They showed his picture on the TV.
I had been picked up by John Wayne Gacy."
Here are their horrifying stories.
*
*We also used some responses fromthis Reddit thread.
“Several years ago, we had friends over for Christmas dinner: a mom and three daughters.
The oldest had just married.
Of course, the husband came along.
There was something about him I didn’t like just a feeling I got.
But there was just something that just wasn’t right.
She was staying with friends in a neighboring town.
Her friends had an eight-year-old son.
“She was stabbed several times one knicked her heart, but she thankfully survived.
He finally was sentenced to life after a deal took the death penalty off the table.”
dianed4ef4966b5
2.
“I had a close call with a serial killer, Leonard Lake.
I put a notice on a bulletin board on campus for a room in a house.
I was young and naive.
A girlfriend spent the night, and he came into the room at 5 a.m. and photographed us.
One time, I found pictures of myself that he had shared with another dude.
Fortunately, my boyfriend of three months visited me and got a creepy vibe from Leonard.
He insisted I move out.”
“Ten years later, I was working and got a weird call.
Turns out Lake and a friend had tortured and murdered 40 women and children.
They filmed this shit.
When he was captured, he ate cyanide and died before he could be tried.
His buddy escaped to Canada but was eventually returned to the US and got a death sentence.
bestghoul28
3.In 1979, …
He put a police light on his dashboard and signaled me to pull over.
This is around the time of several women going missing and being murdered.
I had this feeling that this was the guy.
It was before cell phones, of course, so I sped up.
I kept driving as fast as I could and he finally gave up and flipped me off.
u/Gramasattic
4.
“I picked up my first and last hitchhiker many years ago.
I got a bad vibe.
Then he showed me a little plastic doll and told me its name.
Before getting out, he asked if I wanted to split a pack of cigarettes.
I said, ‘No thanks.’
He lingered, then finally got out of the car.
I saw him on the news the next day.
Hed murdered someone.”
u/MadMadRoger
5.
I got picked up by this guy around Joliet.
His car was nothing memorable.
He had a round, jowly face, a plug-like nose, and a mustache.
He was trying to talk me up and offered to buy me a couple of beers at a bar.
As a beer-thirsty teen in the seventies, I said yes.
My radar was up at this point, and I thanked him but disengaged.
“This was at a time when there were copies of ‘Have You Seen Me?’
pages taped to the entrance doors of grocery stores.
They featured seventies white boys with longish hair kids like me.
They showed his picture on the TV.
I had been picked up by John Wayne Gacy.
I don’t tell anyone this story because I know they won’t believe it.
It happened, but I have no proof.
I just keep this shit to myself.”
u/mareprofundus
6.
“I watch a lot of true crime videos on YouTube, with them typically playing in the background.
One featured a girl I went to high school with.
She’s currently on trial for murdering her five-year-old daughter and burning her in her fireplace.
They found her daughters remains in her patio closet.
This is the same girl I used to sit at lunch with every day in ninth grade.”
“I still have her number and receive notifications to add her on social media.
clumsysorcerer85
7.
We met that year at the annual family reunion.
He lived with his grandma, who was also my mom’s aunt.
The reunion was on the family farm, which was still my mom’s aunt’s place.
The cousin and I were closer in age to each other than anyone else there.
We ran off together, and he let me ride his 4x4 while his dog ran beside us.
We got way out into this other field, and suddenly, his demeanor changed.”
He snapped out of his creepy state and took me back as fast as he could.
On our way home, my mom told me some stories about him.
She told me she didn’t like me hanging out with him.
I told her how weird things were when we rode out into the field.
I told her he really creeped me out.
About a month later, we found out he killed my mom’s aunt.”
mirandarose64
8.
“I used to shop at Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar in the flea market in KC in the 1980s.
I loved the earrings.
Bob Berdella sat behind the counter of his shop, and we would chit-chat.
That was at the time he was torturing and killing people in his home.
Creepy…but I still have a pair of the earrings.”
skimswan59
9.
“Recently, I found out my former landlord murdered and dismembered a young girl after a first date.
He lived above me for three and a half years.
It’s scary to think that could have been me.”
carrierosin
10. rl19
11. u/borrow-protect
12.
“I went to school with a girl who escaped being a victim of a serial child murderer.
She was the only one to get away from him and the only reason he got caught.
I hate thinking that this absolute garbage human might’ve ever eyeballed us.”
jmw1122
13.
“I met a woman in grad school and went to her place to drop off a few books.
I chatted with her husband for a minute while she was with their baby.
He was quiet, but I thought, ‘Typical intellectual.’
It was incredibly disturbing and sad.
I went over the conversation I’d had with him in my mind, trying to find clues.”
“She had been accepted to a PhD program and wanted to take the baby across the country.
He didn’t want to go and flipped out.
That’s the speculation because nobody really knows why he did it.”
u/sebastianmorningwood
14.
You would think that they would have at least called back or wrote shit down.”
u/Sugarlessmama
15.
“A man tried to block me in with his car and force me into a parking lot.
The police did not want to deal with it.
Turns out this man beat a woman unconscious, raped her, then stabbed her in the head.
She managed to escape from his trailer days later and went to the police.
When they searched his property, they found copious amounts of blood in his truck and his trailer.
Even after he kidnapped, raped, and stabbed a woman, the police let him go.
He only served two months.
I fully believe he is a serial killer responsible for at least five murders in my city.”
u/Bag_of_DIcksss
16.
“I lived in a townhouse when I was eight.
My cousin and I met this really nice couple walking their dog.
They even let us pet him.
I can’t remember what we talked about, but I can still picture their warm smiles.
At 6 a.m. the next morning, I woke up and looked through the bedroom window.
Turns out, that night, the couple had a terrible fight.
Her boyfriend ended up stabbing her to death.
She was an only child.
I also saw it on TV and in the newspaper a while later.”
u/ubefrappehazelnut
17.
“I went to Murray State University in KY back in the 1990s.
At a party, I met the infamous ‘Vampire Killer,’ Rod Ferrell.
He was a pretty creepy dude.”
u/artistandattorney
18.
She said being in the small examining room with this guy was the most scared she had ever been.
It’s been twenty years, but I still remember how shaken she was.
And yes, the guy and his parents had killed the wife and chopped her up.
Supposedly, it had been the mom’s idea."
u/MorningSkyLanded
19.
“I was walking out of my mechanic’s.
I’d dropped my car off for a new tire and was going to get a coffee.
There was this guy crouched on the concrete walkway, muttering to himself.
I was like, ‘meh, typical for this suburb, I’ll just walk around him’.
As I walked around him, he said, ‘just help me.’
I instinctively turned back, as it seemed he was talking to me.
He said, ‘The police are here, and this fucking slut won’t leave me alone.’
He looked up at me and said, ‘Get away from me, you fucking slut!’
And then he lunged at me.
Of course, I ran.
He went past the coffee shop at a fast walk about ten minutes later.
They didn’t find him.
That evening, he was on the news for going home and killing his girlfriend.”
u/ChaosAlainn
20.
He talked about football and UVA because he saw my Virginia Tech shirt under my jacket.
All three of us mentioned it once he left her room.
Several years later, we saw him on the news in relation to the Hannah Graham disappearance.
It was Jesse Matthew."
u/educ8d
21.
It isn’t unusual to have empty streets at night where we live; our town is super small.
Out of nowhere, he asked her, ‘Where are you going?’
She told him, ‘None of your business, so fuck off!’
He ran towards her, grabbed her, and started dragging her.
The cop knew my mother and told her to go home.
It turned out this guy was a serial rapist/murderer and had already nabbed a few girls.
This happened in the early ’70s."
u/agoodfuckingcatholic
22.
My mom said yes.
My neighbor’s husband would be staying behind because he was disabled and just not in good shape.
… My neighbor was called right after the police got there.
SHE DIDN’T SHOW UP UNTIL 24 HOURS LATER.
clairzeez
23.
A mustached man used to come in who would always give me the creeps.
u/TigerQueef
24.
We were both wrong.
Most adults would cuss a little or flip each other off and get over it.
I ended up going 40 on the freeway just to ditch them.
Then, a very similar-looking kid was arrested for shooting an entire family in a road rage incident."
The sidewalk that ran in front of the building was perfectly paved and salted remember that.
Instantly, I just froze and stared at him.
And I had left my pepper spray inside in my bag.
All these facts were hitting me hard in the gut.
‘Hey,’ he said.
He said, now even more pissed.
Why make a random U-shape around a building with a shitty icy parking lot when the sidewalk is safer/better?
And C) I realized as he got closer that he was shorter than me.
I don’t think he realized how tall I was from a distance.
I got my ass back inside and locked the doors.
That’s when I saw prints next to one of the windows.
Instantly, my gut sank.
I think he had noticed the lights on in the building and investigated.
He probably watched me clean inside for god knows how long before deciding to follow me to the dumpster.
It really scared me, I can’t lie.
This is not the end of the story.
He had no real motive other than ‘opportunity.’
I wonder, if I was a short woman, would I be dead right now?
The final kicker:he hasn’t been caught.
That’s right, he’s still on the loose somewhere.
u/Jay-Writer
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
