27 Bone-Chilling Experiences Of People Coming Into Contact With Killers

I’m a criminal defense investigator. I had a murder case involving two brothers. The one accused of the murders was very autistic, and his brother was a schizophrenic. The schizophrenic brother lived in a potato shack in the middle of the desert. I needed to talk to him several times throughout the course of the investigation, and since he didn’t have a phone or electricity, I had to drive several hours out to his house and yell his name from the fence line until he came out of the shack. This investigation lasted for several years, and over time I developed a rapport with schizophrenic brother, and I kind of got to like him. He would talk your ear off about the aliens with golden eyes and the underground tunnels that connect all the Walmarts in the country, but he was pretty entertaining, and part of me wonders how much of it was a “show”. Schizophrenic brother eventually gets a girlfriend; she’s a tweaker who has mistaken his schizophrenia for meth induced psychosis. I talked to her a few times in jail when she was sober, and she was surprisingly charming and insightful. The last time I go to see schizophrenic brother, it’s a dark winter night and tweaker girlfriend is there; she’s lurking in the shadows and staring daggers at me the entire time I’m talking to him. I cut off his conversation about the speakers in his fillings and walk back to my truck to leave. A minute later, schizophrenic brother comes running out and tells me that he wants to show me something in his shack. He’s never invited me inside before, and I’m not thrilled by the prospect. The whole thing feels off to me, so I tell him I have to get going, and start the truck. The look of relief on his face when I declined to go inside convinced me that tweaker girlfriend was waiting behind the door with a hammer or something. A few months later I learned that she shot him in his sleep and stashed his body in an old refrigerator. She has since plead guilty to his murder. 

My mom went on a blind date and got a weird vibe so she ghosted. A few years later he was on the news for killing eight people (his ex-girlfriend and her whole family) before dying himself. She still remembers him talking about this canoe that he made and was proud of and then seeing it his front lawn in the news coverage.

My sister used to work as a security guard at a mall in Colorado. When she was just leaving work at 3 p.m. in the afternoon one day, a strange man comes up to her, asking if he can use her phone. She points over to a public phone and tells him he can use that one. He insists on using her phone and when she denied him a second time, he pulls out a gun at her and tells her to drive him somewhere. She immediately gets into the vehicle and drives with him in the passenger seat, having no idea where he is going to direct her. After driving 15ish minutes he then tells her to pull over to the side of the road and proceeds to take her purse, wedding ring, and key to the car and tells her to get in the trunk.
So she does what he asks. For whatever reason, the trunk was not locked and so while he’s just barely hitting the gas to go, she manages to jump out of the car going about 20 mph. Later, after finding that they guy had smashed the car into the side of the road, the police find him and also find out that he had just killed a 70-year-old man after stealing his money. I don’t know what I would do without my big sister. She’s the light of my life as well as her two beautiful children.

My wife and I were camping on the Oregon coast and jogged through a guy's campsite that he'd set up on the trail down to the beach. On the way back to our campsite, I jogged a little bit ahead of my wife and she was really upset that I didn't stay with her. She said the guy looked really creepy.

We got back to Eugene and got a call from the state police asking if we saw anything strange. We gave an update about the guy camping above the beach and asked why they were calling. They said someone had drowned an off duty police woman in a tidal pool, cut their tent lines and stolen her car.

Turned out to be a serial killer who'd been killing people while traveling across the country. They caught him in southern California a few weeks later.

We definitely got the "dodged a bullet" feeling.

A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor...I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell.

Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling.

Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout "YO!"

Time to go.

I've never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other's bikes.

When I was a teen (from 16 years old to 18) I worked at a local grocery store on the front end. There was this incredibly creepy guy who was about my dad’s age (so almost 30 years older than me), who used to come in everyday to get cigarettes and lotto. He was constantly asking me (and every other young female working) if we wanted to come to his house and party. He said he had weed, and would get whatever booze we wanted. Nobody ever took him up on it. He had this gaze that you could feel even if your back was turned, and would make really sleazy comments to/about us, and act as if we should have been flattered by the attention. This was in the late nineties."
Turns out, he was arrested about five years ago for the murder of 15-year-old Tracy Gilpin in 1986, when he was close to 30 years old. Look him up. Michael Hand. You’ll see exactly how creepy he still looks.

My dad believed he had The Zodiac Killer as a patient WAY back in the very early '70s when he was an active killer. My dad's practice was in Richmond, CA, in the eastern half of the San Francisco Bay Area. This patient was always the last patient of the day. He was always talking about the case. bragging about all the weapons he had, and he even resembled the sketch of him. Dad was a first lieutenant, infantry, tail end of WW2 and did not scare. This patient though gave my dad the creeps. Finally, my dad gave the cops a sample of this patients handwriting. Shortly after this, he stopped being seen by my dad.

Basically, back in the '80s my mum lived in a bedsit, which is basically shared accommodation for those who don't know, and had some guy knock on the door around 11 p.m. All the other young women she lived with had went out earlier in the evening to go drinking, but my mum had stayed back due to work the next day. My mum, being the wise person she is (thank god — otherwise I probably wouldn't be here today and typing this), didn't open the door to him but opted to shout out the window asking who it was. Some dude was stood there with a baseball cap on, briefcase in hand and insisted he had a business meeting with the business below the bedsit. Throughout the conversation he refused to look directly up at her and didn't want to leave. My mum thought this was strange, especially at 11 p.m. at night, so effectively told him to go away and contact whoever he was supposed to be meeting. She reported it to the police."
"Turns out it was the 'bedsit killer,' and my mum could've potentially been his next victim that night. She got a call back in 2021 from detectives saying they'd remanded a man on suspicion of the rapes and killings of two women back in the '80s through DNA (someone in his family I believe got put on file, and that's how they eventually made that crucial link) and they highly suspected he was the man on the doorstep that night from descriptions in her report, and wanted to use this as evidence in court. My mum lived one road over from one of the victims, who coincidentally shared the same name as her, and looked really similar. We got invited to the sentencing at court and managed to see him in the dock, and my mum thought it was definitely the man from that night. He got a whole life sentence for the murders and other crimes (won't go into it, but when they arrested him for the murders and searched his property back in 2021, they unveiled evidence that he'd been abusing bodies in a mortuary in the hospital he worked at, for years).

I worked a lot in remote areas of west Texas, servicing oilfield related equipment. One time I was out in the middle of nowhere as usual and to the northeast was a butte (an isolated hill that's bigger than a regular hill but smaller than a mountain) but everywhere else around was pretty flat. There was one road in and out of the site I was at.

At some point when I was working on a control box, I had the overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I scanned the horizon, looked all around the butte, and went back to work. This happened a few more times within several minutes until I finally saw something move on the side of one of the rock outcroppings on the butte.

I went to my truck, grabbed my binoculars, and the figure hid behind that outcropping. It was definitely a human. I glassed him for a good 20 minutes and I could see him peek around every couple of minutes. Eventually he leaned out so far that I could see the silhouette of the barrel of a rifle slung around his back. At some point he was hidden behind his rock for a while and the next time he peeked out, I couldn't see the rifle. He had either put it down somewhere or he was now holding it.

I immediately felt a sense of impending doom. The hair on my arms and neck was standing straight up. I very quickly collected my tools, got my AR-15 from behind the driver's seat and sat it on the passenger seat, and tore out of there. I sped down the dirt road, almost clipped the cattleguard, and started cruising down the highway just as the adrenaline started to wear off. I remember the metal taste in my mouth and having to grip the steering wheel to keep my fingers from twitching.

A few miles down the road, a maroon suburban full of guys was pulled over on the oncoming side of the road. They definitely weren't oilfield workers: shades all around, buzzed heads, all intently looking at me. I expected them to pull a u-turn and pursue me, but they didn't. I can't prove that this is what was happening, but I do know that cartel guys run operations where one scouts for guys working alone and calls in a group of guys to rob them of their truck and tools.

During my second year of teaching, there was a long-term sub across the hallway from me that I had a good relationship with, and he always came to me for help when he needed it. He was a former college football star at out local university and was a volunteer coach for the football program at a nearby high school. On the last day of school, the day after students left and we were all wrapping things up before leaving for summer, we walked past each other in the hallway and I greeted him simply by saying, 'What's up Mr. Johnson!' Not a word back from him; he didn't even look at me, just had a thousand-yard stare down the other end of the hallway. Two days later, I turn on the news and the headlining story was, 'Local substitute teacher arrested for triple-murder.' He had killed his own son, niece, and brother later that day that I last saw him in that hallway.

I was installing a camera in a customer's home with another guy at work. The wife of the couple we were installing for began the appointment by ranting. For a taste: "All the cops are rapists and murderers, all of em, and they didn't do a damn thing to protect the white house, yet they arrest me and throw me in jail for quoting a scripture while I'm in court. It's just like my damn landlord and the cops are trying to rape me just like the god damn white house was." It's unbelievable that what she was doing went on like that for 5 minutes before I cut her off.

It was her husband, though... The way he looked at both my coworker and I was like a person staring through me, like he knew he was looking at me but didn't "see" me. In his garage, where we were mounting the camera, this guy with the dead eyes closes the garage door, looks at me for a long 5 second stretch, then says "yep, over there is where we let them suffer before we gotta cut the heads off. Gotta let them suffer before cutting the heads off." He locked the outside garage door, turns around and just starts murmering about cutting off heads again. He must have brought up murder 5-8 times in a 10 minute stretch. "They call me Sergeant (something, I forget)." I reply: "Thank you for your service!! I really admire veterans!" He looked at me with those dead eyes: "I was never in the military." Long stretch of silence. His wife called him on his iWatch: "Everything ok down there? Anybody up to something?" Long stretch before he replies. "Everything's fine. We're just in the garage. Everybody is here and we're fine. I'll call you if I need you." It was like they were talking about something they didn't want us to hear.

My coworker and I kept our scissors and razors in our hands from about 5 minutes into that service call for the rest of the way, neither of us letting him be behind us where we couldn't see him. We were bracing for him to try to get us. After we mounted the camera he asked us to go through the house back to the panel to learn it in. There was no way in hell I was doing that, so I said "we need to take the ladder back out to the car." He said we could take it through the house (remember, he had closed and locked the outside garage door earlier). I said it was a safety hazard and needed to go out the big garage door. Once more he asked us to go through the house, to which I replied we couldn't do that because of company policy with the outdoor ladder. He stared at me for roughly 5-10 seconds in silence, then went and opened the garage door. Both of us split out of there and didn't look back. Told the company, locked the account, and wondered if we should have called the cops.

I have no idea what would have happened to my coworker had he showed up alone there. He was supposed to be alone, I randomly picked that day to audit him. Both of us swear up and down he felt like he was looking at something less than human and worthy of killing when he looked at us. Creepiest thing I've ever been around.

I was in Denver with my ex a few years back. We had just gotten off the light rail maybe five or six blocks from our Airbnb, and there was a guy trying to get a ticket for the train. As we were walking past, he explained he was like 50 cents short and asked if we could spare some change. All I had was a $5. I hand it to him and realize as he's grabbing the cash that he has blood splattered on his hand. I look up and make eye contact and he had more blood splattered on his face, and a huge grin.
Time stopped for a second, and then he asked me if I wanted my change. I told him no, grabbed my ex by the hand, and started hurrying away looking over my shoulder every few seconds. He stood still as a statue watching us walk away until we turned a corner. We found a church and hunkered down in the doorway and called an Uber for the remaining four block walk to our room.
The next day we were flying out and saw a news story about a murder that happened in the neighborhood we were staying in that night. Someone was stabbed to death near the train tracks at around 10:00 PM. We got off the train at around 11:00 PM. Can't confirm, but I may have met a murderer and given him five bucks to help evade the scene.

Back when my son was only about a year old my husband worked second shift so I was alone every evening. We lived in townhouses at the time and had a neighbor who was a war vet, my husband was friendly with. He was a little off in the sense there was very obvious PTSD and other traumas but all around a nice dude.

Anyway, one evening this guy knocked on the door. I opened it thinking he probably was looking for my husband and I was just gonna let him know he was working. Dude was super drunk, wouldn’t stop talking and kinda made his way into the house. He also brought his huge a*s German Sheppard with him. I was trying to be friendly but I had the worst feeling in my stomach. I felt insanely vulnerable and like something just wasn’t right with this situation. I kept trying to tell him in the nicest way to leave but he wouldn’t.

I texted my husband “hey neighbor guys here and won’t leave, he’s trashed, I feel really uncomfortable”. My husband texted his buddies that lived a few apartments down and they came over immediately. They got the dude out of the house and not even 20 minutes later I hear noises outside and this guy is trying to rip the license plate off my car. My husbands friends heard it or saw it I’m not really sure but they came over and were more aggressive about him going home and leaving me alone. And he did, so I thought.

Few hours later my husband gets home and sees this guy hanging out crouched behind some cars. He goes up to him to ask him exactly what the f**k he’s doing. I don’t know the exact details because I stayed hiding in the house but this guy had ropes and some other weapon on him and full intentions of raping me that night.

It makes me sick to think that if my husbands friends wouldn’t have came over as fast as they did to help me my poor son would have watched something horrible happen to me. Or even what he would have even done to my child.

Found a piece of furniture on Craigslist that I wanted to buy. Agreed to meet the guy outside of his house to inspect/pickup. When I arrived, he wasn't outside. Rung the doorbell, he answers and invites me in. Tells me the furniture is in his basement. Without leading me to it, he points to the door to his basement and tells me to go have a look. I notice the basement door has a lock and deadbolt. My internal subconscious alarm bells immediately being screaming at me to leave. I'm a 5'10" male in good shape, but I still wouldn't be able to bust down a deadbolted door. I thanked him for his time and promptly left (fled).

My grandpa once bought shoes from John Wayne Gacy.

2019 summer, i was house sitting for my dad while he was away for work. the house is in the middle of nowhere and barely even on google maps, usually when friends would come over i would have to drive to the top of the nearest paved road and lead them down a few more i paved streets to my dad’s place.

i had had a few drinks with friends and been dropped off my a friend that lived close by, he dropped me at the side of the house because it was easier for him to turn around there. so i walked up the stairs and entered with my key through the side door that led to the kitchen. the kitchen overlooked the front garden but the front door was nestled into a small porch and wasn’t visible to me.

i saw a movement in the front garden while i was making tea in the kitchen and immediately turned off the lights. there was a man trying to look into the kitchen windows from the garden, he ended up walking around to the wall-to-ceiling glass doors around the back of the house, cupping his hands to the glass and trying to look in. i wasn’t completely sober that night so i remember just thinking the situation didn’t seem real. he couldn’t see me in the dark but i was hiding behind the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining/lounge area (open floor plan). i had stupidly not locked one of the glass doors closer to the front door and he started entering the house, in the pitch black, not realising i was maybe 10ft away from him. i had already called the friend who had dropped me off as i knew he was still nearby (cops would have taken at least 30mins to get to me), knowing his parents (ex military) kept a gun in a safe in the truck. i remember just wanting to RUN, get out of the house asap. the situation didn’t feel real at all, like something from a movie. i was acting on adrenaline. but if i ran, i’d be alone in the middle of nowhere with a deranged man chasing after me.

as the guy walked further into the house, i stepped out and pulled a knife on him (again, i was NOT sober. it was a very stupid thing to do). he tried to incoherently make conversation but i got him out of the door just as my friend pulled up with his gun. the dude bolted to his car that was parked in an area concealed by trees on the property.

turns out he was the gardener. He had been keeping tabs on me, knew i was house sitting alone for my dad while he was out of town, was VERY high on meth (he admitted to me while i had the knife out) and had been waiting on the front porch for me to come home. except i had used the side door that night, something i NEVER usually did.

if i hadn’t have used the side door that night, i have no idea what would have happened. i also have no idea what would have happened if my friend hadn’t come back when i called him, because the guy was starting to get aggressive and trying to come towards me right when my friend got there with his gun out.

we like to joke about it now, but it was the worst scenario i have ever experienced where i wanted to just run and get the f**k away

I was driving back from a trip with a friend and my kids (at the time 4 and maybe 3 month baby) my baby was screaming so I pulled into a gas station to change her and nurse her in the car. The store was very rural but maybe 10 cars still there, they were closing as I was feeding her. I stood up and laid her in my drivers seat to change her diaper when a pickup truck with 2 men pulled up behind me, they were talking to one another and smiling the nastiest, creepiest smiles at me. I stared back for what felt like eternity, I handed my baby across to my friend and reached in my glovebox and pulled out my .380 and kept it in the seat and never broke eye contact. They must have recognized the motion I made bc they peeled out after that. I have no doubt they were gonna try and harm us.

I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend & I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms & a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of "Get out! Not that way!" Just absolute fear, I felt trapped & anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said "Let's take the outdoor stairs..." My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit.

The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin & students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He'd been kicked out of the program for his grades & snapped.

My friend still talks about it & tells people to always trust my instincts. I actually asked her to stop telling people, because I felt so weird about it. I'm sure I just heard something in the distance that gave me that feeling, but Gavin de Becker would be proud!

I had a run-in not to long ago. A man almost ran into me and looked me dead in the eyes then suddenly laid down on the sidewalk directly infront of me. My initial reaction was trying to help him, but someting was holding me back. I had a real bad feeling about him, so I was stuck in a dilemma of wanting to help him but also having a bad gut feeling about it. Eventually I went my way and felt horrible. But a week later this man randomly killed three woman and injured nine — including a child."
"He just snapped and stabbed them out of nothing, they also say he had a misogynistic motive. So to this day I am grateful I for once didn’t try to help, God knows what he would have done.

My grandparents bought their house in Tacoma, Wash., from Ted Bundy’s great-uncle. They were apparently super close and Ted spent a lot of time at their house when he was a kid. I only found this out recently and it’s a little disconcerting to think that around the same time Ted Bundy was killing dozens of women, I was a toddler spending weekends with my grandma in his old house.