My Halloween Stalker
I decided to tell you this story because it’s almost Halloween. The story took place around this time of year, and it’s probably one of the most scary things that ever happened to me, simply because I was not in control and the person who was was not someone who could have been trusted.
I’ve been working haunted houses for a few years now. The first year was a little more interesting than you would have expected. At the time, I was a human services major and going to a local private college. (This is important, I promise.)
The idea of me being a counselor honestly made me quite unhappy, and I took a lot of my frustration out at the haunted house that I was playing a role in. It is very oddly soothing to scream and throw things for no actual reason.
I was in a part of the haunt that no one really frequented other than my fellow actor who would often neglect his duties, choosing instead to come and go as you please and leave me to do skits alone while he smoked and chatted with whomever passed by. The haunt was wrapping up. It was almost finals week for the class that I hated, and I was struggling with to say the least. Needless to say, I was very anxious for the class to be over. I had one more assignment to do, and it was a one-on-one interview, the criteria being that it had to be someone that I didn’t know. This was an attempt on the teacher’s part to stimulate the relationship between a counselor and the client.
In my quest to find a stranger who would be willing to let me interview them, I asked someone I barely knew from the haunted house. He was a friend of a friend for the sake of the story, and, because it is almost Halloween, let’s call my friends Freddy and Jason.
Jason was someone that I was getting to know outside of class. We hung out at the mall once or twice, so I trusted him at the time. Jason told me Freddy was a good guy and would be willing to help me on the assignment that I was dreading and rushing to get done.
To deal with my nervousness around new people, I asked both Jason and Freddy to come to the house in order to help me with my project. Freddy came to the house alone, saying that Jason was with a little girl who had fallen ill and would be unable to make it.
I believed Jason when he told me that his friend was trustworthy. That is something I would come to regret.
I went through with the assignment and handed it in. Over the next little while two things happened that were noticeable: Jason pretty much quit texting all together even though we had a pretty decent friendship before that, and Freddy texted at all hours of the night, sometimes even going as far as to call my phone multiple times after 2 in the morning to ask me how I was sleeping, of all things.
Needless to say, this was weird, especially when considering Freddy was in his early twenties and should have realized that this wasn’t normal behavior, even if you like someone.
When I expressed anger towards blowing up my phone at all hours of the night, keeping me awake, Freddy proceeded to beg me to let him come over to my house. He showed up later that day with my favorite soda on hand. I took it, but I never took a sip of the drink — something about it made me uncomfortable.
I was getting bad vibes all the time now, and I have a really shy awkward personality when it comes to relating to people one-on-one. I would constantly believe that it was me who was the problem.
We watched a couple episodes of Bob’s Burgers on Netflix in silence, sitting in different living room chairs. After watching T.V. for short period of time, he simply got up out of his chair and left without saying a word to me. When he left, I threw my soda down the kitchen sink. Again, something about the idea of drinking it just didn’t feel right to me.
I got a text from him saying that he had fun shortly thereafter. I felt like I should respond. I know how it feels to be ignored by someone that you want to reach out to. I just told him that I was glad and then I had homework to do. I wanted to quietly diffuse the situation while getting him to leave me alone at the same time. I was busy most of the time with my senior level college classes and didn’t like having my small amounts of me time disturbed.
College was taking up a large majority of my time, and I couldn’t go to a cafe or a bar to meet guys, so I started meeting guys via a popular dating app.
It just so happened that Freddy had an active profile on the app that I had been using. To my dismay, he decided that he wanted to message me. For those who don’t know, dating apps usually have a few basic message choices that you’ll get from other people: the person will ask you for a cup of coffee, tell you you’re attractive, ask for your number, or ask if you simply want to hook up with them.
Freddy asked me point-blank if I would go out with him on a date. I said something to the effect of “I know you have a girlfriend, I don’t think she would be comfortable with you dating other girls or having a profile on this app.”
I found a guy that I thought I might like to have coffee with. We exchange numbers. Things went well. We were posting sappy things on each other’s Facebook walls and talking all night about anything we could think of, including Halloween movies and our favorite Marilyn Manson songs. Like most run of the mill millennial couples, we started liking each other’s Facebook posts and making plans via the internet.
Freddie was still on my Facebook list. He would like all my posts, and, eventually, when I made plans to go to the mall with the guy that I liked, I got a lot of creepy messages asking why I was dating another guy when we were dating, I should know better, and I was his girlfriend, and calling me a whore and a liar. I responded with confusion.
The guy that I have been interested in, let’s call him “Rob Zombie” for this post, and I started seriously dating, and we would date exclusively until the following summer.
Rob Zombie was pissed, but, being the ever so passive little guy that he was, he was unable to vocalize this and it continued for weeks.
Freddy would send me various texts, including unwanted pictures of his penis
At this point, I was genuinely freaking out, but most of my friends and family were in the dark because I was not sure how to handle it, and I didn’t tell them the full extent of what was going on. One of the people from The Haunted House about that they could be our friend and be the bridge between the two of us. The well-meaning friend would try to get me to talk to Freddy all the time and say we needed to make up. [AP4] Ultimately, I ended up having to abandon this friendship because, as with most abusive situations, I was made out to be the villain and my stalker portrayed himself as the victim.
I blocked Freddy’s profile from Facebook. I would get a lot of messages from Freddy pretending to be the person who had sexually abused Freddy in his childhood. Of course, I raised an eyebrow at this. I had so many questions. Why would someone be contacting me that didn’t know me? And why would someone who did so many horrible things to you be friends with you?
I didn’t believe him. The last message I received was from the perceived friend/enemy of Freddy, and it said that I would be sexually assaulted in graphic detail. He said he would sneak into my house, he knew where my room was, and he knew I was too small and weak to fight him. I was being threatened because Jason believed he was the victim. I was scared deep down I have always been small and fragile he was right he would win a physical fight.
I told him I knew it was all a lie, it was all a facade to get me to feel bad for him somehow and to get my attention, but that threatening to assault someone anyway is illegal and immoral.
At the time, I felt I could only give Freddy, who I knew now was on the other end of the phone, two choices. I told him he could either delete his entire Facebook history, both profiles, and pretend that he never met me; or I would save the 3 month’s worth of creepy texts and take them to the police station in the morning and the cops could handle it from there.
I never heard from him again. I’m still ashamed that I let this person into my life and around my family and my animals.
Always remember that any kind of abuse is not okay. You deserve to be treated well, and it is beneath you to treat others poorly for your own satisfaction.
This was a better outcome than you hear about in the movies. I’m thankful for that. It’s still something that unsettles me.
