I was nearly kidnapped near my flat
Just to give some context, I'm currently in the UK and the town where I live is known for its drug scene, but it doesn't have a violent crime problem to speak of. I think that's why I found what happened so shocking, because I lived in London before and, while some messed up stuff did happen to me there, it was nowhere near on the level of what happened to me earlier this year.
My partner and I live together in our flat, which is in a relatively busy residential area. I work from home, however, and he's out of the flat quite a lot, so I guess it might look to an outside observer like I live alone. Our flat complex was once an old factory and we have these HUGE industrial windows, so people walking on the street have a pretty clear view of our dining room, which is where I work during the day.
It all started in July of this year. I'm ashamed to say that I can be a major rubber-necker and a lot of drama occurs on the road outside of our flat, so I look out of the windows often during my work day for some light entertainment. The best was a 2-hour break-up I got to watch unfold in the car just below our window, but that's beside the point.
One day, I got up to make myself a cup of tea, looked out of the kitchen window, and saw this guy just staring at me. I was struck by how intense it was and how he didn't look away, even when it was obvious that I was looking back at him. I felt creeped out by it, but I tried not to let it bother me. We have a lot of drug addicts and other weird characters that hang out around here, so it didn't seem like such a big deal. I went back to work and, by the time I'd sat down at the table, he was gone.
About a week later, my partner had gone to visit his dad for the weekend, so I was excited to hunker down and catch up on some of my favourite shows alone. After about 30 minutes, the buzzer to the flat went. The buzzer is so loud and it scared the heck out of me. I was lucky my popcorn didn't go flying out of my hands.
Now our flat complex has this big porch where teenagers and addicts love to hang out, because it provides shelter from the rain and about 4 people can sit down inside of it. Sometimes people lean up on the buzzers by accident when they're hanging out in the porch, so I assumed that was what happened.
After a few seconds, however, the buzzer went again, and again, and again. Someone was pressing it in this rhythmic pattern. It's something I know my partner does when he's forgotten his keys and it's kind of our code for me to let him in, which is why I found it so disconcerting.
At first, I was worried he might have missed the bus to his dad's house and had decided to come back to the flat. I was nearly about to buzz him straight in when I thought it would be a good idea to pick up the phone first and check who it was. As soon I as picked up the phone, the person standing near the intercom must have heard, because they said "Hello?"
It was definitely not my partner.
I asked who it was and why they were buzzing the flat so late at night, but all they said was "Can you let me in?" I asked them why they wanted to come in and they said "You invited me, remember?" While they were talking, they kept kind of laughing under their breath, and the whole exchange put me on edge. I told them I had no idea who they were and just hung up. I was half-expecting them to start pressing the buzzer again, but they didn't.
After a few minutes, I crept out of the flat to have a look at who was in the porch, but they were long gone.
My partner has to get up early for work, whereas I'm more of a night owl. Most nights, I'm up until around 2am or 3am working on my laptop while he's asleep.
A few nights after the intercom incident, I was on my laptop watching YouTube videos and I realised that we'd forgotten to take the trash out. This happens a lot and it's not uncommon for me to take the trash out at around 1am/2am. At least, it wasn't until all this happened.
I put my slippers on, grabbed the bag of trash, and took it out to the curb outside the flat's main entrance. When I looked across the street, there was this guy standing on the opposite street corner. He was watching me, and his eyes followed me all the way from the front door to the curb.
I noticed he was smoking, so I assumed he lived in one of the houses across the street. I remember even thinking "Wouldn't it be creepy if he tried to come over here?"
As I put the trash bag down, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw him walking in a straight line across the road towards me, with his eyes fixed on me the entire time. I don't know how to describe it, but the look on his face filled me with this instinctive sense of dread. It felt like someone had just turned my stomach inside out.
I pulled my keys out of my hoody pocket, turned around, and ran to the front door. I've never felt that kind of fear before and it was like my body was compelling me to get as far away from this man as possible. I got into the building, slammed the door behind me, and rushed to my flat without looking back. I didn't want to know whether he'd followed me or not.
I told my partner about the whole thing the next day and how shook up I was. We agreed that we'd be more proactive with the trash, and I've never taken it out late at night again.
Fast forward to the beginning of August, about two weeks after the trash incident, and I'd pretty much forgotten about all of it. I was still too scared to go out late at night on the road, but nothing weird had happened since then.
I went to bed at about 2am, but I felt restless for some reason and struggled to get to sleep. By about 3am, I was contemplating whether or not to give up and go do something else, when I heard this scream. The sound cut right through me. There was something visceral about the terror in that scream. I knew it was bad, because my partner went from stone-cold asleep to being up in a shot. He asked me what it was, and I said I didn't know.
I went to the window straight away and looked out. Down one of the side roads near our flat, I could see headlights, but couldn't get a clear view of the car. The screaming continued in bursts and, after a while, I could make out words. It was a women and she was saying "get out, get out" over and over again.
I'm used to hearing all kinds of domestic arguments take place on the road outside of our flat, particularly since we're near to the University and several popular bars, but this was different. There was this raw fear in her voice that made the hairs on my arms stand up. I turned to my partner and said I had to call the police.
When they picked up and I explained what was happening, they seemed disinterested at first, but the operator's tone changed when I told them where it was. I think they must have been getting calls from all around the area about it. It was sometime during this phone call that I heard a screech of tires and the screaming stopped.
The operator asked me to go to the window and describe to them what was happening. When I looked down, there was this black car sat on the road. One of the neighbours from across the road was speaking to the two guys in the car. I had to twist to get a good look at them, but one of the guys in the car looked uncannily like the guy who had been watching me when I was putting out the trash that time.
At first, the conversation seemed congenial, but it took a turn when the neighbour asked them some sort of question that I couldn't hear clearly and they sped off down the road.
Within no less than 10 minutes, three police cars arrived and had blocked off the roads leading to our flat (our residential area is on a grid system). They were knocking on doors and asking to speak to all of our neighbours. I told my partner that we should go out and speak to them, since we saw a lot of what happened and my partner had had the foresight to write down the license plate of the black car.
When we went out, there were these two girls talking to one of the police officers. They were both shaking, and one of them looked as though she had been crying. I decided to stand nearby and wait for the girls to finish before speaking with the officer myself. What they said made my blood run cold.
They were from one of the houses that looked out directly onto the road where I had seen the headlights, so they had a clear view of what had happened. Like us, they had been alerted by the screaming and gone straight to the window.
From what they could gather, the black car had cut off a small red car on the road (like pulled right in front of it) and that's what had caused the girl driving the red car to scream the first time. They thought it might have been some kind of misunderstanding, but then they watched as one of the guys from the black car got out, walked to the red car, and jumped in through the window. That's the point when the girl must have been screaming "get out, get out."
There had been a struggle and the girls watching said they assumed the guy was just trying to steal the car, but then he forced the driver into the back seat and that's when he drove off. The two girls were both hysterical by this point and you could tell they felt guilty for not intervening. I could feel that same guilt seeping in to my thoughts as well.
After the guy had driven off in the red car, the two men in the black car had gone the opposite way and turned the corner onto our road, but had been stopped by another neighbour. Although this neighbour had been alerted by the screaming, he hadn't actually witnessed what happened, so he had stopped the black car to ask the guys what was going on without knowing they were involved. That was the exchange we saw.
When the guys started acting suspicious, he asked them if they would wait for the police to arrive, and that's the point when they drove off.
It wasn't until we got back to the flat that I started to put two and two together.
I have a small red car, just like the one that the girls had described, and I normally come back at night on that day of the week, since it's the day I go to visit my parents. I had only come back early on this particular occasion because I needed to let a plumber in to do some work on the flat.
What if they had been waiting for me, and they had gotten the wrong car?
Over the next few days, I contacted the police several times and checked the local news, but I never heard anything about the girl who was kidnapped. I still have no idea what happened to her. All I know is that they found her car abandoned somewhere not far from where she was taken, but she wasn't in it.
It still gives me chills just thinking about it.
submitted by
helpcreepylandlady to
LetsNotMeet
