Have you ever met someone you felt was truly evil?

[Isisiris]

Inspired by a thread,not a TAAT. have you ever met someone and just known they were evil?
Or has someone you know done something you felt showed they were?
I'm suffering insomnia and this subject fascinates me.

I met that guy who had locked a nurse in his boot for 10 days. What I found scary, is that there was no hint of evil about him at all. He was good looking, charming etc...that's almost more scary, the fact that he gave off no clues as to lay beneath the veneer.

[quote Sway19]@tigerbear it’s a shame you couldn’t have stood up to him/her when you made it into the safety of the petrol station. Very unfortunate if it was the same person to have committed the murder[/quote]
Seriously?

I've met people who have made me uneasy and each time my first inintal reaction as been right about them. I've also met 2 people who I instantly felt were very good people.

I’m at the criminal bar so spend fair amount of time representing dodgy types and being locked in small cells with them for conferences etc.
Concept of ‘evil’ is not wholly clear for me. Really rare to represent someone who I can’t understand to some extent how or why they’ve ended up where they are. Some torture and child abuse cases (not all by any means) have made me think about ‘pure evil’. Almost always there’s a pretty clear explanation and ‘if things had been different that could have been any one of us’ type thought.

I have met many sadly as a result of work. I spent over a decade solely investigating murders and so met some very horrible individuals. Glad to be away from it all now...

summerblondey this scares me evens more.. when they appear so normal. I had a murderer in my house once. Friend of a housemate who came back for a post-pub drink with a bunch of other young men. Out of the lot of them he was the most polite (offered me a £1 for each bottle of my cheap lager be drank) and also he was concerned and kept asking my housemate and the others (the ones I knew) if I was okay with men I dont know in the house...
Next week they all went to his funeral. Hed been killed by a family member of a man he had murdered by stabbing him through his eye and into his brain, with a pen!
Honestly, he was such a nice man and so concerned about me that night... terrifying.

I had a relative (now dead) who was as close as I have ever encountered to evil. He came across as charming and kind (especially on first meeting) but took great pleasure from getting close to people then hurting them (mentally, physically or both). He particularly enjoyed it when he convinced his victims' friends/family that they were making things up and he was actually trying to help them. On one occasion he actually confessed to me that everything one of his victims had said was true and also some other things he had done that she had not told anyone about. I will never forget the horrible smile on his face as he threatened that if I told anyone else he would make sure everyone thought I was a liar and would convince them that I was on drugs (which as well as being untrue would have made things difficult for me professionally). I have never known anyone else as skilled at making people believe what he says, even when it is actually pretty far fetched.

A friend of my husband's family. I always found him peculiar and felt uncomfortable around him.He was a bit of a waster but they were always kind to him. He called to my house looking for something one day and my dog barked, growled and snapped at him and when I picked her up to calm her she urinated all over me and was shaking. I have never seen her behave like that ever or since. A couple of weeks later he stole MILs car and cleared out FILs bank account.....

I don't think I have, but years ago my little terrier - the friendliest dog in the world - growled at a man when I opened the door to him. We'd not met him before. I can no longer remember what he wanted, but I thought it was significant that Piggly disliked him on sight.

No because I don't believe in evil. Thanks to work I've dealt with crime but don't people anyone is born 'evil' nor do they become it. You can be shaped to be bad through nurturing, abuse, other outside influences, be predisposed to violence, be mentally ill, be all three, etc etc
Most of the examples on here don't demonstrate pure evil, anyway.

I'm derailing a little but, of the dog thing, my local pub has an elderly lady come in with her husband and another couple (well, it doesnt now, pre covid!) And my dog HATES her! She's a tiny little posh polite old lady,loves dogs and she's mortified that my dog growls and 'tail between legs'and cowers. She tries to make friends with her and I've told her to stop even trying because although my dogs never bitten anyone, she's a big dog and she really doesnt like her and I'm petrified soemthing might happen! I honestly cant see that this woman is evil(who knows though) or that my dog has a feasible reason to react that way. I even spoke to the woman about why, asked had she got different perfume on or soemthing. My only reasoning was/is that she perhaps has a disease or something that my dog doesnt like the smell of?

I'm not sure whether this is evil or sadistic or whether being sadistic makes you evil but I would genuinely have to say my ex boyfriend for this. He has a really evil glare that literally sent shivers down my spine. Sometimes I would be doing something completely normal like drinking tea and look up to find him glaring at me for no reason. It was truly unsettling. He used to frequently ask if I was scared of him and would intentionally do things to unsettle me. He enjoyed making me cry- one time he made me cry and started laughing, I asked what on earth was so funny and his response was that he loved to watch me cry. I stopped wanting to be alone with him and was also unsettled by the aggressiveness he had towards others and the way he spoke to other people. I am glad I left that relationship as there was something truly sinister about him.

My ex (who I've recently began a thread about on here) is similar to that ellebee . Thank god you're away from him!

Friend who works with some not very nice people says that there are three camps she sees: those who do bad things because they have genuine mental problems that mean they can't control their actions, those who do bad things but they've got some kind of internal logic that justifies it, and those who do bad things because they can and because they genuinely enjoy hurting others.

Now you can debate whether there are reasons why the latter group are as they are but its those that I'd class as evil. She doesn't see as many of those but thinks its because they're just better at covering their tracks and charming people. They also seem to enjoy getting away with things in plain sight.

Yes, I can relate to that logic molten. I guess there are some Grey areas though? Someone who hurts people because they enjoy it but has also some internal anger fue to childhood issues or having been hurt? It makes sense though.

I've worked as a criminal defence solicitor and I agree with @HeronLanyon. Very few people that I met in the police station or prisons were "evil" - even the ones who do evil things. Once you get to know their backstories then, most of the time, it kind of makes sense. I could weep (and have wept) for some of the people I've represented.

Tonnes of people have childhood issues and don't turn their pain into causing suffering of others. Some may not realise acceptable boundaries due to childhood issues, some may act without care and not give a shit about the fallout on others, but that's very different from people taking pleasure from hurting others.

@Sway19 I wish I had said something in the petrol station, but it was a tiny shop, a few feet long, and they were standing directly behind me.
At that point, they’d been following me for less than a minute, so I had no idea what to say to the cashier, as technically he/she hadn’t really done anything.

Tigerbear That has sent shivers up my spine.

Molten it's highly likely the ones in the third category are sociopathic (psychopathic in common parlance), although that's a very simplified system your friend has come up with.

Yes. A couple of kids I’ve taught.

1. He was very, very difficult. Following an incident we had a meeting about him. At the end of the meeting the deputy head said, under his breath, ‘He’ll murder somebody one day’. He did.

1. A girl who has a weird effect on the class. They were totally silent and would answer no questions. It was awful teaching them. There was just a strange atmosphere. I didn’t realise what it was until one day she was absent, and I can’t begin to describe how lovely and relaxed it was. One day another two girls were charged with GBH. She had told them to do it. I have never seen such horrible ability to control others in a negative way. I can’t bear to think what she’s done in later life, but it won’t have been good.

@goldielockdown2

Molten it's highly likely the ones in the third category are sociopathic (psychopathic in common parlance), although that's a very simplified system your friend has come up with.

She was most likely dumbing it down for me tbh! She was explaining the vast majority of people fall into the second group where she feels like what she's doing has some chance of success. The ones in the first group need protecting from themselves mostly, but the ones in the third group are the ones she loses sleep over because they're not being driven by any logic other than they genuinely enjoy hurting people and how do you intervene successfully in that?

I got friendly with a homeless man a few years ago . He was living in a caravan in his daughters garden . I tried naively to help him get off cannabis . When he was off the drugs he fell out with his daughter and ex wife . He was so angry when I saw him his normal pleasant countenance had changed to what I can only describe as pure evil . The hate on his face and he was calling her vile names . I remember saying to him that this wasn't the person I knew . The next day he thanked me for letting him getting it out of his system . I am not sure if he had a personality disorder but I had to encourage him to go the drs ( which he did ) as he was having thoughts of killing someone he knew .
I really think Evil is linked in some way to mental health and if people have themselves being abused in their early life . Drugs also create a lot of evil by messing with peoples heads and creating irritation in the brain when they try to get off them .
I had to cut contact with this man in the end as I had a breakdown myself . You can't fix people is what I think to myself now .

My mother is a teacher and once taught a child who might have been described as evil. She would never have described him that way herself (the furthest she went was to say he was the only child she ever taught that she wouldn’t have adopted had they been left with no family). But he used to do really sickening, cruel things even at the age of 5/6.

He would hurt the other children all the time. As easily as he breathed he would scratch them, pull their hair, slap them, etc. He would also break their things, tear up their work, steal from them etc. He used to try and put his hands in the girls’ underwear. He needed constant supervision from an adult to stop him from doing these things.

The class once had a project where they would hatch chicks from eggs in an incubator. One break time he sneaked back into the classroom and broke every single egg, leaving the almost-hatched chicks dead in the tray for the others to find.

I don’t know if a child that young can really be described as evil, but he certainly seemed incapable of any kind of empathy. He may have had a horrendous home life or something else to explain it, but he had two older brothers who were both lovely children.

@HeronLanyon

I’m at the criminal bar so spend fair amount of time representing dodgy types and being locked in small cells with them for conferences etc. Concept of ‘evil’ is not wholly clear for me. Really rare to represent someone who I can’t understand to some extent how or why they’ve ended up where they are. Some torture and child abuse cases (not all by any means) have made me think about ‘pure evil’. Almost always there’s a pretty clear explanation and ‘if things had been different that could have been any one of us’ type thought.

Almost always there’s a pretty clear explanation and ‘if things had been different that could have been any one of us’ type thought.

This is probably more the case than that someone is “evil”.