bit woo- but have you ever met anyone you have felt scared of for no reason?

[crochetmonkey74]

I'm fascinated by stories like this- when you meet someone and they don't necessarily do anything - more that you just feel scared- intuition etc

I'm nearly 50 and it's happened once very strongly (was justified I later came to find out) and once not as strongly - so it's not a regular occurrence, but stories like this really interest me

Re the person who said with the Fred West etc stories that they always 'appear' (as if they're made up), there are lots of incidents about him meeting people, one I saw was in an online article where he'd travelled to Bristol, think it was in a supermarket car park and approached a young woman. It seems they were very prolific in travelling around and searching for victims.

A very long time ago I was choosing a bottle of wine in an off licence. I became aware of a man next to me and all the hairs suddenly stood up on the back of my neck. I felt frozen to the spot in fear. I turned to him as he started to speak and felt a great danger. He said something about recommending the chianti. Years later, I realised that it had been Hannibal Lecter

I worked with a guy - could just never take to him which was really unusual as I generally get on well with everyone. He never really interacted with me, but any time I spoke with him I got the sense that he was pretty inadequate and pretending in life - emulating what others were doing. Weirdly anytime I changed my email signature, he would immediately do the same - so if I changed the format, or font he would follow. It sounds really petty, but it freaked me out. In the course of a tribunal it emerged that he had been taking credit in his annual appraisal for work I had done and was actively trying to undermine my promotion. He was a real creep with women who were junior to him, and his speciality was being a shoulder to cry on and telling them he too had a terrible marriage then bombarding them with sexual propositions. I was at a work function and he sexually assaulted a woman there. Nothing happened as a result (senior police officer), but I am absolutely convinced that something much more serious will emerge as he is an out and out sexual predator.

I'm notoriously over-trusting and tend to let people in far too quickly and have had several instances of people who I regarded as good friends turning out to be arseholes (though not actual murderers or abusers as far as I know). But there's one guy I have to see a couple of times a year for work events and from the first second I met him, 5/6 years ago, he has given me the pure, absolute willies. Stands far too close, dead eyes, super-intense, softly spoken, overfamiliar. Has invited me several times to other ostensibly work-related things near him and said I can stay at his house. Have simply told (male) colleagues I feel uncomfortable around him and not to leave me alone with him. No-one else sees it, and I sometimes feel bad because he might just be a nice guy who struggles with social skills, but it's so visceral, like actual sickening repulsion, and I feel I should pay attention to that.

Rose West (and Fred) got about a bit didn’t they? Wonder what she was doing at a London Station? Could possibly be made up….could it?

I must be crap at spotting these cues, i've had plenty of stay away from him he's a creep moments though. There is one person i've had a bad feeling about and that was my daughters ex boyfriend, me and my eldest son hated him on first sight, real creepy he's a wrong un vibes. He isolated my daughter from her friends and family straight away. Made her feel like she was important to him&his family, she looked after his 2 children and his sisters children every weekend. For 5 years he abused and controlled her, she became a shell of her former self. She is thankfully away from him now, but only after years of abuse, he is in prison now for being a filthy nonce with over 500 pictures, including babies of one, which was the age of my granddaughter when he was arrested and I thank the goddesses that he will never get to be a part of her life again! Plus my daughter is much happier and stronger without him!

I suspect a high percentage of celebrities have a dash of psychopathy in their psychological make up.

You've got to be a bit weird to want to be famous anyway. To desire adulation from large groups of people speaks of deep-set issues.

Then of course there’s all the shit you have to do to claw your way to the top: moral compromises, backstabbing, shitting on people etc.

And of course if you really make it to the top you can do whatever you want, which is a very dangerous thing.

He found it harder to get out than he'd thought it would be - and probably harder than prison.

Yes and no. Everyone else was sick. He was lying, entitled and narcissistic.

I’d love to see the build-up to the faker ending up on the psych ward.

TAX INSPECTOR:
So Mr. Johnson, do you have an explanation for not having declared your income from these sources?

JOHNSON:
Er……I’m Jesus?

I won’t watch Jimmy Carr either.

Is being homely a sign of a serial killer?

Christ! That must have been frightening

I don't doubt they got about at all. I think casting their net wider meant they got more 'victims'. And no one would see anything dodgy/doubtful about a trip to London from Gloucester would they?

Didn't Hindley/Brady also travel about a bit too?

The poster is not implying that at all. They mean he couldn’t let her go with the woman despite her being homely (in the British sense of home-like not the North American one of unattractive) not because of it.

More the opposite, I’ve met paedophiles and had no idea! Not as a child, so maybe that’s why. The three I properly met - spoke to in various situations over the years - were all v charming men. Very scary.

Homely isn't the sign of being a serial killer. But it's the hook to draw them in. Harmless looking and speaking, sort of looks like your sister/mum. Especially if Fred West is there. Some of their talk if you read books about them was 'we need someone to help out with the kids, like a nanny/au pair/babysitter. Do you like kids?' 'Victim' says "she likes kids, helped out with her brothers/sisters" and is young and naive enough to be taken in by them.

Absolutely. More potential victims and less chance of being caught than if the girls all disappeared within a few miles of their house.
The reason there are so many stories is that they were at it for an awfully long time, decades, before they were caught, and their modus operandi was to approach a lot of girls in the hope that even if most said no a few would say yes. Serial killers who target specific victims by eg stalking or following them for a while are going to produce fewer stories of near misses.

Oh god, the eye tests!
Those couple of posts have just reminded me of when l had an eye test years ago. I was in my early twenties, and the guy must have been in his sixties then, he seemed ancient to me at the time.
The 'exam' room was tiny, it must have just been about three feet by seven, if that. It had a sliding door, and when that door closed, it was pitch dark in there besides the screen used for the eye tests.
All l could hear was this man's breathing, and l was way too aware of how close he was to me. He didn't actually do anything wrong, but l had goosebumps from head to foot the entire time l was in there.
Thank god the eye tests I've had more recently have been in bigger rooms, and not in (what felt like) total darkness. I've never had the creeps like l did with that man.

Recent a friend of DS’s (young adults) - he came round to our house a few times and I just got bad vibes off him. Turns out he was trying to manipulate DS and control him. - very, very unpleasant business which was a lot more involved than this.

This is interesting. There is a hamlet near where I live in Canada that I find deeply creepy. It is former mining town which used to have a population of several thousand, but now has a tiny population and lots of derelict buildings. I thought the creepiness was because of this, and because there were probably mining tragedies there. But it's also in a deep valley and surrounded by dense evergreen forest, so that could also be a factor.

Ah well if he was faking to get off a sentence for GBH then that puts a different complexion on things.

But yes, generally I’d feel safer with someone who was rational and faking serious mental illness than someone who was actually suffering from it.

Me and my DH had a really odd reaction to a guy we saw walking the dog (our dog was desperate to get away too, but that might have been because he sensed our fear).

It was the oddest thing… he looked perfectly normal but we both felt a strong urge to run. I’d understand more if it were just me, I can be quite suspicious. But I’ve never known DH to react like that way to a stranger.

He might have been a perfectly nice man, but I was so relieved when he was out of sight.

I've met two people who gave me this feeling. One was a convicted murderer but I didn't realise it when he approached me. The other was suspected to have done some very bad things. There was a stifling sense of evil off both of them, and both times I got that feeling before I knew who I was looking at/talking to. I also have radar for narcissists and have backed out of several friendships by spotting the signs early on. Never discount the feeling! It's there for a reason.

Your mention of a creepy place in Canada has reminded me of Kamloops in British Columbia. Scariest place I've ever been and it was creepy/eerie scary rather than because we felt threatened by the people there. My husband and daughter felt the same and it's the only place we've been that has had that effect on us. Fortunately we were only there for one night as it was an overnight stop on the Rocky Mountaineer train.