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When I was a kid, my family moved from our home in upstate New York all the way down to North Carolina, all because of something to do with my dad's job.

It was a pretty scary time in my life.

For someone so young to have to leave behind their school friends and stuff and settle in an entirely new place was deeply disconcerting and saddening.

But none of that compared to what I would face one day during elementary school.

To me, it was a morning a lot like any other.

Nothing remarkable or ominous about it.

I mean, the weather seemed pretty crappy, so there was no outside recess during the morning, but that's not entirely unusual during the fall on the East Coast.

But as the afternoon progressed, I remember looking out of the windows of our classroom and seeing the light drizzle of the morning progressed steadily into some of the heaviest wind and rain I had ever seen.

Like it was pounding against the window so hard at one point that our teacher had to actually raise their voice in order to make themselves heard.

Not long after, another teacher walks in the classroom, quickly walks up to our teacher standing at the front of the class, and whispers something in her ear.

Our teacher immediately goes all wide eyed, and although we didn't know exactly what had been said or what was going on, this super tense feeling just descended over the class like we instinctively knew something was wrong.

Class continued for a little while, all while the weather outside continued to get worse.

Only this time, instead of just ignoring it, our teacher kept looking out the windows.

I remember turning to see what she was looking at and seeing just a bunch of stuff flying across the playing field outside.

Nothing major, just a lot of paper and bits of plastic.

But I'd never seen anything like that before, and it made me really, really nervous.

Then the intercom in our classroom buzzed into life, saying something about how all teaching staff and pupils needed to take shelter in the hallways immediately.

So we did, and with our teacher trying to keep us all calm and she struggled to keep a lid on her own fears, we filed out into the hallway and we're told to sit down on the floor out there.

By that point we could all hear the sounds of the wind howling outside of the building, even through some pretty thick cladding and stuff, which was terrifying all on its own.

And the louder it got, the more and more afraid we all got as our teachers explained that it was just some nasty weather and it couldn't hurt us so long as we were in the hallways.

Things were fine for a little while, but our classroom was right next to the library, and at one point, just as the mood seems to be as tense as it could get, we all heard this big crashing sound coming from behind the closed double doors.

It was so loud and frightening that all the kids immediately screamed when we heard it, and it was followed by these horribly loud howling wind noises that seemed to echo down the hallways.

We were saddened.

It honestly sounded like a big monster had just come crashing its way through the glass and was tearing around the library, knocking things over as it went.

Some of the other kids were inconsolable at that point as the screams turned into sobs and wails that the teachers tried and failed to calm.

It was like a rolling choir of fear and misery with almost every second kid just either quietly sobbing or openly wailing.

I admit to crying myself, but it was only upon hearing another kid saying to a teacher, I want to go home, I want my mom and dad, I need my mom and dad.

That just made me think of my own parents and how this horrible and bizarre event might be affecting them too.

That's when I couldn't find it in me to be brave anymore, and I broke down crying as well.

We ended up staying in that corridor for hours, way past the time we all should have been filing out of the school for the end of the day.

It was actually dark out by the time the howling noises stopped coming from the library, and you can't even imagine the sense of relief that came over us when we were told that our parents would be coming to collect us from school in the next hour or so.

I cried again when I saw them near the main entrance, running up and giving them a huge hug.

I was just so thankful that they were safe and that whatever was going on outside hadn't gotten them, as I was so terrified that it might.

As it turns out, the school had been hit by a tornado.

It definitely wasn't the worst time that could have hit, but as I mentioned, it was bad enough to blow out the windows in the library.

Or maybe it was a tree that was felled that somehow managed to smash through the windows.

I didn't actually see what exactly caused the damage, but at that age I wasn't even really sure what a tornado even was.

Like.

Sure I had heard the word before, but I had never been caught in anything as crazy as that, and neither had most of the other kids by the way they reacted.

It was without a doubt the single most pant weddingly scary thing that ever happened to me during my entire childhood, let alone during my time in elementary school, and since then I have had a profound respect for how awesomely powerful the forces of nature can be and how they are not to be taken lightly.

I know this isn't as gripping or terrifying a story as some of the school lockdown ones I read from time to time, but for all of us in school that day, it was like a nightmare come to life.

Before you hear this story, I just want to say that it does not have a particularly satisfying climax or ending.

It defies all logic and sense and will probably leave you feeling quite bewildered as it did to me while it was occurring.

Having said that, it's still the creepiest series of events that has ever happened to me.

When I was a young teenager, my friend Nathan and I would often take my family's large sea kayak across the nearby river to a small Creek that was around half a kilometer away and shot off adjacent to an abandoned golf course.

This Creek was very slow moving compared to the large Hawkesbury River and as a result of this, a lot of garbage and debris would collect at the mouth of the Creek before slowly being distributed throughout its length.

Nathan and I spent a lot of time at this Creek.

We even built a small jetty to tie the kayak to, using long sticks and baling twine from the hay bales that we used to feed the horses back at home.

We used this jetty to more the kayak while we navigated the mess of prickly pear cacti that guarded the borders of the golf course.

The golf course itself was incredibly eerie.

No animals, birds, or even insects could be heard or seen on it.

Every noise you made was echoed back at you from a nearby sandstone Cliff base.

The closest thing we saw to an animal with the skeleton of a kangaroo, which we found around the second time we went there.

It was strange as we had only been to the spot around a week or so prior and there was no corpse at that time.

Yet there it was, in the middle of the clearing, a full kangaroo skeleton, sun bleached and scattered about.

We picked up some of the bones and admired them closely, remarking on what part of the skeleton we thought each bone was before tossing them aside.

I took the skull back with me in the kayak and placed it on the bookshelf in my room when I got home that afternoon.

I often took things back from outings Nathan never did, but he was always on the lookout for things for me to collect.

The next time we went out to that Creek, we decided to try our luck at exploring the waterway as far down as we could.

We armed ourselves with machetes and a small hatchet that we used when we built the jetty and set off.

The journey was made extremely difficult by vines that spanned the Creek from bank to bank, sunken logs and dense river weed that made paddling nearly impossible.

The water was full of garbage too, broken tubes, life jackets, boat propellers, you name it, it had made its way here.

As we made it through to the relatively rubbish free area that had dark ominous looking water, I looked down briefly and saw what I thought was a doll's head just below the surface of the water.

I stopped paddling to crane my neck to see it more clearly.

It was definitely a doll's head around a foot below the surface, as if it was tethered there from the riverbed.

It was looking up with a blank expression and light blue eyes.

I instantly got a panicked feeling as I gazed at it.

Before I could say anything, Nathan exclaimed Ah, cool, and plunged his hand into the water.

I could tell that he was surprised at how deep he had to reach to wrap his fingers around the head, but Nathan was a determined dude.

He lifted the head out of the water and looked at me, grinning, streams of water running from his closed fist as he held it out toward me triumphantly.

I took it reluctantly from him.

It was a small doll's head, around 3 inches in diameter.

The head was clearly sun damaged and as a result it had lost a lot of the paint features.

There were no discernible pupils on the eyes, just the blue colored irises.

This gave the thing a really disturbing look.

I shook my head at Nathan and placed the head on the front of the kayak to look like the figurehead of an old wooden ship.

Nathan laughed.

Let's call him Bob.

He said while still grinning.

I gave him a deadpan look, trying not to laugh.

You're so original.

I scoffed at him before turning around to resume paddling.

I stopped immediately when I saw Bob staring straight back at me.

I had not placed him like that.

I had placed him facing outward.

I knew that I had because his face creeped me out and I did not want to look at it.

Nathan was paddling while I had stopped and so we were moving at a good pace.

As I was at the front of the boat, I was meant to keep an eye out for obstacles and call out if I saw anything ahead.

I was entirely focused on Bob.

However, as we struck A submerged tree and came to an abrupt stop.

Everything on the kayak jumped forward as a result of this.

Nathan, me, our packed lunches and water bottles, nothing too major happened.

Everything on the kayak had jumped forward, that is except for the dolls head.

I had kept my eye on it the entire time and it did not move even half an inch.

It was like it was super glued to the boat.

Nathan began teasing me about being blind and I snapped at him to be quiet.

He asked what was wrong and I leaned to the right for him to see the head.

I pointed and said.

It didn't move, dude.

While half chuckling, Nathan moved forward to look at it closer.

What do you mean?

He asked slowly.

I picked up my paddle and took a slow stroke backward in the water to lightly hit the tree again.

Once again, everything on the kayak jumped forward slightly as we struck the tree.

Except for Bob.

He stayed perfectly still.

Nathan laughed.

That's weird, he said, his voice trailing off.

I reached out to turn Bob around on his spot and he turned easily.

Let's go home.

I said loudly, trying to wash the area of the heavy feeling that was seeming to settle down upon us.

Nathan agreed, and we turned the kayak around to head home.

I watched the head like a hawk.

Bob never looked back at me on the trip home, though.

When we got home, we packed everything that we could into our backpacks and lifted the kayak out of the water.

The head was stuffed into my pocket.

I had not told Nathan how creeped out I was out of the fear that he would give me crap or give him possible ammunition to play a dumb prank on me with it.

Nathan was and still is my best friend, and he would absolutely have done that if I had told him, just as I would to him had the roles been reversed.

I decided to just keep my mouth shut about the stupid doll head and hope that Nathan would simply forget about it.

We trudged over to my neighbor's backyard with the kayak holding it by the handles at both ends.

My pocket started to feel very warm.

I stopped listening to Nathan's nonsense and began to focus more on the ever increasing temperature of the head inside my pocket.

Each time I thought it can't get any hotter, it somehow would.

It was not burning, more like the feeling of deep heat as it gets left on.

I tried my best to ignore it.

It was getting dark now and I really wanted to get home.

We dropped the kayak in the garage and put away the machetes and hatchet before making our way upstairs for dinner.

I took a detour to my room to dump the head out of my pocket and onto my bed, leaving it there while I left my room to join Nathan and my family for dinner.

When Nathan and I finished dinner and entered my bedroom to go to sleep later on that night, the head was absent from my bottom bunk bed.

Granted, my room was a mess, but it should still have been in the cleared spot on my bare mattress.

I took a little time to look for it, tossing the blankets and sheets aside and climbing on top to peer down through the gap between the bed and the wall.

I could not see it anywhere.

I was not concerned that I may not see it again.

In fact, I was somewhat relieved that it was gone.

However, I had a gnawing feeling that it was still around, not watching me exactly, but just a presence.

Nathan seemed to have forgotten about it, though.

He never brought Bob back up again that night, and he climbed up to the top bunk and promptly fell asleep.

I lay down on my bed and pulled the bundle of blankets haphazardly over the top of me, falling asleep quickly as well.

The next day I was awoken by the sounds of thumping noises coming from nearby outside.

I got up out of bed to glance out the window into the front paddock of our property to see my stepfather using the hatchet to hack at a tree stump that was much too large for the minuscule axe.

My stepfather was a very smart man, but his grasp on common sense sometimes bordered on the absurd.

I yawned, rubbing my eyes and turning around before opening them.

I froze in place.

There, on the shelf in front of the kangaroo's skull was Bob, his eyes looking once again directly into mine.

I turned to look at Nathan, still sleeping on the top bunk, and instantly jumped up on the railing to punch him hard in the upper arm.

He awoke with a pained cry and looked at me with a scowl.

What the heck, man?

He demanded, lifting his other arm to place his palms over the spot that I had struck with the punch.

All like you don't know, mofo.

I said with a slight laugh, trying to mask the trembling tone in my voice.

Nathan looked incredulously back at me.

I stared at him to try to see if his stoic expression would falter.

It always would when he played pranks.

It did not, though.

I shook my head and strafed across the railing so that the bookshelf was in his view.

I pointed at the top shelf.

You didn't put it there?

I asked.

Nathan sat up to get a better look and shook his head.

Nah, man, I would have had him facing outward anyway.

You know I would have.

I spun my head around so fast that I'm surprised my neck did not break.

Sure enough, the head was now facing toward the kangaroo skull and not outward like before.

I began shaking, unable to hold myself up on the railing any longer.

I dropped to the floor and stormed over to the bookshelf to pick Bob up and took him out into the kitchen.

I stepped on the pedal to open the Chrome bin in there and threw him in the garbage a lot harder than I needed to.

I did not let the lid naturally close, instead choosing to slam it down as a good measure.

Nathan sleepily trudged out of my room once I'd finished doing this.

He stared wide eyed at the bin.

He took a moment before looking up at me and speaking.

Yeah, that thing was creepy, man.

I was glad that Nathan agreed with me and was not using this opportunity to make fun of me.

I nodded at him.

Something about it was just wrong.

I uttered quietly.

Nathan playfully kicked the bin, making it rock a little.

Take that creepy doll head guy.

He exclaimed while laughing.

I laughed too, feeling glad that the situation was over and dealt with.

I asked Nathan again if he had actually put the head on the shelf, stating that if he had, it was OK.

It was a good prank, I just needed to know for my own sanity.

Nathan put his hand over his heart and sternly promised that he had not done it.

I believed him then and I still do to this day, nearly 17 years later.

Months went past, Nathan and I never had an opportunity to make our way back to the Creek.

With school holidays approaching, I was keen to get big chores out of the way on weekends so that I could enjoy the full extent of the holiday period.

I did this by working on weekends with my stepfather on various projects on our rural property.

We used the machetes and hatchet that Nathan and I had taken on our last trip to the Creek in order to complete many of these tasks.

Having no means to sharpen the tools, or even the knowledge for that matter, meant that cutting and hacking got more difficult and cumbersome as time went on.

One day, as I was fighting my way through a thicket of vines hanging from a large peppercorn tree, I observed my mother leaned down to pick up an object out of the dirt in the front paddock.

It was in a spot directly below the main household wheelie bins that the council picked up weekly.

I thought nothing of it.

A few hours later I went inside to get a drink of water and to change my shirt as I had managed to create a large tear in the one that I was wearing.

I entered my room and immediately felt strange, feeling a need to look over at my bookshelf.

The feeling of Deja vu was intense.

Bob was back staring at me again from the spot on the bookshelf that I had placed him on years earlier.

This time, though, a small smirk was obvious on his features.

I felt nausea sweep over me and I turned around to walk back into the kitchen.

Mom.

I asked sheepishly.

My mother didn't look up from doing the dishes.

Yes, honey, She replied.

Did you put something on my shelf?

Mom murmured in agreement with me.

Yes, I found that doll's head in the front yard earlier.

I saw it in your room a long time ago and figured you must have lost it somehow.

This made no sense to me.

Mom could not have seen it in my room.

There was no time.

Furthermore, what a bizarre thing to do to find a doll's head underneath the retaining wall there are bins sat atop of, and to think to wash it off and put it on my bookshelf.

I shook my head and turned to walk back to my room, determined to get rid of him for good this time.

I marched straight up to the bookshelf and reached up to grab Bob and paused.

He was not there.

I let out an exasperated sigh and began to violently push things aside on my bookshelf, first on the top shelf, then the second shelf, all the way down until starting to fling things around in my room.

He was nowhere to be found.

I stopped and placed my hands on either side of my face and took a minute to slow my breathing down.

I walked briskly out of my room and grabbed the cordless phone off the wall.

I called Nathan to tell him what had happened.

After I finished rattling off a summary of what had happened.

He was speechless about what I had told him.

We both had no idea what to make of all this.

My stepfather, growing impatient with how long I was taking to come back, had returned to the house also and was standing over me with his hands on his hips, looking very annoyed.

I told Nathan that I had to go and hung up.

My stepfather asked me where I had put the hatchet that I was using earlier.

I looked confused.

I had left it impaled into the impossibly large tree stump.

As always, he had watched me do it.

I told him as much and he said that he could not find it.

We both went back down to the paddock together and sure enough, just like Bob, the hatchet had seemingly disappeared.

I never saw Bob again.

But the story does not end there.

Years later, when Nathan and I were in our 20s, we decided to take the kayak and make our way back to the Creek for old time's sake.

We took the kayak out of the garage and carried it up the road to a launch ramp as the neighbor's property that we used to get to the river had changed owners some years back.

It took us about an hour to get to the Creek, as opposed to our usual 20 minutes back in the day.

When we arrived, we were very surprised to see that our jetty was still there.

Having survived 2 floods and over a decade of river tides.

It honestly did not look like it was damaged in any way, almost like new.

We stopped and moored the kayak to it, as we always done, and stepped out onto the shore.

My foot kicked something up in the dirt and I looked down to see the outline of a familiar shape.

It couldn't be.

I knelt down and grasped at the handle of the object, pulling it out of the crumbling earth to reveal the hatchet that I had misplaced so many years ago, the casing bearing my stepfather's monogram embossed into the dark leather.

I shook my head.

This was impossible.

This hatchet was the only one we had purchased, and it was one-of-a-kind.

Nathan and I were the only ones that visited this spot.

Out of my family and anyone else that we knew.

This made no sense whatsoever.

Nathan looked at it quietly along with me, a heavy feeling seeming to settle around us once again.

We both turned to look at the wide berth of Stillwater at the mouth of the Creek.

In the center, the bloated and rotting corpse of a cow floated innocuously, drifting lazily in a clockwise direction.

A storm was setting in rapidly.

Nathan and I looked at each other at the same time and knew that this was the last time.

We would ever be coming to Katai Creek.

OK, so here in the UK we don't really have elementary schools, but the equivalents are called junior or primary schools.

We go here from about four to 11 years old.

So while I suppose they're not strictly American elementary schools, I suppose this story fits into the age bracket.

Anyway, this is the scariest thing that happened to me while I was at Junior School.

The school I went to had a tiny playground.

Like I think there were only about 100 kids in the entire school, so the little concrete play area was maybe only like 50 meters across.

It was tiny, so if something happened on the playground, every kid and supervising teacher could see it, which I suppose suited them down to the ground.

But it didn't suit me the day something happened to Louis because one day we are all just lagging it around the playground as little kids do not a care in the world.

When I hear one of the teaching assistants scream really really loudly.

Louis.

Louis.

I remember it was autumn because I was playing with some fallen leaves when I heard the scream.

Don't ask me why I spin around like every single other kid in the playground after hearing that blood curdling screech to see the teaching assistant kneeling down by Lewis, who was just lying on the concrete with blood pouring out of his mouth.

Not a little drip, I mean a steady stream of blood that was just cascading out of the corner of his mouth and pooling on the ground beneath him.

I mean, that was horrific enough, but the thing that really got to me was that he was totally unconscious and that his eyes had just rolled up into their sockets so you could only see the whites of his eyes while he bled uncontrollably from his mouth.

Loads of us just piled into the coat room.

Some kids were crying, others were pale and in shock.

And I obviously can't speak for any of the other kids, but I 100% thought that Lewis was dead.

I've never seen any kind of injury like that before.

At least when my friend Ewan broke his leg when he fell off a swing set, he'd screamed bloody murder until the ambulance came.

I knew he was alive, even if it was really distressing.

But Lewis was out cold, bleeding like a stuck pig.

And his eyes, I didn't know eyes could even do that back when I was that age.

Afternoon classes basically got cancelled.

The kids were just distraught, so no one was in any fit state to be concentrating on lessons.

We were just kept in our classrooms until we were all called into the main assembly hall to hear the news about Louis.

We didn't get all the gory details, only that Louis had taken a fall in the playground and that banged his head.

We were told that he had been taken to the hospital and that he was OK, but that he would be out of school for a week or so while he healed up.

Lewis was back before we knew it.

We were all super relieved to see him.

I remember the first day he was back, we all gathered around him as he showed off the big scar inside his lip where he had fallen on his face.

He had also lost a few baby teeth, which I guess was lucky as he was about to lose them anyway.

I suppose that was definitely the most terrifying thing I ever saw during my childhood.

I mean, I'm 32 now, it's been like 25 years or so since it happened, but I remember the whole thing is clear as day.

It's just burned into my memory.

Those eyes, the whites of his eyes, they're something I'll never, ever forget.

To start this story, I should mention my occupation.

I'm in my 30s now and I am a journeyman electrician.

I often work alone and in people's homes, so Needless to say I often find myself in rather interesting situations.

I'm a rather small woman as I'm only 5, two, and maybe 125 lbs.

I'm very aware of my limitations when it comes to physically dangerous situations, especially when it would apply as a target of just about any male.

I served in the military so I have a rudimentary knowledge of hand to hand combat and I am adept trained and a concealed weapons permit carrier.

I also had experience as a paramedic in a major city.

Needless to say, I feel as prepared as someone my size and gender could possibly be for most situations.

However, this situation triggered A visceral response, so I thought I would share my experience with who I refer to as the man with the mannequin legs.

In the interest of privacy and simplicity, I will refer to him simply as John Doe.

It starts on a Friday almost two years ago.

The time was 730 PMI had already worked an extremely long day and was just ready to get home.

I received an emergency dispatch to an apartment complex several towns over.

I grumbled as it was a Friday night.

I just wanted to go home and shower.

The dispatch was for a loss of power to a condo unit in one of the older lower income buildings.

There are certain home and building as I go into which automatically trigger a certain amount of caution.

Upon seeing the building, I had a gut feeling already that I would proceed with an air of caution.

I don't know what it was, but for the first time in seven years of doing this job, I had an extreme sense of anxiety and trepidation about walking into the property.

Thinking that I was over exaggerating but wanted to trust my gut feeling and be safe.

I immediately texted both my office manager, my boyfriend, and my mother, my GPS location with a message saying this is where I am.

His name is John Doe, this is his address and unit number.

If you don't hear from me every 20 minutes until I tell you I have left, please call me first.

If I don't answer, please call the police.

My company uses a dispatch software that tells them my location for every appointment, but my gut told me that I needed to make sure they knew where I was, that they needed to hear my gut feeling screaming as loudly as I could when I rang the bell, A gruff voice of a man who smokes far too many cigarettes forcefully inquires as to who is there.

I answer, stating that I'm the electrician who is dispatched.

He hits the buzzer and lets me in.

I walk up the stairs and the first thing to hit me is the smell of the building.

A building full of unwashed bodies, unemptied wet ashtrays and stale alcohol.

He opened his door and the smell intensified.

He wore grubby, unkempt I'll fitting clothing stained with fluids bodily or food in origin.

His face thin and gaunt, unshaven with the dark heavy bags under his eyes.

Entering the door I noticed a small table that was stacked with empty beer cans toting the champagne of beers.

A plastic whiskey bottle went funk off the toe of my steel toe boots and skidded across the floor.

I look up at him, though on the skinny side, he was tall.

I asked him for details regarding the loss of power, and he explains that some things work while others don't.

I won't bore you with the details, but in the end I had to see the panel.

I told him I had to go run out to my truck to grab a different screwdriver, and I went back out and got my concealed weapon, shoving it in my pants.

I went back into the home with a deep breath to settle my nerves.

He leads me to his bedroom as I pick my way across a sea of discarded items.

We passed the kitchen, the sink stacked high with plates unwashed with rotting food, precariously balanced, the top one enough like a perverse game of Jenga stepping over clothing, garbage and discarded alcohol containers, burn marks in the carpet from someone nodding out and dropping a lit cigarette.

I enter his bedroom.

A mattress with a tattered blanket and no sheets or pillows sits in the center.

If you ask any person who regularly goes into the home of others, one of the signs that something is off with the resident is a bare mattress.

I'll be honest with you, no person in their right mind sleeps without at least a fitted sheet on their bed.

The furniture is all second hand and distressed, broken in places, water stain as if it were saved from some unknown curb which was not sold during the estate sale.

The top half of a naked dirty mannequin appearing as if it were stolen from an abandoned storefront of a long dead store lays in the bed.

I trip over something as I'm making my way around the bed.

Looking down, I see two things that make me take pause.

The more alarming of the two happened to be a set of legs from a mannequin carelessly hacked from the top half with what looks like to be a very dull hacksaw, A hole crudely drilled between the legs, lines drawn at the natural human joints like a surgeon marking amputation lines on body.

It's hard molded plastic, white in color, posed on the floor like it was modeling the latest fashionable footwear.

While trying not to trip, I see a dimly flashing red light coming from the ankle of my creepy host.

It's a Department of Corrections GPS ankle monitor.

My breath catches in my chest as my anxiety increases.

He leads me to the panel, which of course had to be located in the bedroom closet.

I think to myself, of course, why wouldn't it be in the bedroom closet?

I have to turn my back on him to make the repairs, which makes my hair stand on end.

He watches me, smoking a cigarette and sneaking to the living room, often to take a swig from a brown paper bag, occasionally standing over me to view my progress.

He stands behind me, his hot breath on the back of my neck.

Keep in mind I'm now in a closet, working in the back corner on an electrical panel, keeping my body turned as much as possible while still being able to complete my task.

Which unfortunately wasn't enough as I didn't see him come out of the bathroom on the side obscured from my view.

The apartment had one of those bathrooms with a door to the hallway and a door to the master bedroom.

What's the problem?

He rasped suddenly, making me jump.

Well Sir, your electrical panel is failing.

It appears that only half of the panel is working.

That is pretty common for this model at the end of its life.

I reply, keeping my tone even and unwavering.

I leave, telling him that I need a different type of breaker in order to get him up and running temporarily.

I was not about to spend the several hours required in his presence to replace the electrical panel, but without getting too far into it, I could shuffle the Breakers around in order to return power to about 80% of the circuits in the panel.

But he had a very old panel and I had to go get some supplies to do it.

I leave and head over to the supply store, all the while texting those who received my earlier texts regarding my apprehension of going into the home.

I tell them that my gut feeling was perfectly correct and I did not feel comfortable.

My office manager told me that she would understand if I was not comfortable finishing the repairs, but I told her that I wouldn't dump that on another one of my Co workers.

Although they were male, I realized that I had more of an ability to protect myself than they would have, although it didn't cross my mind till later that they would have been less of a target.

I would go back in and finish my job.

I returned still with my concealed weapon, taking comfort in its presence, but being extremely aware that if he came up behind me and smashed me on my head, I may not have time to react.

Taking solace in the idea that I would be safe, at least until I had restored electricity to the home, why attack the electrician until the job is done, right?

I make a few temporary repairs and tell him that I'll have to come back to finish the rest of it, stressing that this repair would probably only hold him over until the following week, or until the panel has failed in its entirety.

The panel needs to be replaced, and I would send him an estimate to replace it.

Realizing that this would be the most dangerous part of my interaction with him, I ready myself to get payments and leave.

If there was a time for him to decide to act on more nefarious predilections, this was the time.

I'd already prepared the invoice.

I think he notices me gripping my folding knife, my hand inside my pocket, ready with a backup in case I cannot get to my concealed weapon in time.

As he had not done anything overtly threatening, I give him the benefit of the doubt and he doesn't do anything threatening.

His hands shake and he fills out a check for the amount due, his hands shaking while holding the pencil.

The kind of shakes you see in somebody who is an alcoholic or a drug addict.

Again, not overtly threatening.

He thanks me, all while eyeing me like a piece of meat.

He watches me walk to my truck, following me to the apartment landing and to the main front door.

I am almost running now.

And I jump into my work truck and lock the doors.

I finally breathe.

I finally feel safe.

Until I see him in my mirror, staring back at me from the rear section of my truck.

Not threatening, just staring.

I leave without finishing my paperwork and go a few blocks down.

I stop and start shaking as the adrenaline slowly leaves my system.

I reassure my family that I'm safe and tell my boss that I cannot go back to that address.

Within 10 minutes of leaving, the office manager contacts me and tells me that he has already booked an appointment for me to do the panel the following week.

I tell her that I have not even sent him an estimate yet and if he can't afford it, to be prepared for a cancellation that following Monday.

I prepare the estimate and with the permission of my boss, I overpriced it about three times what it should cost, hoping that he will not ask me to come back.

No such luck.

Within 10 minutes of sending the estimate, my boss called saying that he had accepted it and wishes to keep his appointment.

I told my boss I cannot go back to a guy who accepts an estimate that cost three times over what it should, especially when he obviously didn't have funds to spare.

I beg and plead not to make me go back, instead they offered to send me back with another person and my heart drops.

I look for a reason not to.

After seeing the ankle bracelet I knew he would have some form of criminal record.

I quickly Google his name and the name of the city he lived in.

It was one of the 1st results and I find out exactly why he was wearing an ankle monitor.

He had just gotten out of prison.

John Doe served two years in state prison for stalking a woman, a perfect stranger, a waitress he met at a local breakfast joint.

When she threatened to report him, he broke into her home.

He held her hostage as she begged him to allow her to leave.

When she refused, he told her he would kill her and threatened to dismember her.

He threatened to make her disappear in a way that her family would never know where she went.

The article didn't say how it concluded, but the woman was safely able to get away and he was arrested.

He then spent two years in a state penitentiary and received five years of monitored probation.

He had only been released in the last year.

It took less than a year for that apartment to get in that state.

My heart leapt into my chest as I realized what this man may have truly been capable of.

Here I was, a small woman in the service industry, just like that waitress.

Him setting up the appointment overpriced.

It was all so wrong.

With the evidence of the mannequin staring me in the face, it appears his fantasy is alive and well.

It appears that the last two years have taught him exactly what he wanted to do.

I thought back over the last week and remember 2 occasions where a beat up old tan Buick had been following me, but not closely.

Not even enough to set off alarm bells.

But again, I noticed these type of things.

I can't be 100% sure it was him, but looking back it probably was.

It just seemed like the car would spontaneously appear and follow me between appointments, never entering the neighborhood I was going into, but would follow me onto the main streets.

Keep in mind my work van is essentially A9 foot tall billboard for my company.

I am impossible to miss, so you do not have to be very close to see where my truck is going.

I do not have a rear view mirror, so if you're in the right spot, I cannot see a good majority of a car that's behind me.

I can tell there is in fact a car behind me, but I obviously cannot see the front portion of it.

The car would always be around for a few of my morning appointments, but once I would travel more than about 15 miles away from the town that John Doe lived in, it would vanish.

When I'm doing estimates all day, I can easily drive about 200 miles in one work day.

I can drive between job sites that are maybe 10 minutes apart or up to about an hour and a half from each other.

I crisscrossed the northeastern half of the state all day.

It makes it extremely difficult for somebody to follow me all day long.

I assume he tried to find me by name, but without telling you my name, I can tell you that I have an incredibly common name, to the point where when I was in middle school, there was another girl attending the school with the same exact name.

First and last.

My name is so incredibly common that unless you knew me personally, you could not find me on the Internet.

I keep all of my security settings on social media incredibly strict and I never post anything that will reveal my location.

I even have this setting off in my phone that saves the location to a photo.

I wouldn't say that I'm paranoid per SE, but I learned very young what the world is actually like that most people do not have your best interest in mind.

I can thank the US Army for teaching me, but once something goes into the Internet it can never be truly deleted.

I think This is why he was never able to find me, although I'm sure he tried.

He called my company almost daily for weeks to try to get me to go back out to work on his electrical panel.

He even offered to pay me more money if I would come back.

Luckily I'd shared all the information I've found with all of the office staff.

I made sure a do not service was placed on his name and address.

My company stood behind me and protected me, going as far as to make sure my name and photo were not on the website, that I was never tagged in any social media, and that my schedule was randomized with me never starting and finishing at the same town or anywhere near the same location.

I was never booked within 10 miles of his address.

Needless to say, my company never sent any technician back to the man with mannequin legs.

I ended up with nothing more than a story.

A story that shows no matter how prepared you might be for a situation, you never know exactly who you're dealing with.

That you should be prepared for anything and everything that can come your way.

A story that stresses the importance of trusting your instincts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.