Hello, kitties, this is the Crep Keeper and you're listening to Uncle Josh's true scary stories.

Be careful what you ask for, you may get it.

Hey, campfire crew, let's get it on.

Roses are red, violets are blue.

One is dead, and so are you.

A very bone chilling encounter with a cult or what by vigneesh Ash.

I wanted to share this real encounter, but couldn't because I wanted to forget it.

But now it's a good chance to share.

I'm a twenty nine year old guy, I currently in the US.

Three years ago in Buffalo, this bizarre thing happened, and I've never really been able to make sense of it.

I was staying at a friend's place to finish assignments for my master's degree.

After wrapping up my work, I said goodbye and started walking home around twelve a m.

It's not something I normally did walking alone that late, but since my place was within walking distance, I took the risk.

As I walked, I glanced to my right and noticed a dark cul de sac.

I heard noises.

My first instinct was to run, but as odd as it sounds, I felt adventurous and decided to sneak over and hide.

Instead, I silenced my phone and crept toward the noise, trying to not make a sound.

Then I heard the noise clearly.

It wasn't just one person, it was a group.

I looked around, trying to locate the source, and finally my gaze locked on a house across from where I was hiding.

In the backyard of that house, there was a group of people.

They were laughing and shouting something like for the sagur d'Or MAROUSSEI.

I'm not even sure that's correct, that's just what it sounded like, but the phrase gave me chills.

Moments later, they switched to English and I heard something that made me panic in the deepest way.

They were saying that they took care of one and their leader was asking for another raw And that moment, I booked it out of there.

I didn't care if anyone heard me.

I ran all the way to the main road where people were around, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, reached home and cried myself to sleep.

I've never known what I stumbled across.

To this day, I can't figure out what I witnessed.

Has anyone ever heard of something like this?

What could it have been?

You never know who is lurking in the dark by mindless reward.

This is a true story.

It happened about eight years ago.

I'll never forget this encounter.

I've had such weird things happen to me in my life, and some being strange, some unbelievable, some scary, and this this was by far the most unsettling and eye opening encounter.

I've never felt so helpless and vulnerable in my whole life.

This was a five minute conversation that rocked my world, where in that five minutes everything changed for me.

I realized I'd been in a little bubble of ignorance, and this is where that bubble burst.

It was an encounter that if you yourself were watching from afar, you wouldn't have the slightest idea that something scary was happening.

Walking by, it would appear to look normal, and you wouldn't think twice in passing unless you could hear what was being said.

I used to wear closing shifts at a busy salon in South Tacoma.

We were right next to the freeway, tucked into a shopping center with constant traffic, and just across the lot was a bus stop, the kind that drops people off.

Practically At our front door after a long day, my coworker and I stepped outside for a quick cigarette before tackling closing duties.

We were scrolling through our phones, laughing about something stupid when I noticed him, a man walking up in the dark.

We looked at each other.

Something about his expression was off, unsettling, both of us tensed.

Waiting.

He stepped in front of us and stood there for a few seconds, then asked for a light.

I relaxed a little.

I mean, every smoker knows that panic a cigarette with no way to light it, so I handed him my lighter.

He said his hands were oily and dirty from work, and instead of taking the lighter, he leaned in close, too close.

His face was inches from mine and his hands were rising to block the wind as I lit his cigarette, and he never broke eye contact.

Then he said it the words that froze me.

I was an encounter that sends chills down my spine.

It still does to this day.

I stopped breathing temporarily, and I froze in fear and did the best I could to not express it on my face.

You know, you hear the words being said, and your heart starts pounding in your chest.

The world stops spinning in that moment, and you realize how unaware you are.

You have no clue what is actually going on outside of your world until that moment smacks you in the face.

This was that moment.

This is what he said.

You're even prettier up close.

I'm blinked.

Excuse me, I said.

My coworker stepped closer, unsettled too, but he kept talking calm and casual, like this was normal.

He told me this was his usual nightly route home, and that he had a twenty minute layover before his next bus.

That every night he watched me.

He could see me cut hair every night through the salon's glass windows, and said I was always smiling, always looked so friendly.

He would imagine what I was talking about, and said I always looked so beautiful.

He admitted he had a lighter but tonight he saw me outside and he just had to know if I was as pretty up close as I was from a distance.

He said.

He couldn't stand not knowing the color of my eyes.

Now I know, he said, with a serious somber face, the way he looked through me while he spoke so candidly.

I mean, I was lost for words.

My voice was lost, stuck in my th wrote in my feet to the ground.

He said he'd always wanted to talk to me, but I was always busy.

Tonight though tonight was fate.

I was silently shocked.

All I could manage was one word at a time.

Thanks.

Then he asked if I had a boyfriend.

I didn't, but I nodded my head and forced out a quiet yeah.

His face went from serious to a forced, awkward smile.

Well, I'll be around if you're ever single.

I somehow muttered out okay, and he said I'm always around.

Then he said good night, beautiful, and he walked away back into the dark across the parking lot.

My coworker and I just stood there, terrified and speechless.

And that's not like us.

I mean, hair stylists can talk to anyone, but this was different.

We lit another cigarette and smoked in silence, and we're just slowly sitting there on the sidewalk.

We weren't taking our eyes off of that man and the bus stop, not until he was on it.

It was unspoken but we sat there in the silence, not moving and not going back inside, for all to see.

A few minutes later, the bus came and we did our closing routine quickly in the silence.

We didn't talk about it until the next day.

We needed time to let what he was really saying sink in.

That night, we realized something we'd never thought about before.

We work inside a glass box, bright lights, smiles, conversation, Like fish in a tank.

We realized we are people on display for all to see.

We are in here, safe, or so we thought.

But from the outside we can't see out.

Everyone else can see in.

Who else was watching?

How many other people could be watching, like animals in a cage.

Our job is to show up.

Work can be pretty.

We have no idea who's out there in the dark looking in at us.

So to the stranger lurking in the dark, the one who watches silently from outside, let's not meet again.

My favorite coworker murdered someone by anonymous.

I've been into true crime since I was very young.

For some reason, I always believe that if I ever crossed paths with a murderer or a psychopath, I would know I thought something inside me would warn me like I was smarter than that, I was very, very wrong.

When I was twenty, I worked as a waitress at a restaurant and that was where I met him.

He was the in his mid to late twenties, a bit of a rocker type.

He was genuine and funny, with a loud, beautiful laugh, and he had a very distinctive smile that made his eyes disappear completely.

He had a wife and four children, which surprised me because he gave off such manchild vibes.

But he seemed like a great dad and husband.

I still remember the day he bought matching Spider Man costumes for himself and his two sons and proudly showed them to us.

He knew I loved strawberry juice, so whenever someone ordered it, he would set some aside for me.

After every shift, we would close up together and go out back for a cigarette.

We always stood behind the shipping containers in the pitch dark, smoking, laughing and talking about customers.

Thinking about that now sends shivers down my spine.

Afterward, he would drive me home and I lived in a very isolated area, and I lived in a very isolated back then.

He was the one person I genuinely looked forward to working with and trusted completely.

Even when I hated the job, I used to think that at least I would get some laughs with him.

In June of this year, six years later, news broke about a waitress who had been murdered in my neighborhood.

It shocked everyone.

I didn't know her personally, but I knew people who did, so it all felt very close.

She was found half buried under concrete.

I mean they tried to bury her, but in the heat in my country, added to the natural decomposition process, made it humid and it never set properly.

The neighbors noticed the smell and called the police, and a few days later the photos of the perpetrators were released.

At first, I didn't recognize him immediately.

It had been six years and I didn't think about former co workers that often.

But when I saw his mugshot, I knew how that that man in the picture smiled.

I knew the way he talked, the way you do when you know a friend.

I knew how his eyes disappeared when he laughed, And suddenly it clicked in my mind that it was him.

It crushed me.

At first, I went into denial.

I kept thinking that it couldn't be him, that there must have been some mistake.

But there was no mistake.

He had murdered that poor girl because she called him out in front of their coworkers for doing a Nazi salute.

He apparently thought it was funny, and when she called him out for it in front of others, he felt humiliated and it made him furious.

He then teamed up with another coworker who owed her money, and for him it was a convenient opportunity.

They lured her to their house with the promise of paying her back, and when she arrived, they murdered her.

They did terrible things to her before and after her death.

I felt absent, absolutely terrible, not only for this beautiful young woman whose life was stolen, but also for the realization that it could have been me.

I thought about all the times he could have done something to me, and I felt a strange kind of survivor's guilt.

It was awful to understand that if even one small thing had gone differently, I might not be here.

I've been working through this in therapy, but it has changed me deeply.

I now understand that you cannot tell.

A murderer can be someone you love, someone you trust, someone you would never ever think to fear.

And I feel like sharing this as a warning to everyone out there, especially young girls.

Stay aware and understand that danger does not always look like danger.

There's no such thing as an instinct, and you can never be careful enough.

Uncle Josh note, Well, guys, now you know why I end the podcast every time the way I do it could be anything, even the guy next door.

Hey, gang, thanks for listening to this episode.

If you have a true scary story of any nature that you'd like me to narrate, send it to Uncle Josh True Scary Stories at gmail dot com.

I read them all.

And if you have any winter holiday stories Christmas, New Year's, that sort of thing, send it my way as soon as you can.

I will be working on a special episode for that coming up.

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Everybody happy Thanksgiving, Be excellent to each other, and until next time, be wary of things that go bump in the night.

It could be anything a ghost, a monster, or the guy next door.