0:14 When I was 18, I got arrested for trying to steal a phone from Walmart. It was the dumbest thing I had ever done, and I still hate even admitting it. I was with two friends, and the whole thing started as just one of those stupid ideas. I thought I could open the packaging, slip the phone into my hoodie pocket, and walk out like nothing happened. Instead, loss prevention stopped me before I even made it to the exit. I didn't know they watched the cameras like that. Within an hour, I was sitting in the back of a police car with my hands cuffed behind me, staring at the same parking lot I had driven into like a normal person earlier that day. It was a Friday night, which made everything worse. I kept thinking my parents would come get me or that I'd just get a ticket and go home, but after I was brought to the station, processed, fingerprinted, and
1:00 questioned, I was told I'd be spending the weekend in county because court wasn't open until Monday. Hearing that made my stomach twist. I still remember the feeling of helplessness. I had never been in real trouble before. I had never even been suspended from school. And now I was being walked into a local jail in handcuffs over one of the most embarrassing decisions of my life. The booking process took forever. They took everything on me, including my clothes. Then they gave me an orange jumpsuit to put on. And that's really when the gravity of the situation I got myself in became real. I remember changing into it and looking at myself for a second, feeling sick. When they finally brought me back to the holding area, I realized very quickly that nobody else looked like me. I don't mean that in a better than them way,
1:46 I just mean I looked young, scared, and completely out of place. Some of the men in there were older, bigger, tattooed, and looked like genuinely dangerous scary people. A lot of them were loud, acting like this was some fun place to be that they'd been ten times before. A few of them looked at me like they were annoyed I even existed. Some guys actually made fun of me, calling me Pretty Boy. I tried not to react, but I could feel my face getting hot. I stared at the floor most of the time and tried to look calm, but I'm sure everyone could tell I was terrified. After a while, a fresh group of Orestes got brought into the day room and we were all told we could make phone calls. I called my parents and my mom answered. The sound of her voice almost made me break down. I told her where I was and what happened, and then my
2:35 dad got on the phone. He wasn't screaming, which somehow made it worse. He just sounded disappointed. He told me they had already called an attorney and that I would most likely be out on bail by Monday after I saw the judge. Monday was so far away though. I wanted to ask them to get me out sooner, but I knew there was nothing they could do. After the call, I had to go back into the day room and pretend I wasn't on the verge of panicking or crying. Later that night, they assigned me to a cell. My cellmate was a man in his 40s who told me his name was Bob. I almost didn't believe that was his name. At first, I was almost relieved because he wasn't screaming or acting aggressive like some of the others. He had a calm voice and talked to me like a normal person. He asked what I was in for and I stupidly told
3:23 him. He laughed a little and said that was nothing, that I'd be fine. For the first hour or so, he actually made me feel less alone. He told me how to deal with the routine, when meals came, how to keep to myself, and not to let anyone see me looking too nervous. I remember thinking maybe I got lucky, but that feeling didn't last. As the hours dragged on, Bob got too comfortable with me. He started asking personal questions like where I lived, if I had a girlfriend, what school I went to, and if I still lived with my parents. I gave vague answers, but he kept pressing. Then he started making comments about how young I looked and how I didn't belong there. At first it sounded like a concerned elder, but then it started sounding creepy. He would sit too close on the lower
4:10 bunk with me when we talked. He touched my shoulder more than once, and once he put his hand on my knee while laughing at something he said. I moved away right away, and he smiled like he knew exactly how uncomfortable he was making me. From then on, I dreaded every second the cell door was closed. The day room became the only place where I felt like I could breathe, even though that place was terrible too. I would wait for the doors to open just so I didn't have to be alone with him. The days and nights blended together and it all felt like one long day because there was no damn sunlight in that depressing place. The lights never fully went off. I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like Bob was watching me. One time, in the middle of rest time, I don't even know if it was nighttime, I opened my eyes and saw
4:58 him looking down from the top bunk at me. He saw me wake up and said he couldn't sleep either. I didn't answer him. Those 48 hours felt longer than any full week of my life. By the time I finally saw the judge, I was exhausted and yet excited to leave. I barely remember what was said. I just remember hearing that I was being released and later that day my dad picked me up. When I got into his car, he wasn't angry. He was strangely sympathetic but disappointed. I didn't want to talk about jail, Bob, or anything that happened. I wanted to shower and sleep in my own bed and pretend the whole thing had just been a bad dream. A few days later, I got a follow on Instagram from a fake-looking account. My profile was public at the time, so random accounts weren't unusual.
5:46 It had no real name and no posts, and the profile picture looked like a dark, blurry room. I ignored it. Later that night, I got a DM from the account. When I opened it, it was a selfie from Bob. His face was close to the camera with that same little smile he kept giving me in the cell. Under it, he had written, Miss you already. I blocked the account immediately and threw my phone onto the bed. I felt violated in a way. He knew my real name, he found my profile, and I had no idea how. Two days later, I came home from work in the late afternoon. It was a foggy day and my parents were both still at work. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed a ratty old car parked across the street. Someone was sitting inside with their head down.
6:35 I sat in my car for a second, watching it. I couldn't see their face, but something about the way they wouldn't move was concerning. I went inside fast and locked the front door behind me. A few minutes later, while I was standing in the kitchen trying to tell myself I was being paranoid, I heard the front door not rattle. Instead of knocking or ringing the bell, whoever was outside was turning the doorknob back and forth like they were testing if it was unlocked. Then they stopped. It was not even 30 seconds later when I heard the back doorknob do the same thing. That's when shit became real and I called 911, as weird as that felt after spending a weekend in jail. I whispered at first because I was afraid whoever it was would hear me. I told the operator someone was trying to get into my house. While I was on the phone, the doorbell rang. The
7:24 operator asked if I could see who it was. I told her I was too scared to check. I told her I thought it was the man I shared a cell with in jail. She told me not to answer the door and to wait for the officers. By the time the officers arrived, the car was gone and whoever had been at the door was gone too. I told the officers everything. I told them about the arrest, the weekend in jail, Bob, the Instagram message, and the car outside. The second I admitted I had just been in jail, I felt their attitude change. They weren't rude per se, but they didn't seem eager to help either. One of them asked if I was sure I wasn't just shaken up from the weekend, which really pissed me off. Another asked if I had given this guy my full name. I said no. They left me with a report number and that was basically
8:10 it. For the next week, nothing happened and I tried to convince myself it was over. Then one night I went to a dive bar with friends. They weren't my friends who knew about the arrest. Outside of my family and the friends that knew, I didn't tell anyone else. We were standing near the pool table when I looked toward the far end of the bar and saw Bob sitting alone. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low and a dark jacket like the guy was freaking incognito, but I knew it was him. He wasn't looking directly at me when I first saw him, but a few seconds later, he lifted his head and when he saw me looking at him, he smiled. The fear and concern in my face had to be so obvious that my friends asked what was wrong and I told them there was a girl that I didn't want to deal with and that I wanted
8:56 to leave. We left through the front and I kept expecting Bob to come out behind us. In the parking lot, I told my friends I was calling an Uber home but to wait with me. The second I got in, I called my parents and finally told them everything I had been leaving out. That night, they put their foot down. We went straight to the precinct. This time, with my parents there and with the Instagram message still saved as a screenshot, they took it more seriously. I told them about the attempted break-in, the fake account, and seeing him at the bar. I signed a sworn statement and eventually I was able to get a temporary restraining order. That was when I found out Bob wasn't even his real name. I'm not going to write his real name here. I also learned how easy it can be to find inmate and arrest information after someone gets booked. My guess is that once
9:44 he got released, he searched my name through public records or some jail-related system and found enough to track me down. The restraining order seemed to work because I never saw him again after that, but for years after, this crap definitely stayed with me. Getting arrested for stealing from Walmart was humiliating and it could have messed up my life in the obvious legal ways, but the worst part almost had nothing to do with court and the charges. It was realizing that one stupid decision put me in a locked room with someone who should have never had access to me and then gave him just enough information to follow me back into real life.
10:30 This is the first time that I'm trying to explain something by writing. I also just want to say that I struggle to relive this memory. Whenever I start to go down the rabbit hole of potential harm that could have ensued from my friend Laura and I, I start to get anxious and worked up all over again. I'll start from the beginning. Last summer, I started dating a guy who lived about an hour away from me. It only lasted a few months. I'll be honest, it was a rebound. The only reason I'm mentioning him is because on this hour-long drive, I would always pass this giant building in the distance. Most of the drive was nothing but trees and massive open fields of grass. and I would be roughly 15 minutes from his house is when I would drive by that building. From the road, it looked like a building you would see in an old horror movie. He had these
11:17 high arching roofs, small windows, and this giant cross on the highest point of the roof. The building fascinated me. I asked him once if he knew what the building was, and he had no idea. He said he thought it was an old prison, but truthfully had no clue. He said that for his entire life, it had been abandoned. and he never cared enough to find out what it was. That's one of the many differences between him and me. I saw that building one time and I wanted to know everything. After he and I stopped talking, I would still think about that old building sometimes. I told my friend Laura about it and she seemed just as interested as I was. We tried looking it up online, but we couldn't find any concrete evidence for exactly what the building was used for. Honestly, we probably didn't look that hard. Neither one of us is the internet research type. and when no
12:06 easy information was available, we gave up the search. However, we weren't ready to give up on the building. That's when Laura made an interesting suggestion. She suggested that we just drive out to the building and check it out. She said it's not that far after all, and if it's abandoned, nobody will be there. I was on the fence about this, not because I didn't want to, but because I don't really live on the edge. I don't take risks a lot, and potentially breaking into a building is a massive risk for someone like me. As I write this now, I feel like an idiot, but when this happened, going in the middle of the night seemed like a better idea. My logic was that if there was some type of security, they would for sure be gone after dark. I know it's not the best logic, but that's where my brain went. A few nights later, we made the trip at
12:53 1 in the morning. We put fresh batteries in our flashlights and got ourselves pumped up for an adventure. Laura parked the car on the side of the road. She didn't want to pull the car all the way up to the building just in case it had cameras. It took us almost 10 minutes to walk from the side of the road to the front door. When we got to the front door, I was desperately looking for a sign above or near the door. There was nothing I could see anywhere. Even with being right at the door, we still couldn't tell what the building was. Laura walked up to the front door and tried opening it. Surprisingly, it opened right up. There was a lock on the door, but it wasn't latched. The smell of must and old wood was overwhelming. With our flashlights on, you could see a stream of dust particles everywhere. After walking in the door, it
13:42 seemed obvious what the building was. It was clearly an old prison. There was a door straight ahead that had bars on the window and a giant lock on it. This door also wasn't locked. It wasn't even closed. I was starting to feel anxious about entering this place, but Laura continued forward, so I followed her. We made our way through several smaller rooms and then eventually walked into this big room that had many cells lining the wall. The building was also littered with debris. There were chunks of the wall and ceiling all over the place. It was like the place was literally falling apart. Laura wanted to keep going, but I was all done. With all the debris everywhere, I didn't feel safe. I told Laura that the ceiling could cave in at any second. She laughed at me and called me a nervous wreck. She
14:27 wasn't wrong. She promised just a little while longer. I was reluctant, but I agreed. It couldn't have been more than three minutes later when we heard a loud crashing noise. It stopped us both dead in our tracks. I instantly started freaking out. I couldn't help but imagine the worst. Laura was trying to be rational. She said something must have collapsed and we heard the echoing. I gave her a look that said it was time to leave. Whether it was something collapsing or something worse, it was time to go. We started heading back in the direction we came from. In the doorway of the big room with the cells, Laura could see a person standing at the end of the room. When Laura told me, she said not to freak out. I can't even begin to explain how unbelievably unsettling it is to
15:14 be in a giant abandoned prison in the middle of the night and have a person standing 20 feet away from you. We didn't move. The person eventually put their hands up in a defensive position and spoke. He said his name was Mike and he meant no harm. Laura started to press Mike. asking him why he's in the building and telling him that if he comes any closer, we'll pepper spray him. Mike immediately went into defense mode. He claimed that he was a security guard for the building. He said that he's supposed to detain anyone who breaks into the building and call the police to pick them up. He started going into detail about how the building started getting broken into all the time, so they needed to take measures to keep the people out. He seemed confident. All his answers were smooth, and he didn't stumble over his words at all. I was freaking out at this point thinking I
16:00 was about to be detained. Laura leaned over and whispered to me that she didn't trust this guy. Mike continued walking towards us with his smooth tone. He said that he was going to escort us out of the building with a warning. He claimed that we looked like nice young women and that there was no reason to get the law involved. I started thanking him. He was laughing and told me not to worry about it. Laura asked if he could get out of the way so we could leave and he got a little weird. He said he was sorry, but he couldn't let us leave that way. When we pressed on why, he said that part of the ceiling caved in. There was no way through anymore. He was going to take us out the building through a much safer back route. Laura was skeptical. I just wanted to leave. When he walked by us, he did look a little weird.
16:48 By that, I mean he wasn't dressed how you'd imagine a security guard dressing. He was wearing jeans, white sneakers, and a black sweatshirt with a flannel on the outside. Laura even said that his outfit looked weird for security guard. He laughed, and with that confident, smooth voice, he claimed that he was able to wear whatever he wanted since this was mostly a boring job. We were walking deeper into this building, and it felt like we were going in the opposite direction of where we needed to be. Every time we asked where we were going, he would just say, don't worry, we're almost there. A few minutes later, we made it to this long, narrow hallway with a door at the end. The hallway was small enough that we couldn't even fit two people next to each other. He opened the door at the end of the hall and it was a long staircase down. It was dark, so dark that
17:35 you couldn't even see. Instead of continuing to lead, he moved to the side of the doorframe and said, after you. He just looked at him. Laura asked him, why would we go down? He just laughed and said she was silly. Yes, he used the word silly. Laura put her foot down and said we weren't going any further. That's when I stepped in and asked if he could lead the way. He didn't answer for a second, but then agreed. He took one or two steps down and then said that he needed to make sure the door locked behind all of us, just in case someone broke in. So he came back up, grabbed my arm gently, and tried to guide me down first. I was not a fan of this. Laura screamed and pushed him away, which freed his grip from my arm. But because Laura
18:21 still had some high ground, she was able to make him stumble with the push. She looked at me and told me to run. Laura and I ran back the way we came. Eventually, we made it back to the room with the cells and ran through the door where we encountered Mike for the first time. We made it all the way back to the front entrance and never once did we see any area that was caved in, as Mike had claimed. The entire time we were running, we couldn't hear anything behind us. Even though we didn't hear Mike. I felt like he was right on top of me. It was like I could still feel his touch lingering on my arm. We sprinted to the car and drove off fast. The entire long drive home, we kept checking the mirrors, making sure this guy didn't follow us somehow. It was about a week later that I contacted the police in that
19:07 area. I admitted to them that I had broken into the building and that the security guard had tried getting me into a dark basement. The cop was speechless. I thought it was because I had broken into the building. but it almost seemed like he didn't care about that. He told me that the old prison doesn't have any security guards and it isn't even patrolled or monitored by security cameras. He said that whoever we encountered that evening was not a friendly person and my friend and I are lucky to be alive. Just reliving those words from that cop makes me want to cry. I think one of the most upsetting things about this nightmare is we have no idea where this guy came from. He looked a little too clean cut just to be some random guy who lived in an abandoned prison. If I think about it too much, I can almost feel his hand grab my arm again and
19:53 I start to spiral out of control. I know I'll never get answers to this horrible night. I'm just happy I'm still here and I'm able to tell my story. Several years ago, I moved across the country. I worked as a corrections officer at a local jail. I was there about a week when I met Edgar. He seemed like a decent guy. Just because he was in jail doesn't necessarily mean he was a violent criminal. In Edgar's case, he was there for violating his parole, not being violent. Every time I would cross paths with Edgar, he was always respectful, called me sir, and never stepped out of line. One of those first weeks there, completely out of the blue,
20:43 Edgar asked how Stan was doing. I just looked at him in disbelief. I have a brother named Stan, but I couldn't think of how Edgar would know something like that. This jail I worked at was nearly 1,000 miles from my hometown. The people I worked with didn't even know about my brother. I just remember ignoring him and going about my business. As unlikely as it could be, I determined that it had to be an insane coincidence. He could have been talking about anyone or anything. A few days later, I crossed paths with Edgar again, and this time he asked if Diana still lived by the lake. Now he had my attention. My mother's name is Diana, and she lives on a lake. I pulled him aside and asked how he knew that name. He just shrugged and said he didn't know. In a lot of
21:32 jails and prisons, they have these gossip chains where inmates will find out information about other inmates and even some of the law enforcement. But in this instance, there was no way this guy could have found out information this personal. It just didn't make any sense. Nobody in town knew who I was. I didn't have social media. I wasn't even the talkative type. This just felt weird and like a total invasion of my privacy. After he asked about my mother, I did some research. As unlikely as it could be, I thought maybe there was a chance this guy was from my hometown. After looking up Edgar's file, I was able to see that he was born and raised right here. By all accounts, he had never even been to my side of the country. Then one day, he asked about my nephew. He asked if he
22:17 was still a fan of baseball. I was beyond disturbed at this point. There was no way this guy could know this information about my family. I went to my supervisor after this and told her about Edgar and this weird cat and mouse game he was playing with me. She dismissed it. She said he was probably trying to get me to retaliate in some way so he could sue the jail. I didn't buy this, but I accepted it because I felt like I had to. I would continue seeing Edgar daily, and I would wait for him to mention another member of my family, but he never did. He continued to be respectful, always smiling, and never aggressive. Not long after all this, Edgar was finally getting released. On his way out, he said goodbye to me, and then said something that stuck with me.
23:04 He said, maybe I'll see you around. I don't know why, but it made me feel uncomfortable. Maybe it was the weird smile he had as he said it. I don't know. It just felt ominous. A few months had passed since Edgar had been released. By this time, I was completely settled in at my job and in my new home. I started dating someone, and I would spend certain nights of the week at her place. One morning while I was at her place, I got a notification on my phone. Someone had alerted my ring camera at my house. They rang the bell. They stood there completely still for a strange amount of time, and then they finally rang the bell again. This time they spoke through the camera. In a soft voice, the person said, You home? Clearly I wasn't. Then the person started
23:52 talking about selling meat out of his truck. He pointed away from the camera and said that he had a lot of meat in his truck, and he was going door to door trying to sell meat. He apologized for imposing and then left. I just ignored the entire thing. This wouldn't be the first time someone tried selling me something at the door, so it wasn't that weird to me, even if the guy himself was weird. Even though it was morning, the way the shadows were hitting the camera, I couldn't tell who the person was. It didn't help that the person also had his hood up. Not a good look if you're trying to sell a product. That next night, I stayed at my girlfriend's house again. A little after 2 in the morning, I got a notification on my phone. Somebody was at the door. When I pulled up the camera feed, nobody was there. Somehow, the sensor got tripped. I
24:39 heard of this happening to others before, but it never happened to me. I dismissed it and went back to bed. The next night, I was home alone since I worked at the jail early the next day. At almost the same time as the previous night, at 2 in the morning, my doorbell rang. I pulled up the camera feed. and it was the same guy as the day before. The guy who was trying to sell meat. Before I said anything, he rang the bell again and said into the camera, Hello, I got some meat in the truck I'm trying to sell. Is anybody home? I was furious. Before I said anything, he spoke again and said, You should open the door so you can see what I have for sale. I'm not 100% sure, but it looked like this person reached for the doorknob after he said that. I'm able to talk through my ring camera, So I alerted the
25:27 person that I was law enforcement and that he better get off my property before I called in. At first, he didn't move at all. Then, seconds later, he lifted his head up a bit. With a huge smile on his face, I was able to tell exactly who it was. It was Edgar. The kind man from the jail who knew way too much about my personal life. I had forgotten all about Edgar by this time. He didn't run off as a lot of criminals would do. Instead, he slowly turned around and walked away. I noticed that he didn't get into a truck or any vehicle for that matter. He claimed that he had meat in a truck, but I watched this man just walk away and keep walking into the night. I was a little freaked out after that night,
26:14 mainly because I didn't know what Edgar was capable of. He wasn't violent in the past, but these were clearly not the actions of a sane man. I called my brother Stan the next day. I asked him if he knew this specific Edgar, and my brother had no idea who he is. When I sent him a picture of Edgar, he confirmed that he certainly didn't know who he was. I did a little extra digging after that night and found some interesting information about Edgar. The man had no known family, no previous addresses, and when the parole officer checked his current address, he wasn't there. I wish I could tell you that's where my story ends, but I think Edgar decided to visit me one last time. It was about a month after the last visit and somebody rang the doorbell at my girlfriend's house at 10.30
27:00 at night. I ran to the front door to answer it, thinking it was maybe some sort of mistake. When I answered the door, nobody was there. When I looked down the street, I saw someone walking away. It looked like someone similar in size to Edgar, but it was too dark to be sure. I shouted to the person, but they didn't react and just kept walking. I didn't chase them because people walk in that neighborhood at night often. I wasn't sure if it was Edgar or just a neighbor. I went back inside, locked the door, and told my girlfriend it was nothing. I stayed up that entire night waiting for another visit, but nobody ever came. I never found out what happened to Edgar. It's like he fell off the face of the earth. It disturbs me to think about the fact that this man knew where I lived, and if that was him at my girlfriend's house, I can't even
27:48 imagine how he would have found that out. It made me feel like this man was stalking me. I was constantly looking over my shoulder for months. What bothers me more than all that is that I have no clue how this guy from jail knew my brother's name, my mom's name, and where she lived. I'm still terrified he's going to show up at my mom's house one night, and I'm not there to protect her. I don't know why he chose me to mess with. I haven't slept well in years. I like to tell myself that he went to another town under a different name and got arrested there. The hope that he's in jail is one of the only things that helps me not dwell on this more than I already do.
