Wednesday One-Shot: Creepy Van Man

[00:00:02] Welcome to Wednesday One-Shots, a new series where we share a bonus story to help you get through that midweek slump. This story is from a listener that goes by the name of G. I've recently started listening to this podcast and it reminded me of an experience I had

[00:00:30] when I was in 8th grade. I've always been very independent, and I'm very confident in my ability to handle situations but this seriously rocked me in a way that not many things can. It was a Tuesday afternoon and I decided that I wanted to go see some friends.

[00:00:47] I lived at the top of a mountain in town. I literally lived on the ridge of that mountain so walking down takes about an hour if I take the steps. When you live on a mountain, there are stairs that walk up and down around the neighborhood

[00:01:04] in lieu of sidewalks. Since I was young and very impatient, I would often end up walking down to town on the roads because it was quicker than the stairs. I took my normal route going down the path and then heading onto the main road to town.

[00:01:22] Everything was normal for the first 20 minutes but then things got very weird. As a teenage girl, I've experienced catcalling often and it's become a very common occurrence especially when I'm walking in town. But this time felt different.

[00:01:39] I was walking on the side of the road hopping into driveways to get out of the way of cars going by. During my walk to town, I started to notice a large van that seemed to be trailing me. I kept looking back and I saw it slow down.

[00:01:57] The van fell back a bit then sped up until it was less than 10 feet away from me. There was a middle-aged man driving the van. He had a scruffy beard and looked a little out of it, I guess.

[00:02:11] I continued walking but texted my friend to alert her about the situation. My friend and I have a code that we've been using for years. We will text IID to each other which means I'm in danger.

[00:02:25] I shared my location with her and asked her to call me in 10 minutes unless I said otherwise. I continued walking and the van pulled up right next to me. I kept walking trying to ignore the van but the man rolled down his window and whistled at me.

[00:02:44] Now this was very uncomfortable for me so I didn't acknowledge him and just kept going. Then he slowed down enough to be driving beside me at my walking pace. He kept hollering at me. He asked me to get in the van and go to the beach with him.

[00:03:02] Then he said something that I just will never forget. He said, look you little bitch, get in. We can have a good time. I'll give you a little something and then you can head off and go wherever you're going.

[00:03:17] Let's drive down to the beach and we can mess around a little bit. I kept walking at this point. My whole body was shaking and I was holding back tears. He continued yelling at me. He called me a slut in my leggings.

[00:03:31] He said, you can't just walk around like that and not let me see you. I started walking faster but he continued following me. Then he finally roared, look bitch, get in my fucking van or I'll come there and get you myself. And something snapped in me.

[00:03:49] I don't know what really happened. In hindsight this was risky but I turned around and I screamed at the top of my lungs. I told him to get the fuck away from me. I called him a pervert.

[00:03:59] I flipped him off and then started running down the mountain on the side of the road. He sped up and followed but by some crazy luck a woman driving the opposite direction saw this man and me running away from that van.

[00:04:15] She turned around in the middle of the street behind the van and started following both of us. She honked at the van and after two minutes of this the man finally gave up and sped off. I'll never forget the look on that man's face as he drove off.

[00:04:30] The look in his eyes was something that scares me to this day. The woman pulled over next to me, hopped out of her car and ran over to me. I sat down on the curb. My whole body was shaking.

[00:04:43] She sat next to me while I tried to calm down. She asked me what happened and I told her the whole story. Later that day I ended up telling my parents and we alerted the police. The police took my statement and asked me some questions.

[00:04:57] They said that we would get a call from them if they needed further information or anything developed. Nothing ever came from it because I didn't get a chance to memorize the license plate. I will forever be grateful for that woman who stopped to help me.

[00:05:12] I hate to think of what would have happened if she hadn't flipped around in the middle of the road and tailed this guy while he followed me. To the creepy, scruffy middle-aged dude that followed me and harassed and traumatized me at just 13 years old. Let's never meet again.

[00:05:31] Thank you so much for sharing your story, G. I think an important lesson that we can glean from this story and so many others that are similar to it is that while there are a lot of terrible people out there, the large majority

[00:05:43] of folks are really great and would step in to help somebody at the drop of a hat, especially a child. It's an instinct that a lot of us share as fellow humans and it always makes me really proud to hear it happen in a story on the show.

[00:05:57] Also license plates are key to catching these guys. Even if you can only memorize a portion of it, it's an important piece to the puzzle. Thanks everybody for listening. I'll see you Sunday night. Stay safe.