4 True Creepy Catfish Dating Stories From Reddit

when I was 14 I lived in a small suburb in the Midwest full of ordinary people who didn't quite share my interests in Gotham ed oh and David Lynch movies so I often took to the Internet to meet people with like-minded interests and hopes of some stimulating conversation add to that I had recently come out as gay to a couple of close friends along with my mother who did not take the news well at all I didn't know when he gay people in real life so at the time the internet felt like the only place to meet other people sharing similar experiences this is back in the days of dial-up when it wasn't too uncommon for strangers to strike up an IM conversation based solely on their AOL profile one day I received a message from a guy around my age named Steven it started off pretty normal we talked about our favorite music and movies how much we hated school and all the celebrities we thought were cute he eventually revealed that he was 16 and was living with his older brother because his parents had kicked him out of the house for being gay I thought it was cool to meet someone who lived nearby that was old enough to drive and didn't live with their parents so we decided to meet up after a couple of weeks of long chat sessions I knew my parents would not be cool with me meeting a stranger from the internet so I lied and told him that he was a mutual friend of another friend they already knew and trusted if the plan was sent he showed up on a Friday evening in an old beat-up pickup truck to my relief he didn't look like a creepy old catfish stalker in fact he looked just like his pictures red hair goofy smile but definitely not unattractive we went for a ride grabbed a bite to eat stop to the guitar store and caught a new movie at the theater it was so excited to have a friend with similar interests knew about the pressures of being gay in a small town and was happy to chauffeur me around I decided I didn't want the fun to end was curfew drew closer and asked if he wanted to crash at my place I had a trundle bed that pulled out from underneath my bed so he could sleep comfortably without the pressure of something sexual happening after watching a DVD we both passed out for about an hour when suddenly there's a loud knock the front door my parents awoke to find a police officer also a friend of the family as my dad was retired cop standing at the door I went out into the living room to see what was going on and he proceeds to tell us that they received an anonymous phone call that someone in her house has been communicating with a wanted pedophile my parents went into my room and where my computer was he forced me to downgrade my AOL account that kids only when my new friends slept soundly nearby I told them I had no idea what they were talking about but since I was pretty much the only person using an internet extensively in our family they said that would be banned from regular use until the mystery was solved the next day Stephen and I were out for a ride just enjoying the day when all of a sudden we were passing an oncoming SUV who slammed on his brakes into the squealing 180 only to begin tailgating us and honking his horn furiously I was screaming at my friend to slow down and asking if he knew what was going on it was this crazy person behind us he didn't say a word we wound up in a high-speed chase that felt like ours but probably only lasted about five minutes Stephen finally pulled over and jumped out of the car in motion for me to follow him so I did as we're getting out the driver behind us headed straight for me and went to punch me square in the face would stopped mere centimeters before actually hitting me I pulled away from the shaking fist and saw a man in his 30s with eyes bulging out of his head literally a much later realized he had Graves disease which if any of you has seen what it looks like it's nothing short of terrifying when an angry man about to beat you to a pulp this man wanted to tell me that my friend was actually 21 years old and that he was his boyfriend and that I needed to stay out of their lives if I wanted to live to see tomorrow that's the initial shock and confusion wore off absolutely broken scary graves guy took off with Stephen and left me in the best I made my way home and didn't say a word to my pants just locked myself in my room and cried harder than I've ever cried before I felt pretty damn stupid in the shame for being so naive I hope that the whole thing would just blow over without anyone ever finding out but the story didn't end there my older sister and I had her own landline phone number separate from the main house phone that was shared and kept that answering machine in that room I came home from school one day and noticed my mom was already home which was odd because she didn't usually get home from work into a few hours later I went straight to my mom to find a new message on the machine it was the graves dude who went to leave a voicemail but my sister had picked up mid message so I could hear their conversation over the recording he pretended to be a faculty member of my school and asked my mom's work number he wound up calling her and giving her a detailed account just to exactly I had been hanging around with I went into the back patio where my parents sat looking just absolutely devastated as they inform me two FBI agents were on their way to get a report about my experience with Stephen who by the way wasn't actually named Stephen it was a fake name he had given me once the agents arrived the informing that he was warned for alleged molestation of two children one of them as young as ten years old needless to say I was sick beyond belief and angry to booth I complied with everything that asked me to do and agree to testify against him in trial I wasn't going to let this liar get away with hurting any more kids and apparently the other families involved were so embarrassed they didn't want to testify leaving only me to do something about it around this time I received a late-night phone call from Stephens boyfriend asking if I was okay checking up on how I was doing and eventually turning the conversation around to a more flirtatious tone and complimenting me on my musical tastes cetera at this one I realized that this wasn't just a jealous possessive boyfriend involved in a game of cat-and-mouse but rather some kind of partner in crime who reveled in younger boys just as much as his disgusting significant other I quickly hung up and never spoke to him again though he did attempt to call me a few more times after that according to the caller ID fast forward one year when Stevens court date finally arrived and went to the courthouse downtown with my mom and was informed by an attorney that he took a plea deal and would be sentenced to jail for one year yep that's right folks he only got one year because his victims refused to come forward and testify another year later I was 16 and finally had my own car along with a great group of supportive friends I had pretty much buried this memory far away in the deep recesses of my mind and never really thought much more about the encounter until one day I started receiving IMS from an unknown screen name these instant messages consist of death threats and facts about me that he could only have known from driving by my house and stalking me like what kind of car I drove the types of clothes I like to wear and what my daily schedule primarily consisted of this went on for a couple of weeks from various mystery handles sharing an explicit detail hallo is going to die I was pretty freaked out and kept a close watch wherever I went however I never saw him creeping around in spite of the heightened awareness of my surroundings I eventually printed the items out and shared them with my school principal along with the police assuming no doubt it was Stephen attempting to contact me again hell-bent on revenge after filing a report i luckily never heard from him again I don't know what became of him I don't even remember his real name was I can only hope something truly horrible has happened him since all this transpired this is a story I kept from my friends for a very long time and to this day many people in my life don't know about it it's still a delicate subject but a story I felt compelled the share I've since received councilman and with a very happy life as a 28 year old far far away from the dreadful little town and any stranger who attempts to contact me on Facebook it's blocked immediately the day before I received the first text I had been an obsessed of being the reckless sixteen-year-old that I was I got too intoxicated and don't really remember much but somehow made it home about 9:00 a.m. the following day and around probably early afternoon I wake up to a text from a random number asking who is this now at this point I was terribly hungover and out of it so guess this text was from someone I embarrassed and gave my number to at the festival so I text back asking if I met them last night and he said he couldn't remember the conversation is pretty much normal for a small while as I tried to work out who this person was I eventually asked him if he could send a picture of himself so I could try and remember talking to him the day before he asked me if I received the picture and I didn't so then I just asked him for his name I'll call him jack but this name didn't ring any bells to my hung over still half-drunk himself at the time and stupidly kept talking to him I was asking all the people I went to the festival with they remembered a guy named Jack and nobody knew so it was pretty weird but I was hanging too hard to think straight this is when things started to sound a bit off to me he asked how old I was and where I lived to which I answered and asked him the same he told me he was 17 and living in the same place so I took it as day with someone laying Zack same situation as me unable to remember who they met last night now what he said next might ring alarm bells for others and almost ran mine but things like this are asked a lot by desperate boys around my area he asked if I was single and from that point on and really didn't care for speaking to whoever this was so I ignored them and went back to sleep I woke up again slightly less hungover and thinking more straight I remember reading through my text with Jack and something clicked I fell a bit uneasy as I remembered a few months back one of my friends used a guy named Jack's phone from her work to call me and the day after he wouldn't quit texting me until he said he'd delete my number and I had heard nothing since I immediately texted her asking if a guy named Jack still worked with her if this was his number she replied saying yes and I swear my blood ran cold I even started to think I was dreaming or something because this is the kind of things you hear and never expect that to happen to yourself I sent her screenshots of my text with him she seems really creeped out telling me he was a dirty man in his late 50s and that he had been sending weird texts to another one of her colleagues far weirder than those I received but I won't mention what they said out of respect for her privacy it was a bit of a creep to her in person to the shook me up a bit so I told my mum who was absolutely livid she told me if he contacted me again that she called police fast forward to a few days after I was in town waiting for my mom to pick me up and take me home to change for work when I got a text coming through from Jack I was thinking oh god not again and opened it to see a picture of some teenage guy with did you get it yet this is me or something afterwards I knew this wasn't him so ignored it and told my mum when I got in the car and we called the police when I got home and they arranged a visit with me when I got home from work which was quite late and I should finished around 10:00 p.m. they arrived in my idiot phone and reset itself causing me to lose all my texts and pictures so I couldn't even show them the text from before but could show them the recent ones of him asking why wasn't work lying and stuff along those lines as the police were my phone he texted me which I found quite funny as he was unaware who they were being viewed by we shared the information about how he had harassed the girls I know who worked with him and as much as we knew about the guy and they said they dig up some dirt on him and take a visit to his workplace they said they can do much about the text because it wasn't classed as harassment didn't me ignoring him instead of telling him to stop but what he done to the other girls was enough for them to take action that's what they left I texted him asking her not to text me again and he replied with something like why what did I do would never contacted me again after that the police knocked on my door a few days after telling me they were going to visit him later on today would tell us what happened back there if I remember correctly this whole thing is kind of a blur in some places as I don't like to think about it much they never got back to me but luckily for me I got all the gossip I needed for my friend who worked there she had let everyone know about what he had done so pretty much everyone else working with him and been avoiding him and I think he got quite angry about that apparently the police came in and requested to talk to him in private and they took him outside when it came back in she said he was very grumpy obviously from the telling-off she soon found out that the picture you'd sent me was his own son which is so completely messed up his son found out what he had done and threatened to beat him up rightly so finally the workplace fired him and I had to do a statement for all their evidence so they could win if he took them to court last thing I heard of him was that he moved well away from the area which relieved me so much as I'd like to take walks most days down but where he lived which refrained me from doing so out of fear there's some other things I should mention for me added to how creepy it was when I wasn't sure where to put them in between the time gap worried first texted me after my friend used his phone and when he texted me after the festival and went down to the workplace to speak to the owners about getting a job there at one point I was sad smoking with pretty much all of the other staff outside and I was sat opposite to him this makes me feel so uneasy because that whole time he must have known who I was and maybe him seeing me then made him want to try to catfish me or whatever my friend also told me at the time he was trying to send a fake picture of his son he was walking around the workplace trying to find stronger Wi-Fi descendant and getting really frustrated and one more thing one thing that I just found out was that he had tried contacting me on whatsapp I was looking at his Facebook profile and I recognized his profile picture from a message I got off of some random guy on whatsapp but I shook it off as those random messages you get sometimes ille I don't recall what date he sent a message on there I don't have that app anymore but I thought it was worth noting actually feel a lot better after writing this out I've been meaning to for some time what scares me the most or what his intentions were with me I hope this has taught him a lesson and stopped him from thinking that he can just try this within anyone else I just moved to London and being a bit lonely and wanting to get into the dating scene I tried the whole OkCupid thing it was alright I honestly wasn't too active on it I checked my account a few times a week and messaged some profiles of girls that I thought were pretty 95% of the time my messages would go unanswered I guess it was mostly because many of my messages in retrospect were pretty uncreated and dry one day I was messing around looking through various profiles when I saw an extremely attractive girl and decided I had the message her in my opinion she was a perfect 10 not just the fact that she was a gorgeous blonde we liked a lot of the same music and movies as well and I could actually send her a decent email because of all the things we had in common I also need to reiterate that her pictures were smoking which most likely definitely clouded my judgement and I should also mention that I'm a former military and Afghan veteran so nothing really scares me almost immediately after pressing send she responded we message each other through the OkCupid messenger service for about a week and I got to learn a lot about her she had an interesting name Aoife and she was from Belfast she told me she had a daughter named Rosen which didn't really bother me and had a very long complicated story about how she grew up a Catholic in North Ireland during the Troubles and was orphaned at a young age she seemed really driven and had such an amazing story I had so many questions and in all reality a lot of respect for her so it was really easy to keep talking to her but then about another week we started talking on the phone and sometimes on skype she'd never do an actual video chat which at the time I didn't think was too weird but she send me pictures of her and her daughter friends etc for the most part this whole thing seemed legit the story she had were pretty detailed and she was talking about stuff that I really didn't know a lot about and honestly couldn't comprehend when there were parts of the story that seemed to get kind of weird and then that up at first she told me that she was a hair stylist at some Swank place in central London I'm really frequent central a lot so ok no biggie met her online I wasn't going to head into central the stalker at work and she said she owned the barn Camden called the Locke Tavern which I looked up on the internet and it's a real place and manage his own weekends she had details about the bouncers and regulars this didn't seem to make a lot of sense but okay I mean I guess you could do both jobs and be a full-time mom it seemed odd but she seemed driven and she also seemed really hot so it was at a judge again I wasn't going to be super creeper and pop down there I just took her word for it she also said she lived in a really nice penthouse near Covent Garden which if anyone knows the London real estate market didn't seem plausible on a hairdresser barmaids wages she explained us by saying that she had fallen in some money after the troubles it seemed kind of far-fetched but again without actually meeting her who am I to judge I started to notice some other weird things she'd send me pictures and some of them certain tattoos were present and in some they weren't I figured she was just sending old pictures but I remember that is what started to tip me off that things were fishy to say the least but again there's really nothing wrong with sending old pictures and I had no real reason not to believe the photos were Aoife they all seemed like the same girl and with the exception of the tattoos and some small changes in hair color nothing really seemed out of the ordinary she would also send me pictures of her daughter Roe Sheen who she claimed was 14 finally after talking to Eva for a few weeks online I asked her out in a date I figured it was time I finally meet her we're set to meet up on a Friday night and on that Friday she doesn't respond to a single text a call I hadn't know where to meet her by around 9 p.m. she texts saying things got out of control at her club and she was really sorry but she had to cancel I was upset and should have bailed there but forgave her and we agreed to set up another first meeting things from here really started to get weird as I said I was doing the online dating thing and this time I'd met a few other girls another girl named Joe had asked me out and when I would show one night in an area of London called Shoreditch which isn't too far from where EFA's pub was while I was out Aoife called and texted me a few times I basically just ignored the calls and the date was over I said bye to Joe and went home and called Eva she asked where it was basically well I lied and said I was out with a friend Eva didn't say anything we talked on the phone for a bit and then said goodnight the situation that's strange a few nights later when Eva caught me in my lie she claimed that she knew that I was out with another girl she knew which restaurant I was at and the night that I had been there she knew what Joe had looked like he's a claim that one of the bouncers from her pub knew what I look like because she had shown him photos and he recognized me when I came through the doors at the restaurant in Shoreditch this didn't make a lot of sense because I didn't see any bouncers at the restaurant we are at but maybe he was bartending or something I didn't know she had details and they were spot on this was odd to say the least I basically told Eva that the date was set up before I'd even met her and that we weren't really dating so she had no right to be upset plus she stood me up so if anyone should be mad it's me to be honest I forget what really happened in this part of the story I think we fought for a little bit didn't talk for a few weeks then one night she called me really late it seemed off so I answered she was panicking from what I could tell she was suffering from sleep paralysis which I know is scary so I stayed on the phone with her until she went back to sleep this happened a few more times I really had no intention to date or even see her and went home to the US for about a month and while we did keep limited contact there was nothing too serious and my expectations were pretty low after I got back to London she invited me out I don't remember much of the details but she ended up canceling on me again and I basically decided screw it I wasn't even upset we texted a little bit but the communications really started to die down I really didn't think much about it and went on with my life then one night I entered the twilight zone one day I was in the Kings cross st. Pancras area with a friend of mine from the states he had to make a meeting nearby so I was by myself in the area that's when I got a text from Eva she asked if I wanted to meet up and I figured hey might as well finally meet this girl I was in the same area of town two stops away and didn't see any harm in it she told me to meet her up in Camden and she'd be at the Wetherspoons pub at noon it wasn't a date at least in romantic sense which was good and at this point I was really curious as to who she was I'd literally spent hours talking and texting this girl so I don't know Camden that well and I'm getting texts from her on the way up there as I'm trying to find the Weatherspoon's it's right by the Loch and Camden by the way she's telling me she's at work and in the process of selling her share in the bar she's on her way another friend of hers is at the bar but he's a great guy you'll like him again I was already right there might as well meet her friend that's when I meet Rhys Rhys was a tall skinny ginger kid he was about 21 and had a thick Irish accent I walked up to him shook his hand and we got drinks it seemed nice enough and for as weird as the situation could potentially be it wasn't all that uncomfortable another one of his friends was there as well they seemed like two nerds in the early twenties they talked about football and video games and all the other stuff twenty-something year old kids talk about mixed in with a little bit of politics and a couple random questions about how do you know Aoife etc they've been in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban a few years prior the situation wasn't anything to be concerned about I thought to myself then I got a text from Aoife something along the lines of hey getting tied up be there in about an hour Reese seemed nice enough so we hung out got a few beers and moved on to the next pub still no Aoife Reese and his friend were nice we did rounds and fortunately I hold my beer pretty well another apologetic text from etho rolls in screw it or drinking I thought and we're having a good time enough Rhys would ask me random questions about ephod but I basically shrugged it off - being one of the only few things we had in common we bar hopped around Camden and went to the Holly ons at one point I was in the queue to buy a round of drinks and felt like this guy was way too close to me I turned around and saw an overweight old man with an ugly brown jacket and a pockmarked face hit a crucifix tattoo on his neck in all honesty a typical bar fly he'd see in a British pub I said excuse me walk past him we continued to drink and blow the day away by this time it was like 2:30 to 3:00 in a foz nearing three hours late I decided screw it let's go to the lock tavern her bar Reese and his friends seemed cool with it we get there and there's two Irish tricolors flying above the place yeah you can tell Aoife owns the place huh reset the part of the story kind of added up we went into a place tonight texted a teller were there oh great I'm almost done I'll be down in a minute she never comes down but this is when the story gets really really weird this other dude named Pete shows up shakes Reese's Han Reese's oh you're here to meet Eva keep in mind that Eva and Eva are phonetically almost identical names I'd look at Rhys and he's like ah this must seem weird eva is EFA's best friend now this seemed really weird but I needed to figure out what was going on these two girls have almost exactly the same name and I had never heard if I mentioned Eva before I start talking to Pete Marie starts asking similar questions to him about Eva that he was asking me about Eva but some of these questions were getting more serious he was asking him things like do you love her he'd story then starts to sound eerily similar to mine Pete meets evil in line she's from North Island has a daughter named Roshan and his version she's 12 he tried to meet up with her a few times but it fell through he was invited last minute to hang out oh that's weird is all I could think something wasn't right at this point I knew that someone was getting played probably me and I wasn't some kind of game but needed to figure out exactly what was going on Pete and I started to figure out things right about the same time and right in front of Reese who stuck to his guns in the story remarkably well they both have similar names they both have daughters that are around the same age with a really common Irish name I'm not buying it neither is Pete I decided that the pub were in right now might not be friendly territory and I don't want to get shanghaied in Camden so I suggest we leave Aoife sends me a text saying she's almost on her way great I said meet us up the street at some other pub even I start walking out on the way out I asked the bartender hey does eful work in a day he responds now mate Etha hasn't worked here in three years at this point I know something really really creepy is going on we head to the next pub I've got a good buzz going but I know I need to sober up and sober up fast I think Pete might be a victim in this game too but he might not be he for sure can't be trusted recent his buddy are suspected as well but I don't have any proof yet and my curiosity is keeping you there we walk into another pub Reese's friend says something to Reese and I don't hear it neither does Pete Reese's it yells at his friend and his friend basically says screw off a mountain takes off feet are still trying to put things together I find a table on an outdoor deck that's quiet I can think and I can piece this together it's amazing how fast you can sober up when you think you're in trouble I asked Pete if he has any pictures of Eva and Pete pulls out his phone he shows me a picture that I'd seen before wait that's Roshan thief his daughter no mate that's Eva he replies this is making no sense I've been sent the same picture of the same girl and been told it was EFA's fourteen-year-old daughter I showed Pete pictures that I had a visa he claimed he'd never seen the girl in the photos before Rhys was sticking to the story that I had pictures of Eva and Pete had pictures of Eva and he wasn't sure why I thought the pic was a Roshan he also kept claiming that Etha and Eva texted him and they were on their way that's when the dominie I simply looked at Pete and asked him what number do you have in your phone for Eva Pete reads the number on his phone and turns out being the exact same number I had for Eva and my phone if all the other clues hadn't added up this one sent it over the edge it also sent Pete out of the bar as he literally jumped over a table and ran out the door in a panic it was actually quite the sight to see at this point it was just me and Rhys and don't think that he had overheard that we both have the same number for someone that he was telling me were two separate girls we said that Eva and Eva had texted him and that they're on their way I don't know who Eva and Eva are at this point or if they even exist I basically tell Rhys that I think he's playing some kind of messed-up game and that he's more than suspect of wrongdoing he wasn't a big dude and knew that if he stepped to me it wasn't going to end well I basically walked right through him knocking him into a doorframe and tore out of the bar I headed straight for the tube I didn't jump on the Northern Line and get home I wasn't waiting for anything at this point I had no idea what was going on at best I've been in some sort of weird manti te'o type catfish scam at worst I was also a victim and a snuff movie I get on the tube and there's a guy right behind me I look at him he's overweight pockmarked face brown jacket and make eye contact I look at his neck and there's the crucifix tattoo it was the same guy from the Holly Owens I'm a bit worried but I've been under worse pressure before in my life I calmly sat down on the train the train was being held in Camden for some reason and wasn't moving that's when who jumps on the same carriage as the two of us Rhys I could have sworn who made eye contact and gave a nod to the man in the brown jacket at this point I played dumb that they were there on the London Tube there's a certain dinging noise it's made right before the doors closed I waited to hear that noise then bolted out of the door I ran around and doubled back on the tubes several times when I finally got back near home I texted a friend New Cross and told her I was scared and I was being followed she was having a party that night and invited me over I really didn't want to head home alone at this point I think I doubled back and switch lines enough that a threesome the man in the brown coat were following me I'd lost them I'm in it's a New Cross safe and sound I had a few calls from nifA the next few days but I never wanted to answer them she also sent a few texts saying we needed to talk eventually she stopped calling and texting all together I have a few theories on the whole situation one of my friends thinks that recent Aoife are the same person I wouldn't rule it out but the person I talked to on the phone definitely sounded like a woman to those of you who are dating online and meeting sketchy people be safe about it never let your curiosity get to you like it did me if there's anyone out there who has any idea what was going on feel free to share a plate theories off me I'm still baffled by the whole thing I'm almost twenty eight-year-old gay male who was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains which for my friends not in America let's do the South more towards the mid-atlantic region I usually don't just throw being gay out there but it's important to my tale into understanding why make such insanely poor choices in my teenage years I know almost everyone does but this really takes the cake finally back to when I was 16 just about 12 years ago I was a junior in high school had plenty of friends and new trouble with bullies at least not while I was at school my parents are now wonderful people who greatly regret the way they treated me when they found out I was gay at the time I hated them for being so horrendous to me less I got older I finally understood that their reaction was just a product of the strict religious movement they and myself were brought up in my parents who at the time firm would believe that this would send my eternal soul into damnation pretty much only allowed me to stay at her house a couple of days a week after that for at least a year I was living on friends couches and off the kindness of their parents I was in I can only describe as the worst state of miserable nature depression I've ever been in my entire life I have tried to commit suicide the year before with a very serious overdose that cost me nine days in the ICU I should have died but your liver is an amazing thing and it started to regenerate on its own a year to the day after that literally to the day the first guy ever fell in love with was killed in a tragic car accident my parents had zero sympathy for my feelings they were the amoral feelings of the blasphemous Sun so they didn't count I guess I remember coming back home from his funeral that night and my father asking me why are you so upset we dating that boy or something and didn't even respond just walked right past him and straight into my room where I proceeded to cry myself to sleep again don't judge them too harshly they were different people back then needless to say this sent me completely spiraling downwards in the worst possible way drugs alcohol you name it I did it anything to stay numb and keep myself from feeling the immense amounts of pain I was in emotionally every single day to have your situation go from the year before seeing your father cry for the first time as you lay dying in a hospital bed to him spewing so much mouse and hatred towards you let's just say it was enough to make anyone have a mental breakdown I had friends who cared about and loved me deeply I don't know why that wasn't enough it just wasn't I felt like no one truly loved me or ever would how if my own parents couldn't then what would my chances with finding a soul mate would I just be alone forever and as miserable as I was then at the time in my angsty teen mind that's exactly what it felt like which finally brings us through my background and mindset leading into the pure unadulterated hell that was soon to follow in the midst of my deepest darkest despair the brightest idea anyone has ever had on this planet popped in my head well if no one around here will ever love me let him just go online and try to meet someone who will pure stroke of genius right it just made absolute biblical sense to me at the time I felt like the only gay teen in the whole damn State like the only person who really understood me was me and only ever would be me but in order to find someone who loved me I would have to search far and wide beyond the borders of the mountain fortress I had resided in my entire life proud of myself for having such an ingenious idea I immediately hopped on my myspace Facebook for us old people for all you young folks saying what is MySpace and spent the next hour making this cool looking as I thought it could you could customize just about everything on your profile so of course mine had to accurately reflect all my emo feelings in the darkness of my soul word to the wise and something I wish I realized back then if you're trying to attract the darker things in society you're probably going to get back exactly what you're sending out I know I sure as hell did it all started out innocently enough I clicked on one of my gay acquaintances profiles and for some reason this guy on his top eight just flew right out at me his name is Jacob he was gorgeous dressed in all black you know it was pretty much all I needed to know at the time I saw he was from Maryland several hours away from me but far enough to possibly not be like everyone else here far enough to hopefully have exactly the kind of mentality that I was looking for in another human being so I sent him a message something lame to the effect of hi what's up I saw you on my friends top eight and thought you were cute so I figured I would say hello I wasn't expecting a response none whatsoever he was so gorgeous and seemed way too cool for me so why in god's name would he message a guy like me back and then it happened within a minute of me sending my message I got one back was from him not gonna lie I exploded in joy on the inside something that I hadn't felt in years and years it was just something like hey you're cute too how old are you but it was enough to send me over the moon I felt alive again but what I really felt was hope again we talked the rest of the day and night away we talked about each other how much life sucked how bad we wanted the way from our hometown and our lives you know the usual for teenage gay boys living in repression I fell for him hard too hard I mean hook line and sinker hard which ended for maybe a week before he asked me out I had no problem with dating online hell that was the whole point of me doing this in the first place so I eagerly said yes we only been dating for a week after that or so when he introduced me to the rest of his friends I met his ex-boyfriend Zachary and their best friend Josie who I quickly became best friends with along with about 10 other girls and guys Josie was a cool chick and she had known these guys for years who better to give me all the dirt on them right during the course of the next month Josie and I became the closest friends out of everyone he introduced me to and what turned out to be again they were mostly just a group of suburban white kids who called themselves the elites and just drank and smoked a lot of weed I had heard some crazy stories here and there about them beating up and some of them taking the gang thing way too seriously but I didn't really think much about it Josie and I had been talking on the phone every single day and really made a genuine connection with each other she had my sense of bizarre humor was extremely intelligent and still liked to have a crazy good time on top of it all during this period Jacob and I were doing great but it was one little problem I had started to fall in love with his ex Zachary the more I talked to him Jacob could be intense and at times violent and he was angry from what I heard but on the other hand Zachary was his complete opposite he was too kind for his own good an extremely caring guy they wrote the most beautiful piano music I had ever heard being a musician myself French horn for 10 years I was immediately endeared to the sky the more and more time I spent online talking to Zachary the less and less time I felt like talking to Jacob eventually Jacob kind of figured out what was going on to my shock he let me know he was cool with it and wished us the best that's how after about two months with Jacob I started dating his ex a curry this will be the guy I would date for the next two years and with whom the worst times in my life would be spent Josie was clearly thrilled for me and we still talked every day online and on the phone sometimes I talked to Zachary on the phone but more often than not we would just communicate over a AOL Instant Messenger when we started dating was when everything started to collapse Jacob who initially said he was okay with everything ended up exploding it completely tore me a new one online and then proceeded to go and kidnap my current boyfriend Josie called me up freaking the hell out saying he taken Zachary and no one knew where they were was clearly sent him reeling from shock I guess all the rumors I had heard about Jacob were true and now because of my actions guy in love with is in danger I quickly contacted some of the older guys and again and let them know what was going on their response was basically ah not again which caught me off guard again you mean this happens frequently I talked to Chas the leader of this gang while he sent some guys have to deal with Jacob and retrieve my boyfriend they basically told me in a nutshell that Jacob has been it always will be obsessed with Zachary that when he gets wasted on whenever he goes cuckoo for cocoa puffs and sets out on some wild mission to kidnap and apparently violate my new boyfriend I couldn't believe it I mean I was in complete and total shock apparently the situation was resolved easily and he handed over my man without too much incident he also received a healthy beating to remind Jacob that it's not nice to go around kidnapping people just because you can this was the first and certainly not the last incident I can remember where a pattern I'm all too familiar with now with develop over the next several years Jacob would get drunk and jealous he would do something completely insane to me or my boyfriend and then after all the freaking out and worrying was over with he would come crying back to me begging mine and Zachary's forgiveness this became a weekly routine and it began to wear me out mentally very quickly flash forward or around a year after I sent the very first message to Jacob I was still with Zachary still best friends with Josie who had even been up to Maryland and met in person at this point unfortunately to miss my boyfriend who was out of town visiting family and was still dealing with Jacobs craptastic and same plots to ruin my relationship and give me a stroke before the age of 20 none of this craziness set off any red flags in my head not one as a matter of fact nothing period during that entire year gave me second thoughts about anything going on really but day to day the sky is falling lifestyle become the norm for me and I was used to it several of my friends however had their doubts but they were polite enough to keep them to themselves so the time being this is from the first true danger that threatened me and my family ever arose and then led to a night I will never forget as long as I live cut to me is a 17 year old who in the span of one year had accomplished everything he set out to do I had the perfect boyfriend even if I'd never met him didn't care I had an awesome new best friend and Josie we'd hung out a few times at that point and I adored her and I'd joined a group of my own in my hometown if my parents were gonna throw me away just because of who I loved well then I was gonna throw away every single religious thing I had ever been taught and go to the dark side and became a Luciferian otherwise known as a Satanist and boy oh boy did I think I was hardcore now then when it comes to the coven I joined in my hometown that could fill an entirely different story now I received a call one night around 12:00 a.m. from Josie who was almost beside herself very out of character for her I mean Zachary had been kidnapped over 40 times in the past year and she hardly batted an eye but this was different she explained to me that Jacob had really up done himself and lost his mind this time he had hired a guy from the elites named Shaun to come down to my house and kill me plus my mother father and younger sister my sister is about seven and a half years younger than me and from the day she was born I have always been fiercely protective over her she was and still is my beautiful baby sister and truly the only one in my household that I loved at the time when I heard that my ex had taken it so far as to hire a hitman to come after my family I flew in to what we around here call a mountain rage it didn't matter to me if someone simply came after me but the target my precious sister who had nothing to do with any of this was the boiling point for me and even though I despised my parents at the time I'm still a seven there and when you mess with the Southerners family when all the crap you're fighting about goes right out the window completely total defend the homestead mode kicked in I asked Josie when he left Marilyn she told me she found out but they started driving towards my house and maybe an hour ago as soon as she found out she called me immediately okay so that meant I had at the most six hours to prepare and the least possibly four if he got a good head start she also informed that Sean was a former Army guy but got kicked out for failing several psych tests and being a complete sociopath in general I'm not a big guy and at the time I wait even less than I do now I was five seven and maybe weighed 130 pounds soaking wet but my first thought didn't require brute strength to beat back this attacker I called up my coven leader Brandon who lived not even ten minutes away from me and explained the situation I told him I needed to borrow his favorite toy and I promised to bring it back in good condition with his little blood on it as possible he agreed about 30 minutes later and was back home in my room cleaning and loading an extremely nice over-and-under pump-action shotgun like I said no brute force required I called Josie back up and got the details from exactly what he and his car looked like then around 4:00 a.m. I told her I would call her back and crept out into my front yard now for people who have never been to my house they always got where to park at rung they always ended up in front of my house down a hill instead of them in the driveway on the side this little detail was stuck in my mind and probably saved my life in the very front of my yard there was a huge oak tree that was big enough for my skinny girl gene wearing emos self to hide perfectly behind all I had to do was wait and hope he did exactly what I thought he would I got so lucky it parked exactly on the opposite side of the big tree I was hiding behind I heard a car door open and someone step outside of the vehicle shortly followed by the unmistakable cocking of a nine-millimeter handgun well that sound may have struck fear in the hearts of others it absolutely enraged me to the core so I replied in kind with a sound of my own as I stepped around the side of the tree he was directly in front of his car gunned down by a side and one motion I simultaneously pumped a shell into the chamber of my shotgun and raised it directly with his head about ten feet away from me this caught him off-guard and completely by surprised I didn't hesitate I simply told him the God's honest truth I said buddy you got one of two options right now you can either get back in your car turn around and drive straight back to Maryland without stopping or you can so much a splint in my general direction and I will splatter your brains all across the yard you have five seconds to decide what's going to be I kid you not the most sickly smile spread across the psychos face and for a moment I thought we were about to reenact the movie tombstone fortunately he had much more of a sense of self-preservation than I thought someone who had just drove eight hours to kill a family he never met would have all he did was give a little Chuck horn said Eirik old dude see you around he then walked backwards very slowly my gun following him the entire way got back into his car and just drove off right then and there I made up my mind I had to tackle the Beast head-on it was always race but if you have a problem be a man and take care of it yourself I had to go to my enemy Jacobs home turf and bring this war to his doorstep just like he brought it to mine it was time to go to Maryland after all the drama of nearly being murdered by a nutjob I'd really had enough of Jacobs BS at this point I got online and custom mountain to a fly wouldn't land on him making a point to let him know that his little plan backfired he wasn't dealing with some poor little boy that couldn't fend for himself an each and every crazy situation that evolved made me stronger as a person it's not a little bit more mentally disturbed every time I told him he was going to regret the day he ever crossed me and my boyfriend instead of apologizing like usual his true colors finally came out he laughed at me he freaking laughed at me he told me I was cute when I was angry and said what a dang shame was I didn't have a bullet hole in my head he wished that I was dead and he never spoke to me in the first place because he was still in love more likely insanely of sassed with his ex my current boyfriend of a year Zachary informed me that the war was just beginning and he would do everything in his power to win Zachary back like he was some kind of adorable trophy you want for baking the best freakin pie the county fair I was incensed completely livid and brimming to the edge with fury I told him to watch his back because I'm coming for him I called Josie and told her everything that happened and asked if I could come stay with her for a week she excitedly agreed Zachary was asleep for this whole ordeal and blissfully unaware that anything had happened when he found out the next day I think he was even more angry than I was fortunately for us the gang leader Chaz like Zachary a whole hell of a lot more than he did Jacob so he hatched a plan with him the idea was for them to kidnap Jacob like he had Sakura so many times for they would be accomplishing this task while I was on my way up to Maryland and when I got there he would be mine to do with as I pleased he can imagine the eight-hour drive up there all the hideous and heinous ly brutal ideas that were going through my mind I was going to inflict maximum amounts of pain on the guy that had caused so much in my own life and would relish every second of it unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it my dreams of reviving the Spanish Inquisition on my ex's head never came to fruition when I arrived in Maryland Josie came skipping out to greet me happy as a lark like always to see me she had some good and bad news I always asked for the bad news first and the bad news was that Jacob had gotten tipped off by Kenny god I frickin lo that guy always meddling where he didn't belong but everyone was coming for him he made a hasty retreat and had intended to kidnap Zachary and take him on the run too but that was the good news before he could get to him Zachary had hopped on a bus and headed to New York to stay with his mom while things cooled off as soon as I was that once again I had miss seen him for the first time I was just relieved he was out of Hans way safe and sound again no alarm bells going off that for the second time that I had made the trip up there Zachary was not around Josie called him on her cell and he apparently picked up his mom's because he never had his own and we got to enjoy one of the rare times we actually spoke on the phone always well now for a week of fun and plotting and what we were going to do the Jacob the next time you reared his ugly head later on that week Josie wanted to drive down to an old colonial part of Maryland and go ghost hunting on lease abandoned railroad tracks however uneventful and they have been we did end up inviting Sean to go with us turns out psycho dude actually felt bad well almost he blankly told me was I didn't have the balls to stand up to him he would have killed me and my whole family for just 500 bucks instead of killing him on the spot which every fiber in my being was telling me to do I decided to play nice and get him on my side that way if Jacob ever tried that crap again he would definitely tell him no because I'm the cool dude sometimes you catch more flies with honey anyways the rest of the week was normal a damn good time Josie and I said our good-byes and we parted ways wishing each other a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year the next couple of weeks was semi normal no word from Jacob at all not even a peep what a gift I thought I'll take it year two of my relationship began quite happily believe it or not even my birthday month of January was an unusually good one then came the next couple months two months which quite vividly lived within me to this day they also define my life for the next several years this is when the sky stopped falling and my world completely crumbled from beneath me and utter devastation at the beginning of February Josie had a suddent and urgent impulse to get away from the parents now I could completely understand that so I happily agreed the letter comes stay down south with me I borrowed my best friend's car and drove 15 to 16 some odd hour trip all the way to Maryland and back my parents were less than thrilled they told me she couldn't live in the house with us so I said fine and shout out my money to a local look into n where she and I live for almost two weeks before my parents caved and let us back in my house now I forgot to mention something extremely important earlier about boyfriend Zachary he was very sick I mean terminally ill but we thought it wouldn't be four years I was told he had cystic fibrosis and he needed a double lung transplant in order to live much longer he was hospitalized in the beginning of February and rushed up the transplant list because his condition was so great I can't even begin to tell you how after the year we've been through together how badly I wanted to be by his side unfortunately he was at a hospital in a part of the country that specializes in treating cystic fibrosis and was way too far for me to travel Jozy kept me in pretty good spirits about the whole thing she had a lot of experience with cystic fibrosis since her sister died from it several years earlier she reassured me that since he was so young and tried to take such good care of himself but he would probably receive donor lungs very soon and be just fine I try not to worry too much but in reality I worried myself sick losing him after getting him out of harm's way so many times before was not an option in my mind how could we overcome so much only for him to succumb to this disease Zachary and I talked constantly when he felt like it and even though he was scared and alone he said he felt like a million bucks knowing I was supporting him with my love no matter where I was that made me feel wonderful being able to comfort him from so far away and for a couple of weeks my comfort seemed to be doing the trick until one day that day my boyfriend died suddenly on February 14 2008 his lungs filled with fluid he suffocated and died there was nothing anyone could do I was completely and totally lost Jozy broken news and I collapsed into the biggest mess you've ever seen in your life she was still living with me at the time so she tried to console me as best as she could while she was shedding her own tears at the loss of her best friend the forever ruined Valentine's Day for me to this day it only reminds me of loss and death you don't realize how fragile your heart truly is until you've experienced a loss like that little did I know that even worse moments in my life were about to occur about a month later I was headed in the course for total destruction and still blissfully unaware of the one person who had been driving this crazy train from day one skip forward the March st. Patrick's Day to be exact a little over a month since a curry had passed away Josie had forcefully been returned the Maryland by her parents seeing as how she had practically ran away I was off in la-la land of booze drugs and more pain than either of those could cover up I was chilling with my Satanist Posse doing what all normal American teenagers do on st. Patty's Day pretending like we're Irish and testing the limits of alcohol poisoning my alcohol tolerance back then was ridiculously high so I had already drank in an inordinate amount when my phone rang it was Josie I slurred my words of something to the effect of hey girl what is you doing getting bumbling out of my mouth I announced the room it was Josie to which everyone replied hey she had lived with us for several months and loved her hater she had become an honorary southerner the next words out of her mouth once again sent my head spinning off into space and my world into complete chaos Zachary's not dead I stopped breathing for a moment and when I caught my breath I asked her to repeat that again she did except this time she added the fact that his life had been in danger blah blah blah so he had to hide even from me blah blah Jacob just had to think he was dead blah blah blah I could literally feel my brain dripping out from my ears as my mind turned into mush with every word out of his mouth then for the real kicker to my drunken mental meltdown Zachary got on the phone sure enough it was his voice he apologized for what he had to do I apologize for what I was about to do which was scream and yell my lungs out throw my phone into a wall smashing it into a million pieces and then proceeded to girlfriend sue hammered drunk 2 completely insane I drank everything that wasn't nailed down who knows what other drugs I did on top of that because I sure don't remember I was literally having a complete and total mental breakdown the last strand of sanity and my brain just snapped I did this for a couple of more hours until I somehow drove back home put on my work clothes and tore out of the parking lot to go to my job in a city half an hour down the interstate with people chasing me trying to stop me I don't recall any of what happened next but apparently this is what I did I showed up to work completely wasted and got fired from my good job I called my father freaking out in the parking lot of said job he realized I was drunk and told me to stay there and he would come get me oh how I wish crazy drunk me would have listened instead of doing that I started driving on the interstate again not caring if I lived or died and obviously not caring about anyone else according to the police report I was tearing down the interstate at 130 miles per hour I apparently had two mile markers on the side of the road and blew out both my right hand tires but continued on driving with sparks shooting 50 feet out of the back of my car I took the exit to the hospital going that fast and spun out completely totaled what was left of my car according to by standards I then proceeded to eggs at my vehicle and run across the damn interstate towards the hospital with people chasing after me hence I got to the ER Doris I heard the now-familiar whoop whoop of a police cruiser I was so arrested for driving under the influence I blew a point to about 12 hours after I had my last drink if I had blown a point to one I would have gotten a felony charge that led to years of failed drug tests violated probation and ultimately a year in jail down the line after that I decided enough was enough these crazy people from Maryland and their insane concept of living could all go to hell for as much as I was concerned it had been nearly two years of torment fear and unimaginable pain worst of all was starting to cost me my mind and my freedom I was done listening to Josie and ready to start listening to my actual friends in town who had been begging me to stay away from those people for a long time now some good friends sat me down and started to tell me the inconsistencies and all their stories over the last few years at first I didn't want to listen but then eventually there was too much evidence not to listen finally I opened my ears in my mind on what was really going on I decided to figure this out once and for all I got on my myspace Facebook and every other social media I could think of I typed in Josie's full name into the search bar of every single one what I found to this day still makes me want to turn my stomach contents inside out there on every social media possible by using her name and the few email addresses I knew she had I found dozens and dozens of accounts linked to her emails duplicate after duplicate of Zachary's full name on accounts with pictures of her and the same thing with Jacob and every single solitary other person in the supposed elites that's when it's finally after years of denial and torment finally freaking hit me like a railroad car full of bricks my god she's every single one of these people she's absolutely and unequivocally made up every single solitary one of these people and has been pretending to be a dozen or more people for over two years as you can imagine my jaw hit the floor thank God I had some close friends there who kept me from falling apart and help me find every single fake profile she had ever created I was dumbfounded profile after profile to profile had her pictures but the names of people I thought were entirely real prototype accounts before she ended up making the actual fake accounts ganks or jokes to her really in fact all of this has been one big insane psychotic joke I was too shocked to be enraged yet but don't worry that's coming I diligently copied every link to every single one of her profiles my AOL Instant Messenger and then I called her hey how are you I'm all right I guess just bored you nope definitely not bored over here get on a IM chat and i'll show you something really interesting I was nearly hysterical at this point and I could tell she knew something was up when she was online I simply asked her hey Josie what are these then I centered the link to every single fake profile she had ever created in her miserable life and a few from email accounts I didn't even know belong to her the silence on the other end of the line was deafening as I heard her clicking through link after link her two year-long mental game was over and she finally realized it her words well man guess she got me she then started to laugh genuinely laugh as though something remotely funny and just occurred I don't recall what I said but apparently it was bad enough for my friends to take away the phone and have to hold me down catfished the show her movie wasn't a round way back then so I had unwittingly become one of the first hardcore victims of a stalker in the Internet age worse than that I had talked to live with and even the friend of the girl who had been stalking and trying to ruin my life for over two years it was literally and still is the single biggest plot twist I have ever had in my entire life thousands upon thousands of Messenger conversations hundreds and thousands of hours of phone conversation countless amounts of cash being spent to drive up several states away just to stay with my psycho stalker every single time even bring her down to live with me for months having $5,000 mysteriously vanished out of my bank account everything was starting to make sense there was no Jacob there was no Zachary there was no gang what there actually was was one completely insane girl with more mental problems than could fit in an encyclopedia she was the only personally ever talked to she was the only person I ever saw and even worse she was the one that paid Shaun to come down to my house with a gun and try to kill my entire family Josie was the only person in these last two years that had orchestrated any of this from all the fake kidnappings and boyfriend drama to faking the death of someone I had fallen in love with and bringing him back just to screw with my head who does this all the events of the last two years came flooding into my mind as I realized in each and every one it was solely her and no one else but her so many questions raced in my head the least of all being whining I deleted my myspace and made my facebook private I only accepted friends that I knew are real I felt completely off the wagon and out of my head drugs alcohol and more drugs that's all I could do to cope here I was a gay man had unknowingly fallen in love with a straight woman and regardless of whether or not I thought it was a gay man which I wholeheartedly did that still messes with your head pretty bad I didn't think I could ever be close to someone again my world had been rocked and ruined to this day all these years later I still don't trust people I don't think I will ever be able to trust someone ever again can you blame me she came down here you heard me right she moved into my sister town not even half an hour away from me I bumped into her by accident and we started talking again as much as I wanted to stomp her in a bloody pulp on the ground you catch more flies with honey I wanted answers hell I did I told her I was trying to forgive her and I needed answers to my questions in order to do so I asked her if she would sit down with me and tell me everything and she reluctantly agreed I politely informed her that this forgiveness was not for her but it was for me so I could stop holding on to and living in the past I explained she nearly killed me ruined my life and what she did was the most personal and horrific thing one human being can do to another especially after I was so damn good to her she was polite and let me get what I needed to get off my chest I tried to be calm and not rude so she wouldn't run away and I did get closure somewhat and answers to everything here's her explanation take it with a grain of salt it started out as a joke when she was in high school there was a girl who was being mean to her and bullying her so she thought she would get back at her by and getting her to like a guy online and reveal the awful truth later she had made a bunch of prototype profiles and eventually almost 20 profiles in total so it looked like this group of people had the same friends and they were real she just pulled pictures off freaking Google she knew none of them were people in real life she was having a good old time tricking this girl when along comes a spider to mess up her web me she said she thought she would just mess with me a bit and let me know she was actually a girl but after talking to me she unintentionally fell in love with me whether that's true or not I don't know what to believe if she really did love me then why put me through pure freaking hell for two years she said she wanted to tell me a million times but it just got out of control and before she knew it she was really getting into being these people and someone believes she was them and they were real again miss chick is the world's best liar I've ever met so who knows what the truth really is all I wanted to know was how did she get the music and how did she sound like a guy on the phone the music she shockingly demonstrated to me was actually hers she's an amazing pianist and guitar player I saw this with my own eyes and heard it my own years Zachary's voice in the phone wasn't very complicated paid a guy friend a few bucks to be in on it which this jerk-off eagerly agreed to ruining someone's life for a few bucks how sweet Shawn was all her she paid him 500 bucks to do that and she had zero explanation as to why she knew he would do it he's just as much a psycho as she was the rest of it was pure fantasy and imagination all dolled up to be extra crazy so I would care more about Zachary and give her more attention as lie after lie was finally revealed and the truth brought the life I had heard enough after around eight hours of this I'd heard everything I really ever needed to hear and wanted to my life was nearly destroyed my family nearly killed my mental and emotional health left scarred forever simply because she wasn't getting enough attention in her life not it was I when all that started but I didn't go about like a human wrecking ball trying to make myself feel better I'll never be able to comprehend or understand the mind of someone like that people who derive pleasure from other people's pain and misery I'll never be able to fully trust not the way that's required of a true partner and companion I just can't do that again if I'm morally betrayed again I know the next time will kill me so as I write this in my apartments a little over a decade after it all happened I'm alone one good thing did come from this it sure is how many the person I am today and it strengthened and toughened the resolve and two tempered steel I learn to be okay with myself and to finally love myself after so many years of self-loathing I'm a pretty amazing person and in a man to define my life and who I am in any shape form of fashion obviously I'm worth something otherwise this psycho chick wouldn't have latched on to me for years and ended up moving eight hours away from her home to be thirty minutes away from me all this time was she stole I will never get back but when I gained she can never take away from me again

Channel: Lets Read!

Views: 1,054,475

Rating: 4.8135867 out of 5

Keywords: true stories, true creepy catfish stories, catfish, catfish stories, true catfish stories, true creepy stories, creepy stories, reddit stories, true reddit stories, lets read, lets read stories, lets read creepy, catfish stories creepy, real life catfish stories, best catfish stories, catfish dating stories

Id: 4CWhEDUiTzY

Length: 71min 55sec (4315 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017