I matched with this woman on Bumble last spring, and to this day, I still don't know who I actually met that night. Her name on the app was Rachel. [music] She looked normal in her pictures, nothing crazy or overly edited, just a cute brunette who worked in marketing and liked hiking.
We talked for a few days and she seemed down to earth. No weird messages or vibes. She didn't push for anything and she actually wanted to go slow.
Honestly, it felt refreshing compared to the other matches. After about a week of talking, we agreed to [music] meet up for dinner on a Wednesday night. She picked a restaurant in a quiet part of town, a little nicer than the places I usually go, but nothing too crazy.
When I got there, I texted her that I parked. She didn't answer. I waited at the entrance checking my phone every couple minutes.
10 minutes went by, then 20. I thought maybe she got stuck in traffic. I messaged again saying I was inside by the hostess stand.
I started getting a little embarrassed. It looked like I was getting stood up. The hostess asked if I wanted a table and I told her I was waiting for [music] someone.
She told me no one under the name Rachel had checked in. Now 30 minutes passed and I was about to leave when a guy came in and walked straight up to me. He was maybe mid-40s, scruffy, kind of heavy, wearing a black hoodie.
He asked me if I was Jake. My name wasn't on the reservation, so it caught me off guard. I told him yes, and he said he was Rachel's brother.
He told me Rachel wasn't feeling well, but she still wanted to meet me. And she asked him to pick me up and bring me to their place since it was really close and she didn't want to cancel. The whole thing already sounded weird, and I asked why she didn't text me that.
He said she tried, but her phone died and she didn't really want to bail on our date. His tone was calm and polite, and he didn't seem aggressive or anything, [music] but this was just a little off. I asked where she lived, and he said just a few blocks over and that driving would be easier because the sidewalks were icy.
I stood there debating it. A part of me felt like a jerk if I refused, like maybe she really was sick and embarrassed, but the other part of me felt like nothing about this was normal. I told him I was fine walking.
I asked for the address. He said it would be better if he showed me. That's when something in my stomach told me not to go.
I told him I'd rather reschedu and I started walking toward the door. He stepped in front of me, not aggressively, but just enough to block my path. He said Rachel would be upset and that she specifically asked him to bring me.
I told him I text her later. He stared at me for a few seconds, then stepped aside and said, "Have a good night. " in a tone that sounded more like a warning than anything else.
I left the restaurant fast and got into my car. I locked the doors immediately. As I pulled out of the parking space, I saw him standing outside the restaurant watching me.
I drove away thinking that was the end of it and maybe it was just some weird misunderstanding. Later that night around 11 p. m.
my phone buzzed. It was a message on Bumble from Rachel's profile. It said, "Why didn't you come?
" I replied that her brother came to the restaurant and told me she was sick. She answered instantly saying she didn't have a brother. All I could think was, "What?
" I told her exactly what happened and she stopped responding. I figured maybe she was freaked out, too. I tried to sleep after that, but around 1:00 a.
m. I got a notification that someone was trying to log into my email, then my bank app, and then my Instagram, all within minutes of each other. I changed my passwords and turned on every security feature I could.
I didn't quite connect it to Rachel's situation at first. The next morning, I checked Bumble to see if she had replied, but her profile was gone, completely deleted. Around noon, I got a text from an unknown number.
It said, "You should have come with me. " I showed the text to my roommate, and he told me to block the number and report it. I blocked it, but the messages didn't stop.
New numbers kept texting me. Different area codes. Each message was something short and vague, like, "We saw you.
Next time, don't waste my time. " And, "You made it harder for yourself. " [snorts] At one point, a message came through that used my full name, not the name I used on Bumble, my real legal name.
I didn't answer any of them. That night, while I was home alone, someone knocked on my apartment door. I was on the couch and I could not move.
After a minute of silence, there was another knock. Harder this time. I thought about calling the police, but it had only been two knocks, and I didn't want to sound paranoid.
I looked through the peepphole. No one was there. The hallway was empty.
I stepped back and waited. After a few seconds, I heard heavy footsteps walking down the stairs. The next day, I called the restaurant and asked if anyone matching that guy's description had a reservation or had checked in around the time I was there.
They said no. I asked if anyone had been standing around outside looking in, maybe waiting for someone. The hostess told me one of their servers actually mentioned a man in a hoodie pacing back and forth outside for almost an hour before I arrived.
She said they thought he was waiting for someone, but he never went inside until he walked directly up to me. I didn't tell her the rest. I felt sick thinking how long he had been watching the entrance.
I reached out to the local police and gave them the number that had texted me first. They weren't able to trace it to anyone. And since no crime had technically been committed according to them, they couldn't do much.
I deleted Bumble. I changed my phone number and I changed all my passwords. Things were quiet for about a week.
Then one night when I was taking the trash out behind my apartment building, I found a folded piece of paper shoved under the handle of the dumpster. It had my name on it. I opened it.
Inside was a printed photo of me from the night of the supposed date. me standing inside the restaurant lobby looking at my phone. The angle was from outside the window.
Someone had watched me the entire time. On the back of the photo, it said, "You. " I couldn't sleep for days.
I started staying at friends houses. Every little sound made my heart jump. A few days later, I checked the dumpster again and found nothing.
I became really hyper aware of my surroundings. Eventually, the messages and everything stopped. Or maybe they just stopped showing themselves to me.
Maybe they were still watching. The only thing I know is that the person I met that night was not Rachel's brother because Rachel didn't exist. Someone made the entire profile from scratch.
Someone created her just to lure somebody somewhere. Someone was expecting me to leave that restaurant with them. And the worst part is that I still don't know who he was.
I have not been on a dating app since. I feel like I was supposed to disappear that night. And the only reason I didn't was because I trusted my gut at the last second.
After turning 30 years old back in January, I started getting sick of being single. I hadn't been in a real relationship in several years, and I wanted to get back out there. I had always resisted online dating, but I eventually decided to bite the bullet and download the dating app Hinge.
After a few days of using the app, I did end up with several matches, but none of them ever amounted to anything. One Monday night, I was chilling at home watching hockey when I got a phone notification from Hinge saying that I had matched with a girl named Rebecca. Her profile looked legit.
She had a photo of herself at her job, a short video of her and her friends at a bar shooting darts, a picture of her at an outdoor concert, and a regular selfie of just her face. I thought she was very attractive, so I messaged her. Before long, we were having a nice conversation about our respective jobs and hobbies.
She seemed cool and normal, so I asked her if she wanted to meet at a local arcade bar that Friday. She took a while to respond, something like 4 hours. At about 1:00 a.
m. , she finally got back to me and agreed to the date. After our plans were set, I didn't hear from her at all for 4 days until literally 30 minutes before our date.
She sent a text that just said, "On my way at our agreed upon time. " I pulled up to the bar and was immediately surprised by how slow the place looked. This was a Friday at 8:00 p.
m. and this bar only had two cars in their parking lot. I pulled into a spot right by the front side of the bar.
Mere seconds after I put my car in park, I got a text from Rebecca saying that she was having car trouble and that she was parking on the other side of the bar. This immediately struck me as super suspicious since the other side of the bar was nothing but a few dumpsters and a fence that separated the bar from the woods. It didn't make any sense how she would even end up back there.
I tried calling her, but after one ring, it went to voicemail. I hung up and immediately received another text from her that said, "Please just come around back and help with my car. " Alarms were going off in my head, but I wasn't immediately sure what to do.
I sent her a text that just said, "This doesn't feel right. I'm leaving. " I know that sounds a little dumb in retrospects, but I was seriously unsure of how to handle the situation.
After sending her the text, I put my car in reverse and started leaving the parking lot. As soon as I was about to turn off the lot, two men in ski masks came running out from behind the bar straight towards my car. They didn't appear to be holding any kind of weapon, but I was definitely not going to wait around any longer to find out.
I sped off all the way back to my apartment. Once I got back home, I noticed that there was a big dent on the top of my car's trunk, as if one of the guys had thrown a large rock at my car as I was speeding off. I didn't even notice a heavy object hitting my car.
That's how scared I was in the moment. I called the police and told them the whole story, but at the end of the day, there wasn't much they could really do. They said they would keep me posted if any leads came up, whatever that means, but I haven't heard back from them.
Weirdly, this didn't totally scare me off dating apps since I figured the odds of that happening again are very slim. Still, I'm much more careful about meeting people off of them, and I make sure to call or FaceTime women before meeting them. I still remember that stretch of 2024 like it was yesterday.
Humid city nights, cramped condo living, and the constant hum of anxiety sitting in my chest because the board exam [music] was only a few months away. I was staying in a small condominium in the city with my three friends. All of us were buried in review materials, practice exams, and the occasional [music] emotional breakdown disguised as a coffee break.
And like every other stressed out 20some stuck between obligation and burnout, I thought it would be a great idea to distract myself with someone new. That's when I met him. Let's call him Michael.
I don't know if it was the boredom, the loneliness, or just the fact that I was tired of thinking about formulas, but I found him attractive right away. He was charming in the beginning, calm, funny, the type of guy who replied fast but not too fast. It was as if he mastered the perfect balance of interest and chill.
We started talking every day and then every night. And before I could fully process what I was doing, we were dating, or at least something that felt like dating. Michael was at first everything a sane person would want.
Respectful, attentive, a good conversationalist. We would be on calls for hours while I lay on my thin condo mattress, staring at the ceiling and listening to his voice fill the room. The only weird thing was that he never showed his face during our calls.
He claimed his phone had been stolen and the laptop he was using didn't have a functioning camera. I didn't question it at first, but slowly little red flags began popping up like notifications I kept swiping away. The biggest one, the way his tone changed whenever the topic got even remotely intimate.
Out of nowhere, this man would ask me for explicit selfies every single time. I shut it down firmly every time. I wasn't comfortable with that, especially online.
I told him that straight, but it was like talking to a dog in heat. No, scratch that. A dog in heat at least [music] has the excuse of being an animal.
This guy, he was worse because he knew exactly what he was doing. We'd argue about it a lot. He'd push, I'd refuse, and he'd sulk.
Sometimes he'd apologize, sometimes he'd respect my boundaries, only to ask again the next day like we didn't just fight about the same thing. The cycle became exhausting. And yet, despite all of that, I still wanted to meet him in person to see if this connection was real or if I was just romanticizing a voice on the other end of a screen.
But every time, and I mean every time, I suggested meeting up, he had an excuse. He had errands, he was busy, he didn't feel well, his schedule was full, he wasn't in the city, he had a family thing, he had an emergency, or the classic soon. It was always soon, but soon never came.
And somewhere between the late night calls, the excuses, the constant sexual pressure, and the growing pit in my stomach, something in me began to shift. Something wasn't right with Michael. And I felt it long before I admitted it.
My friends had been warning me for weeks. Every time Michael dodged a meetup, every time he gave some vague excuse about his broken camera, every time he pushed for explicit photos, but refused to show so much as half his face, my friends would exchange looks. Does he not show himself on video call at all?
One of them asked one night while we were reviewing in the living room. Not even a quick flash of his face, another added. I shrugged.
His phone got stolen. I reminded them for maybe the 10th time that month. And his laptop cameras broken.
They stared at me like I had just announced I believed in unicorns. Marie, come on. One of them said gently.
If he really wanted to see you, he would find a way. Even a 10-year-old laptop has a camera. something's off.
I knew they were right. Deep down, I felt it, too. But I kept defending him.
I kept telling myself he wouldn't call me every day if he wasn't serious. I kept insisting he was just going through something personal. I kept believing the version of the person he pretended to be.
Then came December, weeks before Christmas. With that stupid mix of hope and denial swirling in my chest, I finally told him, "Come over, meet my family, spend Christmas with us," he sounded thrilled. He said yes instantly.
No hesitation or excuses. For the first time, I let myself believe that maybe everything would pay off in the end. I pictured a sweet Christmas morning introduction, a cheesy meet my boyfriend moment, a fresh start, maybe even something real.
But the day before our meetup, everything shattered. I remember sitting on the condo couch reviewing flashcards when he called me. His breathing was shaky and uneven.
At first, I thought he was just stressed. Then I realized he was crying. "Can we talk?
" he whispered. Something in me went cold. It took a while for him to choke it out, but when he finally did, the words hit me like a punch straight to the stomach.
on the catfish. My heart dropped. He confessed everything.
The photos fake. Taken from an Indonesian influencer he'd been pretending to be. His name fake.
His work fake. His nationality, he lied about everything. My head was spinning so hard I thought I would throw up.
I felt my skin crawl and my face drain of color. It was like he peeled off a mask I didn't even know he was wearing. And then because apparently the universe wanted the moment to be even worse, he sent me a picture of his real face.
He claimed he didn't lie about being 24, but honestly, I've seen uncles in their late 30s who looked younger than him. In that moment, my brain connected all the dots. The way he pushed for explicit photos, the way he'd get sulky and aggressive when I refused, the way he'd avoid meeting up.
Knowing what he really looked like, what he really was, made all his past behavior 10 times more uncomfortable. When I told him I wanted to break up, he snapped. He said, "So, you're just like the other girls.
You only liked me because of the pictures of the guy I used. You never cared about me. You're no different.
" I was stunned. He lied to me, deceived [music] me, manipulated me. Yet, somehow I became the villain.
He ranted [music] and I cried. He blamed me, then he apologized, and then he begged. He guilt tripped like a full cycle of emotional manipulation condensed into 30 minutes.
And then came the most unhinged part of it all. He said, "Please, just let me stay with your family on Christmas. I already told my parents, I won't be home.
I have nowhere else to go. " I stared at my phone in disbelief. Absolutely not.
I muted him. I ignored every message, blocked the numbers, refused to let his chaos bleed into my holiday. And I had a peaceful Christmas with my family, the kind of Christmas I needed.
But if things had truly ended there, I wouldn't be writing this because Michael didn't stay gone. He didn't accept the breakup. He didn't disappear quietly.
And the worst part was still coming. For almost a year, life felt normal again. I focused on myself, my hobbies, and my friends.
I became active on Instagram again, something I had stopped doing while dealing with the emotional fallout of Michael's lies. I started posting selfies, little life updates, even some cosplay photos I was proud of. It felt good to exist online without feeling watched.
But the one thing I forgot, Michael and I still followed each other. It didn't even cross my mind until it was too late. One night after posting a few stories, nothing dramatic, just a selfie and a behind the scenes of a new cosplay, I got a notification.
One message request. [music] Michael. He replied to my story.
Hey, how have you been? Just reading his name made something cold crawl up my spine. I didn't open the message.
I didn't even breathe for a second. I just locked my phone and tossed it aside like the words would burn me if I looked at them for too long. I tried to ignore it, but the notifications kept coming.
Every few hours, another message. Eventually, I got so sick of it, I opened our chat, and the moment I did, my entire body went cold because sitting there sent just minutes earlier, was a photo of the front of our house. My parents weren't home.
I felt like the air was being sucked out of my lungs. My fingers moved on instinct. I locked all the doors in the house, ran upstairs, shut my bedroom door, and locked that too.
Then I called the police. While I was on the phone trying to speak without my voice cracking, I heard knocking. [music] Pounding.
He was outside and yelling my name. He yelled, "Please just open the door. We can talk.
" His voice was desperate and unhinged, a tone I had never heard before. I held my phone so tightly I thought it might crack. I crouched beside my bed, trying not to make a sound while the dispatcher kept me calm step by step.
We're on the way. Don't come out. Stay on the line.
It felt like hours, even though it was probably just minutes. Thankfully, we lived close to a police station. I heard footsteps outside, an officer shouting, and then finally silence.
They arrested him. When they came to the door to check on me, I finally unlocked it. Still shaking.
The officer who talked to me had a serious look on his face. The officer told me he was holding a knife. I had to grip the door frame to stay upright.
He came to my house with a knife. I didn't know if he meant to threaten me, hurt me, or hurt himself. But none of the possibilities made me feel any better.
They were all terrifying. Because of that, I had no choice but to tell my parents everything. Every lie he told and every red flag I ignored.
They scolded me, of course, for trusting someone online and for hiding it from them. But underneath the worry and anger, they were relieved that I was alive. My mom hugged me like I came home from war.
Thinking back on the words he was holding a knife still give me the chills. I've never been a big dating app guy. Maybe a little bit in college, but mostly Tinder when I was messing around.
After that, I had a four-year relationship. I didn't really know how to go out and flirt anymore. I didn't really have game anymore, so I was on Tinder for a bit, just testing the waters as a freshly single guy for a bit and going out with my single friends a lot.
But when it came time to start seriously dating again, the easy answer was, of course, a serious dating app. Hinge was the one everyone recommended for finding quality women looking to actually date. So, I got on there and I got a few matches in the first few days.
One was a really pretty girl named Jenna. She was this short Italian-l looking [music] girl with black hair, tan skin, and she looked like she worked out. We seemed to hit it off immediately in the chat.
After like 10 messages from both sides, she asked for my Instagram saying she hates opening the Hinge app and would rather talk there. So, I gave it to her and moments later, I got a follow request from her account. Her username was Jenna X1 with three A's or something like that.
She had like 2,000 followers. She followed 200 people and she had two posts. Both posts were her taking a selfie in the mirror, but she admittedly looked good.
The posts got a lot of likes and comments. All thirsty looking guys by the looks of it though. She had a story up and I clicked on it and it was her at the gym taking a mirror selfie.
Also looked good. She DM'd me right away and we took the conversation from there. We continued talking about the same stuff we left off at, the gym, traveling, and we found that we related pretty well.
And surprisingly, we agreed to meet for a spontaneous drink at a bar in town that night. She said she was in the same town as me, which was convenient. So, we planned for 9:00 p.
m. I knew the bar we were going to quite well, and I kind of knew the bartenders, so I decided to go a little early. The bar was slightly busy, but there were open bar stools at the bar, so I sat at one seated away from people.
It was like 8:50. The usual bartender came over and greeted me, and she gave me an espresso martini. I casually took some sips and DM'd Jenna that I was there, but that she can take her time.
Then I went through her profile a little more. I went to her tagged pictures. There were none.
I went through the comments again and there truly was not a single comment from a female. It was all dudes. I hoped that wasn't a red flag that she got around.
Then around this time, a man sat down on the bar stool next to me and greeted me saying, "How you doing? " And I nodded with a smile. I went back to looking at my phone, but the man next to me continued to engage in conversation.
He asked if I come to this bar often because he recognized me. This is when I took a closer look at him. He was maybe like 38, just slightly gray, kind of overweight, and a patchy beard that he definitely should have shaved.
I didn't recognize him at all, though. I told him, "Yeah, I come here once in a while. " He then reached out his hand for a handshake and introduced himself as Rob.
"Oh, brother," I thought to myself. I wasn't in the mood for this, but I shook his hand and introduced myself as well. Around now, the bartender came over and said, "Finally decided to get a drink, I see to this guy.
" He gave a weird subtle laugh. But that kind of made me think for a bit. Was he already here?
And he just came up to the bar to talk to me. I DM'd Jenna again, saying, "Help me. This weird guy I think is hitting on me.
" As a joke, but I realized my previous DM to her was left on scene. I asked her if she was on her way. Then I went back to looking at her profile and I decided to check her following list and I realized she didn't follow a single female, only dudes.
What kind of girl doesn't follow any of her girlfriends? This was weird. Was I catfished?
The annoying guy to my right kept trying to talk to me. I had to tell him one second, please. As I tried calling Jenna through Instagram, she didn't pick up.
It was past 9:00 and it seemed like she was ghosting me. And I also just felt like this profile was fake now. I went to Hinge to find that her profile was gone like I expected.
Yep, I got catfished. I asked the bartender for the check and then the rob guy said, "Leaving already? Where are you from?
" I said, "Yeah, I got to get going. " I didn't care to explain the situation to this guy. To be honest, I was kind of annoyed at how outwardly he went out of his way to talk to me.
As I got the check, this guy would still keep trying to talk to me, even telling me I should stick around and that the hot chicks come around this time. I thought he was weird and I was kind of just being short with him at this point. I may sound like a douche, but if you met the guy and experienced the way he approached, you'd have been annoyed, too.
As I said bye to the bartender and turned to leave, I felt a tight grip on my left wrist suddenly. I turned to see the man had his hand wrapped around my wrist. I said, "What the [ __ ] are you doing?
" Loud enough for other people to notice and turn their heads. He started whispering to me and making a weird face. He said, "I'm Jenna.
I'm sorry. Please don't go. " I felt disgusting, like I needed to take a shower.
I felt like throwing up. I felt violated. I broke free of his grip and hurried out of the bar to my car.
It was a quiet drive home. I didn't play music. I didn't call anyone because I was still taking it in and it felt embarrassing.
When I got home, I collapsed into bed and stared at the ceiling for a bit, just absorbing what happened. I went to Instagram to go block the Jenna account, but it appeared he already blocked me or he disabled the Instagram account entirely. This quickly became an experience I just wanted to put behind me.
I turned on the TV and just tried to move on. I'd tell people tomorrow. And after I turned off the light is the part that made me hate having a bedroom on the first floor.
There was an aggressively loud bang on my window. The blinds were closed and I couldn't see to the other side. Instead of yelling, "Who's there?
" I decided to stay quiet. I watched the blinds in horror. And then there was a voice on the other side, a man's voice saying my name, Scott, over and over again.
I refused to acknowledge it, but he knew I was in there. He could see the light of the TV. He might have followed me without me realizing.
He just kept saying Scott. He had to have said it like 10 times before it stopped. I stayed in my bedroom the rest of the night and the next morning I lifted the blind to see this.
A note on the other side of the glass saying, "I'll be watching you. " I didn't leave my apartment the rest of the weekend. I moved a few days later.
