Speaker 1: I was using Craigslist as a means of selling some
of my old, unused things I had stashed away in
my house. I had plans to move out in the
next few months, so I was just trying to organize
what I needed from what I didn't need. And that's
when I found my old motor tools. They were high
quality and still functional, but I had gotten battery powered
ones to replace them not long ago. With no use
for them anymore, I took a couple pictures and posted
them up on Craigslist. I had listed a power drill
driver and matching tool set for eighty dollars. Considering they
weren't that old and still fully functional, this was a
really good deal. It didn't take long to give responses.
In just an hour, I got two replies to my post.
One of them emailed me asking if fifty dollars would
be okay, but I politely declined. The other reply stated
that they were very interested and wanted to buy them
that same night for the listed price. I agreed and
said I was available at five if he wanted to
swing by and pick them up. I never let anyone
into my house when selling things. I'd always just bring
the stuff out to my driveway and talk to them there.
It was a well trafficked neighborhood street, so I wasn't
worried about anyone attempting something out in the open, as
I usually did. I was going to stand out in
the driveway with the items a bit before five and
wait for them so that I could make the transaction
as quick as possible. But just past four thirty there
was a knock at the door. I looked out, seeing
a man standing there with his red car parked in
the driveway. I opened the door a crack, asking who
he was. The man said he was here to buy
the tools that were on Craigslist and admitted to being early.
I told him to hold on for a minute and
to just wait in his car, as I I wasn't
expecting him yet. He hesitated, making the interaction more awkward
than it should have been, but then he turned around.
Once he walked away, I got all the tools together
and met him at the top of the driveway. I
hadn't outlet outside for him to test the tools with,
and he seemed satisfied with them. About twenty he said,
while holding the drill. The deal was eighty I could
do a little lower, but twenties too low, I said nicely,
though I was slightly annoyed because he had already agreed
to pay eighty dollars for them, and twenty dollars was
just a total ripoff. He put the drill down, and
without even looking at me, he walked back to his
car and drove away. I was confused and upset, feeling
like I'd been played and just had wasted my time.
I got the tools back inside and just went on
with my night, trying not to let myself get too
upset about it. Really, it was just a small inconvenience,
at least that's what I thought. A couple hours later,
I walked by the front windows, and out of the
corner of my eye I saw that same red car.
It was parked just down the road, three houses away
from mine. I looked closely, trying to be sure that
it was that same man, but nobody was inside it.
It was an empty parked car, so I had no
way of knowing for sure. I convinced myself it was
just a coincidence, and carried on. Another hour would go by.
I was just going on with my night, making food
and watching TV. But then someone knocked on my door.
I was a little shaken, but chose to ignore it
and hope that whoever it was would go away. Obviously,
the man from earlier was my first thought. Only thirty
seconds passed before they knocked again. Hey it's me. I
decided I'll take the tools I brought the money. He
yelled from the other side of the door. I didn't
believe him at all. It all came together in my
mind that that car that I'd seen an hour ago
was his, meaning that he'd been stalking my house all night.
I didn't respond, and instead called the police, informing them
of the man's name in the car he had. The
man called out several more times, saying he wanted to
buy the tools, but then it went silent for a minute.
I was still standing by my couch, looking toward the
front door. Another minute passed. I wasn't sure what to do.
The police were already on their way and would be
here any minute, so I felt safe enough to be
able to check out the windows. I quietly walked over
to the window that was beside the door, but then
suddenly I heard something hit the s side of the
house with great force. The sound was followed by leaves rustling,
and footsteps running away. I looked out the window and
saw the guy running with a limp down to his car.
The police turned in at the perfect time, though, stopping
him halfway. It surprised me to hear that the man
admitted to a lot. He said he planned on robbing me,
but I wouldn't let him into the house, which complicated
things for him. Additionally, he tried climbing the tree on
the side of my house and jumping onto the roof,
but he missed, hitting the side and falling on his leg.
The thing is, though he was armed with a knife,
and the roof he tried to jump on was just
under my second story window, which after checking, was unlocked,
so if he had made the jump, he actually would
have gotten inside. He claimed it was just an attempted robbery,
but claims are just that. I stopped using Craigslist, and
even to this day, I lock every single window in
my house, even the ones that I think are unreachable.
I used Gregslist many years ago to find a room
for rent. I was looking for a house to stay
at and be able to split rent with a roommate
or roommates. It took maybe a week to find a
place that was suitable for me, and several phone calls
with the owner before I was ready to move in.
The owner, who was to be my roommate, seemed like
a really normal, nice guy who was similar in age
as me. He told me all about the place and
what to expect, and I also felt like we connected well,
with everything seeming perfect, I was getting really excited. I
didn't have much to move, so I packed it all
up and stuffed it in the trunk of my car,
and in just a few days, I drove out thirty
minutes to my soon to be home. It was located
outside of the main town and in more of a
woodsy terrain. It had a long driveway leading far from
the road pulling in. Though it was not as I'd expected.
It was a very old wooden home. I knew it
was passed down from his parents, but this place looked
to be at least one hundred years old. The pictures
of the inside that I'd seen on Craigslist looked to
be fairly modern, so I assumed they had to have
done some pretty big renovations. I left everything in my
car as I went up to the door and knocked Aaron,
the owner, came and showed me around. While the outside
was not so impressive, the inside was the opposite, very
well maintained, clean, and definitely had been renovated not long ago.
I was really happy with everything and moved my things
in that night. Several days went by with no issues.
It didn't even feel like I'd found this place on Craigslist.
It felt like I was just living with a friend.
Aaron worked in town, though, so he was gone most
of the time, and I worked from home, so I
got to have the whole house myself. Well not the
whole house. There was one door that was always locked.
It wasn't any of my business, and I knew that,
so I never brought it up with Aarin, but it
still got me wondering. It was almost definitely the basement door.
But this was odd because he said the house was
a one story home, not mentioning anything about having a basement.
Another couple of days went by before something happened. Aaron
brought home some fast food for dinner and then went
to bed early because he had worked the next day.
I stayed up a while longer and did the same
laying in bed, though I had trouble falling asleep. There
wasn't any reason for this. It was just one of
those nights. But after a while I heard Aaron's bedroom
door open. I was listening because there was nothing else
to do, but no sounds came. I waited a whole
two or three minutes before he started walking slowly down
the hall towards my door. Just as he was passing
though he stopped, I heard the floorboards creak, followed by
the door thump softly, as if he was pressing up
against it. He stayed there behind the door for a while,
I don't even know how long, but then he walked away,
not back toward his room, but the other way, toward
the main hallway. Then a door opened and closed. I
didn't know what to think. It was really weird and creepy,
but also I'd known Erin for a while now and
didn't see him as a weird person. But what was
he doing and where did he go? I stayed awake
as long as I could, waiting to hear him come back,
but he never did. Over the next few nights, I
noticed the pattern. Every time I would go to bed,
about thirty minutes later, Erin would open his door, stand
still for a minute, then walk to my door, stand
still again, then leave and go into the locked door.
He never slept in his room. He always slept somewhere
behind the weird locked door. What made it so creepy
was that he was trying so hard to keep a
secret from me. I decided one night that I was
going to figure this all out, because I was beginning
to feel unsafe. I went to bed and waited for
Aaron to do his usual routine. He opened his bedroom
door and walked over to mine. Then as soon as
I heard him unlock and open the other door, I
got up and quickly went into the hallway, catching him
standing by the open door. He looked back at me,
clearly startled. Hey, is everything okay, Erin, I asked. He
just stared at me, eyes still open wide from the
scare I gave him. Why do you keep going to
that door every night? I broke the silence, getting impatient.
We were standing on opposite sides of the long, dark hallway,
but I could sense that something was wrong with him.
We stared at each other still, and I took a
step closer Erin. As soon as I spoke his name,
he ran around the corner and straight to the back door,
opening it and continuing to run for the trees. I
looked out the back door, seeing him disappear into the
dark woods. I was shaking, horrified at what just happened.
I have no words to describe the unknown thoughts running
through my head. I closed the back door, then grabbed
a knife from the kitchen and walked over to the
door Aaron had opened. It was in fact a basement,
but there was no light switch, and it clearly had
not been renovated. Like the rest of the house. The
walls were old, decaying wood. I debated whether or not
to go down. I was so intrigued and curious, but
terrified as well. The longer I stood there, the more
afraid I became. I turned and ran back to my room,
packed everything I could into two suitcases, stuffed them in
my car, and drove away, never looking back. I never
talked to Erin again, and he never tried to contact
me either. I didn't know what was going on with
him or what he was doing in that house, but
I didn't want to be involved. After a while, I
forgot about it, But almost five years later I found
myself wondering about it again. I looked up the house
online and found some strange things. It had been torn
down years ago. There was an article from five years ago,
just a few months after I left, stating that the
house was abandoned. To me, this meant that when Aaron
ran away that night, he never came back. I kept
reading and it stated that the house was torn down
due to what they described as criminal findings. It didn't
go into any more detail about what those criminal findings were.
This really had me shaken up for a few weeks.
Things like this probably wouldn't happen nowadays, but you can
never be too careful. I'm a twenty five year old
male and this happened to me three years ago. I
had just signed a lease for a small house in
the town I lived in. Having been living in an
apartment for a few years, I didn't have a lot
of furniture or large house decorations to fill the space
in my rental. While I had a decent sized couch
and TV stand, I only had a mini TV that
I wanted to put up in my bedroom since it
was so small. Not having a ton of money to
work with though, I took to Craigslist to find a
larger TV for the living room. I found a few
nice flat screen TVs listed on the site. They were
all over my budget, though, and honestly a lot nicer
than I actually needed. I just wanted a large TV
to fill the space in my living room. I didn't
actually care about the quality of the picture on the
TV anyway. I finally found one that seemed to work
with what I needed. It was cheap, large, and was
said to be in working condition. It was an old
flat screen TV from probably ten years ago. Compared to today,
they aren't even considered flat screens anymore, as they're usually
three to four inches thick and really heavy. I sent
the owner an email and continued with my search, finding
nothing else worth looking into. I just hoped for the
best with that one TV. It wasn't until the following
morning that I received a response to my email. The
owner introduced himself as Mitch and said he'd love to
show me the TV whenever I was available. I don't
know if I just read it in a weird way
or what, but he seemed to be over the top
excited about this. It made me a little uncomfortable, but
I just figured it was a happy, old man or
something I said I could do any day this week
after I got off work at six, and Mitch said
tomorrow at six thirty would be perfect for him, leaving
his address at the bottom of the email, along with
a Google Calendar invite to an event labeled as Craigslist TV.
I accepted it, though I wasn't really sure what the
purpose of it was, and it was definitely not a
normal thing people do, but it didn't affect me in
any way. I got my truck emptied out, and the
next day I went to work, then went straight to
his address afterwards. It was dark out by now, and
when I pulled it to his driveway, I saw all
the lights were on Inside. I checked one last time
to make sure I had all the cash on hand,
then got out of my truck and went to the
front door. Walking up, I could see that the front
door was partially open. There was no screen door or anything,
just one main door. Thinking it was left open for me,
I leaned over and peeked inside, but didn't see anyone,
so I rang the doorbell. Right when the bell rang,
I heard something drop on the far end of the house.
Then it went quiet. There was something about that noise
that made me start getting nervous. After a moment, I
decided I had a bad feeling about this and was
just going to leave. But then footsteps came from behind
the door, which then opened slightly wider, revealing a man
needs something. He said, half his body still behind the door.
Oh uh, yeah, I was here to look at your TV.
We scheduled verse six thirty today. The man looked at
me for a second. All right, he opened the door
completely and let me inside. I will say at that moment,
I knew something was wrong. He wasn't acting at all
like he was in the emails. I expected a happy
old man, not a large, grumpy, middle aged dude. But
I was already inside by the time all the alarms
were going off of my head head. The TV was
in the room right next to the door, so he
stood there while I looked at it. Yeah, this looks good.
I'll take it, I said, not even knowing if it
worked or not, but I wanted to get this over
with quickly. I held out the money. He looked at
it for a moment, then back at me. He reached
out and took it, then shoved it in his pocket
and without giving me any time to react. He grabbed
me by the shoulder and shoved me back towards the door,
yelling at me to leave. I didn't argue, sprinted out
to my truck and drove away. Not long after, I
pulled to the side and called the police to let
them know I'd been robbed. The whole time, I was
just thinking about how stupid they were meeting me at
their own house, robbing me and letting me go, knowing
that I knew where they lived. But when the police
got to the house and called me back, I was
in complete shock hearing what they told me. Over that week,
though things became more clear. The man I met at
the house was not Mitch. Mitch, the owner of the house,
was found unconscious in the kitchen. Thankfully he survived, though
he had some pretty bad injuries. The man I met
at the door was another customer Mitch was meeting from
Craigslist to pick up some kitchen where he was also selling.
He ended up beating him, robbing Mitch, likely just minutes
before I showed up. What's even crazier is that Mitch
had sent that man a Google calendar invite as well,
and the man accepted it. Probably unknowing that it showed
his email, which just so happened to be his first
and last name. He was caught within a few days.
During this whole case, I got to actually meet Mitch,
and he was indeed a happy old man, even despite
what happened to him,