13Thirteens Thread

There were a rash of killings and disappearances of young ladies in our town when I was probably eight or ten. Many of those young ladies have never been found, decades later. Flash forward ahead twenty years and I was training a new employee who was probably fifteen years older than me. At some point, those disappearances/abductions came up in discussion, and she told us about the time that she was at a bar and needed to make a call. The payphone (this was way pre-cell phone) in the bar was too loud, and she didn't want to walk by herself to use the public one down the street because of those abductions, so she took her car, even though it was a very well-lit street that had a lot of traffic. Everyone in the bar teased her for being afraid of the boogeyman. She gets to the phone, makes her call and they started talking (this was back when a quarter got you a call, no time limit) and she wasn't really paying attention to her surroundings, just talking to her friend. She had left the car running with the windows open (because it was a hot summer) and the radio playing with the headlights on, so it wouldn't be creepy. She gets back in the car and a guy pops up in the backseat. She starts to turn around but the guy puts his hands on her shoulders and says "Hey, it's just me, don't be afraid." Except now she's terrified. She starts screaming and tries to grab her purse down in the passenger's foot area (for reasons she doesn't even understand), but the guy grabs her and pulls her back, putting his hands kind of softly on the sides of her face, and starts saying "Shhhhh shhhhh" in this very kind whisper, like you'd say to a little child. She calms down, thinking that maybe it IS one of her friends from the bar, trying to spook her. Then his hands go to her throat and start squeezing, all the while the guy is saying "shhhhhh shhhhhh".

Somehow she is smart enough to honk the horn. That startles him and he releases his grip. She wrenches open the car door and runs as fast as she can down this busy street, screaming at the guys in the businesses to help her. A guy later told the cops that he thought they were having a lover's quarrel and he didn't want to interfere.

She can't wear anything constricting around her neck, not even crew-neck t-shirts, and sometimes when she's falling asleep at night, she'll suddenly hear that "Shhhhhh shhhhhh" again and jolt awake with an intense adrenaline response.

I pass by that corner just about every day. Creeps me out that not only was the guy never caught but it was probably a serial killer responsible for the other abductions too.