That moment that makes you wonder.
Posted by NYC-WhWmn-ov50@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 101 comments
Do you ever find yourself listening to podcasts about the serial killers or weirdos that ran rampant in society when we were ripe in our 'drink from the hose and be home by dark or at least midnight and dont wake me up when you get home' phase and you listen to how tha or that person selected their cictims, and you think,
"How the bloody hell an I still alive? How have I not been serial-murdered a few dozen times by now?"
greenappleberry@reddit
A man tried to get me into his car when I was walking home from school. I was about 12, female and very small for my age. Walking alone. He followed me once he saw me alone. I did talk to him as I was taught to respect adults and answer them. But I lied and told him I couldn’t go with him because I had to babysit. Which of course he asked me where. I just gave him a vague answer. He drove away. I guess he hadn’t perfected his pickup lines yet. I never told my parents. Attention was not a positive thing in my house. I wonder about it all sometimes.
plnnyOfallOFit@reddit
lordy. a man did this to my sister & our entire fam scanned the neighborhood to find him.
remember pussycat theatres??? My aunties & lady neighbors went right in lookin for this freak. Never found him, but caused such a bruHA in our 'hood, she said she maybe regretted sayin anything
she was so visibly shooh & couldn't lie tho, she just burst out crying & off went the whole mob
plnnyOfallOFit@reddit
Sorry to say that era of selfish parents & an experimental society left me w some CPTSD
"demented & sad...but social". Yah i hated the trendy breakfast club type movies, but heck, this holds.
My wanna be hippy parents split & had all kinds of crazies in our childhood home. I may not have had serial killers, but plenty of non kid appropriate wordos we had to RUN from
Next_Ad_4165@reddit
There was a friend of a friend, went to his parents’ vacation house one weekend, and got high on pcp. He then murdered a bunch of animals in the yard. I wonder if he became a serial killer. Ugh.
shackspirit@reddit
Serial killers were more a 70s thing. The teenage and older boomers were more at risk than us. But in the 80s we watched Halloween or Friday the 13th on the VCR at our friend’s house and walked home in the dark just for kicks.
Appropriate_Dig_4348@reddit
There wasn't some magical decade where there were serial killers running rampant. People turning into serial killers, it's a very unique, very rare occurrence. I would say kids in the modern day worried about some classmate shooting up their school would be a bigger concern than any serial killer of the 70s or any missing kid of the '80s.
imspirationMoveMe@reddit
Kidnapping kids was 80s
Appropriate_Dig_4348@reddit
Seriously, the chances of being abducted or murdered by a stranger are so statistically low that worrying about it really is unnecessary. People just love to get worked up about nothing. The chances of being killed or injured from not wearing a bicycle helmet dwarf the chances of being killed by a murderer. Same thing goes for not wearing seat belts. Easy Bake Ovens Burning Down the House along with faulty Christmas lights cause way more death serial killers. I'm sure the list of actual threats to life and dangers that people should pay attention to far outweighs the scarier things that get way more attention.
thecrowsallhateyou@reddit
I had to quit armchair investigating true crime, because a murderer hit so many points of my ex husband, that it really hit too deep.
HornetParticular6625@reddit
My ex-wife loved to read true crime. She was reading a book about serial killers and kept looking at me.
I finally asked her why she kept looking at me, and she actually asked me if I was certain that I was not a serial killer.
To my knowledge, I have never killed anyone.
thecrowsallhateyou@reddit
That's the scary part tho. A lot of average guys fit the profile. You never know what someone has going on or what will make them snap.
HornetParticular6625@reddit
Facts. That is exactly what she said about what she was reading. I used to be the quiet, button down, hair parted on the side person about whom the neighbors would say they never imagined that I could do something like that.
When we were married, my wife was really controlling to the point where she told me that I was not supposed to have any interests "outside of work, home, and church".
That being said, since the divorce (over twenty years ago) I have embraced my creative side and developed several hobbies and multiple friendships.
I don't look like the guy you'd never suspect. Although, some might say that I look like the guy you might cross the street to avoid.
I'm much happier than I was.
thecrowsallhateyou@reddit
THAT is a great story. I like that story. I'm much happier than I was too. 👍😎
Now I gotta know...what's the guy you cross the street to avoid even look like? Cause sometimes it's just ✨ViBeS✨, not necessarily a specific look.
HornetParticular6625@reddit
Yeah, you're correct. I used to keep my head shaved and I have a thick beard. I don't mean mug people.
In fact, part of the year I look like this
thecrowsallhateyou@reddit
I mean... I would cross avoid Santa...
NYC-WhWmn-ov50@reddit (OP)
To your knowledge, eh?
HornetParticular6625@reddit
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Safe-Application-273@reddit
I went to school with one. For some reason he kinda liked me, maybe because he saw I was shy and a bit bullied so he didn't bother me. Murdered a string of old people, including an elderly lady I'd befriended as a teen. Ended himself after being arrested and left a note saying he'd had to do it as he knew he wouldn't be able to stop.
Beneficial-Crab3347@reddit
That had to be traumatic. Sorry for the loss of your friend.
Isaiah53777@reddit
For sure…I am also hyper aware of my kids and where they are…deviants are everywhere
AriaTudor@reddit
I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, back when BTK was still on the loose. I remember my mother talking about the case from time to time. If you're familiar with Wichita, it's a "big" city by Kansas standards, but still relatively small. I think the population was around 350,000 when I was growing up, so BTK was a major topic of conversation and something people genuinely worried about.
I had a friend whose aunt was being stalked by someone. The stalker reportedly got into her house and even went through her dresser drawers. She moved shortly afterward, and the stalking stopped. We always wondered whether it could have been BTK or just some random creep, but of course there was never any way to know. Looking back now, knowing what we know about BTK's behavior, it's a pretty unsettling thought.
Shalleni@reddit
Code Adam.
AriaTudor@reddit
That movie scared the crap out of me when I was a kid! LOL!
new2bay@reddit
Nah. Even when they were more common, serial killers were still pretty rare.
this_kitty68@reddit
My bestie and I frequently remark that it’s a miracle we survived and weren’t murdered and left in a ditch somewhere. We both were sexually assaulted, but luckily the pedos weren’t also murderers. Or maybe they were later. Thinking back to the number of older men hanging around at parties and other places large groups of teenagers were is truly frightening now.
Sumeriandawn@reddit
In the 90s, I don't remember a huge societal fear of serial killers. More of a 70s type of thing?
"How the bloody hell am I still alive?"
I grew up in Los Angeles County in the 80s/90s , we were more worried about different types of killers.
KLLR_ROBOT@reddit
I remember Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez had everyone checking their locks for awhile.
9inez@reddit
Don’t listen to podcasts, so I guess not.
But we used to alter our mental states drive friends by the house that Elmer Wayne Henley’s lived in to freak them out.
Been_Quite_A_Party@reddit
When I was in elementary school my older, teenage brother was supposed to stay home with me when I got off the bus…. But he’d always go to his girlfriend’s house once I was “safely” in the house. He’d regularly demand/threaten that I was to stay out of sight and never open the door because it would be Elmer Wayne Henley there to murder me. Oh— and of course “don’t tell mom!” he left me alone.
He’s still an asshole.
9inez@reddit
That’s cold brotherly action.
Loki_was_framed@reddit
My local paper had a free section where parents could advertise their kids to do work for you, and my mom signed me right the hell up (I mowed so many lawns for $10). At least twice the person calling was definitely not looking for ... lawn mowing. One was obvious, one tried to be sneaky but was bad at it. But I can't believe my parents thought it would be a great idea to drop their 11 year old at a strangers house for two hours and just hope it worked out.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
I heard so many babysitter stories from my high school girlfriends. it's interesting (albeit morbid) what kind of predator goes for what "kind" of kid.
Twisted_Spinster@reddit
Reminded me of the scary story that ends with "The call is coming from inside the house!"
lAngenoire@reddit
Even today parents can be strange. I had a mother drop her 10 year old off at my house without checking in with anyone. We were having a party, but not the one they were invited to. She was fine with leaving her child with people ina house she’d never been in. She didn’t even know to know they were at the wrong address before she turned and drove off.
Step_away_tomorrow@reddit
Survivor bias. A serial killer never got me.
Tough-Advice2910@reddit
When I was a kid, we all played in the woods, walked home in the dark alone AND OUR PARENTS MADE US DO THESE THINGS.
LaceyBloomers@reddit
I (f) grew up in metro Vancouver, British Columbia. During the summer that I was 12, serial killer Clifford Robert Olsen tried to get me into his car. He was unsuccessful (obviously!)
Some things that distinguish him from most serial killers are:
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
I was in a metro high school then too. the year he killed all those kids was my first year in Canada.
terrifying to read what a binge he was on. he killed six kids in July of that year. the escalation is what stands out to me still.
I can't pretend he affected me directly at the time, aside from the general weird uneasy vibe in the air. I was adjusting to other things. but I happened to be be in Vancouver again when I saw the chryon announcing his death, in one of those elevator consoles.
it was a weird sort of generational slip. personally I felt the relief of knowing the Olson story was over for good. but I doubt many others in that elevator were even alive at the time.
LaceyBloomers@reddit
What a wild introduction to Canada you had. I’m sorry.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
lol, spoken like a true Canadian 😂.
everything's relative. any emigration is a huge culture shock, and I was sort of insulated by personal upheaval at the time anyway. honestly didn't even notice the Olson threat at the time.
I do recall reading some debate about imposing a curfew on teens but we were too stunned by the differences to be out much, so that didn't affect us personally. I think it was probably much harder on kids who grew up there. I had a friend later who had a late-shift job at grouse mountain, that year. he was a big guy, but he said waiting for that every-half-hour bus at the end of his shift was scary.
WingZombie@reddit
Richard Ramirez freaked us all out.
Pinkbeans1@reddit
I lived with my Dad in Monterey, visited my Mom in LA. I was convinced that fucker was following me. It’s also when we started locking our doors.
NotoldyetMaggot@reddit
Yup. Slept in a parking garage, a treehouse (we kicked the dude whose treehouse it was out because he was being creepy), on a pedestrian bridge... stupid shit when I was a teen... but we never felt unsafe. Early 90s., college town. Looking back, I don't know how we weren't serial killer victims.
lAngenoire@reddit
No. My parents had rules because they watched the news. And I lived in a close community so they could always call people to look out the windows to see if I was where I said I’d be.
GelatinousGoober@reddit
No
gmhelwig@reddit
According to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, we've all been murdered many times over, in other quantum realities. The only reason we are alive is because we live in the one world where that did not happen.
So how is it I'm not living in the world where I'm rich?
Chemical_Author7880@reddit
We grew up in a deeply weird and problematic time. We didn’t eat lead but a lot of the adults around us did. We grew up knowing there were monsters and how to avoid them, and it created both a detachment and hyper-vigilance unique to GenX.
Still, I wouldn’t trade it for what kids have now.
ThePrimCrow@reddit
My parents were in law enforcement in a state known for prolific serial killers, but they seemed more concerned about burglars than killers.
They did, however, tell me “never let them take you to the second crime scene. Fight like hell to get away because the second crime scene is where they’ll kill you.” Then they’d wave and tell me to be home for dinner as a rode my bike off to go play in the woods by myself.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
yanno ... I'm as addicted as anybody to house porn. spend a lot of recreational time on Reddit.
I'm not very bothered my my own near-miss past. I'm too busy looking at all these modern-day bedrooms giving directly onto back decks, and all those exterior doors with glass inches away from the locks. and thinking "is everyone nuts? that's exactly how Israel Keyes got into the Curriers' house."
HildaTheChickenGirl@reddit
😂 I grew up with my mom saying watch out for the green river killer. We used to spend every single summer day walking to the lake to spend the day. It was like 2 1/2 miles. When he was caught, found out he worked with my uncle at kenworth trucks. About 1/4 mile from said beach. He was even at my uncles retirement party. This was when I was 8 all the way through maybe 12. It was like her signature, watch out for the green river killer or don't let the green river killer get you. I look back horrified. But we survived somehow, even through all the stupid shit we did
Detroitdays@reddit
I put myself in many bad situations. Sometimes they pop into my head and stop dead. I am very fortunate.
Silvaria928@reddit
The Delphi murders of those two girls really bothered me. My childhood best friend and I spent a whole lot of time in remote, wooded locations and in hindsight, it would have been so easy for someone to grab us with no witnesses and no recording that could help solve what happened.
Conscious_Stand9259@reddit
This happened 2 hours north of me and it hit hard. Spent a lot of time in the woods back then too
hankenator1@reddit
My mom went to high school with Ted Bundy. She still has a yearbook with him in it.
Silver_Breakfast7096@reddit
I used to hitch hike. So yeah. Happy to be here.
Mountain_Crab0813@reddit
Would love to hear some of these stories…
CadenceQuandry@reddit
I once got locked out of the house (was staying with my grandmother for the summer before college, she forgot and locked the door after I went out with friends). I had just enough change to bus to my sisters house on the other side of town. Well almost but the bus driver saw me crying and let me on anyways.
Got there, but it was 2am and she was sleeping. Didn't have a door service to ring up and the building was locked at night. I had no change for the pay phone, and no stores were open.
It was late august and COLD overnight. I was wearing a Marilyn Monroe style halter dress and didn't have a jacket. I sat in the bus stop across the street till about five am when the operators were back on duty and I could make a collect call!
Scariest part? There were several cars that kept driving by and stopping and asking me to get in. One car passed by at least a dozen times. Thankfully it wasn't a dead street (portage ave Winnipeg, near Assiniboine park). But it was definitely still terrifying.
My sister was PISSED when she had to come let my sorry ass in at five am, till she learned what happened!
I made sure never to leave a house without a key and my wallet with extra cash in it!
BuckyRainbowCat@reddit
Yup, Charles Ng (the partner in crime of Leonard Lake) was living rough in a park in my city for several months when I was a kid before he got arrested; and my roommate lived in the same area as and was the same age and demographic as one of Canada’s most notorious and disgusting sexual predators and murderers as a teen.
iFuckingLoveBoston@reddit
I was in Long Island visiting relatives during the summer of Sam. People were consumed by it.
RedditWidow@reddit
One of my friends was grabbed by guys in a van and sexually assaulted. I almost got got when I was a teen, walking on the side of a road by myself but I convinced the guys I lived at the nearest house and my dad was a cop. Also narrowly missed being drugged and who knows what when I was on a date with a weirdo who forced his way into my house with a medical kit, when he dropped me off at the end of the night. That one is a long story I'd rather not go into. But yeah, some of us didn't make it through unscathed and some of us were very lucky.
EverythingScrolling@reddit
I didn't have that sort of childhood and adolescence. I was latchkey after school for years, but otherwise, I didn't have that stereotypical GenX experience of being left to my own devices.
My dad was an assistant district attorney and an adjunct instructor of criminal justice classes at the local college.
fluidentity@reddit
Similar, but my dad was the at defense table. He was the state-appointed counsel for one sk in his career, and he was able to recuse because he represented a relative of one of the victims in her divorce. Conflict of interest. Still, he had to meet with the guy one time before the first hearing for procedural whatevers and he was shook.
My sibling and I got a much tighter leash after that.
Alarming_Star_6549@reddit
Who are you listening to? I like the casual criminalist. British dude that does everything. He is a little annoying but the writers are good
NYC-WhWmn-ov50@reddit (OP)
That woyld be it! Today was Samuel Little aand I had to stop halfway thru. How Simon didnt lose his mind reading that one is amazing to consider.
Alarming_Star_6549@reddit
I'm a OTR trucker and kinda have recently just been binge watching/listening. Samuel little thing was crazy and we really never heard of him. There are so many good episodes. Enjoy
PahzTakesPhotos@reddit
Have you tried "Well, I never..."? His crime stories are of a more historical nature and he's very pleasant to listen to. (I also listen to Simon Whistler's stuff).
ibis_mummy@reddit
When I was 11 years old, I was coming back to the house from a campsite that we had to abandon. Me and four friends were going to spend the night out amongst the stars, but one got scared of the dark.
So I had the other two walk him back through the woods to my house.
I stayed back to take down the tents and put out the fire.
As I got near the house, right before a bridge that crossed a stream behind my house, there was a dude with a machete.
We had a guy who lived above our pump house that did work around our property. I thought it was him. So I said, "Evening Bartolo."
He nodded. It was, I should add, a new moon.
I crossed the bridge and then I saw Bartolo through a window in the pump house.
Two weeks later, they captured Henry Lee Lucas. He had been living in an abandoned house a quarter of a mile from my house and crossing our property to steal our neighbor's (about half a mile away) chickens
Extension-Rock-4263@reddit
Not really no. There was a surprisingly low amount of that type of activity (serial killers, abductions, etc) where I grew up during the 80s so I guess we just didn’t think about it.
DJErikD@reddit
I lived in the same complex as a serial killer and some of his victims.
Luckily I’m a dude. However, we did have to call the cops when my girlfriend started getting stalker phone calls from someone who was obviously watching us/her/the apartment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleophus_Prince_Jr.
ca_annyMonticello111@reddit
Whenever my friend would sleep over we would sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and roam the streets. It's 2 in the morning and we were 15 year old girls just wandering around. We learned pretty quickly to hide from cars. On our very first outing some older guys drove by and yelled stuff and we flipped them off. Had to hide in my neighbor's carport because they stopped the car to come after us! And we were only 4 houses down from my house. It was a smallish town and the streets were full of kids in the middle of the night. Someone would yell "CAR" and we'd all dive in the bushes. Good times.
Crusoebear@reddit
When every kid is outside running around feral - the odds were we’d be fine. It’s not like they could serial kill or kidnap all of us.
HornetParticular6625@reddit
We'd either have all run in different directions, or attacked them like a troop of chimpanzees.
Inner-Confidence99@reddit
We lived the Adam Walsh tragedy. It made some parents talk to their kids and Stranger Danger campaigns.
FowlTemptress@reddit
My dad was a police captain and told me I would have fallen for Ted Bundy’s tricks because I was too nice and trusting.
I had a terrifying experience in college when a friend and I drunkenly accepted a ride home that we shouldn’t have (from two dudes we talked to all night). i feel lucky to be alive after that.
Tired_o_Mods_BS@reddit
No, I do not ever find myself listening to podcasts about serial killers.
regeya@reddit
When people wonder how parents became helicopter parents, I remind people we were the generation that became helicopter parents.
I also think of the story of someone I knew who was the victim of a brutal rape and murder, at the hands of a complete stranger. It was like a textbook version of Stranger Danger. Having said that statistically a kid is in far more danger with people they know than with total strangers.
SouthOrlandoFather@reddit
Johnny Gosch getting taken in Iowa in 1982 really kind of shook up the state for about a decade.
FowlTemptress@reddit
I can’t believe what an idiot I was in my youth. I chased a mugger and ended up with a gun pointed to my head (i was dead sober and am a tiny woman). In college, my drunk friend and I accepted a home that we shouldn’t have (from two dudes from a nearby university) and it did not end well - I feel very lucky to be alive. Police were involved. Used to ride my bike home from bars with no helmet (to those of you familiar with DC - I always did this on Connecticut Ave late at night). I was a straight-A student without a lick of common sense.
Now I have maybe 10 drinks a year total and am usually in bed by 10pm.
Sufficient-Pin-481@reddit
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and I’m surprised I was let outside after John Wayne Gacy was arrested.
rharper38@reddit
Rafael Recendez Ramirez killed someone at my college my senior year. Kid was in some of the same classes. We were always walking all over the place. Makes me wonder a lot.
Tigress_Solaris@reddit
I didn't grow up in California, i.e., the Murder Capital of the World.
We had 2-3 weirdos in our town and we all knew to stay away from them.
With that said, I'm pretty sure I went to school with a murderer. At the very least, he was a convicted attempted murderer (juvenile).
PahzTakesPhotos@reddit
I sometimes wonder that because when my dad retired from the Army, we moved to the city and we (brother and myself) used to ride the city bus to school in junior high, including have to switch buses in the middle of the downtown area. We weren't the only kids out there doing that, but still.
And I have the extra layer of being deaf and hard-of-hearing (born deaf in one ear, HoH in the other).
The group of kids who rode the city bus would thin out quickly till we were the last two on the bus. And being my brother, he never sat near me, because- ew, little sister.
In high school, we walked everywhere. Cut through the woods in the park because it was faster than walking on the sidewalks. Big ol' deaf me, running around the trees on my way to my friend's house. My parents didn't even make me call to let them I know I survived.
Now that I'm thinking about it, my parents did sort of play it fast and loose with us as young to mid-teens. We used to go camping almost every weekend from March through October. And we were in Alaska during that time. They just let my brother go fishing for however long he wanted, never checked on him. I would run around the forests on little trails. Again- DEAF in the woods with predators.
NegScenePts@reddit
I spent 9 years developing 1000 crime scene films a day...I don't wonder anymore. Everybody is half a second away from becoming a sick fucking monster, and it's true. I worked with films from every city in Canada that had an RCMP detachment, and it was part of my day to see the kindest looking people in the country being arrested for horrible horrible crimes against their fellow humans.
Humanity is sick inside, and the few that are able to care about the world around them are eventually brought to their knees by a neverending barrage of hate and violence.
...but 9 years of that didn't affect me negatively, obviously.
ThinkChallenge127@reddit
I had a blacked out car come after me,I was on my bike ,and took a path a car couldn’t come on. I wonder the intention of the driver that day.
X-Bones_21@reddit
Severity of the crime does not correlate with the frequency of it happening. Serial killer murders and abductions are exceedingly rare in North American society. The probability of a crime like this happening to you is extremely low, but the emotional response of humans makes it seem more common than it actually is.
Elgiard@reddit
Next you'll tell me that the dangers of quicksand and trick-or-treat needles are overblown too.
Tasty-Tackle-4038@reddit
lol! I saw my brother step in quicksand (went up to his ribs) and jump over and out. I also lived where Tylenol murders occured. Finally, one of the cops involved discovering Gacy’s victims was a wife of a friend of mine. I was also born with the IUD over my eye. The dangers were up in my face real, my entire life.
Bring it on. I’m still alive.
WhatTheHellPod@reddit
Those thoughts have NOTHING to with killers, they are entirely about the stupid shit I personally did.
sauvandrew@reddit
I've thought that a few times really. Some of the situations I put myself into, kinda nuts.
Tasty-Tackle-4038@reddit
To this day
Professional-Tell123@reddit
And the fact that we would have been considered by the police to be runaways until gone getting tortured and killed for at least 24 hours!
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
🙄 I think about it but I'm so over the retroactive judging part of it. it seems to have become how genx collectively frames its identity, and it's so ... sort of smugly whiny.
I look back on parts of my own parenting and sometimes think the same thing. what the hell was I thinking?
fridayimatwork@reddit
Well statistically chances are pretty low. More likely to die falling out of a moving vehicle that we all did
SugarsBoogers@reddit
Back of a pickup, fighting for the top of the wheel spot
fridayimatwork@reddit
Cousins army (open) jeep, even with my brother trying to hang onto me
mmpjd@reddit
A girl I knew was murdered while we were in high school. From what I remember, investigators suspected Paul Bernardo and Carla Homolka were the culprits but they couldn’t prove it so her murder has remained “unsolved”.
MaximumJones@reddit
MaximumJones@reddit
Signal_Glittering@reddit
I thought everyone knew someone who was murdered until I went to college. Two of my classmates were kidnapped. Crazy
crispycritter17@reddit
Funny, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’ve been addicted to a couple true crime podcasts lately, and I think about how much I was off doing things alone and unsupervised as a kid.
JustJulie1313@reddit
We were smart, street smart. I had a few incidences that were extremely shady and could have gone sideways real quick. I was not a tough kid, but I was quick and very observant. Though like you said- I should have been serial-murdered at least 8 times.