Editor’s note: The stories that follow are 100% true but rely on pseudonyms to protect people’s privacy.
VANCOUVER – Mari was at university when she noticed someone following her. Her sister Ashleigh says it started at the library. Some guy in her business class. He would cross the room to sit by her. Ashleigh never says whether the two ever spoke. I don’t think that it matters. Pretty soon, he was following Mari around campus. One day she confronted him and he pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about.
A few weeks later, a girl in Mari’s class pulled her aside.
“Are you having issues with Jeremy?” she asked.
Mari said that she was.
The girl told her Jeremy had been posting videos about her online. When Mari got home she went to YouTube. Jeremy was playing video games and vlogging. Suddenly a picture flashed across the screen. Mari in a bikini. Jeremy had ripped it from her Facebook page. Ashleigh says he told the camera she was his girlfriend.
She definitely wasn’t.
• • •
Roslyn was also stalked in university. The guy was in his 30’s. He never posted about her online, but he did follow her around campus. He said he was studying to become a teacher but Roslyn says he was always in the Humanities Centre. He would bother her while she was eating lunch. She thinks he might have been quasi-homeless.
She was 18-years-old.
• • •
Elle was 14 when she started being followed by two guys who had just graduated high school.
“Two fucking losers,” she says.
“Trevor and Jordy. They would sit outside of my work all day.”
Sometimes, she says, they would be sitting there even after the store had closed. On those nights, she got her manager to escort her to her car.
For an entire summer, these guys followed Elle and her friend Courtney around. It got so bad that they stopped discussing their plans publicly. Elle knew it was weird but was reluctant to tell her mom.
The breaking point came in July.
There was a carnival in town and Elle and Courtney had texted their friends about when and where to meet. They had just bought lemonade when they saw Trevor and Jordy in the crowd. That night Elle told her mom what was going on. They wound up calling the police and getting a restraining order.
She doesn’t know what happened to them after that.
• • •
Casey’s stalker also used to bother him at work. He was 19 and clerking at the library. He says this girl, Jen, became “a little obsessed.” One day, she cornered him while he was restocking the shelves. She gave him a letter. Inside it said he had three options. The first was to date her. Casey didn’t know what to do so he just ignored it. He picked up shifts at another library across town.
He was there when the call came in.
It was Jen.
She wanted to know if Casey was there. He so creeped out, he talked to his manager. Nobody ever followed up with him, but Jen stopped calling.
• • •
Elsie says she and her friend Madi used to ride the city bus home together in high school. Their stop was a ten-minute walk from campus. Elsie says, most days, she and Madi would stand there bored and waiting for a ride back to the west side. Sometimes, a man would be there.
He would watch them as they talked.
One night, she was there alone, although not entirely. The man was there too, standing quiet as the bus pulled up beside the curb. Onboard, Elsie says she noticed him glancing back at her, trying to judge where she’d be getting off. She got freaked out and pulled the cord a couple stops before where she normally disembarked. As she moved to the doors, she saw the man make his exit.
She changed course at the last second.
The doors closed. As the bus pulled away, she saw the guy looking around. When she got off at her normal stop, she ran all the way home, convinced he would be able to find her.
He never did.
• • •
A few years later, in the kitchen, a song I know so well.
“All the streets are crammed with things,
So eager to be held.”
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