When does a simple infatuation become an obsession? If a person is interesting enough, they will attract a group of "followers" who eventually become so obsessed that it starts to become unhealthy. As much as the admiration might be appreciated, it can also be a little creepy. Read on for some intriguing tales of desire and fixation:
#1 The Restraining Order
When my dad showed up to my place of work. We had been estranged, but he knew I worked at Starbucks and had traveled from location to location to figure out where I had transferred to and when my shifts were scheduled. He even had the gall to call the store and pretend to be me to get my schedule information. I saw his vehicle parked out front and freaked out and ran inside. He followed in after about thirty minutes (right as the morning rush was hitting full swing) and started berating me in front of all my coworkers and customers. That's the day I went and learned about restraining orders.
#2 Safety First
This happened when I employed about a dozen young people years ago. One of the girls came in saying that her ex-boyfriend was stalking her and that she'd just seen his car in the lot. We tucked her in a back room with snacks, found a photo of the guy for the manager on duty, and had the cops escort the ex off of the premises.
She took the day off to be with her parents and we established a safety plan in case he showed up again. To be honest, I didn't want anything to do with the drama, but ensuring that my employees have a safe place to work is my #1 job. I say this only so that if anyone reading this finds themselves in a similar situation, they know that there are employers who will have your back.
#3 I'll Take The Gift
I called one of my coworkers out for being a little too handsy and creepy at work, even when I had expressed my lack of interest repeatedly. As an apology, he got me a gift card to Victoria's Secret. I mean, it didn't make up for his behavior, but no way in heck was I going to say no to a free gift card and some new underwear.
#4 Nice Try
When I was stationed in Korea, my ex-girlfriend kept emailing my wife from different emails pretending to be a woman in Korea that I was cheating on her with. My wife and I had a pretty good laugh about it and she eventually came clean. In her words: "You're too socially awkward to get another woman to sleep with you." My ex-girlfriend's husband was not happy about her still obsessing over me.
#5 Let It Go Already
I have an ex who, about a year ago, showed up to a mutual friend's birthday and engagement party absolutely hammered. She called my fiancee gross, tried to spill a drink on her, tried to grab me inappropriately, slapped me when I rejected her, and said I got physical with her when the bartender and bouncer asked her to leave. She was physically removed from the function. This was a decade after we broke up. I had several stiff shots and then a good laugh about that.
#6 Well That's Awkward
When she started sending intimate photos to my work email because I asked her to stop contacting me. I changed my Snapchat account and blocked her number, but my work email is on my company's website, so she found it. That was an awkward conversation with my IT guys. Thankfully, I work with really cool dudes who, in all honesty, have probably seen much worse.
#7 That's A Little Excessive
I was chatting with a gal online through a dating site. She was nice enough and we were having good conversations but we had not yet even spoke on the phone. It turned out, a friend of hers was friends with one of my friends. Small world. I was at home one day puttering around and I heard a knock at my door. I looked out the window and saw a car I didn't recognize.
My think meter started pinging, so I braced my foot to let the door only open a bit. She was standing there and told me she got the address from my friend. I was weirded out and declined, then she got upset and started crying, telling me how this was supposed to be a pleasant surprise. I tried to send her on her way gently and she got upset. She stormed off and drove away.
I thought that was it. Then she started emailing me, saying she loved me. She even started leaving gifts at my door that would be there in the morning. I lived in Mesa, AZ, and she was in Tucson about an hour away. I eventually had to threaten her with a restraining order. My friend had talked to hers about what was going on and she said, "Oh yeah, she's nuts, she's done this before."
I felt a lot better when I left the state.
#8 Sorry, Not Sorry
When he started acting like he couldn’t survive without me directly by his side at all times. I had met him a week earlier, only spoke to him briefly, and never flirted or had any romantic interactions with him. He literally just stalked me and physically put himself at my side like a Siamese twin, going as far as pushing other people away from “his” spot, and threatening to end himself when I brought it up with him. Yeah, no thanks.
#9 Too Soon, Buddy
This guy confessed his love for me within two days of knowing him. He outright said he couldn't wait to make "crazy, beautiful, passionate love to me." He hated all my friends and accused me of leading him on after I noped out of there. He showed up to places I went to a few times afterward and just watched me the whole time. Haven't seen him in years though, thankfully.
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#10 Invasion Of Privacy
I threw a party at my place and went to bed after getting tipsy. I was with this girl who I had been talking to. I locked the door because I'd had bad experiences with people walking in on me. I heard the doorknob rattling, but I was too tired to move or care. After a minute or so, the rattling switched to knocking, which I also ignored. Then it turned into sobbing. It was my "fangirl." She screamed: "IS HE IN THERE?" I heard other voices, and I could make out that it was my friends picking her up and hauling her away.
#11 A Lucky One
I broke up with boyfriend of three months. That week, I received thousands of texts from him ranging from "I love you, we can make this work" to "You're the worst." I don't know why it took three months to see the crazy, but I'm glad I eventually put it together. People are telling me not to be so hard on myself. There are so many stories of people marrying crazies or having children with them. I guess I'm lucky.
#12 An Awkward Bus Ride
As a bus driver, you're expected to be cheerful and chat with whoever while idle. A regular passenger started riding around, always in the front seat. Over a week or two, the conversation got quite personal, always by her initiative. I told my supervisor about this just to cover myself. Then she started to bring me gifts, cookies, candy beverages. Finally, she invited me over for a meal, so her mom could meet her boyfriend! I had zero interest in the young woman, didn't want anything to do with her. Luckily, she moved or just avoided the bus during my shift.
#13 Always On Her Mind
Not me, but my sister is obsessed with her ex. She cheated on him and is desperate to get him back. She constantly tries to get in touch with him like getting my little brother to FaceTime him through his iPad because she knows he won’t answer her. She says she thinks about him every day and will text him on holidays like Easter just to say "Have a nice day," or whatever. She wrote a letter a couple of days ago—she is planning to go to his house and leaving it at his door. Originally, her plan was to pay me to go ring the doorbell and give it to him, but heck no. Whenever I tell her to back off, she just says I don’t understand because I’ve never been in a relationship.
#14 The College Creep
This guy at college would follow me EVERYWHERE. One day, I just went out to buy my lunch and he came with me. He didn't buy anything, just followed me. Even when I told him he was making me uncomfortable, he still would not leave me alone. I didn't wanna sound rude though.
Eventually, he started trying to get on the bus with me when I would head home. That was the last straw for me. The next time, he tried to follow me onto the bus and actually managed to step on. I pushed him off and urgently told the driver to close the doors. The driver instantly took the hint and shut them. I told him the guy was stalking me, showed my student ID which allowed me on the bus for free, and took a seat.
The next day, the guy had the audacity to ask me why I didn't let him come home with me. I told him to stop following me around from then on.
#15 Google Deep Dive
I used to work with a guy who I knew had a little crush on me. First of all, it started off as a little crush with him just making an effort to talk to me whenever I saw him. Soon, it progressed to personal messages. I finally realized it was on an unhealthy level when he asked if I was heading to cadets that night. I used to be involved in it heavily before moving to the city where I had that job. I'm pretty quiet on social media so the only way he could've found out is a deep internet search for some local news articles which only mentioned my very common last name.
#16 Simply "Forgetful"
I had a girl that would visit me and purposely "forget" something at my house as an excuse to drop back by unannounced. "Oh, I was just in the area and decided to stop by to get the hair scrunchie that I left here by mistake. Hope you're not busy." After the third time it happened, I realized she had mental problems or memory problems. Either way, I wanted no part of it.
#17 The Clingy Student
It was really sad. It was a high school student I was teaching. She found out where I lived and she always used to be conveniently in the area, just parked in front of my house. I had to report her. We all met with the principal and a counselor. She was a senior so we all agreed if she stopped doing that and take another class I wasn't teaching, we'd let her graduate at the school.
#18 The Imposter
This may have been a girl (a senior in high school at the time) I was previously friends with. She had the nerve to get the teacher's personal cell number and pretend to be me (I didn't have her as a student, but my friend did and she knew that the teacher was also my basketball coach). It was terribly sad because she didn't have a mother (she died of cancer when she was little) and her father was never in the picture. She also confessed to sitting outside this teacher's house and driving by regularly, which is stalking. I lost contact with her and hope she's alright, but I had been there through some hard times with her.
#19 Some People Are Jerks
I work in automotive. Some people just really suck. But don't judge shops or men because of one bad apple! Last year on Valentine's day, a pushy customer wouldn't take no for an answer and became quite agitated when I refused to take him up on his offer for a date. He actually came back at the end of the day, and my male coworker who is like my work dad, saw him coming, so I ran to hide out in the back room.
He hung around for about 20 minutes before my co-workers gave me the go-ahead to come back out. I don't like to think too much about what might have ensued if I had been there alone to close the shop. The auto industry, men, and predominantly male shops aren't all bad, some people are just jerks!
#20 The Selfish Friend
I had a female friend at college. She was really obsessive and acted as if she owned me. I had a boyfriend at the time. She hated him and he called her out for it at a party. He turned to walk away and she tried to bottle him. She then screamed at me for not backing her up, saying I should have put her first. I really didn't understand at the time, but looking back at it now, I think she was definitely obsessed with me.
#21 Horrible Housemate
had a friend who did this but we were housemates. I was 22 and she was 18. She’d punish me for prioritizing my boyfriend by stealing my work clothes and returning them to really obvious places in the house when she thought I’d been a good enough friend to deserve them back. I never even suspected her until one night she got tipsy and told me that her mother used to punish her like that when she was a child... then it all made sense.
I’m married to that boyfriend now, with a kid and another one on the way. I recently ran into a friend who also knew the weird housemate and found out that once I moved out, she told everybody we knew that my boyfriend was abusive, beat me, and wouldn’t let me see her anymore, and that had been the reason for our friendship ending
#22 From Venus, From Mars
When they tell you they love you even though they met you online and you have not even spoken in person yet. Then having to block them after getting about 60 texts in one day. I’m a guy for god's sake. Shouldn’t it be more statistically likely that I would be the obsessive stalker type? I don't know, maybe nice guys get mean about physical rejection and nice girls get stalky about emotional rejection.
#23 Good For Her
I had this happen with me. I told her straight up that something was wrong with her if she thought she loved me that she needed some sort of help. Two years later, she messaged me from another account saying that she had gotten therapy and medication after I told her that and she was doing much better and thanked me. That was pretty surprising. I wasn't sure whether to trust her or not, but if she actually did get help, that's a good start.
#24 I'm Nothing Special
This happened in the mid-2000s. A girl I hardly knew but met through another friend kept making new AIM screen names, pretending to be her cousins, trying to get me to talk to her, and go on dates with her. The first time it was her "cousin," I had a feeling it was her, and after three more "cousins" I asked her and she admitted it was actually her. I was 15, she was 12. I'm still not sure what the deal was; all I did back then was play WoW, Halo, and go to the mall with my friends. Totally not a cool teenager.
#25 Oddly Flattering
I once found myself on Rule 34. I then proceeded to look up the artist and I recognized the drawing style. The next day, I showed the classmate the page and it turned out that he was drawing sensitive drawings of me during classes. (I am a guy and so is he). I was concerned about the drawings, so I asked him to delete them and he thankfully did so. But also I was a bit happy that some liked me as I had low self-esteem.
#26 She Did Her Research
I had a server girl who liked me. She wouldn’t tell me directly, but she would tell my best friend and a bunch of other people. She was cute, so didn’t think much of it... but one day, I headed to our break room and I saw her in there. She came and sat with me. As we were chatting, she said she wanted to show me a picture of something on her phone. When she opened up the gallery, I saw like five pictures of me from some old high school yearbook and some new pictures that I did not send her at all. I noped out of there quickly.
#27 A Case Of The Ex
My ex-boyfriend. I was looking through the photos on his phone and came across a bunch of candid pictures of me at work. Mostly zoomed in on inappropriate places. The thing is, I worked at that place months before I ever met him and never worked there while we dated. I never knew I could feel creeped out by my own boyfriend. I guess that's why he's an ex now.
#28 Close To You
When I worked at a grocery store, we had a group of friends that always hung out, including this one guy that was quite awkward and clung to us like glue. For some reason, my friends tried to hook us up, even if I said I wasn't interested. The dude couldn't take a hint and always tried to join in on my conversations with other people. After a few weeks of this going on and me saying no, I announced that I was heading to college.
One of my friends later told me that he said he found a job close to my college so that he could visit me more often. That was the last straw. I just told him enough was enough and blocked him on all social media, saying I wanted no contact from him. If he was at a party, I wouldn't go and vice-versa. That was the last I saw of him.
#29 Online Dating: The Truth
My observation is that’s it too easy for someone to put another on a pedestal with online dating. It’s easier for someone to completely look past the other person's flaws, even if they’re open about them and ultimately make that person their ideal partner in their own mind. I’ve been both guilty of and subjected to this, and it’s one of the reasons I stopped with the online dating thing.
#30 Claiming Her Property
This girl that was in my friend group, that I didn’t really even like as a friend, had a huge crush on me, let’s call her Bree. It was pretty obvious but she had no clue how to act around guys, let alone guys that she liked. For some reason, I would always be interested in girls that someone in the group knew and that would make its way to Bree and she would ask about her constantly.
After about a week, the girl I was interested in would stop talking to me and I would move on to a new girl a couple of weeks after. I didn’t know why at the time but the girls I was interested in would stop talking to me out of nowhere even when I thought things were going well.
It turns out that Bree would find these girls on social media and DM them, telling them that we have a thing or that she wants me and tells them to back off. Finally, a girl told me that she did this and I confronted Bree about it. She had confessed her “love” to me and begged me to go out with her. That wasn’t cool and she got kicked out of the friend group.
#31 Yikes, That's Weird
In my sophomore year of high school, I was in some musical and we had a new girl who just came to the school end up in the chorus. She was this short, curly-haired brunette girl who was super bubbly, but kind of kept to herself, which seemed like an odd combination. We never talked with one another until the cast party. We kind of hit it off. We chatted about this and that and did a little flirting for maybe 20 or 30 minutes. I thought she was really cool and cute. It seemed like she felt the same way about me too, so I was kinda psyched.
The following Monday, I ran into her in the halls in school and with a huge smile. She walked up to me and said, "I went home after the party the other night and woke my mom up to get her to put me on birth control because I met the guy I'm going all the way with!"
#32 The Tattle Tale
I've been friends with a girl for a few years. We don't talk anymore... Here's what happened. We went to the same university and did a lot of things together. I was in the university choir along with a couple of other friends, she wasn't. We had a lot of practice sessions as we performed at pretty much every event that happened. She started feeling insecure and would lash out often.
She would constantly treat us terribly every time we did something without her. She hated it and started accusing us of lying to get out of plans with her. Truth be told, it was exhausting to deal with her as she tagged along for everything even when she knew nobody in the room or if the activity was far from interesting for her. We found out that she ranted about things to one of the teachers and mentors that we were close to. I snapped at that point. It wasn't right of her to get a teacher involved in this.
#33 Honorary Japanese Man
I don't know if I'd say obsessed, but I was a guy's supervisor several years ago and he drew a picture of me and gave it to me (think Napoleon Dynamite) and then he cross-stitched the Japanese symbol for "love" and gave it to me in a little frame. This guy was as crockery and blonde as I am, but he was obsessed with Japanese culture and wore kimonos to work.
Sometimes he put up his long-length hair into a bun with chopsticks. He was nice enough, but he very awkwardly asked me what I would have said if he'd have asked me out before I met my now-husband. Luckily, another of my employees walked into the room and I fled the scene.
#34 Point Made And Taken
When she added me on Facebook and started talking to me, while at the same time pretending that she didn't know me or remember me, even though three months before we met on the street and she clearly recognized me. She was trying to pretend like she didn't come on to me when we met, or a year before that, or another year before that. So yeah, she'd stalk me and then pretend to casually pop-up somewhere. The whole "Stalking you? I don't even know you" ruse sort of drove the point home.
#35 MSN Drama
I was online friends with a teenage boy when I was in my 20s. We both used a not-very-widely known video chatroom program and had met in one of the rooms. No, it was not intimate stuff. He got kind of clingy via MSN messenger and every time I was online he wanted to know why I wasn't talking to him. It didn't start out as a big deal, I just didn't want to talk to him every day whenever I signed on; sometimes I wanted to talk to other people since I didn't consider us that close of friends.
It was getting annoying, so I just started ignoring him. He created two other screen names and pretended to be other people to "prove" that I was online and chatting to people just not him. He went off on how I was ignoring him and was mad. I thought this behavior was super weird, so I blocked him. So he sent me a ton of emails in turns apologetic and ranting. Fun times.
#36 Our Creepy Neighbors
We had neighbors that were really weird, but because my husband and I both grew up in the county without close neighbors, it took us a while to realize just how weird. For example, the wife would often come running out of her house to ask us where we were going if she saw us getting in our car. We just thought that was "part of the deal" when living in a townhouse. Then, we had a miscarriage, and she asked us if we had named the baby. Two days later, she adopted a puppy and gave it the same name as the baby we lost. That was just the tip of the iceberg, but it was the moment that I realized there was something very off.
#37 Distant Friends
There was this girl where I used to work that walked with her head down, wore a black overcoat, talked to herself, and smelled horrible. Everyone else hated her but I felt bad for her and invited her to my friend group. Later, we were at her house and I found my Axe body spray. I knew it was mine and it creeped me out. She had stolen it and was sitting in her room, sniffing it while thinking about me. I'm still friends with her but distantly.
#38 Voodoo Magic
She got my number and called me randomly before finally saying something one day. She somehow opened my locker and placed a gift inside. She did some kind of voodoo thing and apparently, I ate it, and she still hates my guts to this day because I said we should not date. There were so many other things. She was super sweet, but I wasn’t ready for something like that as a kid.
#39 Cut Him Out
I met a guy when I went to another country on a student travel program for one summer. We had contact information beforehand and were encouraged to reach out to each other. He and I got along. We started “dating” on the three-week trip, but he lived across the country from me. Fast forward to the following spring—things had been tumultuous. I went to prom with a friend and realized I’d had a great time NOT thinking about long-distance boyfriend all night Things weren’t working, so I broke up with him that Monday.
The long-distance guy had never even been in my state, I live in a rural area and my house was hard to find. We got home from church the following Sunday and there was an unfamiliar car in my driveway. He had decided to drive across the country and find my house to try to win me back. I played along, mostly out of concern of getting hurt because clearly he was unstable, and then when I knew he was back home, I was like yeah, this is still over. Then I cut off basically all communication.
#40 A Real Stalker
When I fell asleep at his place on accident and was awoken by the sound of a camera. This was before smartphones. He was taking photos of me while I was sleeping. I told him that I was not okay with that and that I needed to go. He started crying and said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. I also should mention that I had left the States and went to live in a small town in the Caribbean. He flew there only knowing the name of the small town I was in and found me. When he ran into me there, I was shocked and he said he had always wanted to visit. I had previously dated him but had ended it before I left, and it was never serious. But he turned into a total stalker!
#41 Confronting The Ex
Getting stalked by an ex that was baby crazy and wanted me to marry her when I was 19 tops my list. She followed me everywhere including to a different state and I would randomly see her in places that were not random. Obviously, she purposely wanted to be around me. It didn’t stop until a friend in college got confronted by my ex. My ex got a broken nose and an earful from my that friend and it all happened in front of me. It was super hot.
#42 Improper Conduct
I worked as a secretary in an industrial mill. One of the guys from shipping brought in his family picture, one that obviously had been displayed on a large wall in his family home. It was probably at least 4 feet by 3 feet. He said his wife was upset because she thought there was something going on between the two of us. He brought it in and leaned it against my computer, then hid to see my face when I discovered it. I asked one of the bosses to make sure that I was never alone with him at all. He ended up on a mental leave of absence.
#43 So Hilarious It's Pathetic
I had a catfish chase me for over a year calling me, texting me, sending me explicit videos. I just ignored her and it increased the level of desperation. I wasn't engaging with her and obviously, it unhinged her. When I called her by her real name, it went from 0 to 60 so fast, it scared me. I wasn't an idiot and figured out who it was. It was both hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
#44 Made A Mark
When I started avoiding him at church and he started cornering my sisters to ask where I was. He also mailed me a letter talking about how perfect I was and how I was the only person who'd ever meant anything to him. We were in our 20s. The last interaction I'd had with him was when I invited him to my fourth birthday party—apparently, I was the only kid who invited everyone in the class instead of just a few. Guess it made a mark.
#45 Climbing Walls
He showed up at my apartment and wouldn't stop buzzing to be let in. Finally, he stopped and I thought he had left.. until he started pounding on my locked balcony door. I lived on the third floor. He climbed the side of my building. I luckily had a large intimidating-looking male neighbor friend who was home and owned a baseball bat. He scared the guy away. The guy never came back to my apartment... but I saw him all the time because we worked in the same place. It was uncomfortable, but he never bothered me again.
#46 A Family Feud
My cousin called me during a psychotic episode and was ranting about how I didn't save him. He began throwing things out his window. I called his mother to inform her. He was found naked in a creek at the beginning of winter. He blamed me for the embarrassment he felt. I no longer speak with anyone on that side of my family.
#47 "Just In The Area"
When I blew off a hangout and he shortly texted me something afterward about the street I lived on. I then checked their location out of curiosity and saw their icon outside my house. A neighbor later mentioned to me that they noticed their vehicle driving by extremely often. I don't know what he was trying to achieve, but I promptly told my roommates about it and we were all on watch from that moment on.
#48 That's Too Creepy
I was 15. He showed up at my house at 10 p.m. I was in bed. My dad was in his office in nothing but his boxers and he told me to come down and “get rid of him.” The guy bought me chocolates for my birthday and brought sheet music so we could “play together at church.” Apparently, it couldn’t wait three more days for Sunday church service. Two weeks later, he was asked to leave by our pastor. Apparently, it wasn’t his first incident with a minor. It also got him fired as a security officer at a local college.
#49 A Wholesome Case
When I realized that my dog will listen to me from outside and follow me around my house from the outside. We live in the country so she can roam the yard freely. If I’m in the kitchen on the west side of the house, she’ll flop against the garden door on that side. If I go to my bedroom on the east side of the house, she’ll go flop outside my bedroom window, usually trying to look in to see me.
One time the bathroom window was open (it’s opaque and long, so close to the ground), and I noticed my dog was staring at me while I was showering. She’s a creepy stalker, but I love her.
#50 Out Of Nowhere
It didn't happen to me, but to a female friend during college. One random day, my friend was told by someone out of nowhere: "I've been in love with you ever since the first day we met" which, doesn't sound creepy at all; but when you take in consideration that they only spoke one time and that time was three years before the guy revealed it to my friend, it becomes creepy.
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