AskReaders: Who is the scariest person you’ve ever met?

Long time ago, we asked our regular contributors through e-mail, Who is the scariest person you’ve ever met? We got many interesting responses. Here are some of them. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way and most of the respondents have requested to stay anonymous, so no names will be published.

1-5 Scariest Person People Have Met

01. First day of high school and I was in the toilet. Massive kid (6’5″ and 270lbs) known to be the main drug dealer in the school comes in with blood on his face and dripping from his hands. I look over as I’m washing my hands and he turns to me and goes “Don’t worry little man, it’s not mine.”

I was infinitely more worried after that.

02. There was a guy in my high school who was scary. He was held back a year in high school, well more like he was in jail for a year for beating someone up badly. Anyway, I had a couple classes with him and he was one of those guys who felt zero remorse and did not care or think about consequences. He dated my friend’s sister’s friend, and they had a falling out. He killed her. He first bashed her head in with a rock, and when that didn’t kill her, stabbed her until she finally stopped breathing. This was over 20 years ago and I can still remember the blank look in his eyes when he talked to you. He’s getting out of jail soon.

03. Whenever I saw my friend’s great grandmother she just sat on his porch with a scowl on her face, wrapped up in a shawl, sitting in a rocking chair, chewing tobacco. She was scary as hell. I’d never heard her say a word.

One day, his uncle comes driving up, gets out of the car, and he’s white as a ghost, shaking, and sweating. Of course, they asked what the hell was wrong. He tells us, “I was at the top of the hill just down the road, and right as I crested the hill, there’s a semi in each lane, coming right at me. I had no choice, I just drove right into the ditch, but I managed to maintain control and get back on the road. Scared me to death.”

We’re all comforting him, exclaiming, asking for more details, etc. Just then great-grandma leans forward a bit, spits off the edge of the porch, and says, “That’s the difference between you and me. I’d a hit that sonofab*tch head on.”

04. One time I was at an outdoor bar area with my friends getting a drink. I’m at the bar, it’s pretty crowded. A dude comes up beside me and isn’t really looking to get a drink, he’s just kind of looking at me really intensely. Really big guy, probably 6’3″ 220+ of just muscle (I’m like 6 feet and maybe 160). He nonchalantly starts talking about how his favorite thing on a night out is to just punch an absolutely random person and see their lights go out, laying on the floor. He says he does it when he’s coked out, which he insinuated he was. Just goes on and on about the thrill he gets from knocking someone out who he doesn’t even know. The things he said were probably more graphic and violent than I remember. I was like WTF I need to get the fu*k out of here.

Not sure how the conversation turned, but he mentioned he was out on the town because he went through a breakup. He said, “Are you my bro?” I was like, “yeah man sure, we’re buds.” Got my drink and said something like, “cheers, to all the fish in the sea” or some sh*t. I got back to my friends and kept that guy in the corner of my eye all night long.

05. I work at a fast-food restaurant and we tend to get a lot of interesting customers. One day a man came in and I, being the cashier, went to serve him. He stood at the counter for about 10 seconds without looking at me and then proceeded to run out of the restaurant.

Cut to about 2 hours later, I’m cleaning the men’s bathrooms when he walks in. I apologize and say that I’ll just be a moment to finish up my cleaning. When I went to exit the bathroom with my cleaning supplies, he blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let me pass for about 10 seconds again. He then spends half an hour in the bathroom before exiting the store without purchasing anything.

An hour later, you guessed it, he’s back again, pacing back and forth at the front of the store. He ends up ordering $30 worth of food and (rather than waiting for his order) leaves the store whilst the food is being prepared, never to return.

Several weeks later I’m waiting for my bus (I live very close to work) when he sees me, walks up and stands next to me for the 10 minute and waits. When the bus finally arrived, he turned around and walked away. As a young woman, this scared the sh*t out of me. One day a couple of weeks later, when I drove past him he was getting arrested, surrounded by police officers.

6-10 Scariest Person People Have Met

06. I knew a boy in middle school. Sweet as can be, hilarious, completely dorky and goofy in all the best ways. His life was pretty sad. His dad had died when he was little, and then his mom died the summer before we started seventh grade. He never acted down, though. His situation wasn’t common knowledge, so one day, these girls were making fun of him- as girls do- and one decided to insult his mother.

Instantly, he went silent. Completely silent. Mind you, this kid had never been silent in his life, but he was silent now. The girls, sensing weakness, continued on that path and increased the insults. Before I could jump in or say anything, the boy lurched to his feet and the look in his eyes I legitimately thought he was going to hurt them. I grabbed his arm and held him back, and he didn’t resist, just stood there clenching his fists. The girls sensed that they had gone too far and left. He watched them go before turning and looking at me. He didn’t say anything, but there was still bloodlust in his eyes. I let go of him.

As he walked away, I noticed that there was blood dripping on the ground from his fist. As he walked, he finally unclenched them, and there were these huge gashes on his palms- he had clenched his fists so hard that he had cut open his own skin. And that, children, is the day I became very, very afraid of my friend.

07. I met a Vietnam Vet on a camping trip named “Lube”. He looked like a poster child for the navy sailor. Just a broad mustached dude, he was built like the bulldog from Tom and Jerry, just a huge guy. One of the nicest guys I ever met. I asked him for tips as he was making Char and he showed me how to properly sharpen a knife. Eventually he started telling stories and people asked what he did to get so big. He says “Every Morning when i wake up I roll onto the floor and do 1000 push-ups. Then i flip over and do a thousand sit-ups. Then I notice this piece of beef jerky looking stuff hanging from some twine around his neck, so I asked what it was. He kind of laughed and then said “Well when I came back from ‘Nam I was pretty messed up, I ended up slicing off the meat off the front of my shin and then jerkying (sp?) it” he then rolls up his pant leg to show us this huge scar on his shin, much bigger than the piece on his necklace. So I said, “That’s a lot bigger than the piece around your neck.”

“Yeah”, he chuckled again, “I’ve been chewing on it.”

This was in like 1999, and I thought surely this guy is just telling stories, so I asked another guy I knew who served with him, nope. Those stories are true. This badass sliced his own leg meat off, jerkied it and hung it around his neck, and would chew on it.

I was still pretty skeptical, I mean sure he’s huge and mean looking, but he’s so nice. Sure enough the next morning I see him literally roll out of his hammock, land on his chest and start pounding out pushups.

Maybe not your typical scary, but for damn sure someone I want to really like me.

08. I was waiting in the general lobby of the emergency room waiting for my wife (GF at the time). She was taken to a separate room where she could get scanned for some abdominal pains. Anyways, there was an older gentleman mid-40s sitting right next to me and starts a conversation with me. I didn’t pay too much mind to it, keeping it to small talk.

Well this guy goes on to tell me that he comes in to ‘commit’ himself and that he’s required to do it at least once a month. I was like, ‘oh yeah sure’ not in a rude way but enough to make it believable that I’m intrigued. He goes on about other stuff. What he’s done in the past years. etc.

5 hours go by and I haven’t heard from the GF. I get noticeably worried and he notices. He states that that he can take me to her. I said that it’s nothing to worry about and that I’m expecting a call any minute from her. But he insisted. He gets up, walks past the security guards and nurses. They don’t say anything to him. In fact, they have a chitchat and talk as if they are best friends on first name basis. In the end they give him and I the “OK” to go see my GF. He led me thru the labyrinth of hallways and directly to her without getting lost. Like he’s been there before. I chat with my GF, got an update from her and then went back to the lobby.

As I sat down, the guy goes on about what he and his bro use to do when they were little. Stupid kid’s things blah blah blah. Then the incident with the kitten. That’s when my focus shifted. He said that he put a kitten in the microwave and turned it on. And recalls the noises the poor animal made in its last moments. (I’ll spare other details) My eyes came up to meet his. A man who I just met a few hours ago and all I could feel was hatred towards him now. His eyes were just hollow, hard to describe yet piercing. He said something that I’ll never forget. “I got your attention now boy”. He didn’t even crack a smile.

09. I knew in a guy named Josh in high school. Josh was batsh*t insane. I don’t mean he was a really bad drunk and did crazy sh*t, or that he was big and a lover of kicking people’s a*ses a lot. He was all of those things, but so much more. Josh used to take full packs of Coricidin nearly every day. At least that’s what it seems like. He took it and it would turn his whole mouth red, and he would be at school high. He sewed his lips shut for a Halloween party with a needle and thread and bled all over the place. He shot himself on more than one occasion. Once in the leg with a rifle just to see how it felt, the other time with a handgun in his head, in an attempt at suicide. It didn’t work. He’s still alive and almost exactly the same. No effects other than now he gets seizures.

He once head-butted a cop. One time I lent him a CD and he accidentally broke it. He came back to me apologizing and whipped out this obnoxiously large wad of money from his pocket that was just thick with hundred dollar bills, and handed me a fresh hundred from it. I’d like to take a break in these bullet points to say, Josh was a mentally disturbed individual, this is true, but he was actually a good guy, in his own way. He liked me a lot, actually. Anytime someone would fu*k with me and he’d hear about it, he’d instantly get fighting mad and want to kill them. To some he was a violent psychopath, to others, he was a violent, deranged, fu*ked up human being with an unmistakable sweet side.

He was completely delusional. He used to tell me about how the doctors took pieces of his body out and replaced them with alien parts to see how he’d operate with them. Honestly, and I’m not joking, I could write a novel based on my experiences with the guy. I avoided hanging out with him, because I knew he’d end up getting me in serious trouble, not to mention he scared the sh*t out of me. But he always seemed to go out of his way to try and hang out with me, chat with me, whatever. I have no idea how he was in a regular class at a regular high school, but he was. Everyone knew he was nuts. Even teachers. Years after high school he added me on Facebook. He still sends me the occasional message, and always buys my music when I release something new, comes to shows, etc. He’s a good dude to have on your side, methinks, but he’s seriously terrifying.

10. There was this one guy I had Russian with my freshman year of college. He always wore a suit and tie and would always talk about the anarchist cookbook. I had talked to him a few times and even ate lunch with him once or twice. Anyway he went on to murder one of my friends who lived down the hall from me. Here is the news article about the incident.

As an 18-year-old it really fu*ked with me. Knowing this person could very well have murdered me that night is horrifying. The only reason I probably didn’t get killed that night was because I went to go get stoned and watch Wreck-it Ralph. He was declared unfit to stand trial on account of insanity and now I have this fear he’ll end up back in society where he’ll just hurt more people.