Let me start out by saying I live in a small town and by “neighborhood” I actually mean a specific road I live on that stretches for a few hundred miles with many off roads that connect to this main road.
It’s a sort of rural area but it’s a tight-knit community that keeps connected through a Facebook page in order to share local information.
This story is fresh and actually begins only a few days prior to me posting this.
So far three separate people have posted on the Facebook page with their encounter with this strange man.
The first post is roughly as follows: a woman is home alone and a man appears at her door. He’s wearing a gas station uniform and appears nervous. Her private driveway is not immediately off the road so he traveled all the way down her driveway- clearly for a purpose and not to just turn around.
She hesitantly asks what he wants, it’s an overall helpful community after all, but something about him makes her uncomfortable.
At first he tells her that he ran out of gas. She finds this suspicious as why would you travel all the way down a strangers driveway if you had no gas- why not just pull off the main road and call for help? Nonetheless, she politely questions how she can help, she doesn’t want to offer to invite him in to use her phone, but is wondering how exactly this man wants her to help.
This is when he changes his story. He has gas but is wondering if she has any to spare.
Clearly uncomfortable now, changing his story is a red flag on top of this already being an odd situation with a strange man, she asks him to leave.
She doesn’t call the police as he hasn’t done anything besides making her uncomfortable, but posts on the Facebook page for others to beware of him and suggests to not engage with him if he comes to your door because she doesn’t believe his story and believes his intentions are more malicious.
He stares at her for a few moments with an odd look on his face, and just when she’s ready to threaten to call the cops if he doesn’t leave, with a tight smile he doesn’t say anything more and leaves in his vehicle.
Another woman who is home alone has a similar encounter with him but with a more scary setting. She is outside when the man calls out to her from her wooded property- he’s on foot this time, and again, this is a rural area. Wooded trees with tons of wildlife.
He asks her if she has any gas but she doesn’t engage with him other than going to get her rifle and threaten to use it if he doesn’t leave.
The third encounter is a woman in her car with her young children in the back. The man, same gas station uniform, has his dark SUV almost parked in the middle of the road so it’d be hard to go around him as he’s waving his arms to get her to stop.
With the way he’s parked and how she can’t go around his car without running him over or getting her car into a ditch, she stops.
The woman doesn’t open her window all the way but offers how she can help through her cracked window. He leans down and stares at her through her window and after a few awkward moments of him just staring finally asks her if she has any spare gas with her he can have.
Looking over at his car momentarily, she notices there’s an older looking woman staring right back, her face is sunken in and is clearly on or has been on some really hard drugs.
When she tells the man who’s still watching her that not only does she not have a gas can, she doesn’t have any spare gas, he goes on to tell her that he’d be okay with her giving him any cash she has.
Even more suspicious this could be some type of setup, she doesn’t see if he has any weapons or not but doesn’t want to unlock her doors to find out, especially with her kids in back, she lies and says she doesn’t have any cash.
He seems annoyed now, now searching the inside of her car with his eyes, grinning when he spots her kids and waving his fingers at them, without looking at her he begins telling her that he thought there was a gas station up here, clearly not a local or lying because there was never a gas station up here. He’s just looking for a kind soul who’d offer up their help, asking her if she’s a kind soul.
The whole encounter is strange and she doesn’t wish to interact with him any longer, fearing for her and her kids safety, she quickly tells him that she doesn’t think she can help him, and she needs to get her kids home before reversing and taking the long way home, making sure no one is following her the entire way there.
No one has called the police yet as he hasn’t done anything clearly threatening yet, but it’s made a lot of us on edge and many of us have started closing our gates, myself included, to hopefully avoid interacting with this man. This community is an open family, looking out for each other, keeping each other safe.
It’s a community that usually leaves their cars and homes unlocked, but this strange man is a reminder why it’s important to leave your home locked, and a loaded gun nearby.
I will update if I hear anything else on this man.