Okay, so this is my first-ever post, but I’ve been a reader for years.
Firstly, English is not my native language so my spelling might be a bit off.
This happened when I (female) might have been 10-12 years old and living in Denmark where I grew up. My dad and I were sitting in our car at a train station waiting for my older brother and his family to arrive. We were supposed to all get-together and spend the day with my aunt at her house. Now, this train station was designed in a way, that the cars could park almost right next to the trains as they came in. So we were basically parked a few meters from where the train would arrive.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and put my back against the car window, looking at my dad. This means that my dad was facing me and from my window, he could see the train station (I hope that makes sense).
We were talking and waiting for the train to arrive, when I looked to my right, a bit further down the station. Very far from us I could see a group of guys standing and talking with each other, but - as I remember it - not giving us, or anyone else, any kind of attention. I realized that one of the guys had a white cloth napkin draped over his face. Like, his whole face. I assume it was the kind that he could see through, but it covered his eyes and everything. I was later told that some people, maybe due to an accident or the like, will wear this kind of cloth in order to cover a maybe a not so “appealing” appearance.
Being a curious kid I remember saying to my dad “I would really like to know what he looks like underneath that”. My dad told me not to say stuff like that. We continued talking and I again had my back against the window.
Then all of a sudden, in the middle of our conversation, my dad tells me to NOT turn around under any circumstance. I immediately become frightened, but do what he says. I could see in my dad’s eyes (he was NOT the kind to get spooked easily) that whatever he was seeing was almost paralyzing him with fear. He later told me that the man I had commented on had bent down and had put his face right next to mine and he had lifted up the cloth to reveal his face to my dad. My dad never went into detail as to how this man’s face looked, but exactly that fact shows me that he must have been horrified by his appearance. My dad pressed a button in the car that locked all the doors.
I think it was at this point that I, stupidly, decided to turn around and see what was happening. I could only see from the torso down, but the man was now standing right beside my window… with a nunchaku in his hands, twirling it around as to intimidate us. If you don’t know what a nunchaku is, it’s that steel weapon that is often used in Martial Arts and the like. That has 2 steel poles and a chain connecting them.
Now, according to my memory, the button my father had pushed had locked all the doors but also made the car unable to start. It was an old Mercedes where you would have to open all the doors again, with the button, in order to start the car. This means that we would have to open the doors, with this man standing outside, in order to get away. My dad pushed the button, started the car, and drove as fast as he could out.
We made it and parked a bit away to hide. Then we called my brother to tell him that he had to meet us somewhere else and inform him about what had happened.
We eventually all made it home to my aunt where my dad called the police and gave them his description. We were at her house for a couple of hours and decided to go into town, in order to get our minds off what had happened and enjoy some family time. The city that my aunt lived in was not a very small one (60.000 thousand people maybe - and yes, in Denmark that’s not “very small” :) )
But this meant that we would not think that running into this man again would be an issue. We were very wrong…
We went into “the city”, which was like a town square, with a big open marketplace in the middle and shops all around. My dad, me and my younger niece decided to go into one of the shops to buy an ice cream, while the rest of the family waited in the middle of the town square. We got our ice cream and went back to the family when suddenly my brother’s wife at the time pointed to the shop we had just come out of. She said, “Isn’t that him?”. We turned around and saw this man, still with his face covered, running into the shop with a big butcher knife. I don’t remember what happened in detail after that (I think I blocked it out), but I do know that we hurried back, called the police, and drove home in a hurry.
This event is not something my father liked to talk about afterward. Very few times I asked him about it, and he would just say that he will never forget his face. I remember being very affected for a long time afterward. But then, one day, we read the newspaper. I also believe we were contacted by the police, informing us of this, but the point was, that this man’s body was found in a field, where he had committed suicide by drugs. To my understanding, I think he was suffering from a lot of mental issues and decided to end it.
So, even though I am saddened that he never got the help he needed, I am happy to say: Face-covering man - I am happy we will never meet again.