“I wake up and he looks at me from the window”: 4 creepy stories of stalking victims

Stalking is the pursuit, surveillance, manipulation of the victim in order to gain attention or gain power over her. This is not love. This is a sincere belief that "no" is made up of the letters "d" and "a".

The persecution is romanticized in cinema and literature. So, Paustovsky called Kuprin's "Garnet Bracelet" the most "fragrant" and "sad story of love" in Russian literature. After the release of the film "365 Days", where the main character simply kidnaps the girl he likes, many spectators did not see anything reprehensible in the behavior of the character at all.

True, romantic stalking looks from anywhere, but not from the position of the victim. We talked to people who have experienced real persecution. Someone had to leave the country, someone began to help the victims of stalking himself.

“Created a fake account to write dirt about me”

A stalker has been following me for a year and a half now. We agreed on the basis of Orthodoxy. It all started with his comment on my Instagram post*. The comment seemed witty to me, and I decided to find out who wrote it.

No flirting, just messaging on abstract philosophical topics. And I immediately indicated that I have a boyfriend. Yes, and we lived with this man in different cities: I am from St. Petersburg, he is from Perm.

He spoke little about himself, mostly writing messages on Christian topics. But there were red flags, and I am very sorry that I did not pay attention to them then. For example, he admitted that he had almost no friends, and those that once were do not communicate with him. He lives with his parents and has difficulty communicating with girls. Later, when I had already stopped answering him, he wrote to me that even at school he was called a maniac. Then he "caught up with the offenders and forced them to refuse these words."

He lured out my home address, said that it was necessary to deliver a gift for the holiday. That was my fault.

Once he wrote to me that he was going to fly to St. Petersburg. I thought: to friends, definitely not to me. But he apparently had a completely different puzzle in his head. He began to accuse me of not being sufficiently interested in his trip, did not ask what time he would arrive, whether I should meet him.

On the day of his arrival, I had things to do, but I found a couple of hours for a walk, we went to church together and agreed to go on an excursion on Saturday. Only in the evening I remembered that I had already promised my friend to go to the concert. I wrote to him, apologized and offered to go on a tour with one of my friends, who was just going there. And then the nightmare began.

From harmless accusations of a spoiled mood, he gradually came to me hates. I can't even count how many times I apologized.

For a year and a half, he stalkers me on social networks, endlessly writes threats from different accounts, leaves insulting comments under my personal videos. He writes not from himself, because he is a coward, but on behalf of other people. At the same time, he thought of everything in order to hit my reputation harder. I found out where I work, who my boss is, who I communicate with.

At that time I was an English teacher at school. So, on behalf of my underage student, he began to write comments on posts in the official group of the school on VKontakte, calling me a prostitute, accusing me of corrupting children.

Once similar messages began to come to me from my director and priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. It turned out that the stalker was not shy and created their fake accounts. As are mine.

Soon it was not enough for him, and he took up my reputation specifically at work. Wrote an anonymous complaint to the school on behalf of the student's mother about allegedly found photographs of a naked English teacher, that is, me, on her son's phone.

Later, a complaint against me appeared on the page of the municipal deputy. To the message in the style: “Look what prostitutes work in schools,” the stalker attached my video - more precisely, a screen recording from the video of my sister, where we are with her in swimsuits on the beach.

All these petty nasty things on his part made me quit my job. I didn't want the dirt created by the stalker to reach the children I teach.

All this is very unpleasant, dirty and humiliating. And also scary. I don't feel safe.

I wrote a statement to the police. Did not help. Now I plan to apply to the prosecutor's office because of the inaction of the police.

For a year and a half, I tried different tactics, made contact, apologized, asked me to leave me alone, ignored, blocked the accounts from which he writes to me insults and threats. In the end, I decided that it was safest to just leave the country so that he would not know where I was, with whom I was talking. The worst thing is that he still writes to me.

“He threatened to jump off the springboard if I left”

I've liked detective stories since high school. But when I faced persecution in my life, I realized how scary it was to be in the place of the victim.

I was 22 years old, I studied at the university and was in a serious relationship with a young man. Everything was great, we made plans, started living together. But after a couple of months, his attention began to weigh on me. He decided that I belonged to him - period.

Dissuaded from trips to my parents, if I did not take him with me, forbade meetings with friends, became jealous of any man in the company. More and more often, phrases escaped from him: “We are made for each other”, “You are mine, and I said everything!”

It has become with man uncomfortable. I offered to leave. As a result, he invited me to the “last conversation”. It was in Nizhny Novgorod in winter. I came to the park next to the ski base. As soon as he saw me, he rushed to the ski jump, climbed to the very peak and began to yell that if I left him, he would jump off. I was frightened, began to beg him to come down, agreed to everything he demanded.

He believed that relationships could be built on blackmail. But we only managed to keep the illusion of a couple for a month. This time I firmly said that I'm leaving, there will be no farewell conversations.

From that moment on, he began to follow me: he skipped couples, stood behind the trees, watching me sit in class.

I lived like in a horror movie - constantly feeling his gaze.

In the morning, he guarded me at the door of the dorm room, got into the same minibus as I, although he lived in a different area. When she left steam, he stood at the hull and waited, or hid and watched secretly.

He called me and silently breathed into the phone. If I did not pick up the phone or somehow he lost sight of me, then in my door I found notes with the text: “Stop showing off! You know that we will still be together”, “You will only be mine”, and so on.

He did everything so that no other man appeared in my life, threatened the guys he saw next to me. Arranged several times fight out of nowhere with my classmates.

He taught me to walk and look around. I didn't know which tree he would jump out from behind, so the whole way from the room to the auditorium was like an obstacle course. Physically, the stalker did not touch me, but mentally he simply destroyed me.

To make it clearer, let me give you an example. From the hostel, I moved to an apartment on the first floor. One day I wake up in the morning, turn to the window, and he stands and looks into the room directly from the street. How long he watched me sleep, why he did it - I don’t understand.

The persecution stopped when I got a job in the police. The police uniform turned out to be stronger than his "love".

It's been 17 years now, this story has changed me a lot. I remember the fear I lived with. Eventually, I decided to study psychology. I opened cabinet psychological assistance and now help women in crisis situations, including those who are being pursued by a stalker.

“Hold my brushes with one hand and lifted my skirt with the other”

I was stalked by my classmate. It all started back in the 6th grade, we were 12 years old.

I began to notice that the main bully of our class liked me. He walked with me to the house, although he did not even ask permission to see me off. I waited at the entrance of my grandmother's house, if after school I went to her. A couple of times I even went to her place of work and asked where I was when I arrived.

I didn't have for him sympathy. I knew that he was from a bad company, the guys there used drugs. This boy already had no boundaries at school. He guarded me at the entrance to intimidate me without witnesses that he could rape me at any moment. In class, he sat at the same desk with me to paw during class. He held my brushes with one hand and pulled up my skirt with the other. I told my parents and teachers, I cried.

But adults reacted the same way to each of my tantrums: “Boys show their love this way. Consider that you are the heroine of some series, and silently rejoice.

Once, being under drugs, he attacked me at the entrance and tried to rape me. I was able to break free and run away. But the thing hushed up: it seems like it’s not him himself, drugs are to blame for everything, this will not happen again.

By the age of 15–16, he had changed, became withdrawn, irritable. I remember joking in front of the whole class, what could suit columbine. Once he carried an air pistol into the classroom and boasted that he could "dunk" us.

I tried not to talk to him. To go home, she was looking for friends or waiting for her parents - one was afraid to return.

For the first time since the incident at the entrance, I spoke to him when we graduated from school. Last winter I met with a friend, we stood at the entrance and saw him. Suddenly he stopped and started talking to us. He asked how things were going, began to find out where we studied, then they started talking about classmates. He asked for gum. I replied that I did not go to the store and I do not have. In response to this, he blurted out that he knew for sure that it was a lie that I had been to the store. And he immediately issued a full report on my movements for the day: what time I met my friend, what store they went to, what they bought, how long they walked, what cafe they were in, even what they ate. It became scary.

That school feeling came back.

I felt like some kind of doll that everyone can touch, undress, hit, but she is not able to fight back.

Stalking made me feel disgusted with myself. When I was a schoolgirl, from impotence and this disgust for my body, I became injure oneself.

I am no longer a 12 year old girl. I am 20 years old. But I still, if I walk along the street of the city of childhood, I get very nervous. Is he following me now, can I go into the entrance - or is the stalker hiding on one of the flights? In order to somehow protect myself, I began to carry a pepper spray in my pocket.

I recommend doing the same to all victims of stalking. No one can protect us but ourselves.

 “I came to my seminar in another city and stood at the door”

We met on a dating site. He invited to date, I agreed. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. He arrived in his car - beautiful, well-groomed, gallant, with flowers. Gradually, mutual sympathy arose, but a strong pair of us did not work out.

He built relationships according to his own rules, according to his own format. A person’s priority is business, our conversations most often came down to his monologue about the profession, about work - a dry, unemotional conversation in which he tried to appear as a professional with a capital letter. It felt like I was in an interview with him.

The man was completely unprepared to sacrifice something in order to devote time to a woman. I am an adult and I do not blame him at all for this, everyone has the right to live as they want. But it just doesn't suit me. I offered to end the conversation.

We parted on a good note, and for several months there was no signal from him at all. The first wake-up call was in the form of a message. Nothing concrete, just a stream of nostalgic thoughts about failed relationships. I didn't answer. After a couple of days, he decided to call. When that didn’t work, he came to my work - on the sly crept up behind with a bouquet. From the outside, such an act may seem romanticbut it scared me.

Quite unexpectedly, he changed his rhetoric. And instead of a dry monologue about work, he spoke about feelings. He declared that he loved. It seemed very strange to me, because love is a very meaningful feeling. And during our meetings, we never formed an emotional intimacy. I refused flowers and asked them to stop any contact with me. In addition, she announced that I have sympathy for another young man. It's strong for him did not like, and a streak of persecution has come in my life.

He began to call, and when I did not pick up the phone, he tried to reach me through others. I asked for a contact from my close friend from work. She didn’t know anything about the persecution then, she thought: what a romantic man, after all, he beautifully looks after a woman.

She began to take an interest in my life. He asked me to take a picture for him.

followed my social networks, where I publish announcements of various meetings at work. Sign up for these meetings. He sent gifts and flowers, ordered me a taxi to work, although I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t need it.

Then I began to sign up for lectures that I give at work. Followed the announcements of webinars, registered as a participant. His unhealthy attention began to interfere with my work, it was uncomfortable in front of colleagues and clients. He came to seminars and tried to take my time.

Once we held a meeting in another city. Among those who registered for the lecture was his name. I thought that this was just his reminder of himself that he would not go anywhere, given that during the period of our meetings he paid so much attention to his work, was so busy with it. But he came. Despite the fact that he is not a specialist in the beauty industry, not a client, he has nothing to do with the industry at all.

I had to go out with him to talk, so as not to simply disrupt the event. From conversations, he moved on to trying to somehow me touch: take by the hand, hug.

When I reacted sharply, I grabbed it in my arms and began to circle. This is not romantic and not beautiful, it is unpleasant and scary, because a woman is weaker and cannot always stand up for herself.

I broke free, promising to raise a shout to the entire building. We had to hold the seminar in a closed auditorium so that it would not enter.

Not all women understood what I was experiencing. For most, it looks like courtship. But in fact, his appearance had only one goal - an obsessive desire to achieve attention, against all odds. When that retreat ended, he came to the audience and stood at the door. Tried to let me in. I locked myself in and begged him to leave, threatened to call the police. As a result, I had to ask friends to come for me. Because it was scary to go out alone.

The pressure on me was getting bigger and bigger. When I blocked his number, his friends started calling me. Then this man began to write to my close friend. There was a clear feeling persecution. I noticed that now, when I go somewhere, I turn around.

One day my friend and I went on a boat trip. Rented a yacht. The mood is great, we laugh, take pictures, shoot videos. When we sailed far enough from the shore, he comes out on the bow of the yacht just in front of us.

How did he get here, how did he know that I would be here on this particular day and at this time... For me it was a shock. Around the water, nowhere to escape. Ignoring my reaction, he sat down next to us, took out his phone and tried to take pictures of me.

It's like emotional abuse, you can't do anything, the person is trying to bend your will to his will.

It got to the point that the captain of the ship intervened and asked the stalker to move to another deck.

He continued to look for meetings, call, watch for me in different places until I decided to speak about the persecution publicly. I wrote a post on social networks in the hope that he would hear. I had to ask for help acquaintances and those girls who are faced with the same situation when you are afraid to even leave the house. It worked: I was given useful recommendations on what to do, I decided that I would go to the police, I would go to court if the persecution did not stop.

It's been two months since I wrote that post. This man does not write to me anymore. But in order to regain peace of mind, I had to turn to a psychologist.

My advice to girls who are being stalked by a stalker is this: don't be afraid to talk about your problem. You can't be silent. Ask for help, contact law enforcement when the persecution becomes dangerous for your health - psychological and physical. Do not listen to the "advice" of those who will try to convince you that this is falling in love. This is addiction, this is psychological abuse, there is no love here.

*Activities of Meta Platforms Inc. and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are prohibited in the territory of the Russian Federation.