19 Terrifying ‘I Was Almost Kidnapped’ Stories That Will Scare The Crap Out Of You

We left the door unlocked

“My sister was taken from our home at knife point. We stupidly left a back sliding glass door unlocked and a man who worked at a traveling fair that was in our town came in, took a knife from our kitchen, went upstairs and grabbed my little sister who was 9 at the time. I luckily awoke when she let out a little scream and saw the man dragging her down the stairs. I screamed for my father who jumped out of bed and gave chase. He caught them about 10 feet outside the sliding glass door. The kidnapper told my dad he would kill my sister if he got any closer. My father told him you’ll have to kill me first. My sister elbowed the guy and my father immediately jumped him. Just to let you all know my father was then and is still a big dude. At 67 he’s still lifting but back then he was beast. The fight didn’t last long and the guy was in a coma for 2 days.” — Justathrowawaguy

They wanted to introduce me to their puppy

“A couple in a blue car tried to abduct me while I was playing on the sidewalk outside my house. I was five. They kept telling me how good I looked, that they would take me to a water park and introduce me to their new puppy. When I made it clear I had no intention of going with them the woman freaked out and started screaming at me to get into the car. Later my mom told me to stay with gracie (my friend) at school the next day because there were people in a light blue sedan creeping around the schools in the area.” — VickyStElmo

Do you want a ride?”

“One time when I was in 5th grade, I was walking home like usual and then some truck pulled up next to me. It was some bald guy who just kept smiling when I would glance back at him. So I started walking faster and faster until i heard him say, “hey do you want a ride?” At this point he got off his truck and started coming towards me so I ran like fuck down the road. I ran until I couldn’t see him anymore and ran to a random house, opened the door, and ran to a couch right next to the door and dug my face in the cushions. About 10 minutes passed so I decided to poke my head out to see where the fuck I was. There was a man and a woman just staring at me like if I was robbing their house or something. Then I walked out and went home without saying a word.” — startrak209

He just grabbed my hand

“I was 8 and vacationing in China with my parents.

Apparently (I don’t remember this), in a crowded train station, we were walking and some man grabbed my hand and tried to lead me away. I wasn’t paying attention and I thought he was my dad. Fortunately, my dad saw and beat the everliving fuck out of that guy. Go dad.” — deleted

I would have been sold into slavery

“This happened a while ago when I was 6. I come from a third world countries and at the time, kidnappings were at an all time high. We lived in a fairly nice neighbourhood, no kidnappings there, no theft, great neighbours. We felt pretty safe and therefore, my mom wasn’t too worried. Our house was a gated residence so we had a front yard and backyard. I was out one morning in the front yard, playing with some toys while my mom was inside working or cooking or whatever. Someone knocked on the front gate, me being a dumb child decided to go up and ask who it was. It was this fairly old man who asked for some water, me being the nice, helping child opened the door and was snatched immediately.

I don’t particularly remember what happened after that but I woke up in a compound which i’m pretty sure was far from home. They hadn’t done anything bad to me AFAIK. But they did try to feed me food that I didn’t like. I was a picky child and so, all i ate was fruit. They had asked for ransom, which to this day, I don’t know how much it was. They just kept me in a room all day with duct tape on my mouth and ropes around my feet and hands. They did take duct tape off to let me drink water or eat food. Anyways, a few days later, the police busted them and arrested them. They ended up in jail for life is what I was told.

Not too long after that, my parents decided to move to a different country and now all is well. I still think about what might have gone wrong if they had sold me into child slavery or something (fairly common in my country). Life resumed after that, I’m as happy as a 20 year old can be. Nothing really changed. I still don’t know why I was kidnapped, maybe for ransom or whatever. In exactly a month, it’ll be my 14th kidnapping anniversary!” — Raasiboi

My ex-boyfriend abducted me

“Not much like the other stories here but my ex boyfriend abducted me from my parents’ home when I was 19. Threw me in the trunk of his car and drove off. About 8 hours later (A lot happened in between, including me getting out of the trunk and into the back seat) the police spotted his car and engaged in a high speed pursuit. He crashed into a tree, served about 4 years, and is out with a wife and three kids now.

It didn’t affect me as much as people expected it to and I haven’t really changed anything in my life because of it. It happened in the past and that’s how I view it.” — 5p33di3

‘Princess’

“I was ~7 years old and in Tenerife on holiday. Some random dude in this marketplace starts stroking my sister’s (5-ish at the time) face and calling her ‘princess’. Without missing a beat, my Dad turned round, punched the guy in the face, took my sister’s hand and carried on walking.” — BloodyMuddy

Grocery store grabber

“I was in the grocery store with my mum when I was little. She turned her back to grab something and a man ran up, grabbed the cart and started to run off with me. My mum started to scream and everyone stared at him. He kept running but left the cart.” — deleted

They always have puppies…

“My older sister and I decided to walk the block to school. The very first time we were making our way to school we had another older man try and lure us into his car telling us about his puppies at home. My sister didn’t even let him finish his ramblings before she grabbed my arm and dragged me into a fenced back yard. As luck would have it, the back yard was complete with it’s very own doberman! Yay! I believe that dog is the main reason the man peeled off. I don’t remember if my mom knew about that…” — ReeuQ

He made a kissing face

“When my brother got his drivers license, he would offer to take me anywhere just for an excuse to drive. So one day he takes me and my friend to the mall. (We were both female and 9) Right after we get there, he goes to some store, and my friend and I are wandering around having fun. We were leaning over the railing that looked down to the bottom floor, when we notice this man who had to be late 40’s early 50’s, leaning over the railing, only he’s not looking down, he’s looking at us. We being 9, start giggling because it was weird. Then the guy starts making the ‘kissy face’ at us, and starts making the 2 fingered vagina licking gesture (if this has a name, please clue me in) We obviously have no clue what this means at the time, but it was enough to freak us the fuck out. So we do the fast walk thing out of there to find my brother. The guy follows. Coincidentally, my brother (who at this age, 16, was already 6ft, and 200lbs) was in the closest store to where this was happening. The guy sees us talking to my brother and stops and turns immediately to walk away. We tell him what the guy is doing, my brother confronts him, and then mall security shows up really quickly after. Then the police come. My friend and I had to ID the guy, and when the police looked in his van (yep a van) they found a BUNCH of child porn in it. They arrested the guy, and I have no clue what happened after that. Scared my friend and I, but I think it scared my brother worse.” — jakjg

Strangers tried to claim me

“When I was 5 my mom took me to an “entertainment center” (like chuck e cheese, but much much larger). While walking around the arcade together I suddenly had the urge to use the toilet and ran off to do my business alone.

Upon exiting the washroom my mother was nowhere to be seen, and after searching for what seemed like forever (like 5 seconds) I began to cry. Thankfully a nice woman called security and I was escorted to the front and they set me up on the counter and made a “found child” announcement.

No less than 30 people lined up to see if I was their child, most of whom saw me and walked away disappointed, but more than one stranger tried to claim me as their own, and when my mother finally made it to the front I was clutching the shirt of the teenage boy who worked there frantically screaming “THEY’RENOTMYMOMANDDAD” while an older couple, both missing teeth, were trying to assure him I was in fact, their daughter.

As soon as I saw my mother I jumped off the counter and ran to her and clung to her like a Koala to a tree.” — VisibleKayPee

The worst Halloween

“When I was about 13 I was going trick or treating on Halloween with a friend of mine in her neighborhood. It was later at night and most of the house lights had been turned off. She had told me of a house that was all decked out with crazy decorations like bodies in the yard and creepy lights and music, the whole nine. I still wanted to see it so we wandered around a bit on the empty streets looking for it. When we finally found the house we saw it was all turned off. Disappointed we walked a few houses down and saw a house with the lights still on so we decided to get some more candy.

We knocked on the door and an old fat man answered. We said trick or treat and he asked if we’d seen the house down the road. I said we wanted to but it was turned off. Then he grabbed my wrist with his hand and said let’s go wake him up. My friend followed as he pulled me across the road towards the house. He knocked until someone answered. A tall man with an Irish accent answered and recognized the old man.

They exchanged hellos and explained that we wanted to see the house. I began to protest saying we didn’t want to disturb anyone, and the Irish man said oh well if you guys want to see something you should see the inside.

And the old man pushed me and my friend inside the house and shut the door. Once inside, we saw the walls were covered in these sheets that made the walls look like brick walls. There was a little half zombie body that would crawl across the floor with the push of a button and skeletons and webs. In hindsight it was quite amazing but I couldn’t ignore that we were two young girls in a strangers scary ass house with two grown men.

Then the Irish man said, you guys should see the bathroom. And the old man pushed us into the back of the house. As we walked through the hallway lined with black streamers I saw an Asian woman push a young boy into a room and lock the door.

When we got to the bathroom, it looked straight out of a saw flick. There was a head hanging from the ceiling on a hook and bloody words written on the mirror and a little tv in the corner playing the tape from the ring. My friend had been speechless this whole time and while the men were standing there waiting to hear what we had to say I kept repeating that we needed to go home, we need to go home over and over again and digging my fingernails into my friends hand.

Finally I grabbed her and pulled her through the house towards the door. Once I got there I pulled furiously on the door handle. It wouldn’t open. Then the old man came up around my shoulder and unlocked the door with a horrifying smile on his face. My friend and ran for 10 blocks until I collapsed and vomited everything in my stomach. I had every bad scenario running through my head that night, everything that could’ve happened and what we ran away from. Scary.” — shshshshaa

The van

“So I walked to school every day with my friend who lived down the street from me. Well, as I walk out the door, I notice this van slowly rolling up the street, but I don’t think anything’s wrong. But as I walk down my street and go into my friends house, I see the van stop on the opposite side of the street as my friend’s house. Well, we roll out and reach the bottom of our street and we hear the van rumble to life. We keep walking, thinking the van will go back up our street. As soon as he turned onto the same street we did, we just took off running. We knew this little shortcut and took it so that we would lose him, and we did. We called our parents, they called the cops, and the guy gets brought in. Turns out that he was a mentally ill homeless guy and he was kicked out of our town. I still think back to it and don’t think that he was so innocent.” — deleted

I don’t know what he wanted with me

“My cousins family and my family went to Seattle when I was about 10. All the adults went down to the bar for a drink, and left the kids in the room watching a movie.

about 10 minutes after the movie starts, my cousin and i start goofing around and causing problems for my older sister that is supposed to be watching us. We start tearing through the hallways and whatnot, and my sister gets pissed and locks us out of the room. I promptly continue the super bratty behavior, and tell my sister i’m going down to the bar to tell on her.

So I take the elevator down to the lobby, go to the bar on the other side of the room and pretend to go in. I walk out about a minute later with the victorious, shit eating grin of a 10 yr old, and start to head back to the elevator. I lock eyes with this kind of creepy looking asian dude wearing a brown overcoat and a blue baseball cap. he’s watching me.
I walk towards the 3 stairs that head up the one side of the reception area, and he moves so he’s at the top. I stop, turn around, and head to the other side of a barricade with the wheelchair ramp and start walking up. He moves to that side and waits at the top. I start to get a little freaked out, but try the stair side again… he goes over to that side and waits.

I freak out completely, and bolt for the bar… I tell my parents that someone is trying to get me. My mom walks me back out to the lobby, and the second we walk out of the bar and I point to him he fucking bolts out the front door of the hotel. don’t know what he wanted with a 10 yr old blonde kid, but i’m sure it wasn’t good.” — says_this_here

He’d pay me

“Some guy stopped his car and asked me if I wanted to help him clean out his backyard and he would pay me. My spider alert tingled even though I was maybe 15. I’m quite sure I would have gone missing if I’d gotten into that car.” — giveitago

Thank god I didn’t want a skateboard

“So I was I’d say around 10 years old, and my family decides to take the dog for a walk. I decide I want to rollerblade, and make big circles around my family as they walk. At one point I end up a block ahead of my family, and a rusty beat up truck pulls up and stops, and a dude jumps out. I remember him having a super short beard.

He says “hey kid, check this out!” and he pulls out a skateboard, and rides it on the street and says “pretty cool skateboard huh kid? You want it?” I, being completely happy with my roller blades, say “no thank you!” He says “come on! It’s free! Just come over here and take it!” I say “No, I like my rollerblades!”

At this point, he looks down the street and sees my family walking up the street. Without saying anything to me, he throws his skateboard in the back, jumps in his truck and drives away. I never thought it was weird, didn’t tell my parents, in my head it was “some dude tried to give me a skateboard I didn’t want!” 10 years later I’m like HOLY FUCK. THANK GOD I DIDN’T FUCKING LIKE SKATEBOARDS.” — pornicornucopia

She was my friend

“When I was maybe 10 or 11, my neighbor kidnapped me. She was this single woman in her 50s who was always super, super nice to me. She was always on her porch, and she’d wave when I came home from school. Anyway, I was walking home from school and she was waving as usual, but this time she was beckoning me over. I went up to her porch and she asked me if I wanted some meatloaf she made. I fucking loved meatloaf and she seemed harmless, so I said yes. I expected her to come outside with a plate or something, but instead she called me in and told me to sit downstairs. I felt weird about it, but I followed her into her basement and sat down on her couch. She brought me a plate of meatloaf and I watched Pokemon 2000 on VHS. She had a freezer with those tube popsicle things too. After I ate, I told her I needed to go home, and she told me my parents called and asked her to keep me while they ran errands. I felt weird about it and suspected she was lying, but I just kinda went along with it.

I remember I asked her if I could get my gameboy at one point from my house and she said my parents told me not to let me out of her sight. I remember watching Men In Black and falling asleep. When I woke up, I tried leaving, but the door was locked. She left some banana pudding for me on the table for when I woke up, so I just had that and went back to sleep. She opened the door at like, 5 in the morning, woke me up, and asked me if I wanted to go home. She looked like she had been crying. I told her yes and she let me go.

My parents asked me where I was and I just told them I went home with a friend after school. I didn’t have a cell phone, so it was pretty normal for me to just be gone for a day.

I didn’t see my neighbor on her porch the next Monday, so I knocked on her door. She came outside and we talked on the porch about stuff. We never talked about that night, and she probably thought I didn’t even realize what happened. She didn’t say, but I think she had a kid who died a couple years prior and wanted to fill the gap. I never hated her for it or anything. Until I moved a couple years later, I would sit on her porch after school most days and she’d listen to my neat facts about space.” — Aldae

“Your parents were in an accident”

“When I was very young, I was biking in the street when a man pulls up in his car and tells me that my parents had been in an accident, and to get in the car so he could take me to hospital. I complied when suddenly my uncle ( who had been across the street unbeknownst to me) yanked me out of the car. The man drove away and was not caught.” — MyUserSucks

I met him online

“I met a man online who was around my parents age, he pelted me with compliments and told me how pretty I was and everything a teenage girl wants to hear.

I met him in secret every other weekend for three months. I would tel my parents I was staying at a friend’s house and then he and I would get a hotel room for the weekend.

He started getting really controlling, bordering on physically abusive so after a particularly harsh fight I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore.

A few months later he showed up at my job as I was leaving and told me he wanted me to come to his house (2 hours away) so we could talk about stuff. I told him I had nothing to say to him and tried to leave.

He told me he had recorded us having sex and that if I didn’t go with him he would make sure my parents, my siblings and my boss got a copy of it. That we were just going to talk so he could explain why he acted the way he had.

I was terrified of my parents finding out id been lying AND sleeping with a guy their age. So I went with him.

He made me drive his car there (probably because we had to go through a toll booth with a camera and it would look less against my will if I was the one driving).

We got to his house and he immediately turned violent. He shoved me into his room and locked the door.

He ended up keeping me there for a week. During that time he pretended to be my father and called into work for me. He made me sign onto all of my accounts online (email, AIM, MySpace) he had a key logger set up on his computer so now he had all of my passwords. He took my phone the moment we got to his house.

He wrote a “script” and had me call nearly everyone in my phone and tell them I didn’t want to be friends with them anymore and never to contact me again.

One day he took me for a drive to this park bordering a river and told me that was where he was going to bury me. That night I started actively fighting back (prior to that I thought he was just going to let me go eventually).

I kicked him in the testicles and hit him in the face but that only made him mad and he shoved me on the bed and knelt on my back with my hands behind my back while screaming at me and whacking me in the side of the head.

He was so pissed off that night that he used my phone and called my dad around 6am and left him a voicemail saying “You don’t know where your daughter really is or what she’s been up to and you never will.”

My dad called my phone probably 20-30 times. The guy eventually was afraid he’d the police so he had me answer and told me to tell my dad it was all a joke. He sat pretty much on top of me and told me if he caught me trying to tell him where I was he would kill me.

I told my dad my friends and I had been drinking and it was one of my friends idea of a prank.

When I was little I had this friend who I would play with but she ALWAYS wanted me to spend the night and would pressure me into calling and asking my parents. My dad came up with a trick where he would ask me “Are you going to watch wrestling tonight?” And if I said yes it meant I wanted to stay. If I said no it meant I wanted him to say I could not stay.

At the end of our phone call for the first time in probably ten years he asked are you going to watch wrestling tonight? And I said no.

When we hung up he called the police and called all of my friends that he could get ahold of. He eventually called the ONE friend who I had told about this guy. And he had all his info, name, phone number, everything.

Within 24 hours I was safe at home, confessed everything to everyone, got a bunch of phone calls from friends who were confused and worried and everything worked out.

I never ever go anywhere without multiple people knowing where I’ll be and who I’m with.
I carry pepper spray and a self defense weapon.

And I never met another person online.

I’m 31 now and it’s still something I think about more often than I’d like to.”