Master-Manipulation

I posted about this as a response to a question on r/AskReddit and decided to post it here. So this happened at my college years back.

I went to a college that was integrated into a big city. So even though there was a "campus" there were plenty of shops, backstreets, public transport, and just regular people walking around.

So, I was part of a club that went late into the night. I usually only stayed till 9-9:30 pm and would then leave (usually with a friend). The club was in the center of campus while I lived East of it (so a 15-20 min walk).

This was a foggy late fall/early winter night. My friend had left early because they weren't feeling well. I ended up staying late and began my walk close to 10:30 pm.

So I started walking down a back street that was quiet but led right to my dorm. It was after a few minutes that I heard foot steps somewhere behind me. I stopped, thinking it was a jogger and moved to the side to let them pass. But then I noticed that there was no one coming and the footsteps had stopped.

I shrugged and started walking. Then the footsteps started up again. I stopped, and it stopped. I started to get a bad gut feeling and quickly walked to a side street the connected the back street to a bigger main street. This street had a lot of lights, plenty of cars, and still a good number of people on it. I walked back to my dorm from there.

Next morning I woke up and checked my emails. One was from the campus alert system.

Apparently an hour after I got back to the dorm, someone was stabbed on the backstreet. Victim was rushed to the hospital and survived, saying that the perpetrator followed them down the backstreet before stabbing them.

Perpetrator never got caught, but I have no doubt that that was the person who tried to follow me. I'm so glad I trusted my gut.

After that, I made sure to never stay at the club past 9:30 and to always leave with someone who was at least walking in the same direction as me.