A panhandler followed me through every city, for days, until I called the police

At one point I was a stupid kid and thought it would be fun to travel cross country alone for a couple weeks with no plans, no hotel reservations, and only a vague idea of where I was going and how I'd get there. I had a bag of clothes, and a credit card. That's about it. I've been very lucky with this kind of thing, and have gotten away with it more than once. I still do it, but I'm a little more prepared now. <br><br>At one point on this trip, I was in New York City. I was in a subway station looking at one of the huge maps they have posted up, trying to plan my next couple of hours, and a man came up and started talking to me. It was obvious that he was a panhandler, and I ignored him. I didn't even say "I'm not interested." I kept looking at my map toward the wall and didn't acknowledge that he was there at all. There's a game a lot of panhandlers play where they say something like, "Hey baby, how ya doing?" Then when you ignore them, they say, "Fuck you bitch, I was just trying to be nice!" So I just ignore them.<br><br>This man kept trying to talk to me. I don't know if he wanted to panhandle, or if he was wondering what I was doing as a 22 year old woman traveling alone with a children's backpack, or if he was lonely and just wanted someone to talk to. I still didn't acknowledge him. He was persistent. Eventually he walked away and I got on a subway toward my destination. <br><br>That was that, and I forgot about it. <br><br>The next morning I was somewhere in Massachusetts. It was still very early. The sun hadn't come up yet. I was sitting in a bus station waiting for a bus. It was very cold. It was a small station in a small town. It was just a counter and two benches. On one bench was me. On the other was the man from the subway. He looked at me and said, "How did you get here?"<br><br>There was no possible way he could have followed me. I did not give anyone my itinerary. I hadn't even decided how I was going to leave NYC the night before. I walked down to Grand Central Station about 3am and picked a bus to get on, and I was in Massachusetts just a few hours later. There was just no way this man could be here. He didn't even know what city I was in. The odds of this man being in the same town, in the same bus station as me, at the same time as me, are impossible. It's not like I was in a tourist area. This was an area of factories and textile mills.<br><br>I didn't say anything to him. I turned my head and looked away. I side-eyed him and he was grinning. It was weird. After a couple of minutes he left. He walked out of the station. I took a sigh of relief and went back to what I was doing. <br><br>It was maybe 30 minutes later when he came back in the station. He sat down on the other bench and said "I saw all this amazing stuff on my walk." He was talking about the sights he saw in the short town he walked through. He was still grinning. I didn't say anything. After a couple of minutes he left again. He walked in the opposite direction than the last time he left. Again I took a sigh of relief, and when he was out of sight, I went up the the counter to see if the employee knew the man.<br><br>She didn't. Then I asked her if there was a camera inside and outside of the station. She said no. There was no security camera on the property. I was fucked. Then she said "I'm about to end my shift anyway, I'll stay here until your bus comes."<br><br>A few minutes later the man came back in the station. The employee at the counter told him that the bus station was closed. It was 5am or 6am. She wasn't supposed to be there at all. She told him the bus station was closed and he argued that he saw buses coming and going. She told him she couldn't help him and left the building. I was alone with this man I didn't know. He sat back down and he started talking to me. He asked me if I noticed he had been wearing the same thing for three days. I didn't. But he said he had been following me for three days. He said the first time he saw me was at the subway stop in NYC. He said he liked me and decided to follow me. He said he'd been following me for three days and he lost me for a couple of days, but he found me again here. <br><br>He was wearing a few layers. A shirt, and a few jackets. He kept pulling up one layer and then the next to show me all of his knives and guns. He told me not to try and run. He told me if I tried to run he'd shoot me in the back. He said he didn't want to do that. He had to work hard for his guns. He said he wanted to be my friend, and he wanted me to be his friend. He told me he decided to follow me 3 days ago. <br><br>The busses run pretty regularly. Every 15-30 minutes. They announced what the next bus was going to be. After 20 minutes or so they announced that the next bus would stop at one of the nearby bigger cities, with a connection to Boston. When they announced it, the man I didn't know got up and walked to the counter and bought a ticket. The next bus was mine. <br><br>The man who had been following me got on the same bus as me. I went to the driver and told him everything. I told him not to stop at any of the smaller stops until we got to the bigger city with a lot of people. He said OK. He said the man didn't buy a ticket for that city, he bought a ticket for a stop about 5 minutes away. He said he wouldn't stop there. He lied to the man, and said he'd only be going to a couple of stops before turning around. <br><br>The man who had been following me for days sat a couple rows up from me, and every couple of minutes he stood up and looked at me grinning. The bus driver didn't announce the stops well, or didn't announce them at all. The man got up a couple of times and asked the driver when his stop was going to come. The driver told him he was going to drive for at least an hour before turning around, and his stop was toward the end of the route toward the opposite side of where they were going. <br><br>I rode that bus for about two hours. The man rode it a little longer than me. The driver made special announcements at the bigger cities, toward the end of the route. "Next stop will be Springfield, with connections to Hartford, Boston, and Albany." he'd say. The man who was following me didn't know how close his stop was until the driver called it out. Then he went up to the counter and said "This is my stop, I want a refund." The driver said, "It's not up to me. I'm just driving the bus, you need to buy another ticket if you want to ride again. It's not my fault you rode the bus for two hours in the wrong direction." <br><br>The man started to get angry, but the driver said "I'm not going to listen to this. If you're not getting off at this stop you need to return to your seat and be quiet." Then he blew the air horn and opened the doors. The man sat back down. I got off the bus.<br><br>I went up to a taxi at the station. I told him to drive me to the police station. When we got there I told them my story and they told me they'd never heard of a panhandler following a woman through multiple cities. They took my story and gave me a report number. I only had an ATM card and a credit card. They took me to a hotel and paid for my room. They paid for my McDonald's. <br><br>I haven't thought about this in a while. It was 10 or 15 years ago.<br>But I never forgot it.