This creepy stalker story starts with a guitar pick in a sandwich bag. Someone left it in my mailbox with a label on it saying exactly when and where I’d dropped it. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone. My students like the best spooky stories at band camp. I’ve never told them this one.
I’m a high school band director in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m forty-four, divorced, and I live alone in a small house on the east side with too many instruments and not enough closet space. I’m absent-minded. I lose things constantly. My ex-wife used to say I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.
In October of 2023, I found a plastic sandwich bag in my mailbox. The zip-top kind. Inside was a tortoiseshell guitar pick. On the bag, a white label, printed from a label maker. It said:
“Oct 3. 4:12 PM. Gas station on Atwood. Pump 6.”
I had stopped for gas on Atwood on the 3rd. I always keep a couple of picks in my jacket pocket. One must have fallen out when I pulled out my wallet.
I thought it was sweet, honestly. Weird, but sweet. Somebody saw me drop it, figured out where I lived, and returned it. Madison is like that sometimes. People are nice in a slightly intense way.
Things I Didn’t Know I’d Lost
The next Tuesday, another bag.
Inside was a single button. Dark brown, with four holes. The label said, “Oct 9. 7:48 AM. School parking lot, row C.”
I went to my closet and checked my brown wool coat. Sure enough, the second button from the top was missing. Just a little tuft of thread where it used to be. I hadn’t noticed.
The Tuesday after that, a receipt from a grocery store. Two bananas, a frozen pizza, and a box of reeds for my clarinet section. “Oct 14. 6:20 PM. Your driveway. It blew under your car.”
Then a single wireless earbud. I’d been looking for it for a week. “Oct 21. 12:05 PM. Under the third bench in the band room.”
The band room. Inside the school. During the school day.
I told myself it was a student. Some kid with a label maker and too much time, playing a prank on Mr. Absent-Minded. Kids do stuff like that. I even made a joke about it to my jazz band, to see if anybody reacted. Nobody did. They just looked at me like I was being weird.
A Creepy Stalker Story in Sandwich Bags
The fifth bag came on Halloween. I remember because I’d just bought candy.
Inside was a pair of reading glasses. Mine. Black frames, a little bent on the left side. The label said:
“Oct 29. 2:40 AM. Your nightstand. You fell asleep reading again.”
I stood at my mailbox in the cold with a bag of fun-size candy bars in one hand and my glasses in the other, and I could not get my breath.
I’d been looking for those glasses for two days. I’d torn the house apart. I sleep with them on the nightstand. I had fallen asleep reading that weekend. The book was still face-down on the blanket when I woke up.
At 2:40 in the morning, someone had been standing next to my bed, close enough to take my glasses off the nightstand. And I hadn’t woken up.
The Neighbor’s Camera
I called the police. An officer came out. He took the bags and the labels. He was polite but I could tell he didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing was stolen. If anything, it was the opposite. Somebody kept giving me things back.
He asked if any neighbors had cameras. My neighbor across the street, a retired nurse named Doreen, had a doorbell camera that looked right at my mailbox.
Doreen let us look through the footage. Every Tuesday, at about 5:30 in the morning, while it was still dark, the same person walked up my sidewalk. A woman. Older, maybe sixties. Long gray raincoat with the hood up. She opened my mailbox, put something inside, shut it gently, and walked back the way she came. She never looked toward the camera. She never hurried.
The officer said they’d keep an eye on the house. I changed my locks and put a chain on the door. I bought a camera for my bedroom. I didn’t sleep much.
The bags stopped. Two weeks went by. Three. I started to think it was over.
The Last Bag
The last one came the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Inside was a key. An old brass house key, a little worn. I didn’t recognize it. The label said:
“Spare. You lost this in 2009.”
It took me a whole day to figure out what it was. Then I remembered. In 2009 I lived in an apartment on Williamson Street. I kept a spare key under a flowerpot on my back porch. One day the key was gone. I figured my landlord took it. I never thought about it again.
That was fourteen years ago. Two apartments, a marriage, a divorce, and a house ago.
She had that key for fourteen years.
I gave it to the police. They tried to find the woman in the raincoat. They never did. The bags never came back.
I moved in with my brother for a while, then bought a condo in a building with a front desk. I’m still absent-minded. I still lose things.
But I’ve stopped looking for them. Every time something goes missing now, a sock, a pen, a guitar pick, I don’t search the couch cushions. I just wait.
Because I know somebody’s keeping track of the pieces of me that I don’t notice are gone. And I know that someday, when she’s ready, she’s going to give them all back.
For more scary stories to tell your friends, read the rideshare horror story about the same song every ride, our Halloween stalker story about a copied costume, or the haunted hotel stories about a Do Not Disturb sign that kept getting turned around.
Do you have a creepy stalker story?
Has anyone ever returned something you didn’t know you’d lost? Share your creepy stalker story, or any good scary stories from your own neighborhood that started with a kindness, in the comments below.
How scary was it?
More Creepy Stalker Stories
Someone Wore My Handmade Halloween Costume to Three Parties
The Car Ahead Paid for My Coffee Every Morning
My Quiet Rideshare Passenger Always Asked for the Same Song
One Buyer Bought Something From Every Room in My House
My Date Knew About the Squeaky Stair in a House She’d Never Seen
The Man Who Bought My Old Phone Kept Texting Me About My Day