We've all met them: people with no hearts, no consciences, no consideration for the feelings of other. They lack empathy, so they don't care if they hurt you. And the even worse ones straight up enjoy seeing you suffer.
These folks from around the world recently went online to share their chilling real life encounters with psychopaths. Some will make you shake your head, others are truly terrifying. All will leave you horrified at how cold human blood can run.
40. Waking up happy
Woke up one morning and she told me that she kept having dreams where I was dead. Then said the kicker, "And, I wake up happy." And she didn't mean like... 'I'm happy you're actually okay.'
I ended our engagement shortly after that for obvious reasons.
39. A one month stand
My friend dated a psycho. Met her at the bar and ended up taking her home. She decided it should be more than just a one night stand and suggested a date the following weekend. He obliges.
Their first date was meeting her parents, where she told them how they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, where they were going to buy a house, the names of their two children etc.
He dated her for about a month and after they broke up, she started stalking his friends -- not him, but his friends. She'd somehow find out where we would be and threaten us with lawsuits for 'ruining her life'.
38. A toxic relationship
My cousin, who was 15 years old at the time, tried feeding my sister (then 5) and me (then 9) rat poison.
We told my parents but they didn’t believe us. Neither did our relative who the cousin was staying with at the time.
It’s been a good number of years, and the cousin is doing a lot better now. We’re on decent terms with him.
37. Mix and match
We were long distance. While visiting him I found handwritten love letters that were VERBATIM what he had written me. Except different women's names on each one.
36. Those hairs on the back of your neck
35. She'll never notice
34. Do Not Resuscitate
33. I can't believe she thought this was okay
32. You weren't weak; you were trying to survive
31. "There's no time to move as the bike goes over your face"
My older brother was a psychopath and he was a real monster. Over the years I was put into the hospital for 3rd degree burns, ER surgery for internal bleeding, a broken nose, and several stitches.
My school ended up calling the state on my mom and there was an investigation. My brother ended up being committed for 3 months but that really didn't teach him anything.
To give you an idea of how evil my brother was was, picture laying down on the grass when you look over and see someone coming at you full speed on their bike. There's no time to move as the bike goes over your face. I vividly remember his evil smile and look of pleasure as he sneered down at me.
30. "I feel nothing when you cry"
29. All this... over brownies
28. Trust me
27. "Do you think I'm cool?"
26. Burn it down
25. "Unsettling but you didn't realize it until later"
24. Yeah, that's not someone you can be friends with
23. Some people are born evil
22. Run far, run fast
21. Sick sister
20. Who are you studying with? Huh?!
My boyfriend furiously accused me of cheating when I started going to study at the (very quiet) library while in college.
19. Psycho stepdad
18. How dare you make things better?!
17. The cordon bleus
16. "Your kids are next"
15. The king of gaslighting
14. I didn't know you could 'sit wrong'
13. Once you've seen him snap...
12. What are... feelings?
11. My life is in your hands
10. Stolen valor
9. These are next level trust issues
8. You can't break up with me unless I accept
7. "I'm afraid I might hurt you"
6. Behind her eyes
5. The long con
4. Some crimes can't be forgiven
3. The horror movie cousin
I have a male cousin who I strongly suspect is some kind of sociopath. When I was a child (I'm female by the way) I lived next door. He was in high school and I was in grade school.
His family had a pool and we would often go over and hang out, which I dreaded because this cousin would, when no one was looking, sneak up on me and either throw me into the water or get in with me if I were already in and hold me under until I was so out of breath I would actually breath in water and go limp and he would pull me up with me coughing and choking or I would claw desperately gasping for breath. He was laughing all the way.
He did this all the time and his parents or one of mine, usually my grandmother, would either mildly admonish him if caught or he would do it when no one was around. For some reason I was afraid to tell the extent of his abuses. This all went down between the ages of me being 5-9 and he was 14-18.
He also picked me up and literally held me, feet first, over the railing of the Royal Gorge Bridge on a family vacation. I think I went into shock and I just recall becoming very still. For that he did get in trouble at least. He apologized because he was forced but his eyes were always kind of dead but with a sparkle if he were doing something egregious. Like a happy kind of twinkle.
He was extremely good-looking - like model material (but not to me b/c I saw what he was under the skin), the high school quarter back, adored by all, girls fought over him, he played football on a scholarship at a Division 1 school but suffered a knee injury that ended his career.
In high school and college he was always getting in trouble, frequent fights and DUI's, but he got bailed out every time and again, probably due to his athletic ability, it was swept under the rug. He also bragged he had his girlfriends do his school work.
He has been married three times and has stuck with his third wife who is a martyr type. Scary thing is he is now a high school football coach and has been for decades and was just promoted to assistant principal. Scary, because I think he has no business working with minors.
2. A chilling portrait of an empty person who 'has it all'
I knew a sociopath very closely for about a year.
He was actually a 'good' sociopath in a sense. He was trying to be normal as best he understood it. But he did not really know how. He had lived an amazing life. Travelling everywhere and stuff. But it was like his next challenge was to simply get married and be a normal person. And have friends and stuff like that.
He had a lot of trouble with truth. When talking about things he would always twist things so they suited whatever story he was trying to tell. But even when it served no purpose he would still make things up. It was like he had no instinctive ability to simply state things as he saw them. He had to kind of concentrate and focus a little bit to even remember the truth, or at least to say the truth.
His communication was always about making sure you believed him or at least agreed with him. He never just said something. It was always, say something, and then check your reaction to it to make sure you believed it. All this was done quite subtly and unless you looked at the pattern you would not realize it.
He had very few long-term friends. But lots of short term friends. If you were hanging out with him he seemed very social. But if you chatted to them and asked them 'how long have you known him?' the answer was usually a week or a month or maybe six months. His long-term friends were all very weak minded.
He was decent looking. But he picked up women effortlessly. He would meet girls just walking down the street and sleep with them a few minutes later. He could go out to a bar and get laid that night every time. He told me he had slept with about 900 women (he's mid 30's) and based on what I saw of the rate he sleeps with women I believe him.
I'd often get to know the girls he was with so I knew what was happening. He would sleep with lots of girls but only dated higher quality women. And the girls he dated would often fall strongly in love with him. It was almost comical how often it happened. He dated attractive, intelligent, talented, capable women. Executives. Business owners. Women like that. Most followed the same story and fell for him really hard.
As I said he was trying to be a 'good' guy so he was not callous or cruel with them. But he did a lot of dating and a lot of casual hookups. He probably had 3 or 4 women practically in love with him at any one time.
He was a very self-aware sociopath. Most sociopaths when they realize they are different (a lot never do) come to the conclusion they are a superior type of human being. Their lack of empathy makes them more capable in their eyes. This guy did not think like that. He was aware something was missing. Once or twice he made allusions to being empty inside. Like life was just a long boring video game and he was doing stuff to keep occupied until he died. I think he could sense other people were feeling things that he could not. And he was attempting to copy that by mimicking their behaviour but it was not working.
It made me realize that describing sociopaths as lacking empathy misses the point. Its not that they cannot feel empathy for other people. It's that they can hardly feel at all. They cannot feel empathy for another person's pain or loss. Or their sense of violation because they don't feel those things for themselves either. They only feel a very small set of emotions. The vast majority of human emotions are completely inaccessible to them.
1. The second coming
My mother dated a crazy person after her divorce. We moved into an apartment and he moved in with us not long after.
He had long hair and blue eyes and a beard and was the spitting image of “White Jesus.” And he took it to heart after a few people told him about the resemblance.
He pulled me aside one day and told me that he had a secret and he wanted to tell me but I couldn’t tell anyone else because the government was looking for him. He confided in me that he was in fact Jesus Christ and the he escaped from a government facility after being captured in 1964. He said he escaped with the help of the Pope during his visit to the USA. The Pope's private security force broke him out and once he was free the Pope advised him to blend in with regular people. He said the Pope told him to not draw any attention to himself...so no miracles...and tell no one. But he trusted me with this information.
Jesus Christ was a roofer in case you were curious.
He constantly carried around his roofing hammer aaaand one day it went missing.
Jesus lost his mind.
He locked my mother, my girlfriend, and myself in our apartment until it was found. This lasted 3 days. I was 18 at the time and was much larger then him and would have had no problem physically removing Jesus from our apartment but my Mother insisted he was having a mental episode and if I hurt him or did anything it may mess him up even worse.
Turns out he left the hammer (which is really pretty much a hatchet) at a job site and a co-worker came over to return it.
I sat there like an idiot and watched this guy hand an axe to this lunatic and did nothing. Big mistake.
Our three day long lockdown turned into 5 days. The final 2 days was this illiterate nutcase attempting to read aloud from the Bible getting maybe 1 in 5 words right.
Jesus would only let us eat bread and water. And the bread ran out quickly.
There was a lake outside our apartment and on the 5th day Jesus was looking through the blinds at the lake and called me over to him. He confided in me again.
He said, “You know I could walk right across that lake and right up Into heaven.”
I replied... "If you do that I’ll follow you anywhere... go for it man, I would love to see you do that.”
My plan was to get him out of the apartment and lock the door so my mom and girlfriend would be safe... and pray that I could run faster than him and make it to a pay phone to call 911.
He looked at me with his crazy eyes and said, “YOU TRYING TO GET ME CAUGHT?! I SAID NO MIRACLES!”
He raised up his roofing hammer and told me the only way I was following him anywhere was in the afterlife. It was at that point I thought... I’m going to die and then he is going to kill my mother and girlfriend.
I came to the sudden realization that I no longer cared if Jesus’s mental breakdown would be effected by me beating the crap out of him or not. That was no longer my problem. I swung as hard as I could and punched him right in the sternum. He still had the hatchet cocked over his shoulder (like someone throwing a football) so the blow caused him to lose his balance and fall over a dining room chair.
He crumpled in a heap and my mother, ever the cool head, screamed at me for hitting him. I had knocked the wind out of him and he was gasping for air. My mother assumed he was dying. I would learn later in adulthood my mother was not the brightest lightbulb.
My girlfriend booked out the door with me close behind after grabbing my mother’s arm and dragging her out of the door.
I called the police and they came and got him.
Last I heard he was in a hospital after he locked himself in a bedroom still saying he was Jesus. He was committed after he used a metal throwing dart to pick veins out of his arm.
Never did get to see him walk across that lake, though.