As kids while growing up, our parents always told us scary stories of things they wanted us to stay away from. Countless stories that we only realized were lies after we’ve grown.
And though we’ve forgotten a lot of those stories, there’s one that still lingers in my mind maybe due to the fact that I’ve heard it from somewhere else meaning this one story might not entirely be a lie.
It’s was a story concerning people who were mentally ill and was roaming the street freely. When my mom first told I and my siblings this story, I had taught that she had said it only to make us scared of mad people and not get close to them, even though there was no way I was not going to not be scared of mad people or would even think of getting close to them due to security reasons.
One night at my mom’s shop where I and my brothers gathered, she had started talking about how a man would disguise himself like a mad man and then roam the street gathering dirts while waiting for the perfect opportunity where a child would be alone and then according to my mom, he would grab the child and run away.
I remember that story sending chills down my spine that night and my fear of mentally unstable people tripled. But as I grew up, I probably thought the whole thing was a lie until yesterday when a man was caught pretending to be mad. He had an iPhone with him and had been caught while on the phone with his supposedly buyers, he said he kidnaps and sells children and that had immediately reminded me of the story I was told those many years ago. I have no idea what they did to the man as I left that place as quickly as my legs could carry me.