This story happened when I about 7 or 8, so around 1995 or 1996. It's the first time I have ever told this story.
Some background: I live in a big city with my family in a three story apartment building. It was myself, my Dad and Mom, my older sister, and my older brother in the middle apartment with other family members living in the bottom and top apartments. My family lived in the same neighborhood since before I was born so I saw the changes that it experienced through the years: at an even younger age it was common for me to find used heroin needles on our sidewalk and to spot the prostitutes waiting on the corner. Another time I saw a man get shot at a laundry mat from my bedroom window.
The reason to explain this is to say that during the time this story happened, the neighborhood was slightly improving due to the improved economy and subsequent increase in police presence. Regardless of these improvements, the story is slightly spotty as it happened in a way where things were just not noticeable because of all the other more extreme stuff I was used to seeing.
Our living room windows were tall rectangles (went as high as 6ft), on the left side of the room was one window that faced towards the end of the street where you could see down the rest of the block. There were garages going down the rest of the block (8 individual garages in total) that we owned and rented out so we knew all the cars. The other two windows faced the front of the house and looked out onto the street as well as the lot across the street (it was an empty lot with overgrown weeds, tress, and boulders that was contained by a chain link fence). My parents had a tendency to leave the blinds up and our TV was located about a foot from the left side of the window with a rocking chair and another chair placed in front of the TV.
This setup essentially made it really easy for a person walking up the block to see us watching TV when the blinds were open. One night me and my sister were watching TV when I noticed a white two door sedan parked about 10 yards from our house. At first I did not pay much mind to it but it was weird because the car was blocking one of our garages. Odd but people are stupid, so I went back to blindly watching TV. Two hours pass and I decided to look out the window again, it was still there.
At this point I told my sister that this car was parked in front of our garages and they sure as hell didn't belong there. She looks over and says, "Yeaaah. I've been noticing that car parking there at night a couple of times now." I did not ask how many times she saw this car but I decided it was better to close the blinds. It was obvious we were talking about this car because we were staring right at it, pointing with the blinds opened. We wanted them to know we saw. After about 10 minutes the car was gone.
The white sedan didn't show up every night but it started to show up on more nights, usually late (9 p.m., sometimes midnight), and always parked in the same spot. My sister at the time was a teenager so many times she was out with her friends at night while I was stuck at home. I started to get that feeling of someone watching me and notice the car showing up on multiple occasions...or maybe the person in the car started to look for me. I'm not sure but more and more I found myself up late, alone in the living room only to look up and seeing that white sedan parked.
Even though this happened on a consistent basis I still questioned myself, "Maybe I'm just being paranoid?", "Maybe the person sleeps in their car." Because of these questions I did not tell my Mom (Dad worked nights so there wasn't much point telling him) but I demanded that she close the blinds even but she usually kept them open anyways. The weather started to get warmer as it entered into summer so keeping the blinds fully closed would make the room really hot. I thought that maybe if the blinds were opened about 5 inches it would be enough to let air in but not open enough to allow this person to see inside. The white sedan started to park closer, probably in an attempt to see through the 5 inches that the blinds allowed. But then it stopped coming for a few nights and I thought that the closed blinds worked.
One late night I was watching music videos on Channel 25, since we didn't have cable, with my brother who was going in and out of his room. That feeling of being watched hit me as if a spear was thrown through me. I looked over and there it was....the white sedan. Most people would probably feel scared at this point but I started to get mad. Why won't this person just stop, they must have known that we noticed them, why are they even doing this? I told my brother who tried to see if there was a license plate but couldn't. I decided to grab the binoculars to look for a license plate number but there was no plate. Then I looked to see what the brand the car was but there was no logo where the emblem would normally be. In fact it looked like it was ripped off the front and it was too dark to see any leftover outline. I tried to see if I could get a look at his face but only his chin had light on it and it was titled up, staring at me. This just made me more angry.
I began to be determined to make this person as uncomfortable as they had made me. I grabbed the house phone, went back to the window, stared at the car with the binoculars, and put the phone up to my ear. I pretended to call the police and in hindsight, I honestly have no idea why I didn't just call the police. I was young, never really taught about calling 911 and whatnot so I guess I just did not know how to actually do it. It seemed to work though as the white sedan drove off almost immediately. For about two weeks, there was no sign of the car.
Again, I thought that perhaps that was it.
As a kid (and hell, who am I kidding...I still do this) I would always take care of stray cats and bring them into the vestibule of our house so they could sleep inside for the night. While my parents would always be annoyed that stray cats would find me they allowed a happy medium where the cat had a place to go for food/shelter in bad weather but the cat would not enter our apartment (or interfere with our cat, Princess). At this time I was taking care of a white and black long haired cat that did typical cat stuff, and one night I heard it meowing to come in so I opened the front door and let it in to eat.
I was about to go back upstairs to our apartment and let it stay in for the night since it was already after 9 p.m., but, like a cat, it now wanted to go outside and wouldn't stop crying. I let the cat out, it walked down one step and started to clean itself as I leaned against the door frame in annoyance because I knew it would want to come back in again. Ignoring my surroundings I hear a car pull up in front of me. I look up and there it is, that white sedan stopped in the middle of the street.
All the alarm bells are now going off as panic sinks in and I step back. Finally I see that this person is a man, he was wearing a white t-shirt, he had short dark hair, but I couldn't see his face. It was like the perfect setup for a horror scene, he was looking right at me with the light from the street light seeping in his car but his face was completely shadowed. I was about to close the front door when I remembered the cat was outside, who had walked a couple of steps further from the door to continue grooming. I wanted to escape but then I was afraid he would hurt the cat and if I can help an animal being hurt I do.
There was always someone walking down our block since we lived by a train station, so I worked up my nerve and quickly went to pick up the cat. While keeping an eye on the car, I almost about threw the cat into the hallway when the bats by the door caught my eye. My family always kept two old bats by the door, a long one made out of solid hickory and a metal one. It might seem stupid but for some reason I felt like I couldn't run and if I closed the door to safety he would keep coming back. I grabbed the metal bat behind the door so he couldn't see it and stood there staring back at him, making sure to give him my most angry look.
It felt like an hour but was probably more like five minutes of us just staring at each other. My hand griped the handle of the bat just in case he decided to get out of the car and I thought about the possibly that he might have a gun but I stood my ground. After some time he drove away. I watched him disappear around the bend and noticed that no one was walking up or down the block, it was completely quiet and had been that way this whole time.
I closed the door and ran upstairs to our apartment. At this point I told my Mom what happened and about the car making several appearances. All she said was, "Well then don't go outside." I felt completely defeated that my Mom would be so dismissive of a possible stalker but she might have thought it was an overactive imagination. That was the last time I ever saw the white sedan.
I'm not sure why he stopped coming after that, maybe he found other females to stalk or he was caught doing something else. Or maybe our little stare off made him realize I would not be an easy target, if I wasn't running to safety when I easily could have who is to say I wouldn't fight if he tried to grab me? Maybe he enjoyed seeing terror on little girl's faces and wasn't getting that so he lost interest. Now that I'm older I do wish I had the presence of mind to actually call the police, to get adults more involved, because while all he did was constantly watch me it could have escalated given the chance. I have no idea if he had planned on a physical or sexual attack or a kidnapping, but I do know that he planned the nights to come to our block and stare through our window. He wanted to be seen and to watch us, that night was just the perfect chance for him to get even closer.
Whatever his intentions, it ended up scaring me and I think he wanted that. But it also made me realize to be more aware of my surrounds and to stand up, take action.
So white sedan, if we ever meet again I'll be sure to call the cops this time after putting you in the hospital.