I was followed before, while driving. I think I shared this story before, but I'll post it again.
This was several years ago. I had just visited my parents at their workplace and was heading out to their home. It's not that far from town, but it's still considered country. There's only one main route out of town to their road, it's a simple route, and it's not uncommon for a whole string of cars to be heading to the same place. I never knew the guy was following me.
So I'm driving up the road and this little car behind me starts blinking his headlights at me. I wonder if he's lost, he's someone I know, or he's telling me I have a broken taillight or whatnot. I decide if I should keep on going or not. I pull over, without putting my pickup in park.
I'm ready to draw if I have to, and carefully observe a squat, greasy looking, middle-aged white man with bad hair exit his vehicle and walk up to my window. He stands around 8 feet away. As long as he keeps his hands out where I can see them, it's okay. I have one hand on the steering wheel and the other by my waistband. I keep my doors locked. I'll peel rubber if I have to, and I can easily lose his tiny little car in the windy, bumpy, pothole ridden country road on front of me.
"I see you're not from around here," he says. He must have observed my license plate. I wonder if he's one of these types who found me going a few miles over the speed limit and decided to play cop with the we don't like strangers in this here town attitude.
"I've lived here for ten years."
"Oh. I figured you were from out of town and didn't know the place. I saw you in town back there. You know of any campgrounds around here?"
"There aren't any. You'd have to go to the next town." I kept my answers brief, not being friendly. I'm now agitated that the man admitted he followed me, and upset at myself for not observing it.
"Oh, okay." The greasy little man fidgeted. "Would like to go with me to find the campground?"
"Uhh, no."
He fidgeted some more, said something like,"okay, thanks" and walked back to his car. I drove off.
After things sunk in, I wish I called it in as a suspicious person. He could've been just an inept suitor, but the more I thought about it, he followed me from town and noted that I was not from that town. Was I chosen because nobody would miss me because he thought I was a stranger in the town, or was he not ill-willed and thought I was a fellow single vacationer looking for a good time? Did he have some rope, a shovel and some garbage bags in his trunk?
I'll never know. But I did learn it doesn't take much for a person to spot you, fixate on you, and follow you across town.