Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door is a real scary story about a young girl who is stalked by a man who lives next door.

Hi, my name is Jessie and this is my story. It all began when I was 13 years old. I was the girl next door. Just like any other girl my age, I went to school, I did my homework, I played sports and I hung out with my friends. I was happy and carefree, without a worry in the world. I was just your average girl.

The house next door to ours was vacant for a few months and then, in the Spring, a new neighbor moved in. He came over and talked to my mom and he seemed like a friendly guy. He said his name was Nick. He was in his mid-thrities, but he wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids.

He was kind of on the quiet side and didn’t say a whole lot, but he was nice. He even offered to do some yardwork or handyman stuff for us. Since my dad wasn’t around, there were a lot of things about the house that needed fixing up, so my mom took him up on his offer.

He helped us out a lot. A couple of times, he came to do some chores when I was in the back yard and he would always try to strike up a conversation with me. I thought it was funny because he was so nervous and sweaty and often seemed to get tongue-tied.

Then, one morning, just before I left for school, my mom took me aside and said, “I don’t want you talking to Nick anymore. If you see him outside and I’m not home, I want you to go into the house and lock the doors.”

When I asked her why, she wouldn’t answer me. All she would say was, “I’ve got a funny feeling about him…”

I thought she was just being over-protective, but I always listen to my mom, so I kept my distance from him.

That Summer, my friends and I built a fort in the woods behind our house. It was just a ramshackle little hut and we put it together with some boards and scraps of wood we found lying around.

One day, I came home from school and discovered that someone had fixed it up and turned it into a proper hut. It had a window and a door and everything. There was even a little mailbox on the front with my name on it. Inside, there was a letter. When I opened it up, I realized it was from Nick.

“Dear Jessie,” it read. “Your fort looked so broken-down, I thought I’d fix it up for you. Hope you like it. I think it’s neat how we live next to each other. Yours truly, Nick.”

I thought it was so cool that I immediately wrote a thank you note and dropped it in his letter box. The next day, there was another letter from Nick in the mailbox on my fort.

It was really long and full of weird stuff. He said he wanted to be best friends with me forever and couldn’t wait until I turned 18 so I could move in with him and we could be together. He also said my mom was nuts and was trying to keep us apart.

The strangest part was where he told me he would never harm me and he wouldn’t let anyone else hurt me either. I had no idea what he meant by that.

It took me a while to get through and I finished reading it just as my mom was coming home from work. She made me show it to her and when she read it, she said it made her skin crawl.

“What is a 34-year old man doing, writing a letter like that to a 13-year old girl?” she shouted.

She immediately called the police and when the officers came out to our house and read the letter, they told us Nick had recently been released from prison. The next day he was arrested and they sent him back to jail. My mom told me he was sentenced to two years.

Not long after that, my mom started getting letters from Nick. They were all angry and filled with curse words. He kept asking why she had lied about him to the police and said he knew I was in love with him. When my mom showed the letter to the police, they gave him another year in jail. After that, we stopped getting letters from him.

As time went by, I gradually forgot all about Nick and went on with my life. Then, one day, I came home from school and when I walked up the driveway, I saw him standing in his front yard, staring straight at me. I got such a shock that I just ran into the house and slammed the front door behind me. My heart was beating fast and I was shaking like a leaf.

That was the start of the nightmare. Every day, he began watching me compulsively. Whenever I went outside, he would be in his yard, just staring at me, with a weird smile on his face. It was a terrible feeling. Day and night, he never seemed to take his eyes off me. The fear of not knowing what he might do made me sick to my stomach. It was like living in the middle of a scary movie.

Then, one morning, my mom found a teddy bear sitting on our back doorstep. It had my name on it. The police said there was nothing they could do because we couldn’t prove that it was Nick who had left it there. I felt like a prisoner in my own house. I would crawl around on the ground from room to room because I didn’t want him to catch a glimpse of me through the windows.

A few days later, I was driving to school. When I got into the car, I saw Nick sitting in his truck next door, just staring at me. As soon as I drove off, he began following me. I didn’t know what he was going to do. All I knew was that I had to get away.

I have never been so terrified in all my life. He kept right on my tail and I was desperate to escape from him. I floored the accelerator and drove all the way to my grandmother’s house. When I got there, he even followed me all the way up the driveway, but as soon as he saw my grandmother, he took off. I was petrified.

My mom reported it to the police and they said it was a violation of his probation. They arrested Nick and he was sent back to jail. However, I knew it wasn’t over. I was the object of his obsession and he wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted.

I was expecting the worst, but what happened next shocked me beyond belief. My mom got a phonecall from the police saying Nick had been released on bail. She immediately called me at school and broke the news to me. I couldn’t believe it.

I was scared to death. After all, I was the one who had gotten him sent to prison. Now he was going to be mad and I was afraid he would come after me.

My mom and I left our house that day and we never returned. For a while, we lived in a hotel until we managed to find another house. While we were waiting for the trial, we stayed on the run. I really thought he was just going to kill me. I was afraid… really terrified. If he couldn’t find me, he couldn’t kill me, so I stayed in hiding.

Eventually, the judge gave Nick another two and a half years in prison. For the terrifying ordeal he made me and my mom endure, that’s nothing. When he gets out, I’ll be 18 and I’m afraid he’s going to come after me again. I’m petrified that he’s never going to stop.

The experience has changed me a lot. I’m not the same happy-go-lucky girl I used to be. I don’t trust anyone like I used to. I guess I had to grow up a little faster than everyone else. I was the girl next door. I just happened to live next door to a man who turned out to be the devil in disguise.

The scariest thing about this story is that it’s true. The girl’s name is Jessie Cooper and her stalker is Nick Hamilton.