Let's Not Meet Again

The Men in Masks

This happened when I was in my teens, around 16/17. Background: I live in the UK, at this age I lived in a pretty average area, but you only had to walk 20 minutes out and you were in some pretty dodgy areas that were well known for their level of crime and general bad behaviour.

Myself and my friend of a similar age, both females, were walking to a park that was about 40 minutes away, to meet the rest of our friends, all the same age / gender. To get to this park we had to briefly dip into one of these bad areas, almost on the edge of the worst part of the estate. This was at around 6ish pm and was during the lead up to winter and so it wasn't 'dark' but the streetlights were on and it was coming into the evening.

We were walking along a pathway with my friend on the outside by the bush (which continued into an open field/space) and me on the inside by the road, just a normal two way flowing street. We were giggling away oblivious to almost everything a teen should be thinking about, when out of nowhere this black car (it was like a Vauxhall Astra) sped towards us from behind, the sound alerted us as the tyres screeched towards us.

As the car aligned with us (we were still walking) this guy is literally hanging out of the passenger side window reaching for me (he is about 1 ft away from actually touching me), but as I look up to see his face he is wearing this terrifying mask, the ones with the huge animated smiles like out of the purge if anyones seen that ( I will attach a similar picture for reference).

Once I'd finished screaming and managed to process what was happening, I just remember grabbing my friends arm and bolting into the field that was to the left of us we'd just reached the entrance. Probably wasn't the brightest idea but I just wanted to get away from the road at this point my fight or flight had kicked in.

It suddenly felt a lot darker with no lights in the open field, we stayed close to the bush where the path was on the other side but were crouching behind so they couldn't see us (they never actually stopped just slowed down passing us reached out and sped off) - but we could hear the revving and over acceleration in the distance. We tried to calm each other down and eventually convinced each other that it was a stupid prank and probably a young group of lads just out to scare people. After around 10 minutes we decided to carry on heading towards our friends, you could walk through this field it was in fact a shortcut which we decided to take, as we were clearly not any safer by the lit road.

We made it to the rest of our friends safe, but 3 had already gone home and so another 2 joined us, there was 4 all together. The park was quite small and there wasn't many other people around so we all decided to go and get some cheesy chips (don't judge) from the chip shop about 5 minutes away.

My friend and I were filling in our friends about the masked man and the whole event, they were super freaked out. You could not make this up right, we were about 30 minutes away from where it initially happened, you can guess what happened next!

We were walking in pairs (small pathway) when again me and my friend heard the screeching of tires, we shot a look backwards and there sure as shit was a black Vauxhall Astra or whatever it was and a group of men in the car. I got a good look this time, it became clear they were men not boys, they were well built, tall and the driver had a beard that was protruding from under his mask! I shouted to my friends to run as fast as they could to the chippy, I just knew this was more than a prank.

We were running when the car aligned with us and 2 men (one hanging out the passenger window, the other out the back passenger window) reached out with their masks on and tried to grab those nearest to the road, all the while the men in the car were screaming this ridiculous laugh. They were all psycho laughing at our fear!!!

There was no bushes to hide behind this time and we stopped to hopefully let the car pass so we could run across the road in time and straight for the chippy. It passed, we turned to run across, it stopped and started reversing towards us at high speed WTF!?. It missed us by inches. I just remember running for my life feeling like these men were really out to do damage and at this point I didn't look back until we reached the chip shop, all 4 of us made it.

From here we all rang our parents in hysterics telling them what had happened, all the while this black car is still sat in view revving the engine, at this point all of them had their masks on just slowly tilting their heads side to side showing off the huge grins on their masks. They were waiting for us to leave the chip shop. We explained it to the guys behind the counter and they told us to wait for our parents. After about 5 minutes the car sped off and out parents arrived full of wise words and reassurance.

I don't know what they were doing, whether they were out to scare us or actually hurt us, the reversing suggests the latter. I don't know why they chose us, and I also don't know if they terrified other people that night too. I just wont ever forget the masks and the malicious laughing and chasing. Vile vile men go and get some medical attention and I do not want to meet you again!