Darkness Rising Horror Stories - Chapter 24 Cul

I’ve been working as a second shift shelf stocker at my local Wal-Mart for the past month or so, which means I occasionally get to deal with the creepy customers near the end of my shift. Normally, I can sense when someone or something isn’t right, which isn’t the case for this story unfortunately.

Anyways, I was told to stock the shelves in the area by the pharmacy desk, which is fine by me because not many people come by that side of the store especially once the pharmacy desk closes for the day. As I’m stocking the aisle that had the cold medicine in it, a girl comes up to me and says “You seem like a fun person to talk to!”

In my mind I’m like “uhhh, okay weird but whatever,” and on the outside I put on my best retail smile and say “Sure, what can I help you with?” This girl proceeds to say that she has a bet going on with her dad right now and if she wins the bet, she’ll get $100, and she was wondering if I could help her out.

Me, being the good-hearted person I am, say that I could help her out. Couldn’t be that hard, right? The girl then proceeds to get her guardian, which is a middle-aged woman who then introduces herself. The lady then explains that to help the girl get the $100, I’d have to watch a 20 minute video with them.

Obviously I couldn’t do this now as I was working, so they ask me what time I get off of work and what I was going to be doing afterwards. I let them know that I got off at 11, and that I was going to go drive home with my mom because we both work the same shift at the same store and she doesn’t drive.

The lady then says “Okay, well maybe we can meet at the southside McDonald’s around 11:15 tonight to watch the video? Do you mind if I get your phone number so we can call you?” At this point in time, I was completely oblivious to what was actually happening and gave them my phone number like a complete idiot.

The lady then thanks me and says they’d call me around 11:15 and then we could go from there. After they walked away, I realized what just happened and what I just did and started freaking out. I then went on my last break and told my mom what happened, all while sobbing and freaking out.

We decided to go tell management about the incident, and they decided that when my mom and I were both done with work that night we would be escorted out to our car just for extra safety. After this, we told our supervisor what happened and described the individuals to him and he said he was sure he dealt with these same people before at his previous job, and supposedly the same night I was approached by these people another one of my coworkers encountered them as well, with the same spiel and everything.

As my mom and I were being escorted out, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize, and they didn’t leave a voicemail. I started to freak out again and we decided to go to the cops just to play it safe. After we had told the officer the story and gave them the phone number that had called me, he said that it was really weird for this to be happening in our town, which is relatively small in my opinion.

About an hour later, I got a call from the officer I had talked to and found out some more information about these people that approached me. He called the number I gave him and posed as a friend of mine to get more information, and found out that they were trying to recruit me to work for them by traveling and earning money.

It’s even more sketchy when I was told that this group has a website, a YouTube channel, you name it. The officer also tells me that the group is a pyramid scheme, which is illegal in the US and elsewhere. Basically if you don’t know what that is, it’s a form of investment where a paying participant has to recruit two more participants and once these two people have been recruited, the people who talked them into joining them get payed more money and the newer people get payed less money.

The interesting thing was the fact that I didn’t get a “creepy” vibe from these customers, they were generally nice and friendly people. However, they almost seemed too nice to not be up to something obviously.

This happened to me a few days ago and I’m still having panic attacks about it and the managers at my store are hopefully going to gather all of us together at one point soon and give us some tips if it happens again, as it’s currently not a part of our training stuff we have to go through.