Thankful To Be Alive!

[Valerie100]

Here are two freaky tales that happened to me. Twice in one lifetime is definitely too much. After writing a post in the Bloody Mary and Others Thread, it made me want to share these stories. This is my original post, though. I originally posted this thread on: The Serial Killers Forum @ http://www.thecrimeweb.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=5

Any Garden Members who have stories to post along these lines, please do so. I'd love to hear from you. We can be great support for one another. The best thing for a person who has suffered a traumatic event is to talk about it. Let's get the bad stuff out. :-6

Hi, I'm new to your forum, and I found this board running a search engine for "survivors of serial killers." I was hoping to find a support group or a support website for this. There doesn't seem to be any.

Twice -- not once, but twice -- in my life I was almost murdered by one of these wackos.

When I was 15, I was living in Philadelphia, PA. Myself and a boyfriend had a run-in with a nutcase that chased us with a knife, that he had been sharpening on a tombstone, through a cemetary one night. The Frankford Slasher murders started happening at the bar up the street shortly after this night.

Then when I was 28, my ex-husband was working one night. He was a security guard at a college who worked the night shift. I had been cleaning all day. It was a Saturday. Saturday night, I had a few drinks and fell asleep in front of the TV on the couch.

I woke up around 2:00 a.m. and shut the window in the living room. I heard some kind of a scurrying noise outside of the window. I figured that it was a wild animal and just closed the window and locked up. As I was going up the stairs to bed, I was thinking about getting a shower, but then decided that I was too tired; I'd get one in the morning.

Anyway, a man broke into my house that night. At first, I thought it was my ex-husband home early from work. It wasn't.

I heard someone in my bathroom, and I kept waiting for my ex-husband to come into the bedroom and let me know that he was home from work. I heard cabinets opening in the bathroom. I heard loose change hitting the sink, like someone emptying their pockets. I heard urinating. I heard water running.

I was going to get up to check, but something told me not to move. I thought "I wonder if I should go see who it is" -- then my next thought was "You might not want to know who it is." I wouldn't have been able to get acrossed the water bed quietly or even to the phone to call for help without alerting whoever was in the bathroom. I just laid there in a light sleep.

A short while later, a hispanic man appeared in my hallway. The hallway light was on, and I could see his eyes flitting around wildly, darting from side to side. His face was red from just cleaning himself with water in the bathroom. He took a look in at me and said, "Ah, you stink, anyway." I yelled back after him, "Oh, I didn't know you could smell." I seriously thought it was a dream or that he was a ghost or something. It didn't seem real. The man just turned around in the hallway and walked back downstairs in the dark house.

The next morning, I woke up around 6:00 a.m. I went into the bathroom, and it smelled like chemicals. I searched the house, and nothing was missing. I never called the police, because I didn't even see any way that anyone could have gotten in. It didn't seem real.

Some days later, the top of the front window in the living room fell down. I then realized how he had gotten in. Also, one of the hallway banister spokes had been cut.

A few weeks later, they were showing America's top 10 most wanted, you know, on the news. They had pictures of Rapheal Recindes Ramiriz on, and all of the different looks that he had doned. I couldn't help but to scream when I noticed that one of the pictures they showed on the television was that of the exact same man that had broken into my house that night. This was right before Rapheal had started his crime spree. He was riding the trains all over killing people. I later learned that he was a drug user (the chemical smell in the bathroom) and that he killed people with things that he found around their homes (the cut hallway banister spoke) and that he raped the women before he killed them (I guess from cleaning all day, I wasn't attractive enough for him.) Thank God! I got seriously lucky.

I've prayed that God doesn't let run-ins like this happen every 15 years of my life. That's what it seemed to be. Twice in one lifetime is too much.

Maybe, you could -- The Crime Web -- start a new forum as an offshoot for serial killer survivors. I would seriously like to talk to other people who have had narrow escapes from these madmen to form a support network.

[minks]

My Gawd Girl you are lucky I hope that none of that ever happens again. I would be a mess.

[lady cop]

man i have to check out that forum!! i love crime, and homicide. there's a shock! .......sounds like you had an angel on your shoulder. scary stuff.