Woman Says Two Strangers Complimented Her Jacket — Then Showed Up Outside Her House Days Later

Photo credit: Now Rundown

A 22-year-old woman says she tried to talk herself out of feeling paranoid after two young women approached her in a grocery store and asked too many questions about her jacket. But when she saw them again near her home days later, the whole thing stopped feeling like a random awkward interaction.

She explained in a Reddit post that the first incident happened on March 4 while she was grocery shopping. Two girls, who she guessed were around 18 or 19, came up to her and complimented her jacket.

At first, that sounded harmless. Plenty of people toss out quick compliments in a store and move on.

But these girls did not move on.

The woman said they kept asking about the jacket and her fashion choices, even after she tried to let the interaction die naturally. She is not a big fan of small talk and said that is actually one reason she shops in the next town over — so she does not have to run into people she knows.

She considered being polite and asking them questions back, but when she did, their answers were clipped. The conversation felt one-sided, more like they were interviewing her than chatting.

At first, she wondered if they were solicitors. But there was no booth, no brand, no obvious sales pitch, and nothing about the interaction ever really explained why they were so invested in keeping her talking about a jacket.

She left feeling uneasy.

A few days later, around March 7 or 8, she was walking her dog when she noticed a bright blue van circling her community. She assumed it might be a student driver practicing and did not think much of it.

Then, while she and her dog were heading home, she heard a voice behind her say, “Your dog’s so cute.”

When she looked back, it was the same two girls.

She did not recognize them immediately. She thanked them and kept walking because her dog is reactive and does not like people. One of the girls appeared to ask another question, but she did not stop.

It was only a couple minutes later, after the girls drove away, that she realized they were the same ones from the grocery store.

That was strange enough, but the third incident was the one that made her post.

On March 12, her mother kept commenting about a car lingering near their property. The woman looked outside and saw a blue car sitting right outside the house. At first, the family assumed it might be an Uber Eats driver and did not panic.

A little while later, she looked again.

It was the same girls.

They did not confront anyone. They got into the car and drove out of the community. But then her brother came home and asked why two girls had been looking at their house.

That detail made the whole thing harder to dismiss.

The woman told her mother about the previous encounters, and her mother immediately wanted to confront the girls if she saw them again. She also wanted to call police. The poster was not sure what police could do, since the girls had not threatened her, touched her, or done anything obviously illegal.

That uncertainty is what left her stuck.

Part of her wondered if it was just a weird chain of coincidences. Maybe they were missionaries. Maybe they lived nearby. Maybe the jacket conversation was strange but harmless. She even joked that her jacket was cute, but not “stalk-level cute.”

But another part of her felt like something was wrong.

The pattern was hard to ignore: first the grocery store in another town, then her neighborhood while she was walking her dog, then outside her house. Even if each individual interaction was not openly threatening, seeing the same people across different places made it feel less random every time.

She also could not figure out what they wanted. They had not pushed religion. They had not sold anything. They had not explained themselves. They just kept appearing.

In the comments, she said she was cautious but still struggling to believe the worst-case theories. She noted that she was not isolated and was surrounded by friends and family, so she did not understand why anyone with truly dangerous motives would target her.

Still, she said she planned to be careful and liked the idea of checking whether other neighbors had seen the girls around too.

There was no big update where the girls were identified or confronted. The post ended in that uneasy middle ground: nothing definitive had happened, but enough had happened that her gut would not let her laugh it off.

Commenters mostly told her she was not overreacting. Many said the first grocery store interaction could have been brushed off, and the second encounter might have been a strange coincidence, but the third one — the girls showing up outside her house — made the whole thing more serious.

Several people encouraged her to call the police non-emergency line and make a report, not necessarily because officers could act immediately, but because documentation would matter if the girls came back.

Others suggested taking photos or video if she saw them again, especially of the car and license plate, and saving the footage somewhere outside her phone. Commenters also told her to tell neighbors, check cameras, and avoid walking alone if possible.

Some people raised scarier possibilities, including trafficking or someone using the girls to gather information. The poster was skeptical of that theory, and some commenters were too, saying it sounded more like an MLM approach, a religious group, or people casing the area for some other reason.

But even the commenters who rejected the most dramatic explanation still agreed the pattern was unsettling. Two strangers from a grocery store should not be casually appearing near someone’s dog walk and then outside her home days later.

The main advice was simple: stop worrying about looking paranoid, document everything, and do not engage with them alone.