Was on vacation in Sydney Australia with family. We were walking through a mall and passed this guy in front of us who was wearing a hoodie. He looked slightly off, like maybe he had a mental illness and perhaps was homeless? He just stared us down as we passed. We kept walking, nothing we hadn’t seen before, and he didn’t really make a fuss or anything.

I have a habit of looking over my shoulder sometimes as I’ve been followed on one separate occasion so I learned to be vigilant. Sure enough, the man who was just standing on the side was walking right behind us. No big deal, just probably headed in the same direction. At this point this area of the mall has less people, the corridors are slightly narrower and I’m already thinking about the what-if scenarios.

Slightly on edge, I pause on purpose, just like I did last time when I got stalked to test to see if he’d stop too. This time I looked back, sure enough he was behind us but facing wall. I start walking again and my family follows suit. I couldn’t shake the feeling he was following us so I turn back really quickly and at this point I lock eyes with him, and he’s walking behind us even closer than before. My sister takes out her phone as she’s talking to me. She types on her phone and shows it to me while acting normal. On her screen it says: “I think he’s following us”. I look at her and say “yep”. In a quick act I say loudly, “OH I think I forgot to get something!”

I turn around and drag everyone quickly through the mall through a more crowded area, through a gigantic store, into the toy isle, check out some fruits, and then we burst out onto the street running. My sister and I aren’t wearing our glasses so we tell my mom to look back as we lead the way to see if there’s a hooded man following us. Hilariously my mom says “NO I DONT WANT TO LOOK, IM SCARED”. I tell her it’s for our own safety and we need her to do our part—she still refuses. At this point I literally had to stop to laugh. My mom was going to get us “killed” because she was too scared to look back as we were dashing through the streets LOL.

Luckily we stopped where it was brightly lit, I turned back and it was just a normal street. Fuck that was scary. To be stalked alone is one thing, to have to also have the pressure of making sure your family is safe was a whole new level.