He followed my stories for weeks before trying to get inside my building

Stalking / suspicious behavior · Instagram · United States

I did not meet him on a dating app. He started replying to my Instagram stories in a way that seemed harmless at first. Little comments, local jokes, reactions about coffee places and neighborhoods in Boston. It felt familiar enough that I replied sometimes without thinking much about it.

Over time the questions got more specific. Was I still working from home. Did my building have a front desk. Was the package room inside or outside. Those questions were never all at once, which is probably why they slipped past me at first.

The moment I got scared was when he messaged that he thought he had just seen me going inside my building and asked if I was still downstairs. I had not told him where I lived. I blocked him immediately. Nothing “happened” in the obvious sense, but I still think about how close that felt.