Real Encounters

*Don't Go Into That Barn*

So in 2012 my then girlfriend and I went on a big year-long road trip through the states, working on farms along the way for room and board, and ended our trip by driving across Canada, west to east, stopping back in Nova Scotia where we lived. At some point we got a puppy, and around the time we got to Alberta, with an extra mouth to feed, we decided money was running out. Since I'm a carpenter, we decided to find a place to rent and I would get a job for a few months before we kept going on our trip.

We scrolled through Kijiji (Canadian Craigslist) and eventually found an ad for a place. This guy lived in a cool looking house by himself, just a short drive from the place where I'd found a job. He wanted someone to move in with him to help with the bills. We started corresponding with him a bit by email, told him I was going to work in the area and my girlfriend would be staying home with the puppy, and being desperate and having become accustomed to trusting strangers throughout this long trip, we agreed to send him a deposit and take the offer.

We got to his place a few days later. It was in the middle of nowhere and there were no neighbours, but we'd known that before. He was about 30 to 35, small framed, just looked like a regular working country dude, except his expression was weird. Kind of frightened looking, almost like he always looked ashamed of himself. He was fine with our dog being inside, though he had a dog that wasn't allowed inside - this is the cold Canadian north. Right away when he met us at the door I felt there was something off about him. It made me uneasy, especially since I would be going off to work every day, leaving my girlfriend alone with this creepy guy. But she didn't seem worried, and I didn't want to be controlling, so I let it go. The first night we were there, he wanted to have a few drinks with us. We obliged politely, and he brought a few cans of shitty watery beer out and meekly drank his while sitting across the kitchen table from us. We tried to relax the situation, asked him some friendly questions about himself, but his answers were brief and quiet. He seemed to want friendship, but also seemed completely unsure of how to get it. He went over a few rules he had. Number one was that we stayed out of his room - which was obviously fine - , number two was that we cannot go in the basement - kind of weird -, and number three was that we stay away from the barn.... By this point I could imagine the news headlines -"Nova Scotian couple found murdered, bound in barn".

That night I didn't sleep very much. I wasn't supposed to start work for a couple days, so I just stayed up reading and playing with our pup. I heard his truck pull out of the driveway pretty early in the morning, and I headed for the basement. It was pretty bare, just washing and drying machines and some lawn chairs. But I opened a closet door, and found a weird nurse costume that looked like it was marketed for sexual purposes, a roll of duct tape, a set of handcuffs, a shotgun and a box of shells, all sitting together on the same shelf.

I woke up my girlfriend, explained that she no longer had any say in the matter, and that we were leaving before he got home. We sent him a message after we'd left, lying, saying a family member had taken sick and we were moving back home. He never offered to return our money, and we had no more contact with him. I'm still waiting to see him in the news. My ex thinks I'm a worrier. Her parents thanked me profusely.