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The original was posted on /r/truescarystories by /u/Soft-Law6653 on 2025-05-28 05:39:14+00:00.
To preface, I grew up in Asia, this was in the 90s and child abductions were happening left and right. There were people who would kidnap and traffic kids and “sell” them to a childless family or worse. So I was 6 years old when this happened. I was staying at my aunt’s house for 2 weeks while my parents went on a trip. My aunt’s house was close to an outdoor market in a pretty rural area, and back in the day kids could just go there and buy food, look at the live seafood they were selling, befriend the vendors to get free snacks, etc. I really enjoyed my yearly summer vacation at my aunts and I went there until she eventually moved to Dubai for work and my family moved to the US when I was 13.
Anyway, I’m in my 30s now and when aunt visited us a few months back, I mentioned that I remember someone tried to kidnap me and that I remember the police were called, the aunties at the market were freaking out, and I remember the kidnapper was holding a big cleaver and I was really scared. From what I remember, I was playing hopscotch with a friend, when an “auntie” (we call every older lady auntie in Asia) told me to come eat because she just made rice cakes. As we were walking to her stall, a man grabbed me from her and was football carrying me to somewhere and he had a big cleaver in his hand. I remember not being able to fight back from fear and I was crying really hard. As I was recounting this story, my aunt was shaking her head and said that’s not what happened and I was remembering it wrong.
Apparently, while I was playing with my friend, this lady that no one has seen before came and approached us. Now, everyone knew who my aunt was because she was a regular at that market and so everyone knew who I was because she would introduce me and then would ask everyone to look out for me while I was playing, I just didn’t know everyone there so I blindly trusted this nice looking lady that offered me rice cakes. My aunt said that my friend told them that I was offered rice cakes and dumb kid me started walking with her AWAY from the market. My friend immediately knew something was wrong and ran to the nearest stall and told the first adult he saw that I was being taken by a strange lady. Turned out, that adult was a fish vendor in the middle of chopping and gutting fish. According to the people who saw, he power walked to that lady and grabbed me from her when he saw a pick up truck waiting for her in the distance with the back passenger door wide open. He was waving his cleaver around threatening them and the lady went inside the truck quickly and booked it out of there.
Apparently, I remembered it wrong. The nice fish vendor at the market actually saved my life. I still thank my lucky stars my friend had the presence of mind to recognize what was going on, and an adult stepped up immediately.