A girl at school joined this weird church where they used to have crazy sermons where people would start screaming and stuff. It became her life, she was always talking about the churches teachings, spoke about the pastor like he was the messiah and spent all her time with the church.

It was a cult. It was a fucking cult.

Trigger warning.

Going to the shop with a bunch of friends when I was 7. There was a man there that offered to buy us all ice-cream if one of us sat on his lap.

So we all get ice cream and go back to his caravan (about 6 kids around 7 years old). We all allocated one little girl to sit on his lap.

you just unlocked a core memory for me by asking this

I likely escaped out of a legitimate cult when I was like 14. My parents really wanted me to attend a Korean summer camp and while I’m not religious I thought eh why not might as well make them happy and it’ll be a fun social thing probably.

I met with one of my friends before we went and I was pretty excited that we could hang out and maybe even stay up late while doing whatever events they had.

After I got there I thought hey this might be cooler than I thought, they set up karaoke and whatnot what the heck? Alright I’m down.

I think it was around 7ish, things started to get a bit weird. I don’t know how to describe it but like the mood and tension in the air turned weird. The adults and pastors felt off I wish I could remember why but unfortunately I have no clue now. The older teens/‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ as in Korean relationships 형 [hyoung] and 노나 [noona] stared acting irrational in their bunks and rooms.

We sang church songs, listened to sermons and near the end of the sermon they made us repent our sins and had us cry (literally cry with tears).

I thought that this was so out of left field as I spent most of my childhood with my Canadian friends. I’ve experienced a slew of cultures due to my friend’s backgrounds like Candian Canadian, Slovakian, Indian, African American, Chinese, American, Philippinean.

So as confused as I was, I just looked around in confusion as I didn’t understand why or what was happening. I got some stern looks from 2 pastors so I immediately closed my eyes, looked down, and began to say(more like chant) similar things to the neighboring people around me.

This took like an unbearable 2 hours, holy shit I felt awful as I wanted to leave but I couldn’t. I just felt confused and sick wondering what’s point of all this???

After that grueling mental endurance training ended when I finally got to my room I faked throwing up and asking some adults if I could go home. Thankfully they called my parents and I got to fucking rest holy shit oh my gods I will never forget just how relieving it was to go home.

It wasn’t until I was in one of my post secondary studies where I got into a conversation with one of my 형’s and he told me about the cult epidemic in South Korea. I asked if he was joking as he said it in a quite serious tone to me brows furrowed. He said “컴퓨터각고 찾아봐” (search it with your computer).

• Oh rip I was gonna add the wikipedia link but I can’t find it anymore.

Either way I learned that for some reason cults are a major problem in my family’s country. And I then thought back to that summer camp experience and then I remembered one key thing: why didn’t my parent admonish me for “missing out on the fun”? Usually they’d criticise me for ruining the experience or saying that it was unfortunate that I missed out. After I got back home that day, I never heard anything about it since. They say they don’t remember now.

I don’t know for sure but that summer camp still gives me pyramid scheme vibes(some of my friends got suckered into those ponzi schemes so I know those vibes/atmosphere/ick as well now).

Creeps me out?

Tbh, it depends on what you mean exactly, and still there’s a barrier for me that I don’t get creeped out by much of anything as an adult. Didn’t as a kid tbh, but it did happen here and there.

I think the one that’s going to fit what most people would think of as creepy, rather than just being a very imaginative kid that could scare himself silly, is this old guy that lived nearby.

There was a trail in the neighborhood that ran across several little batches of trees and hidden sections of yards that kids would use instead of walking on roads. It was faster for one thing, and there were sections that older kids couldn’t get through, much less adults. So it was ours.

Anyway, the guy lived on one edge of the trail. One of the few open sections, it ran alongside his yard and into a ditch.

He was a nice guy. He’d wave, say howdy, that kind of thing. Sometimes I’d join him for a spell on his porch if it was super hot. He’d usually offer something cold to drink, we’d talk a while, and that was that.

One day, I was wearing some swimming trunks. They swished a lot when I ran. When I stopped to set a spell with him, he joked about hearing me before he saw me because of the fabric. I explained I had been swimming earlier, and didn’t want to change.

He said something along the lines of “oh, swim shorts, right?”

To which I said yes. He asked if they were the kind with built in underwear. It so happened they were, so I said yes. He then slid a hand up the leg of the shorts to feel the built in underwear. Needless to say, there were things in those shorts being supported by the built-in undies, and he ran his fingers over them.

Very gently, and only for a moment before pulling away and saying they seemed comfortable. He offered me some tea, and I had some.

It wasn’t in any way traumatic for me. Now, I knew enough to not go back. This was the eighties, and we were being taught about good and bad touches, and I didn’t like what he did. I thought it was very rude for one, but everyone was saying that grownups weren’t supposed to be touching kids “down there”. So I figured he might not stop there, even though he didn’t do it aggressively, or even in what seemed like a bad way at the time.

It just tickled a little, and he didn’t ask permission. So it was rude.

Nothing else ever happened. Didn’t think to tell anyone about it at the time. Mainly because I forgot it had happened until a few days later when I was going by and he waved. I remembered it, and just waved as I went about my business. It really didn’t bother me, it was more that you don’t hang around people that do that kind of thing.

As an adult, it’s a little creepy in that it could have gone way worse. And I wish young me had told someone purely because I doubt he would have been that brazen to grope a kid on his porch if he wasn’t in that habit already. But, he was old old, as in well into his eighties, so he didn’t last much longer. Had a stroke maybe a year or so later, though I didn’t know that part until a few years ago, only that he had died.

Thing is, back a decade or so ago, I ran into some of the kids from the neighborhood and the subject of the trail came up, and he got mentioned. I told the story about him, and everyone was surprised. He hadn’t tried it with any of them, though all of us had had drinks with him alone a few times. One of the guys said his brother complained about the man and told him not to be alone with him, but didn’t say why at the time.

Eventually, word got around and the most the guy ever did was touch. Never for long, never enough to really scare anyone, but enough that they would stop visiting with him. It’s one of those things where nobody he fondled really thought it was the same thing we were being warned about. It was bad, but the instructions we were getting back then made it seem like the bad people that liked doing sexual things to kids were going to kidnap you or be really aggressive. This was just a dude on his porch.

Which is pretty insidious, and makes it creepier looking back on it than it was at the time. Like, the guy was flying under the radar, and probably kept it that way on purpose. That’s creepier to me than someone going all Chester Molester and trying to undress you or get you to do sexual things. The stealth is creepy, the more aggressive stuff is “just” evil, if you get the distinction.

I’m still kind of surprised how little it bothered me. It doesn’t even bother me now tbh. It’s just something that happened, akin to getting a sunburn. Not good, but no real emotional impact. It was more disappointing than anything else. Dude had always been nice, and a cold drink on a shaded porch was a great thing, and now that was over because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

Most of the time I talk about it, folks around me have more emotional responses than I had in the moment. I uses to wonder if that means I’m just extra weird, but I’ve run into enough people who had similar experiences that weren’t traumatized either that I figure it’s more about the details of how things go than the simple fact of it happening.

The number of times my butt was grabbed, spanked, etc. by complete strangers any time I was out alone. And I don’t even mean as a teenager. I fully remember this happening when I was walking home from school in grade 1. It just seemed so normal even then. The adults know what they’re doing, and they’re just being playful, right?