Woman warns a mom that a man is following her through the grocery store. Then the mom notices the woman has been watching them too

A TikTok creator says a routine grocery run with her son took an unsettling turn after a woman warned her that a man appeared to be following them. By the time she reached the checkout, however, she had grown suspicious of the woman too.

Brooke was shopping with her young son one evening when a woman on the phone did a double take as she passed them. She brushed it off, figuring the woman had mistaken her for someone else. A few aisles later, she noticed someone entering the aisle out of the corner of her eye and reached back to put a hand on her son.

Turning around, she found the same woman standing there, not looking at anything on the shelves. “She wasn’t looking at anything or reaching for anything. She was, like, looking at us,” Brooke said in the video.

The woman warns her about another shopper

Later, the creator and her son ended up in another section of the store. That’s when the woman approached again, this time pointing to a man wearing a hat nearby. She asked if Brooke knew him. She didn’t. “Well, I really think he’s following you,” the woman told her.

Brooke said the woman presented the warning as one shopper looking out for another. Fears of being followed while shopping with kids aren’t new, including one Wisconsin mom who says a man sprinted after her toward her car.

Instead of feeling safer, she started watching the woman just as closely. At checkout, only two lanes were open because of the late hour. The woman stood ahead of Brooke in line while the man checked out on the opposite side of the store. The woman turned back to repeat her warning, saying the man had walked into an aisle and pretended to browse.

Brooke remembered that aisle differently. It was where she’d seen the woman standing near her son, and she didn’t remember seeing the man there. “My flags are like, okay, they’re way up here,” she said. As the man walked past her lane toward the exit, he glanced down the aisle. “I think he was looking at her, not me and my son,” she said.

Commenters had plenty to say about the encounter. One person, who said they’d taught forensic psychology for two decades, wrote: “STOP being polite to strangers. If they speak just stare. Do NOT smile.” Another commenter was more direct, urging people to confront anyone staring at them “the very first time your intuition clocks to you.”

She said she went home and cried, adding that she feels “this stuff happens all the time.” In the video’s caption, Brooke described the encounter as “terrifying,” writing, “Predators are so crazy and try so many different tactics.” Other shoppers have also sought help after feeling followed, including a Walmart shopper who asked a stranger to pretend they had arrived together after she believed two men were following her.

Brooke never said she saw the man and woman speak to each other. Her suspicion that they were working together came from their movements around the store, rather than any interaction between the two that she witnessed.