Woman spots 'dead' ex-boyfriend in local restaurant 2 years after he borrowed $1000 from her
Years after his family claimed that he had died, an Australian woman spotted her "dead" ex-boyfriend at a local restaurant.
Rachel (last name withheld) started dating a chef, who cannot be named for legal purposes, from a local pub. She was 18 and he was 21 at the time. The relationship did not have many glaring red flags, things started going downhill after he returned one night with a broken hand.
Since he could not work with an injured hand, he asked Rachel if he could borrow $1000 from her, to which she agreed. After they broke up a few months later, for no specific reason, he paid back $300 of the sum that she had loaned him. When she reached out to him, asking for the rest, he ghosted her, ABC reported.
She soon discovered from some of his friends that his belongings were fast disappearing from the house he shared with them. "Furniture was gone, bed was gone, everything was gone. The initial story was he'd gone to rehab in Queensland," Rachel said, adding that she never suspected him of abusing drugs.
On investigating further, she found out that he owed other people money too. "The moment we went 'OK, he owes everyone money," the anxiety and urgency of the situation ramped up," she said. "The story was falling apart really, really quickly."
Then things became more bizarre. Rachel learned that her former boyfriend's mother was going around telling his friends that her son was killed because he owed money to some bike gang.
"It sounds stupid in retrospect, but you don't have any reason to question it. If I called you and told you my mum died, you wouldn't be like, 'give me a death certificate'," she said.
Rachel decided not to pursue the matter, choosing to just grieve in private and move on. Two years after his "death" she was with a friend at a local restaurant where she knew her ex's brother worked. So she asked the waiter if he was working on the particular day.
She told her that he wasn't "but his brother is." Confused, Rachel asked her what was his brother's name and the waitress confirmed it was her ex-boyfriend.
Recalling that she "just went into shock," Rachel said she and her friend asked to see the so-called "dead" man, when the manager came over and told them to leave the place. Later that night, her old boyfriend's mother texted her saying that the "scene" she had created at the restaurant had caused him to lose his job.
Rachel said she had the chance to confront her ex once again at another restaurant a few years later. "We made eye contact, and you could see he recognized me. I was like 'Long time no see!' And he went, 'Oh yeah, it has been a long time,'" Rachel said.
After denying that he owed her money, the man left the scene, depriving Rachel the opportunity to ask him everything she wanted to know. "If I'd sat down with him properly, yeah, I would have had questions," she said. "One or two."