Unmasking the Mask: 69 Shocking Signs Psychopaths Use to Hide in Plain Sight
Ever wondered what it feels like to sit across from someone who could chillly recount the darkest deeds without so much as a flicker of remorse? Imagine the unnerving calm of a man describing crimes as casually as one might discuss the weather—no guilt, no shivers of conscience, just a cold, unsettling lack of humanity. Psychopaths don’t always wear the masks we expect; sometimes, they blend seamlessly into the crowd, charming and calculating beneath the surface. This article dives into spine-tingling real-life encounters from the minds and experiences of mental health professionals and those who’ve brushed up against the uncanny. Ready to peer behind the curtain at the chilling normalcy of psychopathy? Let’s unravel the eerie tales that prove sometimes, the most frightening faces are the ones that look just like everyone else. LEARN MORE
Clinical psychologist here.
At first I didn’t know. If anything, given the context he was more put together than most of my patients.
The subject of his criminal past came up. I only knew he had served prison time some years before, not what he was in for. I had met with him a month or two when this came up.
Turns out it was two separate sentences served. Both were for r**e. In both cases he was the exact thing we are afraid of: a guy lurking in a dark alley jumping a drunk girl.
He told me about these things as if he was talking about the weather. When it dawned on me that he expressed no remorse or guilt whatsoever I got the same cold, gut-wrenching kind of primal fear you feel when you’re out for a walk and almost step on snake.
I’m a bit late to this, so not sure this will be seen, but my wife is bugging me to share. I actually started my career in forensic psychology, but decided to get out of it after I got stabbed and assaulted a few times by patients. I then started working with children and teens. It was there, working with an 8 year old girl, we’ll call her Sarah – that I came across my first person I’d ear mark as a psychopath.
Sarah came from a pretty good family and they were really dedicated to help her moving forward. The parents had no obvious concerns with their own behaviour and they seemed to be pretty well regulated folks. They had bounced across a few therapists before seeing me, most of which seemed to struggle with the fact that Sarah did not seem to be demonstrating more traditional behavioural issues (e.g. she was not impulsive, she did not just lose her temper and go wild). Instead, Sarah was attentive, planning and meticulous. She was pretty text book in that she had a long history of mutilated barbies and some quite hurt animals along her path. The part that was bit unique with Sarah is she rarely got in trouble for doing anything because it seemed that she was really good at convincing other children, usually those a bit younger than he of doing things.
We got my foot in the door by doing some psych testing with Sarah. I had a booklet in front of her (thing costs about $200) that we use for the tests. Sarah proceeded to slowly rip one page at a time while looking me in the eye. I have a pretty good poker face. She asked me what I was going to do about it. I said “nothing”. She continued. After a while she admitted that she was surprised I had not reacted yet. I told her it wasn’t my booklet and that “I just work here”. That actually was why she stopped.
The next 9 hours I spent with Sarah continued with this kind of stuff. The most uncomfortable part was that she just stared at me constantly and tried to read my face. I think she was really thrown off by my lack of expression. When she was observed with her parents she did the exact same thing. Child protective services was already well involved and everyone was kind of unsure what to do about this kid. She was (fortunately or unfortunately) about to move across the country and into a heavily wooded area. I remember her dad somewhat sadly joking “at least the animals there might fight back”. I remember the parents just seemed scared. About 6 months after she moved one of the worst fires in the history of the area happened and destroyed entire towns. I’ve always wondered if it was Sarah.
When telling that “he kept thinking about how k**ling people would be more fun than “lame” animals” (stray cats and dogs and everything else he could catch). Only 11 years old.
I typed out a long response to this but then deleted it because I couldn’t really describe it without giving too many details away. One thing I will say is that psychopaths aren’t all your classic mu**derous criminals. Sometimes the nicest people you’ll meet are psychopaths, and it’s all an act to manipulate you to do what they want, or think a certain way about them, because that makes them feel like they’ve won and/or are superior to you. Watch out for the nice guys.
When i was a student we had an interview with a lady that k**led her baby child with a handgun because it cried so much that she couldn’t take it. At first we weren’t told that she was a psychopath and we were just told to listen to her side of the story. She was reading us from her journal that she made while she was in the institution. Not once did she mention that she was sad that her baby died, or how what she did was bad.
She was just reading angry toughts about her husband that left her and turned her in the police about what she did. She was justifying the k**ling because the baby was so unbearable and once she mentioned that she was angry and mad that her husband did not believe her that she didn’t have any other choice but to k**l the baby. She was very smart and well spoken and the whole time she was speaking she was trying to make us feel sorry for her for beeing locked up. We later learned that sometimes she was lying about not k*****g her baby and other times just brag about it, depending on who she was speaking with. Very normal looking person and very good speaker.
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