Young bloke’s spooky late-night encounter reignites chilling rumour about popular tourist hotspot in Australia

A tourist has reignited theories of a serial killer lurking in Byron Bay after a chilling late-night encounter with a stranger.

Sunshine Coast content creator Bodhi Jako shared a video on Sunday recounting his experience with a man he feared could be the ‘Byron Bay Butcher’ – a suspected serial killer believed to be behind dozens of attacks in northern NSW over the past 50 years.

The theory of a serial killer being linked to over 60 disappearances since the 1970s was raised by NSW State MLC Jeremy Buckingham in October last year.

He highlighted an ‘alarming similarity’ between 67 murder and missing persons cases between Newcastle and Byron Bay and called for a special inquiry.

Mr Jako shared on Monday his own unnerving experience with an unknown stalker in mid-2024.

‘I was sleeping on the floor in my friend’s house. In the weeks leading up to this night, there had been a bunch of questionable things that happened,’ he said in a TikTok video.

‘This house belonged to two girls and they had had creepy notes and anonymous flowers dropped off and left on their front door.

‘One night they woke up to noises outside of their window, and when they opened the curtains, there was a man standing there.

‘Super sketchy, super weird.’

Mr Jako claimed the man returned, and may have entered the girls’ home had he not woken up. 

‘At about two in the morning, I just wake up for no particular reason,’ he said.

‘I just wake up, I look to my right and hear just a little bit of rustling.

‘There is a head poked through the curtains in the early hours of the morning, watching.

‘As soon as the man sees me, the head shoots back through the curtains, and that was that.’

Mr Jako was in no doubt the man he saw had ill intentions. 

‘Following this a bunch of other creepy things happened and the girls were forced to move out of the house,’ he said.

‘That guy, that poked his head through the curtain, could be the same guy responsible for all of the people that have gone missing.’

Last year, Laura, 37, and Kayley, 28, shared similar stories of their own experiences with a predator.

They were quickly inundated with messages from others who had similar experiences on the state’s North Coast. 

‘This is as far back to the 70s and as recent as last week,’ Laura told Daily Mail Australia in October.

‘People are telling me such alarming details of things that happened to them too, sexual assaults, stalking, drink spiking and even giving me names.’

Kayley, from Melbourne, ignited the conversation after she recalled being stalked by a stranger while holidaying in Byron Bay in August 2024.

‘I was walking along the road in [nearby] Suffolk Park towards the beach when a car with a couple in the front slowed down,’ she said.

‘The look of terror on their faces as they looked just past me made me turn around.

‘There was a man right behind me wearing a hat, sunglasses and gloves and I have never felt such pure evil in my life.

‘I don’t know what his intentions were for me – but I just had a gut feeling he wasn’t there to rob me.

‘It was just awful.’ 

Kayley immediately fled to the safety of the beach where her friends were waiting, but the sense that she had dodged a sinister fate has stayed with her.

‘I just knew something violent was about to happen,’ she added. 

‘This was broad daylight on a busy street and I couldn’t let it go so I reported it to the police.’ 

However, Kayley was met with an ‘exhausting experience’ of being bounced between the Byron Bay police station and her local one in Melbourne. 

‘They both kept telling me I had to report at the other one and I just couldn’t get anywhere,’ she said.  

After sharing her experience as a warning to tourists, Kayley was also inundated with messages making disturbing fresh allegations of similar attacks in recent decades.

‘There are brutal sexual assaults, people have escaped attempted kidnapping and I can see there are common similarities, ‘ she said. 

‘I don’t know how to support these people. I’m trying to tell them to tell the police but some people are scared and it is very concerning.’

The fresh spotlight on the cold case murders triggered Laura’s memory of her own terrifying experience when she hitchhiked with a friend on the 5km trip from Suffolk Park to their home in nearby Byron Bay in 2008.

A van stopped to give them a lift – but they were alarmed by what they saw inside the vehicle.

‘When I climbed into the guy’s van, I could see a huge rusty knife on the front seat and so I moved it onto the floor,’ she told Daily Mail Australia. 

‘I didn’t think much of it really and I asked him why he had the knife.’

The mysterious stranger in his 30s said he was a chef, but Laura immediately felt uneasy. 

‘I knew that knife wasn’t a kitchen knife,’ she said. ‘It was huge and rusty.

‘[And when] I asked where he worked, he said he was unemployed.’

Laura and her friend immediately made a quick exit after pretending to the driver that they had reached their destination.

She said she had almost forgotten about the encounter until this week’s revelations about the scores of unsolved murders in the area.

But Laura now believes she may also have cheated death, and has been sent scores of messages from others with fresh details of similar cases and incidents.

‘I have had people give me names of family members they think are involved,’ she says. 

‘Dads, ex-partners and mates. Many are too scared to go to the police or think that the information they have is not enough to go on. 

‘But Byron is not the place people think it is. There is a dark and dangerous underbelly.’