Laura narrowly escaped a man with a rusty knife. Now people think it was the NSW 'serial killer'.

Last month Kayley was walking alone in the Northern NSW suburb of Suffolk Park at about 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, when a car pulled up beside her.

A young couple was inside, and the woman in the passenger seat looked startled.

"She was looking at me, and then looking behind me at something and she looks terrified," Kayley explained on TikTok, in a video that's since gone viral.

Watch: Kayley's story. Post continues after video.

When Kayley followed her gaze she spotted a man a couple of metres behind her. He was dressed in clothes that immediately stood out as odd, in particularly Kayley noticed he was wearing gloves.

"I looked at this man and I felt terror," she said.

"The thing is for that man to be as close to me as he was, he had to have run up on me. Because I had already been checking behind me, because I am just that kind of person."

As soon as she spotted him, he disappeared down a side street, but Kayley couldn't shake the feeling that she'd had a "really close encounter with something really evil".

Kayley informed the local police, but found them quite dismissive. Her TikTok comment section on the other hand, was flooded with similar experiences.

Last week, NSW MP Jeremy Buckingham addressed state parliament, stating that "the worst serial killer in the nation's history has gotten away with it".

In an impassioned speech, he noted the scores of unsolved cases on the NSW North Coast, that shared "alarming similarity".

He pointed out that many of the women had been picked up hitch-hiking or walking, with many of their bodies found dumped in remote areas, if they were even found at all.

Listen to The Quicky interview the women who may have come into contact with evil in Byron. Post continues below.

According to a Daily Telegraph investigation, there are 64 women who have have been murdered or have gone missing in the area over the last 30 years.

They include a number of disappearances around Newcastle in the 70s; including 18-year-old Robyn Hickie who was last seen at a bus stop in April 1979. Eight months later 14-year-old Amanda Robinson vanished while walking home near Swansea.

The following year, 17-year-old Anni Tominac and 18-year-old Joy Hodgins went missing after a night out at a club in the city.

The cases examined range from the Central Coast, all the way up to the Gold Coast of NSW.

@heykayley Replying to @Dontwaitforareply Discussing the Northern NSW serial k*llings 😶 I'm not saying my situation is connected bcos of course no one can know that- but I'm seeing a lot of you message me about it so i thought I'd address it. I started tracking cases after I noticed the patterns once I posted my video and then I got overwhelmed and stopped... until this week when I learned about the list of 67 missing or 💀 women in Northern NSW and holy sh*t… this is big #nsw #truecrime #australia ♬ original sound - kayley 🌻

As Buckingham told parliament, "I've been called, by some alarmist, because my view and the view of senior police like Detective Gary McEvoy who investigated these matters from Coffs Harbour, is that they were and are linked."

"This week I met with senior police who confirmed… the most senior police in this state tell us there were causal links in some of these matters," he added.

He, with the support of Greens MP Sue Higginson, called on Premier Chris Minns to hold a special commission of inquiry, but that has been rejected amid suggestions a new police Task Force be set up to investigate the unsolved cases.

Women, like Kayley, are continuing to share their close encounters.

Laura recalls a close call she had in Byron Bay in 2008 when she and a friend decided to hitchhike to Suffolk Park - the same area Kayley mentioned.

A van pulled over to their out-stretched thumbs, and while her friend hopped in the back, Laura made her way to the front where a man in his 30s was driving.

"I go to jump in the front and there is a big knife on the front seat. Instead of getting the f*** out of there, I said 'do you mind if I just put this on the floor.'

@laurac1are One of my many not so responsible decisions in my 20s #byronbay #truecrime #closecall #hitchhiking #creepy ♬ original sound - LauraC1are

"So we're driving along…I just don't have any spidey senses. But I am curious so I go, 'what's the knife for?' He goes 'I'm a chef.' It's the rustiest knife, sitting out of packaging on a seat, which he was happy for me to put on the floor. It had no other knives with it, it wasn't in like a chef's case thing."

Laura finally realised she needed to get out, feigning that they'd reached their destination and asking to be dropped off in a highly populated area. He pulled over and let them out.

"He could have just been a really nice guy, who was an unemployed chef with a really rusty knife. Or he could have been a murderer," she said.

Since posting her video, like Kayley, Laura has been inundated with similar stories.

"In the last 24 hours I have been contacted by an unbelievable amount of women in my comments and privately about close calls, sexual assaults, drink spiking, people they know that have gone missing and murdered, and names of possible murderers…I don't know what to do."

Speaking to Mamamia, Laura added that she felt quite overwhelmed by the hundreds of stories women were sharing with her and this week reported her own incident to police.

Image: TikTok.

Of her own encounter, she had one woman say, "that sounds just like what happened to us the year before".

"There's just an overwhelming sense of women feeling they aren't being heard and they aren't safe and they don't know where to go about it," she told Mamamia.

As Buckingham pointed out to parliament, "If you look at other jurisdictions around Australia with a similar demographics, even a similar geography, there are just not those numbers.

"In the whole of Tasmania, less than 10 (cases).

"When you looked at the North Coast cases there was an alarming similarity."

If Kayley and Laura's DMs are anything to go by, there are hundreds more 'close calls' that aren't even on police's radar.

"There's so many women who have these experiences, but there's no validation, there's 'not enough information' for the police to do anything…so we have to keep talking about it," Laura told Mamamia.

Whether it's one serial killer, or several, there's something very sinister happening in communities up and down the NSW North Coast.

If you have been the victim of a crime in NSW, please reach out to CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000 or report online.

Feature image: TikTok.