17x14: We Call Them Larry

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01] This podcast contains adult language and content. The stories shared in this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_01] Recently, some friends and I stayed in what had to be the third most shady hotel in Vegas, which for Vegas is saying something. And I recounted to my friends what I considered to be an amusing childhood story about the time my family stayed in an even shadier so-called hotel. Rather than them being amused, however, I managed to inadvertently traumatize the entirety of my company.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_01] I decided that this would be a good place to share this story, given the reaction of my buddies. What follows is completely true and everyone who was there swears by this narrative. When I was five years old, my family took a road trip to upstate New York to see my paternal grandmother. We were also going to tour around the countryside a bit with her.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_01] We were planning on staying in a bed and breakfast my father had booked ahead of time, which sat in a rural part of upstate that was pretty far away from where my grandmother actually lives. It had been an unexpectedly long drive due to an impending storm and weather complications, and when we found the B&B in question, we were all quite tired.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_01] We went up to the door to check in, and a woman missing her two front teeth on both the top and bottom answered. She invited us in and warned us that they didn't have any room for the night. They were booked solid. My father protested, stating that he had made the arrangements in advance, but she said she knew of another hotel just up the way that had a vacancy, and that she would give them a call, assuring him that they would offer the same rates.

[00:02:30] [SPEAKER_01] Before she called them, though, she insisted on showing my parents around, claiming that her husband was an artist and that she wanted them to see his studio and famous artwork. We were all invited in, but after seeing the first few pieces of naked women missing their front teeth or being bound and tortured in various ways, my parents opted to leave my siblings and me outside with grandma.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01] Apparently, most of the rooms were full to the ceiling with similarly foreboding imagery of dead and dying people, with the occasional sculpture of menacing animals. My parents were a bit creeped out, but just figured that these people were eccentric, and that we had dodged a bullet by needing to stay somewhere else.

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_01] While the woman called her friend at the hotel, we all waited out back beside a fire pit, containing what could only be described as some kind of altar, which was covered with pentagrams.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_01] My mother mentioned that it seemed strange that not only had they not met the husband, who was supposedly there somewhere during a full house tour, but that there hadn't been a single sign of life, or a piece of luggage suggesting that anyone else was even staying in any of the guest rooms in this supposedly fully booked B&B. By the time we arrived at the hotel, the storm was upon us.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_01] We were greeted by a different woman, who was also conspicuously missing her two front teeth, upper and lower. The so-called hotel was just her house, but we were all exhausted, and there was nowhere else to stay anywhere near there. My dad decided that we would make do with whatever they had to offer. What they had to offer was a slightly renovated barn.

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_01] During the bustle of moving our luggage in, the woman kept inviting my three-year-old brother and me into the house, saying that she had some sweets, and wouldn't we like to meet her kitties? Unlike the first B&B, however, she made it clear that my parents were not welcome in the house, because it was too messy and she would be embarrassed. My parents herded us both into the barn and told us not to talk to the lady.

[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_01] My father, who was by this time pretty creeped out, went about checking the beds and the security of this one-room barn unit. The windows had no coverings whatsoever, and the doors had no locks. We placed pillows from the couches in the window frames, and my dad started to move a dresser in front of the door to block it. He quickly discovered, though, that the dresser was on wheels, which were completely silent.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_01] He also noticed that when he shifted the dresser, the wall behind it moved a little. Upon scrutinizing the wall further, he found a seam. He pushed on the wall, and it gave way. That section of quote-unquote wall was actually two invisible doors that opened outward into the night. Parked just outside of them was a dark-colored van, which had been backed up to the opening.

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_01] Livid, my dad went about rearranging all the furniture in the room, stacking the heaviest against the outward-swinging doors, and moving the mobile dresser with various loud objects piled on top of it against the main door. On why we didn't just leave? Well, the storm was bad, and we didn't know the area at all. This was also before GPS or cell phones, and my parents had some kids and an elderly person with them.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_01] So, I think that creating a defensible perimeter made sense to them at the time. By the time he completed this, and we were starting to settle down, it was around 11pm, and the woman brought us freshly baked blueberry muffins. I don't know if she acknowledged my dad's improvised security setup. As I had mentioned before, I don't remember much of the trip. But what I do remember vividly are the muffins.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01] With the inclement weather, and the rush to find a place to stay, complimented by the utter lack of restaurants or anything else in the area, we hadn't had what one might consider a proper meal. When you're five, dinner is very important, and these muffins were freshly baked and smelled heavenly. I wanted a blueberry muffin more than I wanted anything else in the world, however, presuming, probably correctly,

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01] that they were poisoned or that something else was wrong about them, especially since the entire thing was beginning to feel like a horror movie. My mother absolutely forbade us from even going near them, instead putting them on a high shelf. I was so angry, and I went to bed hungry and irritable. During the night, my parents obviously slept very lightly, and they claimed they kept hearing talking outside.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_01] My infant sister also woke us all up with blood-curdling screams at around 1am for no reason, which was strange because she was usually a very quiet baby. We packed up early the next morning and waited for the lady so that we could pay and leave. While my parents were packing up the bags into their car, the woman came around the back and gave both my brother and I small wooden cats carved into the form of napkin holders,

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_01] which were different colors. She had written little notes on them. My father loaded us up in the car and then paid the woman, who waved to us with her gap-toothed grin, as we drove away. People listening to this story seemed appalled at the fact that I still have that wooden cat, and that it's sitting in my bedroom. It has been for years.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_01] But as a kid, I just thought the B&B was a cool old building with some cats and a nice lady, so I've kept it for over two decades. I know it all sounds very strange, but I can only assure you that it matches well with the memory of the events, and all of the adults were there to tell the same story. And two of them are not known to exaggerate at all. I recently found the website for the B&B.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_01] It's still running, just with different owners. But they seem like nice people who have improved it quite a bit. Personally, I'm glad that it's just a weird story we can look back on with confusion, and that nothing stranger happened that night.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_01] Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went for a routine shopping trip at Walmart. It's not usually where we shop, but we were a couple of towns over that day, and it was the closest store. We split up once we got there, because she usually likes to browse around while I grab groceries and snacks for the week. After around 20 minutes or so, she came up to me saying that she thought that there was a guy following her around and taking videos of her ass.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_01] She said that at one point, he had pretended to drop a box of cookies so he could bend down and point his camera up at her. We decided to wait in an aisle for a while to see if he'd come around, and she had been right. He walked past us three separate times each time he was looking at us nervously, and he had his phone at his hip pointed towards her. The third time, he actually came into the aisle

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01] and pointed his camera right at my girlfriend as he walked past her uncomfortably close. It was so obvious what he was doing, but he clearly thought he was being sneaky by pretending to hold his phone naturally while he went through the motions of shopping. We found an employee and informed him of what was happening. He came back with two other employees who I assume were security or managers, and they told us that if they saw him,

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_01] they'd have him removed from the store. But then, the creep decided to come back a fourth time, and he knew he was caught the second he did, because he looked like a deer in headlights. The manager stopped him and asked, Hey, have you been filming women? He denied it, until the manager threatened to call the cops. The little creep was shaking like a leaf. It was actually kind of pathetic. He was a very short man,

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_01] and was clearly physically intimidated by the security guards. They escorted him away, and I assume they evicted him from the store. And the manager told us that he'd make sure the videos were deleted. This is just a reminder to always be aware of your surroundings in public, because you never know who might be following you.

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[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_01] I'm 23 years old, and this story first started during this year's solar eclipse. I live in a small village, and there's a place near the edge of the forest where you can sit on some benches and look over the entire village towards the city. That day, a good friend of mine and I went there to watch the solar eclipse. We've known each other forever, and we had lost contact for a couple of years

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_01] and had just started talking again, so it was nice to have a chance to hang out. Quite a few other people had gathered to watch the eclipse as well, especially families. They were all sitting about 50 to 60 meters away from us. At some point, my friend suddenly realized that he had left the oven on, and all of our stuff was spread out across the benches. We didn't want to lose our spot, so he ran home to check the oven,

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_01] and I was left there alone. And then I saw him. A relatively young man was walking towards me from the distance. He wasn't just walking normally, though. He was walking in my direction very quickly and very directly. I immediately had a bad feeling about him, and my first thought was, why is he walking straight towards me? So I texted my friend, and I told him what was happening.

[00:15:44] [SPEAKER_01] The man stopped right in front of me and asked, can I sit here? I said, no, I'm waiting for someone. But he didn't really react. He had absolutely no expression on his face. He spoke in a completely flat, monotone voice. No emotion, no gestures, nothing. Then he looked directly into my eyes and asked, can I sit here until someone else comes? And before I could even respond,

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01] he just sat down, even though there were plenty of other empty benches. I immediately grabbed all of my stuff, including my friend's things, and moved them closer to me. I said, yeah, I'll make a little space for you. Then I took my bag and grabbed my pepper spray, just in case. And even though this man hadn't actually done anything to me, my body was shaking. I want to explain something here.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_01] I'm definitely someone who can be a little suspicious of people. I pay attention to who I'm talking to, and I usually notice when somebody gives me a strange feeling. But I don't actually get scared easily. I have no problem talking to strangers. In fact, I kind of like it. I've met so many different kinds of people in my life, and normally I can deal with pretty much anyone. But that's why this situation was so alarming. I had never experienced a person who made me feel like this.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_01] My body was literally shaking. It was like it was trying to tell me something before my brain could even understand it. And that was probably the strangest part, because technically, he wasn't doing anything. He wasn't threatening me. He wasn't touching me. He wasn't even saying anything obviously dangerous, but something about him felt completely wrong. He just stared at me. And I know this sounds strange, but his eyes looked dead. They were totally empty.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_01] He started asking me questions. He asked who I was waiting for. I said, A friend. And immediately texted my friend again. Please hurry. I don't know why, but this guy is freaking me out. He hasn't done anything, but he really scares me. The man looked at me for a long time and then asked, Who are you waiting for? Again, I said, A friend. Then, for the first time, his voice sounded slightly different. It wasn't as tense

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_01] or completely monotone anymore. It almost sounded relieved. He said, My friends are all very, very far away. I nervously laughed and said, Yeah, a lot of my friends had moved away too. He looked at me and said, No. I didn't really understand what he meant, but he said it with zero emotion, no smile or anything. At that point, even though I was definitely uncomfortable and still shaking,

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_01] I wasn't extremely scared because there were still a lot of other people around us. Like I said, they were probably 50 meters away, so I knew I wasn't completely alone. I kept telling myself, Maybe it's nothing. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. There are other people here. I'm fine. But then he started asking me much more personal questions. He asked me where I lived. He asked me who I lived with. And then he said,

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_01] You live around here too, right? But the way that he said it was strange. It sounded like he already knew. But I had never seen this man before in my life. He kept asking me things about where I lived, who I lived with, and how many people I was close to. Or whether I had many people that I regularly stayed in contact with. The questions became more and more disturbing. And then the solar eclipse was slowly coming to an end.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_01] The families and the other people around us started packing their things and leaving. And that was when I started getting really scared. Not because other people were leaving, but because I realized that soon there would be almost nobody left. I would be alone with this strange man at the edge of the forest. Luckily, my friend returned almost exactly at the right moment. He had seen my messages and came back quickly. When my friend arrived, the last families were also leaving.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01] The moment the man saw my friend, he immediately stood up, looked at him and said, good evening, and walked away. My friend looked at me and immediately said, what the fuck? He also thought that the guy was really creepy. I remember wondering what the hell had been wrong with him. I thought that that would be the end of it. But it wasn't. A few days later, I was taking the train home from work. I was sitting towards the back, but there were plenty of seats behind me that were empty.

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_01] The man got on at the front, and the second he noticed me, he looked directly at me. He stared at me the entire time and didn't look away. Then he walked past me and sat somewhere behind my seat, where he stayed for the rest of the ride. When I got off the train, I purposely went in a direction that would make it difficult for someone still on the train to see where I was going. But then, I noticed him walking right behind me.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01] He was walking very quickly, following me. Luckily, there was a small convenience store nearby, so I suddenly turned into it and pretended to be looking at something. I stayed there for quite a while, and when I looked outside, I saw him standing and waiting, and I swear, it looked like he took a picture of me. Again, I started shaking. I couldn't even say a word, and that's what scared me the most. Like I said before, I'm not normally someone

[00:21:40] [SPEAKER_01] who gets scared easily, but something about this man made my body react before my brain could even understand what was happening. Eventually, he must have realized I wasn't coming out, and he simply walked away. After that, I didn't see him for a while, until one morning. I recently got a new job, and I have to take the train to work at a different time, around 5 a.m. But I noticed him again. At the time, I was carrying a backpack

[00:22:10] [SPEAKER_01] with the logo of my company on it, and he must have seen it because, a few days later, I found him near my workplace. He was walking around an area where he didn't really have any reason to be. I didn't go outside. I don't even know if he saw me. I have no idea. I honestly don't know what to think about any of this anymore. I recently saw him again, just as I was walking to the train. The thing is, I live on a street

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_01] where there are basically only two possible ways to go, and one of them leads to where I live, while the rest of the area is basically a dead end. So, now I wonder, what if he knows where I live? Or, have I just become paranoid? Summer reminds me

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[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_01] when this all happened. I was waiting for the bus so that I could head back home and when the bus arrived, a man got off, which was obviously normal. But the thing is, he got off the bus, I got on, and then he got on again. On the bus, I was minding my own business. But the guy was reciting poems to people and then asking for money. But he wasn't an awkward 20-something, he was a grown man

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_01] who seemed fully lucid and like a functional member of society. He looked strong, not gym heavy, but stronger than you might think. Now, I never give people money, but the guy scared me. My gut feeling about him was bad. I decided to play nice so he would leave me alone. He finally approached me and this is when it got weird. He said the usual, then asked for money, and I gave it to him. But then he stopped,

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_01] looked me dead in the eye, and said, My favorite color is purple. Since I was just playing nice, I said, Me too. He paused and said, Yeah, it shows. Then he walked away and left the bus at the next stop. But here's the thing. I wasn't wearing anything purple. Everything I had on was black. Nothing was even close to purple. Not my phone case, not my shoes, nothing.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_01] So why did he say that? I realized that one week before that incident, I had been heading home, doing my exact same routine, but I was wearing a bright purple shirt. I typically don't like wearing that shirt when I'm out on the street because men tend to stare at me more, but I had decided to wear it that day to get over my goddamn paranoia. He must have been watching me way before I even knew of his existence,

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_01] and his comment about me loving purple was him, I don't know, teasing me. The second time I saw him was some weeks later, and the same thing happened. I was waiting at the bus stop to head home, and when the bus arrived, he got off. But this time, I recognized him, and I got angry. I wasn't going to be stuck on the bus with this guy a second time, nor was I interested in finding out whatever he had in mind, so I walked away

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01] instead of getting onto the bus. But instead of him getting back on the bus like he did last time, he started walking in my direction following me. Luckily, I had put some distance between us, and I was walking very quickly, so eventually I lost him. The third time I saw him was different. I had always come across him later in the day, but this time it was in the morning while I was on my way to university. I got onto the bus and then suddenly

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_01] he was there too. It was like he somehow freaking spawned on that bus because he got on so quickly. I panicked and started gathering my belongings to quickly get off the bus again because something about the guy scared me. But he stopped me from moving by placing his finger on my hand and telling me not to put my stuff away. It felt nasty. I don't know how else to explain it. It was like he was enjoying my fear.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_01] Then he did the usual, saying whatever and asking people for money. When he was done, he placed himself in front of the exit, standing there casually. I knew that as soon as I exited the bus he was going to follow me again so I decided to test him. My stop came and I didn't get up. If this had all been a crazy coincidence, he had to get off first since he was in front of the door.

[00:29:02] [SPEAKER_01] I was far away from the exit so if I was going to get off, I'd have to prepare and stand up earlier to reach the exit in time. Instead, I didn't move, pretending I wasn't getting off. He didn't get off. He just stood there without any hint of moving. At the last second, I jumped up and bolted for the door before it closed, successfully slipping out of the bus, and he got off right after me. As I walked, he followed me.

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_01] At this point, I was so tired of him that I literally walked in a circle. If, for some crazy reason, you think that this was a coincidence, there was no way that I fucking walked in a circle and he coincidentally walked in a circle too. So after he followed me in a complete circle like an idiot, he suddenly walked off in the opposite direction. I stopped taking that route for other reasons, and he never followed me again. I haven't seen him since,

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_01] and I never got to know what he was up to, but perhaps it's better that way. My family and I went on a trip to the Hocking Hills area of Southern Ohio a few weeks ago. The area has an abandoned ghost town called Moonville, and there's a rail tunnel in Moonville that I had always wanted to visit.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_01] I had never been to this area, so I didn't know what to expect. But I did know it was pretty deep into the woods. For context, I drive a Mercedes that I'm lucky to have, and in the car with me were my husband, who is a black man with dreadlocks, my 10-year-old non-verbal autistic son, and my 6-year-old daughter. We took a trip from our rented cabin using our phone for GPS. We started driving, and the area was,

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_01] for lack of better words, really impoverished. It had a Hills Have Eyes vibe. We were on the back roads, and literally saw only a few cars on the way there, but we finally got to the point where we needed to enter a forest. This meant that we were close to the tunnel. There was a sign that said we were entering Bubba Wood, and as soon as my husband saw that sign, he started making jokes about being axe-murdered.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_01] I tried to downplay the creepiness so the kids wouldn't get freaked out. We drove down this really creepy stone road into the forest, and there was nothing back there. No cars, nobody. But we saw signs that we were close, so we pulled into the parking lot. There was a footbridge with a ton of padlocks on it that people had put there, so we walked over to that footbridge and made our way toward the tunnel,

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_01] which ended up being a lot larger than I expected. The one end of the tunnel is near the parking lot, but the other end goes back into the woods, so we start walking through the tunnel when we hear a sound coming from the other side. That side goes into the woods. Suddenly a truck comes driving through the tunnel towards us, stops, and this guy in his 60s gets out.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01] He has a chainsaw. He proceeds to follow my entire family everywhere we go through the tunnel. If we turn to look at him, he stops and acts like he's busy. I thought that he might work for the Department of Natural Resources or something, so I tried to make small talk with him and pull some info out of him, but he really isn't budging. We turn around and walk back out of the tunnel to the parking lot. The guy starts using the chainsaw

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_01] behind us. The sound is now echoing through the tunnel. At this point, we don't have cell phone service and literally no one knows my family is out here except us. I had already been worried my car was sending the wrong idea to people, like we have money or something. We don't. So, we rush back across the footbridge to the parking lot and get to the car so we can put the kids in their booster seats. Suddenly, this creep comes driving

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_01] over the footbridge in his truck heading towards us in the parking lot. I honestly don't even know how this truck fit on it. He stops again, gets out of his truck and starts walking in the other direction, much to our relief. But about this time, I notice that there are dusty handprints on my car. I ask my husband if they are his and we compared his hand and my son's to the prints but they didn't match. I don't know

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_01] who could have touched the car because we were with the chainsaw man the entire time we were there. We drive out of there as fast as possible, retracing our route through the woods and along the stony road that we had taken to get in. Then, in my rearview mirror, there's a bunch of dust getting kicked up behind us. And there he is. He had to have driven very fast on the stone road to catch up to us like that. There is nowhere to go to

[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_01] in these woods. The road is basically one lane and we have no cell service or GPS. Every time I think we lose him, there he is again. I'm waiting for my tires to get popped or for this guy to ram me off the road into a ravine. Finally, we get out of the woods and turn onto a main road and he's still following. We printed out directions ahead of time in case we lost our GPS signal and we were following these printed directions to get back,

[00:34:57] [SPEAKER_01] but because of the stress of this guy following us, I had turned the wrong way onto this main road. Luckily though, the guy in his truck is finally gone, so I turn around. This means we have to drive past the stone road that goes into the forest. As we pass it, I see that there is one lone house near the road. Parked next to it is the man's truck. He had to have seen us drive onto this road into the woods

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_01] and he must have taken some way back to the tunnel. I don't know if it was motivated by race, since we didn't see many people of color anywhere in that area, or if he was just trying to protect the site from graffiti or what, but he really creeped us out. It was like every scary movie trope rolled into one single event.

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[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_01] I used to be super anti-social media. But I recently got Snapchat and Instagram again because I was feeling bored. I added a bunch of friends, family, and a few random people and this was my first mistake. I had been entertaining a lot of guys who were giving me compliments, although that's as far as it typically went. One of the guys was named Louis. He had been very kind to me, saying all the right things and telling me

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_01] what I wanted to hear. And after we talked a little bit more, we decided to hang out. I didn't recall him telling me his age, but I knew he was slightly older, maybe 19 or 20, so not a huge deal. Louis and I made plans for a Wednesday night, but I ended up being too tired. I told him that Friday would work better, and he suggested that we go to breakfast. My school has a two-hour delayed start on Fridays,

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_01] and I also don't have first period, so I had three hours off on that Friday morning. We met at a church and then took a walk along the nearby creek. We'd talked quite a bit when he suddenly seemed to remember our plans, because he said, oh, let's go get breakfast. We got in our cars, then met back up at High Hop and had breakfast. I like to talk a lot, so he just let me talk about myself,

[00:39:06] [SPEAKER_01] and he was engaged when I asked him questions about himself. He told me about his cats that he likes to walk, his job in a hospital kitchen, and some personal stuff. He also paid. I couldn't really tell if he had any weird intentions at the time. I went to school and had a normal day, after which I had work, and then went to a birthday party. Louis had been texting me and asking me about

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_01] hanging out after the birthday party. I had seen his texts and wondered, why so soon? But I impulsively agreed. I dropped my car off and changed into more casual clothes since I didn't know what we were going to do. He ended up taking me to a very isolated trail about 20 minutes or so from home. I instantly realized I had made a mistake and that I was quite literally fucked.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01] He started being really weird towards me. He was holding my hand, grabbing me, kissing my head, and rubbing his nose against mine. It was so strange, but it only got worse. We went on a walk and then stopped to sit down on a log. I was so frightened, but I tried to play it cool and be collected. He had really creeped me out by this point, and then I smelled alcohol on his breath.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01] I thought to myself, at least I told my mom I loved her. I tried to text people, but he would look at my phone and question me. The only time he wasn't looking, I was able to text my sister-in-law, but she had unfortunately been asleep at this point. I finally said, let's leave. And we walked back to his car. On the drive to my house, he was grabbing my thighs really, really hard.

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_01] And even though I told him to stop and that it made me uncomfortable, he kept pushing me in my boundaries and made me explain why I wasn't an affectionate person. I was so genuinely scared, but he was taking the correct turns to get to my house, and that was the only thing that reassured me that I was going to be okay. Things were really uncomfortable and weird by the time I stepped out of his car and walked to my house.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_01] As soon as I locked my front door, I blocked him. The next day, I was hanging out at some friends and telling them about the night before. Since I had blocked Louis, I used one of their phones to look up his Snapchat. When I showed it to my best friend, she got a confused look on her face. Seemingly forgetting that we were talking about the creepy guy from the night before, she asked, Why are you showing me Louis? Another of our friends explained to her

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_01] that Louis was the guy I had been talking about from last night, and my best friend immediately looked at me with shock. Given the encounter I had with him, I was scared all over again and asked her to spit it out. My best friend grew up with a girl named Anna, and the two were still friends. Anna had even given me a free car wash at the car wash that she works at. So suddenly I understood why my best friend had looked so confused when she told me,

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_01] Louis is Anna's boyfriend and he's 22. A pit formed in my stomach and we immediately called Anna. She was with him when she answered the phone. I felt sick. My entire body was filled with fear when I had to tell Anna about Louis and explain everything that had happened with him the night before. Unfortunately, I don't think she believed any of it. She hung up and hasn't said much to my best friend

[00:43:02] [SPEAKER_01] over text since. Lesson learned, don't go out with people that you don't know in isolated settings or if you only know them on Snapchat. After this, I removed every guy I ever entertained and anyone I didn't know off Snapchat. Ladies, please stay safe.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_01] My sister lives in an apartment complex. Yesterday, she called me saying that she saw one of her neighbors who lives in the building across from her with a weird face. She said that it looked uncanny, like a doll or a mannequin, or like he had human skin glued to his actual face. She explained that there was this white line, maybe glue or something, surrounding the mask, connecting his actual face to the one he was wearing.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_01] The first time she saw him, yesterday, she had been walking from her apartment to her car, and as she approached her car, he got out of his truck, looked at her, and then walked to his apartment. We obviously thought that this was weird, but figured he was doing some sort of costume or special effects makeup. That brings us to today, the day after this initial encounter. I pulled into my sister's complex, parked my car

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_01] right by her building, and started walking to her door. She had mentioned that yesterday this man drove a white truck. I noticed the truck, and since I was curious, I stopped to look at it. The mannequin man was in the driver's seat, he was sitting perfectly still, facing me, not moving. He had a mannequin face, black slits for the eyes, no mouth, and was wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie with the hood

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_01] pulled up over the hat. I can't describe the feeling I had when I saw this. I've never had a worse feeling in my gut. This guy was so still that I thought he genuinely was a mannequin. I just tried to ignore him, but I still sprinted to her door, opened it, and immediately locked it when I got inside. Our plan was to go to the gym, so about 15 minutes later, we walked out to her car. I glanced over at the truck and noticed

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_01] that it was running. He was still in the driver's seat, still wearing the mask, not moving. My sister was obviously shaken and called her property manager while we were sitting in her car. Luckily, the manager was already on her way home, so when she arrived, she pulled in next to the man in the white truck. A few seconds later, she walked over to our car confused. No one had been sitting in the truck. The mannequin man was gone, so just like he had done

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_01] yesterday, he'd once sat in the truck while wearing a creepy mask, waited for my sister to come outside, watched her walk to her car, and then went into his apartment. We're unsure of what to do next. The thing that worries me the most is that he's been sitting there in that creepy mannequin mask, watching my sister go to her car around the same time for two days in a row. It seems like he's watching her schedule or something. I'm worried for her safety.

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_01] I don't know if I'm overreacting because I'm her brother or if there's anything I could actually do. The manager suggested an apartment inspection because she had heard reports of shouting and crying coming from the man's apartment. I suggested having the police do a wellness check, but the mannequin man would know who reported him if they didn't find anything. And I don't want to put a target on my sister's back if there isn't already one there.

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[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_01] payment options. That's BetterHelp.com slash not meet. I live decently in a flat, but we never had much money growing up. I was the kid who didn't have as many Pokemon cards as the other children. My home wasn't exactly the kind of place you proudly showed your friends. I remember bringing a friend home once and seeing the slight look of disgust on his face.

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_01] We were that kind of poor. Somehow, though, I never really wanted to leave. A lot of weird things happened in that flat while I was growing up, though. Because we didn't have much money, we kept one of those old cathode ray tube TVs, or CRTs, for far longer than we probably should have. I hated that TV. Even when we turned it off, I'd sometimes hear murmurs coming from it.

[00:49:44] [SPEAKER_01] I would turn it back on and listen to whatever program was playing, but the voices weren't the same. I hated it. One of my friends eventually explained that old TVs could pick up some kind of radio interference. I preferred my explanation. I thought it was talking to the dead. Then there was Watermelon. Watermelon was my cat, and he did that creepy thing that apparently all cats do.

[00:50:13] [SPEAKER_01] He saw things. Or at least, he stared at things. There was one particular spot on the ceiling, directly above the headboard of my mother's bed, and he would stare at it all the time. There were other things, too. Sometimes, I don't even want to talk about them. Things that felt so cursed that talking about them seemed like inviting them back into the world. Almost all of those things happened in my mother's

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_01] bedroom. I rarely went there except to reach the balcony and water the plants. Sometimes, I think my mom lives between two worlds. Anyway, not long ago, I was getting ready to sleep. It must have been around 3 a.m. I don't stay awake that late very often anymore, but that night, I had entertained myself by watching somebody play a horror game. I was sleepy when something caught my attention.

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_01] It was my mom. She was walking through the hallway. I raised my head. Maybe I could say goodnight. I waited for her to turn on the light, but she didn't. That was strange, but not that strange. Maybe she was going to the bathroom and just didn't want to wake me up in case I was asleep, but then she stopped in the kitchen. I should mention that I have terrible eyesight, but very good hearing.

[00:51:43] [SPEAKER_01] I know the way my mother walks. She loves to drag her feet. What I heard sounded like my mother's walk, perfectly. I waited for the kitchen light to turn on, but there was nothing. She just stood there in the darkness. Then I heard cracking noises. Was she eating something at three in the morning? Okay, that's weird. I called out. Mom?

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_01] Nothing. Maybe she was sleepwalking. I tried again. Mom? Still nothing. I called even louder. Mom! Then, her confused, muffled voice came from the bedroom. Huh? I froze. I then ran toward her bedroom. In retrospect, that was probably incredibly

[00:52:42] [SPEAKER_01] stupid, but I didn't think about it at all. I just reacted. The kitchen is between my bedroom and hers, and as I passed it, I saw that nobody was there. This led me to believe that what I heard must have been rats. That summer had been incredibly hot, and we'd already had a few unwanted visitors inside the flat. A tiny mouse, a cockroach, things like that. But this had felt different.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_01] My mom and I stayed awake for a while and searched our apartment. We didn't find anything, and we eventually went back to our rooms. Ten minutes later, my mom called my name, asking, Is that you in the hallway? A few seconds later, she opened my door. I was still sitting at my computer, and I said, No, you heard it too? My mom said that she thought she heard something. I responded,

[00:53:42] [SPEAKER_01] I hate this house. She just laughed, exhausted, and went back to bed. Eventually, so did I. If I hadn't run so quickly to my mother's room, and found the kitchen completely empty, I probably would have assumed that we'd had our first intruder. But I didn't hear anyone running away. There weren't any footsteps, no windows moving, nothing. And as I said, it had been an extremely

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_01] hot summer. Our windows were wide open. Over the next few days, we realized there were some kind of rodents living in the neighbor's gardens. They squealed and made other strange noises at night, especially when it rained. whatever they were, they seemed to absolutely hate the rain. Sometimes when it rained, they would even scratch at my shutters, so I started keeping the shutters

[00:54:41] [SPEAKER_01] closed whenever the weather was bad, even if I left the windows behind them open. This is where I should probably explain who Larry is. I call everything that happens around here that I can't put a friendly face to, Larry. Things need names. Names make them cuter. Names make them easier to live with. The ghost that Watermelon used to stare at was the first Larry.

[00:55:11] [SPEAKER_01] Whatever entered my kitchen that night was Larry as well. That's its name now. We started trying to figure out what Larry actually was, mostly because we wanted to keep it outside. Here's what we know. Larry is probably some kind of nocturnal rodent. Larry likes to talk sometimes. Larry makes the neighbors dogs extremely nervous. Sometimes you know Larry is around because all of the dogs suddenly start

[00:55:41] [SPEAKER_01] barking for seemingly no reason. I live upstairs, so Larry can apparently move horizontally along the walls. Larry hates the rain. We are especially careful about closing the windows when it rains now. When I mentioned all of this to my mother, she reminded me of something else. There is a squirrel around here that seems almost domesticated. It's unusually small. I'll call her Mini Larry.

[00:56:10] [SPEAKER_01] I have also arbitrarily decided that Mini Larry is a girl. But squirrels aren't nocturnal, so Mini Larry doesn't explain Larry. A few days passed, and then someone knocked on our door. when my mom answered, it was one of our upstairs neighbors. My mom came to get me because she wasn't really sure what to do with this request. She told me, he says

[00:56:40] [SPEAKER_01] he forgot his keys inside his apartment and wants to use our balcony to get to his. I replied, okay. I went to the door in my pajamas, since I obviously hadn't been expecting visitors, and the man explained the situation again. He told me that he was a climber. Something about it didn't feel right. Our apartment wasn't exactly the easiest one to use if he wanted to reach his apartment.

[00:57:09] [SPEAKER_01] He lived upstairs. It seemed like it would have made much more sense to ask one of the neighbors on his own floor for help. But he assured me everything would be fine. And again, he reminded me he was a climber. I didn't like it, but I eventually did let him inside. Mostly I was worried that he was going to hurt himself. His son was with him, a teenager, but he stayed outside our front door. My mother and I accompanied

[00:57:39] [SPEAKER_01] the man to the balcony. At first, I expected him to look at the distance, attempt it for a few seconds, and realize how insanely dangerous it was and give up. But he didn't. He grabbed one of the columns connecting our balcony to the one above. He wasn't particularly tall, maybe around 1.7 meters, but he climbed onto our balcony's railing. Standing there, balancing over the drop, his hands could barely reach the balcony above ours. I remember thinking,

[00:58:08] [SPEAKER_01] this is an awful idea. Then he moved. He slid his entire body upward and onto his balcony. No hesitation, no struggle, and it only took a few seconds. I had been afraid I was about to watch somebody fall. Instead, what I saw frightened me for entirely different reasons. It was so easy for him. It was so silent, completely silent.

[00:58:39] [SPEAKER_01] I looked at the wall, then at my balcony, then at the open windows, and I thought about the footsteps in the hallway, the noises in the kitchen, the scratching outside. All those nights when the dogs suddenly started barking, I thought about how I had been trying to figure out what kind of animal could move along the walls of the apartment building without making a sound. And for the first time, I wondered

[00:59:08] [SPEAKER_01] if Larry had ever been an animal at all. Thanks for listening. If you have a story to share, make sure you send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. If you're tired of ads and you want to get bonus stories every single week, go to patreon.com forward slash letsnotmeetpodcast to sign up and support the show today. You'll get ad-free versions of all of the episodes at a higher

[00:59:38] [SPEAKER_01] bit rate, plus bonus stories every single week in our episode extensions. If you're already a patron, make sure you stick around your extension. Be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radio Cast wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash cryptic county. This week you have heard Satan's B&B by Sign Knox, Let's Not Meet Again by IDK1233, Creep at Walmart by I Am Not the Walrus, He Told

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_01] Me My Favorite Color by Lower Ty6813, Mannequin Man by Jackson, The Chainsaw Man by Semlet, Creepy First Dates by Sierra Tapia, and finally I Call Them Larry by Hazel Lou Woodus. I think I'm saying that right. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.

[01:00:37] [SPEAKER_01] We'll see you all next week. Everybody stay safe.

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_01] I've always had weird, creepy

[01:01:10] [SPEAKER_01] things happen to me.