4x10: The Extra Key - Let's Not Meet (Feat. Sapphire Sandalo)

[00:00:03] My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 4, Episode 10 of Lets Not Meet, a true horror podcast. My guest this week is a returning favorite and friend of the show, Sapphire Sandalo. Check out her podcast at storieswithsapphire.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:40] I'm a male and I'm 30 years old. I'm a long time lets not meet lurker. I've debated sharing this for a while. A recent post by someone else about an attempted kidnapping kind of jogged my memory again so I figured I would share my experience. Well, two experiences.

[00:01:01] This first part, I really have no solid recollection of because I was so young. But it's been a story that my mom has shared with the family and friends for years. So I've heard

[00:01:13] about it many times. This would have been in the early 90s so I was probably 2 or 3 years old. I don't remember this specific trip but I do remember our routine of grocery shopping because

[00:01:26] my mom would always stop at Wendy's to get me chicken nuggets to eat while I was in the cart. I'll also mention that my mom worked nights at the same grocery store, the now defunct

[00:01:38] Pathmark chain. Anyways, as my mom was going about her business in shopping and I was going about my business of tearing up some sweet nuggies, she was approached by an older woman. As I mentioned, my mom also worked here and while she had countless regulars that would routinely

[00:01:58] come into the store, she had never seen this woman before. Now I don't know if this woman wasn't all there, if she had evil intentions or was just plain lonely. But when she stopped us, it was

[00:02:12] to ask my mom if she would sell me to her. By her account, my mom said the woman was being dead serious offering $10,000 for me. First of all, that's a terrible deal. I'm worth way more than

[00:02:29] that. Secondly, that's creepy as fuck and you're weird as shit. Obviously my mom turned her down, told her off and quickly got us the hell away from her. She rushed to the manager's office

[00:02:45] to report what had just happened. Remember early 90s, no cell phones. But by the time that the security or management went to find her, she was already gone. I don't recall from the retelling

[00:02:58] of the story if the police were involved. I'll have to ask my mom to see if she remembers. And I don't believe my mom ever saw her in the store again. So luckily, I wasn't tossed up on

[00:03:09] a register conveyor belt and scanned for $10,000. Unless she did sell me and it turns out my mom isn't my real mom. Plot twist. Experience number two, the mid 90s. This one I do remember.

[00:03:26] My mom took me and my older brother to the mall because my brother was and still is a huge sports fan. And they were having a sports card show. If you're unfamiliar, a card show consists of tons

[00:03:39] of vendors setting up tables throughout the mall. And they sell cards, autographs, jerseys, etc. Anything sports related. Because of this, the mall was a lot more crowded than usual. And having the tables all set up sort of narrowed the general walking area. So lots of people

[00:03:58] moving through a tight space. This is an important detail. I also know that it was around Halloween because I vividly remember walking with my mom and brother past a Halloween adventure store. My brother had stopped and was looking at something on one of the card show tables.

[00:04:17] However, I was too distracted by the damn Halloween store because they had all of the really awesome masks on this big wall that was visible from the outside of the store.

[00:04:30] Mistake number one. I hadn't noticed by that point that my mom and brother had walked a little further down from me. Not far, but maybe 15 feet from where we initially stopped near the Halloween

[00:04:43] adventure store. I guess I was still in my mask-gazing trance in the midst of this crowded and condensed walkway when I suddenly felt a hand holding mine. Again, I'm still not paying attention.

[00:04:59] So this hand was pulling at me rather briskly in the direction that we had come from. Which struck me as odd. Why were we going back the way that we came when the stuff that we hadn't

[00:05:12] seen yet was up ahead? This was the question I intended to ask my mom. Finally raising my eyes to look at her, it was not her. Instead, I looked up and it turned out to be some woman that I had

[00:05:28] never seen before. The creepy thing is that she never looked down at me. She's holding me by the hand, pulling me away from my mom at a fairly quick pace. And her gaze is just dead set in front

[00:05:45] of her like this bizarre look of determination. This is what terrified me and made me realize I had to break loose as soon as possible. Even more unsettling, as I wiggled my hand free, her expression still never changed. She still never looked down at me.

[00:06:09] Once I got my hand free, she didn't even react. She never spoke a single word. She didn't try to get me again. She just kept walking at that same brisk pace as if nothing ever happened.

[00:06:25] Everything about her was so robotic. I ran back to my mom and brother. Again, they weren't that far away and it all happened in a matter of seconds. But I was still scared

[00:06:39] shitless. I vaguely remember grabbing my mom and crying. At the time, I said that I was just freaked out because I thought I had lost them. For whatever reason, I was afraid of getting in trouble,

[00:06:51] so I didn't bring up what happened until later. And by that time, what can you really do? It's funny though. You read all these let's not meet stories and it sort of has you recalling

[00:07:03] different unsettling events throughout your life and maybe you remember things that you had long forgotten. You read about stalking and harassment that goes on for years and it makes you wonder if these experiences are random or if, for whatever reason, they're calculated. It's thoughts

[00:07:21] like this that forced me to re-examine both of those events and it brought me to one terrifying question. What if it was the same woman? I was 14 years old when I had to live with my

[00:07:48] grandparents. I had to live with them because my sister was in college and my parents were divorced. They lived in this old bungalow type house. It was one story with stairs that immediately went

[00:08:01] up to the attic. An attic which no one really used. We just put stuff in there. It's too hot and stuffy. The sole window up there didn't really help. The attic had old creaky wooden floors that

[00:08:14] I had to polish with a coconut shell because that's how we do it here in the Philippines. That and my grandparents are very traditional. Anyways, my room door was near the stairs leading

[00:08:27] up to the attic. Like you can open my door and then face right and the stairs would immediately be right there. I hated that every time I left my room because I would expect that something

[00:08:38] would be crawling down from the attic. One night my grandparents had to pick up my aunt's family from the airport but because of the hellish traffic here they had to leave at 7 p.m and

[00:08:50] their expected arrival back home would be at the latest 5 a.m. So I, a 14 year old girl, would be alone at home the whole time. I told them I would be safe here. We lived in a gated community.

[00:09:05] We had tons of guard dogs. Everything would be okay. Or so I thought. We had dinner before they left so I was stuck cleaning the dishes and all. As I was doing that I could hear a bunch of

[00:09:18] neighboring dogs bark a lot. I didn't really think much of it because the dogs always do that. When I finished cleaning up from dinner I immediately had to lock every door and window

[00:09:30] and close all the lights before heading to bed. When I entered my room my lights were open and it looked normal. My anime posters were on the wall. My closet was untouched. My bed was next

[00:09:42] to my barred tinted windows. We had to tint them because I was on the first floor and my grandparents wanted to make sure no one would peep in a young girl's room. They were barred too because my uncle

[00:09:54] who used to stay in the room always escaped through there to go to parties. This was my grandparent's solution to that. Nothing was out of place to alarm me. Everything was normal.

[00:10:06] Until I closed the lights. As soon as I closed the lights a silhouette of a man was illuminated by the streetlights outside. He looked like he had thick curly hair and a skinny build. I thought

[00:10:22] I was hallucinating. So I opened the lights again. He was gone. I closed it. He was back again. Opened. Gone. Closed. Gone. I sighed in relief. I was just tricking myself I guess or something else

[00:10:41] was casting the shadow. I double locked my door just to be safe. One with a doorknob lock and one of those door latch type locks. Then I tucked myself in. It was hard to fall asleep when a lot

[00:10:55] of dogs were barking outside. They weren't our dogs. They were the neighbors. But I was finally falling asleep when I heard something above me moving. Something in the attic. I pushed down the thought. I'm tricking myself again. I hugged my pillow. It's just rats I said to myself.

[00:11:16] Although these rats seemed heavy and were also pushing furniture around. My heart sank when I heard them hurriedly go down the stairs and stop at the bottom. I covered myself with my blanket

[00:11:31] and I waited for something. I was also wishing that my parents had given me a phone at a time like this but I could only wait with bated breath. Suddenly I heard my doorknob being gently fiddled.

[00:11:46] I wanted to vomit when I heard it click. Followed by a quiet turn of the knob. The knob turned but it didn't budge. When they noticed they tried to push it. This time I was standing. Shaking.

[00:12:02] I was a kid home alone with no phone, no means of defense. All that was saving me was this thick old door. I softly pushed my body up against the door and locked everything up again.

[00:12:16] I didn't want to make any sound. I didn't want to scream. I didn't want him to know I was there. I don't know why he stopped but he did. I didn't go back to my bed. I just sat there at the door

[00:12:32] waiting. It felt like forever. I heard footsteps go up the stairs but I still sat there. I saw something move in the corner of my eye. There. Out the window. The shadow was back.

[00:12:48] I forced myself not to look. All I could think of was, thank god they were barred. I don't remember what happens after that. I think I fell asleep or I was too scared to even think

[00:13:01] straight. I just remember the next day when my family and I were finally having breakfast, I casually brought it up. Lolo, I think I heard footsteps up in the attic last night.

[00:13:15] My Lola scoffed. It's probably rats. I never brought it up again. I didn't want them to worry. It probably was just rats. But I do know this. Our dogs were caged up near the gate

[00:13:34] and were far from my room. So they wouldn't have seen anything. The only dogs who were near my room were the neighbors. Also, there was nothing outside my window that could cast a shadow

[00:13:48] that looked like a man. And lastly, the attic window was open. This happened 24 years ago on July of 1996. I had just finished my term of service in the army. I was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas and decided at midnight I would out-process and travel back to Wisconsin.

[00:14:25] All day I was so anxious to go that I had trouble sleeping. Finally, at 1145 at night, I got out of bed and went to sign out with the desk sergeant. Of course, knowing people wanted

[00:14:38] to sign out at midnight, he decided to do his rounds. You can't leave until you get your final sign-off with the sergeant and turn in your room key. I waited and waited until finally, 245 AM,

[00:14:53] he returned. I turned in my key and signed off and I was out of there by 330 AM. At first, I was so full of adrenaline that I felt like I could drive for days. Unfortunately, that adrenaline didn't last long and by the time I was getting through Dallas,

[00:15:10] I was nodding off. I decided just past Denton that I would pull over at the next rest stop and take a quick nap until the sun came up. I could barely keep my eyes open when I came to

[00:15:24] a full stop. I pulled over and got out of my car to get some air and throw something away and to get a look at my surroundings. There were only about 3 other cars and 2 semi-trucks there.

[00:15:38] It was a picnic stop and not a rest stop, so there were no restrooms. I threw away my trash and glanced at a poster of a few missing persons, but I really didn't pay much attention to it.

[00:15:51] I went back to my car, which was a basic Geo Metro. No radio, no power windows, and no power locks. I cracked the windows and turned on the quote-unquote boombox I had for some tunes and laid down for some sleep.

[00:16:08] I was only asleep maybe 5 or 10 minutes when I felt my car shake just slightly. I cracked my eye open and I looked, but I didn't see anything, so I blew it off and went back to sleep. Then I

[00:16:24] heard what sounded like the handle being pulled and a scratching on the door key. I then sat up quickly, but I didn't see anyone there. I looked at all of the windows and there was nobody,

[00:16:39] so again I shrugged it off as me being tired and laid back down and turned up the radio. Being a Texas night in July, it was hot, but I was so tired I just laid back down.

[00:16:52] A few more minutes later, I hear the door handle again and the car really shook. I sat up and I saw a man standing at the passenger side looking in. Even though it was hot and humid, he was wearing

[00:17:09] a red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. I couldn't see his face. Being young and dumb and just out of the military, I yelled at him, what the fuck do you want? He just stared at me, so like an idiot I got out of my car. Mind you,

[00:17:28] I'm only 5'6", but I was pissed. He just walked off towards the picnic tables like nothing happened. All the while I'm yelling at him that if he came back I would take him out.

[00:17:40] I decided I would just drive on from there. I got back in and went on my way, and even though I was upset, only about 10 minutes down the road I was tired again. Luckily,

[00:17:52] about another 10 minutes down I-35, there was another picnic stop. I'm not sure why North Texas doesn't have regular rest areas, but they don't. I pulled into the second picnic stop

[00:18:05] and backed into a spot just in case I needed to leave quickly. I'm not sure why, but there was only one other car there and no semi trucks. I again locked the doors, cracked the windows,

[00:18:18] and turned on my boombox. I fell asleep right away, and about 30 minutes later, I hear a loud thud on my driver's side window. I jumped up and looked around. No one was there.

[00:18:32] I got out of the car, which again was very stupid, but I had my macho military attitude going. But there was no one around. I just assumed it was my nerves from the other stop.

[00:18:47] I just got back into my car, locked the doors, and closed my eyes again. This time, I was too amped up to fall asleep, so I laid there with my eyes closed. I felt that someone

[00:19:00] was looking at me, and I opened my eyes and saw that guy standing there again with the red sweatshirt hood up. I couldn't see his eyes, but I could see that he was smiling at me.

[00:19:13] I popped up quickly and tried to quickly open the door to bump him. Being a cheap geo, since the doors were locked, it didn't open. He walked backwards, still staring at me. By

[00:19:27] the time I got out, though, he was about 30 feet away. He was fairly dark, but as I looked him over, he looked really skinny. But he was about 6'2", maybe 6'3". But I still felt like I could

[00:19:37] take him with my military experience. He was wearing the red hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and green tennis shoes. For some reason, I thought the shoes looked odd. I could see something shine every now and then as he stood there staring at me. I believe it was a machete.

[00:19:59] I quickly reached into my back seat to grab my baseball bat and started yelling at him to, quote, come get some. Not sure why I said that. He started walking towards me,

[00:20:11] and I took a few steps towards him, not really thinking. As I got about 5 feet from my car, he was now 15 feet from me. A yellow van pulled up very quickly and parked just off the side of my

[00:20:27] car. I finally realized what was happening. I saw two guys wearing hooded sweatshirts in the van. Before they could get out, I ran back to my car. I had left the keys in the ignition.

[00:20:42] Since I had backed in, I was able to cut a hard right and peeled my car out of there. I was so lucky, being a manual car, it didn't stall. The other two guys were out of the van,

[00:20:54] and the first guy was just about at my car. I jumped back on the interstate and didn't stop until I was about 20 miles into Oklahoma. I stopped for gas to use the restroom. In the restroom, I noticed that same flyer

[00:21:12] that I barely glanced at at the first picnic stop. It was a flyer with several missing persons on it, and warning people not to stop for long periods of time at rest areas. It described a possible

[00:21:26] suspect being about 6 foot, wearing blue jeans, green shoes, and a red hooded sweatshirt. I completely went white. Needless to say, since it was day, I drove the rest of the way to Wisconsin wide awake.

[00:21:45] Not sure why, but I never reported it to the number on the flyer or told anyone about it. But I now live in North Texas and pass those picnic stops every day on my way to work and

[00:21:57] think about it quite often. I wonder if they got anyone else or if they got caught. I tried looking them up, but I couldn't find any stories about it on the internet, so creepy dudes in the sweatshirts in Texas in July. Let's never meet again.

[00:22:26] This is my first Let's Not Meet post. I have a few frightening stories to tell, but this one is playing out right now, so I thought I would share it with you.

[00:22:36] Here goes. Last May, my husband, myself, and our two small boys left our little farm in the country and moved into a posh boutique-style urban apartment building. My husband had recently received a sizable raise after many years with his current company, and we wanted to be closer

[00:22:54] to his office and to mine. We chose this particular building as it was brand new and offered an array of shopping, eating, and outdoor amenities without ever having to leave the building or surrounding shopping center. We quickly settled in and started enjoying the new change of pace.

[00:23:13] At first everything was fine, but about three months into our lease, we noticed that the front office completely changed staff. We were upset about the change because two of the receptionists

[00:23:25] had been personal friends of ours. We asked them why everyone had been let go, but they said they didn't know why. Apparently, corporate had just decided they wanted a change. We were sad to see

[00:23:37] our friends go, especially our two and three-year-old boys who had grown quite fond of their daily visit to the office for milk and cookies. We also noticed that the new staff was mainly much younger, attractive women. We assumed then that the management company intended to appeal to the

[00:23:55] college crowd and singles. We were slightly annoyed with the general lack of experience in customer service, but thought that it wasn't the end of the world and moved on. Then weird stuff started happening. One morning I walked into the living room to find our patio door wide open.

[00:24:14] It seemed odd because we triple lock it to keep the children from accessing the patio unsupervised. I locked the door and then accused my husband of being absent-minded and leaving it open.

[00:24:27] He swore that he hadn't touched the door or the locks in days, and I let it go, but made a mental note to start checking it every night before bed, just in case. About two weeks later, I awoke to

[00:24:41] the sound of my oldest boy screaming for me somewhere outside of the apartment. When I found him, he was wandering the hallway outside, soaked in urine and utterly terrified. At the time, we were absolutely baffled at how he managed to unlock two locks and a childproof lock cover.

[00:25:03] When we asked him what happened, he said that a monster was in his room looking at him, and he didn't want to move, so he peed in the bed. Honestly, I was so happy he was safe. I just

[00:25:16] chalked it up to kid imagination and my husband not locking the door properly again. It never crossed my mind that someone had potentially been inside the apartment and let him out. They would have had to open the door from the outside, and only we have a key.

[00:25:34] Weird stuff like that kept happening for several more months, and we kept finding reasonable excuses that explained everything away. Then one afternoon, I got a phone call from the office of our apartment. We had recently installed

[00:25:48] a ring doorbell to alert us when someone was at the door. It was mostly an attempt to prevent another runaway toddler. The woman from the office asked me if our door camera was operational

[00:26:00] or just put there to make people think that we had security. I informed her that it was a hundred percent functional and that we had installed video surveillance in our nursery and the adjoining bathroom to keep the kids safe. She then asked me a really odd question.

[00:26:18] She wanted to know if I would add her to our security devices so that she could view our ring footage. Of course, I politely told her that was not going to happen. I asked her why she

[00:26:30] wanted it, but I never got a clear answer. I told my husband about the call later that night, and he agreed that we should make an effort to always keep the ring charged and recording to

[00:26:41] the cloud. We did, and things seemed fine... for a while. Over the course of our lease, the doors have continued to occasionally magically come unlocked and open, even locks that the kids can't reach, and it's always overnight or we notice them when we get home from work.

[00:27:01] About two months ago, things started to go missing from the apartment. At first, it was little things like a new tube of Dior mascara or a $20 bill left on the kitchen island. My husband and I

[00:27:14] thought it might be the baby storing them somewhere like treasures. He sometimes does that with my husband's golf balls, so it wasn't too far-fetched. Then bigger, more expensive items started to disappear. Our iPad vanished from my nightstand. A leather jacket with a designer label no longer

[00:27:33] hung from its hanger on my side of the closet. A bra still with tags was absent from one of my dresser drawers, and a full bottle of prescription painkillers was nowhere to be found. So was a half

[00:27:48] bottle of my anxiety meds. We now began to suspect that something really weird was happening in our apartment, but had no proof. The nursery and bathroom cameras didn't show anything during the

[00:28:02] day, and we started making our boys sleep in bed with us at night, the bedroom door locked from the inside. I could swear that I woke up in the middle of the night once to a slight thudding noise and

[00:28:15] saw the shadows of movement on the other side of the door, but I fell back asleep before I could register what was happening. I take a tile in all three most nights before bed, so while I do wake

[00:28:26] up at the slightest noise, staying awake is a battle of its own. This is our last month at these apartments. In two weeks we'll be moving into our own home. Two weeks ago I obtained a money

[00:28:40] order for the last month's rent. It was a large money order and had to be halved into two. As always, I brought it home along with the receipt and placed them into the plastic magnetic sleeve

[00:28:51] attached to the freezer that also housed our monthly invoice. Now, I don't know how to fill out a money order. I know how stupid that is, but I never worried about it since my husband usually

[00:29:02] fills them out and pays our rent. It's not that I can't learn, but I'm lazy and don't mind letting him do it. That means that the money order in the rent sleeve was blank, and guess what?

[00:29:15] It too went missing. A novice mistake, I know, but thank God for online banking. One call to our bank and an investigation had begun. We waited with unease until this afternoon when a representative

[00:29:29] from the company that had issued the money order gave us a call. The call was to inform us that the order had been cashed and that the thief was identified. Sure enough, it was one of the

[00:29:41] receptionists in our building. The same young woman who had called to ask about our new security devices. She has been using the spare maintenance key to come inside our apartment whenever she wants. Tomorrow I will take this information to the buildings manager. At the moment we aren't

[00:30:01] pressing charges as long as our conditions are met. Hopefully this young lady gets help because we don't think she's malicious, just a thief and a grade A creeper. Don't worry, tonight will be

[00:30:14] our last night here. As far as her watching my children sleep goes, I can't say that I'll be comfortable having them sleep away from me for a good long while. I feel terrible for not believing

[00:30:26] my son. I tear up just thinking how scared he really must have been. The new house will get a full security system with every bell and whistle. We still aren't sure how she got past the ring

[00:30:39] camera without being seen, but my husband is dead set on figuring it out. To the seriously weird receptionist who's been entering our apartment at night and while we are at work, you'd better hope

[00:30:52] we don't meet again. Update, when we got to the office this morning, the manager greeted us, apologized about 20 times and informed us that said receptionist had been let go when she arrived on property this morning. We made sure that he understood the gravity of the situation,

[00:31:09] especially concerning our children's safety and the fact that the building is mostly comprised of families and retirees. We came to an agreement not to pursue legal action against the company

[00:31:21] as long as we could leave today with our deposit in hand and never hear from them again. We also made him promise to send out a PSA to the other residents explaining portions of the situation

[00:31:34] in case she's been doing this to other people, which I'd bet money that she has. We are currently throwing our belongings in boxes and laundry baskets awaiting family and friends coming to

[00:31:45] help us move out. My husband and I have decided not to pursue our missing property, however we will be filing charges for the theft of the money order. We think she was leaving the patio doors

[00:31:58] unlocked because we have a first floor apartment with a sunroom and she was unlocking them at night when we charged the ring so that she could let herself in during the day via the patio. It explains

[00:32:10] why we never got her on camera and why she would be so bold as to come in at night while we were home asleep. My guess is that the night our son got out she had snuck in to unlock the back doors

[00:32:23] and saw him awake. She must have waited until he was still for a while and then ran back out the front door forgetting to completely shut and lock it. When he finally felt safe enough to get

[00:32:34] out of bed he saw the lights from the hall and followed them wanting to be out of the dark where he saw the monster. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true

[00:33:02] horror podcast. This week you have heard Apparently I Was A Desirable Child by Reddit user DanceJoeDance18 I'm Pretty Sure They Weren't Rats by Reddit user OfaTheAwesome. I'm Lucky My Macho Stupidity Didn't Get Me Killed by Reddit user mshall1005. And finally The Extra Key by Reddit

[00:33:23] user GullibleGreen. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. If you'd like to hear your story on the show email me at letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. While I read every single email that I get I don't necessarily

[00:33:38] have time to respond to every email unless your story is chosen for the show. So if you are looking for feedback or you haven't heard from me yet send me a friendly reminder. I'll go over your story

[00:33:49] again and I will get back to you. I'm just very busy outside of my day job. I'm working full time on Let's Not Meet, producing this show, correspondence, working with stories, all of the

[00:34:02] editing as well as working on all of the bonus Patreon content and working on some designs for the up and coming merch store. So I'm just... I don't have a day off ever and I have very little

[00:34:16] free time but that's okay. I love what I do. I actually don't know what to do with free time when I'm not working or working on the podcast. I kind of get a little antsy and a little crazy

[00:34:25] and you guys keep me sane and I do this because I love doing this podcast. But if you would like to gain access to all of that bonus material and support the show head to patreon.com forward slash

[00:34:37] letsnotmeetpodcast. As I said I am working on some designs for the up and coming merch store. I know you've all asked for t-shirts and merch and it is coming. I'm also working with some outside artists

[00:34:48] on multiple designs to put into the store as well as some exclusive stuff for patrons only. Thanks again to my guest this week Sapphire Sandalo for appearing on the show. It's always

[00:35:00] a pleasure to have you. You're welcome here anytime if you want to check out her show head over to storieswithsapphire.com or find it wherever you listen to podcasts. I'd like to thank the

[00:35:12] patron of the week Lauren Paul Patton for supporting me for the last two years. Thanks so much I really do appreciate you. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.