4x23: The Sykesville Monster

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone and welcome to the season four finale of Let's Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast.

[00:00:29] We're back with another live stream episode just like we did for the end of season three. Now we also have some returning guests, Shelby Scott of Scare You to Sleep and Sora Narnia of

[00:00:41] Knife Point Horror are both back to tell some gripping stories. We also have a brand new guest to the show, Christine Schieffer of And That's Why We Drink, one of my favorite podcasts of all time.

[00:00:54] Now this was a live stream episode on my Twitch channel and just like season three, I went ahead and extracted all of the audio, did my best as far as messing with the levels to create

[00:01:05] the most enjoyable listening experience, but we did all record on different microphones and setups and it was a live stream episode so the quality can differ between stories. However, I am going

[00:01:17] to start things off with a bonus story that I went ahead and recorded today while I was in my booth because I had a little bit of extra time and I just wanted to add some icing on the cake,

[00:01:26] so to speak, for this special episode. Enjoy the show. A few years ago, I went camping for the first time in my life. I was about 11 or 12 when we headed out

[00:01:50] to a forest nearby our house. We were in Poland for the holidays, as we are every year, and right next to our house was a huge forest. So one day we decided to take out my mom's old tent

[00:02:06] she still had from probably back in the 90s and stay out for a night or two in the wildlife. Now, the good thing is, the place that we chose to sleep was only about 20, maybe 30 minutes away

[00:02:20] from the house. The bad thing? There are a lot, and I mean a lot of wolves, foxes, and boars in that forest and honestly, I kind of regretted going there in the first place. We set everything up at

[00:02:35] about 6 p.m. and my sister and I set up the campfire. My dad chopped down a smaller tree with his oak axe, and this is important for later, and by now it had dried out just enough to catch fire.

[00:02:50] We sat around the fire for quite some time, probably about four hours, until it was dark, so we decided to go to sleep. My two sisters and I on one end of the tent and my parents on the other.

[00:03:06] It was probably just the fear of getting eaten alive by some wolves or homesickness, but I couldn't sleep. Not at all. I heard my dad tell my mom he was going out into the forest to get some

[00:03:20] wood for the morning while it was still fairly dry, or it would have soaked up all the dew by then. The thought of not having my dad around made it even worse to me, to even try and close my eyes

[00:03:32] for a second. I'm not too good at telling what time it is by just staring at the sky and trying to figure out how long it's been, so I'll just say that it was around 12 or 1 in the morning.

[00:03:46] I was actually falling asleep when I heard some rattling outside the tent. My first thought? It was a wolf. I was terrified, and so I popped my head out through the little curtain that separated

[00:03:59] the two halves of the tent, basically a piece of thin fabric just hanging on some threads to see if my dad was back. He was still gone, and it had been about an hour since he left. I lay back down

[00:04:12] and try to fall asleep, but when I turn over onto my side, I see a faint human shadow outside the tent. I froze and let out a tiny squeak. The person seemed to be holding some sort of axe

[00:04:27] or shovel type thing in its hand, and so I thought it may have just been my dad coming back. The shadow walked towards the entrance of the tent and just stood there at the zipped up door

[00:04:41] for maybe 30 seconds. I began to wonder why he wasn't just coming inside. The person finally ran off into the forest but dropped the axe. You could hear the footsteps fade into the distance

[00:04:56] and a thump just appear along the way. Maybe a minute or so later, I hear my dad walking back from the opposite side of the forest, then enter the tent tired and ready to fall asleep. It seemed

[00:05:10] kind of sketchy and fishy as well as scary to me, but it was so late I couldn't really think anymore and somehow I fell asleep. The next morning I woke up after my dad dropped his phone on his face,

[00:05:24] letting out an ouch. I peeped through the curtain at him and he just smiled back while rubbing his nose. I needed some fresh air because I was feeling a bit sick, maybe the nerves in the morning or the

[00:05:38] homesickness. I couldn't really tell. Both of us got out of the tent and walked around for a bit. We circled around the campsite for about 10 minutes until we came back to our tent,

[00:05:50] and that's when I noticed something that ran chills down my back. A few meters from the tent, in the corner of my eye, I managed to catch a glimpse of something red. It took me a hot second

[00:06:03] to realize I actually saw something and when I turned my head to see what it was, I saw that it was a red and black rubber axe. It was not there before. I knew it wasn't my dad's because his was

[00:06:18] by the pile of wood he collected that night. My dad turned his gaze to where I was looking and we both just stared for a few seconds before he called out for the rest of the family to wake up and get

[00:06:30] moving. We were all packed up within an hour and we rushed back home. I later told my dad what I saw that night and he wouldn't believe me at first. I carried on with the story and he finally realized

[00:06:43] I was telling the truth. To this day, I have no clue who the fuck that was. I'm just happy he didn't investigate our tent any further. To the axe man who was outside my tent in the middle of the night, let's not meet.

[00:07:07] I have a tale from a long time ago I thought I would share. I think it belongs here. I hope I don't bore you. I am now a 72 year old man. This happened long ago but I remember it so well.

[00:07:23] The background was a series of events that placed me in a mountain cabin outside of Frederick, Maryland circa 1969 or 1970. Just say my life at the time was in disarray. I dropped out of college.

[00:07:37] My father had died very badly and I was alienated. I needed to get my mind right. The opportunity to move to an isolated cabin, to live in contemplation and solitude was welcome.

[00:07:52] I had some inheritance money to pay for it. To the best of my memory, I was there eight to nine months. No TV but books and radio. I had a library card and I can't remember if I

[00:08:04] had a phone. The story begins when a month into my stay, a female beagle showed up at my door. She was a lost dog and I took her in. Never could train her to do anything but I fed her

[00:08:21] and she was a sweet if not the brightest dog. A few months in, I began to feel a presence around the isolated cabin. Hard to describe but I felt like someone was watching. On many occasions, I thought someone might even be looking in my cabin window, watching me.

[00:08:44] The next phase was the shadowing or following. I knew the folks a half mile down the lane, woods all around, and would sometimes visit them at night. Someone, something was waiting for me and followed closely in the woods beside me in the darkness.

[00:09:06] You could hear it easily, footsteps in the woods, and it picked up its pace as I did. This not only happened to me but to my younger brother who visited and to friends and it spooked

[00:09:20] them big time. At night, it was out there around the cabin. Here's the funny thing, I was never afraid, never felt threatened, not at all, at least early on. There was no feeling of

[00:09:37] malevolence. I spent a good bit of time wandering the vast areas of woodlands around me. There was a state park just up the hill and the Frederick Municipal Forest went on for mile after

[00:09:50] mile. The whole of western Maryland was much more country than it is now, none of the development had set in yet. In our hikes, the dog and I, we came across evidence of campsites, recent ones in

[00:10:06] the woods, traces of fires, old abandoned buildings that had corners that gave shelter and looked slept in, garbage, food and drink, paper, what have you, perhaps hunters but much of it did not

[00:10:19] have the organized feel you would get from experienced hunters. The last month of my stay there was when things intensified. Maybe he sensed I was preparing to leave. In the mornings, I would find

[00:10:41] small dead animals at the bottom of the front porch steps. The cabin had a small front porch screened with a light door and four wooden steps to the ground. A spotlight would illuminate the long front yard with woods close by either side.

[00:11:01] Dead animals began to appear at the bottom of the steps many mornings. I remember small birds, then a squirrel, a rabbit, even a weasel one day, like they were offerings. I had to grab them up before the dog ate them. This went on almost daily for several weeks.

[00:11:22] One night, very late, I was awoken by some sound. I lay in bed and heard something from the porch. I hopped up and hit the lights and I saw that hound dog who never learned to sit or stay

[00:11:37] standing at the front door in a perfect point position. She was shaking in fear. She never barked. I heard the door slam and footsteps go down the steps. I hit the spotlight but saw nothing.

[00:11:56] I went out. He had been on the porch at my front door, maybe trying to enter. After that, I stayed in at night more and more. The animal offerings got bigger and bigger, larger birds, a possum, a woodchuck. It was not funny. The final two gifts were legs

[00:12:19] from either horses or cows, big and bloody. One was skinned. Holy shit! The second to the last day, the dog left me. I could hear her in the woods howling on a trail

[00:12:34] following a scent. I looked for her in every way I could. Came up in following weeks but to no avail. She left as she came. I moved back to the Maryland suburbs of DC. Got an apartment with a friend,

[00:12:51] a job, and moved on with my life. One day not long after, I picked up the Washington Post and there was an article about recent encounters with the Sykesville Monster. It described a tall

[00:13:05] yeti-like creature, fur covered, on two legs that would pick out a family or person and give them attention. I wasn't the only one. That attention described in the article was a the only one. That attention described in the article was exactly what had happened to me.

[00:13:25] Following you at night, looking inside the house, gifts and so on, I was shocked. If I had turned on that spotlight and seen a Bigfoot or yeti, I might still be running. But I think I know who it was. Sykesville, Maryland was the location of the Springfield

[00:13:44] Hospital Center, a large state psychiatric hospital. It was 20 miles or so east of Frederick. Back then, many folks knew how to live in the woods. They grew up that way, country folks. I think the monster was an escaped patient, or just a free schizophrenic who lived outside.

[00:14:16] This is like all the homeless you see in cities now, probably off his meds but somehow functional and lonely. He would pick people or families to adopt. The camps in the woods could have been him.

[00:14:31] Nothing to do. He would make mischief. I think he liked me, but sensed I was leaving. I can't prove any of this. It's just my theory. My monster was very much of that time and place, and his behavior was what I noticed in nearly every case then.

[00:14:55] I do not think he could have survived until the 1980s. Deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals threw the mentally ill out into the streets and took away the shelter of hospitals. Unprotected, the mentally ill die. Hi, I'm Christine. I'm the co-host of the Paranormal True Crime podcast,

[00:15:29] and that's why we drink, as well as the comedy podcast Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet, where we read one-star Yelp reviews in the most dramatic fashion. In any case, I'm a huge fan of

[00:15:40] Let's Not Meet, and I recently wrote up my own Let's Not Meet story, and Andrew was kind enough to let me read it for the show. So I'm going to read it for you now. It's called The White Hand,

[00:15:51] and it is a true story, unfortunately, that happened to me in my childhood. So hope you enjoy! Over the years, this story has taken on a sort of mythical feel in my family. Sometimes we laugh at its ridiculousness. Other times, it makes me shudder. Either way,

[00:16:09] it's all too true. To ensure full accuracy, I asked my mother to send her version of events so I could corroborate the details. In the mid-90s, my parents moved us into a beautiful old home in

[00:16:21] a historic early 20th century neighborhood in Cincinnati. The house was old, big, and full of charm. It had wide staircases, tall gleaming windows, and gorgeous wooden floors on which we could ride our tricycles around and around a la The Shining. But it also had a dank, scary basement,

[00:16:39] an unfinished, and most definitely haunted attic, and at night those gleaming windows turned into what always felt like pitch black one-way mirrors to the dark forested yard outside. Arguably the most gorgeous room of the house was the window-filled sunroom,

[00:16:54] which our parents had transformed into my brother's and my playroom. In January of 1996, an immense amount of snow had brought the city of Cincinnati to a grinding halt. Schools were closed for weeks, so my brother, age 2, and I, age 4, spent our evenings in the playroom,

[00:17:09] racing hot wheels, building forts, and doing puzzles. Our dad was traveling on business, but my mom's best friend was visiting from Germany. I was imparting my puzzle wisdom to my younger brother one evening, piecing together duck after duck in one of those 500-piece puzzle

[00:17:25] sets. The snow had brought a hush over the neighborhood, interrupted only by the faint German chatter between our mother and her BFF at the other end of the house. As we pieced together one particularly large mallard, we heard a soft tap-tap-tap on the glass of the floor-to-ceiling

[00:17:42] window mere feet from where we sat. I remember that moment clear as day. I froze, clutching a duck beak puzzle piece as my brother shifted beside me. My mind raced as I prepared an answer

[00:17:54] to what I knew would be his first question. Christina, what was that noise? Without waiting a beat, I responded it was just the wind. I handed him the puzzle piece and instructed him to look

[00:18:06] very carefully for its proper placement. I needed more than anything for him to not look at the window, because despite what I had just told him, I knew for a fact it hadn't been the wind.

[00:18:18] I felt frozen in my fear, but I thought the smart thing to do was play dumb. If it looked like we hadn't heard the noise, maybe it would go away. No such luck. Moments after the first tapping, it happened again, but louder. What was-

[00:18:33] before my brother could even finish his sentence, I heard a noise that chilled my blood. The telltale squeak of the window's rusted handle. Being a sunroom, the windows opened outward into the garden. I cautiously raised my head to the sound. I don't know what I expected

[00:18:48] to see, but what I did see caught me very off guard. Two feet from where we sat perched a white, gloved hand. It was seemingly disembodied from any sort of entity, just a white hand amidst

[00:19:01] the darkness. I froze. It froze. For a few painfully long seconds, neither of us moved, as my brother sat unknowingly beside me, shoving puzzle pieces into various positions. Then, suddenly, swiftly, horrifyingly, the hand waved at me. As I continued to stare frozen in

[00:19:21] utter fear, the hand quickly stopped its waving and grabbed once again for the rusted handle. The movement jolted me out of my paralysis, and I grabbed my brother's arm, suddenly giving up on my attempt at keeping him calm. Like a cheesy horror movie, we simultaneously inhaled, then

[00:19:35] began screaming absolute bloody murder. At that, the hand stopped its fumbling and smacked into the glass in what I now imagine was an attempt at keeping us quiet. It didn't work. We shoved ourselves upright, in the meantime destroying our beautiful duck masterpiece, and ran through

[00:19:52] the first floor in hysterics. Our mom and her friend were chatting in the kitchen, wine in hand. My mom has gone through a lot in life, so she isn't prone to hysterics. But when her friend

[00:20:02] heard us spluttering on about a white hand in the window, she was sure she knew the culprit. A ghost. Though I agreed with her to an extent, our house was way too creepy to not contain at

[00:20:12] least a few disembodied spirits, I insisted that what we had seen was no ghost. My mom tried to calm us down by saying it was just the wind. At that, I grew angry. How dare she use my own phony

[00:20:26] excuse against me? Seeing the earnestness in our fear though, she called the police. After all, we were home alone with no alarm system. The police took our statements and did a quick search of the house, finding nothing. It seemed we would be left with nothing but the overwhelming

[00:20:41] shame of being told that it had all been our imagination gone awry. Before heading out though, the officer decided to do a quick check of the perimeter of the house. Strangely, he didn't come

[00:20:52] back for a while. When he returned, he looked more serious than before. Along the back wall of the house, he had found footprints. Large footprints. They led from the window of our playroom to our

[00:21:06] elderly neighbor's back door. Seeing lights on inside, he knocked, but no one answered. With no other recourse, the officer suggested we stay indoors and call if anything else happened. The next morning brought with it a sense of vengeance in my mother. Not one to be intimidated,

[00:21:22] she marched over to our neighbor's home and banged on his front door until he answered. Karl, an elderly German man with hunched back, beady eyes, and a large white beard, stared at her calmly in the face and told her, I have no idea what you're talking about.

[00:21:38] But that evening, as darkness fell, my mom spotted a figure creeping along the hedges of our backyard. She yelled out, exclaiming that she had a gun. She definitely didn't, for the record, but it seemed to scare him off. For a while, things got quiet. My dad returned from

[00:21:53] his trip, rolling his eyes at our dramatics and insisting that Karl was a good, upstanding German man who most certainly had been misunderstood. We were careful to lock our doors, and after a while

[00:22:05] that evening became a vague memory. The following spring, my dad was once again traveling when my mom, my brother, and I got home from soccer practice, the sun having already set. My mom

[00:22:16] unlocked the back door to find none other than Karl standing in our kitchen. My mom, shocked, asked what he wanted, and he responded simply, I'm looking for something that belongs to me,

[00:22:29] before waving at my brother and me and then sauntering out the door. It turns out Karl had a key to our house this whole time. Who knew how many times he'd gone in while we weren't home,

[00:22:40] or maybe even while we were. My mom had the locks changed and an alarm system installed, but we never felt fully safe in that house again. Karl died a few years later in his late 70s. You'd think

[00:22:51] that'd be the end of the story, but I guess even death can't keep some people away. Years later, we moved into a beautiful old home in a different neighborhood across town. The house was perfect,

[00:23:01] large if a little worn, but enough space for my brother, our young sister, and me to have our own rooms. My bedroom windows overlooked a cemetery that the seller had sworn was inactive. Well,

[00:23:12] as you can probably guess, that was total BS. I awoke one morning shortly after moving in to what sounded like weeping. Opening my blinds, I was stunned to see a casket being lowered into the

[00:23:24] ground, mourners in black crying beside it. After the initial shock wore off, our family made it a habit to pay our respects after a body had been buried and the mourners had left. A few years

[00:23:35] into living there, I awoke to the familiar sound of digging. But when I opened my blinds, I didn't see the usual despondent crowd dressed in black. Instead, I saw a casket being buried but no

[00:23:47] mourners in sight. That afternoon, I went to the cemetery to pay my respects as usual, but the simple grave marker stopped me in my tracks. It took a moment to register, but when it did, my

[00:23:58] blood ran cold. It was Carl. It seems haunting us outside our windows that snowy night in 1996 wasn't enough. He'd now remain outside my window for the rest of time. So to my creepy neighbor

[00:24:11] Carl and the white hand that haunted my childhood, now that I've moved into a home of my own, let's not meet again in this life or the next. My name is Shelby Scott. I'm the host of Scare You

[00:24:41] to Sleep, and I'm so excited to be back! Thank you, Andy, for having me back on the livestream. All right, let's get to the scares, shall we? Hi. For the record, I'm a female. I'm turning 19 this year, and this story happened when I was 15.

[00:25:00] Oh, and also, I'm from France, which can explain my English mistakes if there are any. When I was 15 years old and just got into junior year, I created my first Twitter account that I deleted because of this story. Some information. I didn't tell anyone my username,

[00:25:21] neither my family nor my friends, because I didn't have any. My profile picture was an avatar, so no pictures of me on the account, and as location, I said Paris because I lived in the

[00:25:32] suburbs. I didn't have many followers, 20 or maybe 30, and I didn't follow that much people, so my timeline was not really interesting. One evening in October, someone sent me a quite strange direct message. It was a 200 followers account, and the message was,

[00:25:55] Hi, my name is Rob. I just turned 17 and wanted to know if you lived in blank because I will soon move in and go to the town high school, and I'm looking for friends. Blank was obviously the

[00:26:09] town I lived in. I immediately thought something was wrong because there was nowhere on my profile where I said I actually lived, but after some time thinking, I remembered of a tweet I made weeks ago

[00:26:23] about buses and I mentioned the city, so I told myself he just looked up for blank and found my tweet. His age wasn't shocking because I'm two years ahead of my classmates. I was bored and

[00:26:36] he was polite. I answered him and I told him I indeed lived in blank and go to high school there. The discussion was natural, and we talked a lot that night, mainly about high school,

[00:26:48] about the food at the cafeteria, about the teachers, that kind of thing, but as it was getting very late, he tried to interpose some personal questions like do you live far away

[00:27:02] from the school, in a house or an apartment? Do you live with both your parents? There's five of you? You're not home alone often, are you? I never answered because it was way too shady for me,

[00:27:20] and unfortunately he didn't insist. Unfortunately, because if he did, I would have probably blocked him. The next day, same thing. We talked a lot and he was still asking personal questions to know me better,

[00:27:36] so I asked some too, and he always answered with what seemed like honesty. I still didn't answer the questions about my house though because he didn't need to know anything. It lasted two or

[00:27:48] three weeks, but it was enough for me to develop feelings for him. He was handsome, super kind, and it was everything I needed. Because I was bullied for years, and even today, I still develop strong

[00:28:04] feelings, but most importantly blind trust in people who are friendly to me. In France, in October, we have a two weeks long vacation, and the day before back-to-school day, he finally told me he was coming

[00:28:16] to my high school because he finally moved in with his mom, and he asked me a place to meet during the morning break. I was so happy and relieved to be able to meet him, and told him to join me in

[00:28:28] the hall, but when he understood that there would be people around, he said he would prefer an isolated place because he was afraid he would not recognize me and didn't want to spend the break

[00:28:41] looking for me. It was a good excuse for me, so I told him to meet me in the third floor bathroom because we weren't allowed to stay there during breaks, and no one would disturb us. In my head,

[00:28:55] even though it was a little bit creepy, I was still in the school, so nothing could happen to me. Next day, back-to-school day, I made myself pretty. I wore my best clothes, I counted down the minutes,

[00:29:08] and finally when break time arrived, I ran to the bathroom and waited, and when he arrived, it was him. He was not a catfish, he looked quite like his profile picture,

[00:29:21] but I still noticed that he seemed a little bit older than me. I thought 20 years old instead of 17. We talked a lot, we got along well, I was so pleased, and at the end of the break,

[00:29:34] he asked me to go with him for fast food for lunch. I said no because I didn't have any money, and I always refuse for people to pay for me. It's a principle. He seemed disappointed, but

[00:29:46] offered to walk me home after classes. I explained I have to take the bus, but that he could walk me to the bus stop. He looked disappointed again, but finally accepted, and that's exactly what happened.

[00:30:00] It was so great that it quickly became some kind of routine, and he walked me to the bus stop after classes. Surprising fact, I never saw him in the hallways nor at the cafeteria, but I thought at

[00:30:17] that time the building was huge and that there was over 1500 students in there, so if our schedules didn't coincide, there was no way we could meet each other. This little game lasted until December,

[00:30:30] so almost a month and a half. The 14th of December, a Thursday, I complained about how lonely I was going to be that evening because my dad was abroad for work and my brother was always at his friend's

[00:30:42] house, my little sis was on a school trip, and my mom had to work late that very night. It was very reckless of me, but after weeks, I thought I could trust him. That evening,

[00:30:56] he walked me to the bus stop. We both waited, I got on the bus, waved to him, and put on my earphones. I had two stops before my house. It was about 1745 in December, so it was already really dark outside,

[00:31:11] and as I got off the bus, I had a really bad feeling. There was that very uncomfortable sensation on my stomach. I pressed pause on my music, but kept my earphones on so that people thought I

[00:31:25] couldn't hear anything, and that's probably what saved my life. I lived in a suburban neighborhood, very silent, especially at night, with no visibility on the big road the bus passed. When I heard footsteps behind me, I understood I was right. There was someone following me,

[00:31:44] and he was not well-intentioned. At least I could hear that he was not accelerating, but I couldn't guess how long it would last. As quietly as possible, I tried to reach for my

[00:31:55] keys in my pocket, and when I finally pulled them out, I ran. As fast as I could. The best sprint of my life. I don't know how it worked, but I managed to open and close the door before he

[00:32:07] could reach me. I then deactivated my alarm, which by the way confirmed that I was home, and took a look through the glass panel on the door. It is not a peephole, it is a whole window,

[00:32:18] so if someone wanted to see what's happening inside, they can. It was Rob, a few meters away, looking at me with a really creepy face. He followed me to my home, probably with a car,

[00:32:33] and he was clearly not there for chit-chat. I still don't know why I didn't call the police. I was totally paralyzed. We both stared at each other for a minute, and when I took back control

[00:32:43] over my body, I ran in the kitchen to get a knife and got back to the door. He was there too. Banging against the door. I feared for a second that the glass would break, but it didn't happen.

[00:32:57] That moment when I was pushing against the door, praying for it not to break while he was kicking harder and harder was the longest I've ever experienced. After maybe five minutes, he stopped

[00:33:08] and got around the house, knocking against every shutter, and got back to the door. He looked very angry, but then my neighbor's car reached my house and Rob ran away, probably thinking it was my mom

[00:33:22] coming home. On Twitter, Rob sent me a thousand messages before I could block him. He then deleted the account, and I thought I was done with this story, but quickly after, some accounts, which have

[00:33:35] just been created, followed me. Their at were all a series of numbers and the first letter of his name, and as soon as I blocked one, another one followed me. I chose to delete my account because I couldn't

[00:33:47] make it stop, and it was too hard to endure because they were sending me dozens of insulting DMs. Later, I talked to the people who were supposed to be Rob's classmates because I haven't met him

[00:34:00] again in days, but not a single one ever heard about a Rob. This guy was never a student at my high school, so this is why I've never met him apart from our daily meetings, and that is probably

[00:34:13] why he seemed so old. I never heard about him anymore, and I'm still asking myself what did he want and what could have happened to that night. So Rob, let's never meet again.

[00:34:38] I can't explain what I saw on the trail that summer evening. It happened to me when I was 14, and I haven't spoken about it since to anyone, not even my significant other. I'm 20 now, and I'm about to major in my first two degrees, psychology and anthropology.

[00:34:57] Recently, for reasons unknown to me, though, the memory of this strange happening, it's resurfaced, and it continues to plague my waking thoughts as well as my unconscious and my subconscious, and we're taught in psychology that you're supposed to talk about the situation

[00:35:13] the situation to help with the repressed trauma, so here goes. I live in the high desert mountains in Southern California. It's situated just below the Sierra Nevadas about 30 minutes west of the

[00:35:25] Mojave. My town is no booming metropolis by any means. In fact, at the time our largest market was a Kmart, one of the last still in business. We only had four stoplights in town. This takes

[00:35:39] place in a subsection of the town about 13 miles from the shops, banks, and restaurants in a small community largely inhabited by retirees. It's smack dab in the middle of summer, and the temperatures are well into the high 90s or low 100s. My nightly routine would consist of walking

[00:35:59] my Australian Shepherd. However, I would wait until it was almost dark to avoid the heat. I would grab my phone, a small pocket knife, some headphones, my dog, and I would set out for the

[00:36:10] nightly walk. Now, my community is also home to a significant amount of equestrian riders as well as cattle ranchers. The trails that I walked were designated horse riding trails set between pastures. That night I had decided to take the horse trail that stretches approximately two miles between

[00:36:29] back-to-back paddocks. It's basically this long narrow trail between two very large backyards. So my ending destination was the equestrian center, a communal equestrian park where all types of horse riders could enjoy various activities on their horses. I'm making my way

[00:36:51] through the sandy terrain of the trail. It's nearly dark now. The sky was becoming a deeper shade of blue every time that I looked up and my dog was becoming harder to see. I estimate my arrival at

[00:37:05] the equestrian center to be about 15 minutes from my current position, so I text my mom and I tell her I'm going to be at the equestrian center in 15 minutes and if she could pick me up because

[00:37:15] I didn't want to walk home. She texts me back and says she'll leave in about 10 minutes. Now at this point I was just outside of the east entrance of the equestrian center where

[00:37:27] the enchanted forest trail connects to the straight trail that I was on, sort of like a three-way intersection. You can either go left into the enchanted forest trail or go straight into the equestrian center. Before I reached the intersection of the trails though, I noticed

[00:37:46] I noticed a shift in my dog's behavior. She becomes anxious and seemingly worried. She had her eyes fixated to the forest and stopped dead in her tracks. I played it off as

[00:38:02] another animal within the forest, like a bobcat or a boar, as they weren't uncommon in my area. I gave her a slight tug on her collar and she just remained incessantly focused on the forest.

[00:38:20] With a little more convincing though, I was able to get her to move forward, pushing towards the equestrian center where my mother would be waiting for our arrival. Now it was nearly pitch black with only the moon guiding me with its low light. There was

[00:38:34] just the slightest bit of visibility and it forced me to turn my cell phone's flashlight on dim. Entering the equestrian center now, I noticed something that startled me immensely. A very tall person, a man about 10 to 15 feet into the enchanted forest trail with his back

[00:38:53] towards me, standing completely still, his head facing the sky and his hands open, palms pointing in front of him with his arms at his side. He was tall, approximately 6 feet, slim build, short dark hair. He was wearing what looked to be light blue scrubs or at least

[00:39:15] a very thin blue napkin-like material and he was barefoot. What startled me the most was his demeanor and what he was doing. His stance was enough to scare anyone in that setting, but

[00:39:32] as I approached him slowly it appeared to me that he was shaking, vibrating or slightly convulsing. But he was doing it while standing up. It didn't seem like he had any control over it,

[00:39:47] but he did keep his balance perfectly. Scared and not entirely sure what to do, I asked him. I said hello, excuse me, and I paused momentarily and then raised my voice with the next question.

[00:40:05] I asked him if everything's all right. When I said that, he stopped shaking altogether, but still doesn't turn around or even move another muscle. He just remains in that same creepy position and doesn't move. Now for a brief moment I thought that

[00:40:29] I might have been imagining this whole thing. I glanced down at my dog and I see that she's also concerned and this man is just standing there shaking while she begins to growl quietly.

[00:40:45] So I knew that this wasn't all in my head. When I look back up though, he had moved closer to me. I want to say seven feet closer, now almost on the trail's path.

[00:41:00] I had only looked at my dog for a split second and he did it without making a sound. He still wasn't facing me either and his hands were still open, head still facing the sky. I wasn't about to wait

[00:41:14] and see what this guy was doing or what his intentions were so slowly I eased my way past him towards the equestrian center as quietly as I could before I felt that it was safe enough

[00:41:28] for me to start sprinting as fast as I could away from this guy. When I reached the first arena of the equestrian center, I looked back in the direction of the

[00:41:38] forest completely out of breath and there he was. This guy was standing at the edge of the trail outside of the forest just standing there and facing me. I was too far away to see his face

[00:41:56] and frankly I didn't want to. I couldn't make out his features, all I could see was his silhouette illuminated by the moonlight peeking through the forest trails. I continued to run with no

[00:42:08] intention of stopping until I found someone. I had never been so happy to see my nagging neighbor Penny and her moody mare Jolene riding in the Milano area. She noticed my distress but due to

[00:42:25] her already harsh opinions of me, I told her that I had been on an endurance run and I was just very out of breath and tired. I wanted to avoid any small town gossip as much as I could. My mother

[00:42:38] arrived with impeccable timing and during the ride home I broke down into a state of paranoia, distress, and panic at what I had just witnessed. Now my mother, she didn't know exactly what to

[00:42:52] make of it so she recommended that I file a police report with the police department. About an hour after getting home, an officer shows up to take my statement. Following up the next day, the same officer claims to have went and checked the area but

[00:43:07] didn't find anyone or anything out of the ordinary apart from partial bare footprints. But there's nothing incriminating or suspicious about someone going for a walk without shoes. He played it off as a joke and accused me of being under the influence but I can assure you I was

[00:43:25] completely sober. Nothing ever came out of this though. I attended weekly therapy sessions for almost two years following the event and I never went on walks by myself ever again.

[00:43:40] I had night terrors about the man and sometimes I still do. I don't know what to make of it and I don't know if I ever will. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. If you'd

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[00:44:18] forward slash let's not meet podcast. 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. If you have a story to share,

[00:44:33] send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Finally, make sure to check out all of our other storytelling podcasts like Odd Trails, our true paranormal podcast and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.