5x09: The Devil And His Date

[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.

[00:00:53] I had just transferred schools and had took a new position at a high school as a librarian. There was a little snack bar run by the cafeteria workers in the student center.

[00:01:06] Bill was the guy who manned the register for this snack bar. He was a short man in his late 50s. He always had a smile for anyone who came to visit. He really loved when adults of the building

[00:01:22] came by to get food and drinks, and he would try to start conversation with anyone who would stop to talk. He seemed sad and lonely though. Over the first few months of stopping there

[00:01:36] for my morning tea, he would always ask me questions. I was in a serious relationship at this time. I had been with my partner for six years and we had a child together.

[00:01:49] He seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me. I never got any weird vibes from him. He seemed like a sweet father or grandfather type figure. Over the summer between my first

[00:02:02] year of working and my second year, my boyfriend and I broke up. I didn't talk about it at work when I could help it. It was painful to talk about because we had been together for a long time

[00:02:16] and we had a child. I was trying to date online. I was on the main ones, Facebook, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, and Bumble. I live in a pretty small town so the same men were on all

[00:02:32] the same apps. I went on a few dates but overall the entire process was a disaster. I only stayed on the apps for that first fall semester of my second year and then deleted all of them

[00:02:47] to remain single. During this time, Bill's attention started to change. He would get very excited when I came down to get my morning drink. He knew about my breakup and would ask me

[00:02:59] how the dating was going. I don't remember telling him that I was single but I assumed I must have let it slip at some point in our conversations. I would come back in the mornings

[00:03:11] and tell him about all the terrible dates. I remember telling him that I was giving up on dating. He tried to hold my hand to try and comfort me I guess. I immediately jerked my hand

[00:03:26] back. I told him I was fine with my life and that I won't be dating again until I'm happy with just myself. Each morning that I went back, I noticed that he kept trying to find excuses to touch me.

[00:03:42] I would have hair on my clothes or he needed to fix the alignment of my jacket. I started to get very creeped out from all of his attention. I stopped going down to get a drink.

[00:03:55] I told him I didn't have time in the morning anymore because the library was getting more kids needing me to check out books before school started. Since I wasn't coming down to see him,

[00:04:07] he started coming to see me. He started just by bringing me tea. If I was not at my desk, he would leave it for me to find. At first, I didn't mind too much. Things just appeared

[00:04:24] and I didn't have to fake a smile when he came by. Well after a few weeks, it stopped being just tea and he started to bring me food too. We just got a shipment of oranges in, he said. I picked out

[00:04:39] the very best ones for you. I know how much you love oranges. The gifts became bigger and bigger until he was bringing me full meals from the cafeteria. I started trying to think of how I

[00:04:56] could get this to stop while also being polite. I had to be nice, right? Over time, I couldn't even eat the food. I would give it away or trash it the moment that he left the room.

[00:05:10] The next time he came down with his arms filled with free food for me, I told him that I didn't want him to bring me anything because I was on a diet and I was bringing my own food to school.

[00:05:22] You are perfect just the way you are, he said with a big smile. I replied with a thank you. Why do I feel like I need to be nice to creepy people? When he would try to bring me food down,

[00:05:37] I would thank him and remind him that I did not want any more food. When he would come in and I wasn't at my desk, I would duck down and hide until he left. The students started to ask what

[00:05:50] was going on. I'm a full grown woman, the person in charge of these students and I'm hiding on the floor behind a stack of books to avoid talking to him. The students even said that they

[00:06:04] didn't like him. They had nicknamed him the troll. It was a fitting name. Over time, he understood that I didn't want any more food from him. I had a month of glorious silence. No visits,

[00:06:21] just awkward waves in the hallway if I passed by. And my second year as a librarian ended. When the third year started back up, I had a lovely summer without a thought of him.

[00:06:35] I walked into the library on my first day with a present on my desk. I opened the package. It's a coffee tumbler and a gift card to Starbucks. No name or card to say who gave it to me.

[00:06:50] I wasn't sure it was him, so I went down to ask. He said that he wanted to buy me something special and to have my school year start off with a smile. I accepted the gift and thanked him.

[00:07:04] I'm not saying no to some free drinks, but I shouldn't have taken it. I know that now. The gifts didn't stop. At least once a week, he would bring me something. Each gift got more expensive and I became increasingly more uncomfortable. By October, I told him again to

[00:07:22] stop. Do not bring me anything. Do not buy me anything. It makes me uncomfortable. And I will not be buying him anything in return. He didn't listen. He kept bringing me things. I knew he

[00:07:38] couldn't afford this on a cafeteria worker's salary and I told him that. Just stop. I started to get angry with him. I was no longer smiling or saying thank you, but I realized my biggest mistake now. I took the gifts. I took them because I didn't have

[00:08:00] a lot of money and the gifts were truly all the things that I loved. I should have never accepted them. I started to confide in other co-workers about how uncomfortable the situation made me.

[00:08:14] Most of them would just reply, he's single and really nice. He obviously likes you. I know he's older, but maybe you should give him a chance. I did not. With each unwanted gift, he would say,

[00:08:29] I know you told me no gifts, but I just had to get it for you. On Valentine's Day of my third year working at this school, a giant gift basket was on my desk.

[00:08:43] I brought the entire thing back to him. I told him to take it back, that it was just too much. My guess was that it was about $150 for the entire thing. I told him to keep it.

[00:08:57] He said that if I took this, it would be the last gift. He promised. So I took it and I made him repeat it again, that it was the last gift. I didn't get a chance to test this. By the next

[00:09:12] month, the entire country shut down because of COVID. I had to still be on campus to work, despite all the students being remote. In April, he came by my desk with a goodbye gift. He was

[00:09:27] quitting the job because they couldn't pay any of the cafeteria workers without students on campus. He was moving away. We cried, partly because I'm empathetic when others cry and mostly from my relief. He was leaving. I never had to speak to him again.

[00:09:45] The next day, I had a friend request and a message from him on Facebook. I didn't respond or accept the request, but it did fill in some of the gaps of my knowledge. He had a car as his

[00:09:59] profile picture, and I remember the picture from all my dating apps. That's why his demeanor changed. He saw me on all the dating apps, and I had ignored him. For eight months,

[00:10:14] I thought it was over. I didn't think about him. School started back up this past August with students back on campus. It was a relief not to worry about seeing him or finding random things

[00:10:26] on my desk. In October, my phone started ringing. I was busy, so I didn't answer. After the person called about five times, I finally answered, thinking it could be an urgent

[00:10:42] parent. It was creepy troll Bill. He had to talk to me. He was in love with me. He said he spent every day thinking about me and, oh, by the way, he's married and has grandchildren. Guess who's

[00:11:02] ready to leave his wife for me? Crazy troll Bill. He kept me on my work phone for 45 minutes. I listened. I was nice. In hindsight, I have no idea why I kept talking to him. I told him that

[00:11:18] I was not interested in him in that way. He begged to be friends, though. I said fine. He asked me to accept his friend request, and I did. He tried messaging me the next day, but

[00:11:32] I left it on read. Two weeks later, I get a message from the front office that a representative from a company needs to talk to me. I rarely get sales reps coming in person, especially after

[00:11:45] COVID. I go up to the front, and it's the troll in a suit, large bags under his arms. The secretary thought he must have been a regular because she recognized him but couldn't place

[00:12:01] where from. He asks to come in and talk to me, but with COVID and safety rules, no one is allowed in this school. I go outside in the cold to talk to him. He explains that he just wanted to drop

[00:12:15] off a few gifts for me. He proceeds to take each item out of the bag. He tells me where he was, how it reminded him of me, and why I had to have it. He bought things for my kid,

[00:12:32] nowhere close to what he needs for his age. At this point, I start panicking. My stomach hurts. I feel like I'm trapped, but outwardly, I'm being polite and nice. He asks to hold my hand while he

[00:12:48] reads the poetry that he wrote for me, but I refuse and move as far away as I can manage. The poem that he reads references a picture of me. He has the picture printed out. He said it was

[00:13:03] his favorite picture of mine. I'm 14 years old in the picture. How far back on my Facebook did he go? And this man used to work in a high school. I tell him again that I do not have any interest in

[00:13:21] him. He says, that's okay. I just need to be near you. I will take any attention that you're willing to give me. I just need to be in your life. He goes in for a hug and I try to get away,

[00:13:37] but I'm trapped between a tree and a bench. With his height, his face buried in my breasts, and his hand trying to sneak under my shirt, I can hear him trying to smell my hair. I'm

[00:13:50] instantly sick. I'm able to get away. I sent him a Facebook message the moment I'm back inside. This time, finally, I'm not nice. I tell him no more gifts, period. None. This is a matter of

[00:14:07] consent. I do not consent to any more gifts. You say you care about me, but you do not respect my wishes. No more gifts. After he responds, and I'm confident that he actually understood my words,

[00:14:22] I block him. I change the setting of my profile to make it harder to find. In November, a box arrived at the school. A subscription box that will be sent every month. There isn't a name

[00:14:38] for who it's from, but I know who sent it. I went to speak with the police on campus, but guess what? Not much that they can do since I don't have proof that it's from Bill.

[00:14:50] I've called the company, but they can't help because I'm not the account holder. The school is aware of the situation. They will hopefully remember him if he tries to see me at

[00:15:00] work again. The day before my birthday, he called my work phone four times. On my birthday, he called my phone more than five. I didn't answer. Yesterday, a second package arrived at the school with my

[00:15:15] name on it. At the school address. I hope this story is over, but it might not be. I make sure I'm not followed when I leave work, but I don't have any clue what kind of car he drives. I have

[00:15:32] a special way that I drive home now, where everything is single lanes, hopefully making it easy to see if I'm followed. I always check the caller ID before I answer my work phone.

[00:15:46] I'm afraid of anyone who expresses any interest in me now because crushes are not cute anymore. I wait for things to be delivered to campus. I live in a constant state of panic because

[00:16:01] what if he meant it? What if he has to be a part of my life, whether I like it or not? So to build a creepy cafeteria troll, let's not meet again. I spent most of my childhood

[00:16:32] in a medium-sized town in the deep south near the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn't the typical everybody-knows-everybody town, but small enough that we personally knew the more prominent residents, including a wealthy family that had been there since the town was founded.

[00:16:51] We moved around a bit while there, but one house we rented in particular was my favorite I've ever lived in. It was a single story home with a large fenced-in backyard in an upper middle-class neighborhood with mature dogwood trees and beautiful azaleas. It was owned by one

[00:17:12] of those prominent families in the area who just so happened to live in the house right next door. The backyard included a tennis court and was semi-secluded by shrubbery on either side and wooded behind the tennis court. The house had five bedrooms, one each for me,

[00:17:35] my two sisters, my parents, and one spare bedroom for my half-brother to use when he was in town visiting. My older sister Denise's bedroom was in the front of the house with a wall of windows

[00:17:50] facing the street. Next to her room was the bathroom that she shared with my other sister Amy, whose room was on the other side of the bathroom. Amy's room also had a lot of windows

[00:18:01] that faced the narrow side yard separating our house from the neighbors. Down the hall was a spare room currently occupied by my older half-brother Jeff who rarely left his room and barely interacted with us. My room sat in the far back corner of the house facing the backyard,

[00:18:18] also with a lot of windows on both exterior walls. I loved that room. It was large and cozy with a walk-in closet, something I wouldn't fully come to appreciate until I was an adult.

[00:18:32] I was a bit of a loner, a shy child, often spending time either in my room or in my backyard by myself. This house had what we would now call an open floor plan. The dining room led into the

[00:18:48] den which led into the kitchen area. Attached off of the kitchen was a playroom that one of the previous owners converted from a three-car garage. All of these rooms were lined with windows all looking into the backyard. There were doors leading into the backyard from the den

[00:19:08] and the playroom, though we rarely used the one in the den as it usually was too swollen to open as we lived in a pretty humid part of the country. My father worked long hours at a factory

[00:19:21] over an hour away from our house, so there were plenty of nights when he didn't get home until long after I was in bed. This particular night was one of those nights. I was around nine years old

[00:19:34] and it must have been summer because I was up late in my room on my bed putting together a small puzzle. I had turned on a small lamp on my nightstand that gave out a decent amount of

[00:19:47] illumination. There were five good-sized windows in my room, three on one wall, two on the other, all with the old retractable style shades, the type that you could pull down in a specific length

[00:20:03] and it would stay in place or slightly tug on it and it would cause the entire thing to retract all the way open. One of the shades was broken. We typically left that small opening because that particular window faced the same narrow side yard that bordered the wealthy

[00:20:23] family's yard next door, so no one could just stroll by the window and see through the crack. My mom had been watching TV in the den, my siblings in their respective rooms,

[00:20:35] so the house was pretty quiet. All of a sudden I hear my mom screaming at someone outside, what are you doing here? Who are you? I ran from my room to the den and through the open back door.

[00:20:52] Stopping outside I could see Jeff, my half-brother, standing on the back porch holding an aluminum baseball bat and looking toward the side yard. I followed his gaze to see my mom in her

[00:21:06] pajamas holding a small stick that I had whittled to a point the day before, screaming at someone that I couldn't see. I heard a rustling of bushes and branches as the person ran through the

[00:21:19] shrubbery and trees surrounding our backyard. My mom ran past me to the kitchen to call the police, all the while my large and very capable half-brother stood frozen on the back porch. She got all of us into the den as we waited for the police to arrive.

[00:21:36] When they did, my mom told them Amy, my sister, came running into the den breathless and hysterical saying she saw someone walk by her window several times, stopping once or twice at one of them.

[00:21:49] She said it looked like they tried to peer around her curtains, cupping their hands around their face to see in. Not being someone to fuck around, my mom got up and grabbed the closest weapon that

[00:22:01] she could find, my wimpy whittled stick, and ran outside. Keep in mind my mom grew up in the deep south her whole life, poor and tough, and has always been fiercely protective of her cubs.

[00:22:14] In the hands of anyone else, the little twig would have done zero damage to anyone, but in the hands of an angry frightened mother who is protecting her kids, I'm sure she could have gutted someone. She ran to the narrow side of the yard and saw him.

[00:22:30] She said it looked like an adult male in khakis and a red shirt with very blonde short hair, and he was crouching down, looking into my window through the small area not covered

[00:22:42] by my window shade. She stood there for a fraction of a second before screaming at him. That's when I heard her and ran from my room. She said that the man stood up slowly and looked over for what she felt like was forever.

[00:23:00] He then started to run towards her, only to take a sharp turn to what turned out to be a collapsed part of the chain link barrier around our backyard. We had no idea the fence was collapsed

[00:23:12] because it was covered by honeysuckle and vines. The police looked around, shining flashlights, and put out an alert that there was a peeping tom in the neighborhood. My mom filed a police

[00:23:24] report and suggested off the record that the guy was part of the family that owned the house, the same family that lived next door. But there was no evidence, and the side yard was poorly lit,

[00:23:38] so she couldn't say she was positive. Then they were a wealthy, prominent, well-known family in the town who were very liked and had a lot of influence. When the police left,

[00:23:51] we all gathered in the den and tried to get some sleep, but no one could. We tried watching TV, but no one could take their eyes from the backyard searching for this guy.

[00:24:03] My father came home very late that night, and my mom told him everything, including her suspicions about the neighbors. We told all our friends, who probably told their parents, etc. It was a few

[00:24:15] weeks later we got a notice from the hone owners that we would have to move out of the house, that they have a family member that wanted to move into it, so we would have to leave. No one said it,

[00:24:27] but we were all pretty sure we were being kicked out because either they had heard the stories about the suspicions of their peeping Tom's son, and they needed to get us out of the house next

[00:24:38] door lest my mom see him there and recognize, or they were mad about us spreading untrue rumors about him. We moved to another house about 10 minutes away, and I made sure all of our curtains

[00:24:52] covered all of the windows. I've thought about this often over the years, and here are things that still frighten me. We had been living in that house for a few years, a family with three young

[00:25:05] daughters and an occasional absent father, all the while a potentially dangerous peeping Tom lived next door. Whoever it was walked around our house at least twice, peering in the windows as

[00:25:19] he passed them. In my head, I can tell myself he would have done that at any house, but in my heart I'm positive he knew those windows and who slept in those rooms. There was a part of the fence that

[00:25:32] was collapsed under that brush, like they had cased the house and the backyard for an easy entry and escape. Or even worse, he had been there several times and was just caught this time because Amy's

[00:25:47] lights were off, but she was awake to see him pass by. Who knows what he could have seen, how many other young girls' windows he leered through. What would have happened if Amy didn't see him pass by? How

[00:26:02] many more times would he have shown up before escalating, like trying to get into the house or snatch me from the backyard when I was alone? I've listened to a lot of Let's Not Meet podcasts,

[00:26:14] so I know this is not the scariest story, but it's one of far too many that involve young girls being watched or stalked. How heartbreaking it is to hear another tale of a prepubescent girl

[00:26:27] almost sexually assaulted or even more awful, the offender, was never caught or never even searched for. It's incredibly dangerous out there for children, especially young girls. As a mom of a now-grown woman, I watched very closely the people around her. Men in particular, sizing them up, scrutinizing

[00:26:48] their attentions and actions. So creepy pedo peeper who watched me through the window when I was too young to deserve to be scared, let's not meet again. I'll meet you on Bloomberg Avenue with a

[00:27:02] whittled stick and we'll see how fast you get away over the fence this time. I have been debating submitting this for some time now, but recently you said that families listen to this with their

[00:27:29] kids during one of your episodes to help educate them. That hit home for me. I hope my story will help someone somewhere. I grew up in a rural community in eastern Canada and I want to tell

[00:27:43] you a little bit about my neighborhood for context. My house was located on a hill up along driveway surrounded by trees. You could only see the roof of my house from the road. My grandparents lived

[00:27:55] two houses down on the opposite side of the street that opened into a rocky beach, but all of the homes were sheltered and separated by patches of forest. My best friend at the time,

[00:28:08] who I'll call Bert, lived about six to seven houses down the street in the opposite direction around two curves in the road. I walked and biked this stretch all the time. This is relevant for

[00:28:20] later and how isolated I felt and how limited my options were at the time of this event. I was about seven years old when this happened to me. I'm almost 30 now. It rains a lot where

[00:28:35] I grew up, but picture a beautiful warm summer afternoon with a light ocean breeze. Usually I would bike to Bert's house, spend the day there, or we'd meet at my Nan's, hanging out in their

[00:28:50] large yard or on the rocky shoreline. On this day I had ventured to my Nan's and gathered a bunch of toys in my really cliche little red wagon and headed to Bert's. I don't really remember what

[00:29:05] we got up to or for how long, but I know it was late in the afternoon when I decided to head back home. I knew I had to drop the wagon off at my Nan's and then get home for dinner, so I headed

[00:29:18] out with my wagon towards home. Shortly after I left, a vehicle pulled up behind me and the driver stopped the car next to me to talk. That was not uncommon. People came down through our community

[00:29:33] for drives on nice days and asked for directions. I remember the vehicle pretty clearly. It was a brown station wagon, one of those older ones with the wood paneling on the sides. The driver was a

[00:29:47] man in a t-shirt and there was a younger woman in the passenger seat. The man did most of the talking. He commented that my wagon must have been pretty heavy, to which I responded, it was, but I was

[00:30:03] strong. He asked me how far I lived. I remembered this because alarm bells started ringing in my little seven-year-old brain and it just got worse from there. I said I didn't live too far and that

[00:30:19] my Nan was waiting. He then offered to give me a ride home, to which I said no thanks and repeated that I didn't live far. He offered again. I declined. This time I went further as to say that

[00:30:36] I couldn't just leave my wagon. At first he told me it would be okay to leave the wagon, that he would come back for it. I refused, so then he offered to put it in the back of his station

[00:30:51] wagon. At this point, alarm bells just got louder. The woman chimed in and repeated that it was no trouble, that they would put the wagon in the back and give me a lift home. I don't remember much

[00:31:08] about her but she didn't look at me when she said this. The bells started screaming. This part is scarily clear to me. I again responded that I didn't live far, just around the bend, but knew

[00:31:25] I was running out of things to say. I was worried that I was also running out of time. Remember my neighborhood setup? At this point, thankfully, I'm standing about 200 meters from a

[00:31:38] house that I know. A family that went to our church with two girls just a bit older than me. I can't see my house from here. It's just beyond the curve of the road and there are a lot of

[00:31:52] uninhabited woods from here to there. I also noticed that there's no car in this family's driveway. I literally remember calculating. I felt that I could make it to the door but I was very worried they weren't actually home. Then what would I do? There was another house about 500

[00:32:14] meters on the opposite side of the street but their house was farther from the road and I didn't know them very well. Plus, the car was between me and that route. What if they got out of the car?

[00:32:27] I didn't feel like I could make it to my friends as it was about 500 meters behind me and up a small hill. They had a long driveway through the woods as well.

[00:32:38] Could he sense me thinking all of these things though? I could feel the adrenaline and I realized that I would have to ditch my precious wagon. He then said, okay, well we could really give you a

[00:32:54] lift. It's no problem. I declined again as all these options are going over in my mind and he said, okay, have a nice day and drove away. The walk home seemed to take forever. I was afraid that

[00:33:10] they would be up ahead away from the houses as there were large stretches of woods on both sides isolated from any house and they would just grab me where no one would see or hear me

[00:33:23] but they were gone. I left my wagon at the bottom of the driveway and ran up and told my mom. I don't remember much after that. When I asked my mom about it, she doesn't like to but she remembers it.

[00:33:37] She reported it to the police who came and took a statement but I honestly don't remember that part. I realize I'm very fortunate and that thought still crosses my mind from time to time.

[00:33:48] There was no one else around. There were two of them and one of me. My parents and I didn't have a definite time to be home. Just a vague sense of being home for dinner. I'm very, very lucky.

[00:34:01] I don't know why they didn't just snatch me. Maybe they were just being nice but when I listened to my mom talk about it, I know how upset she gets and that reportedly other children in the surrounding

[00:34:14] areas reported similar interactions. No one had seen that vehicle before or since. This is a small community. Everyone knows everyone but regardless, I am glad that it didn't escalate or I might not

[00:34:29] be around to tell this story. To the young couple offering a seven-year-old a ride, I don't know what your intentions were though I feel they were likely despicable. Let's never meet again. When I was 20,

[00:34:57] I was an international student in a small town in Scotland. The pub I was working in had just opened and was a bit higher scale than the townspeople were used to.

[00:35:09] We didn't get a lot of customers so it was often pretty quiet. On this weekend evening, we had just a few people for dinner and we were winding down probably going to close early if no one else

[00:35:22] came in. My manager was cleaning up in the kitchen which was down a long hall pretty far from the bar and I was in the front at the bar washing glasses and tidying up.

[00:35:34] I was just thinking about how nice it would be to get home earlier than expected when the door opened and a particularly rough-looking couple came in. I try not to judge people by appearances especially as an outsider in this town. I was very open to

[00:35:51] people's differences but there was immediately something about this woman in particular that felt off to me. Even though she was heavily tattooed and pierced and looked quite strong, she was pretty small, normal looking but just strange. They got a couple of drinks at the bar

[00:36:13] and we had a surprisingly normal interaction while I got them a glass of wine and a beer. They paid and went to sit down. She didn't say much in the interaction and I thought okay,

[00:36:26] they're just on a cute date and they're here for a quiet drink. Maybe they won't be any trouble. They went to sit down and having literally every table in the place to pick from,

[00:36:38] they sat directly facing me both on the same side of a table backs to a wall facing out looking right at me. A bit weird but they had their drinks so I figured they'd be occupied at least for a little

[00:36:55] while. They didn't speak at all. They didn't even seem to be drinking the drinks that they had. They just looked around. I tried to ignore them and just keep tidying up hoping that my manager

[00:37:09] would come back to the kitchen so I wasn't alone with these people. A few minutes later, the woman went upstairs towards the women's bathroom on the third floor. Let me describe the layout of

[00:37:21] the building real quick. It's a very old building on the edge of a river built into a hillside so the ground floor is half underground at the back and the floor above is a little event space that

[00:37:33] we sometimes have private parties or music events in. And above that is the attic and storage space that had been converted into a women's bathroom once women were allowed into bars or whatever.

[00:37:45] On the ground floor, when you come in the front door, you can either go straight up the stairs or go through the doorway to the right to enter the bar. If you're standing behind the bar,

[00:37:56] you're facing the entrance but if you're standing at the bar as a patron, you have your back to the door. Almost as soon as the woman was out of sight and on her way upstairs, the man got up and came

[00:38:10] over to the bar to chat with me. I got a little bit nervous because I'm pretty shy and I was going to be alone with this guy. But I am great at customer service and working with this bar where I frequently

[00:38:25] encountered drunk old Scottish men, I had gotten very good at having conversations where I barely understood anything that was being said and pretty much just kept nodding along and letting them say

[00:38:36] whatever they wanted until they got bored and went away. The guy started making some small talk like where's your accent from, what are you doing in town, etc. Pretty standard stuff that I was used to

[00:38:52] as a foreigner in a small town. It was going on like this for quite a while and I was wondering where his girlfriend had gotten to. I think he saw me sort of glazing over and looking around

[00:39:06] wondering where his girlfriend was and where my manager was. His tone started changing. He started asking me if I believed in God, heaven and hell. I guess it was a bad idea to try and

[00:39:20] laugh it off saying no when he asked me with a hiss in his thick Scottish accent if I had ever met the devil. His eyes narrowed and out of nowhere he produced a pocket knife hissing again. Well now

[00:39:40] you have. At this exact moment our one regular customer Fred walked into the bar. He walked right up to the guy and knocked the knife out of his hand. Fred was the local martial arts instructor

[00:39:54] and sometimes when I tell this story I say that he judo chopped him but to be honest I can't really remember what he did. I just know that he had knocked it out of his hand.

[00:40:03] Fred overpowered him easily and he dragged him out the door shouting and chased the guy off. My manager came out to the kitchen upon hearing the commotion and Fred explained that he could

[00:40:16] see what was going on through the window before he came in. We locked the door and my manager poured Fred a drink telling me to take a break and relax. I really had to pee so I went upstairs

[00:40:28] quickly ducking into the first stall and relieving myself finally breathing a sigh of relief while coming down from that crazy adrenaline rush. Then I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized the enormous dread that the woman had never come back downstairs

[00:40:46] and must still be up here. I had forgotten to mention her to the manager and Fred so they had no idea she was here. Fuck. I decided to try and rush out of there while she was still in the stall and get back downstairs as quickly as possible.

[00:41:05] Unfortunately when I opened the door she was standing at the sinks in between me and the door. I guess I won't be washing my hands I thought. She was staring right at me and she started yelling

[00:41:21] it wasn't a language that I understood and the best I can describe it was something like tongues. She looked absolutely terrifying. I wasn't sure what to do. Remember I said she was pretty small

[00:41:39] well I'm pretty big. At the time I probably weighed around 250 pounds and this lady was maybe 120 pounds max. I quickly looked at her hands to make sure she wasn't holding a knife

[00:41:51] like her boyfriend was and I decided to literally just push past her to get by. I said excuse me. I don't know why I said that. I know now to say fuck politeness. She moved into my path still

[00:42:08] yelling and started flailing her arms around and I just swept her out of the way with my arm and booked it out of there. I'm not sure if she fell down or what happened but she didn't come after me.

[00:42:22] I flew down the two flights of stairs and burst into the bar finding the guys sitting quietly and ran right past them so they were between me and the door. I said his girlfriend is still here.

[00:42:36] We all then saw her come downstairs and start trying to get out the door while yelling and muttering incomprehensible words. My manager shouted to her it's locked and she finally figured that out unlocked it and let

[00:42:50] herself out while he ran to lock it again. We had a few drinks and my manager called the police to file a report. It was a small town and the guy would be pretty easy to find considering he had

[00:43:05] very recognizable face and neck tattoos. Fred walked me home that night and I only worked for a few more daytime shifts at the pub without incident before the year ended and I left town

[00:43:19] but those last few weeks in this tiny town I was constantly looking over my shoulder in case I ran into those two again. I didn't and over 10 years have passed but I'd just like to say to anyone who

[00:43:35] thinks they might be the devil and their crazy girlfriends let's not meet. Throughout my childhood my family went on camping trips multiple times a year with a bunch of other families we knew. Those trips are some of my favorite memories of growing

[00:44:03] up because as kids would wander in packs together exploring the woods or playing hide and seek in the dark. One year I was about 14 years old we went to a campsite at Tyler State Park outside

[00:44:18] of Tyler Texas. If you're not familiar with Tyler it's a region of Texas with 300 foot pine trees, fall colors and a lot of lakes. The first evening we arrived at the park I started feeling antsy

[00:44:35] and wanted to go for a walk. We had driven several hours to get there and I was disappointed at the idea of not really getting to do anything fun before dark. The parents were still setting up

[00:44:48] the campsite but said that I could go exploring if I took some of the younger kids along. They were also stir crazy and getting in the way. They told me to take a flashlight too just in case

[00:45:02] So that's how I ended up walking down the park road with a couple of girls who were around 10 years old and my family's dog Sophie. The girls who were with me were a little too young for us

[00:45:15] to really be friends. I knew I basically was babysitting them but I didn't mind it. It let me leave the unpacking to my parents. We started walking down the main road and had seen a map

[00:45:30] of the park and it had shown the road as a giant loop. I planned to follow the loop all the way around until we ended up back at our campsite but I underestimated how quickly dusk sets in

[00:45:44] in a forest. Pine trees towered over both sides of the road blocking much of the sky. I wondered if we should turn around but reminded myself that the road looped back though it hadn't occurred to me

[00:45:58] to consider the map's scale and if the route might be several miles longer than I had thought. We'd started to get tired and nervous. One of the younger girls picked up the dog to carry her.

[00:46:11] None of us had phones. It was the time of evening when everything in the woods had kind of a gray tone to it. It wasn't quite dark yet but the trees and bushes were starting to look like shapes.

[00:46:25] We saw headlights approaching. They were blinding and bouncing over the road. We heard the driver slow down and I half expected it to be one of our parents coming to find us but the driver

[00:46:37] pulled right next to us with his window rolled down. He was a man with a long gray and white beard. He drove a beat-up ancient car like a 70s Plymouth or something with half crunched empty

[00:46:53] beer cans covering the dashboard but the part I remember most clearly was just how he stared at us without speaking. I sputtered out a hello and he didn't respond. Now I believe in god angels and

[00:47:10] gut feelings and that moment suddenly everything in me said to run. I couldn't explain why but I just knew I needed to. With one click I turned off my flashlight grabbed the arms of the girls

[00:47:23] who were standing on either side of me and we took off running. What happened next showed me we were right to be very very afraid. When we ran we ran the opposite direction of the car

[00:47:37] towards the direction it came from and when we ran I heard the car behind us suddenly accelerate and swerve to turn around. If he was going to chase us in his car I knew he would see us with

[00:47:50] his headlights. We were just three girls running down the middle of the road with no one else around. We were the only thing to see. Still holding the younger girl's hands I pulled us

[00:48:03] a few feet off of the road and into some bushes at the base of a tree. He must have seen us leave the road because he stopped the car. The headlights shut off and a moment later he cut the engine.

[00:48:17] Everything went quiet. We were only maybe 20 to 30 feet away from the car at this point and I remember trying not to breathe. It's that feeling you get when you're playing hide and seek

[00:48:32] like the person looking for you might be able to hear your heartbeat. We were sitting there in total silence. I could feel the girls with me their hands holding mine tightly. I remember one

[00:48:46] part of my brain being confused trying to think of a totally innocent reason for someone to turn off their headlights and cut their car's engine but my gut told me he was looking for us. He turned off the headlights to try and adjust his eyes to the semi-dark

[00:49:04] and he cut his engine and then a moment later I heard the sound of his car door opening. As an adult I look back on this part of the story as the scariest part. There's still no reason I

[00:49:15] could imagine for a man to pursue a group of little girls in the dark woods. If he were a nice person just concerned about us being lost wouldn't he have said something to us when he first pulled

[00:49:26] up? And while there were three of us plus a dog so cowardly that it didn't even count we were probably combined 170 pounds and completely and utterly lost. I heard him getting

[00:49:41] out of his car and I knew he would find us so that's when I whispered for the girls to run. We took off into the woods parallel from the road. We ran without even turning our flashlight on.

[00:49:53] The ground was uneven so we inched closer and closer to the road until we were running again on concrete. I think we ran for 10 to 15 minutes then we saw headlights again. One of the younger girls that I had with me who had kind of a panicky personality

[00:50:11] streaked away from me and the other girl directly into the woods. The car was some kind of SUV. The younger girl just kept running. I chased her down grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

[00:50:24] Don't run away from us I said. I wasn't really thinking about being nice at that moment. I was thinking about losing her in the dark or getting separated and one of us being found by the man.

[00:50:38] Then I grabbed her by the arm and practically dragged her to the road where we started walking again. By this time everything was pitch black. I had to turn my flashlight on again.

[00:50:48] We walked in silence and if we heard the sound of car engine I'd click the flashlight off and we dived to the side of the road until a car passed. At one point one of the cars looked like it could

[00:51:00] have been the older white car but I wasn't sure. We walked until we found a camper with a little wooden sign on the front that said park host. I knocked on the door of the camper which was

[00:51:12] open by a middle-aged woman who seemed shocked to see three girls at her door in the dark. Her husband started his truck and asked us to pile in with him. The younger girls did not want

[00:51:24] to. We had been so terrified that night already and getting into a truck with a stranger was the last thing any of us wanted to do but me? They seemed nice enough. The park host drove us back

[00:51:37] to our parents who at that point had been searching all over for us. They might have even been driving some of the cars that we had seen when we were hidden from the road. When I told my parents what

[00:51:48] happened they were unsure at first if we overreacted to just meeting a stranger but then when they learned that he had cut his headlights and turned off his car engine they became pretty

[00:52:01] freaked out as well. I remember my little brother was hanging around me all night and I asked him why he was following me. He pulled out his pocket knife and said he just wanted to make sure I was

[00:52:12] protected. The next day we went down to a swimming area at the park. My heart stopped when I saw a man sitting next to the water watching all of the families swim. He had a white beard that went

[00:52:29] all the way down to his chest. I grabbed my dad's arm and I told him that's the guy. I don't know what my dad did after that but it's hard for me to imagine my dad not having words

[00:52:40] with the man. All I know is that my dad disappeared after that for an hour or so before coming back and saying you don't need to worry about that guy I followed him until he left the park.

[00:52:54] Just the same I looked over my shoulder for the rest of that trip. Man in the old white car let's not meet. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast.

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