5x10: Whatever Happened In That House?

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult content and language. The stories in this show may be frightening and disturbing for some. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com Enjoy the show.

[00:01:15] During the recession my parents bought a huge house very cheap in the mountains of Utah. Because so many people had lost their homes our nearest neighbor was a 10 minute walk in either direction. My brother chose a room on the top floor.

[00:01:33] My parents had the master on the main floor and I picked a room in the basement so I could easily sneak in and out. 16 year old girl priorities. For a few weeks everything was normal, but then a big rainstorm hit and my mom made us wash the windows.

[00:01:51] The next morning I woke up to two huge hand prints on the window over my bed. The hands were about two feet apart like someone was leaning against the window looking down at me as I was sleeping.

[00:02:06] As I said before we lived up in the mountains without any close neighbors, so I didn't bother to close the drapes until that night. After that I made sure that the windows were locked and the drapes were closed.

[00:02:22] I showed my parents and they laughed and said that I had just done a bad job washing and those were my hand prints. When I showed them they were twice as big as my hands. They just laughed again and said that I was being dramatic.

[00:02:40] A few weeks later we were having breakfast and my sister came to visit. We had just sat down when my sister spotted a guy on a hill opposite our house looking into our kitchen with binoculars.

[00:02:55] Our kitchen windows were floor to ceiling. He must have been able to see us perfectly. Even with five people looking right back at him, he continued to look in our direction.

[00:03:10] After watching him for a while, my parents were convinced he was looking for elk on the mountain behind us. So we kept eating and forgot about him. A while after that my best friend and I were having a sleepover.

[00:03:28] It was getting really late around two in the morning and we finally started to fall asleep. As soon as I closed my eyes, I heard a loud cough not any further than ten feet away. We didn't bother looking around. We just jumped up and ran into the house.

[00:03:45] It was at that moment we realized my back door which is about 20 feet away from my bedroom would not lock. We turned on the floodlights but the sage was so thick and tall we couldn't see anyone.

[00:04:00] After laughing it off and guessing it was probably my dad or my boyfriend trying to be funny, we decided to sleep in my room because it was cold out there anyways.

[00:04:11] A while after that my family had been away for the day and had gotten home late but we still had to feed the horses. I was gone so my mother and brother went down to the paddock to feed them.

[00:04:24] On their way down they saw someone walking up the trail that led to our house with a flashlight. My brother called out, who is that? As soon as my brother spoke to the person, they turned their light off and ran back down the trail.

[00:04:42] My family thought that it was weird but again didn't think much of it. Probably someone that followed a trail and didn't realize that it led to our house. A few more weeks went by and I snuck my boyfriend into my room so we could make out and cuddle.

[00:04:59] After a while we fell asleep but were woken up to footsteps approaching my window. We couldn't make it out but it was definitely a big guy. My window was about 4 inches open in case my boyfriend had to make a break for it.

[00:05:16] So we could hear this person perfectly. He decided it was probably my dad and we were dead. So we pretended to be asleep and hopefully he wouldn't be too mad. Our eyes were closed. We could hear someone slide the window open completely and stick their head in.

[00:05:34] We listened, horrified as this guy leaned over us and breathed for what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes. Both of us were too scared to move and we continued to pretend we were asleep until we heard the guy stand up and walk away.

[00:05:55] We waited a few more minutes before we both sat up and looked out the window. Whoever it was left the window open and was gone. We shut the window and locked it.

[00:06:07] We both thought that it was my dad but we were worried that if it wasn't, whoever it was is probably still out there. So we waited wide awake until it was light enough for him to sneak out. That morning I went upstairs for breakfast.

[00:06:22] I figured that I was in for it but my parents acted like nothing was wrong. I didn't want to draw any attention to the situation in case it was my dad and he just didn't want to get into it with me.

[00:06:36] So I didn't say anything to them and assumed I'd hear about it one day but for now I was off the hook. By this time I was pretty freaked out and couldn't decide if it really was my dad all along or if I had a stalker.

[00:06:53] But I wasn't taking any chances. I locked my windows and door and closed up the curtains. The next night I could not sleep.

[00:07:01] I was still thoroughly freaked out from the night before and I was debating on going upstairs to sleep in the guest room next to my parents.

[00:07:10] That's when I heard the back door open and someone was feeling the walls in the dark to find their way through my house.

[00:07:19] My dad had a bad pill problem back then and it was normal for him to get messed up and have to cling to the walls for support. We had T-Mobile at the time and I only had enough service to send texts in my room.

[00:07:33] I listened for a while hoping my dad had gotten messed up, gone for a walk down the trail and was using the back door so he didn't wake up my mom.

[00:07:43] But instead of going up the stairs that were opposite my room, the person had gotten to my door and they were trying to open it. I sat in my bed stunned. I listened to the handle rattle. I couldn't move or make a sound.

[00:08:02] I was so scared but I finally got the courage to yell as loud as I could. Dad, knock it off! The rattling immediately stopped and I listened as they used the walls again to hurriedly find their way back to the door.

[00:08:19] I heard the door shut and sat back in my bed shocked. If it was my dad he would have yelled back at me or at least said something and he wouldn't have ran back outside. I was too scared to move. What if they were still in my house?

[00:08:36] I tried calling my parents but my stupid phone wouldn't work and they weren't answering my texts. I didn't want to call the cops because my dad had been in trouble with them before and if it was him, I didn't want him to get in trouble again.

[00:08:52] So I waited until morning. Then I booked it upstairs to tell my parents. They didn't believe me and would not call the cops. But they did tell me to move my stuff up to the guest room until I felt safe enough to go back to my room.

[00:09:07] They told me I needed to stop watching scary movies because I was scaring myself. Months went by without incident and I was finally starting to feel safe again. I had a million other 16-year-old problems to worry about.

[00:09:22] I had pretty much forgotten about it but I still refused to move my things back downstairs. For Easter, my parents gave us swimsuits and beach towels. So that night before bed, I tried on my new swimsuits in front of the mirror.

[00:09:38] I was pretty OCD about closing my drapes now but there was about a 2-inch gap between the two panels. When I was satisfied they fit, I put them away. I got into my pajamas and turned the light off.

[00:09:53] My mom was sitting in the living room across the hall from my room watching TV. As soon as I got to bed, I heard our dogs barking and my mom started screaming.

[00:10:04] I ran out of the room and although she was clearly shaken and the dogs were still going berserk, she told me everything was fine and to go back to bed. She said that she would tell me in the morning.

[00:10:18] When I asked her what happened the next day, she said as soon as she shut the lights off, the dogs started barking again at the living room window, which is right next to my room.

[00:10:29] She looked over and she saw a man so big that he had to hunch down to look in. When he saw my mom screaming, he took off. My parents never called the cops but they changed the locks and we moved a month later.

[00:10:48] I have a daughter of my own now and I'm hyper-vigilant of her. She's one and a half and has slept between my husband and I every night since she was born. I'm clearly too protective and need to work on it, but I promised myself

[00:11:02] I would never put my children in the position my parents put me in. So big, creepy guy that stalked me as a teenager, let's not meet. I must tell you a story about my last month of college. I was 22 years old, nearly graduating, and I lived alone.

[00:11:38] It was November 2002 in Southern Illinois. I lived in these really cheap government-zoned apartments for the sick and elderly. Yes, you read that right. These super affordable, surprisingly nice studio apartments were conveniently right off of campus and close to my program's office.

[00:11:58] The front room inside even had free cookies and lemonade. It was a hot spot for a crew of nice elderly folks that lounged around in wheelchairs socializing or putting together puzzles. Whenever the apartment complex had a room open that wasn't filled by a senior citizen,

[00:12:15] they would offer it up to a student. In order to be selected for the apartment, the student had to fill a lengthy application and participate in an interview process. I was a great student with a good track record and was chosen to live essentially

[00:12:32] in a nursing home for almost free. I was so very poor, I lived off of dollar store cans of corn and cereal, so this was a big deal for me. My room was at the top of the 7th floor.

[00:12:45] I moved in for my last year of school while also taking 18 credit hours, working a part-time job as an assistant photo editor in my college paper, and I still had time left for a few beers with friends.

[00:12:58] 40-year-old me has no idea how I had the energy for all of it. Anyway, I started noticing from time to time that the tenant below me would get very angry and take what I can only assume is a broom handle or a bat to hit his ceiling,

[00:13:15] which was my floor. These loud noises from him seemed to be at random times and often in the evening and happened several times throughout my short stay of living there. You have to understand, I was not a loud tenant.

[00:13:31] I never had guests. I never even played loud music. I was always working on projects or most likely not even home. One evening I heard the elevator ding. Unfortunately, my studio apartment was right next to it and I could hear the soft ding through my front door.

[00:13:50] I then heard a repetitive pounding on my door. I answered tentatively, not knowing what to expect and figuring out it was my downstairs neighbor when he told me, keep it down. I had been studying and had my radio on at such a small volume level for background noise.

[00:14:12] I do remember he was intensely creepy like almost manic. He was sweaty and had long hair flailing about. So back in early November, I'm working on an art project very late in the night, quietly chatting long distance with my boyfriend that was overseas in the Air Force.

[00:14:34] I heard the broom or baseball bat hit the ceiling. I was annoyed. My boyfriend was concerned because he could hear the bangs through the phone. We continued talking, but then I heard the elevator ding. My stomach dropped.

[00:14:54] Immediately there was a very loud pounding on my thick wooden door. I had my boyfriend on the phone as I looked through the peephole to see the neighbor man pounding on my door wildly with the butt of a gun.

[00:15:10] I unfortunately had to hang up with him just so that I could call 911. He was calling from Korea. He was nearly as hysterical as I was, and there was nothing he could do from the other end of the world.

[00:15:23] My heart was racing, and I was in pure fight or flight mode. I do not know how long the pounding lasted or how long my enraged neighbor was at the door. I had went into my bathroom, which was the only other room in my studio, with a door.

[00:15:39] I closed it, but it had no lock. Furthermore, I stood in the tub with the curtains drawn, trying to physically get as far away as possible from the door, putting as many superficial layers of whatever I could between the crazed man and myself.

[00:15:56] I talked to the 911 operator, struggling to keep my voice calm and quiet. I felt like a trapped mouse. I felt like I was going to throw up. It's impossible to get out of my apartment as there is only one way out.

[00:16:09] I'm on the top floor, and there is no fire escape. The 911 operator informs me that the police officer is on the way, and she loops him in on the call. I hear them both talking. She tells the officer that I'm hysterical. I know. I truly am, though.

[00:16:28] About ten painfully long minutes go by, which felt like hours to me. It turns out the police were there quickly, but couldn't enter the Fort Knox of our complex around 1 a.m. with no keycard. No one was downstairs to let them in.

[00:16:45] Through the 911 operator, the police tells me that they're on my floor right as I hear the ding of the elevator. I get out of the bathroom, shaking, and I make my way to the door.

[00:16:57] I look through the peephole, and I see that they indeed are on the other side. I cautiously open the door. Two men in full SWAT gear with guns drawn are there. I tell them my story again, and they look down at my door.

[00:17:12] The entire metal lock area where you enter the key, and the wood around it is damaged from a gun and or another weapon. The work of my neighbor. To this day, I send up thanks that I had a solid, sturdy door that did not give.

[00:17:29] Someone stays with me, and an officer goes downstairs and pounds on the neighbor's door. However, the man chooses not to answer. The cops tell me there's nothing they can do if he does not answer. They can't break and enter. They leave shortly after.

[00:17:48] I think this is utter bullshit. Now it's getting closer to 2am. I call my boyfriend back, and I'm terrified. I live alone. I'm a 125-pound woman. I'm terrified, to say the least. I swiftly pack a bag and head for my friend's house. She has cats.

[00:18:05] In the next days, I fill out a formal police report and speak with the building management. I'm scared as hell to live in my studio, not knowing how I'm going to possibly do so for another month before I graduate.

[00:18:19] Eventually, I decide I have to return home to my apartment, and I'm able to stay less and less with friends. I actually put a large knife under my mattress, but I never heard a lot from the man below or his broom.

[00:18:34] However, it does not stop me from panicking. A few times, from late-night elevator dings sending me running down seven flights of stairs, I didn't want to run into him in the elevator. I wanted to get to my car, where I could shake and sit

[00:18:54] for a good 30 minutes trying to calm myself down before I'm too tired and return-to-bed defeated. All in all, I end up graduating and not getting murdered, but to the man who lived below me, who was sick in his mind and had it out to get me,

[00:19:10] or like to scare young women. Let's never meet again. When I was a 22-year-old girl fresh out of college, I found a room for rent on Facebook Marketplace that was about 45 minutes north from the city where I worked.

[00:19:37] But the rent was good and the house was on a beautiful wooded 11-acre lot. Plus, I wanted to get a kitten and the owner said that it was fine and that she wouldn't charge any additional pet rent. I met the girl who owned it

[00:19:52] and was planning to live there with her and her boyfriend after they had finished a few refurbishments. I'll call them Tara and Justin. At the time that I moved in, Tara and Justin had three dogs and a cat. I was totally fine with this.

[00:20:08] I love animals and wanted a new kitten to be socialized. So in September of that year, I moved into the upstairs bedroom and adopted a two-pound kitten. I loved living there despite what I'm about to share. My bedroom window faced the marsh

[00:20:24] and at night I fell asleep to the sounds of crickets and frogs. I was within walking distance of a regional lake and park. My commute was long, but I thought it was worth it to be able to come home to a place so separate from my work life.

[00:20:40] Eventually, Tara and Justin had six dogs and three cats, but that just added to the fun. The house itself was odd, however. Tara told me that prior to my move in, the house had been custom built by some old guy who lived there previously.

[00:20:58] She didn't know the exact details, but he had given up on the house involuntarily possibly due to going into rehab or a foreclosure or both. Regardless, he had not wanted to leave. The lot was nestled between a quiet street of lake houses,

[00:21:16] a thick acreage of wood, and an organic farm. In order to reach it or even to see it, you had to drive down a dirt road shared only by the farm. You couldn't see it from the small street of lake houses, let alone from any main road.

[00:21:33] In other words, it wasn't the kind of house you saw unless you were looking for it. The actual door to the house was on the left side, facing a large pole barn we used as a garage. I often worked later shifts, and when I returned at night,

[00:21:51] the woods felt like they crept up on me from all sides. They were endless. You could hear a rustle or a branch snap and be unable to tell where or what it had come from in the complete darkness.

[00:22:06] An enormous bay window looked out on the front yard, dirt road, and marsh beyond it. The location of the bay window meant that when you sat in the living room, you had a broad view of the front property and the surrounding woods,

[00:22:23] plus you could watch the sunset over the marsh. My room was on the second floor, directly above the living room, and my window faced the same way. The location of the bay window also meant that if you approached the house after dark,

[00:22:41] you could see virtually everything going on inside of it. There were no curtains or blinds. The fluorescent lights inside the house illuminated all of its contents to anyone who happened to walk by or drive down that dirt road.

[00:22:54] From inside, you could see headlights approaching immediately when they appeared. One day around dusk, I saw a small sedan creep down the road towards the farm, then turn around and head back to the main road. It then did this several more times, always very slowly.

[00:23:14] I could only see a dark blur in the driver's seat. By itself, the somewhat odd layout of the house seemed innocent. But this wasn't all. Tara told me offhandedly that when she had moved into the house,

[00:23:31] she had had to get parts of it fumigated because the previous owner had been a smoker. She also mentioned that each door had to be custom built because the frames were slightly off from standard sizes. Why did she need to replace all the doors?

[00:23:47] Well, because the old man had super glued most of the locks shut. She theorized from what she had heard that the old man or his son were involved in drug sales, which may have had something to do with it.

[00:24:01] There was a narrow closet next to the kitchen that filled the space under the stairs leading to the second floor. It also contained the entrance to the crawlspace under the house. This was one of the doors that had not been replaced because the doorknob opened from the outside.

[00:24:18] It did not, however, open from the inside. An old alarm system was installed on the wall inside the closet, which had been set to go off any time the door was opened or closed. What reason could this old man possibly have to keep people out of his crawlspace?

[00:24:38] Or was he trying to keep something in? I went into that crawlspace once, almost expected to find human remains, in a John Wayne Gacy sort of way, but it was empty except for a dirt floor and tiny thick glass windows that peered to the edge of the house.

[00:24:56] One night I ordered a pizza. When the delivery man came, he looked at me with interest and asked if I owned the farm down the road. No, I explained. This was a separate property. He gave me an awkward smile and told me that once,

[00:25:13] before Tara had bought the house, he had tried to deliver pizza here accidentally. When the old man came to the door, he was furious and screamed at the pizza deliverer to leave his home immediately.

[00:25:26] A few times Justin, Tara, and I would be sitting in the living room watching TV in the evenings. We would see the flash of a light and look up to see a car slowly pulling onto the dirt road and up to the driveway.

[00:25:42] Of course, because of the bay window, we knew the driver could see us in almost perfect detail. But from our perspective, all we could see was the silhouette of the vehicle and two bright headlights. Sometimes the car would sit there for a few moments before driving off.

[00:25:58] Once, the car pulled all the way up to the house then slowly reversed down the driveway, not turning until it reached the dirt road. I don't know why that old man superglued the locks shut and set up indoor alarms and yelled at the pizza delivery man.

[00:26:14] I'll likely never know. But I'm almost completely certain that something happened in that little house in the woods that he did not want me or anyone else to know about. Even the dogs seemed to know about it.

[00:26:28] Sometimes they would just refuse to step foot into the house and just start growling in empty spaces. Take that as you will, but creepy old man that owned the house? Let's Not Meet.

[00:27:02] I've been binging the Let's Not Meet podcast for some weeks now at work and let me tell you it's been a ride. I wanted to share my own story about two people who robbed me and then murdered my friend.

[00:27:13] For starters, I'm a 28-year-old female who lives in Oregon. I moved here about four months ago from California. When I was 21, I used to work at a pizza joint in my small town. I worked until about 10 or 11 at night and didn't drive at the time.

[00:27:32] So my only transportation was the bus or longboarding. My boss knew this but did not care because I quote, If you want a job this badly, you'll make it to work.

[00:27:45] I'd have co-workers give me rides sometimes, which I was super thankful for because I lived on the other side of town, about 45 minutes to an hour away from work if I were to longboard. Longer if I had to walk.

[00:27:59] I just put in my two weeks the following day because I wanted to focus on college. Nighttime in my small town was always sketchy. There were always a bunch of tweakers walking around, so being a small female I didn't have much to defend myself.

[00:28:17] One night, my supervisor was kind enough to provide me with a ride, even though I had tried to protest because I felt bad as she lived in the opposite direction. After closing up, she let me make my own pizza to take home for dinner

[00:28:33] because I was hardly eating during this point of my life. We drove to the local store on the way to my house because she just got her check and she decided to cash it.

[00:28:43] Once we got to my house, she parked right in front and we got to talking for a good hour. For some reason, when she turned her car off, her doors automatically unlocked.

[00:28:55] It kind of unnerved me but I decided to look past it and just enjoy my time with my supervisor before I headed inside. At about 12 o'clock, I noticed figures coming out of an alleyway across from where we were parked.

[00:29:10] It was two men rushing the car, one man on my co-worker's side and one on mine. I tried really hard to keep my door shut but I noticed he had a gun and I was shocked

[00:29:22] so I let go of the door and froze as he frantically grabbed for my things. Everything happened so fast. I remember looking over to my co-worker as she tried to give the man her keys and pleaded to just take the car and leave us alone.

[00:29:36] The asshole on my side took my bag which held my wallet, iPod and Nintendo 3DS. Not only did this dude steal my shit but he also stole my pizza. Who the fuck steals someone's dinner like that?

[00:29:52] They stole my co-worker's money which she had just cashed and I just felt so fucking awful. They didn't steal the car but they left as soon as they came. My co-worker and I were in hysterics. We were crying and calling the cops.

[00:30:10] I ran inside the house bawling my eyes out to my dad because he didn't hear or see what had just happened. The cops came and we made our statements and that was it. My co-worker came back to check up on me. I apologized profusely.

[00:30:25] We gave each other a tight hug knowing we both survived and she went home. Not even two days later there was a shooting down the street from my house and an attempted robbery. The man got airlifted to the hospital.

[00:30:39] I believe he did make it but honestly I'm not that sure. I figured it was the same men who had robbed my co-worker and I. I didn't feel safe being at home with them on the loose.

[00:30:53] I called my boss and let her know I had gotten robbed and needed to retract my two weeks because I didn't have any funds. She was extremely angry with me and told me not to threaten to quit ever again.

[00:31:07] Which also set me off because I didn't even threaten to leave. I had a valid reason. I wanted to focus on college. I just got robbed with your supervisor and you want to be a bitch to me.

[00:31:18] I did the wrong thing and decided to no call no show the next day. I know it's bad work ethic but I was traumatized. Not feeling safe having to longboard across town at night. Fast forward a couple of weeks later and it's almost New Year's.

[00:31:35] On New Year's night my friend who I'll call T and his friend who was my weed dealer at the time who I'll call R got at the party and got called to do a drug deal.

[00:31:47] Once they got to where they were to meet one person on each side of R's car holding guns tried to rob them. R was able to wrestle the guy on the driver's side and managed to turn his car on.

[00:32:01] Once he got his foot on the pedal and was about to speed off the guy on T's side hopped into the car behind T. He shot him in the head and jumped out of the moving car. R was shocked and scared and took T to the hospital.

[00:32:19] He didn't know what to do. He knew he had a bunch of weed in his car and wanted to avoid the police so he dropped T off at the hospital with a gunshot wound. T did not make it. He was pronounced dead within moments of arriving.

[00:32:32] I know R didn't mean for this to happen and a lot of people were upset with R because he hid his car with T's blood everywhere. Two months later the men who killed T were caught and were set at a million dollar bail.

[00:32:49] They were basketball players at the community college that I went to. It was mentioned that they were going around robbing people as well and that's when I knew the people who had robbed me murdered my friend T.

[00:33:02] He didn't make it to the new year that brought me to tears and that could have been the fate of my co-worker or even myself. Two years later they finally got sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Rest in peace T.

[00:33:18] As a side note, a week after no call no show at the pizza joint I got an interview at the mall. One of the interview questions was, do you consider taking a penny from the drawer, stealing, followed by have you ever gotten anything stolen from you?

[00:33:35] Well, I told the interviewer, I literally got robbed at gunpoint the week prior. I got hired. To the assholes who stole my pizza and murdered my friend seven years ago, let's not fucking meet ever again.

[00:33:56] My name is Rose and for context, I'm a female about 5'8 and 135 pounds. I was a 911 dispatcher and because of this I happened to have a lot of law enforcement friends. I was invited to a small New Year's Eve party, if you could even call it that.

[00:34:22] It was more like a mellow hangout with my closest friends. I brought along my friend Claire. As we got ready to leave from my place, Claire took two edibles. For context, she's very small and very sensitive to any intoxicants. Because of this, she doesn't drink.

[00:34:44] But she wanted to cut loose a little bit so she went with edibles. Both of us got ready and headed out. I was the driver for the night as I'm not a drinker either.

[00:34:54] I'm the type to have a glass of wine every so often but due to my profession, I'm a bit paranoid and ready for things to go wrong. We arrive at the party and I introduce Claire to everyone.

[00:35:07] Things are going well and our host, James, an officer, is giving the tour as he recently remodeled his house. There are about eight or so people, a mix of officers and their wives and such.

[00:35:24] I'm introduced to a woman named Melinda who is the wife of one of the people at the party. Melinda is touchy with both Claire and I, petting our hair, wanting to hold our hands, which I assumed was because she was drunk.

[00:35:41] Melinda was in her 50s and one of the oldest people at the party. Claire and I are both in our 20s. As the night progresses, I can tell Claire is getting uncomfortable and paranoid. We make eye contact across the room and I can tell she's about to cry.

[00:35:59] At this point, I decide it's time to take her home. We head out and I drop her off. With it being New Year's Eve and about 11.15, I decided to return back to the party to finish the night out. I walk back into the party and rejoin the festivities.

[00:36:18] I happen to be wearing a corset, which gets uncomfortable after a while. I knew I'd be going home after the ball dropped at midnight and since I was with my friends, I decided I wanted to be comfortable.

[00:36:32] I asked the host for a shirt and went into his room to change. I shut the door and twisted the lock, which unfortunately did not lock all the way. Unbeknownst to me, I start to untie my corset and I accidentally knotted it tightly.

[00:36:55] I'm fighting with the knot, trying to get it undone, and the door opens. It's Melinda. I ask her if she can help me untie the knot. She does.

[00:37:09] I then turn to her and tell her I'm going to change, trying to give her the hint to leave the room. She doesn't. She sits down on the bed and asks me, Do you know Maddie Stone? I said no and asked her to leave. She continues to ask,

[00:37:31] Do you know Maddie Stone? I continue to tell her no. Finally, I demand she leaves so I can change. And she does. After changing, I shoved my top and corset into my bag and walked back out.

[00:37:50] Melinda comes up to me yet again, but this time, she grabs my face with both hands and says, Thank you for looking out for my daughter. I know you've been protecting her. This statement is the one that really scares me.

[00:38:08] I don't know her daughter, or this Maddie Stone she keeps bringing up. I pull away and go to turn from her, but she catches my wrist and squeezes hard.

[00:38:22] I yank my arm away and go to stand by a friend of mine, hoping that she would leave me alone. At this point, I see Melinda go upstairs to the bathroom, I guess to throw up. I recognize this is my chance.

[00:38:36] I run to quickly change, grab my things and walk quickly to the front door, not even saying goodbye. The door shuts and I stand there for a minute, shaken up and trying to collect myself.

[00:38:49] There's something weird about that woman, and my intuition was screaming at me to leave. My car is a few houses down the street. As I start to walk down the driveway, the front door opens.

[00:39:06] I toss a glance over my shoulder only to realize that it's Melinda, and she's running at me. Full speed. At that moment, my fight or flight kicked in. I've never felt truly afraid for my life until that moment.

[00:39:21] Unfortunately for me, no one saw her leave, or start to chase me. I take off down the street, luckily wearing Doc Martin boots instead of my heels. As I'm running, I'm struggling to dig through my bag for my keys.

[00:39:39] I'm shaking and sprinting, but for one moment my body hyper-focuses and I'm able to get my keys out and unlock my car. Unfortunately, this dumped a good amount of things out of my bag, but I no longer cared.

[00:39:56] I slammed the door and locked it just as Melinda reached me. I thought surely she would leave, but no. She begins to pull on my door handle to the point that I'm sure it's going to break off.

[00:40:13] She starts screaming that name over and over, Maddie Stone, Maddie Stone! My only option at that point is to lay on my horn in order to get her off of my car. The second she steps back, I throw it into gear and gun it down the street.

[00:40:33] As I look in my rearview mirror, she's standing frozen in the middle of the road, watching me drive off. I'm a concealed weapons permit holder. The only time I do not carry is if there's a possibility of me having a single beer.

[00:40:52] This night was the first night I have not carried in over a year. Of course, the one night I may have needed it. It wasn't there.

[00:41:03] So to the woman that tried to watch me change, chase me, and was planning to do God knows what with me that night, let's not meet. This story took place about five years ago. I was 22 at the time and my sister was only 18.

[00:41:36] We took a spur of the moment trip to Chili's one night about an hour before closing. I know, not cool, but that's what 22 year olds do.

[00:41:46] We were the last patrons to leave, and as we were walking to the car in the dark, I saw a woman rushing towards us. Something about the way she was moving and the look that she had in her eyes instantly put me on edge.

[00:42:02] I told my sister to hurry up and get into the car. Unfortunately though, I had an older car at the time with no power locks, so I had to manually unlock her side and then rush back to the driver's side.

[00:42:16] The woman caught me just as I was getting my door open. She was fairly small and thin and looked to be in her early 30s, but her eyes darted around and she appeared jittery as she spoke to me.

[00:42:30] She told me that her and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight at the bowling alley next door and that he had left her with no way to get home. She said she didn't have any money to call a cab. This was pre-Uber in our town.

[00:42:48] She asked if I could give her a ride to a town about 30 minutes away from where we were. I told her that I couldn't give her a ride because I needed to get home, but I would give her some cash for a cab.

[00:43:01] I refused to turn back to her and without looking, reached into my car, pulled out my purse and handed her a 20.

[00:43:09] I normally wouldn't just give money to strangers as I was a struggling single mother at the time, but something told me that things would not go well if I didn't help her in some way.

[00:43:21] After giving her the money, I very forcefully told her she needed to get away from the car now and she did. My sister and I rode home, both shaken up by the woman's behavior.

[00:43:33] A couple of months later, I'm lying in bed, scrolling through Facebook. I see the woman's face. It's a mugshot. Apparently this woman and her boyfriend had been assaulting and robbing people in the city.

[00:43:51] The woman would come up to the people and tell them the same story that she told me. She would ask for a ride, but when she got in the car, the boyfriend would follow in a truck.

[00:44:05] She would get the driver to pull over at some point and the boyfriend would assault and then rob them.

[00:44:12] I felt chills as I read this knowing just how close my sister and I came to this fate and I'm so grateful that I trusted my gut and got us out of there safely. To the woman in the Chili's parking lot, let's not meet again.

[00:44:34] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard, Huge man broke into my house and my parents didn't believe me by listener Ashley. My downstairs neighbor almost killed me by listener Rhonda Churchill.

[00:45:09] Whatever happened in that house? By Daisy Cats. I got robbed by the same people who murdered my friend by listener Nimrod Poop Tart. 911 dispatcher almost kidnapped me on New Year's Eve by listener Rose. And finally, the time my sister and I almost got mugged by listener Alyssa.

[00:45:31] 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.

[00:45:40] And as always, if you want to hear your story in the show, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. And if you want to get access to bonus episodes every single week, plus exclusive merchandise, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

[00:45:54] Thanks for listening everyone. I'll see you next week for a brand new episode. Stay safe.