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[00:00:16] Enjoy the show. My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 7, Episode 18 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast. Hello folks. Merry Christmas. I hope you're enjoying the holidays. Hopefully this episode will find you either on your trip to or from your families or late
[00:01:02] at night when you're sitting by the fire. This week we're going back a few years with another Lost Stories episode. These are stories from the original run of Lets Not Meet which are no longer available online.
[00:01:13] These recordings are rather old, but I did spend some time this week remastering and editing them for you and I think I've put together a very terrifying special. Enjoy the show. This story takes place on and off again throughout most of my life.
[00:01:44] It starts out as a typical, my parents got divorced when I was young type of situation, but it unfolded into so much more. In fact, I'm still picking up the pieces of everything that happened.
[00:01:59] There's a lot of backstory, but I feel it is important to understanding what happened. As it stands now, my father is dead. It was ruled suicide, but I think that was only half of what happened.
[00:02:12] I'll talk about everything that led up to this, but more importantly, I believe that Mary definitely had a hand in what happened. My mother and father divorced when I was around 4. Almost everyone I know has gone through some sort of similar situation.
[00:02:31] I have two brothers, one older and one younger. We saw him about every other weekend. He paid child support. You get the gist. One weekend visit, my father introduces us to a woman he's seeing, named Mary. Her eyes and hair are dark. Her skin is pale.
[00:02:53] She had an obsession with the color red. Something was immediately off to me, but I didn't really start to know what she was capable of until later. I didn't know at the time, but Mary was one of the main reasons my parents got divorced.
[00:03:10] My father cheated on my mother with her. He met her while he was working as a waiter at Red Lobster. When he moved over to his career at a casino as a slot machine repairman, she followed. Mary would follow my dad anywhere.
[00:03:27] They got married pretty quickly after my mother and father divorced. I never knew there was a wedding until later. My mother hated her, but she never bad-mouthed my father or Mary in front of my brothers and I.
[00:03:40] She felt that it was important for us to make judgments ourselves, even if this woman was part of the reason her marriage was broken up. We continued to visit what was now my dad and Mary's house on our scheduled time with dad.
[00:03:56] I always associated their house with red. Their house was always decorated with strawberries. Mary liked red sheets. She had red sweaters and pants. It was weird. Mary was just unnecessary drama for a while.
[00:04:15] Things like buying us toys that we could only keep while we were at dad and Mary's house, or saying that she and my father wanted custody of us instead of my mom. I feel like these things were harmless in a way.
[00:04:30] Every divorcing couple probably has some sort of variation. Things carried on like this for a couple of years. We would have a special vacation on Christmas or Easter or whatever aside from what we celebrated with my mom.
[00:04:45] I was about 7 or 8 when I remember the first incident that confirmed that I knew this wasn't right. My little brother was a super curious child and he was about 4 years old.
[00:04:58] He had scooted a dining table chair to the fridge to get to a cereal box on top of it. When he reached up, he pulled down a handgun instead of a cereal box. I panicked and got my dad, who acted really funny about it.
[00:05:15] My memory is fuzzy, but I remember going home early that weekend. My dad didn't know that the gun was there because it was Mary's. It was at this point that my mom started to have trouble with us going over there.
[00:05:31] My father got worse about being able to come pick us up. He was unreliable for the most part to begin with, but I know that he was 10 times worse when he was around Mary.
[00:05:44] My mom told me later when I was much older that Mary actually called our house around the time of the gun incident and only said, I want your life. My mother is a really tough lady. She grew up in East LA, but this scared her.
[00:06:04] She planned to get a restraining order soon. I guess what Mary meant was that she wanted my mom's stability. Even as a single mom with three kids, she was doing very well for herself and even dating.
[00:06:16] But even so, how long had she obsessed with my mom before she and my father ever got divorced? What did that even mean? Not long after the phone call, my mom heard her car being smashed into one night. Someone had taken a brick and smashed the driver's window.
[00:06:37] Nothing was taken. I know it was Mary though. We had no way to prove it, but I just know. My dad and Mary had a baby. Her name is Madison. I only remember holding and playing with her for so long.
[00:06:54] I can't imagine all the shit that she's been through. My mom met and married my stepdad pretty soon after that, and they decided that it would be best to move to Florida. We had other family there, and there weren't many jobs where we were living in Tennessee.
[00:07:12] I don't remember any problems at all when we were so far from my dad and Mary. We stayed close for about a year, and then moved back to Tennessee. My stepdad was able to get a better job again, and we were closer to my mom's parents.
[00:07:29] This is when the phone calls start. As soon as we moved back, we would get phone calls where someone would just listen for a few minutes and then hang up. The numbers were always blocked, but I'm sure it was her. The calls continued for years.
[00:07:46] It became like an inside joke. We all knew who it was, but there wasn't anything we could do. My father denied it. Anytime I asked him about it, he took her side.
[00:07:59] We fell into the swing of things where my mom was the bad guy, and anytime I questioned my dad and Mary's behavior, they were sure my mom was putting me up to it. Things escalated one night when my dad came to pick us up for a visit.
[00:08:15] My mom and Mary ended up getting into a fist fight. Mary swung first, and my mom punched her so hard that she fell backwards. My brothers and I watched from the apartment where we were living at the time.
[00:08:29] My mom immediately went to the police, but my dad and Mary never even called. My mom didn't press any charges, and the whole incident sort of faded away. We ended up moving into a big house a while after that, where we still are today.
[00:08:48] Dad and Mary started to have problems and split up. I thought maybe she would be gone for good, or at least gone for the most part. But she never really went away. My dad started to become a person we could somewhat rely on again when she was gone.
[00:09:07] I got to know my little sister more, the baby that they had, and things were okay. She started coming around again though. Whenever she was with my dad in front of us, she would whisper in his ear. My dad would drink more.
[00:09:25] He became physically ill-looking and started to gain weight. We could always tell when Mary was around because the difference was so drastic. He even officially divorced her at one point, but it was obvious that they still got together on and off.
[00:09:44] Me and my brothers went on with our lives, and we became too old for visiting the way we were. Our entire weekend visits became just going to see my dad for an evening. The whole time, however, the phone calls never stopped.
[00:10:00] They weren't as frequent, but they were there in the background, like a reminder that she was always lurking. When I got into high school, visits from my dad just about stopped altogether.
[00:10:13] We usually talked on the phone here and there, and I saw him when I had events like marching band competition and formal dance, milestones like graduating high school. It was pretty common to go a while without hearing from him sometimes. Mary was only a thought.
[00:10:32] I hadn't seen her in years. I never saw her anywhere at all. The phone calls had stopped, but only because we had gotten rid of the house phone. I was a freshman in college, and I remember it being right around Halloween of 2009.
[00:10:51] I was shopping with my aunt for some cheap decorations at the Walmart by my house. I saw a woman walking slowly behind us, and my aunt and I both did a double take. It was Mary. She was following us around the store.
[00:11:10] She looked like she was maybe 50 years or older than we last saw her, and her clothes were disheveled. My aunt kept elbowing me to go talk to her because we weren't exactly sure if this really was her. It could have been someone who just looked similar.
[00:11:31] I worked up the nerve and went up to her. Is your name Mary? I asked. Yes, it is. Hi Samantha, how are you? Using my name like that really caught me off guard. She knew who I was and wasn't bothering to talk to me.
[00:11:53] She didn't even act like she had been caught. I was asking her if she had talked to my dad lately because it had been a while since I had heard from him.
[00:12:05] She swore up and down that she hadn't spoke to him for months, which I later found out was a lie. This was the beginning of my dad going missing. After I saw her, something happened and it's hard to pin down what, but he completely disappeared.
[00:12:24] His cell phone was shut off and when I called his work at the casino, where he had been working for over 15 years, they said that he was no longer working there and they couldn't tell me why.
[00:12:37] My mom, my brothers, and I called the police to file a missing persons report. We didn't have to wait because it had already been several weeks since we had heard from him. They helped us make a flyer and we looked and asked all over.
[00:12:54] Nothing led back to Mary, most likely being the last one to see him. By the time we started talking to her, it was mid-November. My mom and I called Mary and she told us that she had in fact seen my dad on the night after Halloween.
[00:13:14] Mary told us that he was making a noose and this would be the last time anyone ever saw him. We honestly didn't know what to believe. My dad was an alcoholic and it wasn't uncommon for him to say dramatic stuff but we never considered suicide.
[00:13:32] When we told the detectives what Mary told us, they had her come in for questioning. She had told the detectives a completely different story and her dates kept changing. There wasn't any evidence though so there wasn't much that they could do.
[00:13:50] The detectives did however tell us that we shouldn't talk to her anymore. To quote them, we don't know what she's capable of. Things went on like this until they found him. On January 4th, 2010, my dad was found dead in a storage unit.
[00:14:10] He had pulled his car and shut the door and let it run until he died. He had been there for 63 days. There were several suicide notes all dated for November 2nd. One for my mom, one for each of his children.
[00:14:31] But there was an exceptionally long note for Mary where he doted on her and talked about what a wonderful woman she was. The suicide note even said for her to take any insurance money and use it on herself.
[00:14:48] The date on the notes was so close to the date where Mary said she had seen him. There are a million things that could have happened but I know she had something to do with it.
[00:14:58] Even if my father really did kill himself, I know that she helped push him over the edge. I'm not one to just blame someone. I know my father was a troubled man, he was an alcoholic, and he was depressed most of the time. But usually because of Mary.
[00:15:16] There's something that's so frustrating and horrendous about this woman and there's zero evidence for me to prove anything against her. She wasn't allowed to come to the funeral. My mom and parts of his family put everything together.
[00:15:30] There wasn't anyone he knew that hadn't heard of her and everyone felt that she was a bad woman. I found a Facebook profile of hers months after they found my dad. There were only 5 or 6 photos of her and some guy, obviously happy, and they were all dated
[00:15:51] for January 4th, 2010. The next year, on January 4th, 2011, she showed up at my family's house. We didn't let her in the house. She kept saying something about having some stuff of my dad's in the car. We told her to leave or else we would call the police.
[00:16:14] That night, someone put red tissue paper in and around our mailbox. Even the next year, 2012, she called my mom and asked to meet her at a Sonic Burger parking lot. She said she had a box of my dad's stuff to give us.
[00:16:34] My mom made my stepdad go instead of her, but she never showed up. I feel like she wanted to do something bad to my mom. The next year, we didn't hear from her.
[00:16:46] I did some research and it turns out that she was put in jail for making meth. It made a lot of sense for some of the things, but I still have so many questions and issues that were unanswered. Supposedly, she was let out sometime last year.
[00:17:03] Summer of 2014, I think. The correctional facility that she was at has a website and it says that she was let out for good behavior and rehab. I found a different Facebook that showed her with some other family.
[00:17:19] God help them if she's pulling that same crap as she did with mine. My little brother works at a video game store. It was around 8pm last night, October 4th, and Madison, Mary's daughter, came in to buy a video game.
[00:17:35] My little brother was shocked and he didn't recognize her at first. She introduced herself and my little brother couldn't do much. She asked for his phone number, but he didn't end up giving it to her because he had a weird feeling in his stomach.
[00:17:52] She took what she bought and left, and my little brother thought that it was the end of it. But maybe 5-10 minutes later, in walks Madison again, with Mary by her side. My little brother immediately recognized her and started to panic.
[00:18:12] Mary and Madison stood at the back of the store, whispering to each other. He said that they were both smiling the whole time, and a couple of times they even giggled to each other.
[00:18:27] Mary looked right at him in the eyes and started to head toward the counter that my brother was behind. He said he felt so angry and his heart started to race. Instead of trying to confront her, he walked into the back of the store and let his co-worker
[00:18:45] ask if he could help her. Maybe 10 minutes later, she was gone and his co-worker told him that she left without asking for anything. My brother thinks that she was just making her presence known and that she thought she
[00:18:59] could quote unquote catch up with him like they were friends or something. I just know that I don't want this woman in my life anymore. I don't want her harassing my family members, and I want to move as far away as possible.
[00:19:13] We documented this incident with the police department and they said that if it happens three times, then we can file a restraining order. I don't really know what else to do. As much as I thought it might finally be over, she pops right back into my life.
[00:19:31] It's not enough for her that my dad is dead. I guess she wants to have the last word. I'm not going to lie to you. I basically went to college to smoke weed and go to parties.
[00:20:01] My full intention was to just do enough to get by while partying as much as I could. Unfortunately for me, I only applied to a few schools and was only accepted to one, a small college in the mountains of New Hampshire.
[00:20:18] It was very small, around 3,500 total undergrads, and I went not knowing anyone. On the first day, as I was skipping the ice breaking games and other students were giving tours of the campus to their families before leaving, I wandered down a small path behind
[00:20:38] the cafeteria toward a small stream I had noticed during the drive in. I lit a joint and was just meandering around when I noticed another guy a little further down the stream that cut a straightish path through the trees.
[00:20:57] He was also smoking a joint, I assumed by the way he was holding it. I made my way over to see if I just made my first college friend and introduced myself. His name was Nate, and he seemed pretty cool and was smoking some really nice weed, so
[00:21:17] I figured I could get along with him. He stood about 5'5 and was a little stubby, but I remember noticing that he had a really weird laugh, like a nervous type, and that whenever he laughed, he'd kind of look off
[00:21:34] to the side and glance back at me from his peripheral vision. Yes, I knew it was weird even back then, from the first time I met him, literally the first 30 seconds of introducing myself, but I thought maybe he was socially awkward, or had bad teeth, who knows.
[00:21:56] I was taught not to judge, and he was otherwise normal. We ended up hanging out fairly frequently, playing video games, drinking, smoking, but other people, especially in my dorm, didn't really seem to take to him. Not that I really felt a strong bond with him, I didn't.
[00:22:19] It was very superficial as far as friendships go, built around drugs and debauchery, but I definitely got the sense that my other friends were not comfortable around him. Then something weird happened that I've managed to successfully forget about until very recently.
[00:22:40] My heart is pumping out of my chest, just typing this. One weekend, my roommate was home for a visit, and Nate's roommate was having his girlfriend over which basically implied, in college terms, that Nate was staying with me. It seemed automatic.
[00:23:01] We got trashed and smoked a ton, got a pizza, played some video games, etc. I was pretty out of it, and we were both sitting in desk chairs in my room, passing
[00:23:13] a bowl back and forth when he handed the bowl to me, leaning toward me in his chair. He put his hand over my hand, and casually, but in a low, steady voice said, I'm going to fucking kill you.
[00:23:33] Okay, so like I said, we were all sorts of fucked up, but I was definitely freaked out a little. He'd never really been aggressive before, even at his most intoxicated, certainly never said anything like this before.
[00:23:52] I've never handled confrontation very well, so all I said was, no dude, don't do that bro, and sort of laughed it off, and tried to write it off as a drunk stoned idiot playing too much Mortal Kombat.
[00:24:10] We had a bunk bed set up in the room since it was pretty small and I was on top. My roommate was a bigger guy, and I didn't want to have to climb down to pee in the middle of the night.
[00:24:23] We had both gone to bed, but my roommate had put up Christmas lights that we just kept on strung along the ceiling. And also, I'm half deaf, I should add, so when I sleep I tend to roll onto my functioning
[00:24:40] ear to block sounds or muffle them in the pillow. This also means I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. Sometime during the night, I woke up feeling a bit nauseous and slowly opened my eyes.
[00:24:56] Nate was standing on the edge of his mattress, holding onto the side railings of the top bunk and staring directly at my face as I was sleeping. My eyes got wide as I snapped awake and sat up. What the fuck, dude?
[00:25:18] I said, backing up and bumping my head on the wall behind me. Then he turned his head and gave me that fucking look from the corners of his eyes. The same smile and laugh that freaked me out the first day I met him.
[00:25:40] He was still holding the railings, standing on the mattress from the lower bunk. His face was lit in weird splashes of color from the Christmas lights. He took one hand from behind the railing and put his finger to his mouth while smiling
[00:25:59] and still looking at me sideways and whispered, Shhhhhh Before hopping down and leaving the room. It was about 3am. I don't know where he went that night. I never told anyone about that and pretty much did my best to bury it and never think about it again.
[00:26:27] I avoided Nate for the rest of the year, making up excuses when he wanted to chill alone, but did end up at the same parties with him a few times. We never talked about that. He never brought it up.
[00:26:43] I transferred to another school the following year, not because of Nate or anything, just financial reasons, and did manage to forget about that weird incident. That was about 15 years ago. I'm 33 now and recently got a call from my old roommate from the school in New Hampshire
[00:27:07] who luckily remembered my very repetitive phone number. He said, Man, remember that guy Nate you used to hang out with at the dorms? He killed his two friends with a hunting knife and fishing line on a camping trip just a year ago.
[00:27:28] He said he was too fucked up to control himself. He was mixing his meds with booze and drugs and they said he just lost it. The thing that fucks with me is wondering if he told them he was going to kill them
[00:27:46] and if the last thing they saw was that sideways smile that I saw when I woke up that night. Nate, let's not meet again. This just happened a few days ago and I'm extremely shaken up. Some backstory, I live on the second floor of a three-level apartment.
[00:28:31] We have a crawlspace that connects all of the apartments. We aren't sure why it's there but we all have stuff in it and none of us would ever attempt to go inside of it so we still felt pretty safe.
[00:28:47] The other night, the sun was setting but it wasn't quite pitch black out or anything yet. I'm walking through my living room when I see a short woman on the fire escape looking into my windows. This is extremely bizarre considering it's still semi-light out and she had literally
[00:29:11] gotten onto our fire escape somehow. We have two windows that the fire escape reaches and she was looking in both but didn't see me. I crawled onto the ground and my heart was racing as I watched her try to open the windows.
[00:29:30] I didn't know what to do because my phone was in the other room. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally left. I went into my room to get my phone to text the landlord and call the cops.
[00:29:47] I came back into the living room and was looking out the windows to see if I could locate her when all of a sudden I hear a weird noise coming from the ceiling. We have those tile ceilings made out of separate slabs of cork and wood.
[00:30:09] I look up and see one of the slabs lift up and two eyes staring at me. Having no clue how she got into the crawl space so quickly, but I grabbed the nearest
[00:30:26] thing next to me which was a broom and started hitting her with it through the ceiling and called the cops as soon as she crawled away. They soon showed up and searched the place and didn't find her until a few days later
[00:30:39] when she was on someone else's fire escape. The cops said she was definitely on some hard drugs and that she was violent towards them. I'm glad she's gone, but whoever that crazy lady that came through my ceiling was, let's not meet again.
[00:31:17] I grew up in a very safe neighborhood. It was unheard of for anyone to lock their cars or houses, and when someone new moved into the neighborhood it was mere moments before they were welcomed with open arms and open doors.
[00:31:32] Despite being surrounded by what could only be described as one large neighborhood family, my mom was very particular about house rules being followed, one of which was never going out alone. Walking to a friend's house?
[00:31:50] Three of us have to go so two could walk home together after dropping you off. It was rare, but occasionally just two of us would be able to sneak out from under her
[00:32:00] watchful eye and run to the corner store a few blocks down for some candy or soda. One sweltering day during the summer I turned nine. I found myself home alone and restless.
[00:32:12] I decided to take my sister's cool new 10-speed for a spin around the block a few times. Even though I was tall for my age, the bike was still a few inches too big for me. I decided that it didn't matter, jumped on and started pedaling.
[00:32:29] My first lap around the neighborhood went off without a hitch. Birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the wind blowing through my curls. It felt wonderful. Second lap around the block I passed an older unfamiliar car parked on the side of the road,
[00:32:46] and the sun reflecting off of the huge scrape down the side temporarily shocked my vision into blue bright stripes which I furiously tried to blink away. On the third lap I saw the car pull off of the side of the road, heading towards me,
[00:33:07] and a tiny pit of unease began to grow in my stomach as the driver slowed when he passed me. I chalked it up to being scared of getting caught out alone and continued on my way.
[00:33:20] I picked up speed as I rounded the corner towards my house and decided to go for one more time around the block, but to make it quick so I'd beat my mom home and avoid the trouble I knew I'd be in if she caught me out alone.
[00:33:34] I hit the bottom of the hill next to our house with some speed and started to climb up to the top, slowing more and more the closer I got. By the time I reached the top of the hill, I had to stop and catch my breath, teetering
[00:33:48] the too tall bike at my hip. I struggled to catch my breath. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my arms locked on the handlebars and every inch of my body froze. I had been caught. I just knew it.
[00:34:08] I heard a car creeping behind me, and it just had to be my mom, but it wasn't. Even relief should have washed over me. The unknown dread only deepened, further stiffening my frozen, still limbs.
[00:34:26] I turned to see the same old car with the same blinding scratch down the side slowing down right next to me. The man stopped the car right next to my bike on the wrong side of the street and through
[00:34:40] his opening driver's door started to ask me if I had seen a stray dog running about because his had come off the leash and run off. I froze. This cliche question is the one they warned us about in school, the one every kidnapper supposedly uses.
[00:35:04] I decided if I answered him firmly and rode my bike away that he would know his plan wouldn't work on me, plus he might just really be looking for his dog. This was my plan.
[00:35:19] My terrified body betrayed that plan and a trembling no is all I could manage. As I fumbled my feet to the pedals of this too big bike, his car door flew open and out he lunged. No!
[00:35:39] I said again as I wobbled my way past his open car door, his hand brushing the back of my shirt and knocking my back tire as I pedaled as fast as I could the 50 feet to the next driveway I saw.
[00:35:57] I pedaled, legs burning, up the drive running my front tire so hard into my neighbor's front step that it bent the wheel. My body catapulted over the handlebars and I burst through the neighbor's front door. Edie! Edie! Help! My neighbor was not home.
[00:36:15] I ran into the kitchen, still calling in hopes I was wrong. Edie! What are you doing? A man's voice behind me. I froze, hearing my heartbeat in my ears, feeling the blood pumping through my veins, knowing that this was it.
[00:36:36] I slowly turned around, not knowing what else to do and there stood my neighbor's son, home from college. I dissolved into tears, gulping out what happened. He tossed the bent bike into the back of his truck and drove me around the corner to the safety of my home.
[00:36:57] My mom was home, the car had been spotted frantically circling the block the few minutes following our encounter, but he was gone by the time the police arrived. To this day, 20 years later, I still have a hard time riding my bike alone.
[00:37:11] I still get chills when cars slow down next to me and I still wonder if the next girl was as lucky as I was. This begins in 2011. I had just turned 24 and with my cosmetology license, I began working at a hair salon down the street from my apartment.
[00:37:42] I lived in a very wealthy suburban neighborhood on the water. I called it the sleepy beach town. Most nights, I worked at the front desk, closing with my coworker, Becky. Becky was a shy and reserved younger girl who would easily get embarrassed talking to customers.
[00:38:02] I, on the other hand, was very extroverted and took pleasure talking with anyone and everyone. The salon was divided three ways. There was the room to the left where the stylist cut and colored hair. The receptionist's desk was on the right when you first walk in.
[00:38:21] Behind it, there was a wall between the desk and the back room reserved for guest waiting, spa treatments, and shampooing. I had to approach from the side to get behind the desk. It started off as a typical night at the salon.
[00:38:41] There were two stylists finishing up a couple clients in the stylist's room. I was busy training Becky on how to close the cash register. The clock just turned 6.30pm and it was already dark out when a man walked in.
[00:38:59] He was tall and a true silver fox with the full head of hair. He wore a black north face fleece and he looked like your typical Pacific Northwest local. He asked me if he could take a seat and wait.
[00:39:16] This is not a weird request in the salon since many women's husbands come to pick them up and wait until their wives' appointments are finished. I assumed this man was doing the same.
[00:39:31] Twenty minutes passed and then he walked right up next to Becky and I behind the counter. He looked down at me and says, I've been waiting but no one has showed up. I politely asked who he was waiting for and he replied, you know, and winked.
[00:39:53] No sir, I do not. How can I help you? Are both of you over 18? Excuse me? I have good money and I have been patiently waiting. Now I'm getting irritated. I want my massage and I want it now.
[00:40:11] Fear had crept over me since he started standing there, especially since he had his hand in his pocket and because he was hovering over me in an area with no escape.
[00:40:23] I then noticed the handle of a knife sticking out of his fleece and the wristband of a medical patient ID. I signaled Becky to call 911 but she had completely frozen.
[00:40:37] I told the man he needed to come in to the front of the counter if he wanted to begin his appointment. He slowly sauntered to the front of the counter. Then he leans in and softly says to me, I like that dark shade of lipstick you're wearing.
[00:40:56] Will you be wearing it for me? That was when I grabbed the phone and made. It very apparent I was calling 911. I quickly began giving a full description of him including the wristband I had noticed. He turned around and left out the front.
[00:41:14] I had this weird feeling that he wasn't done yet so I locked the entry door. A few moments later he came running up, stopped and stared into my eyes. His eyes looked empty and careless with rage as he began punching the front door.
[00:41:38] Then he slowly turned and quietly started to walk away. While this was going on I told everyone to remain calm and said that it was being handled. Thankfully the cops showed up immediately and detained him.
[00:41:54] The officer had explained that the man escaped a psychiatric hospital a few towns down and was looking for a quote unquote happy ending massage parlor. During a weekly team meeting the owner of the salon had told me what I did was not protocol
[00:42:12] and that if it were to happen again to get a quote unquote adult to help. I left that salon shortly after and am very happy with my career change into real estate so far. Creepy man escaping the psychiatric hospital for a quickie. Let's not meet.
[00:42:49] It was the summer before my senior year in college. My little brother, always interested in military stuff had gotten a pair of night vision goggles for his birthday and he'd left them at my apartment.
[00:43:01] One night I was bored and decided to go try out the goggles in a wooded hiking area or nature reserve nearby. In retrospect this seems like a very stupid idea since I was all by myself and a female,
[00:43:15] but I was young and stupid and I got myself all excited at the possibility of seeing deer and other woodland creatures in their natural nighttime habitat. I was familiar with these woods and my best friend and I had hiked there at night before
[00:43:32] and we'd never run into anyone else. Our area is mostly rural and pretty safe so I didn't anticipate any trouble. I parked in the little sparsely lit parking area, ignored the sign that said park closes at 10 and entered the woods. Night vision goggles in hand.
[00:43:51] It was a half moon that night and that was the only light that filtered down through the canopy of trees. It was pretty dark and I didn't want to put the goggles on until I'd found a place
[00:44:03] to sit down so I lit my way with the mini mag light on my keychain. A couple of times I thought I heard a little rustling in the woods a fair distance away but it was nothing out of the ordinary and I put it down to animal activity.
[00:44:20] Hopefully the deer I'd come hoping to see. After I'd hiked in a fair distance, I found a fallen log to sit on and put the goggles on. I don't know if you've ever used night vision goggles before but the effect is impressive.
[00:44:36] They can turn near pitch black darkness into bright as day. Everything appears in shades of green but quite bright and clear. For a while I had a blast looking around from my fallen log vantage point.
[00:44:53] Some chipmunks played around in the leaves nearby and a big owl blinked its lamp like eyes at me from a tree branch. No deer though and I started to think that maybe they wouldn't likely come anywhere
[00:45:06] near me, darkness or not, if I sat right out in the open on a log. So I decided to find a place where I could be a little more hidden. I made my way a little deeper into the woods and finally found a huge tree perfect for climbing.
[00:45:22] I've always loved climbing trees so it was nothing for me to hoist myself up a few branches and settle in to wait for my deer. I didn't get to see any. What I did see lit up in bright night vision green after about ten minutes of waiting was
[00:45:39] this. A man dressed head to toe in dark colored clothing making his way stealthily through the woods. He was coming from the same direction I had come and was clearly trying to stay hidden, moving from tree to tree and glancing around carefully before moving on again.
[00:46:02] It looked very much like he was looking for someone. It took me a few moments to notice that he was carrying something and when I saw what it was, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
[00:46:14] He had a knife, a big knife and he was gripping it as if he expected to use it in the very near future. It wasn't deer hunting season and this was a nature preserve so hunting of any kind was prohibited.
[00:46:31] At any rate, the guy was alone and not dressed like a hunter. There were no deer in sight and very few hunters kill their prey with knives. I was suddenly horribly aware of my situation, a young woman alone weaponless in the middle of the woods at night.
[00:46:51] This was the 90s so no cell phones and even if I had one I wouldn't have felt safe using it to draw his attention to me. I didn't know how he was able to see me so well in the dark.
[00:47:06] I guessed his eyes had just adjusted and I was terrified he would look up and see me. I sat there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe and watched him as he continued his methodical
[00:47:20] and stealthy process of scanning the forest for who or whatever the hell he was stalking. I scanned around but couldn't see anyone else, even from my high vantage point and the sickening thought struck me that he might be looking for me.
[00:47:39] I remembered the rustling noises I'd heard in the woods when I first arrived and then I thought back further and remembered something else. A white car that had followed too close behind me for most of my drive to the nature preserve.
[00:47:57] I'd been annoyed and a little freaked out at the time but when I turned into my nature preserve parking area the white car passed me and drove on its way. I hadn't thought anything more of it.
[00:48:12] Now I wondered, horrified, if this was the driver of that car and if he had circled back and seen my parked car alone in the lot, if he had come after me. I sat paralyzed with fear and watched the man for what felt like forever but was probably
[00:48:34] another half hour or so. There was a heart-stopping moment when he paused right underneath my tree and I was sure he was going to look up and find me but he didn't. After a while he seemed to give up whatever he planned in his mind.
[00:48:52] I heard him say, fuck it and he started heading back in the direction he had come. The direction of the parking area. I stayed in the tree wet with sweat and crying until the sun came up a few hours later.
[00:49:08] Then I climbed down and still terrified, gripping the little can of pepper spray on my keychain I made my way as fast as I could to the parking lot. The man had been there, my windshield had been smashed with a rock and someone had scraped
[00:49:25] all down the sides of my car with something sharp, presumably a giant knife that I'm lucky didn't end up in my chest. Thank God for night vision goggles that let me see him before he could see me and thank God for big trees with sturdy branches.
[00:49:42] Creepy Forest Rapist, let's never meet again.
[00:50:25] And finally Night Vision by Whitney Katt. 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.
[00:50:39] As always if you have a story to share, send it in to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com and if you'd like to support the Patreon and get access to all of the bonus content and
[00:50:48] hear this episode ad free, head over to patreon.com forward slash letsnotmeetpodcast to sign up today. And lastly if you're looking for the true paranormal, don't forget to check out this week's brand new episode of my other podcast Odd Trails at oddtrails.com or wherever you
[00:51:05] get your podcasts. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Stay safe.