9x13: Giant-Sized Halloween Special - Let's Not Meet

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail dot com. Enjoy the show. My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 9, Episode 13 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast.

[00:00:50] If you missed our live stream episode this week, worry not. I've compiled everyone's performances here in audio form for a special Halloween treat. We have 7 guests this week, 2 of which are brand new to the fold.

[00:01:04] Cassidy and Amanda are back in action from the podcast Drinking the Kool-Aid, along with Sorin Narnia of Knife Point Horror, Shelby Scott of Scary to Sleep, Joel of the Let's Read Podcast and YouTube channel, and our first appearances by Farron Moore of More to

[00:01:19] the Story and Dennis Callow of The Check In. Links to all their respective podcasts and work will be listed in the show notes for all who wish to devour some new and wonderful podcasts.

[00:01:30] All of the guests have created their own recordings this week, some even including some delightfully creepy soundscapes. But I won't hold you up any longer. I'm going to go ahead and get things kicked off. Enjoy the show. I'm a male and I live in Seattle.

[00:01:56] I work the 5am shift at a local grocery store and I wake up at around 4am. I don't mind it because I get off early. It's still dark when I arrive at the store and I always have to call and ask for the

[00:02:09] produce workers to let me in. As I was walking up to the door one morning, I saw this average looking man, probably in his late 30s. He doesn't work at my store. He was clearly on something, moving around in crazy motions.

[00:02:24] But it was common to find needles and other items like that in the bathrooms of the store. I was waiting for the doors to be open and he turned to face me from about 8 feet away. But he wasn't looking at me, he seemed to be looking past me.

[00:02:43] He was repeating something along the lines of, Satan will come. Satan knows. He continued repeating those lines. I was standing at the door wondering what this guy was on, hoping to be let inside as soon as possible.

[00:03:01] Nothing else strange happens at work that day and I get off at 9am. As I'm driving home I get a call. The caller ID said that it was from a nearby city. I answer and I hear a man on the other end. He's breathing heavily.

[00:03:16] I'm sitting there thinking that this is some kind of corny prank. His breath was amplified as the audio played through the speakers of my car. This made me unsure if the heavy breathing was intentional.

[00:03:31] He then says my full name in the tone of a question, but in this very weird and strangely excited kind of way that made me feel very uneasy. This was very stupid of me, but I said, yeah who is this? He then pauses and hangs up.

[00:03:51] I can't get over how he sounded exactly like the guy from that morning except sober if that makes any sense. Now I get paranoid easily, but this truly sent chills down my spine. I tried calling back but the number was disconnected.

[00:04:09] The next day I arrive at work with no trouble and I leave again at 9am. I get home at about 9.20 and I see my father's car in the driveway. He's always home at this time. The front door of the house was locked.

[00:04:24] Since my dad was home I wasn't too concerned about this. I walk in and take off my shoes and call out for my dad because I brought in his mail. Now there's a very specific noise that my dad's bed frame makes when he's rolling

[00:04:38] around on it or if he's moving too much because it's wood. I know that sound very well because my room is right next to his. My dad is an extremely light sleeper. Anytime I drop something or make a relatively loud sound I can hear him rolling around on

[00:04:55] his bed because I disturbed him. When I walked in that day I heard the sound of his bed. I called out for my dad as I walked up the stairs but there's no response.

[00:05:08] Only that very specific noise of the bed frame moving and you need a significant amount of weight to produce that sound. Then it dawned on me. My dad wakes up very early and there is no way that he's taking a nap at 9.30am.

[00:05:23] I'm already at the top of the stairs at this point so I burst into my room and close the door. I listened through our paper thin walls and I heard someone whispering and then the springs

[00:05:34] releasing as if someone were sitting on the edge of the bed but then stood up. If this person was whispering that means that there could potentially be two people in my house and I could be in very real danger.

[00:05:49] I instinctively grabbed my dresser and dragged it in front of my bedroom door. That thing weighs at least 150 pounds and it took me a little while to move it into place. My heart was pounding.

[00:06:02] I was worried that the intruders would catch on to what I was doing and break through the door before I had a chance to finish. I slammed the dresser down in front of my door.

[00:06:12] I felt a bit more relaxed and I called my dad and started to get nervous because he didn't answer but he does sometimes go on walks in my neighborhood around this time. Just as I tried calling him again, I saw him walking up the street from my bedroom

[00:06:28] window. I shouted that it wasn't safe for him to come into the house and at first he laughed it off but then he proceeded up the driveway. I repeated myself but this time I screamed at him. He now knew that I was very serious.

[00:06:45] He could see the fear in my eyes. He stepped back a few feet and asked what the hell was going on. I didn't feel like I had time to explain so I just told him to wait. Once I confirmed that my father was safe, I called 911.

[00:07:01] I then heard the intruders running down the stairs. I was scared for my dad at this point because he was right outside. I shoved the dresser away from my door. I was in a panicked state as I left the room and ran downstairs to see nothing except my

[00:07:16] dad who was still confused. He pointed out that the back door was wide open. The cops got there about 11 minutes later and they came up with nothing, no evidence of forcible entry, literally nothing besides the wide open back door and some mud that

[00:07:35] had been tracked into the house. Could it have been the crazy mumbling man who was talking about Satan that I ran into outside of the store? How did the man on the phone know my name? Can somebody track you if they know your number and full name?

[00:07:51] Were these people trying to abduct me? This happened just 5 days ago and I've been scared ever since, worrying that they might come back. I struggle with sleep paralysis and it has gotten worse lately because of this whole ordeal.

[00:08:06] Well, that's my story and I hope that nothing like this happens to any of you and to the mumbling man talking about Satan outside of my store. Let's never meet again. This happened Halloween night, 2014. I was living in the DC area of Northern Virginia.

[00:08:42] Here, the combination of a huge population of students, numerous nearby military bases, and the politics and media infused, fast paced, go-getter, work-centric atmosphere led itself to a culture of youthful individuals who like to get their kicks by getting inebriated,

[00:09:01] especially when autumn rolls around and it starts to get cold. I lived there all throughout my 20s and my friends and I loved to attend and plan parties for any and every occasion. We'd invite everybody we knew and consume copious amounts of alcohol and weed.

[00:09:16] If there wasn't a party already happening, or if we just didn't feel like hoofing it on the metro for the third night in a row in heels, we would just have a party at one of our places.

[00:09:25] My roommates and I were very excited for this particular Halloween because it fell on a Friday and all of us had the next day off. This was pretty noteworthy because I worked a 9-to-5 in the events industry, my roommate

[00:09:38] was a naval officer, and my other roommate Sophie worked in retail, so our schedules rarely if ever aligned like this. As soon as we realized we were all free for debauchery on the same night and none of us plans for Halloween, we decided to throw a party.

[00:09:55] The decision came pretty last minute in the week leading up to Halloween and we quickly made a Facebook event. Yeah, this was almost 10 years ago we used Facebook. Each of us invited absolutely everybody.

[00:10:08] We checked in with the neighbors to make sure they were all up for it and only one person would be home and that was a hard of hearing elderly lady who lived alone. She gave us her blessing and the RSVPs started pouring in.

[00:10:21] We each had separate friend groups and soon we had well over 100 people planning to attend. To set up the scene, we share a two-story condo in a pretty populated but quiet and family-oriented neighborhood development that was built in the 1940s.

[00:10:36] There were lots of trees and streetlights were few and far between. Each brick building looked pretty much the same and was just vintage creepy enough to be perfect for a Halloween party. The buildings weren't that close together, maybe about 20 yards minimum between each

[00:10:51] one, and each building had about 4 or 5 condo units. There was one front entrance to our building and I guess you would call it a lobby. It was really more like a grouping of hallways.

[00:11:03] You'd come in the main door, grab your mail, and head down whatever hallway or staircase led to your unit. Since we had a two-story unit, we had a top floor entrance and a basement entrance.

[00:11:14] And the latter incidentally was right by my room, so that was the entrance I mostly used. The top floor entry of our unit had a doorbell and was the first condo entry right at the very top of the stairs.

[00:11:25] It's visible when you come into the main entrance of the building. We put a doorstop in the main entry door and in the basement door to our unit that night. That way, the doors would stay open for all of our partygoers and we decked out the basement

[00:11:38] corridor leading up to the stairs with streamers, plastic sheeting that looked like it had been smeared with bloody handprints, and all sorts of other creepy items. Very haunted house vibe decorations. We blocked the stairs to the top floor with caution tape, albeit easy to pass through,

[00:11:54] but to put up a sign to usher partygoers to make the mandatory trip through our dreadful downstairs tunnel masterpiece. Once inside, we had kept the whole basement eerily lit, and a videographer friend had compiled a kaleidoscope video of dark and disturbing images, clips from scary movies

[00:12:12] that were all projected floor to ceiling on the living room wall. It was intended to give a subtle, almost subliminal scary tone to an otherwise happy-go-lucky night. And it worked. We had a creepy soundtrack playing, and even had a dry ice machine generating a shallow

[00:12:28] but very thick layer of fog all over the basement floor. Honestly, it was pretty dope. As soon as all the lights were on, the music was going and the drinks and snacks were flowing.

[00:12:40] Jake and Sophie and I were all surprised at how many people actually showed up, especially since it was so last minute. It was the perfect storm of a Friday night party and nothing else to do.

[00:12:50] People in costume filled all of the space in our little condo, dancing, singing, drinking, and chatting in the bright upstairs, while making out, having quieter conversations, and sampling the bong in the darker spectral downstairs.

[00:13:05] It even spilled out into the crisp, but not too cold night air on our little back porch which was fenced in. There were lots of people I knew, and even more that I didn't.

[00:13:15] We had a costume contest, so nobody dared show up without some attempt at a getup. We started at 9 and proceeded to do what we did best, and get fucked up. I'm a historically happy and very loving drunk, and so I was beyond buzzed and having a great

[00:13:30] time loving on my boyfriend, my friends, and my friends of friends, and friends of Jake's and Sophie's with whom I didn't even know. I couldn't say with any certainty if every person in attendance that night knew one of the three of us.

[00:13:44] Sometimes a knock at the door or a doorbell would come at the upstairs door for someone trying to bypass the creepy hallway of horrors, but we kept that door locked and would yell for them to go downstairs. Nobody would be exempt from the experience that we created.

[00:13:58] Right into the night, when much drinking and much smoking had taken place, no new guests had shown up for a long time. The party was still robust, but it was well after midnight and too late for anybody else to really show up.

[00:14:11] People were already at their forever parties for the night. They were already settled in, good and intoxicated wherever they were, and they weren't gearing to uproot and come to ours. I happened to be upstairs at the time, and I was standing about 5 feet away from the door

[00:14:25] playing beer pong when the doorbell rang. Go downstairs! My friends and I all shouted, laughing in unison in the direction of the door. It was well rehearsed at this point. We got on with whatever we were doing, and a few moments later, the doorbell rang again. Downstairs!

[00:14:42] Go downstairs! Even more drunken voices joined in on the jeer. A few seconds passed, and more of our attention was now on whoever was at the other side of the door.

[00:14:53] I glanced out the front window to see if there were any cops maybe checking up on a noise complaint, but I didn't see any lights or cop cars. Other guests seemed to have the same idea and the room started to quiet down just a

[00:15:03] bit when the third doorbell rang out, followed by a knock on the door. Not a banging, demanding knock. Just a gentle one. I looked around for Jake and Sophie and determined that I was the closest resident to the door,

[00:15:18] so I obligatorily made my way over and threw a big, wide smile on. I was drunk, I was having a great time, and not really deterred whether it was the police or not. There in the hallway was a young man with brown hair.

[00:15:32] It was hard to tell exactly how old he was. He was wearing an old-fashioned hockey mask, you know, like the Jason from Friday the 13th movies. The guy also had on a nice shirt and tie. Seeing that it wasn't the police, everyone went right back to partying.

[00:15:47] Hi, I said. You're supposed to come in through the downstairs, silly. I gushed and giggled, pointing out downstairs. The man didn't say anything and just stood there awkwardly about a foot away. Are you here for the party? I asked, assessing him a bit more.

[00:16:05] And he didn't say anything, and I saw that he was holding a long carving knife in his left hand. Like a real carving knife. He was holding it in what you could say was a safety position. Handle in, fist with the blade pointed out at the ground.

[00:16:22] But his hand was slightly raised, about waist level. I think I also subconsciously registered that this was the stabbing position. Instinctively, I drew back just a little, and I lessened the gap in the door ready to slam it if I needed to. Who do you know?

[00:16:40] I asked tentatively. I tried to get a location on Jake in my periphery to help me identify the person and maybe protect the house if needed. I was waiting for him to throw back his mask and say, just fuck in with you, and I'd

[00:16:53] recognize him, or someone would recognize him, and then maybe we'd all laugh and that would be that. But he didn't. He just stood there. And after a few moments, before I figured out what was going on here, he relaxed and he lowered his knife-wielding hand. Wrong house.

[00:17:12] He said quietly, sounding very detached. Then he just turned around, paused for a moment like he was genuinely confused, and walked down the stairs. Glad to have an excuse to close and lock the door, I did.

[00:17:28] That was weird, I said to one of my nearby friends, but I didn't really get a response. Although there were many people right next to me, everyone was just having too much of a good time to really notice what happened. And not that much had happened, really.

[00:17:43] Being drunk, I found someone to help me externally process. I told my friend Tiffany, and we worked through some scenarios. Probably it was just a prank. Maybe it was someone coming from another party who wanted to use their costume for a little scare.

[00:17:57] Or maybe it was just someone who was as drunk as we were trying to find their friend's place. Probably it was nothing. He left? Tiffany asked. Yeah, I mean, I think so. He walked downstairs. I didn't watch him leave though, I just quickly shut the door.

[00:18:16] So he could have gone downstairs. She said it just as I realized the same thing. It made my stomach sink. Unwelcome, fucking freaky thoughts started creeping into my mind. Fueled by our scary movie montage playing down in the basement, this guy is wearing a Jason mask.

[00:18:36] He might have entered my home through my door, by my bedroom, and stalked or worse even stabbed an unsuspecting party guest in our house, in the creepy basement while the rest of us are blissfully unaware upstairs.

[00:18:50] Or he might be lurking in a dark corner of my bedroom, or the laundry room, waiting for me to stumble upon him later. We decided that we needed to let everybody know and make sure the house was clear, and

[00:19:03] that it was time to close and lock the basement entry. We split up and start telling everybody, then gathered a force to clear the house and the building's common hallways to make sure that the knife guy in the Jason mask was not here among us.

[00:19:16] Thankfully, we found no evidence that he was still here. But the vibe of turning on all the lights and switching into survival mode was really sobering. Even if most of the guests weren't really bothered or taking it very seriously, the party started quieting down and then thinning out.

[00:19:33] A smaller group of us stayed up until the wee hours, and overall it was one for the books. The best party I ever threw. After everyone was leaving, I made sure all the doors were locked.

[00:19:44] I asked my boyfriend at the time to help me check all of the rooms and make sure nobody was hiding out anywhere, but he said I was just being paranoid and went to bed. Dick. I checked anyway. Paranoid is better than stabbed any day.

[00:19:59] I never heard anything about any kind of crime nearby that night. No murders, no stabbings, no break-ins. Although DC was really the murder capital, and often one-off crimes in such a heavily populated area won't even make the headlines. I want to think that it was just a prank.

[00:20:18] Or maybe somebody was just confused. I want to think that that's the most likely scenario, and that we were never in any real danger. But I saw the guy in the Jason mask with the carving knife in my mind's eye every night

[00:20:33] before going to bed until I moved out of that condo. I didn't want to go on that camping trip. Instead of that camping trip, I could have been on vacation with my best friend and their family in Cape Cod. But of course, they said no.

[00:21:06] My best friend's sister had been killed in a boating accident near that house. My parents said it was because she wasn't supervised. It was a massive fight between us. Long story short, this trip was my punishment.

[00:21:20] There I was, 15 years old, on a seven-hour trip in the backseat of my mom's car with only the radio to entertain me. I turned my head to look out the window. We were in the middle of nowhere.

[00:21:32] For the next half hour, I tried my hardest to not get sick and vomit all over my mom's nice new car. When we finally arrived, I was really excited to see what we had traveled seven hours for.

[00:21:44] It was just your average campsite, but it was in the middle of a field. I marched into the cabin and stopped at the side of a girl and her mother. The girl said hello, complimented my shirt, and asked why we were there.

[00:21:59] She was really kind, unlike the mother who made some rude remarks about me. I blinked, shook it off, and told her why I was there, and she let me through. I heard the girl say she was going to go to the bathroom.

[00:22:13] She ran out behind me and whispered, Wait! I am so sorry about her. The girl and I chatted a bit while I set up my tent, but then her mother came and dragged her away. I shrugged it off and grabbed my cell phone.

[00:22:30] I decided to wander around to see if I could get a signal. I soon found myself on one of the many trails. I'd been wandering for some time when someone shouted, Hey! Looking for a signal? Alex, Matthew, and Nate appeared. They were my new campsite buddies.

[00:22:52] For the first day or two, we sat around in our sleeping bags, trying and failing to escape the cold as we played cards and gossiped about the other kids in our neighborhood. Turns out these guys actually lived not far from my house.

[00:23:05] They were really chill and were a lot of fun to be around, but as all kids do, we got bored fast. We had three more days of this. So what were we going to do? Trespass, of course. Well allegedly trespass.

[00:23:20] There were no trespassing signs, so I'm not quite sure. Anyway, you can guess what we did when we heard about the creepy old cornfield right next to our campsite. We decided to test our luck and took off stomping through the rows of corn.

[00:23:38] We'd been walking in silence for just a few minutes when Nate yelled out in pain. We stopped to see if he was okay. He'd stepped on something. We looked down and found a small pile of bones. It was weird, but we brushed it off and kept walking.

[00:23:57] We walked, still in silence, up the hills of the cornfield. It seemed like the further we walked, the more bones we saw. More and more piles started to block the sides of the path. There were clearly the bones of animals, but we couldn't figure out what kind.

[00:24:17] In the distance, we saw what looked to be an angel headstone. All it took was one glance at each other for us to take off running. However, we didn't run away from the headstone as any smart person would have done. Nope, we ran towards it.

[00:24:34] When we reached it, we found that we were standing in a full-blown graveyard, but all the graves looked to be dug up. Not a sign of a bone anywhere, which was odd considering we had seen them all over that field.

[00:24:51] We spent ten minutes there trying to rationalize what we were looking at. We probably would have been there for much longer, but we heard a whistle. Oh my God, Alex said, pointing at the other end of the field. There was a man walking toward us very slowly.

[00:25:13] He had a long white stick that looked eerily similar to a human bone. We hightailed it out of there as fast as we could. When we reached the edge of the cornfield, Matthew had the bright idea of going back to grab some of the bones.

[00:25:31] Nate and Alex decided they were not going to do that, but I couldn't let him go alone. So the two of us went back up the hill and he filled his shirt pockets and his sweatshirt with bones.

[00:25:47] Finally we ran out of the cornfield again and started to make our way to the campsite. Once we got there, Matthew cleaned the bones and left them out to dry. We washed our hands and decided we should do something fun, so we went to grab some snacks.

[00:26:04] On our persons, we had only our phones and some military-grade glow sticks. After some time, the four of us wandered into the woods. I don't really remember what we did for most of the walk, but I do remember when we came

[00:26:19] upon a tree far off in the distance. It was beautiful. The grass was green underneath and there were mushrooms growing on the tree. I remember starting to move towards it, maybe to inspect the life underneath it or something, but I don't really remember. I'm a plant person, okay?

[00:26:44] Anyways, Alex stops me and he points up. Nathan whispered, What the f- Something was hanging from the tree that looked like a person. I remember one of them threw their glow stick at it. Then we heard it for the second time that day, that whistle.

[00:27:13] You bet I could have outrun an Olympic runner in that moment. We got back to the campsite and checked where we had put the bones. All of them were gone. And trust me, we looked everywhere and asked everyone.

[00:27:32] We all agreed not to go anywhere in the woods or the cornfield again. The next day, that girl from the cabin found me and what she said truly jarred me. She whispered, Next time, remember not to touch the bone.

[00:27:59] We left the day after, but I can't help but wonder if we had done something differently, I wouldn't be telling you this. What if we hadn't run away from that man? Anyways, you can bet I'm not going back to the Susquehanna River campsite ever again.

[00:28:18] So to that creepy guy from the cornfield who followed us around, please let's not meet again. My mom was always very cautious of the bad things that could happen to her children.

[00:28:49] She would take all three of us, my brother, sister, and I to school in the morning as she worked close to the same time school started. I had been begging to bike to school since I got a new bike for my birthday a few months

[00:29:01] earlier, and she finally agreed. I was in grade 7, so 12 or 13 years old. My school was a 2-3 minute drive and around a 10-15 minute bike ride. I was eager to ride my new bike to school as I had also gotten a new helmet and bike

[00:29:18] lock to go with it. School started at 9 o'clock, so I left around 8. I liked to hang out in the yard with my friends before school started, so I would always go earlier. The route to school was pretty much one straight line down one main road in my city.

[00:29:37] Now it's 8 o'clock in the morning, so it's relatively bright outside, and again, I'm on a well-populated main road around the time everyone is heading to work or school. So I'm about halfway to school and I decide to cross the street, but not at a crosswalk

[00:29:56] or traffic light, just kind of jaywalking, or biking if you will. As I'm stopped in someone's driveway looking both ways to cross, I notice a black car pull up to my left and park on the side of the road.

[00:30:11] It's a two-door Honda Civic type looking car from what I can remember, and all of the windows were tinted. I didn't think much of it, the only thing that crossed my mind was maybe I was blocking

[00:30:22] them from getting in their driveway, so I continued on trying to cross the street. From the corner of my eye, I see a man dressed in all black with his hood pulled up to hide

[00:30:33] his face, get out of the driver's side, and walk around the back of the car to the passenger side. Before I get the chance to realize what's happening, he's opened the passenger side

[00:30:44] door and is pulling me by the arm off my bike in an attempt to put me in his car. And for what felt like forever, it was like every car on this street had disappeared. Any sign of help was completely gone.

[00:30:59] One of the busiest streets in my city felt like a gravel road in the middle of nowhere with nothing to be seen for miles. It also felt like one of those awful nightmares where you try to scream, but nothing comes

[00:31:13] out so you're just silently suffering until you finally wake up. But it was real. I couldn't scream. I can't explain that feeling any better than a nightmare but not being able to wake up from it.

[00:31:28] These things didn't happen in my city, so I wasn't prepared for what to do in a situation like this. So I did the first thing that came to my mind.

[00:31:36] I shifted my weight to my right leg and kicked him in the crotch as hard as I possibly could with my left. I landed one kick, which I recall actually hurt my ankle a bit so I can only imagine what it felt like on the receiving end.

[00:31:51] And he instantly let go. I didn't even look before I crossed that street, biking as fast as I possibly could. I remember trying to turn around to get a license plate but my eyes were watery from

[00:32:04] the tears streaming from them and it still felt like making any noise was impossible. I knew my mom would have been at work by now so I just continued biking to school silently crying the entire way. I pulled into the schoolyard and dropped my bike.

[00:32:22] I didn't care to lock it or ever ride it anywhere again, frankly. My school's front door was locked 24-7 and you had to ring a doorbell to get in so I did exactly that.

[00:32:33] The secretary reminded me that I still had time to play outside before class started and that's when I was finally able to speak again. I need to call my mom, I screamed. The door opened instantly.

[00:32:47] I explained what happened to the secretary, then the principal, my mom, and finally the police who I had refused to talk to until I spoke with my mom. The police arrived at the school shortly and took my statement then I went to the station

[00:33:03] after school to make another with my mom. A business across the street from where it happened had video surveillance but it only captured the bottom 6 inches of the guy's car pulling up, his footsteps around the back of his car, and then the car pulling away shortly after.

[00:33:21] Basically, no solid leads on who this guy was or is. The same guy with the same body description and car description went on to attempt to kidnap three other girls but still was never caught.

[00:33:37] I don't really believe in a God but I do pray that he was or is never successful. So whoever you are, let's not meet. I didn't know much about living in the wilderness when I bought a house with my best friend

[00:34:08] but it was a really good deal that we just couldn't pass up. My friend Julia and I were going to school about a half an hour away and buying a house for the next four years actually turned out to be cheaper than the rent would have been

[00:34:20] at the end of it all. Plus this meant no landlords and we could do whatever we wanted with the place. The house was technically considered off-grid since it wasn't connected to our city's power grid which of course helped us with the price.

[00:34:34] Thankfully the previous owners agreed to sell us their solar panels as part of the overall price which was actually super lucky. The house was also on septic and we had a well so even though it was off-grid we still

[00:34:46] had all the luxuries of living in a house in the city. Julia and I both had pretty well paying jobs and I'm not ashamed to say that we both come from families who helped us with the mortgage from time to time.

[00:34:59] Anyways, the number one rule that I made with Julia when we agreed to buy this house together was that we wouldn't give our address to anyone but family. No friends, no boyfriends and especially no random guys.

[00:35:12] We were out in the middle of nowhere and I didn't want to risk the wrong person knowing that we, two 22 year old women, were living 30 minutes outside of town, miles from the next house. It just didn't seem smart to me.

[00:35:24] Julia always said that she was fine with the rule and for the first year we lived together and she respected it. At least I think she did. Then one day, in our second year of being housemates, I came home to her making out

[00:35:36] with some random guy on the sofa in the living room. I was livid. I screamed at the guy to get out, which of course only made Julia mad but I really didn't care.

[00:35:46] I had boundaries and my reason for not wanting men over to the house seemed pretty fair. After he left, she yelled at me that I was being stupid and having a guy over from time to time wasn't going to do anything bad.

[00:35:58] I tried telling her that it just wasn't smart letting people we don't even know into our house and letting it be known that we live alone with basically no means to protect ourselves. But she still didn't get it. She just kept saying, this isn't the movie Taken.

[00:36:12] A guy isn't going to come back and kidnap and sell us. Calm down. Live a little. Her making fun of the situation made me feel like I had made a huge mistake buying this house with a person I thought I knew so well.

[00:36:25] She had been my best friend for four years and I never got the impression that she would be so careless. I called my mom that night and told her what happened.

[00:36:33] She agreed with me that it was dumb of Julia to invite a guy over that she didn't even know. I also told her that it made me uncomfortable staying there knowing this guy knew where we lived, who we were and that we lived alone.

[00:36:45] I mean, it was obvious no guy lived with us. Every picture in the place was just two of us and I'm pretty sure Julia probably told him that she only had one roommate. It wouldn't have been a shocker if she did.

[00:36:58] She brought him back to the house after all so telling him about her life wouldn't have been a big deal. My mom told me that if I was uncomfortable that I could just stay with her for a few

[00:37:07] nights and if I wanted to go back after then I could and if not, I could stay however long I needed. I appreciated the offer and decided that I'd go to school the next day, go home, pack some

[00:37:20] things and then head off to my mom's for a bit. Julia thought that I was being dramatic but I didn't care. I went to school the next day as planned and made my way back to the house that afternoon.

[00:37:32] I decided to wait until Julia got home to let her know how long I'd be gone and just to make sure that she'd locked up. Clearly she wasn't the most responsible person so I couldn't rely on her to secure the place after I left.

[00:37:45] At around 8pm I decided I was done waiting and began making my way to the front door with my bag in hand. When I reached the hall that led into the living room, I stopped in my tracks.

[00:37:58] Thankfully the darkness that filled the house hid me as I watched two men in black masks standing at the door behind the frosted glass. They were talking to each other when I heard one of them say,

[00:38:09] I'm telling you man, the girls who live here are all types of fine. Now get the door open before they hear you. My heart sank and I didn't know what to do. I just had to hide.

[00:38:22] I guess now I realized that I probably should have slipped out the back door but I really wasn't thinking. Instead I slowly walked back into my room, shot and locked the door and started trying to find some places to hide.

[00:38:35] I watched a movie the previous night that gave me the idea of opening my window to make it look as though I'd gone out that way so I did that and climbed into the back of my closet

[00:38:44] and hid under a couple of thick comforters I'd shoved back there after last winter. I heard the sound of the glass in the front door shattering and I felt tears beginning to streak down my face.

[00:38:56] I wasn't going to be one of those girls you see in movies and TV shows who can't keep quiet though. I was barely breathing so I wouldn't make a sound. I listened as they made their way through the house, loudly arguing with each other that

[00:39:08] they hadn't found us yet. I silenced my phone so it wouldn't give up my hiding spot if it were to go off and I texted Julie not to come home, that people had broken into our house and to call 911 immediately.

[00:39:21] I also texted my mom and told her what was happening and for her to call 911 too. Of course they both started blowing at my phone but when I heard the men try the handle to my bedroom door, I couldn't focus on anything but staying hidden and staying quiet.

[00:39:35] She's gotta be in here, her car is out front. I'm going to be so pissed if she's not and you had me break into this house for nothing. They argued back and forth like that for a couple of minutes until one of them must have

[00:39:48] gotten tired of it and kicked the door in. I was relieved when the window trick seemed to work and they screamed at each other that I'd gotten away. The relief only lasted a minute though when one of them told the other to look around

[00:40:01] for anything they could take that might have been worth something. I started praying that they wouldn't look too far into my closet, that they wouldn't pull back the comforters I was under and do what men do to women whose houses they break into.

[00:40:15] I heard one of the men leave my room but I could tell one of them stayed. I heard him begin to go through my drawers and throw things across the room. He seemed frustrated, which was probably due to the fact that I don't own super nice things.

[00:40:29] No expensive jewelry, nothing designer. I could never justify spending that kind of money and clearly this guy didn't appreciate that. My breath stopped in my throat when I heard his footsteps get closer to the closet doors. I didn't move an inch.

[00:40:43] There was no way that I was going to give this guy any reason to believe I was in there. It felt like I was going to have a heart attack when he opened the closet doors.

[00:40:52] I could feel the vibrations of him moving things around off the shelves overhead and just when I felt him grab hold of the blankets I was under, his friend burst into the room, yelling that they had to go. Apparently they heard sirens down the road and got scared.

[00:41:08] They ran out of the house and I stayed in my spot. I had every intention of staying there all night. I was terrified of the possibility that they were still there and that was until I heard my mom's voice calling for me from inside the house.

[00:41:22] I tore the comforters off my body and as quickly as I could I ran toward my mom's voice. The second I saw her I burst into tears. All the emotion I'd held in that whole time was being let out and I couldn't control it.

[00:41:37] I wish I could tell you that they found the men who broke in, but they didn't. They left behind no evidence and the police didn't find anyone in the woods surrounding the house.

[00:41:47] The guy Julie brought over the previous night had a solid alibi too so they ruled him out. He also denied telling anyone where we lived but I don't buy it. I moved out the next day.

[00:42:00] It took a while but Julie eventually agreed to take my name off the mortgage. One of our other friends moved in with her and I moved back in with my parents. I feel safer with them. I just wish they'd caught the guys who terrorized me that night.

[00:42:31] My girlfriend Bethy and I made a huge life decision to A. move in together and B. completely uproot our lives in New York City and move about an hour upstate. We found a dream rental home that has tons of space and also a wonderful landlord who

[00:42:46] basically said we can live here forever. It really has been one of the best decisions we made because being surrounded by nature as well as the peace and solitude of the property has done wonders for our creativity and stress levels.

[00:43:00] We also have a very strict exercise routine so every morning we wake up super early, have our coffee, and get into our workouts which includes one hour of brisk walking. We could not believe our luck when we found a path that is exactly a three mile loop

[00:43:13] just a few steps from our home. It's off the main road and surrounded by woods so at first I was a little nervous being a city boy my whole life but got used to it after I would come across a random person

[00:43:24] walking their dog or on a morning run. Everyone always waves and smiles as they say hello and I always happily return the greeting. Still Bethy and I remain vigilant since one of our favorite podcasts is Let's Not Meet

[00:43:38] and we know that no matter how beautiful and peaceful the surroundings are you must be aware of them at all times. Flash forward about a month ago and I get a text from Bethany that there was an animal

[00:43:48] skull on one of the posts on the trail and a car parked on the side of the dirt road. The car looked empty but because its side windows were tinted she wasn't sure.

[00:43:57] I told her to loop back and we will only walk on the path as a team from then on out just to be safe. All seemed well until one day we were walking on the path and rounded a corner and saw a

[00:44:09] man with a long beard wearing a hoodie and sunglasses. He was walking up to his car from the woods to get something from it. We waved and smiled but he just looked at us dead in the eye, didn't greet us or acknowledge

[00:44:21] our presence, slammed his car door and huffed back into the woods. It was really weird and aggressive considering almost everyone who passes on that road always greets each other with a smile as we cautiously rounded the corner there on a post was an animal skull.

[00:44:37] I asked Bethany if that was the same one she saw and she said yes it was and she thinks the car was the same too. Bethany quickly and discreetly took a photo of the car with the license plate in view

[00:44:47] and sent it to her family as I gripped onto the knife I carry with me for protection. I tell her that we are going to make the loop and not be afraid because this is our trail and we love it. She agrees and we make the loop.

[00:45:01] On the way back we see the man's car but he is nowhere in sight. In the post where the skull had been, there was nothing. The skull was gone. I looked at her and mouthed, this is a little weird.

[00:45:14] And we cut our walk short and went back home and did what everyone does in these situations. I took it to Instagram for answers. One piece of great advice that I thought was the best was avoid the path for a few days

[00:45:27] then go back and see if it happens again. Because we're fully paranoid enough that we didn't want this guy knowing our schedule we did just that. And for a few days we avoided the path and kind of chided ourselves for being over dramatic city folk.

[00:45:39] We'd been back on the path and haven't seen the man's car but we did see the skull back on the post one day and decided we should give it a loving home so we carefully removed it from the post, cleaned it, and gave it the name Hemlock.

[00:45:52] We still walk along the path with our heads held high and my hand always tightly gripped to the knife I keep in my walking vest pocket. No sign of the man or his car for a while but we are remaining on elevated alert just in case.

[00:46:05] So creepy bearded sunglasses hoodie guy who likes fucking with the new people in town, you better hope we don't meet. For a little backstory, the legal drinking age in my country is 18.

[00:46:33] So if you wanted alcohol and didn't have a fake ID or a parent to get it for you, then you had to wait around outside the liquor store until someone came by who agreed to go in and purchase the alcohol for you.

[00:46:44] So we waited around, found someone who was willing to go in and buy our alcohol for us, and got him to purchase a few bottles of vodka for me and my friends.

[00:46:54] Only two of my friends were with me but we planned to meet the others after we were done. Now as it was around 6pm, we decided it was too much of a risk to decant our vodka into

[00:47:05] less suspicious looking bottles in the middle of the street as it was very busy. So we did what we would usually do in this situation and found a nearby restaurant to quickly run in and use the bathroom to decant our alcohol so we could be on our way.

[00:47:19] This time, we chose to do this in a nearby McDonalds, a location we had actually done this in before so we knew it would be a safe bet. So we go into the McDonalds and head straight for the bathroom as we'd done a million times before.

[00:47:34] As we get into the bathroom, I and my other two friends, we'll call them Harriet and Kara, all occupy one stall to get the job done and get out and back to our drinking ASAP.

[00:47:46] And as I previously mentioned, we'd done this lots of times before and usually opted to come into this McDonalds as it was usually busy which meant no one paid attention to three teenagers running straight into the toilet without purchasing anything.

[00:48:01] So anyway, we were all in there doing our thing when I could suddenly hear a lot of shifting and moving around above us. I figured it was possibly the air conditioning and opted not to tell my friends as I thought it would freak them out.

[00:48:17] We get the job done and as we're about to leave this stall, we hear a giggle followed by a question, where are you girls off to? I was presenting as female at the time.

[00:48:30] I looked up and saw the forehead and eyes of a male who looked to be about 30. He was staring out from underneath a tile in the ceiling that he'd slightly lifted up.

[00:48:43] We were all in shock just staring at this guy who proceeded to giggle down at us and ask us our names, where we were going and if he could come. We're all in shock because who really expects there to be some random guy in the ceiling

[00:48:57] of a McDonalds? Being a teenager who thought I was untouchable, I proceeded to tell the guy that he was a perv and to fuck right off. The guy seemed to enjoy this and giggled a little more still while shifting around in

[00:49:13] the ceiling and never taking his eyes off of us. Now I should probably mention that along with pouring our drink into other bottles, we pre-rolled a few joints so we were terrified to alert anyone at this point as we were young and terrified of our parents finding out.

[00:49:31] The guy, still staring at us, starts to ask questions like, what age are you guys? Where do you live? And can I have some of your weed? All the while twitching and fidgeting overhead. He then started to lift the tile.

[00:49:49] We were all stuck in a stall with this guy above us. We knew the only way for him to get down was to drop directly on top of us. So we made a run for it. We went outside and discussed what we were going to do.

[00:50:06] I decided to go back in and alert someone as it was a very busy McDonalds and I knew there would be women and children in and out of the bathroom all night. I didn't want to risk that creep staying up there just to spy on them, especially since

[00:50:21] I knew he was there and had witnessed his behavior firsthand. I go in and tell a member of the staff that I'd been in the bathroom for a long while just taking a phone call when the guy appeared. To my shock, they were completely unsurprised.

[00:50:38] They were actually pissed off more than anything. I saw a few male employees of their staff go in and enter the bathroom and I figured they could handle it from there. So I went on my way.

[00:50:51] We still went into that McDonalds but never had encounters with the ceiling guy again. We're not even sure if the guy got caught as we didn't hear anything about it afterward. So to the creepy guy in the ceiling watching the girls bathroom with a bird's eye view,

[00:51:07] let's not meet. Ever again. This happened about 6 years ago. For a little background info, I'm 23 years old. I am also very small. I am 4'11 and weigh 95 pounds soaking wet. My 11th grade year of high school is when this event took place.

[00:51:43] It was within the first two weeks of school and I always rode the bus. We had a new bus driver at the time. Me being a very social person, I always thanked him for his service and was always super nice

[00:51:54] to him and I believe that's where I messed up. I was riding the bus after school one day. I was always one of the first to be dropped off. So when I realized that I had been on the bus for an extra 10 minutes, I was a little

[00:52:10] curious but I chalked it up to the fact that bus routes get changed all the time. At this point, I had been on the bus for about 30 minutes and there were two kids left, an old friend of mine and of course myself.

[00:52:24] This friend of mine lived in a very remote location and there was absolutely no cell service out there. So when we dropped her off, I couldn't call my parents to let them know what was happening.

[00:52:36] My friend tried really hard to convince me to get off at her stop and I should have listened. As we were leaving the area, the bus driver pulled into a cemetery and told me to look out my window.

[00:52:50] When I did, I saw a small deer that had been torn to shreds. My whole body went into shutdown mode and I didn't know what to do. My initial reaction was to pull out my phone and call my parents. I remembered I had no signal.

[00:53:07] I immediately got up and ran to the back of the bus. Keep in mind, I'm the only kid on the bus. We just sat there for what felt like an eternity next to that poor deer. I'm in the back and my blood is absolutely boiling the entire time.

[00:53:30] It took everything in me to not run off that bus and look for help. When we began to drive away, he started talking about random stuff like how he loves his wife and his new job as a bus driver.

[00:53:45] The whole time, he's barely paying attention to the road. I get on my phone and go to Google Maps. Thank God they work even without service. I realize my house was 15 minutes from where we were and I was relieved to be going home soon. Boy, was I wrong.

[00:54:03] This jackass then decides to take a bunch of back roads while continuing to talk to me. Meanwhile, I'm sitting in silence with no service on my phone. So about 20-25 minutes later, I start seeing landmarks that are close to my neighborhood.

[00:54:19] I look down and there's finally service on my phone. I immediately call my dad but he doesn't answer. Not even 2 minutes later, we pull into my neighborhood and he drops me off at my house.

[00:54:32] I wanted to run but for some reason, I just stood in my yard and stared at him. Frozen in fear. Eventually, he pulled off and when he did, I took off running into the house. My parents were freaking out about where I had been.

[00:54:53] My mom started grilling me about where I was and what I was doing because I got out of school at 2.15 and I was just getting home around 4.45. On a normal day, I would get home at like 2.30 so my mom was very upset.

[00:55:08] My dad's phone was dead because he tried to call so many times. I began to cry and tell them everything that had happened. My dad was furious and called my school. My principal was extremely pissed off about what had taken place.

[00:55:24] My mother was cuddling me, asking me if I was okay and if anything else had happened. I didn't go back to school for about 2 days. There was no formal investigation. The school handled it on their own.

[00:55:36] The bus driver denied everything and when they checked the camera footage, the camera happened to be covered by a sticker. Thankfully, nobody believed the bus driver and he was fired. I haven't ridden a bus since then. So creepy bus driver, let's not meet. For your sake, goodnight.

[00:56:16] Don't forget to stick around after the music for your extended ad-free version of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast with some bonus stories. If you want to get access, you can head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet

[00:56:28] podcast to sign up and support the show today. This week you have heard, Someone was in my house by Collateral Damage, Knife Party by Le Bouf, The Man in the Cornfield by Callahan, The first and last time I biked to school by

[00:56:44] You Don't Wanna Know, An off the grid story from Joel's podcast Let's Read, The Man on the Path by Dennis Callow, The Guy in the Ceiling by Dame Z Vader, and finally, The Bus Driver Kidnapped Me by Mommie Brie.

[00:57:00] 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.

[00:57:10] If you have a story to share, send it to me at letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. And don't forget to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts, Odd Trails and the Old Time Radiocast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:57:27] I'll see y'all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet. Stay safe. When I was 21, I decided I wanted to work in remote locations.