11x26: The Girl with the Moth Tattoo (feat. Kaelyn Moore)

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. When I was around

[00:00:41] nine years old, my family and I were in a bit of a rough patch. My father had issues with substance abuse, which resulted in our family of five being sort of homeless. Now I say sort of

[00:00:54] because in reality my parents owned a home, but we just ended up kind of leaving it. My dad's addiction introduced some shadowy characters into our lives, but the scariest of which was our next door neighbor. We lived in a secluded, wooded area on five acres.

[00:01:14] Our next door neighbor's property was separated from ours by vacant but densely overgrown lots connected by footpaths that you wouldn't likely be able to pick out without prior familiarity. For many years, this neighbor had been on good terms with my dad.

[00:01:33] When my dad's addiction got truly out of hand, those terms turned more and more sour. See, our neighbor had been producing drugs. If that wasn't bad enough, we had come to know that

[00:01:46] he was involved with the KKK. It was really scary stuff. When my dad became involved in distribution with a separate entity, this became a major conflict of interest for our neighbor. This, paired with the mounting paranoia that naturally tends to accompany methamphetamine use,

[00:02:07] led to some very confusing events, especially confusing for someone my age at the time. There would be times when my dad would ask me to look at camera footage and tell him if I was

[00:02:19] seeing the same figures that he was. I always tried to help him out, but I couldn't always make out what he was seeing. There were times when he swore that there was someone under the house

[00:02:32] attempting to saw through the floor to access his safe. One day, I recall playing in our sprawling front yard, sometime around dusk. From the furthest corner of the house, on the side closest to our

[00:02:46] neighbor's property, I could have sworn that I heard a man calling my name. My ears perked up as I repeatedly heard my name. At first, it was quiet, so I pretended to be oblivious.

[00:03:01] But the voice increased in volume after a minute. Not wanting to stick around to find out who was calling for me, I sprinted back into the house. I often wonder if this event was a true memory,

[00:03:15] or if I vividly imagined this due to the horrors that my father was experiencing. His concern and paranoia had managed to seek into my psyche as well. Around this time, my dad decided that he was no longer interested in standing his ground and putting his family at risk,

[00:03:35] so we left our property and began hopping from motel to motel. This really didn't help with putting my dad at ease as sometimes he would sit up all night long with a gun resting beside him.

[00:03:50] My two younger brothers and I made the best out of this experience since we were never close enough to other families to make neighborhood friends. We ended up taking advantage of being in close

[00:04:02] proximity to other kids in similar situations. We went down to the pool, had continental breakfast, and dodged homework to go play with whoever was around that day. One day my brother who was closest

[00:04:16] to my age and I went down to the pool near the lobby. It was emptied for the winter, but we wanted to go investigate the creatures that might be thriving in the murky sludge that was left over.

[00:04:29] In doing so, we may have gotten a little more than we bargained for. While poking around looking for lizards or whatever else, I looked around and realized that I no longer saw my little brother.

[00:04:42] Panicked, I spotted a man with two women. He was tall with a crooked nose. I was shy and not very accustomed to speaking to strangers, especially adults, but I asked him if he had seen my brother

[00:04:58] not realizing that this man had already been paying close attention to us. The man told me that my brother had gone back up to our room and he told me not to worry.

[00:05:10] He had this sly amusement displayed on his face as he spoke to me. I picked up on this and I didn't understand what could be so entertaining about my concern for my brother.

[00:05:23] He began making conversation, mentioning that he had met my parents. He said that they invited him to come visit us in our room. He asked me for our room number and ensured that my parents

[00:05:36] had given their blessing for me to share this information with them. Horrified, I bolted out of the courtyard, calling for my brother as I made my way back to our room. Luckily, he was there.

[00:05:49] He had wandered back to our room on his own without me noticing. Once I recalled this strange interaction with this man to my parents, my dad was thrown into a fury. He marched down to the

[00:06:01] pool to identify this man, but by the time he got back down there, the man and his friends were already long gone. Several mornings later, my brother and I walked down to the lobby for breakfast

[00:06:13] before it was time to leave for school. We sat down with our food when I realized this strange man was also sitting down for breakfast. He made eye contact with me and gave me a smirk that made

[00:06:28] my skin crawl. As he got up to leave, he casually said, I'm glad you found your brother. When we got back to our room, I informed my dad about this second interaction.

[00:06:42] Again, he was fuming, telling us that next time we saw this man, we needed to come get him immediately. The next morning, my brother and I walked down for breakfast with our hoodies

[00:06:52] zipped up to conceal the logo of our elementary school that was clearly displayed on our uniforms. I was relieved at first as we selected our foods since the man was nowhere in sight.

[00:07:04] Then, as we settled into our seats, he strode in with another smirk. He sat down with his breakfast, facing our table. My brother and I left everything on our table and ran back to the room.

[00:07:16] We got our dad and then followed behind him as he marched back to the lobby. The man was still seated where we left him. My brother and I returned to our seats as our dad confronted the man.

[00:07:29] They began a back and forth with raised voices, and then the man insisted that they go outside to continue their conversation. Just a few minutes later, our dad returned and told us

[00:07:41] it was time to go to school. As we walked to the car, we saw the man in the parking lot, cursing and holding a paper towel up to his face. Then, we were taken to school as if nothing had happened.

[00:07:56] When we got out of school that afternoon, our car was packed up and we were on our way to some new lodging on the other side of town. It's been 20 years since this happened. It was so bizarre,

[00:08:09] but I still remember that man's face and the way that he made my stomach clench during the few short interactions that I had with him. So to the stranger at the pool, asking for a child's room

[00:08:22] number, I hope you never got whatever it was that you were after, and let's not meet again. My story happened sometime around 99 or 2000. I was in middle school. My best friend, whom I'll

[00:08:55] call Lisa, and I were in a phase where every weekend we would have sleepovers at each other's houses. On this weekend in particular, we were at her house. We both lived in typical suburban neighborhood homes with two stories on quiet streets with lots of neighbors. What's important

[00:09:14] to know is that behind her house was another row of houses. These parallel rows of houses were separated by just a few small trees, but there was no fencing on either side.

[00:09:28] On this night, we were at her house alone, which was uncommon but very exciting for a pair of preteen girls. Our parents had gone to a late evening dinner theater show. We were explicitly

[00:09:42] told not to call them unless it was an emergency. For those of you that don't know or don't remember, around that year, 2000, our parents either had very basic cell phones or pagers. Texting was not

[00:09:55] a thing yet. Lisa and I were on one of the cordless phones talking to another friend of ours in Lisa's bedroom on the second floor. This was during the winter, so it was dark outside, and inside of the

[00:10:09] house was pretty dark as well. All of a sudden, we heard the distinct sound of her back door which was by no means a quiet door. Right when this happened, Lisa's older dog, who never made much

[00:10:24] noise in her old age, started barking. We told our friend on the phone that we had to go, and we booked it to Lisa's parents' room. Her parents' room had these two attic-like closets. They were

[00:10:39] unfinished but accessible via a door, and both contained racks of clothes. We looked at the racks and picked one to hide in. I'm not sure how we did this undetected since I had never breathed

[00:10:52] so frantically loud in my life. Everything felt loud in that moment, even my heartbeat. Once we settled into the clothing rack, we sat as quietly as we could and listened. As we started

[00:11:07] to assume that we were just being jumpy, we heard the heavy, slow footfalls of somebody wearing boots downstairs in the kitchen. Thankfully, Lisa still had the cordless phone in her hand when we

[00:11:22] dove into her parents' closet. She called her dad's phone, but there was no answer. We sat in the clothing rack in the dark for what felt like hours when, in reality, it was probably just a few

[00:11:37] minutes. We had pre-dialed 9-1 on the phone, ready to hit that second 1 when the phone rang in Lisa's hand. The house had a corded phone down in the kitchen, but we had the cordless one with us.

[00:11:52] For those of you that don't know, landline phones ring in unison, so as the cordless phone rang in Lisa's hand, the corded phone rang downstairs. We picked the phone up as quickly as we could

[00:12:05] so that the intruder didn't have enough time to determine where the cordless phone was. After we picked up, it was Lisa's dad on the other end of the line. He was scolding us for calling in

[00:12:18] the middle of the show. As her dad was yelling at us, we heard the back door open and slam closed. Since we picked the phone up after just one ring, this intruder must have realized that somebody was

[00:12:29] obviously home, so they booked it right away. After explaining the situation to all of our parents, they left the show early and came back to the house. We were beside ourselves, but when they got back and noticed that nobody was in the house anymore, they shrugged it off

[00:12:46] and assumed that it couldn't possibly be true. They were upset at us for making a big fuss about this and ruining the show night for them. I still slept over at Lisa's house that night, the next morning we went out into the backyard where it had recently snowed.

[00:13:04] From the back door across the deck leading to the house of the neighbor who lived behind her, there was a clear track of fresh footprints in the snow. We didn't know much about these neighbors,

[00:13:17] all we knew was that some older high school aged boys lived in that house. We showed Lisa's dad the footprints in the snow, but he still didn't believe our story. I can still picture these

[00:13:30] fresh footprints in the snow in my mind. I also remember the fear that I felt while hiding in that closet over 20 years ago. I'm not sure exactly why somebody entered the house that night,

[00:13:44] but I'm thankful for being able to reach Lisa's dad so promptly during the age of house phones. And to my friend's backyard neighbor who likely let themselves in, let's never actually meet. Winter is here and for me that means struggling to find the right temperature when I sleep.

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[00:16:05] a friend or a loved one this holiday season. Now back to the show. This happened when I was 14 years old. I was a freshman in high school. My friends and I used to hang out at this abandoned lumber

[00:16:32] mill behind Walmart in our tiny town. Yeah we were classy. Most days you could find a dozen or more kids skating, smoking, and hanging out in this spot in the afternoons after school. But on this day

[00:16:47] the lumber yard was completely empty. My two friends Kim and Krista and I were hanging out talking about some drama and boys and all of that. We were hoping that some other teens would

[00:17:00] show up when an old Nissan pickup pulled into the yard about 100 feet away from us. We didn't know many people who drove so we just assumed it was somebody looking for directions. A well-dressed

[00:17:12] man who appeared to be in his late 20s stepped out of the Nissan leaving it running. He said something to us in Spanish but we knew very little of the language and replied that we don't

[00:17:25] understand. The man continued speaking to us in Spanish as he slowly walked closer to the large concrete block that we were sitting on. We tried to brush him off saying no thanks and we attempted

[00:17:40] to ask him to stop getting so close to us. We stood up and got ready to walk in another direction because we were used to old men trying to talk to us like this. It was annoying every single time

[00:17:50] too. When the man saw us stand up he started walking toward us faster and began unzipping the fly of his freshly pressed Wrangler jeans. Then he did the unthinkable. The man fully exposed

[00:18:06] himself in front of three teenage girls. All three of us girls were on our feet screaming at the man to get away from us. My friend Krista picked up a small clunk of concrete and threw it at the man

[00:18:19] sadly missing his face by an inch. We were several feet away from him when my other friend Kim started mocking the man. She said, oh look how small that thing is despite being in very real danger.

[00:18:34] This prompted all three of us girls to laugh and taunt the man. This man did not speak English but he fully comprehended what our English insults meant and they enraged him. He started running

[00:18:46] towards us, pants still unzipped. He was yelling, I'm going to kill you. So we got out of there fast. Thankfully the Walmart was nearby and we started running towards it. The man jumped into his truck

[00:19:01] and sped after us. We got to the store safely by running along a tree line that he couldn't drive his truck into. We went inside Walmart and we watched the doors while he circled the parking lot

[00:19:13] waiting for us for about half an hour. Eventually he gave up and we left, making it home safely. I don't think any of us knew what could have happened if the man had gotten his hands on us.

[00:19:26] We saw that same truck around town a few times after so we warned our friends about what had happened. For some reason we never reported this incident to the police or our parents. I think we

[00:19:37] didn't want to freak out our parents and we didn't want to lose the very little independence that we had as teenage girls. Sadly this is something that we hear about in these stories quite often.

[00:19:48] This was back in the early 2000s when nobody had cell phones. If something like this were to happen today it would be recorded in a heartbeat and made viral on TikTok, fully doxing the man.

[00:20:02] When I think about this moment I feel proud that my friends and I stood up to this psycho pervert the best way that we could. We weren't afraid of him. Truth be told I think we wanted to kick his

[00:20:13] butt into the next county but we knew that we needed to run away to avoid a more dangerous situation. I have little nieces now and the thought of anyone ever doing this to them gets

[00:20:26] me very riled up. I plan to tell them this story as a cautionary tale when they're old enough. I hope that when a man tries to cross boundaries with them they are brave and smart enough to get

[00:20:37] themselves out of the situation. In my mind my tough as nails little ladies kick this hypothetical man's inappropriate butt every time I think about it. To the pervert who flashed three teenage girls at the desolate lumber yard near the Walmart, let's not meet again because next time

[00:20:56] you'll probably be the one running away screaming. Before I start with my story I would like to give some background that will play a role in what I experienced with someone who we'll call Ronnie.

[00:21:16] When I was younger I went through certain situations that a kid should never go through. From five to seven I suffered years of abuse and although it's messed up it helped me develop some

[00:21:28] kind of sixth sense if you will. My experiences have enabled me to sense when men are approaching with hidden motives and I knew to be alert and stay away from them. I was about seven years old

[00:21:43] when I met Ronnie. I never knew Ronnie's age but he seemed to be around his late 20s or early 30s. He and my dad had a mutual friend so they became acquainted because they shared the same interests

[00:21:58] in construction work. Ronnie soon started working with my dad fixing or painting houses which meant that I had to see Ronnie almost every day. He got very close to our family circle and also befriended

[00:22:12] close family friends. I was struggling in silence and although no one knew what I was going through Ronnie started interacting with me as an older person would with a kid. It started with playful

[00:22:26] pats on the back or playful jokes but then it slowly turned into him winking at me when nobody was looking. He would chase me and grab my waist really hard when he caught me. Again all of this

[00:22:39] was done when no one was around to see it happen. Red flags continued to wave when he started grabbing me harder and started chasing me in these very menacing ways like a cat chasing a mouse.

[00:22:53] I know that may seem harsh but even though so much was going on back then I knew that he was grabbing me in a way that was too aggressive. He was always breathing heavily and had this creepy smile.

[00:23:05] This was headed in a bad direction. The fact that he acted like this behind everyone's back meant that he was up to no good. One day my family went down to the river and they invited Ronnie.

[00:23:17] I remember I sat near the water and I was staring at him with so much disgust. Something came over me so I braved it and approached him. I was shaking so much but I knew

[00:23:28] that this was my chance. He was surrounded by some young people that he befriended at the river I tapped on his shoulder and he turned around giving me that creepy smile. I told him

[00:23:41] if you don't stop grabbing me, smiling at me, and winking at me I'm going to tell my dad. His creepy smile faded as those words came out of my mouth. Then I ran away as fast as I could

[00:23:53] back to my mom. After that I never saw Ronnie again. He no longer came to my house, no longer called my dad, and I felt safe from him. Fast forward to today. I'm now 26 years old. My cousin

[00:24:10] and I were talking about old memories when we started talking about a friend we had in common. I froze when she asked me, do you remember Ronnie? I mumbled a faint, yeah. She went on to tell me

[00:24:26] that she had dated our mutual friend but he was deported after she called the cops on him. It turns out Ronnie attempted to assault her. She was able to defend herself and call the cops.

[00:24:40] I went on to tell my cousin my experience with Ronnie and she and I both agreed that he was a creep. We were glad that I was able to shoo him away so long ago. So for anyone who's going through

[00:24:54] anything similar to this, don't be afraid to speak up. You just may avoid some scary trauma. To creepy Ronnie, let's not meet. Unwrap the first of many presents this season with Holidays on the House from DraftKings Casino. With hundreds of games, prizes, and promos,

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[00:26:19] restrictions apply one per opted-in customer. $5 wager required. Max $100 in casino credit awarded which require one-time playthrough within seven days. Terms at casino.draftkings.com holidays on the house. Restrictions apply. Now back to the show. I had a pretty creepy experience with my friends in the woods fairly recently.

[00:26:53] So for some context, my friends and I like to be in the wooded part of my state. We like to just hang out in the forests out there. It's more peaceful to us and the sights are cooler to look

[00:27:05] at than where we're from. When we go out there, we normally go down to this one road that's pretty out of the way. It's far from everything. There aren't any houses on it, no streetlights, and it

[00:27:19] stretches for miles. It's lined with thick woods on either side. On this particular night, it was just me and a friend of mine who had never been down this road before. I decided to show it to him

[00:27:33] so we started driving. We were pretty far down the road when I saw what looked like the reflection of a license plate on a car. This confused me since cars are never on this road, especially at night.

[00:27:47] I decided to keep driving as I was passing it. I noticed it was a practically brand new Mustang on the side of the road. I found this to be strange and turned around to go home. The following weekend,

[00:28:02] I was with friends who frequented the road. The Mustang was there again, but this time in a different spot with a white towel sticking out of the window. We thought it was strange, but we

[00:28:16] pulled over to check it out. We wanted to make sure that no one needed help or anything like that. We peeked through the windows and inside just looked as new as the outside, but nobody was there.

[00:28:29] We brushed it off and kept it in the back of our minds. The next day we went back and the Mustang was in a different spot, but it still had that white towel sticking out of the window.

[00:28:40] I took a picture of the plates and tried to run them, but we were on a stretch of the road where there wasn't any service. We had never noticed a drop in service on this road, which was weird,

[00:28:51] so we drove back towards the road that took us home until we got connection. When I was finally able to run the plates, nothing came up. Then we decided to stake out the car and see if someone

[00:29:04] comes to get it or move it or something. So that night rolled around and we were just sitting in my friend's car trying to focus on this Mustang that was about 100 feet ahead of us. My friend and I

[00:29:16] got out of the car and went to take a look inside of the Mustang with our flashlights. As we walked up to the car, nothing seemed weird. We heard nothing, no animals in the woods,

[00:29:26] no anything. It was weird. This prompted us to walk into this little clearing in the woods and take a look around. As we stood in this clearing and yelled out, hello! And, we like your Mustang!

[00:29:41] We heard whispers and saw movement. My friend and I thought that we were hearing other friends behind us, so we started to run back to the car. And as we were doing so, we heard footsteps

[00:29:53] following behind us in the woods. We got back to the car and our friends and they said that they weren't making any noises at all. Even if they were, from where my friend and I were

[00:30:06] in the woods, we wouldn't have been able to hear them. We all got into the car and my friend drove us up to the side of the Mustang. His car was angled in a way that his lights were now shining

[00:30:18] on the driver's side door. One of my friends took a video and when we looked at the video later, we clearly saw a person standing in the woods behind the Mustang. There was another person too,

[00:30:29] but we couldn't really see them as clearly since they were behind a tree. To those creepy people hiding in the woods behind the Mustang, let's not meet. My guest this week is Kaylin Moore of

[00:30:55] the podcast Heart Starts Pounding. I was really happy when she wanted to come on the show to narrate a story. I've been binging her podcast for the last couple of weeks and I'm almost caught up.

[00:31:05] Kaylin, much like our show here, shares a collection of terrifying stories, however they're both fiction and non-fiction. She's such a fantastic storyteller and I love that she's not scared to

[00:31:16] cover all kinds of creepy topics from true crime to the paranormal. So if you're a fan of this show or my other podcast Odd Trails, you're definitely going to want to add this one to your library.

[00:31:26] So when you're done here, make sure you check out Heart Starts Pounding wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy the rest of the show. This happened when I was 25. I worked as a teller

[00:31:44] at a bank. My branch in particular was located in a high traffic area, so we had a lot of customers coming in and out on a daily basis. Suffice it to say, we were always busy, especially at the

[00:31:58] teller station. But as busy as it was, the job wasn't all bad. We had a lot of customers that we became friendly with and looked forward to seeing. It got to a point that the bank tellers memorized

[00:32:10] a lot of their schedules and we essentially became friends with these customers. There was another branch of my bank only a few minutes away from my own, but our regulars would insist on coming to

[00:32:21] our branch since they, as they said, liked us better. Many of them would buy us cookies and treats for holidays, and I remember on one occasion a guy made us a whole batch of delicious homemade

[00:32:34] empanadas. Our regular customers were really sweet and great people, for the most part. Some customers weren't as sweet, like this mother and son duo that I'm about to talk about. From here on out, I'll call them Kathy and Dave. Kathy was an older woman. The other tellers and

[00:32:58] I used to joke that she was the devil because she'd always come dressed in head-to-toe black, complete with a hat that had a veil pulled down, concealing her eyes. She was mean and she was

[00:33:11] angry, and on more than one occasion we had to call our supervisor to physically escort her out of the building, Walker and all. Sometimes it'd come to this because she'd start screaming,

[00:33:24] threatening, and cursing at us at the top of her lungs if she thought one of us looked at her funny. She only came to the bank at the beginning of the month to withdraw a certain deposit she received

[00:33:34] around that time. We were grateful for that, at the very least. It was a relief knowing we generally only had to deal with her once a month, as it gave us ample time in between her visits to mentally

[00:33:46] prepare ourselves for her next visit. Her son, Dave, on the other hand, was a whole different story. To this day, I don't really know what his deal was, except for the fact that he was acting as

[00:34:02] his mother's caretaker. He lived in the area, or at least I assume he must have since he was constantly in and out of our branch. For the most part, he was quiet and unassuming,

[00:34:14] but there were days, mostly when he came in by himself, that his demeanor did a complete 180, and he became much more threatening. On these days, he'd walk in cursing and swearing under his breath,

[00:34:29] and when he got to a teller station, he'd stare the teller down while cursing even more audibly. One time, he was at the window of my co-worker, and as she was counting his money,

[00:34:39] in the denomination of the bills that he had asked for, he suddenly lashed out at her. He made derogatory comments at her and said he was, quote, going to kill her. This threat wasn't

[00:34:53] enough to ban Dave from the premises, since my supervisor shrugged it off and dismissed his behavior due to his instability. My supervisor also said that my co-worker must have done something

[00:35:04] to provoke him, and that was ultimately why he was allowed to continue to come into the bank as he pleased. I had never really had any interaction with Dave myself until about a year after he blew

[00:35:18] up at my co-worker. At this point, my branch was being shut down due to my bank cutting costs. I was moved to another branch that was much farther away, and I was sad to be leaving all

[00:35:29] the great people I had gotten to know so well. So, on our last day there, my co-workers were joking about how lucky I was to be leaving the area since I'd never have to deal with Kathy or

[00:35:40] Dave ever again. This was safe for everyone to assume as the branch I was relocating to was in a completely different neighborhood. We knew that Kathy and Dave used public transportation,

[00:35:52] so we figured they would just go to the branch that was only a few minutes away from our branch that was closing. We were all wrong about that. The first time I saw Kathy and Dave walk into

[00:36:04] my new branch was a few months after I had been relocated. When they walked in, I was left speechless, but it was mostly Dave who had me on high alert at that point. I don't know what

[00:36:17] happened between the last time I saw him at my old branch and the first time I saw him at my new branch, but there was something very different about him. He seemed much angrier, and any time he

[00:36:31] came in he'd glare at everyone who looked in his general direction. He continued to mutter curses and swears under his breath, and when any of the tellers handed him his money from a withdrawal,

[00:36:42] he'd snatch it away so hard that it felt like he was trying to tug their hands off. Sometimes, when we left for breaks or even closed up the branch for the day and were leaving,

[00:36:52] we found him skulking behind the building as if he was casing the place. Sometimes it also seemed like he was waiting for someone to come out alone so he could do who knows what to them.

[00:37:03] My new coworkers had no idea who Dave was or what his track record was like since he was a new customer to them. They essentially considered his mannerisms to be general weirdness and brushed him

[00:37:15] off. But I knew differently since I had seen him before and knew he hadn't always been this extreme. He hadn't always been quite this angry. Sure, at the old branch he had his outbursts, but that

[00:37:29] wasn't an everyday thing. He didn't come into my old branch looking like he wanted to kill us all, so this level of anger was new to me. During Dave's next visit, the branch was exceptionally busy.

[00:37:43] For whatever reason, the teller lines were out the door and the parking lot was packed. There were four of us on the teller line, chipping away at the line of customers.

[00:37:51] I swear, none of us even had a second to take a break to breathe in between customers. At some point during the afternoon, I happened to glance over at the glass doors of the entrance while

[00:38:02] finishing up a transaction. I noticed Dave walking in and getting in the teller line. In the back of my mind, I thought, great, one more irritating thing to have to deal with today. But I didn't

[00:38:15] think anything of it beyond that. I just figured he'd come in, do his whole mumbling and glaring routine, get his money, and leave like he always did. But as he got closer, I realized he looked

[00:38:28] different, but not in a good way. His eyes were bloodshot and he was sneering as he was staring daggers into me, specifically. It was like I was the only teller on the line, the way he was

[00:38:43] watching me. And eventually, he ended up coming to my window. Before I continue, I need to quickly explain a very important detail. My new branch was open concept, meaning the teller line was just an

[00:38:58] elevated counter that the tellers sat behind. There was no protective glass between the tellers and the customers, and no divider to keep us apart besides the counter itself. So, if a customer

[00:39:10] felt like it, they could reach over the counter and grab whatever was on my desk. Generally speaking, I've had customers cross this boundary, but only to the extent that they would peek over the

[00:39:22] counter, see the spare pen on my desk, and reach over to take it without asking. This branch also did not have security personnel since it was so small. I never really thought about how dangerous

[00:39:34] this was because I hadn't felt my life was in danger at any point. But Dave changed that outlook in a matter of 30 seconds. The second he got to my window, he slammed his withdrawal sheet and

[00:39:48] ID on the counter. He didn't break eye contact with me for a second, and he didn't respond when I tried to break the silence by greeting, hello, how are you? I was extremely uncomfortable, but I

[00:40:01] tried to brush it off as Dave being Dave, and I quickly got to work on his transaction. I looked away from him to look at my computer screen, and that was when the muttering started. It started

[00:40:14] quietly, but as I was typing his information into the computer, he started to get louder. He was calling me filthy names, saying girls like me were only good for one thing. I was just trying

[00:40:27] to speed through his transactions, but my hands were starting to shake and I could feel myself getting closer to a panic attack. Meanwhile, he just wouldn't stop calling me these awful names

[00:40:37] and saying awful things. I just kept working and kept my eyes on my monitor, and I guess he didn't like that I wasn't responsive to him or looking at him because he continued to get louder and the

[00:40:48] things he said began to get more violent. As I popped open the cash till to hand him his money so he could leave, Dave started to scream at the top of his lungs. He screamed, I'm going to kill

[00:41:00] you, you whore, you stupid slut. I'm going to cut you up. Not even God will recognize you when I'm finished. And then he lunged over the counter right at me and he reached for a pair of scissors I had

[00:41:12] on my desk. I don't know how I managed to react so quickly, but I sprung up from my chair so fast and I leaped back and braced myself against the wall behind me. I got as far away from him as I

[00:41:24] could possibly get in that small space. I even managed to grab the scissors as I jumped back. At that point, I was hyperventilating and I felt like I was either going to throw up, pass out,

[00:41:35] or do both. My co-worker ran over at that point and told Dave to step back as he finished the transaction. My co-worker handed Dave his cash and walked him out of the building. Meanwhile,

[00:41:47] I had run behind the wall I backed myself up against to escape into the vault room, where my co-worker found me having a full blown panic attack. I was sitting on the floor of the

[00:41:58] room with my knees pulled into my chest, trying to regulate my breath. He helped calm me down as I was internally hashing out what had happened and what could have happened if I hadn't been so

[00:42:09] quick on my feet. The scissors from my desk were still in my hand, and seeing them there made the whole situation even more real, which made me feel even more terrified. I started crying and

[00:42:22] called my supervisor to relay the entire situation. She told me to contact the bank's internal security department immediately to see what could be done. In the end, internal security decided to do a whole lot of nothing. They claimed that since he hadn't hurt

[00:42:38] me, there was nothing they could do. When I insisted that they review the camera feed from behind the teller line, which would show the incident clearly and prove Dave had intended to hurt me, they gave me vague and frankly stupid reasons as to why they couldn't. My co-workers

[00:42:54] supported me 100% though. They did everything in their power to make me feel safe at work. Dave continued to come into the branch after that. Because again, security said they couldn't do anything or ban the man who threatened to kill me. Anytime he came into the bank after that,

[00:43:12] my co-workers would usher me into the back and get him in and out as quickly as possible so I could come back out and do my job. I only ended up face to face with him one other time, and it was

[00:43:22] entirely by accident. When I had to help him again, he only looked at me with a vacant expression, like he was looking through me, or just didn't recognize me at all. Eventually,

[00:43:35] Dave started coming in less and less, and a few months after the incident, I left my bank job for something better. I haven't seen Dave since then. More recently, that branch of the bank I worked

[00:43:48] for has also closed, so I don't know if he even goes to that neighborhood anymore. But to Dave, who very literally threatened to kill me at work and would've tried had he gotten ahold

[00:44:01] of that pair of scissors before I did, let's never meet again. I've listened to enough of this podcast to be able to dig deep into memories of my early 20s. In doing so, I recalled one of the

[00:44:34] more unsettling moments in my life. Let me start by saying that there aren't a lot of times in my life that I felt unsafe. I'm a small bartender, standing about 5 foot. Over the years, I've become

[00:44:49] outspoken, especially regarding anyone who seems like they're making any bar guests of mine feel uncomfortable. However, there was a point in my life when I wasn't as outspoken, which is when

[00:45:02] I found myself in a bit of a creepy situation. I was 22, a bartender at a pizza place in my hometown. It was winter, post-Christmas time, so work had slowed down pretty significantly.

[00:45:17] At this time, I decided to sign up for a webcam site to bring in some extra money. Now, this was before OnlyFans, so it was essentially a chatroom set up where I could share video content. I'm

[00:45:30] currently 28 and pretty heavily tattooed. At the time, I wasn't as tattooed as I am now, but I still had quite a few. There were a few tattoos that could only be seen while I was naked. Now, my chatroom guests frequently talked about these tattoos as they complimented them.

[00:45:48] I used a fake name while using this website, and I had a fake background story. I never revealed my location, and I created this fake fantasy persona the best that I could. I was down for

[00:46:00] whatever was going to help me make the most money. One night, I was online, and a random guest requested a private video chat with me. This wasn't uncommon, and I jumped at opportunities

[00:46:12] like this, keeping requesters on as long as I could since I was being paid by the minute. I entered the chat and we talked. He asked to see several things, and towards the end of the chat,

[00:46:24] he complimented the moth tattoo on my stomach and asked if I'd consider getting my nipples pierced. I told him I had thought about it, and he said that if I let him know where I lived, he would come visit me and pay for me to have them pierced.

[00:46:41] This guest talked about money a lot, so in my head, he was just some bored, rich, older guy who could easily afford the time and money that it took to talk to women online all day. I was

[00:46:54] uneasy about this pitch to visit me, so I told him I'd think about it and asked if I could do anything else for him before I logged off. He said no, and I closed the chat.

[00:47:06] I genuinely thought nothing of this. Men said creepy and weird stuff to me all the time, especially on the webcam site. They were all relatively harmless, as most of these men were

[00:47:18] too afraid to talk to women in real life. They often used anonymous profiles so that they could act their wildest. A few weeks passed, and that particular guest did not return. I didn't receive

[00:47:33] any messages from him, and he never entered the chat again. This caused me to quickly forget about the entire interaction, allowing other creepy men's behavior and comments to take its place. Then one night while at work, I had been scheduled to bartend in the beer garden.

[00:47:51] This usually meant I spent all of my shifts outside until right before closing time when I brought everything into the dining room bar. As I moved my operation inside, there were only a few

[00:48:04] patrons remaining, including one man sitting at the bar inside. He was talking with a few of my co-workers, and they were all laughing. I had headphones in, so I wasn't paying attention to anything being said until my co-worker flagged me down to join their conversation.

[00:48:22] As I walked over, my co-worker was gushing about tattoos and how I had a lot of them. She caught me up on the conversation and said that this man mentioned his girlfriend and how he wished that

[00:48:35] she had more tattoos or piercings. I really wish she'd get her nipples pierced, he droned. I wasn't very interested in this conversation, so I politely nodded before checking out and attempting to sneak away from the conversation. As I tried to make my exit, he locked his eyes

[00:48:55] on me, looking me up and down, and an eager smile crept across his face. Are you completely tattooed? He asked. This struck me as an odd question, so I asked him what he meant. He clarified, are those tattoos under your clothes? If someone were to ask me this

[00:49:15] question at the present, I would tell them to screw off in two seconds flat, but timid 22-year-old me clammed up and sheepishly responded, yeah, I guess. Don't you have a blue moth tattoo? He

[00:49:31] inquired. I felt my skin get cold. I looked at him as he smiled, knowingly, as if to say, I found you. As I said previously, I never divulged any actual personal information about

[00:49:48] myself on this webcam site, nothing. I think I even lied about my age as if that would protect me even more. I immediately turned and made a beeline to my manager's office. I broke out in

[00:50:02] a cold sweat as I tried to sort my thoughts every which way, trying to figure out how I could explain this situation. I was trying to think of how to communicate that this man had found me through

[00:50:15] a webcam site and was now sitting at the bar. I went into the office, breathing so hard I felt like I was going to pass out. I managed to meekly explain the situation by saying, there's a man who

[00:50:29] I met from my other job and I'm scared of him. My manager immediately stood up and asked me if he was in the restaurant. I told him that the man was in the dining room bar. He told me to stay

[00:50:40] in the kitchen as he assessed the situation. I stood in the kitchen and at this point, tears were slowly rolling down my eyes as I hyperventilated. Two of the kitchen staff members leaped into

[00:50:52] action, wondering if I was okay and asking what they could do for me. After I loosely explained the situation, one of the kitchen staff members told me that they would walk me to my car after

[00:51:03] closing to make sure that I was safe. The other kitchen staff member angrily demanded to know if the man was still in the restaurant, but I didn't know. I was too afraid to look.

[00:51:17] Five minutes later, my manager came back and told me that she watched the man leave out the patio door. My manager said that the man tried to get a good look at the patio bar to see if I was out

[00:51:29] there closing. When the man didn't see me, he got into his car and left. Still visibly shaken, my coworkers asked what had happened and if I was okay. I was embarrassed because I didn't like

[00:51:44] that I let someone make me feel that uncomfortable, and I was also still very scared. How did this man know where I lived or where I worked? How did he get so much private personal

[00:51:57] information in the 15-minute private call that we were on? I never even revealed my real name. How could he have known all of this information? I didn't tell him anything. I was worried that he would come back again, which was chilling. What did he even want from me?

[00:52:17] The next thing I knew it was midnight. An hour and a half had passed since the coast was cleared by my manager. Even then, I asked about 20 times out of an abundance of caution if he was sure

[00:52:30] that he saw the man leave in his car. My manager confirmed, yes, he was driving a green van, he's gone. And he was right. The parking lot only had a few cars left and they were recognized by

[00:52:41] me as belonging to the closing staff. Right before I walked out, the two guys working in the kitchen suggested that I leave from the side door just in case. I agreed that this was a good

[00:52:52] idea and one of them walked out first, holding the door open for me as I stepped behind them. Right then, a green van that had been parked right outside the side door turned its lights on

[00:53:03] and peeled out of the parking lot. My coworker immediately realizing who it was began to chase after the van on foot screaming, don't ever come back here and threatened to beat them up.

[00:53:17] Two more male coworkers followed suit and the three of them went outside to circle our building and the parking lot to ensure that this man didn't pull back in. I was crying and anxious

[00:53:30] all over again. So my manager and two female coworkers rushed me to my car. My manager assured me that he was calling the cops. He said that he was going to pull the camera footage of the man

[00:53:43] in his green van in the parking lot. I remember trying to ease myself as I sat in the driver's seat of my car. I relaxed for a second as my manager advised, take a different way home than

[00:53:56] you ordinarily would. Don't park your car and try to go into your home until you're certain that nobody is tailing you. I drove the whole way home in complete silence, checking my mirrors every

[00:54:07] few seconds for headlights behind me. I was petrified, frozen from pure fear. I never heard from that man again after that night. I couldn't find our messages on the site to report as I'm sure

[00:54:22] he quickly deleted his account. If he ever returned to the bar that I worked at again, I never knew about it. A few months later, I moved to Texas and moved on from this creepy

[00:54:34] situation entirely. So to the man who liked my moth tattoo, let's never meet again. Thanks for listening and make sure you stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended ad free version of this week's episode. And if you'd like to get access, head

[00:55:02] over to patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet podcast to sign up and support the show today. As of right now, we're uploading content every single day with remastered ad free versions of

[00:55:13] all the early seasons. Make sure you check that out again. That's every single day we're releasing content. This week you have heard a motel creep by shy, the backyard neighbor by anonymous. Keep

[00:55:24] it in your pants by Fricka. Scottlehyman. Creepy Ronnie by Apple Mustang on the side of the wooded road by Omega Chad 667 Dave by anonymous and finally the girl with the moth tattoo by Tory

[00:55:40] cross. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. If you have a story to share, make sure you send it to let's not meet

[00:55:48] stories at gmail.com. Let's not meet a true horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. Make sure you check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like odd

[00:55:58] trails my true paranormal podcast and the old time radio cast at cryptic county podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out Kalen Morris podcast heart starts pounding at heart starts pounding calm or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like my podcasts.

[00:56:16] Everyone please stay safe.