16x22: Deadly Drug Debts

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] Lets Not Meet is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit Progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

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[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_00] This podcast contains adult language and content. The stories shared in this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00] Enjoy the show. This happened when I was a freshman in college. I met Ron through one of our mutual

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00] friends, Chris, because they were in a school club together. When I met Ron, I thought he was somewhat unusual, but I ultimately brushed it off because he was nice and seemed interesting. He claimed to be Slavic and had an accent to support his claim. I just thought that he might have come off as weird to me because of the cultural differences. I go to school in a rural southern area, and I figured the culture shock between

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00] here and wherever he was originally from was a lot to handle. We exchanged numbers and texted frequently for a couple of weeks. On October 3rd of 2018, a friend of mine and I went to a drag show on our campus. We weren't out super late, but it was dark when the show ended and we began walking back to our dorm. I had been texting Ron a bit during the night because he was unable to get a ticket to the drag show,

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_00] and he wanted to know how it was. At some point in the conversation, I mentioned that I wanted to grab some orange juice on the way back to my dorm. I'm not sure why I mentioned that to him. I think I was just trying to make conversation. My friend and I stopped in a convenience store near our building so that I could get some orange juice, and Ron was already there. He said something about

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_00] buying the juice for me, which I thanked him for but declined. He got upset and started to walk away, which was odd, but I just let it go. My friend and I walked out of the store and saw that he was standing outside. Our dorm was actually right across from the building where the convenience store was, so he saw us enter the building. My friend and I then parted ways, and I walked up to my room,

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00] which was on the second floor of the building facing the convenience store. I kicked myself now for doing this, but I went to my window, I opened it, and I yelled down to Ron when I saw that he was still standing there. I apologized for declining his offer to buy the juice for me because I felt like I had been rude for some reason. I had a guilty conscience, I guess. He stood below my window and started talking to me about random stuff, and at one point he said

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00] something that was odd. He said, Can I flirt with you? I enjoy that. I just laughed and said, Uh, okay, because I had no clue how to respond to that. I just figured he was a flirtatious person. This was naive, I know, but that wasn't the dumbest thing I did. I ended up going outside to sit and talk with Ron for a bit because I felt bad about being

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00] rude earlier. As if declining someone's offer to buy something for you is rude, but I digress. While we were outside, he didn't say anything of note, and he was acting pretty normal. It was getting cold out, so he asked if we could go inside to talk, and I said sure. At this point in the year, I had had several guys over to my room just to work and chat, so I didn't see the issue. Things started normally, but the situation quickly became scary.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_00] Ron basically turned into a different person when we were alone in my room. He stopped blinking. He held eye contact very intensely, and he was laughing in this really low, creepy way. On top of that, his accent disappeared. That was when he had told me he lied about being Slavic. He told me that he was a native of the state our college was in.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00] He also pulled a few IDs out of his wallet, and all of them had different names on them. He became increasingly more creepy, and there was nothing that I could do about it, because I had a single room my freshman year. At one point, he wrapped me in a hug, and wouldn't let go until I said, Let go of me, right now! Which I had to say three times. He told me he had done a lot of bad things,

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_00] and that if I wanted to put him in jail, he could give me the names of people who had evidence against him. He said he hated everyone until they gave him a reason not to hate them. He said a lot of weird, pseudo-sexual stuff to me as well. Like, he went on and on about how showering alone wasn't fun, and said that it was better with another person, and that he would be willing to do it with me if I wanted to. Keep in mind, this guy had a girlfriend,

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00] whom he fully acknowledged. He even said he would be going after me if he weren't dating someone, which really freaked me out. He then asked if he could sleep in my room, but I said no, and I used that as a segue to let him know that I was ready for bed, and told him that he needed to leave. As he left, he asked, Do you want to know how insecure the locks on your door really are? I didn't say anything. I just closed the door on him, locked it,

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_00] and looked out through the peephole. He stood there, just staring at the door, for an uncomfortably long time, before finally leaving. After that, he called me multiple times throughout the month, always at odd times. He also started appearing everywhere I was around campus. The friend who had introduced us, Chris, actually started walking everywhere with me because he noticed Ron was following me around

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_00] and lurking around corners when I couldn't see him. Apparently, he was around me a lot more than I realized because Chris began carrying a knife whenever he went places. Ron was everywhere. Sometimes Ron would manage to come up to me, and when he did, he would put his arm around me and whisper something like, We need to talk. For a while, he would lurk outside my dorm, but that suddenly stopped one day.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00] I later found out that Chris had told my RA about Ron, and Ron was then banned from my building. I hadn't done that myself because I assumed I would have been told I was overreacting, but my RA heard Chris out and decided to take action. I blocked Ron on my phone, and he hasn't contacted me since. He apologized to me one day on campus last semester when we ran into each other,

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_00] and I was willing to accept it and move on until recently. So here I am, two years later. Everything that happened with Ron has come back up again. I found out recently that he has a history of stalking women. He has an extensive history that goes back at least five years. I met another victim of his who he had stalked before coming to my university. She had gone to a community college for a bit, and he stalked her

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00] while he was also a student there. He followed her to our university after apparently being suspended from school after three separate stalking incidents were linked to him. The victim I met told me something very worrying. She let me know that Ron is currently an RA on our campus, and she was one of his residents. When she told the residential office that Ron had stalked her in the past,

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00] they told her all that they could do was have her move dorms, which she did. They then said that they couldn't do anything to discipline him because the stalking didn't occur at our university. She and I both reported our experiences with him to the residential office, which then tipped off the campus police, who then spoke to the dean. The thing is, when I gave his name to the residential office, they had no idea who I was talking about.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00] This is because he gave me a fake first and last name, and I had to do a lot of searching to find out his real name. I knew he was sketchy from the four separate IDs in his wallet, but I never thought that he had given me a fake name when I met him. After talking to Residential Living, I talked to the police. When I talked to the police, they didn't seem to care about anything I had to say. Actually, the officer I spoke to talked over me

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00] while I tried to explain everything that happened. He said, I've heard all I need to hear. I spoke to the dean, who asked me some clarifying questions about the police report he had received. The police had mixed up several details of my story with the stories of other victims, apparently more than just the girl I met and I had come forward with information about Ron. There were even reports that he got physical with two separate people before coming to the university.

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00] Last time I saw him on campus, it was apparent that he was still an RA, even though multiple women had spoken to higher-ups about his behavior. If I hear from him, I'm issuing a no-contact order to ensure that he stays away from me. Right now, though, that feels like too much of a hassle because we're all going home for a two-month break. I'm hoping that this story teaches everyone to stay on their toes

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_00] and not to think they're overreacting when someone is being sketchy. Stay safe out there. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_00] Summer is interesting because on paper, it's supposed to be the good part of the year. More sun, more time, more adventure. And for some people, it genuinely is, but for a lot of us, it's just more noise, more obligations, more pressure to be on and making the most of every single day. That constant pressure to thrive can actually make you feel worse when you're just trying to survive. I think about that a lot running Let's Not Meet. We hear stories from people who are so caught up in the moment that they never stop

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_00] to check in with themselves. And summer has a way of doing that. The days fill up fast and suddenly you're exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering why you're not enjoying something that you were supposed to love. Trust me, I am there almost every single day. But that's where therapy can really make a difference. Not to add something else to your plate, but to help you figure out what actually belongs on it. Understanding your own needs, feeling more confident, setting boundaries, creating a version of summer

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00] that actually feels good for you. That's what it's really about. BetterHelp matches you with fully licensed therapists based on your needs. With over 30,000 therapists and 6 million people served, they have the experience to get it right. Average rating of 4.9 out of 5 across over 1.7 million client reviews. And if your match isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support and therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash notmeat.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_00] That's betterhelp.com slash notmeat. Let's Not Meet is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_00] to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. To get to the neighborhood that I grew up in, you have to drive down this old dirt road a couple of miles and pass some small farms. Right outside of the neighborhood entrance was this spooky house shrouded by a cluster of giant oak trees. A red and white Jeep from the 1960s sat outside. The blinds were always closed

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_00] and there were never any lights on. I ended up meeting the man who lived there several times. Sometimes he slowly followed me in his Jeep while I was on my bike. One time, he showed up at my house to watch me jump on my mini trampoline in the front yard and he approached me and grabbed my arm. Other times, he would sit in his Jeep at 6 a.m. and stare at me while I stood at the bus stop. That's just a brief introduction

[00:15:08] [SPEAKER_00] of this man. However, let's move on to the two main scary occurrences I would like to share. My Uncle Dave is really awesome in a really goofy sort of way. He's always playing pranks on me. He once convinced me that a hot pepper was a pickle and got me to down one at Chili's, which prompted me to wash my mouth out with soap in the restroom. He lived in Connecticut and when my family moved down south to this neighborhood,

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_00] we didn't see much of him. One weekend, after several encounters with the creepy guy, Uncle Dave announced that he was coming for a visit and would be staying in our guest room. My mom let me stay up late to wait for his flight to arrive. However, after seeing me fall asleep on the couch several times, she ordered me to bed and said that I could see Uncle Dave the next morning when I woke up. In the middle of the night, I woke up with this eerie feeling. The hair on the back

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_00] of my neck stood up and goosebumps covered my body. I had this uneasy feeling of being watched and I felt stiff as a board, trying not to move my head, lest I announce to the watcher that I was awake and aware of their presence. I moved my eyes around the room to look for anything out of the ordinary. My nightlight was in the corner of my room, which created a pretty decent glow. It was really easy to make out the details of my Beanie Baby collection,

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00] my desk, my dresser, and the man crouched next to the dresser. I could see this guy with dark hair sitting with his back against the wall and his right side leaning against the dresser. His knees were pulled close to his body and I could see his teeth and the whites of his eyes gleaming. He was facing me. I stared at him for a long time, but he didn't move. At first,

[00:17:06] [SPEAKER_00] I was scared. Then I remembered Uncle Dave. I figured, of course, he's always trying to scare me and prank me. This was his life mission. It was probably him and he was probably trying to trick me again. If I cried or screamed, he'd probably jump up and laugh and shout, Gotcha! As I lay there, I thought about the fact that I couldn't let Uncle Dave win. So I kept staring at him for a while and he didn't move a muscle. He never gave up the game.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_00] After what felt like hours, I felt this sense of dread. As much as Uncle Dave loved pranking me, I just couldn't picture him staying up all night long to pull off this weird, creepy prank. A small voice in my head tried to convince me that this was actually someone else, not Uncle Dave. I didn't know what to do about this, so I just closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. When I peeked again,

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_00] I saw that the man was still there. He wasn't a figment of my imagination. I closed my eyes again and I imagined shouting for my mom and how she would dash in and rescue me. Even if this was Uncle Dave, I didn't want any part of this prank. At some point, after hours of adrenaline, I crashed and fell asleep. When I awoke in the morning, I immediately checked by the dresser and saw no one.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_00] A feeling of relief washed over me. I was firmly convinced it was Uncle Dave being dumb again, so I leapt out of bed and I rushed out of my room. I then ran into the living room, gleefully shouting, Ha ha, Uncle Dave, you didn't get me. That was the dumbest prank ever. My mom turned to me with this weird look on her face and told me that Uncle Dave was still in Connecticut. His flight was delayed. I figured my mom was in on the prank too,

[00:19:05] [SPEAKER_00] and I told her what happened. I insisted that Uncle Dave was there. When she shook her head no, I felt a wave of horror wash over me as I tried to figure out who was in my room. My mom told me I was imagining things, and she wouldn't even entertain a story about a prank any further. Flash forward a bit later, and again, I was in my bed, and my nightlight was on. I had somewhat forgotten about the creepy man and was more focused on stuff

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_00] like Captain Planet and my Game Boy. But when I woke up in the middle of the night with that same eerie feeling, I checked by the dresser, but I didn't see anything. I was relieved. I settled back into bed and tried counting sheep. While lying there, I saw this slender hand creep up the side of my comforter from under my bed. It felt around, as if it were looking for something to grab onto.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00] At that second, every alarm system in my body was screaming, except for, of course, my mouth. I tried so many times to open my mouth and shout, but nothing came out. I felt paralyzed. The hand was on my bed for at least five minutes, but it felt like the longest five minutes of my life. I lay there petrified, fantasizing about running out of the room and calling for my mom, but I couldn't get my mouth or legs to work.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_00] Instead, I just lay there frozen. I eventually was able to call for my mother, but in the middle of shouting, my nightlight turned off, and I don't remember what happened after that, but I think I fainted from fright. When I woke up, I stood up on the bed and took a flying leap, then ran out of my room and into the living room to tell my mom what happened. My dad checked under the bed and again told me it was my imagination, despite my mom trying to convince me I

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_00] was crazy, I was firmly convinced that a man had been in my room, not once, but twice. After that, I would start sprinting from my bedroom door and take a flying leap mid-room, landing with a thud on my bed. I was convinced that if I didn't do this, and if I walked up to my bed like a normal person, somebody hiding under my bed would grab my ankles. As time went on, other things happened. Someone stood in the pitch black of my

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_00] backyard one night and made human meowing noises at my window. Someone tapped at my window, and I once found that the screen of my window had been pried open. I saw the red Jeep parked in front of our house several times. When I finally told my mom about the Jeep, she went white and started making all of these phone calls. It turns out the guy who lived in the dark house had been previously accused of assaulting a

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_00] child. He was never convicted, but he was convicted of indecent exposure. The court took away his driver's license and had him register as a sex offender. When my mom heard that he was violating his conditions and following kids in the neighborhood in his car, she called the cops, and the cops went to his house and ended up searching it. Inside, they found this weird wooden chair with a large hole in the seat. Allegedly, the man would ask the neighboring farm girls to sit in the chair.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_00] He would then lie on the ground underneath the chair to look up their dresses. One kid got a new bike out of it. Apparently, all of the kids from the farms knew about this guy and his chair, but they never reported him because they liked getting free stuff. I don't know what his name is or where he is now. I tried googling some keywords with my old neighborhood. I wanted to see if anything popped up about him, but I didn't find anything. I also have no idea if he was the

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_00] guy who was in my room, but after hearing about him and remembering how he would follow me to my house in his Jeep, I became pretty convinced he was the guy who had hidden in my room twice. This story is the number one reason

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_00] my electricity bill is so high. Every single light is on in the house when my boyfriend is not home. I moved in with my boyfriend exactly one year ago. We work at the same place and neither of us has a car. Work was a 20-minute walk from his house and a two-and-a-half hour walk from mine, so he was kind enough to tell me to just move in since I was spending the night at his place all the time anyway. We worked three days a week,

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_00] scheduled, and on overtime days that we got to pick. Our shifts were 7pm to 7am, and if anyone has been watching our house, our regular patterns would have been pretty obvious since we were gone on the same days each week. Also, I would pick the first optional day as my overtime day, and my boyfriend would work all the optional days. We rarely strayed from our schedule, so it was very easy to get John to it.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_00] Several months before moving in with him, I was in a terrible relationship with this disgusting person who abused me. My ex was finally removed from my home by the police and taken to jail for 6 months. He got out the day before I moved in with my current boyfriend, and he was not so happy about this, so he started harassing me, sending me death threats, and telling every mutual friend that we had that he always carried a gun and would shoot me if he ever saw me.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00] I was able to get a restraining order, and although he couldn't harass me to my face, he started getting creative. He moved in with a girl who lived just around the block from me. After I had begged her not to tell him where I moved to, she told him the day that I moved, and I'm 100% sure that is why he moved in with her. I believe he started watching my house and figured out my work schedule. One day I came home to find a teddy bear with a used

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_00] condom around its head, placed in the middle of my driveway when I got home. I recognized it and knew for a fact it was the bear that he had given to me months ago, which I had given back to his step mom with the rest of his things when he went to jail. I was creeped out by this and finally got a car, so on days that my boyfriend would work, I would drive him and then drive home, and when I came home, I always felt like someone was hiding behind a bush at the edge of our property.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_00] One day, I finally looked behind this bush, and although there was no one there, I found a crushed soda can. It was the kind of drink my abusive ex was completely addicted to, and this made me even more sure that he was spying on my house. After a couple of weeks of keeping all the doors and windows closed, I switched up my schedule. Instead of taking the first day I could for overtime, I took the second day, since I had a doctor's appointment anyway. My boyfriend

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_00] worked overtime that day, as usual. He likes making money and is willing to work hard for it. So, I took him to work, and after I got home, within minutes, I could tell that something was wrong. The way that my house was laid out, the front door leads into the living room, which is on the right side of my house, and the kitchen opens up from there. The dining room is on the left side of the house, but not visible from any angle in the living room. It has a back door. Well, as I walked in, I immediately

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_00] noticed that my normal docile cats were losing their minds. Both of them were making a lot of noise and running back and forth from the dining room. One of our cats was mine and the other my boyfriend's. My abusive ex would abuse my cats as well, so, up until the cops took him away, my kitty spent every minute on edge, usually trying to hide between my legs for protection. My boyfriend's cat kept going into the living room and meowing, and my

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_00] cat kept looking at the dining room and then running back to me. Then I heard the back door slam. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I crept around the corner and I saw the dining room light was on. I also saw that the screen door was pulled open while the glass was slid shut, and it was unlocked. I knew for a fact that the light was off and both the glass and screen doors were shut and locked when we left. My ex has since

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_00] been arrested for breaking and entering a different house shortly after, and faces eight years in prison. Since going back into custody, all the strange things around my house have stopped. I've been terrified every single night by this. Obviously, he knew which days I would be gone, and I caught him off guard coming home that day. I keep thinking about the what-ifs. What if he had fled when he heard me come home?

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_00] What if he had made good on his death threats and promises to shoot me? I called the cops, and they said that they couldn't do anything, since I couldn't prove that he was the one who broke in. So to the nasty scumbag creeper X, let's never ever meet again, because if we do, I will have protection with me.

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[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_00] dripdrop.com and use promo code MEAT. Let's Not Meet is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_00] Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. For some context, I used to live alone with my mom when I was a teenager, and she was on some pretty powerful sleeping meds at the time. I was also an insomniac, sometimes missing sleep for days at a time. But when I felt like I needed a sleep aid, I turned towards a slightly more natural option than my mom.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00] I opted for a blend of supplements, including valerian, alongside some other stuff, which seemed to help. On this particular night by bedtime, I went back to my room. I had divided the room in a way that I had to go around the shelving unit to get to my bed, and it left the layout of my room looking like a U shape, where one end of the U was at the door and the other was at my bed. Well, I took my supplements, and they kicked in, and I slowly faded into sleep.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_00] I don't know exactly how much time passed, but I woke up in a daze, still well sedated. I was nudged awake from my slumber because I heard a muffled voice in my room, but I was still half asleep, so I couldn't process the words being said. I was able to open my eyes, and my vision was still blurry, but I could see that there was a tall man facing me, standing on the other side of the shelving unit where the door was.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_00] Is that a tall man? I thought to myself, still in a daze. My brain then kicked into overdrive. Now, I lived alone with my mom, so the only other man in the house was me. Adrenaline finally rushed through me, waking me up entirely, and I sprang up. I feel I must preface what happens next with the fact that I was a bit of a wild kid at the time, and was really into weapons and knives, and next to my bed was my

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_00] trusty machete. For the listeners in the US, guns are sometimes hard to come by in Canada unless you're a hunter or you work in security and you have the proper licensing. But people here feel generally safe enough to omit having any kind of weapons in their house at all, so let's just say that being a bit of a maniac, for French-Canadian standards, paid off that day. I then jumped out of bed and grabbed my machete. As soon as

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_00] this man saw me reach for it, he did a quick 180 and bolted towards the exit. Meanwhile, I ran around the shelving unit looking like a half-naked teenage Jason Voorhees. By the time I had reached the outside of my bedroom, he had already run out of the apartment. The first thing I noticed was that he had kicked the front door completely off its hinges to get in, and I didn't even hear this. I guess my sleeping aid really worked that night. I was about to continue to

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_00] pursue him, but my mom finally entered my mind. Her room was right next to the entrance. Her door was closed, so I ran into her room to find her fast asleep. Relief washed over me, so I woke her up as I dialed 911. The police showed up, and they were as useful as you would imagine. If they didn't catch you mid-murder, or at very least, with the intruder in the house, there isn't much that they would do. I asked them what I was supposed to do for the rest of

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_00] the night without a front door, as we were in the middle of the city. They assured me I probably scared the guy enough to the point that he wouldn't come back. Well, after they left, I told my mom to go back to sleep, and I let her know that I would stand guard for the night. I then sat on the couch with the machete next to me, and stayed awake until the sun came up. But as I sat there, I thought about the whole ordeal. Some creepy details stood out to me. The intruder had left every door in the house closed

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_00] except for the one in my bedroom. He essentially kicked the front door in and went straight to my bedroom. I wondered, what was he saying to me before I finally woke up? Was this just someone drugged out of their mind, or maybe someone who used to live here looking for someone else, or trying to find me? Worse yet, if that was the case, what would have happened if I weren't armed at that moment? So let's just say putting a weapon next to my bed has

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00] become a new tradition whenever I move somewhere new. And though my sleep has gotten much better, it's not very hard to wake me up. For some background, I live in an upscale area in California. It was about ten o'clock at night, during summertime, and I was using Uber because my mom didn't want

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_00] to come pick me up. I had been hanging out at a friend's house, so I had to get an Uber to go home, and when the driver picked me up, I was alone on the street corner. When I got in the car, I noticed the driver was a young male, most likely in his mid-to-late twenties. I was a fifteen-year-old girl, and obviously so. I could even have passed for about twelve. At the beginning of the ride, nothing was very abnormal. But as our conversation went

[00:36:33] [SPEAKER_00] on, he started asking me more creepy questions. And because I was a shy girl, and young, I had not yet learned how to stand up for myself or lie when asked personal questions. He asked me if the destination we were heading to was my house, how old I was, where I went to school, and more. I answered all of these truthfully because I was scared and really bad at lying. When we were about fifteen

[00:37:02] [SPEAKER_00] minutes away from my destination, our conversation died down, so he turned up the music. But after half a minute of me singing along, he quickly turned it down and asked, Did you say you wanted to hook up? I replied, No. What the hell, I'm fifteen. I was just singing along to the song. He then muttered something in response, and we stopped talking. However, later he offered me a piece of

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00] gum, except it was unwrapped and weirdly shaped. After I declined the offer several times, I accepted it since he wasn't stepping down. I then pretended to put it in my mouth, and our awkward silence continued. Now this is the part that made my heart skip a beat. He noticed that I wasn't chewing, and he angrily pointed it out. I felt I had no other choice but to actually put the gum in my mouth.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_00] It was so long ago that I can't even recall if it had an odd taste, but I wish I could. After this happened, he started diverting from the route. The app was telling him that he took the wrong turn and how to get back on track, but he ignored it. After a minute or two, I spoke up and I asked him why he was going the way that he was. He explained that he was just trying to find a faster route. That was when my sternness kicked

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_00] in, and I firmly told him that the app was providing the best route, and I said that I knew it by heart. So he then started to get back on route again. He eventually dropped me off at home, and when he said goodbye to me, he turned his entire body around to say goodbye with a smirk. I immediately told my mother what happened, and we spent months trying to report it and get in contact with Uber, but they didn't have a phone number or email to contact at the time.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_00] When we finally did reach an email of theirs, they didn't seem to care. So moral of the story is, fuck those apps that don't care about hiring predators to be their drivers, and I should mention that I don't recall if I felt any odd effects from the gum, but I did spit it out immediately after being dropped off. To the creepy Uber driver, who most assuredly tried to kidnap me. Let's not meet.

[00:39:48] [SPEAKER_00] This is my aunt's story. In the summer of 1975, my aunt was a college student here in Utah, and went camping with her boyfriend and another couple up American Fork Canyon, a beautiful place 40 minutes south from Salt Lake City. It began raining really hard earlier that evening, so most people left their campsites. When it stopped raining, my aunt and her friends made a campfire and got on with their festivities until, after dark, it

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_00] started raining again. The other couple decided they didn't want to camp in the rain and left. My aunt and her boyfriend, who is now my uncle, decided to stay, and they huddled together in their tent and tried to fall asleep. My aunt suddenly heard distinct footsteps not too far away from the tent. She sat up and listened. They were getting closer and closer. She saw a quick flash of a flashlight, which turned off again immediately.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_00] Now, when my aunt tells this story, she says her first thought was that it was a park ranger coming to tell them that they had to leave due to flash flood warnings, so she called out, Who's there? Then, the footsteps stopped. This woke my uncle up, and they listened for more movement. They both talked about how scary it was because it was hard to distinguish footsteps from the sound of the rain. It was the middle of the night, up in the canyon, with

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_00] nobody around to help for miles. They decided that if they heard anything scary one more time, they would leave. So they waited and waited. They finally started falling asleep when suddenly, they were woken up by the soft sound of their tent zipper slowly being unzipped. My aunt screamed and my uncle jumped into action, grabbing his heavy metal flashlight and whacking the person on the other side of the tent as hard as he could. Whoever was there

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_00] gasped when they were hit and ran off. My aunt and uncle ran like mad for their truck, about half a mile away, and discovered the back tire had been slashed. Somehow, they were able to drive to a gas station a few miles out of the canyon to call 911 on a payphone. The next day, they went back with the police to retrieve their things, and officers found footprints all around their tent. They never caught the guy, though.

[00:42:15] [SPEAKER_00] But here's the creepy part. None of this is proven, but it's a spooky thought. See, in the summer of 1975, several women went missing, and it was later discovered that this was when Ted Bundy was living in and terrorizing Utah. And guess where some of the bodies were found? In the caves up American Fork Canyon, about one mile away from my aunt's campsite. A week before my aunt went camping, Ted had murdered one of his

[00:42:44] [SPEAKER_00] victims and hidden her in that area. It's known that Ted would return to visit his victims' bodies. Well, my aunt and uncle have often wondered whether that night, Ted was visiting his collection of bodies when he saw a prime opportunity prowled around their campsite and nearly took it. My uncle also likes to joke that Ted Bundy had a distinct chip in his front tooth, and maybe he's the one that gave it to him with that flashlight hit.

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[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_00] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. During my first and only semester of college, my very good friend Jake was dating this girl Stacy whom we knew from high school. For reference, I'm a woman and I was 18 at the time. I'm now 26. Now, many people back in high school did not like Stacy and I was one of them. To me,

[00:46:11] [SPEAKER_00] she was sketchy. She was a pathological liar and not even a good one. Her stories rarely added up and she would constantly contradict herself sometimes within minutes after she began spouting her lie. She was one of those girls who claimed to hate drama yet drama always seemed to follow her wherever she went. She was constantly in and out of relationships throughout high school and would go out of her way to prove that they were crazy by spreading rumors

[00:46:41] [SPEAKER_00] about them and getting as much sympathy as she could from everyone around her. She always had to be the center of attention wherever she went. I remember during prom night, she was dancing with her then boyfriend and he accidentally stepped on her foot while dancing. She then caused a huge scene about how he was physically abusing her. It was painful to watch. There's much more that I could get into about her but in general, she's just an extremely

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_00] toxic person whom I find it challenging to even be around. It's also worth noting that she was dealing with a drug problem. She often tried to hide it but it would come into play later. Anyway, back to the story. Jake and Stacy had a class together and hit it off rather quickly. Jake was skeptical at first but when he brought up her reputation in high school, Stacy claimed that she was assaulted by an ex-boyfriend and she explained that that was why

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_00] she acted the way she did. She said that she had since worked on getting better and is fine now. My friend, being incredibly insecure about being single and very trustworthy, began dating her. The relationship was extremely dysfunctional and was rampant with emotional abuse and manipulation on her end but the aspect I want to focus on was how she was constantly trying to squeeze money out of him for her aforementioned drug problem.

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_00] Stacy would constantly ask Jake for small amounts of money here and there, usually ranging from 10 to 20 bucks. Jake didn't mind all that much as he bought into her story of struggling financially so he felt bad but one day she asked for $500 to cover her rent which he couldn't help her with. She flipped out on him and didn't talk to him until she drunk dialed him late one night and began revealing that she was doing drugs. She said she

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_00] had been doing this because of how terrible her life was and accused Jake of not being helpful. I don't know why he didn't break up with her then and there but the next day they talked it out, they made up and the issue was dropped. This was also when everything finally came to a head. It was around 10.30 on a Friday night and keep in mind they had been dating for nearly two months at this point. I was chilling in my living room with another friend of mine.

[00:49:10] [SPEAKER_00] We were sitting on the couch bullshitting about stuff going on in our lives and I got a call from Jake. Jake explained that Stacy was hanging out at a friend's house for the day and he said that she asked him if he could pick her up at around midnight as the buses in that area stopped running after 8 since she needed to be at work at 9 in the morning. He said sure and as the time that he needed to leave to pick her up drew closer his mother called saying that

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_00] she was working overtime. She said that she wouldn't be out until midnight and she had the car. He asked if I could drive him to go pick Stacy up. I'll admit I would rather have left her to her own devices but he sounded desperate. He's a great friend who would do anything for me so I did him a solid and told him to start walking over to my house. He arrived at my house about 40 minutes later and the friend

[00:50:08] [SPEAKER_00] I was hanging out with then went back to her house. She lived across the street from me. Jake and I got into my car. He texted Stacy to let her know that he was on his way and he told her that I was driving him over which she responded with the dreaded K. For reference I drove a 2004 Subaru Impreza at the time. We reached Stacy's friend's house which was located on the outskirts of town in a pretty sketchy neighborhood.

[00:50:38] [SPEAKER_00] The road was very poorly lit and as luck would have it the street light in front of Stacy's friend's house was off. I refused to park in front as I didn't feel comfortable sitting in the dark so I parked three houses down between two cars under a functional street light. Then Jake texted Stacy and said we're here but she didn't respond. As we were waiting there a truck drove by and I noticed four men in the truck.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_00] The men appeared to be looking around for something. At first I figured maybe they were lost in looking for an address but this thought was thrown out the window truck drove by again even slower. The guy in the front passenger seat made direct eye contact with me as the truck passed my car. I told Jake something was definitely wrong and asked him to call Stacy so that we could leave. He agreed and called her.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_00] Since it was dead quiet I could hear all of the conversation. She answered and said hey where are you? We're down the block come outside Jake replied. I'm looking outside I don't see your car she responded. We're in a gray Subaru under a street light Jake explained and almost immediately after he said that the phone call dropped. I remember Jake just looked at his phone in complete confusion wondering what the hell was going on.

[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_00] I was starting to get extremely nervous as my thoughts bounced between the truck that was circling before and Stacy's sketchy behavior. I decided that if something was up I was not going to just be a sitting duck and stay parked on the road if shit went south so I pulled out of the spot to drive up in front of Stacy's friend's house and as I was pulling out I heard a vehicle loudly in the distance behind us. I then looked in my rearview mirror to see the

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_00] truck from before. They were now turning quickly and driving back up the block. I freaked out and floored it out of that spot and began speeding up the block. The truck caught up to me and Jake yelled at me to turn since these guys were trying to shoot my car. To my horror I looked behind me and the guy in the backseat was leaning outside of the window with a gun in his hand aiming it at my car. So then I quickly turned and floored it down the road.

[00:53:07] [SPEAKER_00] They struggled to mirror what I did. Then I made another left turn narrowly missing an oncoming car. and slammed on the gas. Luckily I was halfway down the block by the time they turned to follow me. I'm surprised I was driving as well as I was at the time. Jake said I looked extremely calm and determined during all of this but internally I was freaking out. I was worried that they were going to run me off the road or we were going to get a bullet shot through the back of our skulls.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_00] When I hit the end of the block I made another left turn and I drove like a bat out of hell towards the highway. The truck then turned onto the block when I was just about a block down but then stopped and turned down another block when I got close to the highway. When I turned onto the highway I merged into the next lane. A few minutes passed by with us going back and forth questioning who those guys were and what they wanted until Jake got a call on his phone from Stacy.

[00:54:06] [SPEAKER_00] He picked it up, put it on speaker and shakily said hello? Where are you? I'm fucking waiting for you. She screamed. He explained this situation and she proceeded to call him a liar. her. She accused him of not actually being there and said he was standing her up. Jake lost it, screaming at her and told her that we were almost killed. He also called her out about her bizarre behavior throughout all of this. She started yelling again but then went silent for a moment.

[00:54:37] [SPEAKER_00] We then heard a car door quickly open and someone yelled in the background. They got away Stacy. Where the fuck are you? There was a little more silence after this but then she hung up the phone. Jake and I looked at each other. Jake said she definitely had something to do with this. Long story short we spent the rest of the drive theorizing why this happened and we think we may have figured it out. Jake brought up the fact that she

[00:55:06] [SPEAKER_00] had asked him for a large sum of money. Larger than usual. She asked him for 500 bucks instead of the usual 10 or 20. Now this money probably wasn't for rent as she had stated she probably needed the money to pay off a dealer and when she didn't get it she had to find another way. We think she set us up to head to that house to pick her up. Those guys in that truck were probably the dealer and his buddies who were hoping to conveniently show up and rob and rob

[00:55:35] [SPEAKER_00] and possibly jack the car over her debt. She probably thought that Jake was using his car and gave them the description of that car instead. I don't think that she realized we were using mine, which might explain why they circled the block in confusion. This is probably why she hung up the phone immediately after Jake gave her the description of my vehicle as she probably called them to update them. After that, I dropped Jake off at his house and I went home.

[00:56:06] [SPEAKER_00] I know people say after scary encounters that they're always shaken up and their emotions are running in a million directions, but I was emotionally drained. I felt like I just couldn't feel anything and I wanted to go home and go to bed, which is what I immediately did when I got home. I filed a police report on those guys the next morning and they said they'd look into it, but I never heard anything after I filed the report, so who knows what

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_00] they've been up to ever since. As far as Stacy goes, our theory was further solidified when Jake all the way home and had her phone and wallet stolen by some people on the street. Jake basically called her out on the whole night, claiming that she set us up to get robbed. She denied it, though, and she told him that he was crazy.

[00:57:07] [SPEAKER_00] He told her that they were done, and she just yelled fine, and then walked to the back of the room. If she really kept her distance. This is probably because she knew we were on to her, and she likely wanted to keep the heat off of her. After I stopped going to college, I never saw her again, and the last

[00:57:37] [SPEAKER_00] I heard anything about her was from Jake. He said that she had developed a long distance relationship with some guy online and dropped out halfway through the semester to move to Massachusetts was the last anyone ever saw or heard from her. Overall, I'm happy I trusted my instincts and picked up on the fact that something was wrong as this encounter was unfolding. If I weren't as aware in this situation, it may have ended very

[00:58:07] [SPEAKER_00] differently. In for us than robbing us. This was the first of quite a few scary and creepy experiences I've had in my life, and this wasn't actually the scariest one for me. But those experiences are other stories for other times. So to Stacy and

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_00] the four men in the truck, my life has been going perfectly fine since we met. But please do me a favor, don't ruin it by crossing paths with me again. Stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode. If you want to get access go to patreon.com forward slash let's

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_00] not meet podcast to at cryptic county podcasts dot com or wherever you get your podcasts and send your stories in to let's not meet stories at gmail dot com finally follow me on twitch at

[00:59:36] [SPEAKER_00] twitch.tv slash cryptic county this week you have teen daisy prowler outside the tent by lower dabb 66 and finally we were almost robbed as payment for

[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_00] someone else's debt by running in circles two three four 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 of the message boards online again send your stories to let's not meet stories at gmail.com to hear them on the show we'll see you next week everybody stay safe

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_00] I am a

[01:00:56] [SPEAKER_00] 25 year old woman from India

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