17x17: I Was Attacked By A Murderer

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[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_02] 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. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_02] When I was 13, I lived in a pretty sketchy city in New England. One of those places that was known by the entire state to be plagued with a lot of drug and gang activity. However, I had moved there when I was 9, so by now it's pretty much 100% home to me. I loved it despite its reputation. Plus, since I never really caused any problems for anyone, I could get along with anyone I met.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_02] I'd had run-ins with some fairly dangerous people who ended up becoming close friends because I really just enjoyed chatting it up with folks. To sum it up, I was very, naively, confident in my safety around town. One night, I went to the local supermarket to grab some basics while my mom waited in the car. I had just gotten through the entrance and into the seasonal products section when I saw a man walk in.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_02] He stood out to me immediately because he was extremely tall and stocky. I was a 5'7 girl at 13, so it wasn't like I was short, and the height seemed drastic in my brain. I was very used to seeing guys who were 6 feet tall, even up to 6'5. This guy had to be at least 6'8 and was built like a linebacker. His outfit was weird as well.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_02] He was wearing a red flannel shirt, which alone wouldn't be unusual for my region, and he had a giant cowboy hat. We immediately locked eyes, and I felt a cold chill. I tried to keep shopping as normal, but I could feel him staring at me, and when I glanced back up, I saw him walking towards me. Trying to keep some distance between us, I walked further down the aisle casually.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02] And when I looked again, he was picking up his pace while still staring at me. At this point, I was terrified because I knew I wasn't going crazy. This guy was definitely following me. I jogged down the rest of the aisle and turned. He started running after me. I felt so panicked that I abandoned my shopping basket, left the store, and bolted across the parking lot.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_02] When I jumped into my mom's car, she asked what was wrong, and I told her that the store was just out of stuff we needed. She didn't ask any further questions, and we drove home. The next afternoon, I was home from school and going through my usual routine of doing homework, taking a nap in the living room, etc. My mom came home from work at around 6 and told me that she had seen the police at a house down the street.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_02] Apparently, it had been robbed at gunpoint, and police were still looking for the guy. We were a bit shaken, but tried to carry on with the night. Later that same night, while we were watching TV in the living room, we saw the police lights outside our window, although it wasn't clear exactly what was going on. After about 15 minutes, a police officer knocked on the front door.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_02] He informed us that the man who had committed the robbery down the road was found in the woods right outside our house. He had been sitting there for what they guessed was several hours, pointing his handgun at our window that looked directly into the living room. This is where I had been napping. I immediately felt sick. The story was on the news the next day, and they showed his picture.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02] Lo and behold, it was the same man from the supermarket who had chased me. I broke down and told my mom the full story. I never quite felt the same sense of safety in my city afterwards. So lumberjack cowboy gunman, let's never meet again.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_02] I am 15 years old. My mom has always been concerned about me going to malls alone and stuff like that, but I eventually convinced my parents that it wasn't a big deal. So today I went to the mall to meet up with friends. I was the first one to arrive. I had overestimated how long the drive would take, and literally two minutes after I said goodbye to my dad and walked into the mall, this creepy old guy suddenly appeared in front of me and said something like,

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02] Can I help you? I said, No thank you. Because I thought he was one of those people who work the stalls that you see in the malls. But then I went to the other side of the aisle, and he appeared in front of me again. He said something along the lines of, I'm like your father, and you're like my daughter. And even when I moved away from him, he followed me.

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_02] There was a lady working at a nearby stall, and God bless her, because she noticed what was happening and told me, You can report him to security at the gate, and pointed me towards them. I hadn't fully noticed how weird the situation was until then, because even as I was talking to her, this guy was literally waiting for me to finish. I immediately started speedwalking towards security. The old guy trailed behind me the whole time.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_02] When I reached the security guards, I pointed the man out and told them that he was following me. But then, he walked towards us, and started telling the security guards that I was his daughter, and all this other bizarre stuff. At this point, I was genuinely terrified and trying to hold back tears. While the guy was talking to the security guards, I took the opportunity to leave and get away from him.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_02] But as I walked away, I could tell that he wanted to follow me, because he kept looking back over at me. I was literally shaking as I walked away and called my friend, so I felt like I wasn't alone. It all happened so quickly, and I still can't believe how weird the whole situation was. I've never had a weird encounter with an old man up until now. All the men in my life were nothing but sweet, and as a result, I'm always polite.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_02] So it was really scary seeing how it was being used against me. I'm still scared. I literally feel like he's out there watching me. But I'm also afraid to tell my parents, because I don't want them to never trust me to go out alone again.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_02] Seven years ago, I had an interaction that still keeps me up at night, wondering what I escaped from, and if what I did was the reason I escaped, or if I hadn't actually escaped from anything at all. I was 20 years old and driving home from my dorm at UT Austin, to my parents' house in Dallas. It was late. I had ungodly hours in college,

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_02] and I started driving home at around 12.30 a.m. I stopped for gas at a gas station off of the highway, close to Temple, at around 1 a.m. The gas station itself was closed, but the pumps were still open, and I was the only one there. I turned to face the pump, and was putting my card in when I heard two cars coming. Turning to look, I saw that I had been blocked in.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_02] One car was parked diagonally, blocking me in from the front, and the other was doing the same, blocking me in from the back. Two men were in the car that was blocking me from the back, and I watched as they both got out. One stood by the passenger door, and the driver started walking towards me. He had a very obvious gun in his waistband. Behind me, I faintly heard someone getting out of the car

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_02] that was blocking me from the front. I froze and watched as the guy who I now believed to be in charge took a few steps towards me. He was still a good four feet away, but was notably closer than the other, He said something like, Hey beautiful, why are you out here so late? I took the whole situation in, and for some reason that I cannot completely understand, I started flirting hard.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_02] Honestly, I don't remember much because it's almost like I blacked out. But I remember vaguely saying something like, I'm on my way home from college, but apparently got lucky enough to run into you. It probably wasn't that smooth, but I was laying it on pretty thick. I told the man that he should take me to dinner sometime. What the hell was I saying? Then, to make sure it was believable,

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_02] I gave him my number. A Google voice number, that I had created for creeps. A lot of times, if you give a guy a number, they call it with you standing right in front of them. They want to make you prove that you didn't give them a fake number, and that's why I got this Google voice number. As soon as I gave him the number, he went from serious but aloof to serious with a smile pretty quick. Then, sure enough, he called the number

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_02] to make me prove it was real. I held my ringing phone up with a smile, and just like that, he smiled, made a hand gesture to signal his goons, and then got back into the car. And they left. I got into the car and cried. I then deleted the Google voice number and deleted the app because I was so scared. Maybe that was dumb in hindsight, but I was terrified.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_02] I haven't told anyone about this except my therapist, but I've never been able to get it out of my head. What were they planning? Was my fawning the thing that saved me? And if so, why? I wonder if me seeming interested threw them off guard and maybe killed the chase. But if they did this to me, are they going to do this to other women too?

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[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_02] This happened to me last year when I was 23 and working at Target. I'm an openly gay man in the Midwest, but I live in central Illinois, so it's a fairly progressive area. I had been talking to a guy on Tinder for a bit, and he lived in a college town about an hour away from me. We hadn't been talking for very long before I asked if he wanted to add me on Snapchat. I always use Snapchat

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_02] to verify a guy's identity, if I think they're attractive, because stealing pics or just adding AI to auto-generate a whole new fake person is just way too easy. But he didn't have any problem with it. I had rarely thought that I was being smart and cautious with my information because even though I told him that I worked at Target, I didn't tell him what city or which Target location. Turns out,

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_02] I was not as cautious as I thought. We talked for maybe 30 minutes total on Snapchat before I went to sleep and stopped replying. I woke up the next day and didn't reply to anyone or even check my messages, because I'm not much of a morning person and I normally have to sprint through my morning routine to get to work on time. It was a fairly busy day, so I didn't really check anything until my first break. I saw that I had

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02] some messages from this guy, which I didn't think was a big deal. If the messages had been from someone I knew well, I probably would have checked them immediately upon seeing them. But because we hadn't talked a lot yet, I didn't think much of it. Finally, though, I went through his messages. There were some meaningless things that he had texted me before I had fallen asleep, and then him saying the next morning that he had to get

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_02] some things for his room and he was going to spend his day doing that. I sent a short reply and didn't really think anything of it. About 40 minutes later, I was moving boxes when I saw him. He was walking down an aisle. I was bewildered, to say the least, because we had talked about him living really far away from the town I lived in. Plus, the place I worked was probably an additional 30 minutes farther

[00:17:33] [SPEAKER_02] for him. So he drove a long way to coincidentally end up at my store. I freaked out a bit, and I went and hid in the back room because it was still fairly early in the day, so there were plenty of employees as witnesses just in case he was crazy. As if him showing up at my store wasn't already crazy. I told one of my co-workers what was happening and they agreed that it was insane

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_02] and said that I should text him. I did, texting him. Oh, was that you down the aisle? He was sharing his location so I could obviously see it was him. He said that it was, and told me that he really wanted something that only Target sold. Now, I rationalized that maybe I was just overreacting and decided not to get a manager involved.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_02] He texted me hints that we should say hi to each other, but those quote-unquote hints got less and less subtle. Finally, I told him that I was so busy that day and I would try, but I wasn't sure if I could even manage it. I made up some story about my manager being very strict about us not socializing while clocked in. But even besides the obvious, something was off.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_02] He was super cute and had a great personality up until that point, but interacting with him once he got to the store just made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I gave him ten minutes and once he stopped responding, I assumed he had finished shopping and I went back out to do my job. I want to say it was Saturday, but it could have been Sunday. Regardless, the store was extremely busy, so I felt

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_02] more comfortable. Like I had numbers on my side. plus, I kept rationalizing that he was just a bored college student who decided to take a drive to Target. I worked for a little bit, but then I saw him again. He hadn't sent me any more messages, so I wasn't worried about him being weird, but I kept seeing him down aisles in my area. I stocked items, so I was somewhat trapped

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_02] in a single area of the store. It was like he was circling, waiting for something, like me being alone in a deserted aisle. He never came up to me to say hi. He never interacted at all. He just looked at me for a bit and then walked away. After about the third time of seeing him do this, I had gotten over being rational and went to hide in the back again, but this time I told my manager.

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_02] They agreed it was not good, and they told me not to go onto the floor for another 30 minutes. We had agreed that 30 minutes was more than enough time for him to get bored and leave. I knew that I had his location and told my manager I could see where he was through the snap maps. While I was looking, I realized that my location had also been on, which made me realize that the guy also likely had my home address.

[00:21:02] [SPEAKER_02] I wanted to shut it off, but I thought maybe he would get angry and do something if he noticed I had done it while he was there. I kept checking his location religiously and talked to more of my coworkers about him. I showed them pictures of his tender and they told me they would check as well. Them checking on him is how I know he stayed in the store around my area for another 40 minutes. Finally, though, he texted me that he was

[00:21:32] [SPEAKER_02] checking out and he did. I resolved to block him as soon as he had left the area and I had left work so that he couldn't come back and find me in person. I breathed a bit easier and checked the app every 10 minutes to see his location, but he stayed in the parking lot for almost two hours. I was freaking out. I was telling everyone in the store and they were combing through security footage so they knew who I was talking

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_02] about and could keep an eye out to catch him for trespassing if he stepped foot in the doors. They told me that he had been in my work area for almost the entire time he was in the store. From what they said, it didn't seem like he was watching me during most of the time, so he could have just been trying to build confidence to talk to me or something. Regardless, I was scared. The guy wasn't leaving the parking lot and I was almost off work.

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_02] He did finally leave about 30 minutes before I did. Most of the time, he wasn't Snapchatting me, so I couldn't stalk his location. However, every time it updated, he was still there. Finally, though, when I only had 30 minutes left in my shift, he left, but he only went across the river. Maybe he realized that I had his location and thought I wasn't leaving because I knew he was still there.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_02] Well, my managers arranged for the store security to walk me out to my car when I was off, and I blocked him immediately. He never came back that I know of, and he never showed up at my house, but I still get scared sometimes when the dogs go ballistic late at night. So to the cute man from Tinder, let's not meet again.

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_02] I was 8 years old, visiting my grandparents who lived in London. I was on a day outing with my parents and our visiting American friend Laura. My dad grew up in London, so he wanted to take us sightseeing, and we had already done some of the bigger tourist attractions, but now we were wandering through the Oxford Street area window shopping. walking. I remember trailing slightly behind my parents for just a moment and looking into a busy cafe as I walked.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_02] The cafe had a counter bar where two women were perched on pedestals eating ice cream. All of a sudden, I remember watching these two ladies in their chairs fall to the side on the floor in slow motion. It was like a dream sequence, and I recall the music from the cafe momentarily sounding like it was underwater and slowed down, except the two women didn't fall to the floor. It had actually been me.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_02] All I remember next is a huge shooting pain in my back and Laura screaming over me while I watched my mom sprinting away through the newly formed crowd filled with shocked faces, all looking at me with concern. My dad was on his phone, and I remember being angry because mobile phones were new at the time, and he was on it nonstop. I later found out he was actually calling the police.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_02] Here's what had actually happened. While I thought these ladies were falling off their chairs, a man with a heavy coat came out of the crowd, picked me up by my coat collar, and slammed my body down onto the pavement. My mom had immediately run after him. She chased him down a busy London street until he suddenly pulled a huge knife on her. But somehow, she and

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_02] three nearby men managed to disarm him and hold him until the police arrived. At the time, I had absolutely no recollection of being attacked. I was excited to ride in an ambulance and a police car and go to the station. I asked to see a cell, and I remember being given a pin by a police officer. I remember being in a bit of pain, but I couldn't understand the fuss being made over me by the paramedic.

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_02] Boy, did the pain hurt later on, though. I had actually cracked a rib and had giant black bruises all over my chest and back from the attack by the impact of the floor and his grip. I must have had some sort of adrenaline going on where I was in shock and feeling nothing in that moment. As a side note, I apparently woke up screaming every night for months after, saying this man was in my room. Later in life, I can

[00:26:31] [SPEAKER_02] still remember his face quite clearly, and I remember how high he picked me up and threw me down. This memory was triggered by receiving the birthday bumps as a teen, and it all came rushing back in the most bizarre way. Anyway, we finally learned that this man had been using that large knife for a long time to murder people at night. He had also attacked a few other little girls in public, but had always gotten away.

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_02] The police had been looking for him for months. He was put away that day because he hadn't counted on my slightly insane, but fearless mother.

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[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_02] This was about four or five years ago. Back then, I lived with my mother on a farm surrounded by woodlands. Our farmland was part of a large piece of farmland that was split up and sold off. So we had neighbors who were roughly half a kilometer away. We loved that because there was privacy. At the same time, it wasn't like there was nobody nearby that I couldn't go to if I needed help.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_02] That thought is what had me fearlessly walking around alone at night. I mainly went out for a walk between 7 and 8 p.m., but sometimes that fluctuated from earlier to later depending on the day. Sometimes I even went out on a walk at 2 a.m. if I was restless and unable to sleep. Looking back, this wasn't the greatest idea, and after this incident, I never went out for a walk past 6 p.m. ever again.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_02] I've always made sure that there was at least some sunlight remaining when I set out. The route I always took started out in the open in front of my farm and the neighboring farms. Basically, if anything had happened on this stretch of my walk, at least one person would have noticed. Plus, reception in this area was pretty good, too. So, I would have been able to call someone. On the other hand, the second part of my walking

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_02] route was concealed by about 200 meters of woods between the farms and the back road. The woods stretched the full 2 kilometers at the back of the farm. And it was during that part of the walk when I had this creepy encounter. It was late at night. I can't remember what time exactly, but it was pitch black with the exception of the light from my torch. I was about to approach the turn in the loop that would

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_02] bring me back out into the open again when I heard help. I took my headphones out and I turned my music off to make sure that I was hearing it correctly. And I was. It was a monotone voice that started with a single request for help. But whoever it was ramped it up and started repeatedly asking for help. The voice didn't seem panicked, at least, but it was adamant in the sense that it didn't stop.

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_02] Help. Help. I quietly stood there, which was challenging since I wanted to respond to the voice. My first instinct was, someone's in trouble, like a naive kid, which I somewhat was since I was around 16 at the time. I started walking in the direction of the voice, but my brain kicked in and I realized that this didn't seem like a good idea. So I started quietly backing away.

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_02] But my cat, who had followed me on the walk, wasn't backing away with me. She was still walking towards the voice, softly hissing. I remember desperately trying to get her to come back towards me without alerting the voice to my presence, just in case they hadn't noticed me yet. I was beginning to get scared, but I didn't want to stay there for another moment, so I ran forward and grabbed her. Then I turned around and bolted

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_02] back towards my house. As I was running, I was making so much noise, so I knew there was no way that whoever this was didn't know I was there. I wanted to turn around to see if anyone was giving chase, but I was too scared. I had the image of someone cloaked in shadows, chasing me. Even though I couldn't hear anyone behind me, I never once slowed down until I was back safe and sound

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_02] within my house. It didn't end there, though. Despite how terrifying it was, there was still a part of me that was concerned about whoever this was. I couldn't help but wonder what if this person really needed help. I asked my mother to drive us to the location, but we didn't find anyone or anything. We called out again and again, but nobody answered. We didn't get out of our car, so we just drove home,

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_02] having seen nothing and no one. It still bothered me in the morning, so I had my mother drive us over again, and we searched the area once again, and there was nothing. We didn't see any indication that anyone had been there. I was looking for a body, which admittedly was a bit drastic, but I know that a person in shock can be eerily calm, which would have explained the weird monotone voice,

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_02] plus the lack of response after I went back with my mom made me fear we were too late, and I thought that we'd find a body in the morning. I don't know if I would have preferred the outcome of finding a body, but at least I would have had a face to the voice. To this day, I have no idea who that voice belonged to and why they were calling out for help that way. My mind has naturally come to some chilling conclusions and theories

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_02] that leave me unable to sleep. Was it a kidnapper or a serial killer? All of the classic horror stories run through my mind when I think about this, but I guess I'll never know who was out there or why they needed help.

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_02] One chilly fall night. I decided it was the perfect night to relax on the couch with my girlfriend and drink some wine. As we were doing so, we suddenly heard someone knock on the front door. It was around midnight, so my girlfriend's immediate instinct was to not answer the door. I got up and pulled the blinds up slightly. I saw this meek-looking girl who looked younger than 20

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_02] standing on our porch with a blanket and bag. I was shocked because I live in a small town in the Midwest. This wasn't an area where random strangers showed up on people's doorsteps. The town is so small and people who live here generally have a solid support network, so reaching out to strangers never really happens. I asked the girl what was going on and she said that she needed a place to stay.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_02] I was pretty drunk, so my desire to help the world came out and I opened the front door and offered to let her stay in the guest bedroom. My girlfriend sat her down and asked her a bunch of questions. I really didn't think much of it at the time, but thinking back, her answers were pretty vague. She told us that she knocked on every door on the street trying to find a place to stay since she got in a fight with her mom.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_02] It was also odd to think that a young girl would do that considering the danger. As we chatted, I found out that she went to the same private school that I went to from first through sixth grade. We were bonding as we shit-talked the campus since it was run by boomers, but then she mentioned that she had a no-contact order issued against her for sitting at the same table as another student at the school.

[00:37:44] [SPEAKER_02] Being drunk, I didn't really register the no-contact order part, which essentially is a restraining order. Then, the girl said she recognized me from Facebook. I was now alarmed because I had never seen this girl before in my life, and we had a ten-year age gap. She told me she remembered that I posted a local rental on some home share group.

[00:38:14] [SPEAKER_02] As strange as that was, it seemed kind of reasonable since my mom is a realtor who doesn't have Facebook, so I would share that rental listing for her. But then, the girl told me that she knew my mom. This was alarming because my mom and I have different last names. Now, fast forward to the morning. The girl said that she was going to leave, so I asked her if she wanted a ride home

[00:38:43] [SPEAKER_02] since it was cold outside. I knew she lived on the same street as me, but I didn't realize she lived several miles down the street. This meant that she would have had to pass at least five developments and many rows of houses to get to my house. I remember how she said that she knocked on every door until someone answered. Was I really the only one that answered the door? Or did she target my house?

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_02] When I returned, my girlfriend and I discussed how odd the whole situation was. We talked about how many of the things this girl said didn't add up. We ended up running some errands and when we came back home, the girl was in front of our house again. I was starting to panic because I'm horrible with confrontation, but my girlfriend said, you let her into the house, you have to deal with it. So, she stayed in the car

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_02] while I went and asked the girl what was going on. The girl asked if she could stay again. I panicked. I asked my girlfriend to get out of the car. My girlfriend straight up told the girl that we didn't know her and said she could only stay with us if she opened up to us about everything and explained why she didn't go home to her own house. We went inside, sat her down in the kitchen, and nicely grilled her.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_02] But we only got more vague and inconsistent answers to our questions. At this point, she was in our house and we had no idea how to get her out. By a stroke of luck, she said that she was leaving to get something to eat, but she said that she was going to come back later. While she was gone, my girlfriend and I quickly taped up signs on our front and back doors that read, Landlord won't allow additional tenants to stay here. Please go back to your mom's

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_02] house. Later in the evening, after it had gotten dark, we heard banging on the front door. Then, we heard banging on the side door. And then the back. We knew it was her, so we went upstairs to wait it out. After the knocking finally stopped, I waited until an hour of inactivity had passed before walking downstairs to check everything out. I went to the glass doors in the kitchen

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_02] and decided to slide one blind to the side with just one finger so that I could peek outside. The girl was right outside the door, facing me, standing perfectly still and quiet in the pitch black darkness on the back deck. She had been standing there for over an hour, waiting. I looked her dead in the eye, and then turned around and went back upstairs. She eventually left, and when I was sure

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_02] she was gone, I opened the door and took a look around outside, which is when I noticed that she had taken the handwritten notes we taped to the doors. The next day rolled around, and everyone I had shared this story with was lecturing me for opening my door to a stranger. Honestly, this is something I would never normally do, as I thought about the whole situation. I realized that it wasn't sitting well with me, and I needed more information.

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_02] I posted something on Facebook about it, and a guy I went to school with messaged me and said that the girl who kept showing up at my house had an obsession with him that led him to getting a restraining order. He said that she was likely harmless, but I shouldn't respond to her or engage with her. She hasn't come back since that night my girlfriend and I wouldn't let her back in, but to this day I have no clue why she showed up at

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_02] my house.

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[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_02] When this took place, I was in high school, living in a nice area. I'd always wanted to get a job, so as soon as I was legally allowed to, I called up all of the vet clinics in the region and I filled out applications. The place where I was hired was a medium-sized clinic in a nearby town. I'm a tech, so I help doctors do injections, surgeries, that kind of thing, and also do general kennel duties,

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_02] which mostly involve cleaning cages. There are only two more things you need to know before I can get to the meat of this story. First, there were two shifts, opening to early afternoon and late afternoon to midnight. Due to my school schedule and general preference, I often worked nights and spent most of my shift alone in the clinic or with one other person, since we usually

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_02] worked in pairs. The second thing you need to know is that the doctor who owned the clinic got some kind of tax incentive to hire kennel staff through a program that tried to help place people who had disabilities into jobs. Since I was the only one who didn't complain about working with these specific employees, I was almost always paired with one. It typically doubled my workload, but I really didn't mind. On the night

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_02] of this story, I was working with a woman who had many physical disabilities, so while she was supposed to clean cages and mop the floors, I generally tended to redo it all once she was done, so we didn't get yelled at in the morning. She was very nice, but also very childlike and prone to tantrums. We'll call her Shelly. I don't remember why, but everyone had left a bit early for the day, at around 3pm.

[00:45:56] [SPEAKER_02] Shelly and I worked until midnight, and there was plenty of work to do. It was nearly a full house in terms of boarding and sick animals that had come in earlier in the day. I was already a bit frazzled. I'd nearly been bitten by a cat that no one had labeled as being on rabies watch, thanks guys, and one of the large dogs I had to handle a few times that night had already bitten a girl my height and age earlier that day.

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_02] At around 5pm when I was taking that dog to do the outdoor run to do his thing, I looked up and noticed that there were two people in the very back of our parking lot up against the fence. I could only see them because I was behind the building like they were. It was a woman and a guy in a long raincoat who was balding on top but had weird hair around his temples. The guy's pants were around his

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_02] ankles, and the woman was sort of pushed over and he was holding her hair. I assume you can figure out exactly what they were doing. It caught me off guard, and I froze for a moment, pretty sure that they hadn't heard me, but just as I was backing away to go back inside, the man looked up and got what I can only describe as a predatory look on his face. He grinned at me. It was oddly chilling.

[00:47:26] [SPEAKER_02] I grimaced at him and quickly went back inside. I avoided bringing the dogs outside for a bit and then only walked them to and from the door. When I glanced out again, the two people were gone. I figured I had overreacted since I was already pretty jumpy. At around 9pm, I finally got my lunch break. The only food nearby was a Taco Bell that was across the street from the clinic's back parking

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_02] lot, so I headed out the back door. As I was walking, I felt the odd sensation of being watched, and I noticed that there were fewer people on the street than normal. After grabbing my food, I headed back, but I still saw no one. Because I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, I picked up my pace and I jogged back to the door. As I was fumbling for my keys, I kept scanning the

[00:48:25] [SPEAKER_02] door. I noticed movement. Something shiny under one of the cars. It was a shoe. Someone was ducking down behind the car. I quickly got inside the clinic, and luckily, the doors locked automatically. I told Shelly not to go outside, and I went upstairs to eat. I considered calling the cops, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided not to. Whatever

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_02] I saw by the car was probably just that couple going at it again. Besides, there were still another three or four hours until I got off of work, and that would have been a long time for that creepy guy to wait around. More drudgery at work. Then, at what I figured had to be around 10-20, I heard noises. I turned off the radio in the upstairs room and leaned out the door to listen.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_02] It was Shelly, but she wasn't talking or singing to herself, as she usually did. She was arguing with somebody. I flew down the stairs and found Shelly talking to someone out the back door, and now she was raising her voice in confusion. She sounded frustrated, saying things like, I don't know how to get there. I told you. I don't know. Why do you keep asking me things I don't have the answer to? Now, I hadn't yet heard the other

[00:49:54] [SPEAKER_02] person speak, but I was alarmed that they were at the back door, which was hidden instead of the front entry. I edged off of the stairs so that I could see around the door, and sure enough, it was the same guy. The moment he saw me, he got the creepiest smile on his face and began to advance towards the door as if he were trying to come inside. I immediately shoved the door back, but he fought it from the other side.

[00:50:25] [SPEAKER_02] Luckily, I'm surprisingly strong for my size, and I was wearing work boots for traction, so even after he stuck an elbow through the door, I was still throwing myself against it yelling, not today, get out of here, while also yelling at Shelly, call the cops, give me the bleach. After a few seconds, I gave him enough room to take his arm back, and when he pulled it out, I threw myself against the door, which shut

[00:50:54] [SPEAKER_02] and locked automatically. The back door is metal, but the ones in front are glass. Shelly was crying. I told her that everything was fine, but also very sternly told her not to open any doors for anyone unless I told her to. She agreed. I went to reception, and I called the police. They said that the guy was likely confused or didn't understand where he was, and not to worry. They did

[00:51:24] [SPEAKER_02] promise to send some guys over to search the lot and surrounding area and call me back. While I waited, I did perimeter walks inside, securing everything, even remotely questionable. Every time I heard a strange thump, I had to go investigate it by myself, with a flashlight. Finally, the police called back and said that they went over the area a few times, but nobody was there. They said they'd probably scared him off,

[00:51:54] [SPEAKER_02] but I should call back if we had any more problems. Okay, fine, good. Now, I was behind on my work, but I had a ride coming at midnight. Thank goodness I didn't drive myself that day. I hurried up and got on the rest of the night's tasks. As I was managing the IVs on some of the surgery patients from that day, one of them, a giant Rottweiler, went to the bathroom in his cage. It was mostly blood.

[00:52:24] [SPEAKER_02] That wasn't good, and he was continuing to bleed, so I knew I was going to have to take him to the emergency vet. I called one of the doctors to confirm, and Shelly grabbed the phone and screamed into the receiver that the dog was bleeding. The doctor said to get him to the emergency clinic in the next town over as soon as possible. There's a work vehicle that I could use, but I couldn't keep the dog stable and drive at the same time. Also, it was going

[00:52:53] [SPEAKER_02] to take an hour to do the paperwork, and our own work was already way behind, and we weren't supposed to run overtime. I considered leaving Shelly there, but I obviously couldn't do that. She couldn't really be trusted to make any good decisions on her own, so I decided to take on everything. I tried to coach Shelly on how she needed to hold the dog in the car. She protested that she didn't want to go anywhere, but when I said that I had to go, she started

[00:53:23] [SPEAKER_02] to whine and panic because she didn't want to be left alone. Finally, I convinced her to hold the dog while I drove. I got the gear, found the keys, and we were off. I paused just as I was about to open the back door. I had that sinking, creepy feeling again. There aren't any windows on that side of the building. The cops took forever to respond last time, so I decided to call someone to have them on the phone while we walked out. It still felt

[00:53:52] [SPEAKER_02] wrong, but the dog was still bleeding, so I ran back up to the front of the clinic to look out the windows, and even though I didn't see anything, I still felt like I was being watched. I then noticed that there were shoe prints near the front door. They were from the recent rain. Now, it was possible that someone could have just taken shelter during their walk. Maybe. I went to the back and decided to go out on the run.

[00:54:22] [SPEAKER_02] It's an area that's fenced in and covered to see if anybody was visible in the lot. There was no one there. It was decided then. I turned around to go back inside and get everything ready when I heard a noise. The creepy man emerged from the landscape like some kind of fucking where's Waldo game that I just lost. He was there smiling like some kind of demon, but I think he was trying to tone it down. He was talking to me.

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_02] It was all questions. He put his hand on the rusty fence and shook it. It was pretty flimsy. At this point, I was trying to get out of there, but the back door wouldn't open. Shelly had been watching the whole thing and she was freaking out. She was scared of the man getting in since I said that he was a bad guy, so she had locked the door. She was locked in the building and I was locked in the open air run. The creeper was trying to get into the run

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_02] even more aggressively, all while trying to act like we were just, you know, having a conversation at 11pm. I pleaded with Shelly to open the door, but she yelled, no, he's bad, I don't want him coming in here. I was begging her to please open the door, but she kept saying no and that she didn't want to. Until I finally lost it and I yelled, open the door right now. Shelly then said, you're being mean to me,

[00:55:52] [SPEAKER_02] I don't want to, and then started walking away. This is when the creep said to me, it's fine. Are you worried about me? It's fine. Do you work here? He said this all while violently shaking the chain link fence and trying to squeeze around the side. I yelled for Shelly to come back and apologized, but explained that the dog was hurt and needed us to help him. I helped her remember that she wanted to

[00:56:21] [SPEAKER_02] help him and that she needed me to help her, but that I couldn't help protect her or the dog unless she let me in. She was calming down, but then she made me promise that I wasn't mad at her. I promised. Finally, she let me back inside. The Rottweiler was still bleeding, but the fence had gone quiet. The door to the outdoor run wouldn't lock, and the inner door leading to the main area didn't have a lock.

[00:56:51] [SPEAKER_02] This was all very bad. Also, the creep was willing to break a fence, so why wouldn't he be willing to break the glass? I dialed 911 and told them to get there as quickly as possible. I also told them that I might not be here when they arrive. I gave them the address of the emergency

[00:57:59] [SPEAKER_02] slash let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today you'll get extended versions of all of our episodes with bonus stories at the end you won't hear anywhere else and ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate it's the best way to listen to the show be sure to send in your stories to let's not meet stories at gmail.com if you'd like to hear them on the show and check out the new episodes of my other podcast the old time

[00:58:23] [SPEAKER_02] radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts and finally follow me on twitch at twitch.tv slash cryptic county this week you have heard lumberjack cowboy gunman by ballerina 400 i fucking hate old men by informal unit 3386 what was their intention and how did i get out alive by bab bubbles 98 stalked at my job by iphone user zero two i was attacked by a

[00:58:53] [SPEAKER_02] murderer by bam barella 66 the voice in the woods by monster chic 16 the girl at the door by moonlight moody and finally locked in and locked out by sign knocks all of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors let's not meet a true horror podcast is not associated with reddit or any other message boards online we'll see you all next

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