2x16: Indoctrination

[00:00:00] My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 2, Episode 16 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast. When I was seven, I lived in a dusty, vacant part of the West with an atmosphere straight out of a Judy Blume novel.

[00:00:43] Despite everyone on my neighborhood living on large lots, isolated plots of land, mostly ranching families, kids played hockey in the streets, crime was minimal to non-existent and everybody knew everybody else. I had a tight-knit group of friends, names changed to protect privacy, obviously.

[00:01:03] Lets call them Shirley, Natalie, and Bailey. We'd been friends since before we could walk, mostly because we were the same age and all lived in the same neighborhood. We weren't idiots, but we definitely were sheltered. The same could be said for our parents.

[00:01:22] Many of them ended their education after high school or even a bit sooner and grew up in similar, if not the exact same community where anyone who'd shake your hand was probably trustworthy. That's why no one had noticed anything before it was too late.

[00:01:41] Just before the summer started, a new family moved in. Families moving in wasn't terribly uncommon, but this family had a girl my age and so it became a big deal. Her name was Ella and her whole family was a bit strange.

[00:01:56] It took two weeks for them to introduce themselves to anyone. Plenty of people went over to introduce themselves, but even when it was obvious people were home, no one came to the door.

[00:02:10] Only word got around that the father was a minister at some church no one in town had heard of and the wife was working part-time as a tailor. We spent a lot of time outside and eventually spotted Ella, my friends and I, and we invited

[00:02:24] her to join our group in whatever we were up to that afternoon. Through that, we learned that she had four older brothers and an infant sister. She and her whole family had very antiquated gender roles, prayed before and about virtually

[00:02:43] anything they did, and would casually mention the end of the world as a non-sequitur. Despite this, they managed to establish themselves as pillars of the community. The father, let's call him Mr. Cyrus, came to every town hall and his wife Mrs. Cyrus

[00:03:00] took up a leadership role in the PTA. I think their wholesome Christian image helped defray what could have been otherwise a deeply troubling outburst of rage that Mr. Cyrus would exhibit, sometimes right out in public.

[00:03:18] He'd hear another adult use a phrase like, God damn it, and fly into a frenzy about how dare you forsake your Lord and Savior, taking his name in vain. His wife would make unsolicited, judgmental calls about how other people raised their kids, especially daughters.

[00:03:39] Despite all that, within a few months you'd never know they hadn't lived there all their lives. The unspoken understanding in this town was if you left your kids in someone else's care, they had free reign to do whatever they thought best for them and feed them, instruct

[00:03:54] them and discipline them, same as they were their own. The first time that I went to Ella's, nothing was out of the ordinary. The second time Mr. Cyrus led all of us in prayer before we ate our snack and afterward.

[00:04:11] I mentioned to my mom how I found it irritating and she basically said, their house, their rules. So I shrugged it off. Neither of us had any way to know that Mr. Cyrus was testing the waters.

[00:04:25] A few weeks later, several of our families had gotten together and Mr. Cyrus brought a rifle out of nowhere and asked us girls if we wanted to shoot some cans. He said to the parents, once he'd gotten us excited, I mean, if you're comfortable with guns.

[00:04:41] Remember this is rural America. Not one of us girls hadn't already fired a gun in our lives and if any of the parents were uncomfortable about guns, they would never admit it in public. Things progressed little by little every time I went over.

[00:04:56] Within the next few visits, my friends and I were made to participate in a mini Bible study lesson. I guess one of the other girls had told their parents about the praying because when they

[00:05:08] were dropped off, Mr. Cyrus said, oh, I forgot to mention Eileen and I had a family Bible study planned for tonight. If you're uncomfortable with that, you can bring the girls back another night. This was the West in the 80s.

[00:05:25] Christianity was the default and even people who really didn't practice felt obligated to pretend that they did. No one in this town would have objected to their kids participating in a Bible study loud enough for anyone to hear.

[00:05:41] It didn't matter because the Bible study was sort of fun. None of us complained about it and we'd all seen how into it Ella seemed and wouldn't have wanted to hurt her feelings by complaining about it.

[00:05:55] I think Mr. Cyrus took that as one of the final go-aheads that was needed. In late August, Mrs. Cyrus called my parents and friends' parents and asked if we wanted to have a sleepover with Ella. Everyone agreed. The first red flag flew up right away.

[00:06:14] Most of us girls spent half of our days off from school doing farm chores and helping around the house. So we were all in jeans. I had never seen Ella in pants, ever. But what we wore had never been any sort of problem.

[00:06:29] When we got there this time, though, Ella had laid out four of her dresses on the bed and told us to change into them to quote-unquote look more like girls. We all liked playing dress up so we changed without complaint but when we went downstairs Mr. Cyrus said,

[00:06:48] Look how ladylike you all are now. Doesn't that feel better? You've made God very happy. At this point, in a playdate we'd usually go out back and make mud pies or play tag or something. But instead, Mr. Cyrus jumped right into the Bible lesson.

[00:07:10] He was basically giving a sermon and talked about heaven and hell and the ways to get into heaven and the ways to get into hell. He scared our seven-year-old minds half to death about the fires of hell.

[00:07:23] Then he did what I can only describe as cartoony attempts at hypnosis. This was years ago so it was a little fuzzy but he dangled some piece of jewelry, a necklace or something, in front of us and swung it back and forth.

[00:07:41] While he did that, he recited Bible verses about telling the truth and repentance and the end times and clean souls entering the glory of heaven. He sat us all down on the couch.

[00:07:54] We were all thoroughly freaked out at this point by the heaven to hell talk but we figured everything else was just a religious ritual of their home because he'd been so careful to desensitize us over the past few months.

[00:08:08] He talked about sin and repentance and asked us if we wanted to go to heaven or hell. I think you can guess what we all said. He said the only way to get into heaven was to be baptized.

[00:08:19] One of my friends, Shirley, said she'd already been baptized but Mr. Cyrus cut them off. Baptized into real faith. God's faith, he said. He asked if we wanted to know how we could become baptized and we said yes.

[00:08:38] He said by confessing our sins and making them right with God, committing to living a Christ-like way, and most importantly accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Sounded easy enough to us.

[00:08:51] For the next, I don't know how long, there were no clocks in this house and it was after dark by then, we did basically an intense Bible study. It could have been anywhere between 10 minutes and 4 hours when you're little and not accustomed

[00:09:07] to going to church, any amount of Bible study feels like an eternity. This all was interspersed with different prayers for our salvation and making different promises about rejecting sin and resisting temptation. We were all getting very tired and feeling our patience wearing thin for tolerating others' religious beliefs.

[00:09:29] Then there was a whole bunch of prepper stuff. Different types of guns, talking about growing your own food and the importance of self-reliance. Basically a lecture on survival skills, but with constant emphasis on the greatest survival skill being a good Christian.

[00:09:50] He kept us up most of the night after that praying and such. He did some ritual blessing with rubbing oil on our foreheads. He vaguely talked on and off throughout the night about the wonderful place and lots of other kids who love Christ.

[00:10:07] And he said that he'd ask our parents about taking us there on a weekend trip. I knew when I was agreeing with him that I had no interest, but my mom had taught me

[00:10:16] the polite thing to do when you get an invitation to do something you have no interest in doing. You just smile and express interest. When closer to the date, you can say something came up. He didn't feed us anything the entire time we were there.

[00:10:32] By the time it started to get light out, we were baptized in the backyard. Then we finally fell asleep and a few hours later, we were picked up. I told my mom I didn't want to go back there because he was too religious.

[00:10:46] I told her we were up a lot of the night praying. I told my mom there was no food also, but since I'm such a picky eater, she was too used to hearing they had nothing to eat when I really just meant something like they served

[00:11:01] a meatloaf and wouldn't even make me a grilled cheese to eat instead. We stopped playing with Ella and just kind of put it behind us until high school, mentioning once every few years, remember that weird religious play date?

[00:11:18] Since we didn't really understand any of the promises that we had made to Mr. Cyrus, we didn't pay half a mind to keeping any of them. We were exhausted and surrounded in daily life by Jesus rhetoric that everyone took

[00:11:33] seriously in the moment and then ignored once the preacher was out of earshot. In high school, it was heavily rumored that Ella's father, Mr. Cyrus, had someone over famed for her involvement in the controversial Branced Davidians visiting his home and leading

[00:11:50] some sort of prayer circle for him and the people of his church. While I still don't know if she really came to visit him, it was all but irrefutably confirmed in high school that Mr. Cyrus belonged to an offshoot of Shepard's Rod, the Christian

[00:12:06] apocalyptic extremist group rooted in Seventh-day Adventism. Nobody really talked to them much after that, in town even, because we all considered it a cult. I went out of state after high school and had no idea what happened to Ella's family, but Mr. Cyrus? Let's not meet.

[00:12:58] It was a nice summer day. I decided to take my nephew to the park. The park was quite lonely apart from a mom with her daughter and grandmother and a homeless man searching through the trash bins.

[00:13:10] I debated on staying due to not enough people being there, but I did decide to stay. More families would soon be arriving, I told myself. I sat on a bench as I watched my nephew play. Everything seemed perfectly normal until I got an uneasy feeling of being watched.

[00:13:30] I looked around but saw no one and ignored my feeling. My nephew asked for me to race with him. I suggested that we race from a tree to the restrooms all the way back to the playground.

[00:13:45] I suggested that we race from a tree by the restrooms all the way back to the playground. How I regret this decision now. As we left the playground, I heard a woman yell out a name. She kept yelling the name. I ignored it.

[00:13:59] The name wasn't mine or my nephew's. We reached the tree with the lady who was yelling out the name. She was approaching us. I assumed she was going to pass by, but she paused and spoke to me. Do you know me? She said with a look of concern.

[00:14:16] I replied, no. Why did I even respond? She then turned to speak to my nephew. Do you remember me? I was calling out for you. At this point, I knew she was hallucinating or something. She began to call him by the name that she had previously mentioned.

[00:14:37] She then reached for him. I grabbed my nephew and started to leave. She begged for him to come back. She didn't follow us, but kept yelling for him. She would only yell to him. She claimed that she was his mom. How I was a liar.

[00:14:54] How I took him from her when he was a baby. I noticed that she had begun to follow us. The distance from the tree to the playground felt like miles apart. I could hear my nephew asking to go home. I decided not to go to my car.

[00:15:09] I wanted to be where people were. She began to frantically yell, give me my son! We finally reached the playground. I felt safe here assuming that she would not try anything with others watching. I didn't ask for help. I must have been in shock.

[00:15:27] The others began to assume something was wrong once my nephew was crying and I tried to calm him down. The woman kept her distance but still trying to convince him to go to her.

[00:15:41] I regret talking back to her, but I did and said, he's not your son now leave us alone before I call the police. In this moment her facial expression changed. Her eyes, they looked like they were filled with years of anger. She charged forward.

[00:15:59] She grabbed my hair, but I was able to get her off. A mom that was nearby approached us and the woman quickly walked off. I began to dial 911 as she began circling us. She no longer was after my nephew but fixated on me.

[00:16:16] She yelled at me, your next baby I'll rip from your uterus. You'll bleed when I snatch him away. I'll come for you. You're not a good mother. I am, but they think I'm not. She would remain circling, continuing threatening me about my unborn child.

[00:16:37] I was still on the line with the police detailing all her movements. They wouldn't arrive until five more minutes. A nearby elderly woman told her that the cops were on the way. She then headed towards a parking lot. We lost track of her.

[00:16:51] No one wanted to go after her. We all remained together until the police arrived. They did end up searching the area though they didn't find her. I said there wasn't much they could do but patrol the area to see if she would appear again.

[00:17:03] I'm glad no one was harmed but I still feel anxious driving by that park. I get that uneasy feeling although I'm inside my car and it scares me to think she was probably watching us. I am sure it was her who I felt earlier. She hasn't been found.

[00:17:22] At this point, I have moved on and am just hoping that she hasn't committed another incident like mine with another person. But a lady who claimed that I stole her son and threatened to snatch my unborn child? Let's never ever meet again.

[00:17:50] It all started about a month ago. As I was sitting out on my front porch having a cigarette, a random man pops up from around my bushes and walks right up to me. He's pretty tan, slim but fit build to him. Probably about 5'7".

[00:18:06] He walks up and casually asks, hey I couldn't bother you for one of those right? It was random at the time but I didn't mind. I pulled another smoke out, handed it to him and offered my lighter if he needed it.

[00:18:20] Nah don't worry Sarge, I don't need it. He said. As soon as he said that, he turned around, placed the cigarette into the branches on the bush and walked across the street to the house that faces ours. I sat there quietly as he did all of this.

[00:18:39] Why would he ask me for a smoke and then put it in the bush and walk away? Weird. But I don't live in the best area so I took the smoke and went back inside.

[00:18:50] Little did I know, that wasn't going to be the last time he does something strange. Two weeks pass without any problems. My sister brings my niece and nephew over for my mother and I to watch them one Friday night.

[00:19:04] We got them to settle down to a movie when my dogs dart toward the door, their hair standing up on the backs of their necks. But they weren't barking. I shoo them away from the front door since they're known for getting excited about

[00:19:21] anything that they hear out front. No sooner did I turn my back to the door, two knocks thumped on the front door behind me. I slowly open the front door and see the cigarette guy standing there on my porch. A wide grin plastered across his face.

[00:19:39] I open the screen door and step out front with him. Now let me clarify, I'm a giant. I'm 6'5", 300 pounds and I have some martial arts background behind me but when I stood there in front of him, my fight or flight response went haywire.

[00:19:55] I felt the blood rush out of my head and hands and into my feet which is something I rarely felt before. He sat there smiling, doing nothing else. I ask him if I can help him.

[00:20:08] He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of camels and opens them towards me. There were three cigarettes poking out. Hey Sarge, you want a cigarette? Why does he keep calling me Sarge?

[00:20:24] I tell him I'm good, I have my own smokes and it looks like he's almost out anyways. He smiles and vanishes instantly. His eyes seem to be completely glazed over. I want out. It caught me by surprise. Everything. I want out. Tango out. He said.

[00:20:47] He starts rocking back and forth, repeating. I want out. Tango out. I can't begin to tell you the thoughts that were going through my head at this point. I'm speechless. Hey Sarge, can you get me out? Of everything? The military? The FBI?

[00:21:06] Make it all go away, please sir. At that moment, I remember that my mother, niece and nephew are right on the other side of the door. This guy seems like he's about to lose it.

[00:21:20] Without a second thought, I placed my hand on his shoulder and stopped him from rocking. I asked him if everything is okay. He stares back at me for a while before another smile breaks over his face. Hey, yeah, yeah, he says.

[00:21:40] He turns his attention toward the front window. The blinds are shut, but he's focused heavily on them. As I noticed this and was about to say something, he says. Gotta get back to the field. Tango out. He pulled away and sprinted across the street to that house.

[00:22:00] I stood there dumbfounded. I couldn't believe what just happened in those short couple of minutes. I hop inside and lock the door. My mother is staring at me so confused, so I tell her about everything that just happened.

[00:22:12] Weird thing is, we know the woman who lives across the street. She lives alone. Where did this guy come from? My mother and I decide to call him Tango out after that incident. Here's the part that really sent me over the edge with this guy though.

[00:22:26] We got a hold of the woman across the street and got some information about him. He's the son of her friend. They haven't been able to find a place to live. He's apparently an extremely paranoid schizophrenic. He's never been in the military nor the FBI.

[00:22:41] His mother has no idea how his mental state deteriorated to such a severe degree. She assured us that he's harmless and that he's only a danger to himself. Well, last week my mother and her boyfriend decided to go hang out with some family so

[00:22:59] I was home alone with the two dogs. I don't usually watch Netflix but I heard Invader Zim had a new movie so I sat in the living room sofa and was there for about an hour and a half.

[00:23:12] The entire time I was watching, which was about 1130 to 1245, I kept seeing something outside my front window in the corner of my eye. My dogs made no movement and it was quite windy so I brushed it off as moving trees or something.

[00:23:30] I finished the movie and flipped the TV off. I stand to stretch and once again I catch something out of the corner of my eye. This time though, my dogs went straight to the door and stood at alert.

[00:23:45] I was about to go out for a smoke anyways so I make my way to the window to show my dogs that my mom and dad weren't home yet. And that's when I saw him, standing on my porch staring at my front door once again.

[00:24:00] My fight or flight response exploded. Way more than the first time, I snuck my way to the front door and quietly turned the dead bolt and handle locks. I didn't want him to hear me. I can see out of my blinds but only a little bit.

[00:24:17] He's still standing there, not moving an inch, wearing a white tank top and probably his boxers. I was dead focused on him. I was trying to figure out if I was going to have to confront this man. He's never been mean or angry towards us.

[00:24:35] I have no bad things to say about him since I understand that he's not all there but this was too bizarre. He had to have been standing there the entire time I was watching that movie, maybe even longer.

[00:24:49] I walk to my room and place a couple of shells next to my shotgun, just in case. I call my mother's phone as I stare back out to see what he's doing, but he's not there. I scan over the yard but I don't see him anywhere.

[00:25:07] When she answers, I tell her what Tangleot is doing and she hands the phone to her boyfriend. He makes sure I've got my gun ready in case he tries to get hostile. They'll be home in half an hour. I said that's okay and hang up the phone.

[00:25:21] I press 911 on my ringer to be ready at a moment's notice. And that's when I look back out the peak spot of my window and he's standing there, staring at me.

[00:25:34] I doubt he was able to actually see me but it made me jump back and duck below my window. I scramble to grab my phone that fell when I jumped. That's when the two little knocks happen on the front door. I froze entirely. Two more little knocks follow.

[00:25:53] I separate my blinds just enough for me to see his face. He has a simple calm expression on his face, but I can see tears pouring down his face with swollen eyes. I was about to hit dial to 911 when from around the corner, two officer units with flashing

[00:26:11] lights pulled up in front of my house. I'm still shocked. Someone must have seen him and called the cops before I did. I see Tangleot turn around and stare at the lights then he casually walks over to them.

[00:26:24] I open my blinds to see two officers grab him and immediately start to search and question After a moment of making sure the cops had him under control, I came out and stood on my patio and stared at them.

[00:26:38] I lit a cigarette since my nerves were all over the place and waited for one of the cops to walk over and talk to me. Turns out they've had to wrangle him up from multiple places around the neighborhood

[00:26:53] and he's even broken into some people's garages and slept there for the night just to be discovered the next morning. They ask if I'm fine and I say yes. They make a couple of comments about how he was about to break into the giant's lair.

[00:27:09] They ask me if I want to press charges but I say no since I know he's a paranoid schizophrenic and he's not able to control himself all the time. They took him across the street to his mother.

[00:27:19] My parents came back shortly after and the night kind of ended there. I woke up the next day to find multiple cans of food spread all over my front yard. Maybe it was Tango's way of saying sorry.

[00:27:30] I rounded them up and placed them on her property and went to work. Since then we haven't had an issue with Tango out. I see him once in a while walking down the street.

[00:27:40] I guess the cops are going to help his mother get them into a suitable living and him into a hospital for the help he needs. But he hasn't come back onto our property since that night. I'm still a little nervous about going out to smoke though.

[00:27:54] I can't imagine what's going on in your mind, whatever is haunting your thoughts and dreams. I hope one day you can overcome and live happily. But until then I hope we don't meet again.

[00:28:26] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard, When I was seven an adult neighbor tried to indoctrinate me into a cult. By Reddit user Blown Radiation. He is not your son by an anonymous listener.

[00:28:42] And finally, Tango out by Reddit user Siko4800. Don't forget to check out the patreon at patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast for all the bonus content. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.