3x17: My Stalker Who Fed the Cats (feat. Sapphire Sandalo)

[00:00:06] My name is Andrew Tate and this is season three, episode 17 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. My guest this week is friend of the show Sapphire Sandalo, creator of Something Scary and host of the new podcast titled Stories with Sapphire, where she shares multicultural supernatural

[00:00:34] stories. I told a true horror story of my own on her recent episode. Check it out at storieswithsapphire.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Enjoy the show. This happened way back in 2010, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the army

[00:01:04] and stationed in North Carolina. I had recently gotten home from a deployment to Afghanistan and my ex-husband and I had bought a house in a really cute little neighborhood. It was positioned in the back of a cul-de-sac facing the main road that went through the neighborhood.

[00:01:21] Shortly after moving in, my ex received orders to deploy to Kuwait. When he left, so did my best friend's husband, so she moved in with me, that way we both wouldn't be alone.

[00:01:33] A few months after, I went to Florida to do some training on our unit's new equipment. It was when it all started. My friend called me one day and she was frantic. She said she

[00:01:45] went to the back door to let our dogs out and there was a man just standing in the backyard looking at her. They both were frozen for a moment, and then she said that he turned

[00:01:57] and jumped over the little fence and ran off. She said he was wearing a big black hoodie, which struck me as very weird because it was the middle of August. I tell her to call the

[00:02:09] police immediately and set the home security system to stay. That way if any door is opened or the windows are messed with, the alarm will go off. She does this. Apparently they can't help her because she's not the homeowner. The next day, she calls me again frantic.

[00:02:28] She said that the birdbath from the backyard is now in the front yard next to the driveway. That birdbath weighs at least 200 pounds. There's no way one person moved that. And also, when did they do this? My friend didn't work and she was home all day. In Florida,

[00:02:51] my team and I went to a movie to relax from a week of being outside for 14 hours every day in the sun in the middle of swamplands in Florida. After the movie, we go back to

[00:03:03] our hotel. I check my phone that had been dead for like half a day and I have 10 missed calls from my friend and a missed call and voicemail from my home security system. I

[00:03:17] call the number to my voicemail and listen to the woman on the message saying that there was a break-in at my house and they've sent the police. Next, I hear the voicemail from

[00:03:28] my friend. She said the same thing and that she was staying on base with her boyfriend and wasn't home. I literally cannot do a single thing because I am in Florida. But I must have listened to those messages pretty shortly after this happened because I called

[00:03:47] 911 and connected to the police department in my hometown in North Carolina and the dispatcher said that the police were at my house right now. I get the number for the guy in charge

[00:03:57] at my house and he says that they cannot go in until I get there. I explain the situation and give them permission to enter my home. He says that they can't, but they'll have

[00:04:06] the dogs search the perimeter after they figure out if the robbers are still inside. Once they figure out that there's no one inside my house, they have the dogs track a scent

[00:04:15] from my house to the empty house next to mine. The scent trail then goes down the street and disappears. They say that the robbers probably got into a vehicle and left. Thankfully the robbers had way too much to carry, so the robbers had a stash of 4 TVs, 2 Xboxes

[00:04:37] and a Wii along with all of the games. It was all found in an empty house next to mine, so we got all the stuff back. When I got home from Florida, I called the police to do some

[00:04:49] searching at my house. The state of my house was heartbreaking. Everything was destroyed. There was dirt all through the carpets from their shoes. They had broken in through the back bedroom window, so it was smashed out. That's what tripped the alarm. My bed, mattress,

[00:05:08] box spring and blankets were all thrown all over my room. My kitchen looked like the kitchen in the movie Jumanji when the monkeys are through with it. The police did the searching and dusted everywhere for fingerprints. When they left, I had this mess all over the house

[00:05:26] and now the black dust from the fingerprinting all over my walls. One other thing, there was also a single 9mm bullet left sitting on the counter. Even though I wasn't there when it happened, I was terrified. I felt violated and they were never caught. A few

[00:05:48] months after the robbery, the little old lady that lived on the corner had come over to my house and told me and my friend that she saw the whole thing happen. It was the neighbors directly across the street in the cul-de-sac. Their house, although separated

[00:06:05] from mine by the main street, faced directly towards mine. They were likely watching me and my friend every day and every night to get a sense of our habits. While I was gone

[00:06:17] in Florida, they took notice when my friend would leave every night to stay with her boyfriend. They took notice. All these years later, if I leave my house with my kids and my husband and no one is home, I still get paranoid that someone has

[00:06:35] gotten into my house while I was gone. So I grab my own 9mm pistol and search the closets and other places someone could hide. I don't even live in North Carolina anymore. But to the psychos in the house across the street from mine, let's not meet.

[00:07:00] This took place about 7 years ago. I had been single for a very long time. My kids kept telling me to get back into the swing of things, but I just kept making excuses. My nephew

[00:07:18] told me about this dating site. He said that there was no harm in talking to people. So I did it. I put everything out there so there were no surprises when or if they met me. I

[00:07:31] thought that if they still contacted me after reading all I had described about myself and we matched, then maybe I would have coffee with them. Well, I matched with a few and the

[00:07:41] conversation went well. I met with one gentleman who was way too regimental for my crazy life and kindly declined any more involvement with him. Another guy seemed too pushy and acted like I should be honored to be in his presence. But then there came... we'll call him Richard.

[00:08:02] Now please keep in mind, I had very low self-esteem at the time. That being said, Richard seemed great. We carried on conversations for hours. He lived an hour and a half away so all we

[00:08:15] could really do was talk to each other. We talked about our kids, dreams, goals. My daughter even friended one of his sons on Facebook. I was a secretary for some self-help meetings in my town and he was going to school to be a counselor. Perfect, right? We talked

[00:08:32] for at least four months but after a while I noticed that he kept having small problems come up. Arguments with his mom with whom he was living. No money for gas. His truck broke down. His oldest boy was mad at him. Just little things, you know? Not anything

[00:08:49] that would set me off but it was his poor me to heck with it attitude. I tried to let that go and really be a positive influence in his life. His mother and boys loved me and told me that they had never seen him so happy.

[00:09:05] Time went on and we were still talking every day. I had an opportunity to come see him and of course my daughter went with me so she could meet his son in person as well.

[00:09:15] I took him and his son out to eat at the only little coffee shop in that town. He knew I was on a fixed income but I paid anyway because he was going to school and didn't have an

[00:09:26] income as of yet. We had a good time. We met at his son's house on a hilltop town. We were having such a good time that we didn't notice that the snow was coming down hard

[00:09:38] and the roads were icing up so my daughter and I stayed the night in one of the rooms. It seemed like the closer we got to his family, the more distant they became to him. It was

[00:09:50] odd. The next day the roads were clear so we said our goodbyes and went home but before we left I received one extra hug from his son's mother-in-law. She whispered in my ear, don't fall for him. I thought that maybe there was something she didn't like about

[00:10:10] me. That came out of left field. The next few days we didn't talk. I thought that was odd. Did I do something wrong? Someone from the self-help meeting told me that there was a man looking for me. She said he looked disheveled and smelled like alcohol. This

[00:10:29] wasn't a surprise to me because I had helped quite a few people get back on their feet and maybe this one fell off the wagon and just needed to talk. As I was driving down

[00:10:38] my street, I saw a truck in my driveway I didn't recognize at first. But it was him. He found out where I lived and was sitting in front of my house. At first I was happy

[00:10:51] until I looked in his truck and saw him slumped over, reeking of booze. At that point my fixed mode set in and I asked him in for some strong coffee. He told me that he had a blowout with

[00:11:05] his mother and she kicked him out and his boys won't talk to him. I got him some clean clothes and told him to take a shower. I figured we could sort it out the next day, but in

[00:11:16] the meantime I was taking him to a meeting. He sobered up and agreed to go. The whole time at the meeting my friends were acting like I had lost my mind. Did they see something

[00:11:30] I was blind to? We went back to my house and he seemed okay, almost too okay like nothing at all happened. My son pulled me aside and told me he didn't like him much, but I thought

[00:11:44] maybe he was just being overprotective. I should have paid attention. We went to the store because I wasn't prepared for the extra mouth and I bought four two liters of soda, a gallon of milk, and two monsters for him and my son, some chips and stuff for dinner.

[00:12:03] After we ate, we all watched some TV and headed off to bed. I let him sleep on the spare bed in my room, but in the middle of the night he tried to get frisky. At that point, no.

[00:12:15] My grown kids were in the other room and something just didn't sit well with me, like he wasn't the same man he was before. The next morning, my daughter came running out of the bathroom angry. She said in a loud voice, someone pissed all over the toilet.

[00:12:33] He didn't say a word. Later, we were all eating breakfast and he started to let food drop out of his mouth onto the table and floor and was spitting food while he was talking.

[00:12:46] He took three two liters and drank them back to back, letting some run down his chin. What the hell? Then, yes there is more, he took the remote and started to set recordings for his favorite shows, deleting a few of my grandchildren's, recordings set for weeks in advance.

[00:13:06] Wait, wait, what are you doing my friend? This is not cool, I told him, but he acted like I said nothing. Then he went to the refrigerator and told me that I had to go to the store

[00:13:17] and buy more soda and stuff. It was all gone, like it was gone. He even drank my son's monster and the whole gallon of milk. At this point, my daughter was also livid, so she

[00:13:30] contacted his son and he proceeded to tell her that his mom kicked him out because he wouldn't get a job and was stealing money and eating her out of house and home. His other

[00:13:41] son won't talk to him because he keeps asking for money and won't pay it back. He himself was mad at him for lying to me by telling me that he was going to school when he wasn't

[00:13:52] and using me as his next big meal ticket. Well, that was it. I got all his stuff together and took it to his truck and asked him to leave. It doesn't end there. He had loosened

[00:14:06] some bolts on his transmission making it impossible to move. He begged and pleaded me for him to stay. He was at the point snot was coming out of his nose. Good God! He said that he

[00:14:18] just wanted to be close to me and if that meant sleeping in his truck, he would do that and he couldn't live without me. Well, hell to the no. I called his oldest son and told

[00:14:29] him that if they didn't come with a tow truck and get their dad, his fate was not going to be nice. They arrived two hours later apologizing for their father's actions. We found out through

[00:14:41] his son that for many years he had gone through many unhealthy relationships and took advantage of a lot of women that fell for his lies. He still tries to friend me on Facebook to this day.

[00:14:55] I came over from Serbia at age 13 with my mother. My older brother, who was 15 years older than me, had lived in America for a few years and he sent for us. My mom wouldn't

[00:15:19] be staying although at the time I wasn't aware of that. Anyway, we landed in New York City and the plan was for my brother to come and get us. However, my niece decided to come

[00:15:32] early and my brother's wife went into labor shortly before we landed. My brother couldn't leave his wife so he asked his co-worker, they drove cabs, to come and pick us up in

[00:15:44] New York City and drive us to New Jersey where he and my sister-in-law lived. When we got to New York City, we waited in customs for what seemed like forever. We looked for my

[00:15:56] brother but we didn't see him. This was the early 90s so cell phones weren't as much of a common place as they are now. We panicked a bit, not seeing my brother or sister-in-law. Suddenly,

[00:16:10] we heard our names being called and we saw a tall man. He introduced himself in perfect Serbian and explained that he was a good friend of my brother's and then told us about the baby. He

[00:16:25] said he'd be driving us the two hours from the airport to my brother's home. My mom relaxed and they happily began to converse about the baby and my brother and America. I, however,

[00:16:39] just felt off. This guy gave me bad vibes and regardless of my brother's friendship with him, I felt distrustful of him. We drove for a good hour, maybe an hour and a half, when he announced

[00:16:53] he was going to take us for breakfast. We hadn't eaten in over 15 hours so we were starving by then. We pulled up to a house and my mom and I were confused. He insisted cheerfully that his wife

[00:17:07] was cooking us breakfast and after we'd drive the rest of the way to the hospital to see my family. My mom shushed me when I whispered something about it not feeling right and told me that

[00:17:21] we needed to be grateful for the hospitality. We were led up into the house. It was dark, dank, and dirty. Suddenly, I think my mom finally got a bit nervous and started insisting he take

[00:17:37] us to my brother. Then out of nowhere, the man grabbed my mother by the wrist. He told her that he needed a wife to take care of him and his house and when he heard my brother tell the others at

[00:17:52] work that she'd be coming to stay, he knew he'd found a wife. At the time, I was a scrawny little of a kid and I tried pushing him off of my mom but he hit me so hard that I saw stars. At this point,

[00:18:09] we're terrified. Neither of us spoke English. We only knew my brother's home phone number and he was at the hospital. Also in Serbia, you don't call 911 so even if I could, I didn't know how to call

[00:18:24] the police. Anyway, he tells my mom she's to clean and cook for him and he takes me to the basement where I was locked in what I now know is called the laundry room. I banged and cried

[00:18:40] and yelled but it was so far down in the basement everything was muffled. For a week, we were kept in his home. He locked us up in the basement after my mom cooked him breakfast and he'd let us out

[00:18:55] when he'd come home at four. If we had to use the restroom, there was a bathroom but that was it. Just a bathroom and laundry room. It was freezing cold down there and even us huddling together under a

[00:19:12] small blanket did nothing. One morning, I discovered a small window by climbing on some boxes. I managed to open it and my mother insisted I squeeze through it. I didn't want to leave her

[00:19:26] and besides how would I get help? I couldn't read nor speak the language. However, I didn't want to live this way the rest of my life so I did as she asked. I ran once I got out and I'm sure I

[00:19:42] was a sight. A scrawny boy with no shoes only wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of November. However, that's what saved us as several concerned neighbors tried to get me to come to

[00:19:55] them and I wouldn't because I was terrified. I kept trying to get them to follow me. The police were called and a very nice policeman tried to get me into his car and then I saw the man who'd

[00:20:10] taken us drive up in his taxi. He saw the cops and took off. That's when I made a run for his house to go get my mom. Needless to say, the cop and his partner ran after me and my mother was

[00:20:26] rescued. It took another four hours for them to find someone who spoke our language for us to tell him what happened. A warrant was issued for the man. My brother was contacted. His quote

[00:20:41] friend had told him we never showed and my brother had been frantically calling back home to Serbia to find us. He drove up to get us and to give the cops information on his supposed friend so that

[00:20:57] they could find him. They never did find him. Back then before 9-11, it was easy for someone to disappear. However, it made me distrustful for a long time of people and their intentions. My mom

[00:21:12] grew homesick and she ended up going back and becoming a cop in the military thanks to the nice officer that helped me all those years ago. I think of that guy who kept us prisoner every now

[00:21:25] and then and honestly I wouldn't mind meeting him now. I just don't think he'd want to meet me. This story takes place when I was 17 in a small border town that I grew up in. I lived in a house

[00:21:51] on a steep hill and I took the bus every morning and after school to come home. Classes started very early and no other students lived on my small street. It must have been during the winter

[00:22:04] because it was very cold every morning which isn't a usual thing where I lived. I remember being afraid every morning because it was very dark outside and I only had the light of the moon to

[00:22:16] guide me and back then cell phones didn't have flashlights that you can use to guide your way in the dark. There were only three other houses on my small street and they were all on a big hill

[00:22:29] with paved driveways going down and meeting a gravely road. The houses were arranged around a gravel cul-de-sac which many people used to turn around if they went down the wrong road. I live in a desert area so there were leafless mesquite trees and cactus around to where it

[00:22:47] was very reminiscent of a forest or dense flora area. It was so quiet that all you can hear were the bats fluttering around the one streetlight that decided to work on the off day but usually

[00:23:02] it was just pitch black along with the yapping of coyotes and crickets chirping. Other than that all I could hear was the crunching of the gravel beneath my feet. The first time I saw the man in

[00:23:17] a van I wasn't that surprised. A lot of the time we would get these white vans passing through because they delivered the papers to the surrounding houses. I then started to realize that this van

[00:23:30] would stop right next to me when I was standing alone waiting for the bus to arrive. There was a stop sign there but there was no reason for the person in the van to be stopped there for

[00:23:42] ten minutes until the bus picked me up. He must have started to get brave after that because he would roll his window down and ask me if I was cold. I'd say yes and ignore his presence and

[00:23:56] pretend like nothing happened. I just figured he was trying to be nice to me. He was an older Hispanic man in his 70s. Again, the next day he pulls up even closer to me. Are you cold? You

[00:24:12] look beautiful today but you look so cold. This time I just ignored him and waited for the bus to pull up and I got in. I would watch his van pull away after my bus left. He kept doing this

[00:24:26] for two weeks until one day he looked at me through his window and said, I could use a pretty girl like you. It's cold outside. You must be so cold. Come inside my van and I'll keep you warm

[00:24:39] until your bus gets here. I looked at him in horror and luckily the bus pulled up a few seconds later and I decided I needed to tell someone about him. My dad is in law enforcement and I told my dad

[00:24:52] what had been happening. He asked me what he looked like and when the van would pull up. He said I should have told him sooner but he's glad I told him when I did. He called the police

[00:25:02] and I told the police what had been happening. They said they had similar reports in the area and that they would catch him. The next day the police hid behind me where the cul-de-sac is

[00:25:14] and I stood in my usual spot where I stood for the bus. I remember that day the streetlight was finally working and I could see the man's face in the van. He didn't realize the officer was there

[00:25:28] until he made a full turn around the cul-de-sac and started towards me. The police turned their lights on and pulled him over. I could hear him yelling as the bus pulled in and I left for school.

[00:25:42] I could see the police lights glaring on the bus windows. The next day my dad sat me down and told me he had to talk to me. Apparently the man had many suspicious things in the van.

[00:25:55] He had duct tape, plastic bags, zip ties, condoms, lube, black trash bags, a machete and some other strange things. He claimed to be a newspaper man and he would distribute the newspapers to my

[00:26:09] neighbors, yet the police never found one newspaper in his van when they had searched it. My dad ran a background check on him and he had a CD passed. I'm not sure whatever happened to the man legally

[00:26:23] but he never showed his face on the street again. But whenever I stood there at the end of the street all I could think about is if he had gotten the courage to step out of his van that I would have

[00:26:35] had no way to defend myself and no one would have heard from me again. To the man in the white van, I hope no pretty cold teenage girl ever meets you again. This happened a few years ago. I was about

[00:27:05] 16 years old and my best friend Doug was over like normal. We would usually hang out on weekends until the wee hours of the morning, usually until about 3 or 5 am. So we were doing what we normally

[00:27:18] did that night. We were just playing some music and talking. Out of nowhere I hear what sounds like someone jostling one of my doors. I stop the music and listen intently. Now someone breaking in

[00:27:33] wasn't new to me as my house had always been targeted for break-ins and I've been home for one. So quietly I tell him to go check the front door. I'll grab the back. So I quietly pop my back door

[00:27:49] open and see nothing. I peek my head around the side of the door to the driveway and still nothing. Doug however, he goes to open the door and the handle spins in his hand as soon as he grabs it.

[00:28:03] He gripped the handle and found a man standing against the door trying to open it. The man looked up, panicked, and took off. Off of the porch and into the dark alley beside my house. He came back

[00:28:19] and let me know what the man looked like and recognized the description. It was a man that I had seen recently for the last week sitting in the alley beside my house with a backpack feeding and

[00:28:31] petting the neighborhood strays. I thought nothing of it until I realized I had lived here for a few months and I'm just now seeing this man and I knew all of my neighbors and also validated all the

[00:28:46] times that I felt like I had been being watched while outside in my neighborhood late at night or coming home from my friend's house. I don't know how long this man had been watching me or

[00:28:57] my house. I only happened to notice him the week before this all happened. I'd seen him every day about 8 p.m sitting outside and he would be there for hours staring at my house and I would

[00:29:10] occasionally catch him looking at me. Doug stayed for a few more hours. This had happened about one thirty in the morning. He left around 3 30 or 4. When he left he thought he had seen the man

[00:29:26] in the alley beside the house again. So when he left he did what he normally did and took the alley across from my house and just past where the light reached it became pitch black. He stayed

[00:29:42] within the darkness and he saw the man approach the house again. The man stepped onto the porch on the side of the house and opened the screen door. The porch on the side of the house actually

[00:29:57] went straight into my room and I heard the door open and it got me out of bed. I popped up out of the shadows and yelled, hey fucker what do you think you're doing? And again he took off into the

[00:30:13] dark alley beside my house. I came out and I saw Doug leaving towards the shadows again and yelled goodbye. I called him in the morning to find out what happened. He told me about the

[00:30:26] man coming back and whatnot and after that night he never showed his face near my house again. Well he did one other night. We happened to be outside that night talking and

[00:30:38] I happened to be brandishing a baseball bat. Never saw the man again. I moved a couple of months later. So creepy stalker dude let's not meet. Thanks for listening to this week's episode

[00:30:57] of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard The Neighbors by Reddit user 29grapes. What was I thinking? Never again by Reddit user crazyturtlemama. We escaped with our lives by Reddit user picturethiscisley. Man in the white van by Reddit user gothbaby93. And finally

[00:31:18] stalker who fed the cats by Reddit user thesilentabyss. Thanks again to Sapphire for coming on this week. If you'd like to hear your supernatural stories on her podcast email storieswithsapphire at gmail.com. If you'd like to hear your non-supernatural stories on this podcast

[00:31:35] as always email letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. I read them all. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.