3x22: Fingers Under The Door

[00:00:00] This episode of Let's Not Meet is brought to you by AMC Network's Sundance Now, a premium streaming video service offering a rich selection of prestige dramas, heart-stopping thrillers, and gripping true crime series from around the world.

[00:00:13] My name is Andrew Tate, and this is season 3, episode 22 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. For reference, I work as a barista in a coffee shop inside a large store. I am one of a handful of male baristas at my shop.

[00:00:43] I'm gay and very open about this. I wear pride shoes, I have a pride flag attached to my name tag, and I have a couple of wristbands with rainbows and phrases like Orlando Strong and local LGBT plus center.

[00:00:59] So the other day I was working my shift at the register. A gentleman comes up to me with the smile. I think he notices my pride flag on my name tag, and he didn't explicitly mention it at first.

[00:01:13] He says he doesn't know what to order and asks me my opinion. Now, I'm not particularly a coffee drinker, but I know what drinks fit what tastes, so I ask him what he likes and try to give him recommendations.

[00:01:29] As I'm talking, I can tell he's paying more attention to me than to what I'm saying, which I'm completely okay with. He was a shorter but well-built man, had beautiful eyes and nice beard, basically the perfect dilf.

[00:01:45] Eventually he decides on a super sweet iced drink that we have, and I go to make it for him. As I'm making the drink, one of my co-workers leans over and whispers, I think that customer just took a picture of you.

[00:02:00] It was a bit of a red flag, but I thanked her and kind of rushed it off. I give him his drink, and he smiles. He points to the pride flag and says, I love that flag. Where can I get one of those?

[00:02:16] I laughed, and I said that I got it from a pride event that I went to a few weeks ago. He then asks, where can I get the person it's attached to?

[00:02:27] I immediately feel a rush and start blushing, but trying to act professional, I just brush it off. He eventually takes his drink and sits at one of the tables. I continued to go about my day, debating whether I should give in to this guy or not.

[00:02:44] Every now and then, I would glance at his table and see him looking at me. No matter when I looked, it seemed like he was looking at me. I started to get that weird feeling of heart eyes with red flags.

[00:02:59] Then I noticed that he hasn't taken a single drink of his coffee. Remember, it was an iced drink, so I could see through the clear plastic cup. When I have a short break, I go to wipe down some of the tables.

[00:03:14] I stop by his table and ask if he didn't like the drink, and if not, I could make him a new one free of charge.

[00:03:21] He hands me the drink and mentions that he's not sure if it's too sweet for him or not and asks me to try it. I politely decline, telling him I don't drink coffee. He's shocked and asks me why I'm working here, blah blah blah.

[00:03:36] As we're talking though, his questions start to change. So do you lift at all? No, not really. Well, how much do you think you could lift if you had to? The job requirement is 50 pounds, so I guess at least that much.

[00:03:53] Well, I've learned that it's good to be able to lift at least half your body weight. How much do you weigh? Immediate red flag. There was something about the combination of the drink and the two questions

[00:04:09] that made me feel like I was being asked how much of a fight I'd be able to hold if I was drugged. I've been drugged at a party before, and things like these are red flags,

[00:04:25] and I've learned to pick up on them, so I kindly and quickly end the conversation and go back to cleaning up the tables. As the hours go by, he continues to sit there, drinking his coffee. Other employees and a couple of managers ask if everything is okay,

[00:04:44] and he says he's perfectly happy. Every now and then, he takes a phone call, and at one point I swear I can see a guy on his phone at a different part of the store talking opposite of the guy at the table.

[00:05:00] Suddenly, I start to feel like there are more eyes on me than I realized. I pull up one of the managers from the back and tell him that I'm getting weirder and weirder feelings about this guy, and the manager says we'll keep an eye on him.

[00:05:16] Now, I was closing on the shift, and so as we got closer and closer to closing time, I noticed him still sitting there. When the announcement that the store was closing in half an hour was made,

[00:05:30] he comes up to the counter and asks if he could walk me to my car after I get off. I tell him our closing duties take us at least 45 minutes after we close, and he says he'd be happy to wait.

[00:05:44] I politely decline, and he asks me when I work next. I tell him I'm off for a couple of weeks. Well then, I feel I should walk you to your car, especially if I might not be able to see you for a couple of weeks. No way.

[00:06:05] I politely decline, and eventually he leaves. I finish my closing duties and head to the employee area. As soon as I get down there, I tell one of my managers about the situation and ask if I can take the side exit from the store.

[00:06:21] At our store, we have to exit out of one of the main doors after we close, but there is a side door that we can use to get into the building before we're open, and the managers use it to get out after we close.

[00:06:35] He agrees and tells me that he'd walk me to my car to make sure I'm okay if I'm cool with waiting a little while. I am. So I walk out the side doors with a couple of managers, and I get to my car, then as I'm driving away,

[00:06:51] I see a large van with extremely tinted windows parked in front of the front door. There is no way to know for sure if it was the customer in that van and if it was as ominous as I thought it was,

[00:07:09] but I do know that I wasn't able to stay and figure out. I took a long and winding path home that night. So to the very hot guy I sold coffee to, let's not meet, unless of course I just read all of these things wrong

[00:07:23] and you're just socially awkward, and were actually into me and not in a creepy way. But just to be on the safe side, let's not meet. When I was in third grade, there was a girl in my class.

[00:07:51] She wasn't particularly liked by anyone as she was quite the bully and overall rude person even to adults. She was known to have anger issues and get mad at people for what seemed like no reason. I was no exception. Her name was Carly.

[00:08:11] She had been mean to me in the past, but that didn't deter me from going to her house one day after she had been quote nice to me all day at school. Naive, I know. So before leaving school that day,

[00:08:26] I called my mom to ask if I was allowed to go to Carly's house. She said yes and to call her when I get there so I can give her the address. Now, when I think back, I wonder if she had a bad feeling about the situation

[00:08:42] since she doesn't normally ask for the address. And she isn't picking me up since Carly's house was only about two blocks away. When I got there, after calling my mom of course, Carly insisted on making me look quote pretty, aka wetting my hair and brushing it.

[00:09:02] I let her. She then told me to close my eyes and that she was taking me to the living room. I closed my eyes and she began to guide me towards the bathtub. We were already in the bathroom,

[00:09:15] so the tub was a solid two feet away from where we were standing. I opened my eyes just enough to see where she was guiding me. My foot hit the side of the tub and I said, this didn't feel like the living room.

[00:09:32] She said it was and that I just need to step over the gate. I tell her that I know this is the bathtub. She stops trying to get me into the tub and then she brings me into the kitchen instead. She says she is going to make cereal.

[00:09:49] I was standing behind her when she reached into her dishwasher and said that she was grabbing a spoon. The way that she clarified that she was grabbing a spoon immediately told me that she wasn't really going to grab a spoon. And it was for sure not a spoon.

[00:10:10] I can still remember the feeling of dread that overcame me when she said those words. She pulled out a large knife and backs me up to the counter, holding the knife only inches away from my neck. I can't remember if any words were exchanged during this.

[00:10:29] Maybe I was too shocked to say anything. I only stayed there for maybe 30 seconds before I pushed her aside and ran towards the door. I grabbed my backpack and put my winter boots on. By the time that I had my boots on,

[00:10:47] Carly was trying to block the sliding door. I pushed past her again and flung open the door. I ran down her patio steps and out her front gate, not bothering to even close it. I just wanted to get home to where I was safe.

[00:11:03] I remember her yelling at me as her dogs escaped through the open gate. I didn't care. One of her neighbors who was in their front lawn waved and smiled at me, clearly oblivious to what had just gone down. I ran down the road and to my house,

[00:11:20] not stopping once. It wasn't until I got to the door of my house that I broke down. I began to cry and yell for my mom. My two older sisters yelling at me to shut up. My mom walked over to me and immediately knew that something was wrong.

[00:11:38] I explained what happened and she was very understanding, but still freaked out. I can't remember if it was the same day or the next day that I had to talk to a police officer about what happened. He asked me what kind of knife it was and whatnot.

[00:11:58] I think my mom relayed most of the story to him because I don't remember having to say much. They got in contact with Carly's foster mom and Carly got into big shit for it. At school, Carly yelled at me for getting the cops involved

[00:12:14] and tried to guilt trip me by saying that her mom threatened to put her back in foster care if she did anything like that again. I told her I didn't care. The school was also notified of the situation

[00:12:28] and the teachers made sure to keep an extra eye on her. But that didn't mean I wasn't paranoid around her. I made sure to keep my guard up for the rest of the school year. Which was true. She had it coming.

[00:12:43] I always thought that it was a bit extreme to involve the cops, but I ended up making Carly never mess with me again. I ended up moving after that year for unrelated reasons, only to move back before I started sixth grade. The first day of middle school,

[00:13:01] I was awaiting for them to call my name so I know which class is my homeroom when I hear an all too familiar name. Carly. I watch as no one goes up to join the class. Was she not here? Next, I was called.

[00:13:22] I go up to join the class that she would have been in. I found out later when the teacher was doing attendance that she had moved three hours away just before the beginning of the school year. It's been just three years since then

[00:13:36] and I can only hope she doesn't come back. But if she does, I guess I'm not too concerned. And if she does, I will make sure that she stays the fuck away from me. That incident has given me some trust issues,

[00:13:53] but at least now I know how to choose my friends wisely. Around nine or ten years ago, I was living with my mom, dad, an older sister in an oldish house in a very small village. And when I say small,

[00:14:13] I mean that its only main feature was a small church with a few houses scattered about that were occupied mostly by very old people. At the time, it was summer so I wasn't at school or anything. And since we were so far in the middle of nowhere,

[00:14:31] I spent most of that time at home glued to one screen or another. The usual routine was I would wake up around ten or eleven. By this point, mom, dad and sister had all left for work so I had the house to myself.

[00:14:47] I'd go downstairs, make some toast, watch some random stuff on TV for an hour before heading back to my room to continue with whatever game I was grinding through that particular day. The usual habits of a 17-year-old guy

[00:15:03] cut off from the rest of the world by many, many fields. I should give a quick rundown of our house. It was an older cottage with two rooms upstairs, mine and my sister's, and everything else downstairs. As you walk up the stairs, you got a very small landing

[00:15:22] and it could go either left to my room or immediate right to my sister's room. Basically, the way this was laid out was that I could sit in my room with the door open and my sister's room is directly opposite. I also should mention

[00:15:40] that the ceilings in both our bedrooms are slanted. We were basically in a large attic where the roof slanted down because of where the slant met on the wall, we had a crawl space that ran the length of the house on either side of the rooms,

[00:15:56] both with a small door to access them. These were mostly used for storing normal attic stuff, like Christmas decorations and old forgotten toys. The doors to these were very thin, about four foot tall with a small handle on the outside. This is important because turning these tiny doorknobs

[00:16:19] opened them but only from the outside. If the door was pushed shut with you inside, there was no way to get back out. I discovered this myself on more than one occasion. The door on my side ran along my room and along one wall in my sister's room

[00:16:40] and hers ran along the other side along my room. This space was not very big, you had to crouch to stand in it and most of the time you were there, you were crawling on your hands and knees. This is important, all of it, I promise.

[00:16:58] Anyways, this one morning I'm awoken to a familiar noise, some sort of small creature rustling around in the crawl space on my sister's side. I could hear this because my bed was against the wall that ran along it. Not an unusual noise, living in the countryside,

[00:17:18] we had mice almost constantly and they pretty much had the run of the storage spaces no matter how many traps were put out. I thought nothing of it and I got up and went off to begin my morning ritual of toast and television.

[00:17:35] The first odd thing that I noticed while I was watching TV was that I could hear movement upstairs. My sister's room was directly above the living room so I assumed that she had just not gone to work that day for whatever reason and just continued munching.

[00:17:51] About an hour or two later, I went back upstairs and booted up my PC. As I was waiting, I turned around to my open door and faced my sister's closed one and I realized that it was late in the day and she had not yet left her room,

[00:18:08] an odd thing since she normally parked up on the sofa in the living room on her days off and didn't move until our parents returned. We're not the most active family. I started to think that maybe she was at work

[00:18:24] and I imagined all of the noise from upstairs but as I mused this, I noticed the crack of light at the bottom of her door as a shadow passed by it. Okay, so there's definitely someone in there so it must be her, right?

[00:18:43] I once again pushed it from my mind and went back to my PC. More time passed and a thought came back to me. Why would she be at home and not leave her room? She only has a small TV in there and no books

[00:18:59] so what had she been doing all day? I glanced back around and saw another shadow under the door. She was still moving around in there so what was up? I finally decided to knock on her door. I knocked a few times then said her name. No answer.

[00:19:21] Weird, but maybe she had headphones or something on. I knocked a bit harder again and said her name again but louder. No answer. All right, I thought. Screw this, I'm just going to go in. So I cracked the door open and peered around. I found an empty room.

[00:19:44] No one inside at all. Feeling slightly confused but better that it was just my imagination I stepped in properly and looked around and saw something that made me panic. Near the bottom of her door that led to the crawlspace

[00:20:03] there was a small hole that the mice had made to get in and out at the bottom. Really small but just big enough to fit half of your hand through. There, coming through that hole were four fingers holding the door shut from the inside. At first I thought,

[00:20:26] no, it can't be fingers, don't be stupid until I watched them slowly creep back through the hole into the crawlspace. I completely lost my shit. Very quietly though, I might add. I packed out of the room, shut the door behind me and ran back to mine.

[00:20:48] Being the stupid teenager that I was, I grabbed what might be the most imposing weapon that I could find a fake Winchester rifle cap gun that I got from Disneyland a few years prior. I figured that if whoever was hiding in that bedroom

[00:21:04] didn't believe it was a real firearm, I could at least hit them with it. I ran off downstairs to where my dogs were on the far side of the house and called my mom who worked about a five-minute drive from our house.

[00:21:17] She told me to stay put and that her and her manager were on their way. In this time I made a small upgrade from a fake plastic rifle to one of my dad's golf clubs. I felt much better with that.

[00:21:30] Finally, my mom and her boss John turn up and I tell them everything leading up to this point. They say, okay, and we all set off upstairs to investigate. Me rather unheroically bringing up the rear with my golf club.

[00:21:44] We get into my sister's room and I point to the door. I'll never know if my mom is just hard as nails or massively stupid but while John and I watch, she marches over to the door yanks it open and sticks her head in.

[00:22:00] A moment passes while she looks left and right and John and I are preparing to yank her back from the clutches of the psycho-hobo murderer hiding before she shouts, Chris, what the fuck are you doing in there? Get out! Small amount of backstory. Chris was my sister's boyfriend.

[00:22:22] Unbeknownst to me, the night before, my dad had asked Chris to leave as he was staying with us around five days at this point. He said, yeah, that's cool and as far as my mom and dad knew, he headed home. What really happened was instead of leaving,

[00:22:39] he and my sister had planned to make it seem like he had left then he could stay another night. He would then wake up before my mom shouted for my sister to wake up for work like she did every morning

[00:22:51] and would hide in the crawlspace and sleep there until everyone had left for the day. The one small hitch in the plan was that they didn't think of me. They'd forgotten that I was home and conveniently sat directly opposite the only exit for most of the day

[00:23:08] so he was trapped. When I knocked, he hid himself behind the door and held it shut to prevent being locked in. Anyway, my mom swiftly told him to get the fuck out and not to come back. Sadly, this was not the last time we saw the guy.

[00:23:24] As it turned out, he had stolen quite a bit of money from my sister's room while he was hiding out then got her pregnant and proceeded to smash all the windows trying to get at her and her baby a year later.

[00:23:38] For a while, we lived in the same city when I went to university and he was spending time at the prison there for stabbing someone in a completely different town. Super guy. Oh, and a small topper for all of this as I mentioned earlier,

[00:23:55] the only rooms upstairs are mine and my sister's bedrooms. He had been there for close to 14 hours with no access to a toilet but don't worry for this guy because he had lots of empty bottles to piss in which he kindly left behind for us to clean up.

[00:24:13] And finally, around a year later as my mom was getting the Christmas decorations out which were at the far back end of the storage space she found a small bag filled with feces. I should mention that where she found it

[00:24:30] is exactly next to where my bed is on the other side of the wall. That rustling that woke me up that day, it was him hiding his shit amongst our tinsel and tree. So sisters, baby daddy who hid in our crawl space

[00:24:47] and used it as a private bathroom, let's not meet. This happened a few years ago while I was still in my hometown. I was going for a late night walk in the early AM which is fairly common and I always felt relatively safe

[00:25:16] and street smart to avoid bad situations. My walks would often take me all over town though a favorite haunt was a park we had down by the river. Though it was known as a hangout spot for weirdos and druggies so late

[00:25:33] I've walked there plenty of times and never encountered any problems. So I went down there again all the same just to enjoy the breezy river air. The walk to the park was uneventful so we'll get to the anatomy of the park itself

[00:25:49] something vital to realize the magnitude of the issue. The park was unfenced and easy to get into, open to the public and looking from the park itself you could see an opening to the beach and the river along that.

[00:26:03] There needed to be an opening because the beach was a bit of a drop off. You had to take a moderate step down from the concrete supporting the park itself just to get to the sand and away from this opening.

[00:26:18] The disparity between the concrete steps and the beach became such a length that they needed fencing so as to prevent people from falling and hurting themselves. Basically everywhere not beach led to a major drop off onto a sparse line of sand and muddy areas

[00:26:39] with only one thing separating you from the drop which was the fence or a major tree line. So as I'm walking through the park there's nobody around and it's absolutely silent until the hooting of an owl breaks it

[00:26:56] which was surprising because owls were rare in those parts at that time of year but I ignored it and continued my walk as it continues hooting. As I meandered closer to where it sounded I noticed two things that the owl sounded like it was in pain

[00:27:14] and that it was on the ground. I get really concerned for it and I want to help it so I start going over to where the hooting was coming from though tentatively because even right then a weird chill climbed up my spine though I couldn't say why.

[00:27:34] I get closer and it sounds louder, more hurt and definitely on the ground in the same place. I keep walking closer and I hear it right behind a tree line after the drop off point. Just a little bit more about the park's layout

[00:27:50] The layout anywhere past the tree line led to a drop off that was just a thin line of earth separating you from the water like a gorge. If you jumped down you were relatively stuck because you couldn't go forward for the water.

[00:28:04] Climbing back up was nightmarish for all the roots of the trees jutting out and going left or right would have forced you to follow an extremely narrow path with little room. This owl was right behind the drop off point so even getting closer I couldn't see it.

[00:28:23] The owl kept hooting and I got right in front of the trees and could hear it right underneath me. All I had to do was jump down and I would be able to get to it but I didn't. The weird feeling, this chill came up my back

[00:28:42] it kept getting higher and higher and more intense the closer I got and my conscious brain finally picked up on why. I started counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and the owl hooted. Again I counted up to 10 then it hooted again and again and again

[00:29:12] and I finally realized why I felt so creeped out and why my subconscious brain was screaming at me to run away. It wasn't an owl. It was a recording. A recording of a wounded owl on the ground waiting for anyone to come with the intention of helping it.

[00:29:30] Past the tree line obscuring their vision past a drop off point you couldn't climb back out from and on a path you couldn't run in at all where someone or anyone could be waiting. It was allure meant to lead someone into a trap.

[00:29:51] I suddenly felt very cold and clammy and like I was being watched. I immediately turned and started speed walking away taking the nearest exit out of the park onto as many lit streets as I could all the way home constantly checking to see if I was being followed.

[00:30:10] I stayed up the entire night fully paranoid looking out all of the windows that I could to see if anyone was there. Nothing bad ever did happen and no one ever tried to get me. The next night I went back with my sister's cell phone

[00:30:22] with the intent to call the police and report it if I heard it again but no hooting ever occurred and upon more thorough inspection nobody seemed to be lying in wait. I kept an eye on the newspapers for a bit after that too

[00:30:38] to check if anyone else reported similar happenings or God forbid anyone got hurt in a similar incident but nobody ever did and it never happened again. That's the end of my story and while I do continue to take night walks

[00:30:55] I always carry a weapon on me to defend myself and always, always make it a point to trust my instincts. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard the hot guy I sold coffee to

[00:31:26] the Reddit user TheDarkWolf Knife-wielding third grader by Reddit user SaberHD TheFingersUnderTheDoor by Reddit user FearNotMonkey and finally TheTrap by Reddit user JonathanQ I hope the sound quality was ok on this episode I'm still recording from home in my makeshift recording booth

[00:31:45] that looks like a coffin, a vocal coffin if you will and upstairs we have somebody working on the apartment they're making a video about a guy and somebody working on the apartment they're repainting and redoing the flooring we're actually moving up there when they're done with this

[00:32:04] so that I can have a more quiet space to record in but that being said I've had to do some additional post-processing on the vocal takes because of the noise so I hope it sounds ok and I appreciate you all for still listening to the podcast

[00:32:19] and sticking around during this pandemic I know it's getting a little crazy and I just hope that I can offer a bit of solace and distraction from everything that's going on in the world right now if you'd like to gain access to all of those bonus episodes

[00:32:35] head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to join you can support me there and you're gonna get a lot of bonus content I'm still streaming almost every night I've had to take a couple of nights off just to have a bit of a breather

[00:32:51] head over to twitch.tv forward slash let's not meet streams around 7.30 pacific standard time each evening I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet