4x04: The Ice Cream Man - Let's Not Meet (Feat. Margerie)

[00:00:03] My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 4, Episode 4 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast. My guest narrator this week is an old friend from summer camp named Margerie. Enjoy the show. I apologize if this gets lengthy. There's a lot to unpack here.

[00:00:50] This happened to one of my best friends and I back in 2017 and I feel like it's worth sharing. Some backstory, my best friend Elise was dating this guy Mark in 2016. They broke up right as New Years was approaching.

[00:01:06] I've known Elise for over a decade but we didn't talk much while they were together. I ran into them once at a local coffee shop, hugged her and was chatting away while Mark stared at me in disgust, as if Elise wasn't allowed to talk to her friends.

[00:01:23] At the time I thought nothing of it, assuming that he was just antisocial. I had no idea that he would go on to ruin an entire year of my life. It's really fuzzy as to how Mark got in contact with me specifically.

[00:01:39] I believe Elise posted about her breakup and I offered my support publicly so he targeted me. It began on New Years Eve. He started messaging me on Instagram over and over threatening me. I was having a get together with my then boyfriend,

[00:01:57] two of my now ex-best friends and my now ex-best friend's boyfriend. I remember seeing my notifications blowing up and ignoring it. Everyone else seemed more concerned than I was. I brushed it off until late the next day.

[00:02:13] I checked my phone and I had dozens of DMs from Mark as well as a few public posts that he tagged Elise and I in, calling us every name in the book and claiming that I was the reason that they broke

[00:02:26] up. I answered his DMs asking why he was targeting me. That was the biggest mistake I've ever made. After some angry messages from him, he blocked me and I thought that it was over.

[00:02:41] I also had some missed calls from Elise so I finally contacted her and asked what was going on. She frantically told me that Mark was a dangerous man and that he's been tormenting her since the day that they became a couple. He would throw her around his apartment,

[00:02:59] leaving awful bruises that she sent me photos of. He would threaten to commit suicide if she left him and he even threw a hissy fit at a local tattoo shop because they wouldn't tattoo

[00:03:10] Elise's first and middle name over his eyebrows. He got quote crybaby instead, which was fitting. Elise also informed me that Mark went to jail before meeting her for domestic abuse. He stabbed

[00:03:26] his ex-girlfriend in the leg and was only behind bars for a month before his dad bailed him out. With this new information, I was terrified. Elise told me where he lived and it was directly behind

[00:03:38] the coffee shop I mentioned earlier. I frequented that building and that part of town in general. That'll come into play later. I eventually calmed myself down though. I forgot about him

[00:03:50] until he got my phone number. I still don't know how he got it but I woke up to 30 plus messages from him and one day I was horrified. His messages included threats to kill himself if

[00:04:03] I didn't help him and Elise get back together, threats to kill me, cries for help, him blocking my number and then unblocking it just to start the cycle all over again. I, being very naive and not

[00:04:17] wanting to be held responsible if he actually did kill himself, did not block him. I asked him to leave me alone and if he wanted a number to a hotline where he could get some help. He pretended

[00:04:30] to calm down for a bit. I gave him the number after many messages of him saying how much he missed Elise but also wanted to kill her. I told her immediately and pushed her to go to the police.

[00:04:44] She didn't. He conditioned her to believe that he would get into trouble if she reported him. This went on for months. I usually didn't respond and when I did he seemed to chill out for a little

[00:04:58] bit. I'm skipping ahead to a particular night where Elise and I were hanging out at my house. We were chatting away when my phone started to light up. I ignored it and I just kept talking

[00:05:11] because I didn't want to be rude. Elise peeked at my phone and said, it's Mark, look. Sure enough, Mark was bombing my phone with threats to slit his own throat because he knew Elise was at my house

[00:05:26] calling us both cunts and claiming that it would be our fault if he died that night. I didn't answer but what came next is something that still haunts me to this day. He sent a video. Being curious, I clicked it. Elise watching over my shoulder.

[00:05:45] The video was of Mark's arm, a huge gash going down the middle of it. He was fake crying in the background saying, you made me do this. I fucking hate you both. He clenched his fist over

[00:06:00] and over again to make more blood gush out. Elise and I were so in shock that we watched the entire 50 second clip despite how disturbing it was. I immediately called our local police station.

[00:06:15] Elise gave them his address and an officer came down to my house to view the video and take down some notes. While we waited for the police to arrive, Mark posted a gruesome video to his

[00:06:26] Instagram and unblocked Elise and I just to tag us in it. He claimed that we told him to do it. Being a conventionally attractive guy but with an e-boy aesthetic, the girls that swooned over him

[00:06:40] commented some pretty harsh things about us and kissed his ass like crazy. He was admitted to the hospital that night and I wish they would have kept him but the harassment continued the

[00:06:53] second he got out. Time traveling just a little bit more now to a few months later. Mark hadn't let up and Elise and I were still very close. We had a friend Kayla visiting from across the

[00:07:06] country. She also had a run-in online with Mark and hated him but wasn't afraid of him. She was always carrying more than one weapon, some pepper spray and she knew how to fight. So she suggested

[00:07:21] that we go take a walk in the part of town that he lived in. She wanted to visit that coffee shop, see some more of our small businesses and then grab dinner at a local pizzeria.

[00:07:32] Elise and I reluctantly agreed. We parked in front of the coffee shop, grabbed some drinks and started to walk down the road. Within about five minutes, Mark drove by on his motorcycle. Elise and Kayla were immersed in conversation as I trailed behind. I looked up and made eye

[00:07:52] contact with Mark. Elise and Kayla noticed him as he sped off. Kayla assured us that he wouldn't get anywhere near us with her around. So we kept walking. Mark began circling the block that we

[00:08:05] were walking on his bike. As we crossed to the next block, he switched to that block and he circled it too. On the third block was the pizza place. Their walls are glass, all see-through

[00:08:21] of course. We went in and we were seated in the corner right next to the glass. We sat there for about an hour and a half, eating, talking and sipping soda. Mark circled the restaurant the

[00:08:35] entire time and we did our best to ignore him. Once we finished and got up to leave, Mark sped off and we didn't see him again that evening. Some time passed and Mark began riding by Elise's house

[00:08:50] every night. Within a week, he started doing the same thing to me. I told my parents and my stepfather who kept a close eye on our street. My mom always made sure that our doors and windows

[00:09:01] were locked, shades were shut, etc. before going to bed. My dad would even do a nightly, quote, patrol where he would drive around my street for a few minutes on his way home from work

[00:09:13] since he no longer lived there. He would call me and let me know that the coast was clear as he was leaving. I still woke up almost every night to the sound of his motorcycle engine revving outside

[00:09:27] my house. We had no proof of this to show the police because he was somehow doing this without a trace so we didn't bother reporting it. At the end of 2017, Mark took his motorcycle and sped off

[00:09:42] to California to avoid the legal trouble that he had got into. Elise and I were relieved to say the least. He still harassed us from time to time but he never came back. We stopped hearing from him

[00:09:56] for a while and we thought nothing of it. Fast forward one last time to September of 2019. Elise and I were out and about enjoying the sunshine when she got a phone call. Mark was dead.

[00:10:12] He had died right after his calls and messages had stopped. He got into it with a new drug dealer in Arizona and pissed them off just enough for them to shoot him. He died instantly. He also caught two

[00:10:27] more domestic violence charges in California and Arizona and was on the run from his warrant. His father told everyone it was accidental overdose because Mark was known for abusing Xanax and other miscellaneous drugs but it was to cover his sociopathic son's ass. I'm not sure if Mark's death

[00:10:50] was his karma or some higher being protecting us and all of the girls that he hurt before and would hurt in the future but he's gone. We never have to worry about our safety because of

[00:11:02] him ever again although seeing photos of him does still give me the creeps. Mark, I don't know where you are but this world is better off without people like you. I'm so glad you're gone. Let's never ever meet again.

[00:11:31] It was a long time ago before cell phones were prevalent and I was a mom in my early 30s who had just driven our kids to the pediatrician. The Macon, Georgia doctor's office was an hour

[00:11:43] away from our home and I was just taking the two youngest of my three, then ages one and three years old, to our scheduled appointment. Because we lived so far away their office always gave us

[00:11:53] the last two appointments of the day and we were grateful. The doctor had just built a new building off of a fresh spur of the highway so the location was quite isolated in every direction but a very

[00:12:06] nice facility compared to his old spot by the hospital there. His new building was also pretty far back on the new lot and my car, a black Jeep Cherokee we had owned for two years, was one of

[00:12:17] only four or five cars in the parking lot when we got there. I parked near the front door, removed the kids from their car seats and for the next hour or so we waited, then saw the doctor, paid and finally

[00:12:29] exited back outside. Mine was the only car left in the lot as I loaded the children in their car seats for our trip home but as the receptionist locked the front glass doors my car somehow

[00:12:40] wouldn't start when I turned the key. There was just an odd clicking noise. Gathering the children once again, I knocked on the door until someone allowed us back in and asked to borrow their phone to call

[00:12:50] a nearby garage for service. I found one in the phone book and the man said that he would come but that it might be a bit so I told him my location, left to go back out to the car, rolled down all

[00:13:00] the windows and loaded the children back into their seats once more as we waited. Soon we watched as all the lights were turned out in the building again and everyone left, their cars departing one

[00:13:11] by one from behind the building somewhere, leaving us now completely alone in the parking lot. As it was still light I spent a lot of time trying to tend to the children, digging through our car

[00:13:22] for snacks in a bottle, making sure that they weren't getting too hot, etc. Although the service station attendant said it was probably going to be quite a while. I was pleasantly surprised when

[00:13:33] a truck pulled into the empty parking lot pretty soon and a man got out of his pickup, smiled and nodded to me and said he was going to raise the hood. He was middle-aged and a bit scruffy but

[00:13:43] quite frankly many gas station attendants sometimes look that way, especially at the end of the day, and I was grateful when he began doing something under the hood almost immediately. I sat down

[00:13:54] again in the driver's seat with the door open, waiting for him to tell me to try the engine, but he seemed to be taking a long time checking the connections and I longed for him to just grab

[00:14:03] jumper cables, yet he never did. Without getting out of the car I asked him what he thought was wrong and he said, oh it's just a loose wire not the battery, and continued doing whatever he was

[00:14:14] doing. I couldn't see his face at all from where I was sitting but his hands were slightly visible through that long horizontal slit between the windshield and the raised hood as we waited.

[00:14:24] More than once he said that it was merely a loose wire and if I would just come up here really quick he would show me which one it was so it would never happen again. I remember kind of smiling

[00:14:34] and shaking my head, saying that sadly there was no reason to show me anything as I didn't know anything about cars. I just thanked him and continued to stay in the driver's seat, again just

[00:14:44] waiting for the inevitable signal to try to start the ignition that was most surely coming at any moment. At one point I remember thinking he was definitely flirting as he spoke, but I was trying

[00:14:55] above all to be polite and kind as he was indeed helping us. We were hot and tired and miserable and truthfully I was distracted with the kids. Oddly enough he was starting to sound a little

[00:15:07] frustrated with me because I wouldn't come up and look at the engine. I remember thinking that I certainly didn't want to make him mad where he left us there all alone with the sun sinking so

[00:15:17] quickly. And then the strangest thing happened. Another truck suddenly pulled into that desolate parking lot and as it did this nice guy working underneath my hood suddenly slammed it shut, ran to his truck, started it and drove away very quickly without even saying a word of goodbye.

[00:15:38] I was both confused and a little anxious when he did this because I didn't know who was now arriving. I even remember feeling a little frightened that he had suddenly left me there alone with two

[00:15:48] little ones defenseless. Why wouldn't he at least stay and speak to whoever was parking next to me now? It certainly seemed like the southerly gentleman thing to do. I looked around and was

[00:15:59] very aware once again that there were no visible cars on the road, no homes or businesses nearby, and the sun was continuing to set quickly. As this new also unmarked pickup pulled in next to me

[00:16:12] I got out of the car once again, this time more apprehensively. Upon exiting though he immediately introduced himself and his name and voice seemed to match who I had spoken to on the phone much

[00:16:24] earlier. He then actually called me by my name, apologized for being so late and finally smiled and stared towards the road pointing and asking who the man was that had just left so suddenly. Relieved and unfazed I just smiled back in surprise and told him,

[00:16:41] well I don't know, I thought all this time he was you. And we both laughed slightly as he then grabbed jumper cables, walked to the front of my car, raised the hood and started to work.

[00:16:50] I immediately sat back in the driver's seat once more, suddenly grateful that, with luck, that air conditioner would be blowing full blast shortly and once again checking the children. While listening for the familiar words, try it, I had my back completely turned towards the

[00:17:06] children, when he surprised me by suddenly coming to the driver's side door. In the strangest voice he said, um, ma'am, is this yours? And when I looked into his hands he was holding a long, thin, dagger-like looking device that was about a foot and a half in length.

[00:17:26] It appeared to be very old and covered with reddish rust, yet on one end it had tiny circular, small finger holes, as if it was a mix of a long, thin sword and scissors oddly combined.

[00:17:39] I remember being amazed but not frightened and I asked where he had found them. Under the hood, he replied. I said, just matter-of-factly, that I had never seen them before,

[00:17:51] but how weird was it that those things had somehow been stuck and undiscovered in my car for all those years and shook my head in surprise. He continued to stand there and stare at them, unbelievably,

[00:18:03] and he looked oddly pale too, like he couldn't find the words to speak for a bit, just continuing to stare at the unusual object. Honestly, I didn't care one bit about it. All I

[00:18:16] could think of was getting the car going, letting me pay him, how much it would cost and leaving. He didn't say anything else, just quickly set them on the curb, started his truck and then signaled

[00:18:27] for me to start the jeep. And when it immediately caught, my three-year-old cheered. Grateful, I quickly turned on the air conditioner full blast, rolled up all the windows, aimed the air vents

[00:18:39] back towards the back seat and reached for my purse to pay out. I stood up and took a few steps to meet him so I could hear the amount now owed. With both of our vehicles running, he came back

[00:18:49] around to my driver's side but, instead of handing me the bill, irritated me a bit by walking right past me and picking up that weird object once more. Ma'am? He said slowly. I want you to look at these

[00:19:04] one more time and held him out for closer inspection. This time, I moved a bit closer and actually really looked. In his hands, the item still appeared incredibly large, possessing an almost bayonet-looking quality except for the strangely small two loops on one

[00:19:23] end. I had never seen anything like it and told him so. As he held it, he spoke quietly and slowly to me, as if trying desperately to make me understand something that was somehow still

[00:19:34] going over my head. These weren't hidden somewhere in the engine, ma'am. They hadn't been there very long at all, because they were sitting right on top. They must have just been put there.

[00:19:47] I shook my head no and half smiled as I said, but they're obviously very old and rusty, to which he pointed more closely and replied, yeah, but see how sharp they are? These look like

[00:19:59] they've just been sharpened. And when I looked down, he was right. The long, skinny, dagger-like shape was unusual, but by far the oddest quality was just how sharp it appeared to be. The edges

[00:20:15] at the tip where the rust had been removed were gleaming silver. As I paid him, his final words to me were, ma'am, I don't know what was about to happen here, but I'm really glad I pulled up when

[00:20:28] I did. He quietly thanked me when taking the payment, told me that I probably needed to call the police when I got home, and then asked me where I wanted the item. I didn't want to touch

[00:20:39] it, didn't want to take it at all, but I released the back window so he could place it inside. We both then left the lot together, him turning one way, me turning the other towards the small

[00:20:50] winding highway that would lead me home, still an hour away. I did indeed contact the Macon police the moment that we arrived home and I got the children inside safely, but although they listened

[00:21:02] politely, they declined when I offered to bring the scissor-like thing to them later. The officer I spoke to said they sounded as if they were specialized surgical shears, from my description and measurements on the phone, which I found quite disturbing, as you can imagine. I remember wondering

[00:21:19] how he would even know that. Why would he say that? I had tried so carefully not to touch any of the surfaces, hoping that they might be able to left prints or test it for blood if they wanted,

[00:21:30] but the story seemed to bore him a bit and he didn't seem interested. His attitude insinuated that, as there was no longer an emergency, it was of no importance now. At the very end of the call,

[00:21:43] as if to wind things up, he did say that it sounded as if I was very lucky and that I might want to keep the shears for a few days, just in case someone from his office got back with me later.

[00:21:53] But that was all. I wrapped them carefully in newspaper and placed them in the brick storage unit behind our house. And there they remained for several more years, untouched, until we moved

[00:22:04] away and I finally—not wanting to bring them across several states—reluctantly threw them in the trash. Around that time, though, if you look through old news reports, women were going missing all over Georgia. Some bodies were eventually found, but others remain missing to this very day.

[00:22:22] I have often wondered what would have happened if the service station attendant hadn't arrived when he did. If my children would still have a mother. If I would have still had my son and

[00:22:32] daughter. If I would have missed all these years with them. I guess I'll never know, but I learned something very important about myself that day. I had always felt that I was pretty aware of my surroundings, pretty good at reading people and staying safe.

[00:22:48] But because I was exhausted and tired and hot and stranded in a different city, my common sense and intelligence simply left me for a bit and wasn't working at the time. And many of my friends and family still think that our car trouble that day

[00:23:04] and my lack of awareness could easily have cost us our lives. Honestly, I never hear anyone talk about it seriously, but living in small towns seems to make people cruel. Maybe it's just the sheer boredom that brings out the worst in people.

[00:23:33] Anyways, this is the first time I've ever posted here, so please bear with me. I grew up in a rural Texas town with the crippling meth problem. No positive I grew up in a rural Texas town with the crippling meth problem. No positive outlets for people to

[00:23:50] do activities like movie theaters or a park. And we didn't even have a large grocery store. At least not one large enough to just hang out in. The teens mostly ended up drinking, driving,

[00:24:03] and going to bonfires. But quite a few of these teenage boys in my neighborhood decided that being evil was the best way to have fun. They would literally go out of their way while driving

[00:24:15] to swerve and try to scare younger kids riding bikes or poison loose dogs and even set fire to a few of the trailers in my neighborhood while people were still in them. Only one arrest was

[00:24:28] ever made in connection to the arsons, but it definitely had been a group activity. My neighborhood was a trailer park in which each trailer was placed on a few acres of land with at

[00:24:40] least some forested area between each plot of property. The road was an older dirt road with gravel and rocks poured over the dirt, which is what I had to learn to ride a bike on. It was

[00:24:53] difficult. One day, I was around 10, so 15 years ago. I was doing my best to ride my bike on this rock road without falling while riding away from my house when I saw my older sister who was about

[00:25:08] 16 at the time sprinting alongside the road towards me from the opposite direction. I was going very slow trying to keep my balance but decided to just get off the bike when I noticed how panicked my sister looked. I saw a dust cloud coming from the road,

[00:25:26] but a fairly large hill was blocking the view of my sister and I from any vehicles that were coming towards us. When my sister got to me, she grabbed my arm so hard that I winced in pain and

[00:25:37] she pulled me away from my bike. By this time, the truck that was producing the dust trail was just coming over the hill but was still fairly far away, so I don't think that they noticed us.

[00:25:48] There are woods around 10 feet off both sides of the road where I was and my sister was pulling me into the woods on the left side of the road. I complied but was asking her what was happening.

[00:26:01] She just told me to hurry. We made it about 30 feet into the woods when my sister dropped to the ground and pulled me with her. She covered my mouth and told me to be quiet. I complied.

[00:26:13] I saw that the vehicle she was worried about was a black truck filled with five guys that were in their late teens or early 20s. The truck screeched to a stop right where my bike was.

[00:26:25] I froze solid when I heard my sister whisper, shit. Three of the guys got out of the car but didn't say anything. It was clear that they were looking very intensely into the woods

[00:26:36] on both sides of the road. Luckily, for some reason, I'm not sure of, they all lined up and started approaching and walking into the woods on the opposite side of the road.

[00:26:50] They were talking but we couldn't make out what they were saying. I was worried that they would take their time looking for us since only a handful of people lived this far down the road

[00:27:00] and it could have taken hours before another car would pass through. It took about five minutes of perfect stillness and silence before one did though. One of the guys had already placed my

[00:27:11] bike in the back of their truck when I noticed another car coming over the hill behind them. They quickly jumped into the truck and sped off. I waited there for probably 10 more minutes before

[00:27:23] we stood up and started the walk back home, although we walked right along the tree line instead of on the road itself just in case. My sister didn't say much to me but told my mom

[00:27:34] when we got home that one of the boys that she had been hanging out with was talking about wanting to kill some of the more annoying kids in the neighborhood and she assumed that it was a good

[00:27:46] bet that one of those annoying kids might end up being one of her three younger siblings. It could have been any of us but I was the one that wanted to go for a ride on my bike alone that day instead

[00:27:59] of playing video games with my two brothers. She decided to head home when none of the other guys seemed to go against what the guy was talking about. He was talking about wanting to kill kids

[00:28:10] and even jokingly escalating the desire to kill annoying kids with more details. She had been running home and got just enough of a head start before the boys hopped into their truck to stop whatever they might have done. The cops were informed but apparently the boys disagreed

[00:28:29] and a parent claimed that they never left the trailer so nothing ever came of it. I knew two of the boys names because we lived in the same neighborhood in this small town

[00:28:41] and I know they never got less evil. They later invited my sister to a bonfire party that everyone was going to be at so they said but my sister decided not to go and when she asked all

[00:28:56] of her friends how the party was literally no one knew anything about it. That is because she was the only one invited. She stayed away from them ever since and fortunately neither of us still

[00:29:11] live there. Of the two that I knew, one is currently incarcerated for several drug-related offenses but the other is still out there. As far as the other three that were in the truck, I have no idea

[00:29:26] where they are or what they're up to so to the garbage boys in the truck you can keep my bike because I hope we never meet again. Back in my high school years I'd often meet with a few friends at

[00:29:53] a local Dunkin Donuts which was conveniently near a railway we'd all take to our weed guy's house. My closest friend at the time, Katie, and I usually met up earlier than everyone else just to hang out

[00:30:05] order our extra large drinks and hash browns and attempted some hey mister shenanigans to score some tall boys from anyone willing to buy us beer. I'd consider us to be pretty naive and overly nice

[00:30:18] girls which never proved to be an issue to either of us until we were nice to the wrong person. Now for a little background of my hometown. I grew up in the forgotten borough of New York City,

[00:30:30] Staten Island. For those who were unaware there was and kind of still is a pretty horrendous opioid epidemic so seeing zombie-like civilians strolling the streets is fairly common. Because of this I became pretty good at spotting out someone struggling with heroin and things of the sort.

[00:30:49] Anyways on this one day Katie and I met up at Dunkin and sat at our usual booth. We were in the midst of messing around with our phones and being our overly giggly selves when I

[00:30:58] noticed out of the corner of my eye someone suddenly stop outside of the glass door. Still smiling I glanced over to see if it was maybe one of our friends and ended up making direct eye contact with the basic Staten Island looking dude.

[00:31:13] I looked away unbothered and carried on, just another customer anyways. After the guy got his coffee he sat directly at the table across from our booth. I chose to ignore the fact he sat weirdly close and resisted eye contact since that already

[00:31:28] awkwardly happened but I guess the motion caught Katie's attention and she looked over her shoulder at the man settling in. She looked back at me made a face that said uh okay and we just giggled and

[00:31:41] tried to move on. Every now and then I glanced in his direction mainly just because I like to be observant of my surroundings but also because I kept seeing him scratch at his nose neck and face

[00:31:51] in my peripheral vision and noticed he was bleeding from various little cuts on his body. This was a dead giveaway he was doing some form of opiate as they tend to get very itchy and

[00:32:01] scratch until they break skin. A few minutes later the man asked if one of us had a charger he could borrow. I kindly denied and Katie only had an iPhone charger while the man clearly had

[00:32:12] an Android phone. This slight exchange was enough for the man to feel invited and he'd continue to make comments for quite some time. Being that this was about four years ago I don't remember the

[00:32:22] entire conversation but I do remember him often asking general questions like if we live around here what we do on our free time and creepy things of the sort. I was pretty vague but polite in my

[00:32:35] responses but Katie was always a bit more enthusiastic in her words making it pretty easy for this guy to reciprocate and basically join our conversation all together. In Katie's innocent

[00:32:46] stupidity the guy basically found out some of the main train stops we'd get off at to hang in those areas. He also found out that we would indulge in the devil's lettuce which only made this guy feel

[00:32:57] even more inclined. At some point he mentioned how his ex-girlfriend got him into some trouble, got him into heroin which he used to sell, served jail time for, and pretty recently got out.

[00:33:08] He also mentioned how he's been an ice cream truck driver ever since his release and told us that he's always driving around the train stops Katie mentioned earlier. He also repeatedly offered to

[00:33:20] give us rides around in his truck someday with free ice cream as the bribe. Again we were pretty naive and overly nice girls, Katie more so than I, so one thing led to another and eventually this guy

[00:33:32] was asking for Katie's social media which she happily obliged to. She's always been really dedicated to expanding her follower count. Throughout this entire exchange I was mostly just nodding, smiling, laughing here and there so my remaining silent during the social media

[00:33:48] exchange went unnoticed. However once the guy started following Katie on Instagram he quickly found mine through a tagged picture on her page. I wasn't private at the time so he immediately started liking and commenting on nearly every one of my pictures. The comments were extremely

[00:34:06] cringey consisting of hard eye and water squirt emojis and things like damn ma. Finally after the longest half hour ever I urged we should really be catching our train. Fortunately the man wasn't

[00:34:20] persistent after that and we were on our way with no problem. After some verbal recap of what just happened I convinced Katie to block him and I did the same. We brushed it off with that. I honestly

[00:34:32] forgot about the strange interaction until about a week later. I was hanging out with some friends at a park near my high school when munchies made me crave Ralph's Ices which was just up the block.

[00:34:43] I ventured off with one other friend and almost made it to the store before the sound of an ice cream truck approached from behind us. Completely lost in conversation my attention was only caught by the high-pitched screeching of the truck's brakes and a somewhat familiar voice. Of course

[00:34:59] it was him. He shouted out to me but with Ralph's only a couple feet in front of us I ignored him and rushed in with my friend. The guy didn't stick around being that he was blocking the whole lane

[00:35:10] on a narrow two-way road but we still called our friend at the park to pick us up in his car. For the next two weeks there was about four times this man tried to pick me up in his truck.

[00:35:20] At this point making me pretty paranoid I was potentially being stalked. The last time it happened he was parked directly outside one of the train stops almost as if he was waiting for me. He again called out to me asking why I blocked him and

[00:35:34] saying he just wants to be friends. At this point I had enough and told him to just leave me alone. My dad's a lieutenant which was a lie but slipped out in my defense. I walked away before he could

[00:35:46] respond and into the diner I was meeting my friends at that night. I saw his truck drive away in the window and never had an interaction with the ice cream man again. The sound of an

[00:35:56] ice cream truck has haunted me ever since. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard He Stalked Us Until The Day He Died by Reddit user khway. The Ice Cream Man by Reddit user mauryhjudith. Lost

[00:36:29] Bicycle by Reddit user worldsbestsad. And finally This Happened Quite A Long Time Ago by Reddit user romelondonparis. The stories you've heard this week were produced and narrated with the permission of their respected authors. If you'd like to hear your story on the show please email

[00:36:48] letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Thanks again to my good friend Marjorie for appearing on the show this week. It was a pleasure to have you. Don't forget if you'd like to gain access to all of the

[00:36:58] bonus content from Let's Not Meet, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to support the show. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.