4x12: Ted - Let's Not Meet

[00:00:00] I was a pretty sheltered kid. I grew up an only child that was homeschooled and raised in a strict religious home. At 17, I was gullible and unprepared to deal with the creeps that over a decade of customer service had in store for me.

[00:00:28] Sure, my mom taught me to be overly cautious of strangers and would often use her catchphrase trust no one on me anytime I left the house, but rules and warnings only go so far when you're thrust out of your little protective bubble and into the real world.

[00:00:43] Since I'm the face of the podcast, a lot of people know me by my real name, and for my safety and the safety of others, I've changed the names and some details surrounding this story. However, the events will be laid out exactly as they took place.

[00:00:56] At 17, I lost my first job at a local appliance repair shop in my hometown when it closed down. After one day of working in the meat department at a grocery store for pennies on the dollar,

[00:01:07] I jumped at the opportunity to work at a coffee shop with one of my bandmates and good friends at the time. His name was Jeff. He was into weed, music, and well that's about it. But weed wasn't my thing at the time. Remember the bubble.

[00:01:22] But music was everything to me so we got along just fine. Jeff and I worked very early hours and being homeschooled I was able to work any shift that they needed me to at 17 regardless if it was legal or not.

[00:01:35] Besides, I cheated through most of my schoolwork anyways. We got to know a lot of the regulars of the shop but one man in particular stood out. He was very friendly and he would always show up around the same time every single day, usually around 5 or 6am.

[00:01:50] He would grab a coffee, read the paper, and chat with us about the news. He was a war vet, probably in his 70s at that point. We're going to call him Ted. I never got any bad vibes from Ted.

[00:02:02] He was known amongst a small circle in town due to his veteran status, he was polite to everyone in the store, and they never felt unsafe around him. I mean the guy is 70 years old.

[00:02:12] Sure, I was and still am about the size of a 14 year old girl with a giant beard but I probably still could have taken him. One day Jeff comes in and asks me, Have you talked to Ted today? Yeah of course, I replied.

[00:02:28] No, did you really talk to Ted today? Uh yeah, but I'm not sure what you mean. Jeff kind of laughed and told me that I should let him know when I really talked to Ted.

[00:02:40] I had no idea what he was getting at but I just laughed it off and went on with my day. After all, Jeff was the town stoner and he was known for some wacky behavior.

[00:02:49] Someone once told me a story about how he was kicked out of the mall around Christmas time for hotboxing the Santa's Workshop display where the sad mall Santa would take pictures with all of the screaming kids. I quickly forgot about our conversation until the next day.

[00:03:05] Same thing, Jeff asks me if I've really talked to Ted. I laugh a bit, then ask him to give it up and just tell me what he's talking about. Again he just told me to let him know when I really talked to Ted.

[00:03:17] Alright, whatever, I get back to my work and I forget about it. The following day, I found out exactly what Jeff was talking about. Ted came in at his usual time, grabbed a paper, bought a coffee and sat down to read.

[00:03:32] After a few minutes, when things slowed down, he came over to the counter and he wanted to chat just as he always did. We'd usually talk about the weather, news or any other boring topic that a 17 year old couldn't care less about. I was always polite though.

[00:03:47] I liked Ted. At least until that day. After some repetitive small talk, Ted reaches over the counter. He grabs my arm and pulls me close enough to whisper into my ear and quietly but inappropriately asks, Have you ever had someone lick your asshole?

[00:04:06] At first, my 17 year old brain wanted to laugh. This was the kind of guy talk that every teenager was used to. Guys are gross at that age and we had absolutely no filter.

[00:04:17] But the humor of the initial question quickly died as I realized that this was a very serious inquiry. This 70 year old war vet had a tight grip on my beanpole of an arm and was pulling me closer than I ever wanted to be to his face.

[00:04:33] I stammered out a nervous, no, but he pulled me even closer. His grip tightened and then he whispered, You will be screaming in pleasure. He let go of my arm and smiled and kind of laughed as he walked back to his seat.

[00:04:53] Completely caught off guard and thoroughly disturbed by the events that just took place, I couldn't decide if I should laugh it off or go home sick. I composed myself and turned around to see Jeff giving me an empathetic look with an

[00:05:07] I told you so half grin on his face. Apparently for the last few days, Ted had been buttering up to Jeff and pulling the same routine of bringing up sexually graphic topics only to reward him with a pack of

[00:05:19] cigarettes and a $20 bill at the end of his visit. Just as Jeff finished explaining this strange routine to me, he looked past me and gestured toward the front counter. I turned to see Ted standing there with a creepy smile on his face, a smile that was

[00:05:38] once pleasant and endearing, but now chilled me to the bone. I swallowed hard and made my way to the counter. Ted laid out a pack of unfiltered lucky strikes and a $20 bill on the counter.

[00:05:53] He looked at me hard and said, Have a good smoke and smiled and left the shop. That's when it all dawned on me. He was paying us off so that he could get some kind of sexual pleasure out of a few moments

[00:06:05] of dirty talk with some young guys. I don't know if he was just trying to fulfill some kind of fantasy with this or if he just genuinely wanted some guy talk, but this was not the way to go about it.

[00:06:20] He knew how old I was and he knew what kids would do for a pack of smokes and a quick $20. Unfortunately for him, I didn't smoke, but the $20 was nice. I'm not ashamed to admit that I gladly kept the $20, but I gave the smokes to Jeff, who

[00:06:35] assured me that it never really went beyond a few creepy questions and even though it was completely inappropriate and predatory behavior, we couldn't help but have a good laugh at the whole situation. It was the easiest, albeit not so pleasant way to earn some extra cash.

[00:06:50] However, not quite enough cash for me to ever want to experience his hot breath in my ear again as he asked me about his favorite sexual acts. I felt embarrassed about the whole thing and avoided all contact with him for the next few days.

[00:07:05] Then, my boss let me go because we were overstaffed and to be honest, I was a lousy employee. I was kind of thankful for the chance to collect some more unemployment and get out of what I didn't recognize at the time as a dangerous and toxic environment.

[00:07:20] Fast forward a few weeks and I'm now 18 and ready for the next chapter in my life. I got a job with my other bandmate delivering pizzas. Aside from getting into my first car wrecked with an older guy that didn't have insurance

[00:07:34] and the shitty hours, it was a rad job. Listening to music and driving around all day while making a killing in tips was the perfect job for me. One late rainy night, we got an order from a customer named Ted.

[00:07:49] My heart immediately sunk when I recognized the last name. You guessed it, the very same Ted that paid me off to talk salad tossing and I was the only available driver at the time.

[00:08:03] I took a deep breath, grabbed the order and set out on the longest delivery of my career in pie slinging. I prayed to the whole way there that it was just a different Ted with the same last name

[00:08:13] but in a town as small as ours, it was very unlikely. One week, my bare naked ladies came on the radio just to taunt me as I sped through the wet unlit streets of my hometown.

[00:08:26] I arrived at a somewhat run down apartment complex, looked at the number on the receipt and made my way up the stairs to the second floor of what looked more like a cheap hotel rather than an apartment building.

[00:08:38] I knocked and waited as my bowels started to work overtime. The rain was getting louder and heavier, only adding to my anxiety. The door unlocked and opened just an inch.

[00:08:51] It was too dark and there wasn't enough clearance for me to make out if I was going to be dealing with the last person on earth I ever wanted to encounter on a night like this or just another customer with that same name.

[00:09:04] That's when I heard the cats, my worst enemy. Don't get me wrong, I love cats and I love all animals but I'm deathly allergic to cats so the sound of what I could only assume were several very vocal felines topped off my anxiety for the night.

[00:09:21] The person opened the door a little bit more, about six inches at this point. I was greeted with a very familiar face. Ted. You'll need to sign here sir, I said shakily while holding the pizza box out with the

[00:09:35] receipt on top hoping that he wouldn't recognize me without my beard. I had since shaved because the new job required it. It made me look even younger. But that's when I realized that I left my pen in the car.

[00:09:50] Card orders required a signature and it gave the customers a chance to write their tip amount as well. I apologized and told him that I would run back to the car and get one. He definitely didn't recognize me.

[00:10:03] He said, oh don't worry about that in that familiar voice that filled me with dread. I've got one over here at my computer. He seemed emotionless and not at all like his old bubbly self. Maybe it was the weather. Regardless, I'm just happy the guy didn't recognize me.

[00:10:23] He opened the door a bit more as the smell of ammonia bellowed out of his dank and depressing apartment. It was a mess. Come inside and shut the door. I don't want the cats to get out. He said firmly. I was right.

[00:10:38] There were at least four or five cats in plain sight all practically harmonizing together in a song written and performed only to taunt me even more on this night that I thought would be the last night of my life.

[00:10:51] I began repeating the lyrics of that fucking Barenaked Lady song in my head to try and calm my nerves and keep my mind off the fact that this 70-year-old pervert just asked me into his cat dungeon.

[00:11:01] Sorry, sir, I'm not allowed to come into customers' homes, I said nervously. I wasn't even sure if that was a real policy. Just quick thinking on my part, I guess. He quickly turned and gave me a sour look.

[00:11:16] This was not the same person that I served coffee two months ago. I mean, it was, but he was different now. I fully expected to be greeted by that creepy, pearly-white dentured smile. Instead, I was greeted with a hollowed out old grump of a man.

[00:11:35] However, when he turned to shoot me daggers, I was given a partial view of his computer screen on the desk where he had been searching for a pen. I audibly gasped when I saw a Yahoo video chat session was opened.

[00:11:51] It was a large, naked, heavyset man on the video feed. You can probably guess what was going on, and I'll leave that to your imagination. But the smell of the cat piss wafting from the creepy old pervert's home and the live

[00:12:07] video of the naked man wasn't what finally sent me running like hell. I was frozen, completely in terror. It was the fact that Ted's webcam was conveniently facing the front door of his apartment, and

[00:12:23] just under the video of the man was a tiny preview window of that webcam. It gave this strange man on the internet a perfect view of me as I saw myself on the computer screen.

[00:12:37] This all happened in a matter of three or four seconds, but I can honestly tell you I did not wait for Ted's signature. I ran down the stairs faster than I ever have, jumped into my car and sped off like a madman.

[00:12:49] When I got back to the pizza shop, I explained everything to my boss, and he put the guy on a list of places that we would never deliver to and let me go home early.

[00:12:59] I never really told anyone else about the last half of this experience, as I was young, dumb, and totally embarrassed about the whole event. I even asked my boss not to tell the co-workers.

[00:13:10] I usually omit that last half of the story when telling people about creepy old Ted. I came out of it unscathed, and it didn't really have any kind of lasting negative effect on me.

[00:13:21] I was able to brush it off and use it as a learning experience to know when to trust my gut and not put myself in danger. It was just one of the few events in life that led me to doing a true horror podcast and developing

[00:13:33] a strong sense of empathy when reading and narrating all of your terrifying stories. Ted was in the paper a few months later, but not for what you'd think. He had passed away in his webcam cat dungeon.

[00:13:48] He never harmed me or anyone else, as far as I know, and like most of the authors of the stories on this show, I didn't go to the police, as I was pretty embarrassed about

[00:13:56] the whole thing, and I ultimately didn't want to have anything else to do with that guy. So creepy Ted, well, you're dead, so I don't expect to meet you again in this life, but

[00:14:07] you can bet your ass I'll be telling everyone about you when I get to the next. Let's not meet. I was in high school, freshman or sophomore, so about 14 or 15 years old, but I still looked much younger.

[00:14:35] I rode the city bus to school because no buses from the school routed through my neighborhood. My mom could have dropped me off at the time, but she started work at 8 and my school started at 9, and I wasn't interested in being at school around 7-15.

[00:14:52] Also for whatever reason, I didn't tell her about the previous creepy encounter that I've had. That morning, I get on the bus as usual. It's not empty, but not full.

[00:15:04] I was part of JROTC in high school, and that day was uniform day, so I was wearing my uniform. If you've ever seen female military uniforms, you know that they're the least flattering thing in the world.

[00:15:19] I include this description in case there's any chuckle fucks out there who think what you're wearing when you get creeped on may make a difference. So I'm sitting in my seat surrounded by this big ass backpack and a guitar case for my music class.

[00:15:35] Suddenly this dude just materializes in front of me. I look up and see this guy, average height, sandy colored thin hair, and drug skinny with a tweaker face so he could be anywhere from 20-40.

[00:15:52] He stands awkwardly in front of me and then thrusts his arm out and holds a folded piece of paper in front of me. He gestures for me to take it, and it's so early in the morning and I'm so confused that I take it, and he walks away.

[00:16:10] I open it and read it. It's a note that he wrote. It said something along the lines of, hey my name is, insert name, and I've been watching you for a while, now I'm switching buses soon so here's my phone number, call me.

[00:16:27] It had a phone number written down. I can barely process what I've just read and I can just feel his eyes on me. I arrange my stuff in the empty seats around me like a barrier, and when my bus stop comes I fly off the bus.

[00:16:45] I ran to the ROTC building where I could usually hang out before school. I burst into the building and basically tackled one of the ROTC instructors and clung to him, shaking like a leaf and crying, holding the note and talking incoherently. Now our instructor was obviously retired military.

[00:17:06] He took the note from me, read it, and got the most steel-eyed look. He sat me down in the chair and walked over to the school phone on the table. He calmly dialed the number, and that dumb creepy motherfucker answered. My instructor confirmed that it was him.

[00:17:27] Then he quickly told him that he was my father and asked why the fuck did you, a grown man, give my 14-year-old child your phone number? The creep basically went, uh, well, uh, while my instructor released a stream of very experienced

[00:17:45] ex-military based threats until he could hear the guy just about shit his pants. He finally told him never to contact me and hung up and gave me a huge smile and a hug. I was smiling through my tears at that point, having listened to his tirade.

[00:18:02] I called my mom, told her what happened, and she came down to the school and we went and filed a police report. I told her I was never getting on a city bus again and I didn't care if I had to be at school even two hours early.

[00:18:17] I wanted her to drop me off until I could drive. So that's what happened. That instructor was always my favorite teacher, and I still go visit him, even after graduating college. I imagine someday at my wedding he'll tell this story.

[00:18:46] This story is by far not as crazy as some other stories on here, but I think it fits. This happened several years ago, I think 2009 or 2010. One summer evening, I hung out with my girlfriend for the day at her house.

[00:19:03] I ended up leaving around 10 or 11pm, so it was quite dark out. Before I drove off though, my girlfriend hung out with me in my car for a few minutes. Now my car was an early 90s Dodge. It didn't have automatic locks.

[00:19:19] When my girlfriend stepped out of the car, she didn't lock the door. I drove off and instead of taking the back road home like I usually do, I decided to take the main road. Since it was late, there weren't many cars out.

[00:19:34] However, there was a lady standing next to the bus stop. She was pacing around in a circle. I got a sense that she was anxious or nervous about something. When she saw my car, she flagged me down. I pulled over and reached over to roll down the window.

[00:19:53] No automatic windows either. That's when I noticed the door wasn't locked and before I could do anything, the lady opened up the passenger door and took a seat. I was surprised by this, but I didn't feel like this lady was a threat.

[00:20:10] She was blonde, probably in her late 30s or early 40s. I ask her if she's okay or if she needs help. She tells me that she's trying to get home, but her phone died so she couldn't get a hold of anyone.

[00:20:24] She also said she missed the last bus. This sounded plausible to me and since she didn't seem threatening and she was already in my car, I offered to drive her home. I start driving up the main road and I ask her directions to her place.

[00:20:40] We drove for maybe two minutes when she told me to turn into a residential neighborhood. As we were driving through here, she started talking to me nonstop. Thank you so much for stopping. Not everyone is as nice as you. You're real cute, you know that?

[00:20:57] Your car is super awesome too. I replied with a weak, uh, yeah, thanks. She went on. It's really nice to find someone who is so trusting this late at night. I like trusting people.

[00:21:12] At that point, we came to a stop sign so I looked left then looked right. When I turned to look right, she gave me a very creepy smile like an ear to ear joker smile.

[00:21:25] I also noticed for the first time that her pupils were very dilated and darting all over the place. At this point, I finally started to realize that picking up strange women at night who may be on drugs perhaps is not the best idea.

[00:21:42] I started thinking of ways to get her out of the car, but I didn't want to be rude. I know, I was young and dumb. Before I could think of anything though, she asks me for a phone so that she could give

[00:21:54] her friend a call and let them know that she was coming home. I sheepishly lied to her and said that I didn't have a phone. I was then struck with a feeling of dread because my phone's ringer was set to loud

[00:22:07] and any notification or message would reveal my lie. Just my luck, a moment later someone texted me and my phone went off. I thought you didn't have a phone. Oh, I forgot that I had it. I thought I left it at home. I don't appreciate being lied to.

[00:22:30] She trailed off as if she had more to say. I started getting very nervous at this point. We were deep into the neighborhood, but it was really dark. I needed to get this lady out now.

[00:22:43] She then points up the road and tells me to take a right at the next stop sign. The road curved a bit and from where I was I could see that there was a dead end sign.

[00:22:52] For whatever reason, the thought of turning onto this dead end road seems terrifying to me. Then I have an idea. Right before we got to the stop sign I pulled over and told the lady that my car was making

[00:23:04] a funny noise and the temperature gauge was slowly going up. I turned off my car and popped my trunk. I told her I was grabbing my flashlight from the trunk and if she could step out and hold

[00:23:16] the light for me for a while while I looked at the engine. I got out of the car, I looked back at her and she looked both mad and annoyed, but she also stepped out.

[00:23:29] When I went to my trunk and rummaged through the things that I had there for a few seconds, my flashlight was right in front of me, but I needed to be sure that she was standing in front of the car.

[00:23:40] Once she was there, I closed the trunk and started walking to the front of the car with my flashlight. My heart was pounding, but I knew I had to keep my voice steady.

[00:23:51] I gave her the flashlight and then said something like, oops, forgot to pop the hood open. Let me get that real quick. I got back into the car and I did pop my hood.

[00:24:03] At the same time though, I turned my car back on and threw it into reverse. The lady just stood there staring at me. Once I had enough distance, I put the car back into drive and drove straight past her.

[00:24:18] She was standing near a streetlight so I got one last good look at her and that's when I noticed she was holding a knife in her hand. There was a large man that stepped out from the shadows and stood next to her.

[00:24:33] At first I thought she might be getting attacked, but then they walked away together. I know that this was 100% my fault and it was stupid for me to let her get into my car and even more stupid to agree to drive her home.

[00:24:48] I don't know why she didn't try to attack me earlier. I don't know if they were simply trying to carjack me or do something else. Despite fully accepting the blame, middle-aged blonde lady lets not meet again.