6x13: Lost Stories 3 - Let's Not Meet

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. The stories in this show can be frightening and disturbing for some. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:19] My name is Andrew Tate and this is Season 6, Episode 13 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast. Every week since I released the first Lost Stories episode in Season 5, the number of requests for more of those episodes have increased exponentially. Now, I know this

[00:01:06] is a bit of a surprise if you aren't following me on social media, but something in my gut told me this week was the perfect time for some of those ancient recordings to be unearthed

[00:01:16] and remastered. If you're new and unfamiliar, these are stories from the original run of the podcast that are no longer available online. I've been spending a lot of time curating, remastering, and putting together these special episodes to share with you. Now remember,

[00:01:34] these are very old recordings, and I've done my best to improve the sound quality for a pleasant listening experience. Included are some recordings from the very first few episodes I ever recorded. I have to say, it's wild how much my voice delivery and overall

[00:01:52] cadence has changed over the years. It was like listening to a completely different person altogether. Well, in any case, welcome to Lost Stories Part 3. It's a collection of the very best and most frightening stories from, I guess what you would call the golden age of the show. Enjoy.

[00:02:25] This incident happened in the summer of 2015. I lived by myself in a nice house inside a small town. Low crime, but still the occasional shady fucker. Anyway, at work that day on a smoke break, I watched a dog get thrown from a moving vehicle. Four lane city traffic

[00:02:46] during the start of a rush hour. I ran right out there, scooped his little ass up, and booked it back to my workplace. He was not injured, amazingly. As a bleeding heart animal lover,

[00:02:58] I decided to take him home with me until I could figure out what to do with him. I have a large amount of cats, and always have. This was my first experience with the dog that

[00:03:07] I had solely been responsible for. This guy was very shy. Head hung, tail tucked, jumpy, just looking at me like I was about to beat him. I was clueless on the subject of dog personalities and tendencies. I just knew that they needed to be taken out frequently.

[00:03:25] His first night with me, we had been out about 15 times as I did not want him shitting in my house. I was having my final cigarette of the day on my porch. The dog was on a leash

[00:03:34] chilling under my chair as I smoked and poked about on Reddit. I see a man walking on the sidewalk that runs by my house. He kept glancing up at me before passing. Shortly after he passed my house, he stopped, turned on his heel, and approached.

[00:03:52] Hey, can you tell me where 302 Church Street is? He asked. I told him I would search the address with my phone, which of course was taking a minute to pull up. He explained that he didn't have a phone of his own and was attempting

[00:04:09] to get to a friend's house, taking small steps towards me the whole time. It's exactly two blocks north of here, right on the southwest corner of the cross street, I told him, pointing in the direction. He kept his eyes locked on me, continuing to

[00:04:26] slowly move closer. Dog starts to growl very softly at this point. I had forgotten he was even there until now. Mind if I take a look at the map? He grinned sheepishly. I'm bad with directions. I rose to my seat, pointing again. It's truly just two blocks

[00:04:47] up this road. Just follow the road two blocks. The house will be on your left, making it very clear that I wasn't just going to hand my phone to him. Well, can I call them? I need to let them know that I'm coming, he said, still creeping

[00:05:04] closer, extending his hand. No, I replied. How about text them? Pushing forward still. Dude, no. I started toward my door. Let me see your phone. He was becoming visibly pissed off, clearly trying to contain it, and getting way too close to my porch. As a last ditch

[00:05:32] effort of getting this dude to fuck off, I say, you need to get the fuck out of my yard. My dog is protective. He will fuck you up. Hell, I didn't know the first fucking thing

[00:05:44] about this dog, let alone whether he had the capacity to fuck someone up. I just hoped saying so would intimidate pushy phone guy. Like I had said the magic words, the puppy springs into action. A la wolf creature from the never ending story, he emerges like a

[00:06:01] fucking bullet from under the chair, growling, snarling, and barking his little ass off. He jerks me damn near off the porch trying to get at this guy. He sounded and acted like an 80 pound attack dog, not a 40 pound timid beagle mix. I was afraid. I didn't know

[00:06:18] if the pup would turn on me. As stated previously, at the time I knew absolutely jack shit about dogs. He backed his hindquarters into my legs, almost nudging me to the door, still carrying

[00:06:30] on, eyes locked on the phone dude and baring his teeth. Phone dude holds up his hands and backs off, stammers something like, uh, two blocks north right? Yeah? And begins walking that way. I go inside, cut off my lights, and peek out the window at him. He glances

[00:06:49] at my house, assured I'm inside, turns and begins walking the completely opposite direction I had pointed him in. Icing on the cake, he pulls out a phone from his pocket

[00:07:01] and raises it to his ear to make a call. Doggo secured his place as a member of my family that night. He is incredibly protective of me, and has frightened away another creep

[00:07:12] since this incident. He's attached to my hip, and has made it known that he is grateful to be safe and in a loving home, wherein he will never ever again become a projectile from

[00:07:25] a moving vehicle. His name is Hank, and I truly believe that night would have ended very poorly for me if he had not been there. So, let's not meet again. I worked at a local government agency for a long time. Each summer, we would get a new

[00:07:53] crop of interns. Most were fine, some caused issues, like when we caught two of them making out in the file room. Overall, they were just normal kids from high school or college trying to get some work experience. In 2016, my department received an intern later than

[00:08:11] usual right in the middle of summer. Warner was a bit older than the usual crowd around my age, maybe late 20s. We initially hit it off pretty well, and although I found him sort of strange, I didn't mind since he was friendly and we had some common interests.

[00:08:30] He was the only person in my department who was even close to my age. The interns were all teenagers, the regular staff averaged around 60, older than my mom. I was psyched

[00:08:42] to have a peer to chat with, so occasionally I would eat lunch with Warner or stop to talk at his cubicle. His strangeness was mostly an outsized personality, a mix of over-the-top enthusiasm with a bit of social awkwardness. I got zero bad vibes from the guy.

[00:09:04] It wasn't long before Warner started having major performance problems at work. He would produce little to no work on most days, no show, or arrive late without informing anyone, and generally acted unprofessionally. One day he showed up for work at 3.15pm when our

[00:09:23] work day ended at 4.30pm. The office manager was livid and told him to go home. His behavior bothered nearly everyone in my office, but I did not supervise him and we had plenty

[00:09:36] of slacker interns in the past. While his antics were a bit of a spectacle, it wasn't a big deal to me. If you're wondering why he wasn't let go, two words, political favor.

[00:09:48] I found out from Warner himself that he was hired because his uncle donated to the campaign of our big boss. He wasn't going anywhere. Near the end of that summer, I put in my

[00:09:59] notice that I was leaving my job and relocating to a new state. Once Warner caught wind of this, he would constantly complain that it sucked I was leaving because we barely had time to become friends. I would always laugh lightly in response and give a sympathetic

[00:10:13] yeah. He would start to monopolize my time at work more and more and it became disruptive to the people who sat near me. I found it slightly annoying, but I was also extremely

[00:10:24] happy to be leaving that job for reasons unrelated to Warner. And I spent my last month there not caring much about what my coworkers thought. I tolerated him lingering by my desk.

[00:10:37] One day he caught me leaving work and offered me a ride home. I usually took the bus and occasionally other coworkers would offer me rides home if they were going my way,

[00:10:48] so this didn't seem too odd to me. I accepted and walked to his car with him. It smelled awful and was full of garbage. He hastily cleared off the passenger seat and apologized.

[00:11:03] We got on our way, but once we were on the main road, he began begging me to stop and get dinner with him. I laughed and said he didn't need to ask me that insistently and

[00:11:16] said we could stop at a diner on the way. We had a nice meal with pleasant conversation. He was intelligent and had a variety of interests. Our political positions aligned and we shared disdain for our cranky old coworkers. I had a good time. I expressed that he didn't

[00:11:34] need to drive me all the way home now that it was late, but he kept insisting. So I relented. As I directed him toward my house, he started in again with the whining about how our developing

[00:11:46] friendship was cut short because of the moving. At this point, I was tired of hearing this. The decision to leave my job and move away from home was extremely difficult to make,

[00:11:56] and I was proud of how bold I was being. I stopped responding and laughing, and his whining faded out. We came up to the turn to get onto my street, and when I pointed it out, he accelerated and drove right past, laughing. I laughed in an oh-my-god-what-the-fuck way,

[00:12:16] thinking he was joking around. When I began giving instructions on how to turn around and get back, he started begging me to keep hanging out with him because he was lonely. This immediately set me on high alert. It suddenly hit me that I'm in a man's car,

[00:12:33] someone I don't know that well, who doesn't exercise proper behavior at work, which is the only context. I know him. And now he's displaying weird behavior outside of work as well. My

[00:12:49] instinct was not to insist to be let out of the car. I felt as if this would escalate the situation into something bad, and in hindsight, it may have been the right thing to do when I

[00:13:00] think about the type of person he turned out to be. I told him we could hang out at the park near my house if he wanted to talk. He seemed to like that idea, and we parked and walked over. The

[00:13:14] pleasant conversation resumed. Besides the weird clinginess, he was perfectly fine to talk to. Until he dumped his entire life story on me, including his prior arrest for theft, his heroin addiction, and related struggles with depression. I tried to be sympathetic,

[00:13:32] but I was very put off by this. It was a lot of highly personal information all at once, and I was still on alert because of his prior behavior. I tried changing the subject by

[00:13:44] showing him pictures of my dog. I scrolled one pic too far, and the next one was a photo of me wearing makeup and posing cutely. Way different than the slob I was at work. He grabbed the phone

[00:13:59] and went, wow, you are very photogenic. I felt awkward and didn't say anything. There was this long silence. Then he launched into a weird tangent about how compatible we are, and that

[00:14:12] we have similar interests. He wished that I weren't moving so we could try and hang out again, but on a date. I didn't say anything, and he broke this silence by saying, sorry,

[00:14:25] I'm saying all of this stuff. I'm actually high right now. That's why I know where Riverside is. I went there yesterday to buy. Otherwise, I wouldn't have said it. I'm really sorry. Internally, I freaked out. He had definitely put his drug addiction in the past tense,

[00:14:43] and I assumed it was something he was recovering from, not currently using. I also realized I had been in a car he was operating while he was under the influence. I don't know anything about

[00:14:55] heroin, so I was clueless. I felt very, very stupid. He immediately started whining and me not to judge him or hate him, and kept saying over and over again how nice I am, and how understanding I am. Also that I'm pretty and smart. All of these weird compliments

[00:15:14] interspersed with talking down about himself. I didn't know what to do, so I smiled reassuringly, and told him not to worry, but that I was tired and I wanted to go home. That's when he started

[00:15:28] crying. He had this weird, wheezy sob, but no tears were coming out. I sat there silently while he did this, trying to come up with some sort of graceful escape plan. My patience was wearing thin

[00:15:43] and my anxiety was through the roof. It's a weird feeling to be annoyed and panicky at the same time. I stood up and apologized, said that the park was close to my house so I'll walk,

[00:15:56] and started to leave when I remembered I left my stuff in his car. Trying a new approach, I casually mentioned I forgot my stuff in his car and joked that if he wanted my dirty lunch

[00:16:06] containers he could keep them. He ceased his bizarre crying, stood up and ran over to his car to unlock it, and I grabbed my stuff out of his back seat. His demeanor changed drastically

[00:16:20] as he calmly apologized for making things weird and asked if he could drop me off at home so I didn't have to walk at night. I said yes, but I made him drop me off a block over from my little

[00:16:32] side street so he wouldn't see which house was mine. I could end it there, but what bothered me the most about this guy happened after this encounter. I'll make this part short. A week or

[00:16:44] two after that weird evening, the end of August by this point, I had my last day at the job and moved a thousand miles across the country. Warner would sometimes text me long ramblings detailing his feelings about himself and our missed opportunity. I didn't respond to these

[00:17:03] messages. Now that I wasn't near him, I didn't feel the need to placate. The texts stopped after a few weeks and I forgot about him. Fast forward to February and I get a text from a co-worker.

[00:17:14] Her message said, sorry you had to hear this way. And her next message was a link to a local news article titled, man dies from wounds in Riverside stabbing Wednesday. Because of the way she worded

[00:17:28] it, I thought Warner was the victim. But when I read the article, it included his mugshot and the charges. He was the attacker. He murdered someone. I felt so shocked and disgusted. I couldn't

[00:17:42] believe I knew someone who killed another human. Later on, I called an old work friend for some details. Apparently, shortly after I left the job, he was fired for thrashing the men's bathroom

[00:17:57] like just threw around anything he could lift and poured all of the soap out and smeared it all over the place. He then lost his apartment. Presumably, some of the articles about the

[00:18:08] stabbing described Warner as a homeless man. I have to assume that's how he ended up in the aforementioned Riverside. There are a lot of homeless drug addicts who squat in abandoned houses. I wondered if the man he stabbed had refused to give him something that he wanted,

[00:18:29] and that's how he reacted to a hard no. I don't think I made all of the wisest decisions during my interactions with Warner, but I'm glad I was able to avoid setting him off since he was clearly not stable. Hands down the worst intern I've ever encountered.

[00:19:01] I'm an American living abroad in a place with a lot of nature and mountains not far from my house. It's been a great past month of summer weather, and I've taken advantage of it by hiking nearly

[00:19:13] every day. Now, the country I'm in is incredibly low-key, especially in the residential towns, so the illusion of safety remains. The mountains are just less than half a mile from my house.

[00:19:28] On this day, I was chatting with a friend from the US and decided to go up into the mountains base and loop back down. It's about 3 miles, but not as bad as hiking up the damn thing.

[00:19:39] So I'm chatting with my friend and making my way up this sloppy paved road to get to the base where I have my first unsettling encounter with a truck driver who tries to solicit me.

[00:19:53] I just give him this look like, what the fuck? I'm alone, you're full, and you're making me feel very unsafe. This doesn't turn into anything, but now I'm more on my guard. I am by myself after all,

[00:20:10] my husband is at work. I get to the base and I'm telling my friend about this creepy truck driver, and suddenly I get this urge to get out of plain sight. I'm at the mountains base, which is to the

[00:20:23] left and in front. To the right of me, for probably an eighth of a mile, is the parking lot. This mountain also has skiing in the winter. It's quite a popular place. I get across the parking lot to

[00:20:36] the right and enter the forest across from the mountain. I'm super thirsty, and the stream at the edge of this forest is drinkable, so I start taking sips from my palms. Now, this area of the

[00:20:50] forest is right by the parking lot, with a walking trail to get back down from the mountains base, but it's still enclosed by a lot of trees and shrubs, which obscured it from the view of the

[00:21:02] public. There were some people at the mountain, which was good. Anyway, I'm taking a break from drinking water, still talking to my friend when a different man enters the forest where I am. He starts staring at me. Seriously, he gave himself away from the moment he entered that

[00:21:23] forest. His body language, gaze, and everything was just off and wrong. I look him up and down. He's strong, in shape, white tee, blue shorts, brown hair and eyes with light skin. Just staring.

[00:21:44] But he doesn't approach me. Instead, he walks adjacent to me, crossing the path over the stream and goes to the other side of the stream directly across from me. I don't hear what my friend is

[00:21:59] saying, because I'm just watching him. I notice then that this guy has a knife. Like, clear as day has a knife. And he leans up against the tree, gripping the knife with his fist, and stares at me,

[00:22:16] waiting to see what I'll do. I quickly decide that going deeper into the trail is a no-go. It seems he's anticipating that I'm distracted talking to my friend, and that I'll continue on

[00:22:27] my way. This isn't an option because the trail doesn't lead to a road where cars can drive on for a good while. There's much fewer people on this trail as well. I've seen enough horror movies.

[00:22:40] I suddenly realized that my uneasiness and need to get out of sight when I got to the mountain might have been because I was also being pursued by this knife man, not just some sleep-deprived

[00:22:53] trucker looking for a good time. I turn on my heel and sprint out of the forest. Luckily, I see a car driving towards where I am. It's a mother teaching her daughter how to drive.

[00:23:05] It had randomly started pouring down rain, which I thought was appropriate, and I look like a lunatic myself running towards them. But it's okay, I'm 5'7 and blonde, not a creep with a

[00:23:19] huge knife. I explain to them what had happened, and they let me into the car immediately, lock the doors, and then call the police. After about 30 seconds, the man exits the enclosure

[00:23:31] and starts walking back in the direction of where I came from, at the mountain's base. He's walking briskly and doesn't have a car of his own. The car I got into had tinted windows, so I don't

[00:23:45] think he knew I was in there. I tell the mother that that's the guy, but we don't want to provoke him. He disappears quickly before the police arrive. I give the police a description, but now

[00:23:58] I don't think they ever found him. Part of me now wants to believe that nothing would have happened, and that he didn't go out of his way to make me feel uncomfortable. But everything about him was

[00:24:10] bad, and he was literally flashing his knife at me, sizing me up. It seems to me anyway that he knew I was foreign. I was on the phone and might not have noticed him. I looked like an easy target,

[00:24:26] but it's thanks to what I've read here that I'm more vigilant than ever, and squashed the situation before it escalated. A bit of advice to men, if you see a woman alone, leave her alone. Do not

[00:24:39] provoke her. Even if you think it's funny, we don't ask for it. We want to enjoy time out and about without having to worry we'll be approached somehow by creeps. Don't ask us out on dates.

[00:24:53] I don't go out for walks looking for a quick lay. We are always on the defense, always with a watchful eye, because sometimes when we aren't, and we aren't as lucky, bad things do happen.

[00:25:09] It's a privilege to go outside and not worry about something that could go wrong. I've had a couple of unsettling dreams and anxiety about the situation. Don't be the source of another person's nightmares. Freaky knife man, get a life and let's not meet.

[00:25:39] This is not a new story. This happened back in 1980. I was five years old and I was invited to a neighbor's birthday party. We lived in the quiet suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. It was an idyllic town. Trees lined the streets, looking over the neighborhood like giant looming sentinels.

[00:25:58] It was early October. I remember this because the houses were all decorated for Halloween. The boy's parents pulled out all of the stops to make their son's party one to remember. There was a slow-moving, sad-faced donkey that the smaller children were permitted to ride.

[00:26:17] I was not allowed to ride the donkey. I was a fat boy. Even at age five, I was also as loud as I was fat. It was my loud mouth that caused this pleasant afternoon of cake, ice cream, and piñatas

[00:26:31] to quickly unravel into a horrifying nightmare. Aside from the usual accoutrements at a seven-year-old's party, there was a clown. The clown walked around silently, prancing and smiling. He would laugh silently. He would do the old, I got your nose trick and pull coins from behind our ears.

[00:26:51] He made balloon animals and attempted to ride a unicycle. The other kids laughed, but I hated the clown. Everything about him made me uncomfortable. And because of this, my fat five-year-old

[00:27:05] self decided it was a decent idea to give the clown a hard time. The birthday boy announced aloud that it was time to head inside to see the special clown magic show. All the kids went into the

[00:27:16] living room and sat on the hardwood floor. I stood in the back. The clown proceeded with the magic show. He pulled a fake rabbit out of his hat and performed other hat tricks as I stood in the back

[00:27:27] of the room and jeered him. I would yell out how the tricks were all done. The clown continued to silently smile, making no sound as he went about with his magical presentation. His face said

[00:27:40] happiness, but his eyes screamed rage at me. This went on for about 15 minutes. The kids laughed as the clown fumbled through some crappy dime store magic trick. I do not know if it was an act of

[00:27:53] mercy, but birthday boy's parents shouted, piñata time! And all the kids ran outside to smash the cardboard donkey stuffed with candy. After a few minutes outside, all of the fruit punch I drank

[00:28:05] throughout the day wanted out. I scurried back into the house in search of the toilet. The house was quiet and the sun had shifted in the sky, leaving the kitchen and the adjoining hallway

[00:28:17] bathed in a murky early evening light. As I walked through the kitchen and into the hall, from the room in the hall stepped the clown into the hallway. He stood there staring at me,

[00:28:31] staring at him. It seemed like one of those Wild West showdowns from the cowboy movies my dad used to watch on television. He lurched slowly toward me, his painted smile unwavering, but his eyes bloodshot and filled with unbridled hatred. Here piggy piggy. I walked a few steps in

[00:28:56] reverse before spinning on my heels and trying to make it to the kitchen. I felt a large hand land on my shoulder. I was spun around forcefully and fell to the floor. The clown stood above me

[00:29:09] for a moment before putting a giant clown shoe on my fat chest. I remember trying to squirm, and I remember wanting to scream and cry for help, but it never happened. He stood over me,

[00:29:21] pinning me to the floor before brandishing me with one of those old style seltzer bottles. He proceeded to spray the crotch of my pants, and in a sing-song voice he cooed, piggy going pee pee, piggy going pee pee, until the contents of the bottle were drained.

[00:29:42] When he removed his foot from my chest, I lashed out with my feet kicking at his shins and trying to scurry away at the same time. I ran into the pantry and slammed the door. It

[00:29:53] was really a terrible hiding place. He had seen where I went. The pantry was just four feet away from where I was laying on the floor. Just moments ago, it was dark in the pantry and

[00:30:04] smelled of pine salt. There was no lock on the door to protect me from the clown. In the dark pantry, I slid to the floor and tried not to sob uncontrollably. Only minutes passed. Those minutes felt like hours. I heard no sound other than my wheezing

[00:30:23] and a fear fart that squeaked out, Oh piggy piggy, did you make poo poo in the pantry? The voice came from inside the dark pantry in which I was hiding. Or so I thought.

[00:30:39] I froze in fear, not moving, not breathing. I did not know where the clown was. If he were in the pantry with me, I needed to get out. And if he were out there, I needed to stay in the pantry. I lowered my head to the floor

[00:30:58] and squinted through the gap between the bottom of the pantry door and the floor. There was not much to see. What little light bled through the bottom of the door was quickly blacked out, and one bloodshot eye stared back at me from the other side of the door.

[00:31:14] Oh poo piggy. I squeezed my eyes shut and started crying at near hysterical levels. The door swung open and I screamed as loud as I could, standing in the doorway. It was my dad. It was my dad. What the hell are you doing in there? He asked.

[00:31:36] Clown! I screamed. He carried me out of the pantry and out of the house, and finally back to the safety of our home. So, all clowns ever in history, let's not meet.

[00:31:55] For a bit of context, I grew up in the middle of farmland in a large 1800s Victorian home. Given its history, there has always been several shacks and barns that once belonged to the builder

[00:32:16] of this house. There is a highway that sees maybe three cars on it during night, and directly across from said highway, about 200 feet inward from a cornfield, there are a few houses that have a similar design. The shack that I have always found creepy.

[00:32:37] As kids, myself and friends would dare each other to go inside and look, which always ended up with us going as a team. Nothing scary was ever found. Maybe a few broken glasses, metal piles, and miscellaneous items. There wasn't any electricity or any sort of utility

[00:32:58] that made it homely. So, years go by and the existence of this shack becomes part of my daily life. However, one particular night, as I was watching TV, I noticed a light go off and on

[00:33:14] outside of my window. After getting startled, I dismissed it as passing cars, simply more frequent than they typically are. An hour passes. It's nearing midnight and the light stays on. This time I know for sure it's coming from outside. My family was asleep, but being a pansy

[00:33:35] 16-year-old like I was, I needed confirmation. Too bad for me, no one wants to go check it out. So, I go alone. I grabbed my pocket knife and a flashlight, the best thing I could think of

[00:33:49] with my shaken thoughts, and take off into the night. As I neared the highway, the lights turn off, almost making me choke on air. But I had to figure out what the hell was

[00:34:03] going on. I make it to the entrance of the shack, which has no door, and slowly begin to enter, my flashlight scanning the room for any sign of life. What happened next, I'll never forget. Five feet away from me, there's an old, tattered recliner facing the opposite direction

[00:34:28] that my father had tossed in there for future disposal. I shine my light on it because I knew I'd seen it rock ever so slightly. As I did that, a man stands up from the recliner,

[00:34:43] saying absolutely nothing. All I could tell was that he was middle-aged and wearing a jacket of sorts. Before I could process what was happening, I was already sprinting across the road and praying he wasn't behind me. It felt like years before I could make it to my door,

[00:35:04] but as I am about to make it into safety, I decide to look back. He was standing in the road completely still. No words whatsoever. It's been seven years since then. The shack still stands. The recliner remains in place. My dad never believed me.

[00:35:26] I wish someone could share the dread I had when I realized that the recliner was facing the window. Back in 2013, I was living with my ex at the time who lived near a nice country village.

[00:35:51] And as I was in between jobs at the time, I picked up a job at a local garden center. It was casual retail work, fairly decent pay, and easygoing enough that I could take coffee

[00:36:04] breaks frequently and wear basically whatever I liked as long as I wore my work polo shirt. It was within walking distance from my ex's house and full of people of all ages who were

[00:36:16] the most lovely people I've ever met. Most of the regular customers who came into the garden center were usually sweet old people who would visit the cafe because we had free teas and discounted

[00:36:30] lunches for OAPs if they had a store card, so you often got to know all of them, and some of them we gave nicknames. Most of them were sweet, like Pink Hair Lady, a badass 80-year-old grandma

[00:36:45] who wore a tasseled leather jacket with bright pink hair. Then there was Camper Van Couple who used to drive a really cool camper van with bright orange flowers painted on it. You get the idea.

[00:37:00] The Creepy Artist Man, though. He gave me, and most of the young girls, weird vibes. He wore a straw hat, was in his late 40s, had round gold-rimmed glasses, and would wear strange graphic shirts with naked women on them, or professional pussy patrol. Sort of slogans on the

[00:37:22] back. He always wore ripped jeans where his knees were always hanging out of them, which were always dirty with paint or mud or something. He had this weird half-smile that would never leave his face,

[00:37:37] and a kind of leer that made people uncomfortable. He would take off his glasses and clean them constantly, which kind of made you feel like he was trying to get a better look at the girls who worked there, especially the younger ones, 16 years old. School leavers, usually. Anyways,

[00:37:56] it was a roasting hot summer day, and I had gratefully accepted the job of watering the hanging baskets outside where I could avoid the humid, sweaty heat of the greenhouse.

[00:38:09] I was wearing black shorts and my red polo, with my tool belt to prune and deadhead plants as we went. With the hose in my hand and sunnies on my face, I was busy but enjoying the solitary job at the

[00:38:24] quietest part of the garden center. Well, hello there. Out of practically nowhere, he slipped out from behind some wooden trellises and looked me up and down, smiling with his weird smile. His eyes lingered on me for what felt like an uncomfortable few seconds, and I turned off my

[00:38:43] hose and asked him if he needed anything. He shook his head and kind of shrugged, still smirking at my legs. Okay, sir. Have a nice day. Let me know if you need anything. I turned to continue.

[00:38:57] I've never seen you here before. You're a new one. Huh? Me? Well, I've been here for eight months now. I must have missed the memo that a beauty like you started. You have a nice tan and you look young.

[00:39:14] Uh, thanks. I'm 23. Anyways, I have to get back to work. Nice to meet you. And he called me by name. I suddenly remembered my name badge and get slightly irritated that he now knew my full name.

[00:39:29] I make a beeline for the smoking area where the tool shed was with an excuse to grab some smaller gardening gloves and by the time I returned to the floor he had left. As the weeks went by,

[00:39:39] he would come into the store regularly, usually mid-afternoon, coincidentally or I thought so around the time that I started my shift. Most of the time I was the only cashier, so I would have

[00:39:52] to serve him. He would buy the most smallest, pointless things like floristry wire or a tiny bag of birdseed. It seemed like he would purposely make purchases with the intention of interacting with me. He would make comments about my appearance, statements mostly like,

[00:40:12] you have your hair different today. Yesterday you had it down. You have new glasses? Or that's a different lip color to yesterday. He would always announce my name loudly and deliberately during every interaction. I felt uncomfortable, but I was 23 and politely shrugged it off.

[00:40:35] Around Christmas time I was decorating the artificial trees and he cornered me in what was pretty much a forest of them in the back of the store. He jumped out from behind one

[00:40:46] and made me jump, to which I was kind of pissed about him doing because I dropped my glass ornament and it smashed. He bent down also and tried to quote unquote help, grabbing my wrist and

[00:41:01] telling me not to touch the glass. His grip was scarily tight and forceful and his hands were clammy and gross. I slipped my hand out of his grip and asked if I could help him with anything,

[00:41:15] and that's when it got weird. He pulled out a leaflet from his back pocket and told me he was an artist and had a Christmas art show happening in the local church hall and he wanted me to go

[00:41:26] with him. He told me that he was a painter and he thought I would like his work. I had never indicated I was interested in art to him or anyone else for that matter, which is why I thought it

[00:41:39] was strange. I asked him if he wanted me to pin the leaflet to the local event board and he reached out and touched my arm and said, no, the invitation is specifically for you. He pointed his finger

[00:41:56] and jabbed it into my breast and said, you. So I'm standing there in a dark corner obscured from view by artificial Christmas trees, just kind of concerned by this guy who was touching me.

[00:42:12] I cringed away and said, I was busy with my boyfriend that day, sorry, and kind of scampered off. I remember feeling very strange after that. The fact that he grabbed my wrist and jammed his

[00:42:26] finger into my chest that way, I told a few of my colleagues about it and they all told me they would warn me next time he was in the store so I could maybe hang out at the storeroom until he

[00:42:39] was gone. Well, that memo must have missed a few of the temp Christmas staff because one day I got told by one of them, your friend is asking for you at the tills. It wasn't unusual for my

[00:42:51] friends to stop by as it was a fairly popular place for gifts, etc. So thinking that maybe it was my ex's mom or something, I head to the till and there he is. He's holding a piece of paper.

[00:43:06] I cringe, but he had seen me now so I walk over and ask what he needed from me. He passed the paper over and asked me to open it. Folded up was a drawing of me with exaggerated

[00:43:20] breasts and cartoon-like eyes watering the hanging baskets in a sexual kind of position. I kind of stood there and said thank you, but I couldn't keep it as I thought it was inappropriate

[00:43:34] to take gifts from customers. I handed it back to him and he kind of looked at me with this angry stare. I turned around and walked out without another word. By this point, I had had enough.

[00:43:48] I knocked on my manager's door and told him about the whole scenario that just happened and all the previous interactions that I had had with him over the past year. He watched the CCTV and agreed that

[00:43:59] it was so strange the way that he gave me this gross picture and told me that he would talk to him if he came back. He praised me for my reaction to his advances and said I was doing the right

[00:44:10] thing and he would try and see him off next time. The next day was a Sunday and I was not due into work. My boss calls me and tells me he just received a call from HQ stating that an anonymous

[00:44:22] caller had called in to report a staff member inappropriately coming on to a customer. The staff member they had described and named was me. The caller said that I had been inappropriate

[00:44:36] towards him at work, offered to have sex with them, had led them on, and was obviously promiscuous and that I had been pursuing them for over a year. The jerk even described a fictitious relationship

[00:44:49] that we had and ranted loudly about how I had been cheating on my boyfriend before hanging up. HQ, luckily, didn't believe a word as my manager had already mentioned the guy to one of the higher

[00:45:02] ups but they thought it was wise to let me know about the crazy guy and suggested that I report it to the police. The next day I did just that. The officer that I spoke to said that he matched the

[00:45:13] description of a man who was a local pest, somebody who often harasses young girls in the local area. He was also known to stalk girls in his car and had attempted to abduct a young girl four years

[00:45:26] ago. The police officers assured me that they would file the report and talk to him officially and that he was not allowed in the garden center or anywhere near me and if he did,

[00:45:37] I was to call the police and he would be arrested. Unfortunately though, it never stopped him sending a ranting letter to my workplace addressed to me saying he would kill himself if I didn't take him back and receive his gift he drew of me. Fortunately for me,

[00:45:54] the police saw this as unsolicited contact and he was arrested. So creepy artist guy Let's Not Meet ever again. If you are a Patreon supporter, don't forget to stick around after the outro for your

[00:46:23] half hour extended episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. And to the rest of you, thank you so much for listening. This week you have heard an abandoned dog saved my ass

[00:46:35] by brofilo soldier, piggy going peepee by Gonzo the good featuring Ben Steinert, spooked by knife man by little Swedish lady, my worst intern by walking Jays, the neighbor I didn't know I had

[00:46:55] by Tom Wesley 4644, and finally to the stalker who fabricated a relationship with me for a whole year, Let's Never Meet Again by Casey Catlady. All of these stories were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast is not

[00:47:15] associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. As always, if you have a story to share, make sure you send it to let's not meet stories at gmail.com. And if you want to get access to

[00:47:26] that bonus extended version of the podcast every single week, head over to patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet podcast, you're going to get other bonus material as well as exclusive merchandise. And this podcast is not possible without the support of the patrons. Thank you

[00:47:43] so much. I'll see you all next week for some brand new stories here on Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast. Stay safe. In 2018, I decided to drop out of university in my hometown in Canada and move to Australia.