7x08: Michael - Let's Not Meet (Feat. Drinking The Koolaid)

[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.

[00:00:20] My name is Andrew Tate and this is season seven, episode eight of Lets Not Meet, a true horror podcast. My guests this week are Amanda Goodness and Cassidy Liston. For all things creepy, weird,

[00:00:57] and funny, make sure you check out their podcast, Drinking The Koolaid, wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy the show. It was a chilly February night when my boyfriend and I decided to get an

[00:01:23] Airbnb away from our college dorms. We were looking forward to a romantic dinner and a relaxed evening together. While searching for rooms, it looked like we had found just the place. It was a single

[00:01:37] room with a bed in the corner, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. Nothing fancy, but just what we needed. The host, a man named Michael, seemed happy to have us. We booked and he messaged us for our ETA.

[00:01:52] We told him around 9pm and went off to the restaurant. Throughout dinner, Michael kept messaging us and asking when we would arrive. We kept him informed that we would be arriving at 9

[00:02:06] as planned. He seemed to be checking in every 30 minutes or so, which I found to be annoying, but whatever. A few glasses of wine later, my boyfriend and I caught an Uber to the listed address,

[00:02:20] letting Michael know that we were now on our way. He told us that we would find the keys in a lockbox nailed to the tree in the yard. When we arrived, we found a very large, poorly kept, Victorian-style

[00:02:35] house. Not what we were expecting, but again, whatever. We piled out of the Uber and made our way to the designated tree, feeling very awkward and a bit spooked by wandering in the backyard of a

[00:02:49] creepy old house that seemed to be shared by other tenants. But we got the keys and headed over to the side entrance. We unlocked the side door and were confronted with the steepest staircase that

[00:03:03] I had ever seen. Straight up, no rails, one door at the top. It was dark and creaky and painted blood red. But we made it up to the door at the top, which was an external-type door, heavy and

[00:03:18] reinforced. We got inside, and the room looked just like it had been described, with curtain windows on all four walls and a welcome book on the table. Feeling a little tipsy, we didn't take

[00:03:35] too much notice, though I did stop to read the guestbook. Hello there, my name is Michael. Thank you for staying with me. Your adventures here helped me have a little adventure of my own.

[00:03:49] We dumped our stuff and headed straight to the shower, which was a little room catty corner from the bed. The bathroom had a door to our room and strangely another door right next to it,

[00:04:04] seemingly locked on the other side. Again, weird, but we were already there and that sort of thing is probably pretty common in old subdivided homes. We hopped in the shower and went about our business

[00:04:19] until I noticed the skylight. I mentioned to my boyfriend how nice it would be to shower in here in the morning when the light was coming through. That's a weird skylight. It looks like it's made

[00:04:32] of plastic, he said. He pushed on it gently and to my surprise it lifted. It wasn't a skylight at all, it was just an opening to the attic covered with a thin plastic panel. This definitely tipped into

[00:04:49] the creepy category, so we hustled out of the shower, brushed our teeth, leaving our toothbrushes on the sink and hopped into bed. Now I distinctly remember shutting the bathroom door tightly because

[00:05:01] it was hard to close. The door was too big for the doorframe, so you really had to pull on it to shut it all the way. It had a weird old-timey latch. We dozed off and all was well until a loud

[00:05:18] noise woke me around an hour later. It was 11 or so at this point, my boyfriend was still asleep. I don't know what that noise was, but it was loud enough to make my heart race and it came from the

[00:05:32] direction of the bathroom. I woke him up. Hey, I heard a noise, it was loud. He just told me to go back to sleep. I looked around the room and there was nothing out of place. There were no further

[00:05:46] noises, so I decided to go back to sleep. And I was almost completely out of it when another bump in the night yanked me from dreamland. Again, it sounded like it was coming from the direction

[00:05:59] of the bathroom. I listened hard, but I couldn't hear anything else. I woke my boyfriend up again. Wake up! I keep hearing noises. It's really freaking me out. Shh, it's nothing. Old houses make sounds.

[00:06:17] Go back to sleep. Feeling crazy and not wanting to bother my boyfriend too much, I tried to go back to sleep once again. The final noise came just as I was drifting off. A creak from the

[00:06:33] bathroom faucet and footsteps. Wake up! There's someone in the freaking bathroom. I'm scared. Fine, let's just listen for it one more time, he said. He and I stared silently in the direction of

[00:06:51] the bathroom, waiting for what felt like hours for another sound to come. And just as my boyfriend opened his mouth to reassure me, that damn bathroom door creaked open as if it had been left

[00:07:07] swinging. He leaped out of bed, a man determined to defend his girl wearing nothing but boxers. Michael, are you there? Michael, are you in the bathroom? He boomed. As I cowered in the corner,

[00:07:24] he must have realized his defenselessness and went to grab a lamp on the bedside table, only to find that it was bolted down. Looking around the room in abject horror, we realized

[00:07:38] every last thing was bolted down. The chairs were chained to the table, the wine bottle glued to the counter. Empty handed, my boyfriend bravely headed towards the bathroom where he found nothing except our toothbrushes, which were neatly tucked under our travel kit. But the sink was wet.

[00:08:03] As he came out of the bathroom, he told me his findings, but got distracted from returning to bed by a little blue light in the window. Realizing it wasn't a reflection of any light in the room, he approached the window, gingerly lifting the curtain.

[00:08:23] What that curtain hid still bothers me today. The window looked out, not onto the backyard like we thought, but into another room. In that room sat Michael, frail and shirtless, staring directly

[00:08:40] at us with an unblinking gaze and a toothy smile. He didn't even flinch when the curtain was drawn, no effort to hide, no instinct to run. My boyfriend dropped the curtain and we grabbed our stuff and

[00:08:56] got the hell out of there as fast as we could. In retrospect, the room was designed for Michael's benefit. There was only one exit with a very sturdy door and exceedingly steep stairs beyond it.

[00:09:09] Anything that could be used to defend oneself was bolted down. The faux shower skylight could be slid away for peeping. The second door in the bathroom was locked from the other side. He kept

[00:09:22] asking when we would arrive, precisely, almost like he couldn't wait or needed to know when to hide. The windows on three sides of the room looked into other rooms and the curtains were sheer.

[00:09:38] Even the guestbook gave us hints of the creepy events to come. Our adventure did allow Michael to have his own adventure indeed. I may never know what Michael was planning, whether he was just

[00:09:54] there to watch the show or if he had more sinister things in mind for his little adventure with Airbnb guests. But I do know this, Michael, if you're listening, let's not meet again.

[00:10:18] I've debated on sending this due to the fact that I'm still boggled by how stupid I was during this whole situation. Two things you need to know ahead of time for context. First, I have always been the

[00:10:31] kind of person who nopes the fuck out of things. When I've hit my limit, whatever it is, I'm done and nothing will change my mind and I'm generally going to leave whatever situation that is.

[00:10:42] This isn't always a good thing as I've been known as a young child to leave the day camp I was attending and being brought back by a park ranger and several other instances of ranging degrees of

[00:10:53] stupidity and buzz-killingness, we'll just say that's a word, that have made my family and friends learn that when I say I'm done, I'm leaving. Second is that I've always been a pretty big

[00:11:05] person. I guess I'm tall for a woman having been roughly 5'11 since my sophomore year of high school and I've never been skinny in any sense of the word. Being such a large person can really affect

[00:11:18] how you look at the world and at yourself. For example, growing up I felt safer from predators, kidnappers, and serial killers because monsters like that only go after pretty girls. This false sense of security partnered with years of insecurity, bullying, and general low

[00:11:38] self-esteem has caused me to make some questionable decisions that grown me cringes at. This story or series of questionable decisions took place in the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school, around 2005. Towards the end of my sophomore year, my mom dropped the information

[00:11:59] bomb on my younger brother and I that she had been seeing someone, we were moving in with him, and oh yeah, he lives in middle of nowhere Ohio while we lived 8 hours away in Rochester, NY.

[00:12:13] While swallowing that information, we moved and teenage me had to deal with the culture shock that is rural Ohio, leaving everyone and everything I knew, and the introduction of the new stepdad who

[00:12:27] we didn't get off to a good start. My mom's way of handling all the friction was to fill the summer with family activities and try to force a perfect family situation and parade that perfect family in front of all of my stepdad's friends.

[00:12:43] One weekend, my stepdad's friends were having a fish fry at a campground and we were all invited. I, at this point, was tired of being paraded around, forced to socialize, and didn't want to go and enjoy the fresh air and sunlight and whatever else you do whilst camping.

[00:13:00] I wanted to stay in my air-conditioned home, holed up in my room, reading a book. My mom wasn't going to agree to that, so one argument later, I was sitting in the back seat,

[00:13:10] clutching my book, and wearing my most teenage, fine I'm going but I refuse to have fun face. We drove over an hour to some wooded area, then turned into a park full of RVs. My mom and stepdad go out and hang with the adults.

[00:13:26] My brother runs off to find some kids playing sports, and I find a shaded spot to read my book. After a while, I'm bored and tired of being outdoors in the summer heat, so I go to find my mom and ask if we can go home.

[00:13:40] She refuses and I huff off to the car and crawl into the back seat, where I realize it's a million degrees hotter. That's when I hit my limit. I'm done with the heat, I'm done with the fake perfect family, I'm done with Ohio. I'm leaving.

[00:13:57] So I walk out of the park and towards the direction I think is home, or at least some kind of civilization, angrily muttering under my breath about how I should just leave and find a way back to New York and start my life by myself

[00:14:10] because I'm totally a grown up and can handle that. I continue on like that for I don't know how long, and it starts getting dark, and I realize that I'm a 15 year old kid in the middle of nowhere

[00:14:23] with no idea of where I'm going, no money or phone or idea of any kind. I'm still mad, but hunger, tiredness, and fear were starting to cool that fire. Just as I'm about to turn back, a car pulls off the road in front of me.

[00:14:40] A car pulls off the road in front of me, and a man gets out. Do you need a ride? He asks. I stand there staring while flipping the decisions in my head. Obviously I was taught don't get into a car with a stranger,

[00:14:57] but he seemed normal, nice enough to stop for a woman, I'm assuming he saw me as such, due to my height and size, I was often mistaken as an adult, who may not have been hitchhiking, but probably looked out of place alone on a wooded highway.

[00:15:13] I mean, predators only go after pretty girls, right? Besides, I'm still super mad at my mom for uprooting my life. What would change if I go back now? I decide to ignore everything I was ever taught, and I nod to him,

[00:15:29] and walk over to the car where he has me wait while he moves some baby items from the front seat to the back seat where there's a car seat. Seeing the car seat, I feel relieved.

[00:15:40] He has a car seat, so he's probably some nice dad worried and trying to help me out. I got in and thanked him for picking me up. He asks where I'm heading, and he can go as far as X-town,

[00:15:52] I honestly don't remember the name, a bit further down the way where he's going to his sisters. I say that's the town where I'm going too. Then we head down the road in complete silence.

[00:16:04] He doesn't ask me anything about myself, or why I was on the side of the road, and I was too in my head and nervous at that point to try and say anything myself. I'm questioning what I'm going to do next, questioning my choices,

[00:16:19] and wondering how I ended up at a place in my life where I'm in some strange man's car heading to a town I don't know in a state I'm unfamiliar with. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only 5 or 10 minutes,

[00:16:33] the silence had become incredibly awkward, and I tried to fill it by asking him questions, to which I'm getting non-committal answers or no answers at all. I honestly don't remember too much of the ride except my growing anxiety.

[00:16:49] The one answer I do remember was the one that shocked me out of whatever fog of stupidity I was living in when I motioned to the back seat and asked how old his child was. Oh, I don't have kids.

[00:17:02] He didn't follow that up with any explanation to all the child stuff in his back seat. Just left it at that. I felt like I had been doused in ice water. I looked at my surroundings like it was the first time seeing them.

[00:17:19] I realized that it's really dark out now and that we were already inside the town going down some suburban residential streets, but he hadn't stopped to let me out yet. Or even mentioned it. Then I finally think back and notice how his demeanor changed.

[00:17:37] When he stopped to pick me up, he was smiling and friendly. But as soon as he knew where I was heading and the door shut, he stopped talking. He's not smiling anymore and actually seems kind of tense driving through these house-lined streets. Oh, crap. I'm an idiot.

[00:17:56] To be honest, I don't remember much after that. I remember telling him that he could let me out now and he kept driving. I remember possibly panicking. I remember being let out, not sure where, and him having a negative look on his face that I can't decipher.

[00:18:13] Maybe disgust? For me, it's like part of the story is missing. I have a vague memory of feeling tunnel vision, so my guess is that I had a full-blown panic attack and it freaked him out and he let me out or kicked me out of his car.

[00:18:29] My next solid memory is walking into a nearly deserted police station and telling the officer behind the desk that I had run away from home and I would like to call my parents.

[00:18:40] I feel like I was treated as an annoyance, especially because I didn't have a lot of answers for them, as I didn't know the name of the park I had left, and because I had just moved,

[00:18:51] I didn't know my new address or my mom's brand new cell phone number or my new home phone number. The only number I had memorized was my great-grandmother's, so I called that, freaked out on my great-grandmother, who then handed the phone to

[00:19:06] my grandfather, whose tone of voice on that phone call is ingrained in me to this day. He wasn't mad, just deeply disappointed, which is always worse. He told me he would get in touch with my mom and I was led to what I guess was an interview room,

[00:19:25] as it only had a table and a few chairs where I could wait for my parents. I curled up on the floor under the table until they showed up. There was no tearful happy greeting when I was finally picked up,

[00:19:37] just a tense and silent ride home, and then many, many apology letters to the people who had spent the evening searching for me. When I called my mom to fill in some blanks before I started writing

[00:19:49] this, she told me that after she realized I was missing, the entire park went searching for me, and that search was called off when a park ranger heard the cops talking about me on the radio.

[00:20:00] She also said there was a festival going on in the town they picked me up from. I don't remember a festival. I remember dark, tree-lined streets and a near deserted police department. This is not one of the stories my family looks back on and laughs. This is one

[00:20:17] of those where they shake their heads and say, I still can't believe you did that. I can hardly believe it either. I have done a lot of dumb things and am amazed that not only

[00:20:29] am I still here, but even after going through all that and more, that I'm actually doing pretty okay. I'm married, have a stable job, and an adorable little black cat named Yum-Yum. And yes, I'm still in Ohio. It ended up growing on me.

[00:20:47] To all the young people out there, just try not to do stupid stuff like me. Value yourself and keep safe. It gets better. And to the guy with the child seat but no kids, I hope I misunderstood you.

[00:21:01] I hope you were some nice guy with no social skills but good intentions. I hope your sister, if she really exists, had kids and you were driving her car to her house for some reason. I hope I'm not forgetting anything important. Either way, let's not meet.

[00:21:25] Back in 2013, I had just been going out with the man who would become my husband. I was living at home with my mom and she was sharing a house with a friend, so we spent most of our time at his place.

[00:21:50] We're from a very small town in Ireland and within a two-minute walk from the center, it becomes quiet and secluded, especially at night. This story takes place on the main street of the town. My husband's house was actually two doors closer to the town

[00:22:08] than his family home where his mother lived alone. Her house is very large. She raised seven kids in it. It sits back from the road, usually completely in shadow from the mature trees around it. The front of her house has a large driveway

[00:22:26] and my husband would usually park his car there to avoid using the street parking. It was Halloween night and it had fallen on a weekday. My husband was working as a chef and had an early start

[00:22:41] and since we had only started going out, we were more than happy to stay together. We had ordered food and watched scary movies together. It was late and we had definitely stayed up a lot longer than we intended to. Around midnight, there was a knock at the door.

[00:23:01] Midnight. On the main street. Halloween night. We obviously assumed it was teenagers playing knick-knack or whatever you call it where you're from, but you know, knocking and running. We didn't bother getting up, but then it came again. More insistent this time.

[00:23:22] I remember feeling very anxious just knowing it wasn't right. My husband then made a mistake. He pushed back the curtain of the window at the front of the house and had a peek. It was a man and he began to hammer on the door.

[00:23:40] He shouted, let me in. It was just wrong in our quiet town in the middle of the night. You would be surprised to have an encounter with someone you didn't know personally during the day, let alone this.

[00:23:54] He continued banging now on the window and he shouted, let me in. It's cold. Just let me inside now. I was pressing myself into the corner of the couch, trying to feel as physically far away as possible from the voice and the hammering on the window.

[00:24:12] My husband then shouted back to him. Okay, listen, you need to get away from my house. I'm going to count to five. If I can see you when I look out after five, I'm calling the police. The knocking stopped. He then started to count loudly and slowly.

[00:24:30] He went back from five. We heard nothing else. But when he got to one and peaked again, the man was gone. The relief coursed through us. We started that nervous laugh that you get when you can't believe what has just happened.

[00:24:51] Such a terrifying moment that we would probably look back at and laugh by the next day. But then it suddenly dawned on me. His mother. She was home alone. She was also the type of person who could possibly feel sympathy for someone in the cold.

[00:25:12] On a winter's night. The panic then set in. Shit, should we call? She'll definitely be in bed. We will be panicking her for no reason, especially if he doesn't knock on her door. But she probably didn't lock the front porch. What if he's there now?

[00:25:33] Okay, my husband says. I better go over. He ran out the door. Keys in hand. He of course has a key to his mother's house. While he was gone, I just paced. He was gone for a few minutes, but it felt like 30.

[00:25:50] My heart was racing with the possibilities of what could have happened. I then hear the key and the door and he came back in. And he came back in. He looked rather shaken, but he filled me in.

[00:26:04] He had walked slowly towards his mother's house and around the corner from the street to the dark downhill driveway of her house. At first, he could see that there was no sign of him at the front door and nothing looked disturbed.

[00:26:20] Then he saw a shadow and realized the man was inside my husband's car. Whether he had left the car unlocked or the guy could break in somehow, he didn't know. But he thought quickly enough to hit the central locking button on his keys.

[00:26:37] He was locked into the back of the car. He then called the cops. He just had to hope that this guy wasn't with it enough to find a way to get out of the car before the authorities arrived. When he had finished filling me in, his phone rang.

[00:26:56] The cops asked him to come outside and open his car. The guy had actually fallen asleep or passed out. Either way, he wasn't aware of the attention when they arrived. The cop took his keys and returned to me inside the house.

[00:27:11] After 15 or 20 minutes, my husband got another phone call. They asked us to come to their squad car and collect his keys. He also explained the part of the story that still chills me to this day. He told us that they were aware of this man.

[00:27:28] He was what they referred to as known to them. He had been moved to an area nearby because of issues where he had previously lived. The chances were that he was very intoxicated.

[00:27:42] And when he had been locked out of the pub at closing time, he found himself cold and likely didn't know how to get back to the town that he lived in. No big deal with any of that, right?

[00:27:52] But then he praised my husband's quick thinking at locking the car and calling. It was the best thing to do because upon searching him, while he was arrested, they found a bag of glue and a knife in his pocket.

[00:28:07] If we had let that man into our house or even opened the door, the story could have been very different. So trick or treater, let's not meet. So my aunt had informed me that her friend was in need of a house slash dog sitter as

[00:28:35] her family was headed up north for a few days to visit for the holidays. I was in need of extra money and they lived about 10 minutes from my house, which would allow me to drive to my own house for Thanksgiving dinner

[00:28:47] and then be back in time to feed the dogs and get settled in for the night as I was about to start a new job as a vet tech for a traveling vet clinic the next morning.

[00:28:56] My old co-worker, who we will call Emily, recommended me for this position as she had recently started there and thought I would enjoy it as I have a very strong love for animals. The house where I was staying was a decent-sized two-story house

[00:29:13] situated in the middle of the woods down a long dirt driveway. It had a fenced-in backyard for the dogs and a gigantic pool for the kids. They had three dogs, two were very small and one was medium-sized,

[00:29:27] a one-year-old black lab, and they had adopted it from a shelter. The black lab was sweet but terrified of strangers, so he never paid me any mind or came near me unless I was letting him outside.

[00:29:39] The two smaller dogs loved attention and even slept in the bed with me at night. Thanksgiving was going to be my last night in the house as my aunt's friend and her family would be returning the next afternoon.

[00:29:50] I headed to the house at around 2 in the afternoon and it was pouring down rain all day. I returned to their house at about 8 o'clock that night as I had to be up at 4 a.m. the next morning.

[00:30:03] I was very tired from all the food I'd consumed, so I fed the dogs and let them out. I then brought the two smaller dogs into the guest bedroom with me and settled in for the night while the lab slept in the living room.

[00:30:15] The guest bedroom is on the first floor of the house, right across from the door leading out to the garage. This detail will be important later. I turned on the television and fell asleep watching Criminal Minds, which is one of my favorite shows on Netflix.

[00:30:30] I woke at around 1.30 in the morning and the room was completely dark except for the little bit of light from the television that was still left on. It had stopped raining and there was a tiny bit of moonlight in the room.

[00:30:40] There was a tiny bit of moonlight shining through the window, just a few feet away. It was actually eerily quiet. The dogs were asleep at the end of the bed. All of a sudden I heard something truly terrifying.

[00:30:53] The sound of heavy feet running down the stairs outside of the bedroom, echoing through the house. I sat there, frozen. I then heard what sounded like crashing coming from the kitchen and I shot up. Then I realized I had made a dire mistake.

[00:31:10] I forgot to lock the back door after bringing the dogs in for the night. Now, I am a true crime fanatic and had spent many days binging documentaries and forensic files, which you think would prepare me for a moment like this, but I was not prepared at all.

[00:31:27] I froze up. Tears slowly slipped down my face. My phone was next to me on the dresser so I decided to grab it and hide under the covers. I then heard what sounded like a dog whining outside of the bedroom door,

[00:31:40] which concerned me because like I said before, the lab was terrified of strangers and hadn't done this any of the other nights. I decided to play it safe for a few minutes and turned off the TV so no light would shine

[00:31:54] under the door in the off chance that the intruder was in the house and standing right outside. Once I gathered up enough courage, I dialed 911 and the operator picked up after a few rings. I was very careful to speak as softly and as low as I could,

[00:32:12] but with just enough volume that the person on the other end could hear me. I told them that I was house sitting and that I believed someone had broken in. The operator told me to quietly get out of bed and lock the bedroom door,

[00:32:26] find a hiding spot while making as little noise as possible. While I'm doing this, I'm also trying to keep the two smaller dogs as quiet as possible by this point. They're awake, they're whining, they're just as confused as me about what's going on.

[00:32:42] All of a sudden I see a light shining through the window that faces the backyard. I freeze, not moving a single muscle in my body. I bring the phone back up to my ear and whisper in a shaky voice,

[00:32:57] Please tell me that the cops are already here and the light that I'm seeing outside is from one of their flashlights. The operator said that the cops were still two minutes out and that it was important that I get on my hands and knees

[00:33:12] and find a hiding place immediately. I managed to do so as I was told to crawl to the bedroom bathroom that was just across from the bed. I shut and locked the door. I shut and locked the door.

[00:33:25] A couple of minutes later, the operator told me that the cops had arrived at the address and that I needed to get out of the house and greet them if it was safe to do so.

[00:33:34] I had not heard any more movement so I figured it was safe to leave the room. I exited the bathroom and made my way over to the bedroom door. With two deep breaths, I unlocked it and swung the door open, sprinting across the hall to the garage door.

[00:33:51] Outside, I was met with two cops, one female and one male. They searched the house and the property but found no signs of an intruder or even forced entry, even through the back door. I gave them a statement and they left.

[00:34:07] By this time it was already 3am and I figured I wouldn't be getting any more sleep. I grabbed my suitcase, called Emily as I got into my car. She met me at the Waffle House right down the street from the house

[00:34:21] for breakfast before we both headed into work. I was still too shaken up to eat so I settled for coffee instead. That morning, I texted my aunt's friend and told her what had happened.

[00:34:32] She said that it was perfectly fine, everything that I did, and she understood why I did it. She said that she would check their security camera at the front of the house to see if she could see anything on the recording from the night before

[00:34:45] and when she did, she would get back to me. Fast forward a few days and I got a text from my aunt's friend. It was a video and a message that said, I'm so glad you're okay, you did the right thing.

[00:34:59] And the video that accompanied it made my blood run cold. The timestamp was 116am and it shows a man in a hoodie and dark pants walking around the front of the house peering into the front window where he then walks away and makes his way around the house.

[00:35:20] That's all I could see because they only had one camera. But I finally got confirmation that I was not crazy. I got nauseous immediately. She gave the video to the police but as far as I know nothing came from it.

[00:35:34] So to whoever's listening, please always remember to lock your doors and to the creep who chose to break into the house that night, let's never meet. I've loved the podcast for several months and have listened to every episode.

[00:36:02] I've never had a story of my own to tell and was very happy about that. Until I did have a story of my own. It took place only three nights ago. My wife and I, of course, are still pretty shaken up.

[00:36:21] As a little bit of background, my wife and I are relatively accustomed to bumps and bangs in our house through the night as we do believe that our house is haunted. But by no means is this any kind of ghost story. Three nights ago, I was asleep.

[00:36:40] My wife was up at two in the morning watching some Law & Order as she does on occasion. This particular night, she heard some noises outside of our bedroom. Not really sure what it was. She couldn't tell if it was coming from inside or outside

[00:36:58] and just assumed that it was our dog Bella. She went to go check on her whom she found asleep. My wife went back to the bedroom when she heard three loud bangs. Now this is not super uncommon in our house. Though my wife, of course, was still terrified.

[00:37:21] So she still woke me up and said, Someone is trying to break into the house in a shaky voice. I, of course, was kind of annoyed but proceeded to look all throughout the house anyways. For reference, we have three points of entry to our house.

[00:37:38] We have a front door, a carport door, and a back door with a glass storm door attached. The glass door will sometimes blow in the wind if it isn't closed all the way and it will bang against the house.

[00:37:53] I went to check that back door and I could see that the glass door was open, though the entry door itself was closed. I said, It's just the storm door. And she said, Absolutely not. I know what that sounds like. It was not that.

[00:38:13] I was still annoyed and tired at this point, but she said, You don't believe me. And I assured her I do believe that she heard something scary, but it was probably nothing as usual. She wasn't convinced though. So we opened the back door and stuck our heads out.

[00:38:33] Nothing. We did the same thing with the carport as it's about five feet away, but facing the front of the house. And again, nothing. We opened the front door, stuck our heads out, and saw nothing at first.

[00:38:49] But then we saw a large, well-built man step into the doorframe, trying to walk right into our home. He was hiding behind the wall. We immediately screamed and slammed the door shut as fast and as hard as we could.

[00:39:06] I managed to lock the door and that was where I stayed. Holding the door shut with all of my might, my wife then ran to the baby to make sure that he was safe and proceeded to call the police.

[00:39:20] As this is happening, I can hear the man on the other side yelling through the door. Come on! I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. Repeating it. We stayed very quiet and I held that door shut with the man on the other side.

[00:39:37] For some background, our front door has a large decorative window in it. We could see the attempted intruder right through this window the entire time. And let me tell you, to say it was terrifying is a complete understatement.

[00:39:52] We then saw him run up to the house next door and then come back. This is important for later. To add a little bit of humor to this, I was stark naked during this encounter. So with my wife on the phone with the police,

[00:40:09] I whispered as loudly as I could, Go get me some pants! At this point, my wife asked if he was still there. I couldn't see him but shortly after that I could start to hear him through the other side. I'm not sure what he was saying,

[00:40:24] but I did confirm he was still there. The police finally arrived after six minutes, which felt like an eternity. As the police lights got closer and closer, the man began to knock faster and faster until finally it stopped

[00:40:39] and we saw four police officers get out of the car and approach him. I hurriedly got dressed as they spoke to the man and detained him. One officer then knocked on the door and talked to us.

[00:40:50] He told us that he was claiming to be a soldier from the base about 20 minutes away and that he was blind drunk and couldn't even form words properly or even walk and he thought that this might be his house.

[00:41:07] He then told us that he would probably be in trouble for being out past curfew and they then informed us that they gave him a ride home and he won't be bothering us again. Are you kidding? We could hear him perfectly, clearly through the door.

[00:41:25] We watched him run to the neighbor's house and then back. All this swaying and slurring didn't happen until they got there. The police didn't even file a report and we didn't think to ask for one as we were so shaken up.

[00:41:41] Now, we understand that this could have gone much worse than it did. We know it was stupid to open the door at all if we thought that there was a chance that someone was out there, but remember, we hear sounds and check everything out all the time.

[00:41:56] We stayed at my in-laws that night. Needless to say, we saw my grandfather the very next day and we were gifted a gun. You don't need a permit to own a gun in my state only for conceal and carry.

[00:42:11] We also got a video doorbell and a security system throughout the home. We will not let a situation like this happen again because if it was just a drunken soldier confused, he still cost us our sanity,

[00:42:24] our sense of safety and our ability to think of anything other than a large man stepping into the doorframe and trying to come into our home. That image plays over and over in our heads and no one prepares you for that.

[00:42:38] So to the large man that claimed to be just a confused soldier, it scared my wife, baby and I to death. Please let's never meet again. I'm a 36 year old woman living in the Bay Area and this happened to me two nights ago.

[00:43:05] I'd gone to happy hour with my colleague on Monday at a restaurant in Redwood City. Redwood City does have a decent downtown area, but this particular restaurant was farther out on a one block part of the city.

[00:43:22] There are a bunch of restaurants there, but outside of that one block, the area is mostly shut down by 5pm because it's surrounded by offices and banks. We met up around 5pm. This was our first time seeing each other in person since before the pandemic,

[00:43:40] so we had a lot to talk about. Happy hour turned into dinner and we ended up shutting the place down at 9pm. After walking out of the restaurant, we went to our cars which were parked on the same side of the street,

[00:43:56] but opposite sides of an intersection a block away from the restaurant. Now while we were at happy hour, I had gotten an email about an upcoming vacation my wife and I are taking and I really wanted to read it, so I decided to be responsible

[00:44:13] and sit in my car and read it before driving off instead of reading it in bits and pieces as I drove home because I'm just that impatient. As I am sitting in my car, I of course also have Let's Not Meet playing in the background,

[00:44:29] which is my normal listening routine when driving anywhere these days. So mind you, it's now nearing 9.30pm, it's dark outside, and this part of Redwood City is dead. I'm near a street lamp and parked right off a main road,

[00:44:47] so I'm not too worried about sitting there for a few minutes while I read the email. Restaurants had long closed, however, and there was really no one else walking on the street. I'm sitting there in my car and I notice a black car pull up behind me.

[00:45:06] Very close, weirdly close to my car given that the streets are empty. If they were just parking, there's no reason that they would need to be that close to me. There's parking everywhere. Something about it gave me pause and I got a very weird feeling in my gut.

[00:45:22] I'm a big fan of the My Favorite Murder podcast, so I think to myself, let me lock my fucking doors like Karen and Georgia tell me all the time. I also had all of the recent Let's Not Meet stories I had heard,

[00:45:36] where women hadn't had their car doors locked running through my head, so I pressed the lock button on my doors. They lock, which I'm instantly relieved to hear because I hadn't realized they were unlocked. They hadn't auto locked since I hadn't driven away yet.

[00:45:54] Not two minutes later, some dude is at my passenger door trying to open it. Without saying a word, he grabs the passenger side door handle, pulls twice, but because it's locked, his hand slips back so he stumbles back just a bit. What the fuck I'm thinking to myself.

[00:46:13] At first, I thought maybe it was a friend who had come up to my car to give me something or tell me that she had forgot something, but as soon as I turned my head to look, it was very clearly a man and not my friend.

[00:46:27] When I saw it was a guy, my first thought was, maybe this guy is drunk and he thinks I'm his Uber, but immediately I knew that thought didn't hold water for several reasons.

[00:46:40] One, he had a cell phone in his other hand, so if he was looking for an Uber and had the app up, he'd know that my make model license plate is not at all what he was looking for.

[00:46:51] Two, he never knocked on the window or bent down to make eye contact and try to communicate through the window. Because of this, I never saw his face. He stood up on the curb so that all I could see of him was chest down.

[00:47:08] Even if you're drunk and trying to find an Uber, you bend down and make eye contact with the driver and do the whole are you, am I, are we hand gesture thing. And show your phone or something, anything to establish yourself as a non-murderer or carjacker

[00:47:26] as you go to open a stranger's door. Three, I had a big white jacket on the seat next to me. Even in the dark, it was clearly visible that the front passenger seat was occupied

[00:47:38] and not open seating, especially looking down into the car from an angle that he was at. Four, even if he thought it was an Uber or Lyft, you typically go to open the back door, not the front passenger door.

[00:47:52] And finally five, even after he now knows that the door is clearly locked, this motherfucker comes back and tries yet again to open my door. At this point, I literally say, hell no, out loud. My flight instinct kicked in.

[00:48:09] I drive stick shift, so I throw my car into gear and nope the fuck out of there as fast as I possibly can. I'm fairly certain I see the car pull away from the curb and follow me.

[00:48:20] But they must have gotten caught at a light or something because I didn't see them anymore by the time that I got to a nearby freeway entrance. Once I was on the freeway, I did 90 miles per hour all the way home.

[00:48:32] I can't fully grasp what's going on, but I'm sure that's what he's doing. I can't grasp how lucky I am that I thought to lock my doors and acted on that thought and that my car had been idling, so I was primed to go.

[00:48:47] Also, I happened to have left just enough space between me and the car in front of me so that it could easily turn and get out of the spot in one fell swoop and not have to do some kind of three point turn out of that bitch

[00:49:02] that could have given them a lot more time to come after me. I'm a survivor of sexual assault a few times over, and my fellow survivor friends and I often joke and say hashtag trauma response when we react a certain way to mundane

[00:49:18] things that happen in our everyday lives. I knew I was having a very trauma response moment when my first two thoughts after making it onto the freeway were, oh my god, I now have a story to write in about

[00:49:31] and that was a close call, but I wasn't actually assaulted like I had been in the past, so no trauma to process here. On to my normal night. It's been two days since this happened, and I think it's dawning on me in waves just how

[00:49:46] truly scary this close call was. I shudder to think what could have happened if I hadn't locked my doors. Now, the real trauma response here is that part of me is still doubting that it was nefarious

[00:50:01] as it clearly sounds like it was when I tell the story out loud. Something in me still feels like I'm being dramatic when I say I almost got kidnapped or carjacked or murdered, but in reality, all three of those things were on the table that night.

[00:50:15] Even with all of the evidence that I see pointing to the fact that this guy was clearly up to no good, some twisted part of me still wants to give him the benefit of the doubt.

[00:50:25] I think it's a defense mechanism though, to try and convince myself that it wasn't that or that the threat somehow wasn't as real as I know deep down in my bones that it was.

[00:50:37] To all my fellow survivors out there, let's trust ourselves and stand firm in our truth. But we know what happened to us, even if the many voices who are trying to gaslight us into doubting what we know to be true have gotten internalized a bit.

[00:50:53] We deserve to be heard and believed. And to the guy who tried repeatedly to open my locked car door on a dark, empty street at night, whatever your intentions were, let's not meet ever again.

[00:51:18] Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Don't forget to stick around after the music if you are a patron for your extended version. This week you have heard a story by listener Delaney.

[00:51:33] The second dumbest thing I've ever done by Kendra. Halloween Stranger by Rachel. House Sitting Home Invasion by Marie. Unexpected Intruder by Quint. And finally, a meta Let's Not Meet experience by Angie. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of

[00:51:54] their respective authors. Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. As always, if you have a story to share, it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Thanks to Cassidy Liston and Amanda Goodness from Drinking the Kool-Aid for appearing on

[00:52:11] the show this week. They did a fantastic job. I always enjoy having them on the show. Their podcast is one of the few that I listen to regularly. I never miss an episode. Please check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:52:25] And if you want to get ad-free extended versions of these episodes, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to support the show today. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Stay safe.

[00:53:11] Hi, I'm a long time listener and lurker here with a story that I think fits in with...