8x08: Beer Cans - Let's Not Meet (Feat. Redhanded)

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. My name is Andrew Tate and this is season eight, episode eight of Lets Not Meet, a true horror podcast.

[00:00:47] My guests this week are new friends of the show, Hannah and Saruti of the podcast Redhanded. And if you're listening to a show like mine, one, you have great taste in podcasts. And two, you like things creepy, spooky and generally terrifying.

[00:01:01] So I think you'd really love their show. It's one of the best produced and researched true crime podcasts I've come across in a very long time. They cover cases with a bit of edge, just like this show, with a touch

[00:01:13] of the occult, stories about stalking or even a dash of geopolitics. Check out their show Redhanded anywhere you listen to podcasts. But more on that later. For now, enjoy the show. This story takes place in 1999.

[00:01:39] I had just had my second child and his crib was in mine and my husband's bedroom. My daughter was four years old and her room was right next to ours. One morning, my daughter came to me and told me that someone was looking in her

[00:01:55] bedroom window when she was in bed. Now, there was a big open field right outside our bedroom windows and I had seen many teenagers walking through this field to go to school up the road.

[00:02:09] So I told her that everything was fine and I'm sure she just saw one of these kids walking past. She seemed to accept this and I didn't want to think that someone was actually peering into her window. So I accepted this explanation as well.

[00:02:27] The next morning, I woke up to get ready for work to find my daughter with her pillow and blanket sleeping on our bedroom floor next to her brother's crib. I knelt down by her and asked her why she was sleeping there.

[00:02:42] She said, that man was looking in my window again. And as I was about to stand up, I looked at our bedroom window and I saw a figure. And then I saw what was a head. It moved from side to side along our window.

[00:03:05] I yelled at my husband, there's someone looking in our window. He jumped out of bed and went for the window and saw the figure running away through the field. He went to open the window and jump out to try and chase him.

[00:03:20] He was in his underwear and it was snowing. But that guy was long gone. He's lucky he got away because I know he would have got a serious beating. I didn't want to believe that there was some sick pervert looking into my four

[00:03:36] year old daughter's window and watching her. I feel awful that I didn't believe my daughter when she told me about him the first time. I immediately moved her bed away from that window and always made sure that I looked out that window before putting her to bed.

[00:03:51] But to that creepy asshole outside my daughter's window, let's not meet. This happened back in 2017. I was 26 at the time and I moved by myself into a tiny town 425 kilometers away from my hometown where I don't know anybody. The flat that I was living in was a small,

[00:04:30] two story building. I was on the second floor with the balcony facing the street and a few detached houses across the street. There are a few important things about this building to bear in mind before I move forward with my story.

[00:04:44] There's a small gate that leads to the main door of the building and to access both of those doors, you have to have keys. If you don't, you'll have to go back to the main door and look for the keys. You have to have keys.

[00:04:58] If you don't, they must be open via a door phone that every flat has. My door phone, due to a malfunction, only worked for the small gate but not the main door. So every time I had visitors, I had to open the gate through the door phone

[00:05:16] and then I would have to go downstairs and unlock the main door myself. Also, as in most buildings in Italy, there was a switch that activated the lights in the building. If no one pressed it, they would all be off.

[00:05:30] It was Saturday night and my friend came over for pizza. After dinner, we headed to the balcony to smoke a joint. While we were there, we noticed commotion in an otherwise very quiet street.

[00:05:45] In front of one of the detached houses, there was a fire truck and we noticed that a couple of firefighters climbed onto the balcony of this house and they were trying to gain access inside. We thought that perhaps somebody was trapped in that house and couldn't get out

[00:06:01] or something. We headed to meet with some other friends as planned and quickly forgot about it. Later that night, my friend drove me back home. The fire truck was still there as well as an ambulance now and a few police cars. We didn't think much of it.

[00:06:18] It wasn't our business after all. So she dropped me off and went her way. I got back home and went to sleep since I had to go to work the next day. On Sunday morning, I was going to work and there was still an ambulance there

[00:06:32] as well as the police car in the street. I approached some people that were in their garden right next to the house where the commotion happened and I asked one of them what was happening there.

[00:06:45] He told me that the night before, a guy in his 30s that lived there locked himself in, armed with a chainsaw threatening to kill himself. He said that he lost his parents not long before and he wasn't in the best place mentally.

[00:07:04] I thought it was pretty fucked up and I felt sorry for the guy. I told the story to my coworkers and carried on with my life until Thursday evening. I was playing a game online while I was on the phone with my boyfriend and it

[00:07:20] was around 10pm when the doorbell rang. Not the door phone, the actual doorbell. I thought it was very odd. I only had one friend there and she always called me if she was coming over and we had no plans for that night.

[00:07:40] I also would have to go downstairs to open the main door for her. I got up and went to the door. I looked through the peephole and there was just darkness, it was pitch black. I thought what the fuck?

[00:07:56] I told my boyfriend about it and then I went back to my game. It was scary but surely not a big deal. A few minutes passed and the doorbell rang again. This time for some reason the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

[00:08:14] I felt a shiver down my spine, my heart pounding and fear growing in me. I asked my boyfriend what to do. I was panicking at that point. He said to go and see who it was so I did. I looked through the peephole and I saw him.

[00:08:31] A man in his 30s with short curly brown hair, a scruffy goatee and bulging brown eyes. I asked him who he was. He said something but it was too muffled for me to pick up

[00:08:46] so I opened the door leaving the door chain in and moved to the side so that I wouldn't expose myself through the gap. I asked again who he was and he didn't reply just looked inside my flat. Then asked me if everything was okay.

[00:09:04] At this point I did get a bit angry and I really asked him what he wanted. Again he looked inside and said, This is the wrong room, not the flat, the wrong room. This really freaked me out.

[00:09:21] I tend to get very angry when I'm scared so I just told him to fuck off. I slammed the door and locked it. I was shivering in full panic wondering how the hell he managed to get inside of the building without keys and without calling the door phone.

[00:09:38] Why did he ring the doorbell in complete darkness scaring the shit out of me? How long was he standing there at the stairs waiting for the lights inside of the building to go off? What did he want? I was far from my family and boyfriend completely alone

[00:09:57] and that made me feel incredibly scared and vulnerable. My boyfriend was on the phone the entire time and heard the whole thing. He suggested that the guy could have been the same person that caused all the commotion on Saturday night

[00:10:10] and suggested that I call the police right away. The police asked me to describe the person and what had happened. They told me to meet them in the communal garden of the building. They said they could confirm it was the guy from across the street.

[00:10:28] They said that they were going to talk to him. I didn't press charges as nothing really happened but that night I slept in front of the door with all of the lights on and a kitchen knife by my side.

[00:10:42] I changed my route to and back from work every day so that I wouldn't have to walk in front of his house and also for my movements to be less predictable. The police called me a few days later and told me that the guy was

[00:10:55] locked in a facility for mental health issues and that he was going to be out in a week or so to call them if anything happened again. Luckily I didn't have to. I moved back to my hometown a few months later as my work contract ended.

[00:11:11] To this day, I will never forget when I looked through that peephole and saw darkness. I'm still scared of doorbells and peepholes so the weird guy from across the street, let's not meet again. This happened when I was around 14.

[00:11:41] I'm a female. My family and I were in an airport in Australia on our way home. We were sitting in a big, open-seated area when I noticed a man who looked to be in his late 20s, early 30s on the other side of the room looking at me.

[00:11:58] Now, as a child with severe anxiety, this did freak me out. I got a request from someone to send me a photo through AirDrop on my phone. It was a photo of a TV. More specifically, the TV behind me.

[00:12:19] It was obvious from the angle who took the photo and sent it. It was the guy who is now staring at me. Obviously I didn't accept it. But he kept sending AirDrop requests, more pictures of the TV, but also random things.

[00:12:38] To this day I have no clue how he knew it was my phone that he was sending them to. Because I don't think I was reacting at all when I was getting them, and my AirDrop name was literally just my name and the word iPhone.

[00:12:53] It was a busy airport, and I assume many other people had their phone and AirDrop on, so no clue. I think that's the bit that freaked me out the most. So obviously I was really starting to panic. But being the type of kid I was,

[00:13:13] I hated conflict and confrontation so I didn't tell my family. This was a mistake, I know, but I guess I just didn't want to bring attention to it. When it was time for us to go to our gate to wait on the other plane,

[00:13:28] my family and I sat down right by the door. I got another AirDrop request, but this photo was different. It was a photo of me and my family, sitting right where we were at that time, taken from behind us.

[00:13:46] I tried to look behind me without making it obvious, and there he was, sitting against the wall maybe about 5 meters away from us. Then I got another one. Again it was of me and my family, but this time it was closer.

[00:14:04] I looked back and he had moved just a couple of meters closer. After that, nothing happened. Turned out to be on the same flight as us, sitting just 3 rows in front of me. I'm just glad that he wasn't behind us. So to the creepy guy at the airport,

[00:14:26] let's not meet. To set the scene here, I'm from a fairly small town in the UK. I've lived here my whole life and it's a pleasant place to live, semi-rural, little crime and lots of familiar faces. So around 12 years ago, when I was 17,

[00:14:53] I was going through the standard teenage rebellion phase. I had everything pierced, started dying my hair and going out late. My parents were pretty strict and I always had a curfew and showing just how rebellious I really was, I was never late.

[00:15:07] One night, at around 11pm, I was walking home alone from a friend's house. Now being older and more experienced and also working in forensic mental health, giving me much more of a grasp on what people can be capable of,

[00:15:22] I would certainly not walk home alone at night now. But I was young then and I'd never really experienced anything that made me feel worried. So I frequently walked home alone. That night, I was walking down a country road, surrounded by trees.

[00:15:38] And there was no one around. There were no streetlights, so it was pretty dark. And I also had no shoes on. And this is because the strap on my shoes were broken, so I was walking pretty slowly and carefully.

[00:15:50] I also had my headphones in and was blasting my music. Again, I wouldn't do this now, but I was young and stupid. I then suddenly had a feeling like I was being watched. You know the one, where you're suddenly very aware.

[00:16:05] You can hear your heart racing, feel the pulse in your body and eyes burning into you. I looked around tentatively and saw a man walking behind me. He was about mid-thirties, medium build with dark features. He was about 20 feet away from me.

[00:16:21] Now I usually wouldn't think anything of this. Like I said, I felt safe in my town. But something about the way he was staring at me made me feel uneasy. I sped up, just a little, remember I was still barefoot. And I glanced behind me again.

[00:16:36] He had sped up too and walked at the same distance. Each time I looked round he was looking at me, seemingly unbothered that it may be making me nervous. I crossed the road, there was a pub on the other side,

[00:16:50] and although it was closed, I thought that there would likely be staff in there at that time. I also thought if I crossed the road and he did too, it was likely I wasn't just being paranoid. I looked back, he'd crossed. Still behind me he followed.

[00:17:05] I wasn't sure what to do here. I wasn't very physically fit, I was a young skinny girl, but I'd always had bad asthma and so sport had never really interested me. I didn't really feel like I could sprint the mile back to my house

[00:17:19] and I was worried that it would just tire me out more. I thought I could bang on the door of the pub, but I was young and naive and I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I kept walking, but quicker,

[00:17:30] and I took my phone out to call my friend. She didn't answer, but I kept talking as if she had. I turned the corner and the road split into a fork. I turned left and to my pleasant surprise he turned right.

[00:17:45] He walked on still staring and I cursed myself for being so paranoid. The poor guy must have just been walking home. Or so I thought. The next day came and I was up early

[00:17:57] as I had to go to work at a snooker club around four miles from my home. I was just at the top of the road when I saw the man again. This time he was standing on the corner, drinking a can of beer.

[00:18:09] He stared at me and I smiled awkwardly, thinking that he might smile back now that we were seeing each other in broad daylight and I wasn't the nervous wreck that I'd been the night before. But he didn't smile.

[00:18:21] He just stared at me with his deep, dark eyes and watched as I approached. I turned the right corner and kept walking, eyes down, music on. I walked quickly and decided to take the longer route to work.

[00:18:34] It added about 20 minutes, but meant that I didn't have to use any alleyways or shortcuts. He followed. He followed me the whole four miles. I went into work freaking out and told my manager. He kind of laughed it off and said it was probably nothing,

[00:18:51] but he did offer to give me a lift home that evening. The shift was fine and we locked up and left at about 11pm. The snooker club was in an isolated area with nothing around except a couple of box factories.

[00:19:04] We were open till late but only served one type of beer and had been closed for over an hour and there was no way through the snooker club as it was at the bottom of a dead end. As we came out and locked the door,

[00:19:17] there was a beer can placed right in the middle of the doorway that staff used. It was the same brand of beer that the guy had been drinking earlier in the day. Okay, now this is getting weird I thought to myself, but I still felt safe.

[00:19:32] My manager was a young guy with a lot of experience dealing with difficult customers so I went about the rest of my evening. And then a few days passed and nothing weird happened. I put it down to my paranoia and forgot about it.

[00:19:47] I continued my usual routines, college, working and seeing friends. The next weekend I had planned to go to the pub with my friends. Now it's important to note that this pub is a long way out of town and on top of some local mountain area.

[00:20:02] It's hard to get to and there's no public transport. It's also pretty far from my house, but it was worth it for us because we used to get served beer there even when we were underage. Anyway, we spent the evening drinking and laughing.

[00:20:16] It was a pretty busy pub and there were lots of people there that I knew. I was staying at my friend's house and she had no curfew, so we left a little after midnight. We walked out of the pub a little worse for the beer

[00:20:29] and our male friend offered to walk us home. We agreed. It was cold and dark and we were glad of the company. We were walking and laughing when all of a sudden that familiar feeling came over me. The feeling that I was being watched.

[00:20:42] I didn't mention it to my friends because I thought they'd just make fun of me. But as we turned a sharp corner, I looked back. There he was. The same man walking behind us, drinking a can of beer in a totally isolated mountain path.

[00:21:04] I quietly told my friends and they spotted him too. We sped up and turned a corner. We ran the rest of the way to my friend's house. Our friend offered to stay the night. We were both young and pretty naive and it freaked us all out.

[00:21:17] But like I mentioned, we're from a small town and there's little reason to be scared so we agreed. We watched a movie and fell asleep in the early hours of the morning. The next day we laughed about how intense we had been

[00:21:29] and went to the local coffee shop around mid-morning. We opened the front door and right in the middle of the doorstep, there it was. The beer can, empty and squashed, just standing there. Now you may think it's a coincidence here, someone walking past just threw the can.

[00:21:48] Except my friend's house was massive and up a long winding driveway tucked away from the main road. It was secluded and couldn't be seen from the street due to the length of the driveway and the surrounding trees.

[00:22:02] So someone must have walked up the driveway to the door to leave a can. Weird. But again I shrugged it off, I felt safe with my friends and I didn't want to seem like I was making a big deal for no reason.

[00:22:16] But the thing is, it didn't stop. It got worse. Everywhere I went, work, college, my friend's house, gigs, every place. Every place I left, there was an empty beer can left outside. I didn't see the guy for a while, just the cans.

[00:22:34] Until one night, it was around 1am and I was walking home. I was walking through the small collection of shops in my town and heard footsteps behind me. I snuck a glance over my shoulder as I crossed the road

[00:22:45] and there he was, about 20 feet behind me, just staring. I'd had enough at this point. I shouted at him, what do you want? And this guy just stood completely still and laughed. There were a few seconds that felt like an eternity that we just stared at each other.

[00:23:04] Then this motherfucker ran. He ran full speed towards me. I wasn't about to find out why. I ran as fast as I could. The first house I came to, I knocked on the door. No answer. I could hear him now running behind me shouting,

[00:23:20] you need to get away, I'm not well, I won't stop. I climbed over the fence and ripped my jeans open. I banged on the door and luckily a man and his wife answered. As soon as they answered, I burst into tears. I explained to them what happened.

[00:23:35] They gave me a cup of hot tea and drove me to my mum. I didn't see the man again for several years. I was at university studying to become a psychiatric nurse when I saw him in my local town, shopping. He stopped when he saw me and smiled.

[00:23:50] I smiled back. He waved. I waved back. That was the last time I saw this man and I sincerely hope he recovered from whatever was making him unwell. But to the man who followed me for over a year, please, let's not meet again.

[00:24:13] I grew up in a small town. The fact that it was small and everyone knew everyone gave us all a false sense of security. But in reality, it wasn't as safe as we wanted to believe it was. There were two gangs in my town

[00:24:40] and the part of town where I lived was LT territory. With this being such a small town, it was not hard to know people that were in this gang. In fact, I myself had a cousin that was a gang member in LT.

[00:24:57] Grace, my best friend at the time, had a brother, Robert, who was also in this gang. I remember this one time when we were about 13 and we went to look for her brother. He was at another gang member's place. We'll call him T.

[00:25:16] T was also a known drug dealer. We got to his place, a run-down trailer only a few blocks away. Robert opened the door and told us to come inside. Grace and I stepped into his dingy, dimly lit trailer littered with beer cans. Robert and T were smoking weed

[00:25:37] and Robert told us to wait while they finished their joint. Grace and I sat down on the battered couch and waited. Remember, I was 13 at the time. T turned his attention to me. He stared at me with dead, reptilian-like eyes.

[00:25:58] First at my chest, then at my face, and then asked who I was. I gave him my name and he asked my street name. I explained that I wasn't a gang member. Even though he didn't raise his voice, I could feel anger suddenly radiating from him. He said,

[00:26:21] Who the fuck do you think you are coming into my house? You think you can hang with L.T. like you're one of us, you fucking bitch? I was shocked. I didn't know what to say. He continued on, telling me that there were two ways

[00:26:39] he was going to allow me to be there. There are two ways that females can be initiated into their gang and I knew what they were without him having to tell me. You were either beaten for a certain amount of time

[00:26:55] by multiple people, or you were gang raped. I could feel the tension in the room. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. T was looking at me the way that a predator looks at his prey. I thought maybe I was imagining it.

[00:27:12] Maybe I was being dramatic and there really wasn't any danger. There was no way this guy was going to beat me or rape me. Was he? But my fears were confirmed when I turned to look at Robert. His eyes were wide.

[00:27:29] He could sense the danger, the evil that was radiating from T. Robert looked scared. He said one word, Run. That's all it took for me to grab Grace by the arm and run out of there. I was in full survival mode at this point.

[00:27:51] We ran full speed back to her house. I never went back and would avoid even walking by this guy's place. It wasn't until recently that I was sharing this memory with my boyfriend that I realized how much danger we had actually been in.

[00:28:06] My voice cracked and I could feel panic tightening in my chest just as I told my story. Like it did so many years ago. So to T, that guy who wanted to initiate a 13-year-old girl, I hope we never, ever meet. I work at a storage facility.

[00:28:35] You know, the ones where you store your items. Most people just rent the unit, fill it, and never come back for months upon months to check on their items. I was what was called a relief manager. I would cover for the property managers who lived on the properties

[00:28:49] for their days off. So I was all over the place. I worked at a total of six storage facility locations. This happened to be at one of the facilities I worked at usually on the weekend. I never work Sundays, so this was a Saturday.

[00:29:03] Our lot hours were between 6am and 9pm. Office hours are 9.30am to 6pm. I had to come in as normal, and my day started normally. Every single day, rain or shine, I had to go and check on all the locks,

[00:29:20] every single lock on every single unit at the facility twice a day. Everything was good in the morning. Nobody in their units, nobody on the lot. Lock check usually took me about 45 minutes. We had 700 units at this specific facility.

[00:29:37] Later in the day, I had to go out again to clean out a vacated unit and stage it, which meant that I had to sweep it out and put a lock and insurance brochure inside the unit, then put a seal on it to show that it's staged.

[00:29:51] This is mostly for my property managers to see that we did our jobs. Our units are indoor buildings, buildings A through F. This happened in building A and in the rental office. I made my way to the back of building A, where the vacant unit was,

[00:30:07] and I saw another unit, open, with lots of stuff in the hallway. I made my way over there because I was scared that there was a break-in, which wasn't uncommon at these places. Hello, I called into the dark unit.

[00:30:21] A man, let's call him Richard, peeked his head out from behind some boxes and bins. He smiled and waved. I came to check on you, is everything okay? I asked. He was really sweaty and wearing a thick wool vest with no shirt underneath.

[00:30:37] This was odd to me because it was June in California and there's no AC in the storage units. He said that he was fine and he was just organising some things in his unit and he would be done soon. This was around 2.30pm.

[00:30:49] I thought nothing of it until I noticed on the security cameras that at 5pm, he was still on the property. I went and checked the gate records and saw that he had been on the property since 7am. What was he doing here for so long?

[00:31:05] He knew our hours, why would he just hang out here? It was 5.15 when he came into the office. I was working alone, as I usually did when he came in to use the bathroom. Our outside bathroom for tenants and anyone who doesn't work there was out of order

[00:31:21] so I had people all day using the bathroom. After he was done and didn't wash his hands, he came and leaned on the counter. Can I help you? I asked in my best customer service voice. Hey, how did you get this job? He asked smiling at me.

[00:31:38] I just applied online and then I got hired a few weeks later I said, purposely not giving out the website I had applied on. Are you guys hiring? He asked. No, I'm sorry, we're not. I would have said we weren't even if we were.

[00:31:50] This guy was really creepy. He had a high pitched voice and a smile that made me uneasy. He had put on a shirt but was still wearing the vest. His fingernails were dirty, he smelled like urine. He started asking me really personal questions like am I married?

[00:32:05] What area do you live in? Any kids? Do I work at other storage locations? These were not questions I answered freely to a stranger. But I did tell him that I was happily married. My husband Kyle and I had gotten married in February 2021.

[00:32:19] So whenever I got asked by anyone, I bragged that I was married. My husband is 6'3", heavily tattooed and very strong. I wasn't exactly small being 5'10 and 250 pounds and I worked out pretty hard.

[00:32:32] He went on and on talking about how he was single and just wanted to be friends. He asked me if I wanted to be friends and I told him I couldn't be friends with tenants. As per company rules. That's not a real rule.

[00:32:46] He asked me for my phone number and I told him that I can't give that out. He insisted and started to inch towards the edge of the counter where he could get behind it to me.

[00:32:56] And I subtly let my pepper spray that was on my keys hang out of my pocket where he could see it. He just gave me the creeps and I'm a very anxious person by nature but something about him set off my fight or flight mode.

[00:33:08] He saw the pepper spray and then told me that it was nice talking to me and that he would see me around either at work or around town. Was this guy going to follow me when I left?

[00:33:18] I only had 10 minutes left of my shift and I knew he wouldn't be gone before then. As soon as he left the office and rounded a corner of the building I locked my door and called my district manager. Let's call her Linda.

[00:33:32] I was on the verge of tears and told her everything. She knew him by name. He had brought my property manager Nessa flowers and a box of chocolates before. He was just a creep to all of the female staff who worked there.

[00:33:43] Which was all of our staff. They were all female. I asked not to work in that area for a while. A request that was quickly granted. My other co-workers have said that he's come in a few times looking for me.

[00:33:55] When it came to 6pm I packed up my stuff and quickly left. He was parked right next to my car. I pretended like I didn't see him and got into my car and peeled away. He followed me out of the lot.

[00:34:09] He followed me out of the gate and onto the street in front of the facility. He followed me for a couple of miles. I was trying not to let the other drivers on the road see that I was sobbing.

[00:34:20] Soon I became angry and started driving down streets that were not on my way home. He followed me down those too. This went on for 20 minutes. My house is only a 7 minute drive from my door to the parking lot at work.

[00:34:34] Finally I lost him or he got tired of following me because I looked behind me and he wasn't there. I sped home, ran inside and collapsed sobbing. I'd never been so scared in my life and I'm still scared a month later.

[00:34:48] So Richard, creep who followed me, let's not meet or my metal bat will meet your face. I think that the worst part of this story, at least for me, was the fact that true horror took place after the main event unfolded

[00:35:20] and that I had no idea how bad it was at the time. This happened around 17 years ago. For a bit of context, I'm completely blind. I live in England. Back then, I was attending a college specifically for blind and partially sighted students.

[00:35:39] I was living in a hall of residence. My room was on the top floor. Each room was equipped with a buzzer system. It allowed us to be buzzed by our room number so we could talk to our visitor and if necessary let them in.

[00:35:55] Each buzzer also had a flip switch on its top so it could be turned off when we didn't want to be disturbed. We used it to have complete control of when our buzzer was on or off. But that was lost after this happened. I'll get to that later.

[00:36:13] This took place on a Saturday night into a Sunday at around 3 in the morning. I was asleep when I was woken by a harsh sound. It was the buzzer. Now my only reaction at this time was annoyance, thinking somebody was drunk and had lost their key or something.

[00:36:32] Maybe someone was just being stupid. So I ignored it. I flipped the buzzer off and went back to sleep. A short time later, a matter of minutes, I heard a male voice giggling outside my room door. Then I heard what sounded like someone trying to pick my lock.

[00:36:52] By this point I was thoroughly pissed off so I got out of bed to open my door and tell whoever it was to fuck off. However, as I reached the door, I had a strong gut feeling. It shouted at me, Don't open the door.

[00:37:09] I listened to this instinct and I went back to bed. But all these years later, that action still haunts me and I wish I could go back and open that door.

[00:37:19] Despite extensive counseling at the time, plus family, close friends, and police telling me that I did the right thing, I still suffer with a form of PTSD because, well, because of my actions that night.

[00:37:32] Just days ago I talked to a friend who was like a big sister to me about these events and ended up in tears. So I went back to sleep, still convinced that it was a drunken prank. Someone was messing around. Little did I know the truth.

[00:37:50] As a result, the next morning I was not at all prepared to find myself in the warden's office with the warden and police officer. Nor was I prepared for the awful story they needed to tell me.

[00:38:03] I had mentioned in passing to the warden that morning what I had heard the night before, still under the impression that it was harmless. I had almost thrown it out there as a casual comment.

[00:38:17] So being brought in to talk with the police just hours later was not what I was expecting at all. It turned out that a previous student at that college, named Ash, had broken into my hall of residence high on drugs and armed with a knife.

[00:38:32] He had tried and failed to pick my lock before moving onto another room. Ash had left the previous year. I was in my third year of study.

[00:38:43] Only a few of us older students knew who Ash was, and we weren't allowed to tell the first and second years his name as they didn't know him. Ash had reached the room of another student who was autistic.

[00:38:55] He had gotten into her room, and to this day, I don't know if he picked her lock or she opened her door. Either way, he got in and assaulted her at knife point. Unfortunately, due to her autism, she couldn't report it as assault.

[00:39:12] She didn't really understand the implications of it. So Ash only got a breaking and entering charge, and served far less time in prison than he should have.

[00:39:22] I got a summons to attend court as a witness slash victim as he tried my lock first, but I didn't have to attend. My guess is he either pleaded guilty or they had more than enough evidence without me needing to testify.

[00:39:38] To this day, I suffer, for lack of a better word, from survivor's guilt and PTSD. I should have ignored my instincts and opened the door that night. Not only would I have saved a fellow student from this horrific ordeal,

[00:39:56] but I could have reported him if he had tried to or had assaulted me and got him a much harsher sentence. I still hate myself. My family and friends too have said he wouldn't have listened to me,

[00:40:11] and if I had opened the door, I'd just be putting myself in danger. But even now, 17 years later, I can't forgive myself for my lack of action that night. I'm not especially religious, but if that was God telling me not to open that door,

[00:40:28] I'd like to know why he allowed someone else to go through something like this in my place. I knew Ash. He worked in the student bar. We had talked. So I still believe I could have talked him down, regardless of what the police and my therapist say.

[00:40:47] Much to my anger, which I and my fellow third years made very well known to the relevant powers, might I add, security was only fitted after the event. Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[00:41:04] We had heavy metal plates fitted across the hall doors, which were impossible to cut through, and CCTV cameras placed above the doors. Our buzzers were also all turned off with a master switch at 11pm every night, and only turned back on at 7 in the morning.

[00:41:23] We were told security guards and frisking would be employed if necessary, something which infuriated me, as it had taken this horrible event for them to even consider CCTV relevant, let alone security guards and protective plates across the doors.

[00:41:39] Now, I went back to that college in 2008 to prepare for a work course. I was in another of the halls, and the first thing I felt upon entering was that metal plate. Talk about flashbacks. I'm now working in the British police force entirely because of this incident.

[00:41:59] I couldn't bring Ash to proper justice, so I'm hoping to help other victims instead. That it will dissuade my terrible guilt, and I can do something practical about it. Whenever any of my colleagues ask me why I'm in this line of work, I just make something up, though.

[00:42:16] I haven't shared this story widely until now. So to Ash, let's never meet again. I don't know you anymore after that night. I sent in a story about a year ago. This was about an experience that I had with the stalker. My story was featured on season 5 episode 10.

[00:42:44] Now this story isn't a continuation of the last one, but it does take place in the same area. One day, in the middle of summer, in my early 20s, I went home after work.

[00:42:57] I had every intention of going to sleep as soon as I got out of the shower. I had just worked a long, hot 12-hour day, and six of those hours were spent in the saddle,

[00:43:08] making sure that no one fell off their horses at the guest ranch that I managed. Yes, after rinsing off my sweat, the horses' sweat, dry manure, dirt, sawdust, and hay,

[00:43:20] I was going to hit the hay. Getting into bed by 8 was the goal, but when I opened my door and was greeted with three pairs of brown eyes, I knew I wasn't achieving my goal that night.

[00:43:32] After some much-needed R&R in the shower, I loaded my dogs up and headed for a trail, rural enough to accommodate three crazy off-leash pups. The trail that I picked was more of a dirt road that ran parallel to a neighborhood that I used to live in.

[00:43:48] Picture a Y, with the center of the Y being a turnoff to the trail. One side of the Y was the trail that was surrounded by sagebrush and scrub oak. The other ran along a hill with houses. The homes were spaced out quite a bit.

[00:44:07] Because it was so high up in the mountains, grass and landscaping were rare. More people let the trees and sage grow in their yards to give it a more rustic vibe.

[00:44:18] All this to say, the trail was completely concealed from the nearby homes, and there weren't many homes to begin with. It was getting dark but still hot. I told myself, because I probably wouldn't see anyone,

[00:44:30] I could get away with short shorts, no bra, a tank top, and sandals. Not idea hiking attire, but I was planning on being back home in an hour tops. We piled out of my car, and I started walking up the trail and dirt road.

[00:44:45] As soon as we neared the turn on the trail that would take us out of sight from the paved residential road, I heard a truck barreling towards us. I turned around to see that it was headed up the road, or down the trail.

[00:44:59] I was relieved to see that he was driving past the turnoff. But I quickly realized the person driving the truck, that once had been going pretty fast, had slowed way down, and he was now craning his neck to look at me as he drove up the road.

[00:45:16] Gross, I thought as I kept walking. I remember noticing that he was quite a bit older than me and had no business checking me out. I had gone up the trail a ways when I heard another vehicle coming towards us.

[00:45:29] This time, it had turned, and it was coming down the trail. I ushered my dogs to the side and turned my back to the trail, trying to conceal the fact that I wasn't wearing a bra.

[00:45:43] But instead of driving past us, this vehicle pulled over and killed the engine. What the hell? I thought. It was probably someone that I knew stopping to talk. Although it was rare to see anyone here, especially someone in a vehicle.

[00:45:59] To my absolute horror, it wasn't anyone that I knew. It was the creep from before. He was already outside of his truck walking towards me. How's your night going? He was about to say something else when my 80-pound black lab started running towards him.

[00:46:15] He started to back up and asked if my dogs were nice. I was starting to say, no, they're ferocious and rabid. But he reached down and started to pet my dog who began wagging his tail and licked his hand in return. Thanks, Rex.

[00:46:33] The other two dogs had a combined weight of 30 pounds and didn't look menacing at all. In fact, they were happily circling him, wagging their tails and jumping around, completely unaware of the sickening feeling in my gut that was quickly taking over my body.

[00:46:48] Realizing the dogs posed no threat, he started to walk towards me again. Do you want to go for a drive? I can put the dogs in the back. This didn't sound like a question. His voice was devoid of emotion. This was a command.

[00:47:05] I smiled and said, no thanks. Trying hard not to throw my hands up in the air, look up in the sky and scream bloody murder while running in circles. I turned and started to walk away.

[00:47:19] Now, I am a chatterbox, but for some reason every fiber in my being was telling me to get the hell out of there. I wanted to run, but something told me, maybe not. Walk away slowly, like you're backing away from a predator.

[00:47:35] Don't show him you're scared by taking off like a lunatic. I calmly walked away, not caring if my dogs followed. Luckily, they quickly caught up to me and I heard the stranger get into his truck and slam the door behind him.

[00:47:50] When he started his truck, I heard him peel out and take off up the road. Gravel went flying everywhere, rocks and dust went whizzing past me, and I knew the road was too narrow for him to turn around.

[00:48:03] But a mile up the road was an area big enough to flip around. I waited until I thought he could no longer see me, then I knelt down, scooped up my ancient Pomeranian and took the hell off.

[00:48:16] I'm not an athletic chick, I often joke that there are bushes with more athletic ability than me. But in that moment, I swear, I could have outrun anyone. I kept my eye out for an opening in the trees, something that I could jump in and hide behind.

[00:48:33] My heart was beating out of my chest, my sandals flipped rocks up into their soles. Sharp pains shot through my feet. I was breathing hard and my legs were moving fast but everything seemed to be in slow motion.

[00:48:44] Soon I was at the turn that he spotted me in the first place. There was a culvert between me and the car, and I had to make a choice between making a mad dash for my car or hiding in the culvert.

[00:48:56] I heard this truck coming back fast and I knew I couldn't make it to my car in time. So I slid down the culvert and laid down on my stomach, hiding behind the sagebrush and holding my dogs beside me so they wouldn't give me away.

[00:49:10] I heard this truck barreling down towards us again. He kept going until he came to my car then he abruptly stopped and waited. I could see him turning his head looking around for me, trying to find me.

[00:49:24] I tried to hold my breath from hyperventilating and wrangling my dogs that were desperately trying to get away from my death grip. He finally drove away. He left as fast as he had came, going somewhere between 40 and 50 miles per hour down a residential road in the mountains,

[00:49:41] at dusk when deer and moose were most likely to be out, and mountain coat never speed between sunset and sunrise. I let go of my dogs and collapsed on the ground.

[00:49:52] I didn't realize I had tears streaking my face until I felt dirt caked to the places my tears had fallen. My toes were bloody from running. My arms, stomach, and legs were scratched from throwing myself down on the ground. I felt like I was about to throw up.

[00:50:07] I called my boyfriend and told him what had happened after calming down. He couldn't understand why I was so upset. Honey, I don't understand what he did that bothered you so much. Then I started to question myself. Why was I so upset?

[00:50:22] He hadn't said or done anything outright aggressive. Feeling a little embarrassed, I wanted some validation. I called my mom as I packed up my dogs and headed home. She's a fellow alarmist and very protective, so I knew that she would make me feel better. She listened to me.

[00:50:38] Then she told me that she thought it was weird too and was glad that I listened to my gut. Then she asked me what he looked like. I couldn't remember. I had stood a yard away from him less than ten minutes before,

[00:50:52] and I couldn't tell you what he or his truck looked like. The truck was old, maybe red. He had a tattered shirt on with jeans. Maybe one of those tacky tap-out shirts that those guys wear. He might have been in his late thirties, maybe early forties.

[00:51:11] I remembered smelling beer and hearing him slur his words. I remembered the cloth seats of his truck. They were maroon. The whole interior was maroon. The drink in his center console was a Rambler without a lid, and it had a koozie wrapped around it. How was that it?

[00:51:31] All I could remember, I was baffled. I felt like I should tell the police, but what do I tell them? Maybe the guy wanted to give me and my dogs a ride.

[00:51:38] Oh, and he might have a red truck, but I'm not sure of his height, build, or hair color. I've had many scary run-ins with sketchy people in the past, but I think about this one a lot. It sticks in my mind.

[00:51:52] I never heard about anything happening on that trail, and I check often, but for some reason to this day, I still think about that interaction, and I'm grateful that I listened to my gut. There's no way I had that kind of physical reaction for no reason.

[00:52:05] Something about him sent chills through my whole body. So creepy truck guy I couldn't give a description on, even if I tried. Let's not meet because I traded my Pomeranian for a 100-pound chocolate lab that would do anything for me, including chewing on you.

[00:52:27] Thanks again to Hannah and Saruti of Red Handed for joining me this week. It was a pleasure, and you're welcome back anytime. They've got over 200 episodes to binge, so I recommend getting on that. They cover all of the stories that you'd expect,

[00:52:49] but they focus on stories that you've likely never heard, like the little-known Ripper Crew of Chicago Case and all the nightmarish things that they put their victims through. It's truly frightening stuff. You can listen to all 200-plus episodes of Red Handed

[00:53:03] by searching for Red Handed, all one word, anywhere you listen to podcasts. That's R-E-D-H-A-N-D-E-D, anywhere you listen to podcasts, You can find out more about the show by searching for at Red Handed The Pod on Twitter and Instagram, or by heading to redhandedpodcast.com. Thanks everyone for listening.

[00:53:24] This week you have heard The Creep Peeping In My Four-Year-Old's Window by Nikki Through the Peephole by Fed Stalked Through Airdrop by Tessa Beer Cans by Sarah Lynn Let's Not Meet Robert's Friend by Dulce Storage Creep by Four Salamanders in a Coat

[00:53:46] Gut Instinct, Terrible Guilt by Sarah C. 1985 And finally, Short Walk Cut Shorter by a Gut Feeling by Ash All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast,

[00:54:05] is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. And as always, if you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. I hope you all enjoyed this week's episode, and don't forget if you're a patron,

[00:54:18] stick around after the music for your extended ad-free version of this week's episode. And if you want to join today and get access to those episodes as well as a bunch of other bonus content, head over to patreon.com forward slash letsnotmeetpodcast

[00:54:32] or follow the link in the show notes and join today to start supporting this show. And for the last bit of news, next week we'll be doing another edition of our Lost Stories series. I don't know which number we're on. I'll have to go back and check,

[00:54:46] but we still have some stories to get through. I know you all are dying to hear. These are some of your favorite episodes, and I'm very excited to put together another one for you. So I'll see you all next week for a Lost Stories episode

[00:54:57] of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Stay safe. I was always very immature as a kid. It was about 1961 when...