[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 8, Episode 17 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast.

[00:00:48] Welcome to the 11th edition of the Lost Stories series of episodes here on the podcast. If you're new to the show, these are very special episodes where we take a listen to some of the recordings from the early days of the podcast that were previously unavailable.

[00:01:02] These are very old, very rough recordings, but the stories remain the same. Truly terrifying tales. They need to be shared. I've done some work on the audio side to present you with the best listening experience possible

[00:01:16] and I think you'll get a real good scare from this week's collection of thrills. For now, enjoy a frightening trip down memory lane. I used to sit on the computer at my parents' house and chat on aim with friends.

[00:01:40] The main landline for the house sat next to me in that room. One night, I got a call from a weird number and the voice on the other end asked for me by my name. I told him yes, that's me.

[00:01:57] And he proceeded to tell me he was at a bar in town that I was not from and saw a quote unquote good time for a call. And he just gave it a shot to see what kind of person picked up. I told the guy, I'm 16.

[00:02:18] I can't even get into bars nor do I know anyone from that area. He started with, you sound so cute. I bet you're a nice girl, huh? He told me he was 18 and he wasn't even supposed to be there, but he had some friends who covered him.

[00:02:41] I gave the conversation a chance because I thought one of my friends might be messing with me. I was hoping to eventually find out who wrote my name on a wall in the bathroom at this bar.

[00:02:56] He asked me questions, I asked him questions, and before I knew it we were talking for hours. He was actually very charming and super interesting. I can't remember what all was said because that was about 14 years ago, but I remember

[00:03:16] telling him that I worked at a movie theater. No, I didn't have a boyfriend and yes, I'd love to meet him sometime. He called me a few times after that night and just chatted with me. The conversation was always flirtatious and even sexual.

[00:03:40] Fast forward to a week later and I'm at work when I see a guy pull up out front of the movie theater and come inside. He's definitely older than 18 and he looks right at me when he comes through the door.

[00:03:56] My blood ran cold and I immediately got this sick, sinking feeling that it was the guy I had been talking to. I was stuck at the ticket counter and he walks over to me and calls me by my name.

[00:04:17] All I could say is, hold on a second, and ran to the other side of the theater where I told a group of coworkers that a guy was here to see me and he was probably a creep. What can I do?

[00:04:34] He must have overheard because he bolted out the back door and took off. For the rest of the day, I felt weird and worried and wasn't sure what to do. I told my mother bits and pieces of what was going on because I knew the situation was

[00:04:55] sketchy and I didn't help anything. The part that I left out was the fact that I had been talking to him for a few nights that week and exactly what we were talking about. He calls the house that night and my mother answers the phone.

[00:05:15] He asks for me and she asks him, who is this? He says, none of your business. You just need to let me talk to her. My mom flips out and says, my daughter is 16 years old. Do you know that? I'm her mother. This is absolutely my business.

[00:05:38] How old are you? And he says, I'm 18 years old and whatever is going on between me and your daughter is between us. She hounds him for another 20 minutes and tells him she's calling the police.

[00:05:56] We do some research on his phone number and find out that he's actually 28, married with three kids, and had been in the army. We also found several mugshots with arrests from the town we lived in.

[00:06:13] My mother got sick of the whole thing and took me down to the police station to file a report. I sit down and tell the officer that the guy found me at work and he was not who he said he was and that I was scared.

[00:06:27] The officer asked if I had any contact with him other than the initial phone call. I admitted that I had been speaking with him for the last few nights and told him where I worked.

[00:06:40] The officer and my mother began yelling at me for being stupid and having poor judgment. The officer said, if anything else happens to report it but otherwise they weren't going to pursue anything. He called back one more time after that and I was the one who picked up.

[00:07:02] I told him not to call me again and that the conversation was over. He told me before I hung up, I just wanted to meet a nice girl but you started all this drama.

[00:07:16] I still to this day have no idea how he got my name and number or why he wanted a 16 year old girl other than the fact that he was a creepy bastard preying on young girls. Let's not meet.

[00:07:52] About 3 years ago, I went on a holiday with my boyfriend and his family. I was 17 years old. It was lovely. Long hot days on the beach exploring the city, swimming in the ocean. But I am thinking of one particular night.

[00:08:11] My boyfriend and I had hung out with his stepsister most of the holiday. She is a year younger than us and likes getting drunk. Despite the fact that she annoyed us by following us all the time, we still hung out with her.

[00:08:27] So this one night, she suggests we should go and find a club. I state that me nor her are old enough. Only my boyfriend could get in. But nonetheless, we are all walking to the other side of the island to get to this club. We're all pretty drunk.

[00:08:48] I fell over several times along the journey. We finally get to this club only to see that all the people are leaving it. We didn't realize it was around 2am and it looked like the club was shut down.

[00:09:05] A bit disappointed, we look to a McDonald's and suggest that we refuel there. I go inside and order but tell my boyfriend and his stepsister I need some air. I go outside for a cigarette.

[00:09:22] I'm smoking when a black car pulls up into a taxi space on the road. I have the idea that we may as well get a taxi back. I'm hurting from falling down and am very drunk. How much for a taxi to the hotel? I ask him.

[00:09:44] 10 euro, he replies. The problem was, I only had 5 euros. I said to this man, please will you drive us for 5? We're from the UK and we don't know here very well. So this man says, for you, 5 euro.

[00:10:07] My boyfriend and his stepsister come out of McDonald's with food and they see me talking to this man. I tell them he's a taxi man and that he's taking us back. The taxi man is surprised to see them and says he didn't know I was with friends, but

[00:10:25] come on and hop in. We are all about to get in the car, me and his stepsister in back, boyfriend in front, when the man requests that I sit in front. I had wanted to sit in the front anyway and me being very drunk and stupid, please forgive

[00:10:47] my lack of intelligence in this story, I decided to comply and go in the front despite my boyfriend's protests. So for the first part of the journey, everything's good. We're all chatting and laughing together and the taxi man is joining in.

[00:11:06] We have music on the radio and I am looking out the window at the wonderful ocean side views. Plus, the cool air is nice on my hot drunken face. We all continue chatting and the taxi man is being friendly, asking us questions about

[00:11:23] the UK and just generally making conversation. We all start laughing and chatting away and he takes my hand, his right hand on the wheel. Bear in mind, this man is probably about 50, very chatty, so I thought nothing of it. He was just being friendly.

[00:11:50] Throughout our conversation, he is holding my hand every now and then. Now I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable, but shrug it off. But it progresses. He placed my hand on his thigh, holding it tight in his hand.

[00:12:09] I move over on my seat away from him, but he keeps my hand there. I turn around and see the stepsister and she mouths, are you okay? I nod, because the man is now letting go of my hand.

[00:12:28] I see the stepsister whisper something to my boyfriend and they go quiet for a moment. Seeing as he let go, the conversations continue. I can see we are getting closer to our hotel and am wishing for us to be there quickly. The man takes my hand again.

[00:12:49] This time, he places it on my thigh, his hand holding mine tightly. I'm feeling very vulnerable at this point. I'm wearing a short, tight vest dress. I immediately clamp my legs together. I'm now silent. I froze. My boyfriend notices and says, mate, take your hands off her now.

[00:13:17] The man laughs and says, friendly, I'm being friendly. He continues keeping his hand on my thigh. At this point, my boyfriend and his stepsister are saying, stop it, pull over. But he says we're close to the hotel now.

[00:13:37] I feel sick, the alcohol creeping up my stomach and throat. The man is still grasping my hand and he moves it further up my thigh. I'm completely stiff at this point, knowing that if I let my legs relax even the slightest, things would escalate. But they did anyway.

[00:14:02] He guided his hand up and with one of his fingers, he touched me. I don't need to say where because you already know. I stare out the window and I'm begging for the car to stop. Luckily it does.

[00:14:22] I jump out of the car and my boyfriend and stepsister are looking at me. He touched me, I said. My boyfriend races over to the driver's window, shouting and screaming at him. But the man speeds off, very fast and as he does, my boyfriend kicks his license plate

[00:14:45] and we see a dent. We go back into the hotel and needless to say, I drink more. The next morning, we are going on a boat trip and my boyfriend's family are asking me if I'm okay after hearing about what happened.

[00:15:04] I say yes because it's true and it's over now. It could have gotten a lot worse and I hope I'll never see him again. We leave the hotel lobby and that's when I see them. Taxis, white, yellow taxi signs on top of them, pulled in the taxi ranks.

[00:15:27] I have everyone. Excuse me, I say to the taxi man. Are all taxis white here? Yes, he says. Are taxi colors are white with the sign on top? I feel my insides churning. So let me reiterate this.

[00:15:50] A 50 year old man thought me, a 17 year old, was alone and pretended to be a taxi service to get me into his car. Creepy taxi predator, let's not meet again. I'm a mother of two daughters and I live out in the country.

[00:16:31] My husband is a welder and a really outgoing and charismatic guy, which means he has a lot of friends that will periodically stop by to hang out with him. In fact, there are some friends he trusts enough to use the tools in his garage and

[00:16:49] stay at the house when he isn't home. Well, one late afternoon he was gone and I heard someone pull into the driveway. We have two dogs who were going nuts with barking at the picture window in our living room.

[00:17:05] I looked out and saw a familiar blue blazer and assumed my husband's friend Bob was over to use something from the garage or wait for my husband to get home. He hadn't knocked on the door so I figured they'd already talked to each other about it.

[00:17:24] No big deal. But the dogs would not stop barking and growling, which just didn't seem right because they knew Bob. So he looked a little more closely out the window and realized that there was a man lingering near the garage, but he wasn't Bob.

[00:17:49] In fact, I had never seen him before. I decided to take my dogs and go outside to see who he was and what he wanted. He told me he lived down the street and knew my husband.

[00:18:05] He was very friendly and began telling me about how he had to move out of his house because he and his wife were divorcing. He seemed quite familiar with my husband and even asked about our dog Pepper, who had passed away a few months prior.

[00:18:24] Pepper was very smart and a very protective dog, and he could be scary if he thought harm would come to me or my family. He didn't realize that Pepper died and really seemed genuinely apologetic about it.

[00:18:41] Meanwhile, I noticed that my dog Shadow still hadn't settled down around this guy. He wouldn't let him pet him and the hair on his back was sticking straight up. He would intermittently growl during our conversation as well.

[00:19:01] This was really odd for him, and I was confused because this guy seemed really nice. After chatting for a while, he asked for my husband's number so he could call him. That was a red flag for me because if my husband wanted someone to have his number,

[00:19:20] he'd give it to them. So I told the man I'd give him a call right then. I called my husband in front of the man who suddenly looked a little nervous. I explained to my husband that Jim from down the street was at our house to visit him.

[00:19:40] Immediately, my husband told me to tell Jim to get off of our property and never return. This scared the crap out of me because like I said, my husband is really friendly and hospitable. He told me to make the man leave and he was on his way home.

[00:20:04] I ended up making some excuse to Jim for some reason I just couldn't say something so mean to him after he had been so friendly and polite to me. He backed up right away, suddenly quick to leave.

[00:20:21] My husband arrived at home a short time later and explained that Jim was a severe crack addict who had been stealing from all of his neighbor's garages. His wife threw him out because of this and he's been desperate for cash to support his habit.

[00:20:41] He was probably scoping out what he could steal from my husband's garage and seeing what obstacles, like my dogs, would be in his way. To think he could have harmed me or my kids makes me furious.

[00:20:57] He seemed so nice and I felt like an idiot for not realizing the truth. I learned my lesson now though. If somebody comes over that I don't know while my husband is out, I call him right away.

[00:21:23] Last week I was backing into a parking spot in an unfamiliar townhouse neighborhood. My girlfriend was dog sitting and I was visiting. I caught my quarter panel on this older SUV, an early 2000s model.

[00:21:42] The car gets stuck and I have to make the scrape horse to get out. Basically the goddammit and sigh moment. So like a decent human being I call my insurance, file a claim and leave a note explaining the bumper scuff with my phone number.

[00:22:02] This guy waits until late the next day, texts me giving me his name and asking for my name and address. I don't leave my name on public notes. A phone number is generally fine. Well he lets me know he's going to call me.

[00:22:22] Most of that seemed fine, except that he didn't need my address. So I replied with my name, policy number, insurance company and claim number so that he could get his car fixed.

[00:22:34] Again, this is a minor scrape that took the chrome off of the corner of his bumper and nothing else. Not even a dent. He replies asking me if I live in the neighborhood and I told him no, I was just visiting. No response. Cool whatever.

[00:22:55] There are a lot of federal intelligence and R&D employees and contractors in the area so privacy is a pretty normal thing. A lot of people will just reply quote unquote analyst when you ask what they do, which is code for stop asking me about that.

[00:23:14] So he calls me. I pick up and we chat. He's pressuring me to do out of pocket saying shit like, oh if you keep making claims they'll raise your rates and even drop you. Thanks for the advice but my last claim was comprehensive like 8 years ago.

[00:23:36] I think I'm fine. At this point I'm glad I sent pictures to my insurance company and had a text exchange so I have things in writing. Then he says, so I looked you up online and got your address and like your last 3 addresses

[00:23:56] so I should have what I need now. Now I'm creeped out. Like dude I scuffed your bumper, I didn't break into your house, you don't need to know where I live. You need my insurance information. You've got it. So leave me the fuck alone. So Friday rolls around.

[00:24:20] Someone I know was shot and killed on Thursday afternoon and I attended their vigil on Friday. Obviously I'm not in any mood to deal with this shit and again he already has my information. This dude calls me again, leaves an incomprehensible voicemail and texts me saying, just called

[00:24:46] you during the vigil. Thankfully I remembered to silence my phone. About an hour later he texts me again and asks, by the way who are you visiting? I blocked his number. He can either call my insurance or fuck right off.

[00:25:11] This is way overboard for a scuffed bumper on a 15 year old car that I'm admitting fault for. Let's not meet. I remembered this while reading someone else's story and since I've never shared it before I realized I have something to contribute.

[00:25:40] When I was around 7 years old we moved into a big house that was split into 3 different apartments. It was light blue in shade so everyone called it the big blue house. I had a sister a year younger as well. We lived in the upstairs apartment.

[00:26:02] There were 2 apartments on the ground floor. In the front apartment lived a couple and their teenage son. My parents knew them very well and had actually known them for most of their life. They lived in the apartment for a long time.

[00:26:20] The third apartment is where people seem to come and go. I still remember a certain tenant who was a lady in her 40s that had a daughter around the age of 4 years old.

[00:26:35] She would scream at her daughter that it wasn't her fault her father decided to go be with a whore. So even at the age of 7 I knew this was very odd to tell such a young kid that her father is dating a whore.

[00:26:53] The little girl would even tell me sometimes, my dad is with that whore again. But this story is about the tenant who moved in after she left. He was just a single guy in his 40s as well. He was very friendly.

[00:27:16] Now my mom was an addict and would take off for weeks at a time. My dad had to work full time to care for us so we were left alone often, if not with the teenage son of the couple who lived in the front apartment.

[00:27:36] He would babysit us sometimes but half of the time we took care of ourselves. I remember hanging out inside the apartment of the couple with the teenager often. My parents loved them and they were good people and we hung out inside their apartment a lot.

[00:27:57] Sometimes when all of us kids and adults were there they would invite the man next door to come over and hang out. This man carried a camera with him at all times. He loved taking our photos. And since we were young girls he loved having our photo taken.

[00:28:22] So he would take a ton of pictures of us and full view of the adults and tell us he would print them and give them to us when they were ready. I don't recall this man ever asking us to enter his apartment or take photos alone but

[00:28:42] he was overly friendly and seemed to enjoy taking our photos a little too much. He would also photograph our older cousin who was a 16 year old girl at the time. If I remember correctly this lasted about a month.

[00:29:01] The next thing I know my dad is telling me to never go into that guy's apartment or speak to him at all. After listening in on the adults talk I find that someone entered his apartment, though

[00:29:16] I don't know if it was a landlord or a friend, and discovered that he was developing our photos and cutting our faces from them and pasting our faces onto the bodies of naked women. He had them plastered all over his walls.

[00:29:37] Seven year old girl faces on pornographic bodies. He moved out within days. I'll never forget hearing that. I have no idea if the cops were called or what happened to that guy and the photos afterwards,

[00:29:59] so I don't even know if this creep may still have my childhood photographs somewhere. If someone is interested I'll ask my dad and see if I can get more info. I've never brought it up to him before. I am a 27 year old female.

[00:30:30] At the time this occurred I was a senior in high school, angsty and steadily into partying. For this story I'm going to hide her identity solely due to the rules on Reddit. Let's call her Kay.

[00:30:45] Kay almost cost me my life and I never want to see her again. Little backstory on Kay. She had grown up privileged, given anything she ever wanted. Her parents adopted her five cousins and this is when she started to rebel.

[00:31:05] Her parents, well off, started to pay less attention to her so Kay had all the freedom in the world. At the time of this incident, Kay was 18 and I had just turned 18.

[00:31:18] We were headed to a kickback at this guy's house and nothing more than a little bit of weed was expected. Now I had my share of smoking weed popping pills here and there, I had just tried ecstasy the summer prior. However, I was planning on staying sober.

[00:31:37] She picked me up and we stopped to buy cigarettes at a gas station. I bought a fountain drink with a straw and everything. This is crucial for later in the story. We arrive at the apartment and everyone is smoking, including Kay, but I declined.

[00:31:54] She would always say shit about how she never wanted to be high alone, complained about how I never got as high as her, so I obliged and cleared the bong off of her head, not even taking a full hit.

[00:32:08] She asked for a drink of my soda and I handed it to her. She had it for a good minute. I had my head turned, talking to someone else at the party. When I looked back at Kay, she was messing with my straw.

[00:32:23] I didn't think too much of it and she handed it back to me. Within about 30 minutes or so, I started feeling intensely high, to the point that I needed to escape from the group.

[00:32:38] I go out front to smoke a cigarette only to find that I couldn't even stand up, so I laid on the porch. Then all of these dark thoughts flashed through my mind. I felt sick, like my stomach was being torn open. I couldn't stand up.

[00:32:57] I had to crawl to the bushes to throw up. I thought to myself, all of this clearing off a bong? So I laid back on the porch. The apartment was located on a busy city street that I live in.

[00:33:14] I also thought about running into traffic because I felt like I was dying. So I gave myself two options. I could run into traffic, have a car hit me, and end this horrible pain I was in. Or I could get some help, maybe flag somebody down.

[00:33:34] My mind wasn't in the right state. I knew nobody at this kickback that would take me seriously. I knew something was terribly wrong. I thought about calling my mom. I must have dialed her number and hung up like five different times.

[00:33:54] Finally I called and told her what had happened and that I didn't know why I was so high. Somebody else was feeling the way that I did. What seemed like an eternity later, Kay came outside looking for me.

[00:34:10] As I'm puking my guts into the bushes, she asks me if I want to go get some food. I asked her if she was fucking serious. She laughed as I puked. What I didn't know is that my mother had called my older brother to pick me up since

[00:34:30] he lived close to where I was. He showed up with a machete, ran inside, and threatened people. I didn't know who gave me what. It wasn't until I got home that my brother took one look at my eyes and noticed how dilated my pupils were.

[00:34:50] So they rushed me to the ER. After more puking, of course. My memory is a bit fuzzy. I just remember asking my sister-in-law if I was going to die and telling her that I was scared.

[00:35:06] They ended up sedating me due to the fact that I was yelling and threatening the nurses. Totally out of character for me. They did a tox screen, or drug test, and found MDMA, the drug found in ecstasy, along with other drugs in my system.

[00:35:24] I'm assuming the other drugs were the ones used to make up the ecstasy. This is all frightening and everything. However, what I found out a few days later shocked me to my core. Kay had been to a house party that next night.

[00:35:40] Somebody there had said she was passing out free ecstasy to four different people. Of those four people, three had seizures and had to be taken to the ER by ambulance. I'm assuming whatever that ecstasy she used was a bad batch.

[00:35:58] Remember when she asked me to have a drink of my soda? I assume this is when she dropped the pill inside and it dissolved. She probably crushed it beforehand or something.

[00:36:10] I have no clue, but at this time in my life, I hadn't done drugs for quite a while, especially not ecstasy. Kay also went to tell people that I was the one that slipped her the drug and she had to go to the hospital.

[00:36:29] She is a pathetic liar and has had to go to therapy for a long time due to mental disorders. All of this happened because she wanted me to be high like her. I could have committed suicide because I wasn't in the right frame of mind.

[00:36:45] It still affects me to this day. It sounds cliche, but I have a hard time trusting people with this experience and among other things. I also don't like sharing drinks with friends. I get scared when I go out to the bar or club fearing for the worst.

[00:37:02] I mean, my own friend had done this to me. What's stopping a stranger? So I always guard my drink no matter what. So Kay, let's not meet ever again. The following story is narrated by the multi-talented friend of the show, Marcelina Chavira.

[00:37:36] Actor, comedian, writer and one of the most unique voices in the business. Her information will be available in the show notes if you're interested. While there aren't any graphic details, there are some references to animal harm, so listener discretion is advised.

[00:37:51] I'd like to share with you a series of horrific events from my childhood that we never had a real resolution to. There were some suspects, but no one was ever brought to justice.

[00:38:12] Also there have been a lot of terrible things happen on my mom's property and that's another story but here's part of the beginning. This part of the story happened roughly around 1990 during my summer break from school, but continued on for quite some time.

[00:38:26] I must have been about second or third grade age. I grew up with just my mom. My dad was never in the picture, so we lived alone until I was about 12 when she remarried. Our secluded country neighborhood was safe for the most part and all of our immediate

[00:38:40] neighbors were elderly save for one couple who had a few young adult sons around my brother's age. For the most part though, didn't have much riffraff in the area. At first there were only minor clues to indicate something was going on such as things being

[00:38:54] moved in the backyard and I guess because my mom has always been a paranoid conspiracy theorist she had an idea that something was happening. I didn't really know this until I heard her talking about it much later after the events.

[00:39:07] She tried to hide things so they wouldn't scare me. She even started sleeping in my room with me at night probably because she was paranoid but I assumed it was just so we could stay up late and watch movies together and eat snacks.

[00:39:18] One morning after I got up, I noticed that our old wooden back door had huge chunks missing out of it around the part where the lock bolt goes into the door frame. It was as if someone was trying to chip away at the locked part.

[00:39:32] I showed my mom what I had discovered not realizing why the door was damaged and she went completely silent, pale faced and panicked. I could tell something was wrong but I was too young to understand that someone had apparently

[00:39:45] tried to break in either in the night or when we were out. That day she mended the door to the best of her ability and if I remember correctly she even put a new different lock on it from the hardware store.

[00:39:58] She also filed a police report but there was nothing they could do. I had a German Shepherd named Munchie. He was a big spoiled baby who loved raiding the fridge with me but to a stranger he was probably very intimidating.

[00:40:11] He was my best friend and very watchful over me and I still miss him to this day. For a week or two after mom and I would go to bed, Munchie would start pacing and whining and acting very anxious.

[00:40:23] Since we lived in such a rural place with no imminent danger, we thought, mom would frequently let him outside by himself so one night when he was acting exceptionally strange she let him outside alone. We didn't have central air because our house was old, built in the 50s.

[00:40:39] We were poor and Kentucky summers weren't really too hot anyway. At night my mom would open up all the windows in the house, with the halfway burglar latch of course. Since she was in my room with me watching a movie, we had both my bedroom windows all

[00:40:53] the way up. My back window overlooked a bit of a hill which gradually sloped into a low wide bottom. The bottom was full of tall weeds and bushes. Suddenly we heard movement in the brush of the bottom. Munchie! Then we heard him snarling like a werewolf.

[00:41:12] Mom got up and ran to the window but couldn't see anything. What we heard next was horrifying. It sounded as if Munchie was attacking someone. He was making those awful noises as if he was eating someone alive.

[00:41:27] I began to cry, terrified that something would happen to my best friend and my mom started screaming in horror for Munchie to come home. We heard what sounded like someone escape my dog's wrath and take off through the brush.

[00:41:40] Mom ran to the back door with me right behind her and called for Munchie at the top of her lungs until he came running back into the house. He was panting and grunting and bristled up.

[00:41:50] I hugged him so tight I probably nearly squeezed the life out of him. As time progressed things got worse. Being so young, I didn't know for a long time but my mom was safeguarding the house.

[00:42:03] She even moved a tall dresser in front of my window that overlooked the hill and bottom. She tried her best but whoever was harassing us was finding new ways to make our life hell or maybe try to kill us.

[00:42:16] One night she said she heard peculiar noises coming from the backyard. I don't necessarily remember this so I called her for details before writing this. The sounds were coming from under the dining room windows which overlooked the backyard.

[00:42:29] She turned on the security light on the back of the house and saw a ladder propped up against the back of our house as if someone was trying to climb through our windows. This incident seemed more like an empty threat than a real attempt especially considering

[00:42:44] the back door was probably easier access. We don't know if the person thought the windows would be unlocked or what but for whatever reason they gave it a try. Again she called our local police and they did nothing.

[00:42:58] I should probably note that we really didn't have much law enforcement there. You probably wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell you how worthless law enforcement was and still is in that area.

[00:43:09] On another occasion, and this memory is burned into my brain because it scared me so bad. Someone snuck up to my bedroom window one night. I hate to even think what their intentions might have been.

[00:43:25] Mom had drifted off to sleep but I was quietly watching the rest of Willy Wonka. I was looking in the direction of my ominous window, the one overlooking the bottom. So I ended up getting a good look at this big white hand which reached up and slapped

[00:43:42] my window screen multiple times in rapid succession. I screamed, mom woke up and the tormentor took off no doubt through the brushy bottom. My mom is a dog person. She adores dogs and has always had lots of dogs and puppies around.

[00:43:59] We had seven little black pups and the mother dog around this time and they lived outside on our huge property. Had plenty of space to play and a nice big dog house.

[00:44:08] At some point around the same time this stuff was happening we had to be out of town for a few days. Mom had some people watching the house and I guess she didn't really think anything horrendous would happen.

[00:44:19] Then again, she wasn't aware of how far this thing would go. When we came home mom's puppies had been killed and lined up in a row in the side yard close to my window that overlooked the bottom. This was devastating.

[00:44:37] The police did little to help which included telling her how short to saw off her shotgun so that it was still legal and advising us to keep Munchie in the house. I forgot to ask but I'm nearly positive mom ended up sending the mommy dog away to

[00:44:51] my sister's house on the other side of town. Months later incidents were increasing in occurrence and then someone decided to take it way too far. Something hit the back of the house in the wee hours of the morning.

[00:45:05] Mom looked out the window and saw nothing at least not until the next morning. She found a stick with a charred pine knot on it. Someone had apparently lit it on fire and threw it at our house. I assumed they were hoping our house would burn.

[00:45:20] And don't even ask about the cops because they did nothing. Yet again. I wouldn't be surprised if they knew who the culprit was and didn't care. Then one day Munchie went missing. He had gone to the bathroom in the evening before bed and he didn't come back immediately

[00:45:36] like always. He vanished. I don't even want to go into detail about this because it breaks my heart all over again but we found him days later. He had been poisoned. To be completely honest I could keep going with this story although it takes a lot of

[00:45:54] unbelievable turns. Not all of them are horrifying. Then around 2009 a multiple year long court case began where my mom had to fight a group of her neighbors in court to keep them from stealing her property.

[00:46:09] Those events led us to believe the people involved with that case may have had something to do with the torment we experienced all those years ago. But honestly all we can do is assume.

[00:46:21] So Tormentor I wish we could meet but you're a coward who harasses women and children and hurts animals. This is not my story. It happened to my mom. My family is from a small southern town.

[00:46:53] They've always lived around here and in the early 70s it was the kind of place where everyone knew their neighbors. My grandpa owned his own grocery store. It was called Bill's Food Center. Everyone in town would come by regularly and get their groceries and even stay and chat

[00:47:08] with him for a little bit. My mom had worked there at the cash register regularly from her early teens on so she knew all of the regulars and could always tell when someone hadn't been there before.

[00:47:23] So when two men come in that she had never seen before she made sure to welcome them and asked if they needed help finding anything. She said she remembered being very unnerved by them from the very beginning.

[00:47:38] She asked if they needed help finding anything and the older one replied, Nah sweetie, we'll let you know when we find what we need. As they checked out the older man who she described as mid to late 30s kept asking her increasingly personal questions.

[00:47:57] She was polite but tried to give really vague general answers. The younger man with him was in his early 20s and never spoke, always just went along with what the other man said.

[00:48:11] They came in for items every day for about 4 days and they always unnerved her but she never felt too threatened or weirded out until the very last day. The older man said he could use some help now and explained that they were going on

[00:48:24] a camping trip and needed some help picking out supplies. He said they needed some really strong rope and some duct tape. He explained that he liked to shoot guns and needed the duct tape to wrap around his hands while shooting.

[00:48:40] She felt that the explanation was odd but nevertheless helped them pick out the supplies and checked them out. The vibes she got from them were so bad that day when they left she made sure that she was memorizing their license plate just in case.

[00:49:00] A few days later a cashier at another local store down the street from my grandpa's went missing. After searching for a few days the police found her body near a local river. She had been beaten, sexually abused, tortured and stabbed repeatedly.

[00:49:20] She was bound with duct tape, barbed wire and rope almost exactly like what my mom remembered selling the two men. When she read about the murder in the Sunday paper her stomach dropped. She immediately felt that she knew the two men were responsible.

[00:49:42] She told my grandpa she knew who was responsible for the crime. She knew the two strange men were somehow involved. My grandpa was skeptical at first but my mom was so adamant that he eventually caved and they went to the police.

[00:49:57] My mom was questioned extensively by a detective. It took some time but the police eventually caught up with the men and they were found guilty of the murder. My mom was so shaken up about the whole thing and refused to work in the store alone from then on.

[00:50:16] She was even more alarmed when the police informed her that the men were casing my grandpa's store before ultimately deciding on the other one. So to the weird men prowling grocery stores, let's never meet.

[00:50:31] Thank you for listening to this week's Lost Stories episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Don't forget, if you want to get your weekly dose of the true paranormal, check out the

[00:50:56] new episode of my other podcast Odd Trails at oddtrails.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This week you have heard, Supposedly Found My Name and Hunted Me Down by BurntToastYo, Do Not Get Into Taxis Drunk and Alone, A Lesson by Dova Dragonfruit, My Dog Hated Him by

[00:51:17] Katty64, Dude Whose Bumper I Scuffed by GossPodAndSneg, Child Predator in the Next Apartment Over by JessicaTheFirst, Drugged by a Friend and Nearing Suicide by KPeralta77, Trespasser Tortured Me and My Mom When I Was a Kid by StrayCatDiaries, and finally Never Talk to

[00:51:40] Strangers in a Grocery Store by BaptizedInFlames. 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 is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.

[00:51:55] As always, if you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com and if you want to get access to the extended version of this week's episode, as well as past episodes

[00:52:05] and ad-free versions as well as a bunch of other content, tons of stuff on there, head over to patreon.com forward slash lets not meet podcast to support the show today. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode. Stay safe.

[00:52:47] I was 23 years old in my senior year in college, living just off campus in a weird city.