9x02: Don't Watch Me Sleep - Let's Not Meet

[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 nine, episode two of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast.

[00:00:35] Welcome to the show. I have some very important news for Seattle ticket holders for the show on August 25th. Due to a scheduling issue, the show at the Neptune in Seattle, Washington will now

[00:01:02] take place at the Triple Door. All tickets will be honored. You won't have to do anything else except show up. If for any reason you do need a refund, please contact your point of purchase

[00:01:12] and they'll be able to help you out. I want to say thanks to the Triple Door for being so accommodating. It's a great venue and I'm really excited to see you all there. You can still get

[00:01:21] tickets at letsnotmeetpodcast.com forward slash tour, or just follow the links in the show notes. But we have some terrifying tales to get to this week. So let's jump right in. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:32] I'm a 27 year old woman and this happened to me nine or 10 years ago when I was a senior in high school. We lived in a pretty large house, but my siblings were all away at college or boarding

[00:01:57] school. So it was only my parents and I in the house. I'm a crazy light sleeper. So when I woke up in the dark and saw my alarm clock flashing 311 AM, I wasn't too surprised. However, I was wide

[00:02:13] awake, not just groggily stirring in my sleep. I lay there wondering what had woken me up when I hear very soft footsteps on the stairs outside my bedroom. The door to my room was parallel to

[00:02:30] the left side of the bed and I happened to be laying with my back to the door. When the footsteps approached my door, I thought it must be one of my parents checking on me for some reason.

[00:02:43] Then the doorknob was turned so slowly. Still, I thought they were trying not to wake me up. The door began to open again slowly and carefully. It made a creaking noise no matter how

[00:03:01] slowly it was opened. So the person finally shoved it the rest of the way to silence the creak. Still, my naive brain thought that it was one of my parents until a flashlight clicked on. I froze.

[00:03:18] Terror flooded my insides. I remember that I instantly broke out in a sweat. They were behind me. I was facing away so they couldn't see my eyes. They couldn't see that

[00:03:30] they were wide open as they shone the beam straight on me. I always used to think that if something like that were to happen, I would be such a badass. I would whip out of my bed and

[00:03:43] punch them, attack them, shout, scream, do anything. But I couldn't do a thing. All I could do was try to keep my breath deep and even despite the pounding of my heart so that the intruder

[00:03:57] wouldn't know that I was awake. After about 10 minutes, they finally moved the light away. I prayed and begged and bartered with anything that would listen to me as the intruder walked around my room looking at my things. I could vaguely see their shape, large and bulky,

[00:04:17] like they were wearing two coats. They had a baseball cap on. They didn't shine the flashlight on me again and after a few minutes, which felt like an eternity, they finally left my room. But I could still hear them walking about the rest of the second floor,

[00:04:36] through my sibling's empty bedrooms. I was still sweating, still frozen in terror, not knowing what to do. I wanted to grab my phone and to call my dad. He was sleeping downstairs. I wanted to call our landline so that the phone would ring and wake my parents up.

[00:04:56] I wanted to call the police. I wanted to get up and run from my room. I wanted to cry. But I couldn't do any of these things. I was afraid that they would hear me and I didn't know

[00:05:07] if they had a weapon or if they would try to hurt me or my parents. I wouldn't wish such helpless terror on my worst enemy. I don't know how, but I must have passed out from fear or the adrenaline

[00:05:21] wore off and I fell asleep somehow because the next thing I knew it was 6am and I could hear my parents downstairs. I ran downstairs and as calmly as I could, I asked them if one of them

[00:05:35] had been in my room that night. Their faces went blank. They said no, they had not. That was the last straw. I broke down in sobs and I told them, someone was in my room last night. And even as I

[00:05:52] typed this, my hands had begun shaking and I'm tearing up. The police were called even though there was little that they could do at this point. Apparently when my parents woke up,

[00:06:04] all of the doors to the outside were standing wide open and there was a duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs. All that was inside was a coil of nylon rope and an empty USB flash drive.

[00:06:18] I don't want to think about what it was for. The intruder hadn't taken a thing and we have no idea why they left in what appeared to be a hurry. It took me about a week to be able to sleep in my own

[00:06:32] room, a sanctuary which felt violated and frightening to me now. I carry pepper spray, sleep with the machete next to my bed and double check my locks every night. Hopefully this will never happen

[00:06:47] again but if it does, I won't freeze. It's been 10 years and my most common nightmare is that someone is in my room standing in the shadows, watching me. This happened around 4 months ago. I debated on whether or not I should share this because I wasn't

[00:07:20] sure if I was being paranoid since I watch a lot of true crime. Looking back now, it creeps me out to think of what could have happened if I hadn't acted as I did. Yeah sure, I could still be

[00:07:34] paranoid but something in my gut says that I wasn't. I get back to my gate from a small path at the start of a creek just off the main road. You can go the longer way around to get to my front

[00:07:48] door but usually I just take the back gate because it's quicker. The creek is on the left side of a path surrounded by trees. The local council has a problem with how many bats live there. On the

[00:08:01] right side of the path you see the backs of houses, some have gates like mine. If you follow the main road for a bit, there's an underpass that is always covered with graffiti. It always gets

[00:08:14] painted over only for more graffiti to appear and the cycle continues. I was hanging out with a friend. We went on a bike ride and we had a picnic before school would start back up again.

[00:08:28] It had gotten pretty dark by that point and I was heading back. I went through the underpass which in itself is a sketchy thing to do at night especially considering that I was a 16 year old,

[00:08:40] 5 foot 4 female. I got onto the main road and started riding in the bike lane and I noticed all of the bats in the sky. It was rather pretty actually. I also noticed two cars by the curb

[00:08:56] on the other side of the road with their lights on. One of the cars was black and had tinted windows and the other one was a bigger four-wheel drive car, also black with tinted windows that had a

[00:09:07] mattress tied to the roof. I just assumed that someone was having a party or whatever and kept biking. I heard cars behind me but that's not unusual considering it is a main road even if it

[00:09:21] does get pretty quiet at night. They slowed down so that they were driving behind me which was odd. I was guessing it was because they didn't want to hit me. I mean no one was on the other side

[00:09:34] of the road. I was in the bicycle lane. They could have just overtaken me if they wanted to. I found myself biking even faster because I felt like I was the reason they were driving so slow.

[00:09:48] As I was thinking about this, a car overtook me but didn't speed off. It remained driving at my speed but in front of me. It was then that I noticed there had been a car behind that car

[00:10:04] that was also driving at my speed but behind me. Needless to say, I felt creeped out. I was being sandwiched between these two cars and I realized that they were the same ones that were parked

[00:10:17] at the other side of the road earlier. The fact that they were pretty much the exact same car you think of when you think of a creepy car didn't help. I kept biking until I got to the path by the

[00:10:31] creek that I usually take to get to my back gate. I was having second thoughts though. It was dark, not many people take that path and it was surrounded by trees. Not to mention how creeped

[00:10:44] out I felt by what was happening with these cars. I thought it would be best if I turned down the path because these cars would probably just keep driving but the second I thought of that, the

[00:10:56] four-wheel drive in front of me indicated it was going to the curb just in front of the path. No, this is not happening. No way was I going down that path considering that there was no reason

[00:11:08] that someone would pull up there. There wasn't an entrance to anyone's house nearby or anything except the darkness of the creek. I was going to go the long way around. I overtook the four-wheel

[00:11:19] drive that had now pulled up to the curb to continue along my bike lane and the long way around to my house. As I overtook this four-wheel drive, it indicated it was going to leave the curb.

[00:11:33] They hadn't even been there 10 seconds when the car that was behind me stopped to let them out. The four-wheel drive went back to sandwiching me with that other car. Pretty much any remaining thought I had of this being a coincidence went out the window. I turned

[00:11:52] up the path that goes to the main road. When the cars noticed this, they too did the same. By this point my heart was beating so fast I came up with a split-second plan. I needed to turn left

[00:12:05] at the T-intersection to get to my house but I didn't want to risk these cars knowing where I lived so I continued to go straight pretending that I wasn't going to turn. They continued also

[00:12:18] When it was no longer possible for them to take a left, I did a quick turn and sped down the street. I heard both of the cars speed off. I don't think I had ever biked that fast in my life.

[00:12:32] I flung open the front gate and as it closed behind me and my bike, I heard cars speeding. They were approaching my street from the left. I panicked and ducked down, peering through the

[00:12:45] gap of my fence. I had a sinking feeling I knew which cars would come past. Sure enough, the black four-wheel drive and that other black car sped past. So too whoever was driving those cars late at night and whatever it was you wanted with me.

[00:13:05] Let's never meet again. Years ago, I met my future roommate Alex when we were in college going to school for hotel and restaurant management. We got along amazingly and were friends for years before actually moving in

[00:13:33] together. We would always hang out after work, both of us being chefs by trade, and we would have some drinks, cook some food, and even created a club with other friends who wanted to get

[00:13:45] We were such great roommates that when Alex decided to buy a three-story townhome, he asked if I wanted to move there from our small inner city apartment. I graciously accepted knowing that we were both climbing the ladder in our fields which meant better work opportunities and we

[00:14:05] could afford a nicer place to live with more space. We would always hang out together, We moved into this gigantic three-story townhome, gained a third roommate, and all was right in the

[00:14:21] world. That is until I met the love of my life. My now-fiancee came into the picture and it had Alex wanting to have someone around as well. What we didn't know was he was going to bring in Hannah.

[00:14:38] Hannah was an ex-addict that was visibly your typical former user with a few teeth missing, malnourished looking, and just had this way about her that made you want to lock your doors so she

[00:14:53] didn't pawn your stuff. My roommate was known for smoking pot here and there but he was never into anything else. There were nights that she would be wandering around the house clearly on something

[00:15:06] more than a drink or two. Six years ago when things with my future wife began really progressing, I didn't hesitate to jump on the opportunity spend all of my time with her and move into yet another

[00:15:19] even tinier duplex with my cat and her dog. It might have been a tiny space to live but there was a whole lot of love. Plus I knew that all my stuff was safe with Hannah not being around.

[00:15:34] Over the years Alex and Hannah were on and off again. It always appeared to correlate with how his career was going. Miserable at work, she showed back up. Got a promotion, Hannah was nowhere to be seen. Eventually Alex moved on from the hotel industry and got a well-paying

[00:15:54] higher-end job in HR and things were looking up. Custom suits, house to himself, and even a fancy new Mercedes. We were all so proud of him and we would hang out whenever we could. I'm not going

[00:16:10] to lie, I'm a workaholic and basically had very seldom hangouts with my friends. I wasn't trying to distance myself but being the executive chef of a restaurant takes a lot out of you and at the

[00:16:22] end of the day you just want to be home with your future wife. At this point Alex had gotten a new girlfriend and things seemed to be going amazingly. So about eight months ago I get this frenzied

[00:16:36] phone call from Alex around midnight. I had been hanging out at our new home with my fiance enjoying the space. At first I thought that he was just a little drunk since I too had had a few at that

[00:16:53] point in the evening but his tone was very odd. He said that Hannah was breaking into our old house with some random guy and told me that I needed to bring a gun. I told him to call the

[00:17:06] cops but he insisted that I bring my gun and to hurry. I don't live too far away but this is not a situation I would ever put myself into. I once again urge him, call the cops, hang up, and chalk

[00:17:21] it up to him being drunk. So two months later I get a call from Alex asking if I could help him out. My immediate answer is of course you're my friend and that's what friends do. He had purchased

[00:17:34] an ottoman at a resale store pretty close to my house and he couldn't fit it into his Mercedes. Me having a truck I always get sucked in by my friends to helping them move, pick things up,

[00:17:46] or in general towed everyone around. It was on my way home so I agreed to meet him over there and pick it up. Alex was in good spirits, a little up-tempo to what I'm used to saying but

[00:18:00] his appearance was off. He seemed skinny, really skinny, and his skin had all of these small pock marks on his arms that he claimed was from working with insulation. This was odd because

[00:18:17] he didn't work in construction and I hardly ever knew him to do anything DIY. That was my department back in the day. I even have a full garage workshop. We unload the piece of furniture

[00:18:31] and he asked me if I could help him out with something else. I of course being the friend that I always have been agree and start heading up the stairs. As I round the stairs to the second story

[00:18:45] who do I see but Hannah in the kitchen doing dishes? I say hello cordially with absolutely no acknowledgement of my presence. I shake it off and head up to the third floor where he asks me to

[00:19:00] help him rehang his 150 pound master bathroom mirror which somehow was now lying on his bedroom floor. This is yet again kind of weird but I agree. I remove my sunglasses from my collar of my shirt

[00:19:17] trying not to get them damaged. We get the mirror hung. I say my goodbyes citing that I have several more things to do on the way home and that was it. Yet I drove away questioning why in the hell was

[00:19:31] the girl he called me frantically about two months before in his house like nothing had ever happened. He asked me to bring a gun. He texted me while I was on the road that I had left my sunglasses at

[00:19:45] his house and asked if I wanted to grab them later. I agreed. Once home I spoke with my fiance about it and we both kind of let it fall out of our minds figuring Alex was back to the on again

[00:19:58] off again routine. A few weeks go by and I'm in the middle of opening my first bar that I'm co-owner of so things are hectic to say the least. I have completely forgotten about my sunglasses at this

[00:20:13] point and I'm in full workaholic mode of the highest caliber. He sends me a reminder text or two and I basically mention I remember but I'm very busy at the moment. If he could hold on to them

[00:20:26] for me that would be great. To be honest with Hannah there I figured they were probably already gone to the pawn shop. Once again time passes and I forget about the glasses. Now this brings us to

[00:20:41] one month ago when I'm getting a call from him at 9am. I'm excited as always to answer his call and greet Alex as I always do. Hey man what's up? The response to this day absolutely curls my blood.

[00:20:58] Hey brother, I'm going to fucking kill you. Where the fuck are you? I take a step back and look once again at the caller ensuring that this is Alex. He starts ranting and raving in

[00:21:14] the most malicious voice I had ever heard saying that he was going to fucking kill me over and over again. I was dumbfounded considering that I hadn't talked to him in months and have been his friend

[00:21:29] for 14 years. I ask him what he's talking about and tell him I'm at work. He screams fuck it and hangs up the phone. Being that this is the first time either of us has ever had any raised

[00:21:45] tone with each other I tried calling him back. I tried again to no avail. I was just trying to get to the bottom of this all while physically shaking from this interaction. My employees

[00:22:02] were looking at me asking what was wrong. No words could come from my mouth though. I try one last time to call him back trying to figure out what this was all about because I have

[00:22:15] never done anything to him to warrant such aggression. And then I text him asking what he meant since I haven't talked to him in a few months, asking if he's okay, offering my help if

[00:22:26] he needs anything. I don't hear back at all from Alex and I'm left feeling very uneasy. Luckily he doesn't know where mine and my fiance's new house is but I call to warn her not to communicate with

[00:22:41] him or engage just in case he is serious about these claims. We both rightfully are frightened about the situation and want nothing to do with it. A few days go by and he sends me another weird

[00:22:55] text message telling me to quit with the sexual assault, saying that he knows I shot at him with a pistol years ago. I've only owned a pistol for the last year and none of this is making sense.

[00:23:11] Once again I ask him if he's okay and offer any help that he needs which is met by more death threats. I in no way have ever done anything to ever hurt a soul let alone commit such atrocious

[00:23:25] acts. I reach out to my best friend to find out that he's also receiving very weird and paranoid messages from Alex asking him to stop quote placing algorithms in the world to stop his happiness.

[00:23:41] He too is just one of our college friends. If he knew how to do that he would be making bank working for Google or some other large Silicon Valley company. His former employer reached out

[00:23:56] to us as well whom we're very close saying that he was talking nonsense over the phone and begging for money. Red flags are flying everywhere and we have no idea what is going on with him. Is he on

[00:24:10] drugs? Is this some kind of mental break? No one wants to assume anything but I am the one that's receiving the brunt of it all with death threats and false accusations of impossible acts.

[00:24:24] I stress about it as much as I allow myself but eventually the messages stop and I begin to regain a level of regularity. Now that leads to this morning. It had been almost a month since Alex

[00:24:39] had reached out to me and I figured he had leveled off his high and was finding help hopefully. Wrong. 7 22 in the morning I get a text threatening to kill me calling me a murderer, a rapist and hoping that I choke on the food I tried to eat today.

[00:25:00] He literally calls me the worst human when I've done nothing in this world but help and be kind to him throughout all of the years. I finally stop the coddling and confront him saying whatever drugs

[00:25:13] he's on are affecting him to the point that if he ever contacts me again in this manner I'll cut him out of my life forever. I know I put up with a lot at this point but I really did hope that

[00:25:24] I could save him. I got on the phone with the local police and called a welfare check on him because he definitely is not in the right mind. He instantly blows up at me threatening to report

[00:25:36] me for shooting him yet he's never been shot in his life. That was the last straw. I blocked Alex after telling him he needs to get help and he's losing one of the last people who care about him

[00:25:50] in this world. I didn't sign up for this. No one did. The cops never made the return call about the welfare check either. Drugs are most likely involved but the scary part was that he stated

[00:26:04] that he was sober which makes it even more terrifying. Was he capable of fabricating all of this in his mind? I spoke with all of our mutual friends and no one is brave enough to

[00:26:16] approach my old house for fear that he's capable of murder. I only live about seven minutes away from that house. I've recently installed four security cameras because of this harassment and I pray to goodness he never finds me or my loved ones. Meth can destroy a brain

[00:26:36] from the get-go and this is my opinion of what has happened. One thing is for sure, the day he met Hannah and brought her into our lives his life has been on a downward spiral.

[00:26:50] To Alex, my strung out former roommate who I hope gets the help he needs and Hannah, you piece of shit. Let's never meet again. I'm a female in my early 30s that works at a storage facility.

[00:27:19] I am the on-site manager which means I get a two bedroom apartment rent free. It's great because I don't pay rent or utilities but the downside is that all my customers know exactly where I live.

[00:27:33] I'm married with two kids and my husband is a pretty big guy so when he's home I feel safe but when he's not, which would be obvious to anyone because our parking spots are visible to everyone,

[00:27:45] I can get kind of nervous. I work solo almost every day that I work. I often take people up into the building to tour a unit when there is no one else on the property. I try to always keep

[00:28:00] people in front of me or in my line of sight because these are still strangers. I know 99.99% of people are perfectly safe but you never know. One day I toured a man in his late 40s. I was

[00:28:17] trying to ask the normal questions to see what he would be storing and figured out the size of the unit that he would need. He wouldn't talk much but he did say that he needed a large unit.

[00:28:29] I said okay and we found one that worked and I rented it to him. I was at the end of the business day and I already went into overtime renting to him.

[00:28:40] I made him aware of this but after the rental he wouldn't leave. The man never seemed threatening, just weird and he made me uncomfortable. He just sat in my office. I started turning things off

[00:28:55] and hoped that he would get the hint. He didn't. My husband and kids were already home inside the apartment. I had already asked him a couple of times if there was anything else that I could

[00:29:06] help him with and he said no but he just sat there. Finally I had to walk to the door so I said okay have a good night. He finally got up. Oh okay, he said as he left. I didn't want him knowing

[00:29:22] that I lived there but he stayed in the parking lot and he saw me walk to my front door. Fast forward a few days when he was moving his stuff in. He apparently was a truck driver because

[00:29:36] he parked his truck across the street and would use a cart to bring his items over. Sometimes my husband drives uber on weekend nights to earn some extra money. That weekend he was out.

[00:29:50] My kids were sleeping when I heard a car sound like it hit its brakes. Then I heard crying sounds but it sounded somewhat like an animal. I thought maybe somebody hit a dog. I walked outside but

[00:30:04] I didn't see an accident or a dog but his truck was still just sitting there across the street. This was already very late past the access hours to storage. When I went back to watch the cameras

[00:30:18] he had been there all night pulled up right after my husband had left and never went to the storage. He just stayed in his truck. Anytime that he comes to the property he will come into the office but

[00:30:33] he doesn't need anything. I'll try to be nice and ask if he needs help but he just says no and stands there uncomfortably long until finally he leaves. A couple of times I've actually had

[00:30:49] another employee here with me and I pretend to be busy or on the phone when he comes in. The other employee will try to help but he completely ignores them like they aren't even there

[00:31:00] and he tries to get my attention even when he thinks I'm on the phone. I will ask if he needs anything and I'll gesture towards the other person and they say can I help you? He just says

[00:31:15] oh no I'm fine then proceeds to stand around before finally leaving. Even if he comes in his regular car and not the semi truck he'll park in the front parking lot so that he can walk through the office.

[00:31:32] The other day he came here and parked in the parking lot. I quickly got up and locked the doors then went to walk the property. His unit is on the third floor so I was walking around the second

[00:31:44] floor. I was cleaning a unit with my headphones on and out of the corner of my eye I see something moving. I look up and it's him he says I found you. I asked if he needed anything and he said

[00:32:03] no. He just stood around like he did in the office. I wasn't about to bring up why he's on the second floor I just finished quickly and said okay bye. Normally my husband is home with the

[00:32:18] kids a few minutes before I'm off of work but sometimes they go to the store get stuck in traffic so I'm in the house before their home. This was one of those days. The man was here and

[00:32:31] his car was parked in the parking lot. He had already done his weird uncomfortable office stand around thing then went up to his unit. There are two doors in my office one leading

[00:32:44] to the facility and one leaning outwards to the parking lot in my house. I had already locked the inner door and was outside the office locking the front door when someone was trying to get into the

[00:32:56] office from the inner door. I looked to see him. I lean over to where the gate is and say we're closed. He looked disappointed. I wasn't about to offer any help because fuck it I'm off the clock.

[00:33:12] I start to turn around and walk home he says your family isn't home yet. While still walking and semi turning around I say they're just around the corner. Oh okay he said. Meanwhile he was walking out of the gate towards the parking lot.

[00:33:34] I get inside and start doing the dishes about 10 minutes go by and I happen to peek outside and he's still there sitting in his car. That's when I realized I had forgotten my phone in the

[00:33:45] office. We don't have a house phone so if my husband tries to contact me or anyone tries to contact me I would have no way of knowing. I decide to wait for a few more minutes to see if

[00:33:57] he will either go back to his storage unit or leave but no he's still there so I begrudgingly go out of the house and towards the office. As I'm walking he gets out of his car and tries to

[00:34:11] follow me. I'm trying to think of what my best option is. At first I think I should pretend to be going to my storage unit but then he may follow me. It's an empty building. At least the office

[00:34:26] faces the street and I'm semi visible so I head to the office and he's right behind me. He says hi. I say hi I forgot something I'm going right back home after. He says your husband's still not

[00:34:45] home. He said it like a question but he obviously knew the answer. He's been sitting in the parking lot the entire time. I said he's almost here. I was trying to close the door behind me but he stayed

[00:35:00] right on me. I said I'm sorry I can't let you in we're closed I'm just grabbing something. He said oh okay and just stood in the doorway. I went around my desk and grabbed my phone.

[00:35:15] I saw my husband had been trying to call me so I hit call back as I'm walking out. I'm walking towards the door but he doesn't move. I have to say excuse me and gesture for him to

[00:35:28] back up before he finally does. My husband doesn't answer and I lock up but he's still standing there staring. I say have a good night and start walking back to my apartment.

[00:35:42] He starts to say something but then just says oh okay. He stays in the parking lot until my husband pulled in then immediately leaves. Thank god we actually bought a house out of state and I never

[00:36:00] have to deal with that guy again. I did have a nightmare that he showed up at my back porch but to this random weirdo let's not meet again. This story takes place around 2015 when I was about 11 years old. My mom, brother, and I were

[00:36:26] just moving into our new house in a janky neighborhood in Indiana. Not a safe place by any means but it was affordable. Our house shared a driveway with our next door neighbor who I'll

[00:36:37] call Don. Our house was built sideways so what was meant to be the front of our house actually faced Don's house. My bedroom's only window was along that wall as well as our front door and the

[00:36:52] window to my mother's room. Right away we knew Don was a creep. He dead stared at me and my mom the whole day while we were unloading our u-haul and he constantly had boys over at his house for

[00:37:05] god knows what. He was a 60 something year old man who hired 13 to 21 year old boys to do work for him always in the middle of the night. He stored a bunch of junk in our shared driveway

[00:37:19] and it seemed sometimes he liked to hire these boys to make as much noise at night as possible. Since my mother and I slept along that wall it was almost impossible to fall asleep if you weren't

[00:37:32] already asleep by 10 p.m. I remember being constantly unsettled by the flashlights being outside my window and all of the noise and the boys and men talking. I had blinds on the windows

[00:37:44] but they didn't quite close all the way and I insisted on having these cute sheer butterfly curtains on the windows. I didn't know any better. My mom and I tried to ignore it but over time it

[00:37:57] became clear that they were aware there was a younger girl with a sheer curtain. They started waiting for us to fall asleep then they would shine their lights through my blinds. My mom had woken up

[00:38:12] a couple of times because of the noise, peeked out her window and caught them watching me but she didn't want to scare me. Multiple times she would get up in the middle of the night to threaten

[00:38:23] these guys into leaving me alone and not only did Don not do a thing about it he encouraged it often participating himself. My mother called the police a few times on them. They said that they

[00:38:38] would look into it but they never actually did no matter how bad it seemed to get. These guys were aware that my mother had been calling the police because she did it in front of them to try and

[00:38:50] scare them into stopping and when they realized they'd never come they got cocky. They got louder and more obvious because they knew no one was going to do anything. After about six months

[00:39:05] it would start waking me up at night. Being 11 years old waking up to flashlights in your window and a group of men staring at you is obviously unsettling. I started fully dressing myself to

[00:39:19] sleep instead of wearing my nightgown and I would hide my head under my blanket when I heard people talking outside. If the night was bad enough my mom had me sleep in her room just so they couldn't

[00:39:31] break in and take me if they decided to go that far. I started carrying around this paranoia and fear when I was around any boy that I saw in the neighborhood not knowing who was on Don's payroll

[00:39:46] and watching me sleep at night. The insomnia and fear integrated itself into my life and my school performance plummeted. I never wanted to go to bed or especially to fall asleep. Whether I was

[00:40:01] in my mom's room or not I was absolutely terrified. I had already been in therapy for other issues with anxiety but my appointments got increased to weekly sessions because they were worried about me.

[00:40:17] It all came to a head after about 10 months in that house. One night I was in my bed for once actually sleeping and I woke up to the sound of my mother in my bedroom on the phone with the police

[00:40:31] relaying things that these men outside were saying that they would do to me. They were finally threatening to break in and laughing it up about all of the things that they'd force my 11 year old

[00:40:43] self into when they got their hands on me. Police once again said that there was nothing that they could do unless they took action as there wasn't a clear property line because of the conjoined

[00:40:58] driveway. My mom flipped and hung up the phone. I went to her bedroom. The men outside were laughing I guess thinking that she gave up. I was pretending to still be asleep too afraid to do anything

[00:41:14] the next thing I hear is my mom bursting open our front door and screaming at the guys outside the window threatening to shoot if they didn't get off the property. My mother pulled a shotgun

[00:41:26] from the back of her closet. She went outside and pointed it directly at them. They had no idea that it wasn't loaded so they freaked out and ran away. Apparently Don was freaked as well. He had called the police on her saying she was threatening him

[00:41:43] with a gun on his property. Of course this time the police actually showed up and knocked on our door. I had gotten out of bed by now and was instructed to stay in my room. My mom answered

[00:41:57] the door having already put the gun away. They questioned her about the shotgun and the incident that had just occurred. She explained everything that had happened and that she had been asking

[00:42:10] the police for help many times but she had never stepped out of that kitchen door so she was on her property. She told them all about what Don and the other guys had been doing and after confirming

[00:42:23] that she had in fact been calling for help for months and even earlier that night the police let her go back inside. I peeked through the blinds after the front door was closed and I saw

[00:42:35] a police talking to Don but no arrest was ever made regarding that incident. But it also didn't happen again that we know of. We moved out a few months later as soon as we found a place to go to

[00:42:51] and as we were moving out we found out Don had been arrested on meth charges. Let's just hope for the sake of whoever moves into that house next he stays locked up for a long

[00:43:04] long time. Today I still carry that paranoia. I've been diagnosed with PTSD from that incident and other terrible things that I've been through. I still struggle with insomnia and now I'm sleep paralysis and horrible nightmares. I have an intense fear of being watched.

[00:43:27] I can't close my eyes unless all the doors and windows are locked, blinds closed and there's a thick curtain closed over every window. I leave all doors even inside

[00:43:39] the house closed when I go to sleep just in case and I refuse to sleep in a room without a lock and even with all of these precautions it's hard to shake the feeling that I'm being watched while

[00:43:52] I sleep. Sometimes I jerk awake worried that someone could be watching me. It's an intense fear of sleep that I'll carry for the rest of my life. To the man who hired people to watch me sleep, please for the love of god let's not meet.

[00:44:23] Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast and don't forget that show in Seattle on August 25th has changed from the Neptune to the triple door.

[00:44:33] All tickets will be honored all you have to do is show up and I forgot to add if you're coming to the Portland show nothing has changed we'll still be at Polaris Hall really excited to see you all

[00:44:43] there on the 26th. I have a full episode's worth of brand new stories never heard before to share with you all live. I'm excited to see you there again go to letsnotmeetpodcast.com forward slash

[00:44:54] tour I'll follow the link in the show notes to get your tickets today. I'll see you all there this week you have heard a home intruder came into my room one night by Art Sasquatch followed

[00:45:07] from the underpass by Nasa 24-7 my former roommate by tortured chef creeper story by lady coconut and finally the man who hired people to watch me sleep by Dia. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's

[00:45:27] 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 send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. If you want

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[00:45:51] rewards just for helping us out really excited to get to work filming this pilot for the TV show. Also if you want to support this podcast in any other way you can just go to patreon.com

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[00:46:12] and last but not least don't forget to check out the new episodes this week of my other shows Odd Trails and the Old Time Radio Cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode stay safe.