9x05: In the Dead of Night - 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 9, Episode 5 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast. I'm still in shock as I write this.

[00:00:54] This happened just last week. For context, I'm a 24 year old man who lives in the outskirts of a major city. It's about an hour and a half drive from my house to the city where I currently work

[00:01:08] in and vice versa, so I ride my motorcycle to work to cut through traffic. So now onto my story. I was working late last week, finishing a lot of paperwork. My co-worker who also happens to be my best friend, Eddie, asked for a ride home since

[00:01:27] his car was at the mechanic. I immediately said yes and was delighted at the thought of having some company during a long ride home. Plus, the route I usually take passes through his street so dropping him off at his place would be convenient for both of us.

[00:01:46] About 30 minutes into our ride I noticed my bike slowing down until it gave one final jolt. Then it died. To our dismay, the fuel gauge read empty. I gasped at my stupidity. How could I have overlooked my gas consumption? We were fucked.

[00:02:07] It was almost 1am and we were stuck on a road devoid of any cars or passerby's. I told Eddie that we were going to have to push the motorcycle to the nearest gas station.

[00:02:20] We did and when we arrived, the gas station was apparently closed so I told Eddie to book an Uber instead and I would pay for it. Eddie was hesitant at first but I told him that I didn't want to burden him since the

[00:02:33] next gas station was about 15 minutes away on foot. We waited for his ride to arrive and I apologized for the hassle. After all, it was my lack of preparedness that got us here.

[00:02:49] Eddie was still on the fence about leaving me all by my lonesome but I jokingly convinced him that if he refused my offer one more time, I'd be the one to take the Uber.

[00:03:01] He laughed as he got into the Uber but not before telling me to take care and give him updates from time to time. As his Uber drove off into the night, I was kind of relieved that he would be getting home safely.

[00:03:17] I soldiered on and eventually passed by an old church. The church is a famous landmark in our town and it was also an indicator that the gas station that I was looking for was within my sights.

[00:03:31] As I was pushing my motorcycle further, a blue car suddenly zoomed past and stopped a few feet away from me and my motorcycle. At first, I didn't pay any attention but as I looked through the car's rear view window,

[00:03:48] I noticed a few silhouettes in the backseat, hidden from plain sight. Alarm bells started ringing in my head. I was now sweating bullets but I remained calm. The vehicle suddenly reversed towards me. The driver, who looked like he was in his late twenties, rolled his window down.

[00:04:09] He asked me what had happened to my motorcycle and I stated the obvious. Why don't I get you home and you can tend to your bike in the morning, he suggested. I refused, saying that I didn't even consider leaving it here.

[00:04:26] He asked me once more, this time a bit more forcefully. He then started puffing on a cigarette and what he said chilled me to the bone. Come on bro, I don't have anyone here with me. You can ride shotgun.

[00:04:46] That's weird because I don't remember asking him if he had any company. I politely declined his offer and looking back, I'm still punching myself in the balls for not acknowledging this fucker. Oh no man, I'm good. The gas station's almost near, I exclaimed.

[00:05:05] He obviously knew that as well but he gave me this cold and calculating stare as if he were assessing me. He scoffed and the thick cigarette smoke that came out of his mouth permeated as he whispered one terrifying word. Almost.

[00:05:26] He suddenly opened his door and that's when I booked it. Fuck my bike, my life is more important. As I was running away from him, he simply stood near my bike and continued staring at me while still smoking his cigarette.

[00:05:43] I hid behind a huge tree and waited until I could no longer hear his engine idling. After about three minutes which felt like an eternity, I peeked and his car was no longer in sight.

[00:05:58] As I was walking towards my bike, I saw in my peripheral that his car was parked beside the church. He and his buddies were waiting for me. Only the headlights were turned off so as not to give their location away.

[00:06:15] When they noticed that I was looking in their direction, the car sped back up and stopped in front of my bike. While this was unfolding, another motorcycle was traveling along the road.

[00:06:28] I waved it down and the man who was probably in his forties immediately gave me a ride. I think he inferred the predicament that I was in because he didn't hesitate to help. Please get me the hell away from here, I muttered.

[00:06:47] The man asked, what about your ride? I just urgently tapped him on the shoulder and he gunned it in the opposite direction where he originally came from. The blue car did a U-turn and started following us.

[00:07:03] The car was getting closer and closer each second and I told the rider to drive faster. And he did. To his credit, he did a great job of weaving through alleyways and side streets until the blue car finally gave up and stopped giving chase.

[00:07:19] We rode to the police station where I filed a report. The cop that I talked to told me that the area near the church is an ideal place for dumping bodies and kidnappings since that part of the road didn't have any major establishments.

[00:07:36] The cops and the man who rescued me were kind enough to accompany me back to my motorcycle and they even helped me push it to the gas station where I filled up with gas.

[00:07:47] I went home as fast as I could and my heart was still beating from this whole ordeal. The morning light shining through my curtains didn't make me feel any better. As of riding this, the men in the blue car have yet to be identified.

[00:08:03] I don't know what their intentions were for me but I know 100% that had I gotten in that car I wouldn't be here riding this. I mean for Christ's sake, they were relentless in their pursuit and the manner in which he

[00:08:17] told me that he didn't have anyone riding with him. Who the fuck does that? I'm really thankful for the rider who bailed me out when those men had me dead to rights. I'm forever indebted to him.

[00:08:31] A few days after my incident there were reports of a body being discovered near a church. The same church where those men tried to prey on me. I definitely think it was them and I hope they get caught sooner than later.

[00:08:47] To the men in the blue car, let's never meet again. A couple of months ago I was walking down the road enjoying some time by myself. Keep in mind, I live in the country and I know everyone on my street.

[00:09:14] Anyways, this fancy black car drives past me headed up the road which is weird because there is a gate and only one person lives there. I didn't recognize the car, this made me suspicious. The car drove down and slowed towards me.

[00:09:34] A woman inside rolled down her window and said, Hey there, can you open the gate for me? I have to deliver some cat food. I said, I'm sorry miss but I'm not allowed to open that gate for anybody that I don't know.

[00:09:51] She then said, well what if you get into my car and we can both drive up there. I instantly got anxiety at that point and I told her I'm not comfortable with that.

[00:10:06] What if I drive up there with my dad and he and I could take the cat food? She looked at me, slightly opposing this option, then replied, are you sure you want to? I said, yes there's no problem.

[00:10:23] She handed me the cat food and I went back to my house. I told my dad what had happened and he and I drove up to the person up the street. When we got to their house, I explained what had happened and handed him the cat food.

[00:10:38] They looked at me puzzled and said, well that's strange because we don't have a cat. I didn't know what the lady in the car's intentions were, but let's not meet again. This story takes place around 2013 in a small rural Tennessee town.

[00:11:12] I had grown up there and went to college in another part of the state as soon as I graduated. I did not like my hometown. I still don't. It's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone. What everyone does.

[00:11:28] When someone misses church and if there's dirty laundry, everyone will know about it. So I graduate and go off to college away from everyone else who went to more local colleges to the area if they even went at all. I had started drinking and smoking weed.

[00:11:49] I was a 19 year old who thought he was invincible and was way too fucking arrogant to believe that I had put myself in a stupid and dangerous situation. I was such a dumbass.

[00:12:03] Some of my high school friends and I occasionally spoke, still at this time, and I decided that I would meet up with one of them named Timothy. Once I picked Timothy up in my car, we went to another friend's house and smoked a joint

[00:12:19] and we decided that we needed more. So we went and got some more. Everything went as smoothly as possible in this conservative devil's lettuce community. We then decided to meet up with another couple of guys from high school.

[00:12:36] We went out and talked about how life had been going for us. I wanted to smoke more weed, but I needed time to air out before I entered my mega religious conservative parent's home.

[00:12:49] One of my friends, Michael, was apparently staying at this house that we had driven up to with another guy named Jared. The house was out further off some back roads and was a bit run down.

[00:13:03] It was wooden and had a large porch supported by beams that went over a basement and part of the yard. The yard had patches of tall grass and broken down cars on the front. There were some pitbulls chained to pegs in the ground.

[00:13:20] Not really an abnormal place where I'm from. People can live without hardly seeing another person if they want to. But there was this broken down RV sitting at the back of the yard towards the tree line in a thickly wooded area.

[00:13:37] Me, Timothy, Michael and Jared get in this RV and shut the door. We were planning to hotbox it. In my mind I'm thinking, hell yeah, let's do this. Especially here in the back roads. This is the best situation. I was wrong.

[00:13:57] We spark up a bowl and start passing it around while Michael is looking for a bong that he thought he left in it last time he smoked. He couldn't find it, but we passed the bowl around a few times.

[00:14:10] All of a sudden, someone knocked on the door of the RV. Shit, I thought. Michael casually opened the door and this old man hobbled into the RV and sat across from me.

[00:14:25] His hair was in a long white ponytail down his back and he had a chest length scraggly scruffy beard. He had on shorts that looked like they had been sweatpants before and he had cut off the legs.

[00:14:42] I also noticed that he had a belt on these homemade shorts. Only it wasn't a belt, it was a fucking gun holster on his hip with a western style revolver in it.

[00:14:56] I grew up around guns and I know how people are here and how normal it is for them to carry them. This was different. He sat down as another bowl was being packed. My three friends say hey to the old guy and he just asks, who's that?

[00:15:17] Are y'all bringing cops to my house? This guy is glaring at me. Now I've been fucked with before and sort of thought that this guy was just doing the same. My friends kind of chuckle and I'll assure him I'm not a cop.

[00:15:32] I told him that I smoke at my dorm in college. I try to start talking to my friend and acting normal. They tell me his last name, they say that he is cool. The old man continued to glare at me though. We start smoking again.

[00:15:48] I already wanted to leave but I was thinking, eh, let's not draw too much attention to myself because I definitely can't figure out this old man. The bowl gets to me, I take a hit. And the bowl hits me. I start coughing.

[00:16:05] I've always coughed and I still do to this day. But as soon as I cough the old man yelled out, what the fuck? I thought you said this guy wasn't a cop. Why the fuck are you coughing if you smoke anyway?

[00:16:18] This guy pulls the pistol out of his holster and sets it on his knee pointed directly at me. I try to stifle my cough and tell him that I'm just being a bitch, I don't know.

[00:16:33] I try to take another hit but I couldn't inhale without coughing so I exhaled really fast. The guy spoke again, you're wasting it. People who smoke dope don't waste it. My friends don't say shit and don't even look up when he says any of this.

[00:16:53] At this point I'm choking and about to shit my pants from fear of getting shot by this crazy old man in the backwoods of Tennessee. I made it one more round on the bowl and got a friend's attention telling him that I'm leaving.

[00:17:10] I quickly told everyone goodbye, jumped up, got out of the RV as fast as I could and I didn't even ask Timothy if he had a ride. I just left him there. I sped away from that house.

[00:17:26] I was nearly back to my parents' house when I got to really thinking about that old man and his face, his hair, his short stocky build. I felt like I had met him before but I didn't know where.

[00:17:40] Then one night while I'm still at my parents' house it hits me. I've been on that porch. I know what the kitchen in this house looks like. All from childhood, around 11 years old.

[00:17:55] I fucking remembered that my dad being a religious person that he is visits all sorts of sick and shut in people. Sometimes I used to go with him out to these houses. There's one time he took me to see an old decrepit man who was dying.

[00:18:12] My dad introduced us and they spoke while I sat. There was another man in that house though. He had a long, dark grey beard and a black and grey ponytail. He wore homemade shorts made from cutting off the legs of pants and he was a pretty stocky guy.

[00:18:34] My dad smiled and spoke to him when the man was noticed. My dad knew him. My dad knew everyone. So we wrap up the visit. We get in my dad's truck and we leave.

[00:18:48] On the way home, dad asks me what I thought about the guy with the ponytail. My dad stated his name. I won't state it here publicly. I replied, eh he seems fine I guess, why? My dad smiled and kept driving for a minute.

[00:19:05] He then agreed that he's an okay guy except for one thing. He's a fucking murderer. He killed two people in a field. He's the same guy I ended up smoking weed with in a broken down RV and made threats towards me with a pistol.

[00:19:23] I realized how stupid and naive I was. I realized how dumb I really was at that age. Thank any and every deity I didn't get shot for coughing while smoking weed. So old man murderer who doesn't tolerate coughing, let's never smoke again.

[00:19:45] I was 18 years old and freshly out on my own in the world after escaping a sheltered home life under my evil stepmother. For reference, I am a female from the midwest.

[00:20:09] I was asked to the movies by a friend of a friend and so I figured that it was safe to say yes since I knew people who knew him. He wasn't a complete stranger and he was only a couple years ahead of us in school.

[00:20:25] I'm writing this almost 15 years later so some details have thankfully escaped me. I've never told anyone the truth of how I got this scar on my neck. I hadn't been on many dates before this, three to be exact.

[00:20:43] I was a bookworm in high school and quite shy anyway. Not much by the way of world experience to speak of. Back then before the movie started it was custom as poor teenagers to go buy candy from

[00:20:57] the next door gas station or walmart then sneak it into the theater. While I preferred the gas station, my date who we'll call Dan asked if I would come back to pick him up from the walmart so that we could ride together to the movie theater which

[00:21:14] was right around the corner. Doing this meant I was backtracking and wasting more gas. Not saving anything, time or gas and truly I was disappointed that he couldn't do the traditional gentleman drives the date kind of thing. Being naive I said of course I don't mind.

[00:21:34] It would make sense to ride together. It will give us some more time to talk before the movie starts. Well I was bored of the conversation before we even got there. I remember still pushing his hand away during the movie and being annoyed that I still had

[00:21:50] to share popcorn with him after all of that but not much else. We promptly left after the movie ended which I can't remember what the movie even was. We were back in the walmart parking lot in about five minutes and I was ready to go home.

[00:22:08] I realized I had no interest in this guy and not much in common with him. He spent the entire thankfully short car ride home talking about vampires and how cool they are and how sucking blood could keep you young.

[00:22:26] I was barely listening because no offense to any fans, sure vampire movies are cool. I'm a fan of the movies but that's it for me. The fun stops there at the end of the movie. He was super into blood and vampires. I just wasn't interested.

[00:22:45] I was tired and sorry I even let him in my car in the first place. I remember politely saying goodnight and thinking I made it obvious I was ready for him to go but he just sat there. He had something in his hands.

[00:23:02] It glinted under the parking light that I had stopped under. He was staring at it. A knife. He started saying how good of a time he had at the movies with me. He said he wished his teeth were pointier, sharper and how he wanted to get them sharpened

[00:23:24] to make sucking blood easier. This boy truly believed this shit? I thought. He said that he could already tell that he really liked me. He said he wanted to go out again soon. I said sure. I felt I needed to comply with whatever he said now.

[00:23:44] Maybe if I sounded enthused about the next date he would leave faster. I was wrong. He grabbed my knee and quicker than I thought possible he had the knife at my neck. My head was against the window and I was cornered in my own car.

[00:24:05] He said he wanted to see how young my blood tasted. My eyes darted around the parking lot. How could this be happening? Was he joking? No matter the time of day there are always people in a Walmart parking lot but no one was near.

[00:24:24] No one would hear if I screamed. No one was walking by to see us. I was panicking and somehow knew that I had to sit still or it could get much worse.

[00:24:36] His hand gripped my thigh now as he held my face to his left hand and he forced a kiss on me. He leaned over top of me. How could I not have noticed how crazy he was? I thought. Maybe he was just a bit weird. I thought.

[00:24:56] But not crazy. Why did I put myself in this situation? The front door to the store looked miles away. He looked me in the eye and said that he's going to lick my blood. Don't move. I didn't move a muscle.

[00:25:16] I felt the knife burn through my skin as a tear fell down my cheek. He actually licked up the blood that flowed quickly from my neck. After a few moments he sat back then threw a napkin at me out of my own glove box.

[00:25:37] I held it tightly at my neck but the cut was deep. He started panicking now, frantically apologizing. I was speechless and still frozen in fear wedged against my seat and the window.

[00:25:53] He then got out and went to his car that was parked next to mine and pulled out bandages. I just sat there. He said he taped my cut shut and to go home and clean it. I just nodded.

[00:26:10] I couldn't believe how incapable I was of moving or even speaking. He got into his car and left. Still not a single person around. I looked in the visor mirror. There was blood on my neck. There was blood on one of my favorite shirts.

[00:26:30] I sat there for a while then drove home, just feeling like I was in a trance. I threw my shirt away and just went to bed. I still can't believe today how zombified I was, how I didn't move or scream or anything. At least I'm alive.

[00:26:48] I think about this when I listen to others' stories and start to judge. I remember how frozen every muscle in my body was. You really don't know what it's like unless it's happening to you.

[00:27:03] I've questioned myself over and over why didn't I just get out of the car and run? But now I believe my body did what it thought I needed to do to survive. At work the next morning, of course everyone asked what the giant bandage on my neck was

[00:27:20] from. I lied and said that I had been cutting a box open. My hand slipped, came up, and I cut myself. How everyone believed this was beyond me. I've never told anyone how I really got the scar that Dan left on my neck. Thankfully not many ask.

[00:27:38] There's a white gash there about three inches long to remind me. To drive yourself to a date. To not let strangers in your car. To carry mace. I never responded to Dan's messages again after that and blocked him on every outlet that I could think of.

[00:27:59] So Dan, let's not meet. This happened at my parents' house when I was 14 or 15 years old. I'm 25 now. Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps. It was nearing the end of my summer break and my parents decided that they were going

[00:28:35] to go on one more fishing trip before the students all get back in school. My mom ran a cafe in front of a high school. They gave me the usual rundown of how to reach them and blah blah blah. And they were on their way.

[00:28:53] My parents took my dad's jeep and my mom's car was in the shop because she's a small woman who refuses to wear her glasses. So going out was completely out of the question for me.

[00:29:07] So I did what any teenage girl would do with an empty house and a fully stocked bar. I stayed at home all weekend and binge ate snack foods and watched every Netflix B-horror movie I had rented.

[00:29:22] Thank you dad for the plan allowing three movies at a time when Netflix did DVDs. It was Saturday night well into the AM and I was downstairs on my dad's leather recliner hand in a bowl of popcorn, eyes glued to the TV as I watched The Ring.

[00:29:42] I had all the lights off and I really got myself in that horror movie feel when I really had to pee. I didn't want to turn the lights on because I was lazy. So I walked over to the half bath by the front door and did my business.

[00:30:00] I didn't bother turning the bathroom light on because fuck it, staying lazy. As I sat there pondering the plot of The Ring, I looked up at the window that faced the front yard.

[00:30:13] It's an oval window and instead of buying curtains for it, my dad used some of that frosty privacy film. It basically keeps anyone from looking in but you can vaguely see things if you look out. Well as I'm zoned out, I notice something quite odd.

[00:30:33] There's a shape on the window that looks a lot like a person. Now the reason I say this was odd was because the front porch lights were off. There was a shadow because of the street light in front of our house.

[00:30:51] As my gears were turning, the shadow moved out of sight. It was at that exact moment I realized that whoever was out there got past the lights without them going off. Like most porch lights, ours were motion sensitive. In actuality, ours were super sensitive.

[00:31:14] A good sized leaf could set that sucker off. The only way to not make those lights go off is if you go around the side of the house and crawl over the banister.

[00:31:28] As I realize this, I also realize that this person was standing in front of our front door. I no longer had to go to the bathroom. I awkwardly slid off of the toilet, pulled my pants up, and did a military style crawl

[00:31:46] into the living room while I freaked the fuck out. Whoever this individual was had to have practiced not making that light go off. Also there were no cars in the driveway, so they know no one was home.

[00:32:05] There's always my dad's jeep or my mom's car in the driveway. This was the first time that there wasn't. Now I'm lying on the floor and my ears perk up at the sound of someone pacing the front porch.

[00:32:20] And now I'm scared they're going to break in and see this small girl all alone in this house. I'm not particularly stupid, so I make my way, crawling mind you. I'm terrified, so my legs were not cooperating.

[00:32:37] I make my way to the kitchen and I grab the telephone. As I grab it, the footsteps stop, as if someone left the porch. I turn to look at the front door and I realize the lights haven't turned on.

[00:32:52] We have those small useless windows above the door by the ceiling. That means that this person jumped off the side. I look towards the back door and before my eyes make it, they fall onto a window. A window that has the blinds raised.

[00:33:13] I don't think I had ever ran so fucking fast before. See, we keep the blinds up by the kitchen table because our two cats are little shits and will destroy the blinds if they can't see outside.

[00:33:27] I ran over to the window and closed the blinds then sat on the floor. I have no idea if the person saw me, but if they knew that much about the porch lights, they know that those blinds are always raised.

[00:33:42] There was still a glow from the TV, so I didn't see anyone when I ran over, but now I'm twice as horrified. I kind of sat there for a bit, straining to hear any movement outside, but I wasn't hearing them until I heard the porch door get shaken.

[00:34:04] My dad put a hook on the porch door so that we could let the cats out without them running away, but most of the time my mom forgets to hook it closed because she's short and very forgetful.

[00:34:19] The reason I heard the door shake was because my dad must have locked it the last time he was out there, and thank you Jesus, but I'm in a full panic now. Three things. One, the person knows how to work the porch lights.

[00:34:36] Two, they know about the uncovered window that I hopefully covered in time. And three, knew about the porch door being unlocked 99.9% of the time. Now while I should have called the police at this time like a smart person, I called my dad.

[00:34:56] As the phone is ringing, I'm making sure that the back door is locked, the door to the garage is locked, and the front door is locked. It took a while, but my dad answered the phone, half pissed off and half worried.

[00:35:10] I tell him not to freak out, but that I'm freaking out. I pretty much tell him what's happening, and he says, call the police, what the fuck, and at this point, I'm in my parents' room, so I flick on the lights.

[00:35:28] I told him I will, but I wanted to call him just in case, you know? He said that he'd call the neighbors, and for me to call the police. The reason I turned on my parents' bedroom light was to hopefully give the image that

[00:35:41] an adult was present at the home. Before I called the police, I casually turned on every light in the house. By casually, I mean ran around the house like a mad woman.

[00:35:54] When the police came, no one was found, in fact, I was so afraid to actually open the door to the cop, I demanded he show me some form of identification. He showed me his badge, and called the police station to confirm his identity.

[00:36:11] My neighbors let my parents know that I was safe, and that they didn't find whoever was walking the house. My parents drove home right after that. My neighbors stayed with me until they actually arrived.

[00:36:27] For the following week, I was horrified to be home alone, not to mention we have woods as our backyard, so I was scared that whoever it was was skulking in the woods waiting. I refused to open the blinds for the cats, and to use the downstairs half bath.

[00:36:47] What's even scarier is on the end of that following week, a woman's house was broken into and she was assaulted. Her husband had left for a business trip, and the perp broke into her house via the back door.

[00:37:05] Just knowing that if I was asleep, or if they realized a teenage girl was home, I would have had a completely different experience. This happened when I was around 22 years old. I was back from London for Christmas and was staying at my parents' large 16th century

[00:37:42] farmhouse in my hometown on the south coast of England. It was a weekend, and I had been on a big night out with all of my school friends the night before. I woke up and felt the usual dread of a dry-mouthed, anxious hangover brewing.

[00:38:03] I still party a fair amount now, but back then it was twice a week minimum. I remember the day being a gloomy and very wet day, which is typical for December in the UK. My parents' house is surrounded by fields, but is surprisingly close to town considering

[00:38:22] it feels as if you're in the middle of nowhere. It's a very old house with a lot of history, and the locals even talk about the tunnels that run from the house and across the farm to various outbuildings.

[00:38:36] I'm unsure if this is true, as we have lived here for about 8 years and I have yet to find them. The day was short, and I remember it got dark quicker than usual.

[00:38:49] Because it was near Christmas, most of my family were out at the pub seeing old friends. I remember I was feeling sorry for myself, so I lit a fire, sat on the couch, and put on a movie.

[00:39:01] Before I knew it, I had dozed off in a hungover slumber. A few hours had passed, and I was awoken by my mother shaking me. She was wide-eyed and had this frantic look on her face. I was annoyed by the rude awakening and asked what was wrong.

[00:39:22] She explained that there was a big storm, and she had been down at the stables to check on the horses when she saw a figure walking in front of her. She assumed it was my sister who had come home early from a night out, worried about

[00:39:38] her horse and the bad weather. She called out her name, but the figure carried on walking. She called louder, and still no reaction. Eventually, as she got closer, she realized it was not my sister and ran back to the house.

[00:39:57] She ran back to the house to get me, as I was the only one in. My mother is quite spiritual and explained that she thought she had seen a ghost. Me being more of a skeptic, thought that it was probably more likely a Christmas thief

[00:40:12] or a homeless person from town looking for shelter from the storm. She asked me to go down to the stables to check that everything was okay and to make sure that the horses were safe. I of course was freaked out, but I grabbed a torch and headed out.

[00:40:30] The rain was being blown so fiercely that it stung my face, and I could barely see through my glasses. They were all fogged up. When I got to my destination, I checked on our three horses and shone my light into the remaining empty stalls and barns.

[00:40:47] To my relief, I found nothing out of the ordinary except a light that had been switched on and was swinging in the wind. I went back to the house, dried off by the fire and told my mother about the shadows. They must have been playing tricks on her.

[00:41:05] Roll around morning and the storm is dying out. My dad had taken the dog out for a walk as I was making breakfast. He came back holding a large, muddy, wet cloth in his hands.

[00:41:22] I asked him what it was and he told me that he had been down there where I was searching the night before and he found a hospital gown along with a rusty knife dumped on a pile of hay.

[00:41:36] I'm twenty-eight now, and I think about that night sometimes and how naive and vulnerable I was walking around in the pitch black storm, probably being watched by, I don't know, some creep in a hospital gown wielding a rusty knife.

[00:41:53] Thankfully, everything worked out okay and nothing ever happened again. But creepy escaped hospital patient? Let's never meet. Don't forget to stick around after the music for your ad-free extended version of this week's episode if you're a patron.

[00:42:25] If you want to join and get access to hours and hours of bonus content, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to join and support the show today.

[00:42:36] And make sure you check out the new episodes of all of my other podcasts, Odd Trails, My True Paranormal Podcast, as well as the Old Time Radiocast. I love doing that one. You can check those out at crypticcountypodcasts.com or search wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:42:53] This week you have heard In the Dead of Night by Ham, an untitled story by listener T. Let's Not Smoke Again by Brantley, My Date with a Vampire by Christina, The Shadow in the

[00:43:08] Window by MC Didget, and finally, The Stormy Christmas Night by a listener that asked to remain anonymous. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of the respective authors.

[00:43:22] Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any of the message boards online. As always, if you've got a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.

[00:43:38] Stay safe. I want to preface this story by saying that at the time I was writing this, I was a little