9x19: Return to Grey Cloud Island - 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 19 of Lets Not Meet, A True Horror Podcast.

[00:00:51] When I was in my early 20s, I had just moved to a coastal town in Southern California. I didn't know anyone there. I was young, single, and trying to make friends or romantic connections in any way that I could so I was using Tinder pretty recklessly.

[00:01:09] By recklessly, I mean I was going out on dates with people before really vetting them. Sometimes I'd match with someone and meet up to go out with them just hours later. Usually it worked but one time it didn't and it changed my online dating habits forever.

[00:01:25] I matched with this guy, we'll call him Dave, and within minutes of chatting, we were making plans to go out that evening. I never let new dates know where I lived so I told him that I was out running errands

[00:01:41] and that he should meet me at the CVS near the beach so that we could go out from there. When he showed up at the CVS, I could immediately tell that there was something off about him.

[00:01:51] He wouldn't look me in the eye and he didn't say much but when he did, it was very quiet. He said that he had a bottle of whiskey in the car so we could go drink it on the beach.

[00:02:04] I shrugged off this weird personality and accepted being a young twenty-something looking to drink whenever, wherever. As we were driving to the beach, it was clear he was already buzzed if not drunk. I noticed that the whiskey bottle was already nearly empty.

[00:02:24] I started feeling weird but again, I shook off that feeling. When we got to the beach, we sat on a lifeguard tower, we drank a bit, and made some small talk. The small talk consisted of almost entirely me talking about my new job at this local

[00:02:40] restaurant, my family, interests, etc. Even when I asked him questions he would barely answer. Southern California weather is amazing but the beach gets pretty cold at night. I started shivering. I wasn't into him at all but I let him give me his jacket because it was very cold.

[00:03:00] I ended up getting bored after a while and said I was ready to go home. He didn't like this. He got really mopey but I was determined to leave and I just started walking towards the car from the lifeguard tower.

[00:03:14] He started whining that he wanted more time with me and started getting louder and louder, almost throwing a tantrum. I just kept walking. Then he grabbed my arm from behind and yanked it hard, whipping me around. I stared at him and aggressively said, don't touch me, let go.

[00:03:35] I started walking towards the car again, increasing the speed of my pace. He started apologizing profusely while following me to the car. When we got to the car, he whimpered and whined until it turned into full on tears. I kept telling him I wanted to go home.

[00:03:55] He briefly stopped crying, looked me dead in the eyes and said, I love you. I replied angrily, what? What the fuck are you talking about? He then got on his knees and in all seriousness asked me to marry him while continuing to weep.

[00:04:13] At this point, I was over it. I told him, just leave me alone and I started walking away from him, unsure where I was going. I was just freaked out by this guy, but he followed me, still crying, apologizing and telling me that he loved me.

[00:04:29] I was half jogging to get away from him, but then he grabbed me and pulled me towards him. I could tell immediately he was much stronger than me. Before he pulled me all the way towards him, I pushed him off with all of my strength and

[00:04:46] I ran as fast as I could back towards the beach. I always went for night strolls and I knew I had a good chance of running into people who could help me. I don't know how I was faster than him, but I was by quite a bit.

[00:05:02] I think he must have been that drunk. When I finally reached the beach, it was empty. Everyone was done taking their strolls for the night. I gave myself a second to panic before hearing him behind me, yelling my name. I ran further down the beach.

[00:05:22] It was pitch black because there was no moon, no lights nearby. I lay down behind a large sand dune. I closed my eyes and pressed my face into the cold sand and then tried to calm myself by breathing.

[00:05:38] I could hear him getting closer as he was calling my name while running after me. I heard him walking up and down the beach, but after about five or ten minutes, he turned back towards his car. Ten minutes of laying there in the sand and it hit me.

[00:05:54] I was still wearing his jacket, which had his keys in the pockets. I lost my breath with that thought because that meant he was stranded here with me. He wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't walk back out towards the streets because he would surely see me.

[00:06:16] I was stuck laying behind this sand dune. I don't know when it happened, but I fell asleep. I woke up at what must have been three or four in the morning. I was freezing. My phone was dead, but I was still terrified.

[00:06:34] I reasoned that there was no way he could still be out there and lifted my head from behind the sand dune. I didn't see anyone, so I slowly emerged and walked towards the street.

[00:06:45] The rest of that early morning was long and tiresome, but I finally found a way home around eight in the morning and of course blocked his number immediately. A week or so later, I was at the restaurant that I worked at, setting up the tables outside.

[00:07:04] There was a juice cart next to the restaurant. I was friendly with the staff there, waving hi and smiling, just casual politeness. I looked up to wave at whichever employee was working that morning.

[00:07:20] When I saw who it was, my heart dropped, and I felt like I needed to throw up. It was Dave. We locked eyes, and he stopped what he was doing to stare at me. I knew for a fact he hadn't worked at this juice cart before our date.

[00:07:39] I told him where I worked on our date. This restaurant is pretty well known, and he had said he was currently unemployed. Damn it. I immediately went inside the restaurant and refused to go outside again during my shift.

[00:07:56] I even stayed past my shift to make sure that he left before me so he couldn't follow me or corner me. When I got home, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I grew angrier thinking, who the fuck did this guy think he was?

[00:08:12] I loved my job, and I sure as hell was not going to let him change that. When I finally boiled over, I unblocked him and texted him. Why the fuck did you get a job so close to where you knew I worked?

[00:08:27] He tried to play dumb for a bit, but then finally admitted he was trying to see me again. I don't remember exactly what I said next, but I probably told him to quit or threatened to tell his manager what a creep he was.

[00:08:41] He didn't respond to any of that and instead asked me out again as if our first date went so well. I again told him, I better not see him there again, and then I blocked him. I don't know how, but it worked.

[00:08:57] He quit and I never saw him around there again. I went on with my life and eventually Dave became a tender horror story I would tell friends and other tender dates for a laugh.

[00:09:09] About a year later, while I was in the middle of driving across the country to a new city that I would be living in, I got a text from an unknown number asking me how I was doing.

[00:09:21] I replied with the usual, sorry, I have a new phone and I couldn't transfer contacts. Who is this? They replied with a single word. Dave. I didn't respond, I just blocked the number immediately. A few months after that, I got another text from a random number.

[00:09:40] This text is now asking me how I'm doing and if I was still living in the city I had just moved to. I did not answer the question, but I responded with, I don't have this number saved. Who is this? Once again, one word answer. Dave.

[00:09:58] How the fuck did he know where I moved? I didn't put it on social media. I didn't update my LinkedIn. We didn't have mutual friends, so how did he know where I was? I didn't respond and I blocked the number again.

[00:10:14] This happened about two times per year for the next four years. Always a different number, always telling me who he was. Until my most recent move, he always knew which city I was living in. Every year, I moved cities.

[00:10:33] I'm not extremely active on social media and I definitely never post my personal business, like where I'm living, so it's always freaked me out that he always knew where I was. These texts finally stopped a few years ago.

[00:10:47] Hopefully it's because he finally got some therapy or some help. But Dave, the guy who terrified me on our first Tinder date then stalked me for years after. Let's not meet again. This happened to me when I was a kid.

[00:11:15] My elder sister and I lived in a house with our parents and grandparents. It was a two-story house that stood close to other homes of the same height, which meant the homes around us had their terrace level parallel to ours. This information is useful.

[00:11:34] We had two rooms on the second floor and a single room on the ground floor. My sister and I shared a room on the second floor while our parents shared the other bedroom on the same floor. Our grandparents had the room on the ground floor.

[00:11:48] It was around 10 at night. My sister and I were doing something in our room, I can't remember what exactly, probably completing our homework. Our parents and grandparents were busy on the ground floor. Suddenly we heard a sound. We were unsure of what it was.

[00:12:05] It sounded like a heavy object rubbing against something. At first we thought it might be some trees making the sound due to the wind. We called our parents and we asked them to check it out.

[00:12:19] By the time our parents came upstairs to hear it, the noise had stopped. We explained what we had heard to them. They brushed it off saying that it might be noise from the neighborhood and they told us to go to bed.

[00:12:33] The sound didn't happen again that night or the next night, but it came again the night after that. We called our parents again, equally as terrified as we were the first night that we heard that scraping sound.

[00:12:47] This time our parents were in the adjacent room on our floor so they were able to get into our room quicker to hear the noise. My dad said that it was coming from the roof. It sounded like somebody was dragging a heavy brick against the roof.

[00:13:04] We were now convinced that it wasn't anything natural. My dad took his English willow cricket bat for defense and headed out to the terrace. He came back a couple of minutes later saying that nobody was there. This continued to happen for at least four or five more nights.

[00:13:25] Every time it happened, my father rushed to the roof to check, but nothing seemed to be out of place. Until one night he found a nearly worn out brick. Now we're all terrified.

[00:13:40] We went to the cops, but they said that it was too simple of a phenomenon for them to act on it. The funny thing is this happened every night around the same time for the same duration of time, stopping after 30 minutes or so. We couldn't let it continue.

[00:13:58] Someone was breaking into our house from above to do this. As days passed, dad started recovering more worn out bricks, but never saw anyone. Our assumption was right. The bricks looked as if they were dragged against the roof.

[00:14:15] We noticed some kind of drawing was being made on the roof. It seemed like whoever was doing this came every night and was making some kind of design on our roof with the bricks. My father decided to stay on the roof and look out for whoever it was.

[00:14:32] His plan was to hide in the darkness and watch out for the intruder as he came almost at the same time every night. It was around 11 at night. My dad came down from the roof and explained what he saw to us.

[00:14:47] He said that he saw a man in a hoodie climb up the pipeline that went down along our backyard. My father saw the man in the hoodie climb up to the roof and he took out a small almost

[00:15:00] worn out brick and bent down to rub it on the roof. My father gripped his cricket bat and ran out of the darkness, aiming to make this man unconscious. The man noticed my dad and turned around. He ran back. What he did next was something completely unexpected.

[00:15:21] He jumped from our roof onto the next house's roof, which was parallel to ours. Remember, the houses were the same height. Not so far from each other either. He landed on the neighboring house's roof and then climbed down the pipelines of their house.

[00:15:38] My father didn't want to take a risk of running after him, as he might harm himself, and this story thoroughly washed our night's sleep. The next day we all went up to the roof and looked at whatever design the man was trying to make with the bricks.

[00:15:56] Looks like he had almost completed what he was intending to make. A pentagram. Yes, he was drawing a pentagram on the roof with bricks. We were so horrified that we ended up moving to a different house far away from there.

[00:16:13] Why was the man in the hoodie making a pentagram on our roof? Why did he choose us? What was his intention? Nobody knows. We never saw him again after that. We never want to. So to the man with the hoodie and the bricks, let's not meet again.

[00:16:51] I was cleaning and listening to the new episode as I normally do when the mention of Gray Cloud Island stopped me in my tracks for a minute. I often forget about my trip to Gray Cloud Island. I went in 2012 when I was in high school.

[00:17:09] That seemingly innocent trip is something that shook me for quite a while after. While the memories have faded, it is something that I've thought about here and there for the past ten years. I've often second-guessed myself and doubted what my friends and I saw that night, but

[00:17:29] listening to the Hidden Gems episode confirmed that it was all true. For some context, I was your average high schooler. A little on the quiet side, but I had my group of friends that would always hang out with each other.

[00:17:46] My mom was more strict than most of my friend's parents. I often had to tell some white lies to be able to go do things, meaning a trip to Gray Cloud Island was not something that she would ever approve of.

[00:17:59] One night during my junior year of high school, I was hanging out at a friend's house. Her parents were pretty laid back and didn't really care what we did or who she had over, etc.

[00:18:11] We invited some of our other friends over and we were having a bonfire when someone said, Let's go to Gray Cloud Island! Collectively, we were your average group of high schoolers. We didn't get into too much trouble, but we were also curious, naive, and a little thrill-seeking.

[00:18:30] We were always up for an adventure. So when a trip to Gray Cloud Island was suggested, we were all for it. None of us really knew exactly what Gray Cloud Island was. There were rumors that would go around school from people who said they had been there.

[00:18:46] The main thing that people knew about Gray Cloud Island was that it was haunted and outsiders were definitely not welcome. So around 9 at night, we hopped in our friend's car and started making the 20 minute drive. We asked my friend's mom to cover for me.

[00:19:05] If my mom calls and asks where I am, just tell her that we ran to the store, I requested. My friend's parents knew exactly how strict my mom was and they often felt bad about it so they agreed.

[00:19:19] They thought teenagers should be teenagers and they thought that we should be able to have some fun as long as we were safe. I think that if they knew what Gray Cloud Island really was or what we would experience,

[00:19:32] my friend's parents would have said hell no to this trip. The car was full and I was in the back, sitting in the middle seat. We had the music blasting. We were laughing, telling jokes, and having a good time.

[00:19:49] We were talking about what we would do if we saw ghosts. The rest of us in the car were poking fun at our friend that was driving. We asked if they were a good getaway driver. But we weren't prepared for what we were about to experience.

[00:20:05] I remember going to the island. We were following GPS to get to the cemetery. We made the turn to get onto the island and it wasn't what we were expecting. It was dark, quiet, and almost looked like a ghost town.

[00:20:21] The buildings and houses seemed run down, like no one was living there. There were no floodlights in the front yards. We didn't even see street lights. It was very dark and the only lights around were the headlights on my friend's car.

[00:20:37] GPS had us turn onto a dirt road at some point. The mood quickly shifted from fun and lighthearted to dark and eerie. No one wanted to admit it since we were nervous and everything in me wanted to tell everyone

[00:20:51] else in the car that we should turn around and go back home. The car fell silent, the music was off, and no one was saying anything, only offering quiet suggestions on where to turn since GPS wasn't taking us to the cemetery.

[00:21:07] We were all overcome with this feeling that we weren't welcome. And we were very aware of it. The road that the GPS put us on had a couple of dead ends and driveways. We kept driving around, trying to find the cemetery, but all we were finding were people's

[00:21:24] homes in a tiny, run-down neighborhood. Surely the cemetery had to be around somewhere. It's on the GPS, but for some reason, it's not taking us there. Everything appeared to be private property too. We turned down a road that we hadn't been on yet.

[00:21:42] It was another dirt road and at first all we could see were open fields on either side of us. All of a sudden, way off in the distance, out in the field, we could see a bright orange glow.

[00:21:58] This was the first source of light that we had seen since arriving at Gray Cloud Island. We slowed down a bit to see what had appeared to be a huge bonfire. Then we looked closer. Around this huge bonfire, we could see people standing in a circle.

[00:22:16] Lots of people, actually. We saw about 15 to 20 in total. At first, it didn't seem too out of the ordinary, just some people getting together to hang out over the weekend, just as we were doing before we came here.

[00:22:31] They were all standing, no chairs around, and the fire, it was so tall. They were all wearing white robes and it looked like they had their faces covered. In the middle of this fire, there was a huge wooden box.

[00:22:45] I was comparing the size of the box to everyone around it. I would say that the box was about six to six and a half feet in height and a couple of feet wide. The top of the box came to a triangular point.

[00:22:59] Immediately I thought it was shaped like a coffin, but why would they be burning a coffin? If it wasn't a coffin, why are you burning that huge box? It just didn't make sense. Why was the box shaped like that? What was inside?

[00:23:16] And why are they all wearing white robes? What are these people doing? Did they see us? Well, we were terrified. Again, they were very far away from where we were driving on the road, out in this open field.

[00:23:29] This whole observation lasted only about 30 seconds, but it felt like forever. We were still driving, but had slowed down just enough to get a grasp of what we were looking at. We started panicking. We had to get out of there right away.

[00:23:44] Our friend that was driving sped up the car. It was still very dark, and we were trying to put my friend's address back into the GPS. We got out of sight from what we had just witnessed and thought that we were in the clear.

[00:24:00] Everyone was talking over each other, trying to figure out what we just saw. Then out of nowhere, a truck appeared behind us. Where did this truck come from? We hadn't seen anybody else on the roads since we got there. No one even seemed to be home.

[00:24:18] The truck was getting closer and closer. We thought that it was going to rear end us. We told our friend to speed up, but it was too dark, and these unlit roads were so small, we had no idea where we were.

[00:24:31] The truck didn't honk or make any noise. It just followed us, far too close for comfort, and for far too long. And then we finally got back to where we came from, and we exited the island.

[00:24:45] The truck stopped, sitting there watching us as we got onto the highway. We were finally out of there, and we headed back to my friend's house. There was a mixture of complete silence and frantic discussion about this whole entire thing. We never even turned the music back on.

[00:25:04] I don't remember much after that. I know we made it back to my friend's house. We never really talked about our experience on Gray Cloud Island ever again after that. I don't talk to anyone from that friend group anymore.

[00:25:18] We all grew up, went to college, and went our separate ways. I've really questioned myself on what we saw that night, ten years ago. Sometimes I think that maybe my dumb friends and I really let our imaginations run wild. We were young and naive.

[00:25:36] Maybe it was just a bonfire. On the other hand, I also think we probably should have called the cops. But we didn't. Would the cops have even done anything if we called them? It felt like we were the ones doing something wrong. Like we were trespassing.

[00:25:57] So people of Gray Cloud Island, let's never meet again. I used to be a flight attendant when I was 25. I flew a big international airline for two years. When we flew, we traveled with a different crew for every flight.

[00:26:30] If the crew hit it off, we would usually plan a day out together during our layovers. Half of the time, I would end up going out alone, especially if I was with an older set of flight attendants.

[00:26:43] They generally preferred getting some shut-eye in their rooms for the duration of the layover. I enjoyed exploring cities on my own, visiting local museums, getting some shopping done, or just relaxing at a nearby cafe.

[00:26:58] I was very used to walking around alone and although I never had a bad encounter, one experience definitely scared me. I operated a London flight a few months after I joined the airline.

[00:27:12] During that trip, I decided to make a trip to the Tate Modern since it was just a few train stops away from my hotel. I made my way there late in the afternoon. I entered the museum and was standing by the mezzanine, looking down the hall, when I

[00:27:27] felt someone approach me. It was a big man. He was very tall. He had dark brown hair tied back into a ponytail. He was unshaven and wore a denim jacket. I can't recall what he said exactly, but it was something along the lines of, Isn't this place cool?

[00:27:49] I replied, Yeah, it's pretty interesting, or some boring reply in hopes that he would pick up on my tone and leave me alone. He said that he noticed me standing by the railing and thought that I looked very artistic and that I had an artistic soul.

[00:28:07] I was taken aback because prior to becoming a flight attendant, I studied art and design and wanted to pursue design as a career. I loosened up a bit and shared that I used to be an art student and decided to take a

[00:28:20] year or two to work and travel as a flight attendant. We chatted a little bit and he said that he could take me on a tour through the galleries as he was a regular at the Tate. It seemed pretty harmless, I thought.

[00:28:35] And since the galleries were crowded with visitors, what was the harm? I followed this man through the galleries and he told me that he was an artist and a lecturer teaching at an arts college in London. He asked which art college I attended and asked about my lecturers.

[00:28:54] Surprisingly, he said that he knew the lecturers of my college, which was all the way on the other side of the globe. This made me feel uncomfortable sharing more information with him.

[00:29:06] He showed me photos and paintings of the sketches, which were really good, so I was kind of convinced and my guard was down. Then, he revealed his real agenda. He said that he really, really wanted to paint me.

[00:29:21] When he asked me that question, my hair stood on end and I felt chills go down my spine. Paint me? He insisted that I was a beautiful subject and a great inspiration for his next piece.

[00:29:35] He said he would love nothing more than to have me over to his studio so that he could have a drawing done up of me. I politely declined, explaining that I had to get back to my hotel because I had an early checkout in the morning.

[00:29:47] He assured me that it would be quick and he even invited me to have dinner with his friends afterward. He promised delicious food and an excellent bottle of wine. He was persistent and made the same request about four or five times, but each time he asked, I refused.

[00:30:05] I gave all sorts of excuses, dinner with my crew, a curfew, early checkout, but he counted all of my excuses. I felt that I was being cornered. He would ask again and I would reject him again.

[00:30:21] We would transition into a conversation about work and the arts and when my guard was seemingly down again, he would ask that same question. We had been walking around the galleries for an hour or so, but I couldn't focus on any

[00:30:35] of the artwork displayed because I was so uncomfortable with him being around me. Honestly, I almost caved a few times since his persistence became too pressurizing. I was afraid to be firm and tell him to leave me alone. He just wouldn't leave.

[00:30:53] I kept trying to create distance between us as we walked around, but he always seemed to stand too close to me. I could smell a faint odor from his body like sweat and grime which made me even more uncomfortable.

[00:31:07] I kept looking around, hoping to slip away into the crowd. I was hoping someone would see that I was in distress and pull me away, but he was always too close to me. I felt like he wouldn't let me leave his sight.

[00:31:21] After rejecting him countless times, I could sense his tone becoming increasingly desperate. While sitting on a bench in one of the galleries, he attempted to convince me again. Come to my studio, you'll have fun. I said no again. Finally, he walked off.

[00:31:38] No goodbye, no it was nice to meet you, nothing. He just walked off. He switched from warm and friendly to cold and unfeeling. He left me sitting alone on the bench in the gallery dumbfounded. It was such an abrupt departure.

[00:31:58] The silence felt strange after listening to more than an hour of his pleas for me to go back to the studio with him. I sat on the bench for some time not knowing what to do.

[00:32:08] I had finally gotten rid of him, but his coldness, the way that he just up and left, made me feel extremely terrified. I decided my trip to the Tate Modern was ruined and I wanted to leave.

[00:32:22] I was feeling rather paranoid so I weaved in and out of the crowd through the galleries to make sure that he lost sight of me, just in case he was still watching. The walk back to the train station was the worst part.

[00:32:37] The streets were quiet, the sun was beginning to set so the alleys were feeling dark. I felt like I was being followed so I tried to walk on the main streets where there were people around. I prayed so hard that I wouldn't bump into them.

[00:32:52] I was almost running to the station to get out of there. When I finally made it back to my room, I bolted the doors and I took a shower to wash off the cold sweat that I had accumulated throughout this trip and then I went to bed.

[00:33:04] I hoped that I would forget this strange ordeal after having some sleep. To this day, I don't know what would have happened to me if I caved and followed him back to his quote-unquote studio. He may have just been an eccentric artist who was generally interested in painting

[00:33:20] a portrait, but the way that he left and his coldness always made me feel unnerved, like there was something off about him and the whole situation. To the man who wouldn't leave me alone at the museum, let's not meet.

[00:33:44] When I was in high school, I was a bit of a loner. I had a core group of friends. We were into skateboarding and punk rock music. I got involved with the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps or JROTC. I fell in love with the military and military history.

[00:34:02] I got pretty shredded doing a ton of push-ups, sit-ups and running every day. Toward the end of my sophomore year, I met a girl who I became a bit infatuated with. It was the classic story of meeting the wrong one.

[00:34:16] She introduced me to drugs and after about two or three months of dating, she handed me a pill at school and said, take it, you'll feel real good. I was an impressionable idiot, so I took it. I think it was a muscle relaxer.

[00:34:32] I felt pretty weird, but it made school suck a little less. Later that week, she gave me some painkillers. Those made me feel even weirder, but again, it was fun and new. And I had never really heard the don't do drugs lecture or

[00:34:48] seen what they could do to a person. Fast forward a year, I tried many different forms of drugs and stopped pursuing JROTC. I started hanging out with all of the wrong people, left my old friend group and

[00:35:01] just tried to surf the party wave with the people that I started hanging out with. When I was 16, my uncle passed away during the height of my party phase. My mom and I took a road trip to help our family with his stuff, arrangements, etc.

[00:35:19] On the way down to Florida, we stopped at a hotel for the night. I remember this hotel was strange. It was on the top of a very high hill that had a driveway about half a mile long that zigzagged up to the top of said hill.

[00:35:35] I thought to myself, I'm definitely gonna skate this hill tonight. My mom and I unpacked a bit, and I told her that I was gonna go skate the hill and I'd be back in a bit. Of course, she said no, since it was fairly late, and

[00:35:48] we were in an area that we didn't really know. I was 16 and stupid, so I waited for her to fall asleep. Then I threw on my fake black leather jacket and went on my way. It must have been around midnight.

[00:36:03] I skated down the hill, following the zigzag and getting the wobbles, nearly wiping out. I got to the bottom, and there were only two things, a waffle house and a gas station. Other than that, there were just mountains, woods, and more hills.

[00:36:21] I decided to shred on some of the cement parking blocks, kick flipping off curbs and whatnot. I'm skating for about 20 minutes, and I noticed that there's this old silver and beige minivan parked in the waffle house parking lot.

[00:36:37] It wasn't there when I got there, but I didn't see it arrive either. I took a break from skating and sat down on the sidewalk. An old scraggly guy with a beard got out of the van and sort of eyeballed me.

[00:36:51] I saw him and he averted his gaze a bit, then moved his gaze back to me to see if I stayed locked on him or not. He asked, how's it going man? What you doing, skating? I answered, yep, just hanging out. He replied, that's cool man.

[00:37:11] So I got up and skated a bit, thinking that this guy used to be a skater or something. He was leaning on his van watching me. He looked like every creeper who leaned on a van before him.

[00:37:24] Five minutes or so go by and he asks, hey man, do you party? I said, yeah man, depending on what you got. I still had a hard line against hard stuff like meth, heroin or crack.

[00:37:39] He went back into the cab of his van and popped the hood open. He motioned for me to come over, and I was intrigued at this point, so I did. He popped open the air intake filter box to reveal a prescription bottle full of gram baggies of cocaine.

[00:37:58] For some reason, I didn't consider cocaine to be a super hard drug, and I already had a few experiences with it before then. I said, whoa man, that's awesome. I don't have any cash though. He said, don't worry about it. Wanna go party?

[00:38:15] I agreed like an idiot, and I got into this old disheveled man's mobile crime scene, and we left the parking lot of the Waffle House to travel to a destination I had no clue about. We went about a mile into the mountains and slowed for

[00:38:31] a bit to take what appeared to be a dirt road. I reassured myself I'm fine, this is all fine, but I started to regret my choice and got very creeped out, realizing the potential danger of what was transpiring. It was pitch black.

[00:38:49] The only light was coming from the crappy 80s original manufacturer bulbs that came with this van. We drove down the dirt road for about a quarter of a mile and slowed down. I saw another deeper, more obscure road, if you can call it that.

[00:39:08] It was off of the main dirt road. Rather than pulling in, he backed in. I presumed for ease of exiting or possibly to be at an angle to see if anyone was coming. He backed in further than anyone should need to back in, and

[00:39:25] it seemed like he's done this quite a few times before. We backed in for about 50 yards. He parked and turned off the engine. I was very creeped out now, but I still wanted to possibly go party for

[00:39:41] free and had a bit of tunnel vision on that desire only. He then asked, so how much would you say that you normally do? I replied, I'm not sure, maybe about a gram or a bit less in a night.

[00:39:59] He said, all right man, not a problem, but I have a favor to ask you. I thought this was all a bit strange and the reality was beginning to sink in. I was with a total stranger who's likely not very scrupulous in his van

[00:40:18] in the middle of the wooded mountains, backed 50 yards away from a very dark dirt road, there weren't any lights anywhere, not even cabin lights in the van. We were sitting in the dark, barely able to see each other's faces. He told me that he wanted to have sex.

[00:40:37] My stomach dropped. I was 16, this guy was like 50. I've lost much of the muscle that I bulked up on during my stint of JROTC due to the long nights of partying and my reduced appetite.

[00:40:52] I stared at the dash after a brief recovery from the shock of what he just said. I realized how stupid I was and how much danger I was in. I nonchalantly, smiling so as not to appear judgmental said,

[00:41:05] nah man, I just don't swing that way, I have a girlfriend. As I said that I subtly reached for the handle of a knife, which I happened to have concealed in the right side of my jacket.

[00:41:17] I asked myself in my head, if it comes down to it, am I prepared to stab or potentially even kill this person in self-defense? He emphatically asked, please? What if we do some coke and you get to feeling good, how about then? I answered, no, I'm good.

[00:41:37] I appreciate it though. He pressed a bit more. Are you sure man? Guys know what feels best. This situation really sickened me. I had to negotiate my way out of having sex with this guy who was old enough to be my dad.

[00:41:54] I said to him, look man, how about I give you my leather jacket as trade for a gram and we just go back? He replied, nice jacket, but I don't need one. He put the van in drive and we slowly drove back to the Waffle House.

[00:42:14] I said, have a good one man. I acted as though what happened didn't really happen. I sprinted back up the zigzag hill and didn't sleep for the rest of the night. I didn't tell my parents or anyone about this until many years later.

[00:42:30] Don't forget to stick around after the music for your extended ad free version of Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast if you're a patron and if you'd like to get access to all of the bonus content including

[00:42:56] this week's episode, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet to sign up and support the show today. This week you have heard long term Tinder date by a listener that asked to remain anonymous, The Man with the Bricks by Lucifer666,

[00:43:13] Another Gray Cloud Island Story by AC, My Trip to the Tate Modern by JH. And finally, The Man with the Van in the Waffle House parking lot by Mark. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors.

[00:43:30] Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. As always, if you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com and we'll take a look.

[00:43:41] Don't forget to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts, 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.

[00:43:54] Before I start, I just wanna say that I absolutely love the podcast.