Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 12x01: The Man in the Field

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Stories in this episode: Creeper on the Beach | Anonymous (0:42) The Forest | knoodle03 (11:59) Psych Patient | Anonymous (22:16) The Man in the Field | Ok-Dot-5889 (29:18) Followed All Over Town | Monica (32:49) Stalked by a Client | Boop_Berry (39:56) Extended Patreon Content: What Was John's Deal? | Ms. Chaos Reigns Please Don't Be a Bystander | Hector The Squatter | esperoxursox Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. To submit your story to the show, send it to [e-mail].   Get access to extended, ad-free episodes of Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast with bonus stories every week at a higher bitrate along with a bunch of other great exclusive material and merch at patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast. This podcast would not be possible to continue at this rate without the help of the support of the legendary LNM Patrons. Come join the family! Check out the other Cryptic County podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radiocast at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts! - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/433173970399259/ - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/ - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ - TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@crypticcounty - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/chipschicken  

This podcast contains adult language and content. Listen to discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. This happened in the fall of 2022. My husband, my daughter and I began our move from the south coast of the United States to the west coast. We had been on the road for about a week when we finally made it to the Oregon coast. We finally arrived in the small town of Walgport, Oregon, late at night and pulled our motor

home into a pull-out located right off of Highway 101. For those that don't know, Highway 101 stretches for the entirety of the west coast and it's right along the ocean. We parked with our front windows facing the ocean, and since we were all so tired from the day's travels, we went right to bed. The next morning at the crack of dawn, I woke up feeling deeply excited to be on the organ coast. I peaked out through the curtains along the front of the motorhome, and there it was,

the Pacific Ocean, and all its majestic beauty. I couldn't wait to go down to the beach, and since it was light outside, I went ahead and quietly got ready to go check it out. I figured I would take our dog Lebowski with me. Lebowski is a super chill dog. I mean, if you've ever seen the movie The Big Lebowski, he's basically the dog version of The Dude. He's a small dog weighing about 12 pounds. I whispered, I'm gonna go walk on the beach in my husband's ear. He grunted in response as he had driven many hours the previous day and was very exhausted. I leaned over and kissed him before I headed out.

As Lebowski and I left the motor home, I grabbed my cell phone and my new stun gun. Before we left on our road trip, I purchased a stun gun. I've always been a true crime person, so I knew that purchasing this, as well as staying alert to my surroundings, would help me to stay safe. So there we were, Lebowski and I were happily bouncing down to the beach along a narrow path lined with beach grass as tall as me running along the sides. The sandy path ever so slightly curved down to the beach. The sandy path, ever so slightly, curved down to the beach. I was very happy to feel the cool ocean air gently reviving me.

Once Lebowski and I reached the beach, I could see the entire beach. From above, it was hard to see the actual beach as the elevated angle only provided a view of the ocean. I could see an older couple holding hands and walking toward me from further down the beach with a golden retriever. They were to my right, but quite a bit away from me. There were two men on the beach as well, but they weren't together. One of them was passing in front of me, along the waterline, heading away from me, continuing down the beach. The second man was alone, just standing at the water's edge. He was about 300 yards in front of me since the tide was out. Originally, I had wanted to walk down to the waterline, but for some reason,

I felt a little uncomfortable. I just didn't want to end up getting too close to the guy, who was standing at the water's edge. So instead of walking forward toward him, I veered to the left and approached a large piece of driftwood that was between where the path started and the waterline. I sat on the driftwood as I let Lebowski sniff around and play. The exact moment that I sat down, I felt eyes on me. When I looked up, I realized that it was only me, this man, and Lebowski with an eyesight. Everyone else from before was now gone. I saw that guy looking in my direction. I was still pleading that

he hadn't noticed me, but he started walking directly toward me. I continued to sit there, pretending not to notice him, hoping that he would steer clear of me. However, he veered away from the waterline as he continued to walk toward me. This man was within ten feet of me when he turned to walk past me and back to the path. The path was accessible from where he had been standing so he walked out of his way just so that he could walk past me. As he passed, he said hello, while looking me up and down. I just nodded and greeted him with a quick high while making sure to sound confident and a bit curt. I felt very uncomfortable, but I was in shock more than anything. Why

was he walking so close to me to get to the path when it was unnecessary for him to do so? As I was looking at him, I scanned him. I saw his face in detail, and I made a note of his hair, his clothes, his eyes, everything. He seemed to be in his early to mid-twenties. He looked clean-cut and rather normal, whatever that means. He passed me slowly and deliberately, and we made eye contact the entire time. He had a smirk on his face that I'll never forget. It was the kind of smirk that many of us are familiar with. It was like he was trying to look nice, but the smile never really reached his eyes. The situation felt weird, and he just felt off. If you've ever had this feeling, you know what I'm

talking about. You know that it's a feeling that you can't quite put into words. It's a surreal and uncanny feeling, and this feeling was saying that I absolutely could not allow this man behind me. saying that I absolutely could not allow this man behind me. I should mention that at this time I was 45 and overweight. Considering those factors, I nearly lolled myself into a false sense of security by telling myself that there was no way this young man was interested in me. Don't ever do that. Even if you don't find yourself physically appealing. Well, that means nothing. I was a woman alone. That's all that really mattered. So I stood up and

I led Lebowski further down the beach toward the waterline. Trying not to be obvious and pretending to play with Lebowski, I jogged backward so that I could have this guy in my eyesight. He slowly walked himself back toward the path. Once there, he sat down on a piece of driftwood and watched me, and that really upset me. I was upset that I couldn't even walk along the beach without some guy acting suspicious and making me uncomfortable. It's absurd. I know I'm not alone when I say that I have had just about enough of this. It angers me that it happens so often. I just wanted to relax and look for seashells and let Lebowski off his leash so that we could enjoy ourselves. But no,

I certainly wasn't going to continue on the path and walk toward him. I knew that I was going to have to wait for this guy to continue on the path himself before proceeding so that I would always be behind him. After a 10 minutes stare off, I saw him stand up, and he turned around and began to walk toward the path opening. Then I slowly started to head toward the path. I was trying not to make it obvious that my next move was dependent on his next move. When I glanced up so that I could decide what to do next, he was now standing at the mouth of the path, just standing there, staring at me and waiting.

What is he doing? I thought to myself as he stood there unmoving, watching me. We were about 150 yards from each other, so I stopped and pulled out my cell phone. I decided to call my mom, since I knew my husband and daughter were still fast asleep. Luckily my mom answered, and I put her on FaceTime, as I told her exactly what was happening. As I did this, the man turned, and finally started to ascend the path. I told my mom what he was doing as I began to walk again. I had Lebowski's leash and my cell in one hand, and then the stun gun in the other. I had the camera facing out so that my mom could see the man in the distance.

I felt vulnerable and I wished that I had grabbed the pepper spray instead. To engage the stun gun, I had to be close to someone. That's not ideal. With pepper spray, you don't have to be as close to someone, so that would have at least afforded me some distance. I was inwardly frustrated with myself, and I felt so much anger towards this man who was continuing to make me nervous. It was very obvious that he was up to something since, as I got close to the mouth of the path, he stopped. Even though I was actually starting to

feel concerned, I had managed to convince myself that I was being dramatic. But the fact that he stopped on the path just as I approached was too much of a red flag to ignore. My mom and I formulated a plan in case this man and I came face to face. We planned that I was going to fight while my mom called 911 on my dad's cell phone. All the while, she would stand face time with me to hear and see what was happening. I remember thinking that I would drop the leash to enable me to take a fighting stance with the taser in one hand and my mom mom on FaceTime, on my phone, and the other.

This was a strange moment in time. I stayed where I was and remained on high alert, but I suddenly couldn't see him anymore. I was thinking maybe he had gone ahead and walked the path to the parking lot. I assumed that he had and just missed it while I was strategizing. After what felt like an hour, but was probably only a minute or so, I heard a lady's voice accompanied by a few others. Thank goodness," I said. Some other people are coming down the path. Just as I said this, the man abruptly shot up from behind the beach grass and continued along the path, briskly walking past the family, clearly in a hurry. Mom, he was hiding in the bushes, I clarified.

I quickly continued up the path, past the family, and out to where the parking lot was. It was full of people coming to the beach. I looked around, and I didn't see the man anywhere. My heart was racing, but I don't think I've ever felt my senses so keenly before. Every fiber of my body was still on high alert. Lebowski was oblivious. We made our way quickly back to the RV and went inside. Once inside I shared my mom that I was safe.

After we hung up, I looked through the curtains, and there he was. The man was walking from the parking lot bathrooms and into the nearby woods. He just disappeared into those woods. This just goes to show that you can never let your guard down, not even on a crisp, sunny, fall day in a beautiful place. After seeing him disappear into the woods, I realized I should never have questioned my gut. I also learned that I should never have questioned my gut. I also learned that I should have never tried to talk myself out of what I was feeling, since being alert was what saved me.

To the family that came to the beach at just the right time, thank you, and to the creeper on the beach who hid behind the tall grass, waiting for me. Let's never meet again. I've listened to this podcast for a few years now, and much like many others, I never really thought that I would have a story to share myself. But this has been weighing on me. This story consists of multiple events that occurred during a college field trip for a climate science course that I was taking. The class was split into three groups, and each group was sent to three different locations

for a week in rotation. So the trip lasted for a total of three weeks, quite a bit happening during these three weeks, too, but I'll just talk about one particularly disturbing series of events. The group that I was in was the first to go to a place that I'll refer to as the forest for the sake of privacy. The forest was located in a town, and it was like a camp of sorts. It was basically just a bunch of people who believed in living a more natural and sustainable life. They had come together to the forest to live by the principles in which they believed. They worked heavily on things like forest restoration, reviving native plants, useful waste management, and more. They had support from the community, and people would come to stay there and volunteer.

Anyone who stayed there had different kinds of tasks to help out with and complete. Many of the volunteers there were short-term volunteers, much like us. They came to visit and learned about all of the sustainable practices that were being run. The people who stayed there almost permanently and guided us during our stay were long term volunteers. The organization itself consisted of a hierarchy of a director and an assistant director at the top who also lived and worked there with everyone. The forest and its hierarchy structure had a lot of issues, but I'm not going to get into that, as that's an entirely different rabbit hole.

When we got there, our accommodation for the week looked like a huge solid treehouse, in which we had a mattress with mosquito nets. The lodging was not gender segregated and the accommodations provided weren't just for my groups from school, some of the other volunteers were also sleeping in there with us. Upon arriving, two of my friends and I, all females, were interacting with some other volunteers in the main hall where people sat and lounged around. There was this one kind of, lanky guy, who struck up a conversation with us, and it went fine but, after a while, one of my guy friends and I, unintentionally fell asleep next to each

other. This lanky guy that we were talking to, and the conversation seemed fine but we were just too exhausted from the travel. And not to mention, it was peak summer and the forest didn't have any fans or air conditioning. When I got up, one of my friends told me that the Lanky guy who was talking to us asked her if I was in a relationship

with the guy that I had fallen asleep with. I found it odd that a random person who had only talked to me once was curious about something like that. Although we both found it odd, we random person who had only talked to me once was curious about something like that. Although we both found it odd, we just brushed it off and assumed that the dude was probably just being slightly nosy, and we let it go. Then we went back to our tree house to go to sleep. The next morning, the sun hit my eyes.

I half-opened them only to see the Lanky guy that I had met the night before, was pacing back and forth in front of my mattress. I was still really sleepy and out of it, so I closed my eyes again and ended up falling back to sleep. When I woke up once more, nearly half an hour later, he was still there pacing. I was a little jard, so I joked it up, and then he came really close to the mosquito net and just said, good morning, and then left. I was so confused. I tried to talk myself out of how blatantly odd that was by assuming that maybe the mattress he was sleeping in was next to mine. This seemed to be the most logical explanation as to why he would be pacing around so close to my mattress, but later that night I found out that his mattress was on the complete

opposite end of the treehouse. My mattress was right next to the entry, while his was in the back. Upon this realization I started to become more wary of him, and so did my group mates. Then we noticed that at mealtimes, he would always sit behind or directly in front of me in my two girlfriends, which got annoying since he made it obvious that he was listening in on us. Over the next few days days things got much worse. Some of the guys in my group had planned to go out for dinner at the beach in town,

which had restaurants nearby. They told me and my two girlfriends that that Lankie guy had followed them to the entry gates of the forest as they were leaving. To put it into perspective, the distance from the tree house to the entry gates was long. It was a 20 minute walk. They got annoyed at him for following them, and they firmly told him to go away. But he wouldn't leave them alone until they walked out of the gates. Then he proceeds to stalk another girl in my group while she was on a call with someone.

She noticed him on her tail and tried to walk around different areas to shake him off, but he just wouldn't leave her alone. After she ended the call, he asked her personal questions about what he had overheard on her call. This man was going too far and we had had enough, so we went to the director and told her what was going on. According to the policies of this place, that was enough to kick him out right then and there, but for some reason the director let him off with a warning and asked him to pay a fine, as if that was going to stop him. My group was only going to be at this place for a day longer, but we considered getting out of there in order to make sure that the other groups from our class didn't set foot here.

But before we had a chance to do that, all hell broke loose. That evening, four others and I, three girls, two guys, decided to go to this mud pond within a safe bounds of the forest to take a dip. This place was so hot even at night, and the mud pond was like a cool ice water dip that we desperately needed. Obviously it was muddy so we planned a shower after relaxing in there. To enter the pond, you had to stray from a straight path to slide down a slight slope. The pond was at a lower elevation than the path that ran straight above it, which meant that there was a cliff-like area on one side. Being a forest, it was rather dark at night, so we all had some torches that lit up a good

range to carry with us. We were on our way to the mud pond with our torches, and I was in the back of the group. I noticed that there was another torch shining from behind us. Even though I could see everyone that I was with, I wasn't concerned. At first, this was pretty normal. Other group members or volunteers often came out to this mud pond for a dip to cool down as well. But then something started to feel wrong to me. My gut was saying that something was off, so I shined my torch toward the person behind us and guess who it was, the lanky guy. My stomach dropped. It was so dark and there weren't any other volunteers around.

I didn't know what this guy was up to and I didn't want to underestimate him so I immediately alerted everyone that he was following us again. We didn't know what to do, so we just decided that we would go to the pond regardless, and confront him if he came there. When we got to the mud pond, he was completely out of sight. We were talking pretty loudly to one another as we questioned where he went. I finally flashed my torch around and saw him standing on the cliff, overlooking the pond, watching us from above. I yelled loudly. There he is, guys. Why is he just standing there like that?" He didn't budge. We all looked at each other and began to panic. Most people would leave after being spotted and called out like

this, but this guy just stood there. I told everyone to shine their torches on him so that he knew we were aware of his presence, but he just crouched down in the grass while all our torches continued to eliminate him. One of the guys I was with called out to him by name and asked him what he was doing there. The linky guy just said, I came here to enjoy the breeze. The guys asked him to leave, and he said he would. So we watched the paths around us to make sure that he was leaving, but he disappeared again. My gut was telling me that he hadn't left, so I went closer to the cliff, and I shined

my light to the top, only to find that he was now lying down in the grass so that he could keep watching us. We were so mad. I called the emergency number to talk to the director. The Lankie guy began scurrying back to the campgrounds, and turns out the director was on her way to the mud pond to talk to us, and ended up meeting the linky guy on the path when he was on his way back. When she asked him what he did, he brazenly admitted to eavesdropping on our plans to

go to the mud pond, and he told her that he decided to follow us. When everyone was back at the campgrounds, we had to fight with the director and the assistant director to kick him out, which they honestly should have done by then. He was finally kicked out of the camp, and we made arrangements with our university that very night to ensure that they didn't send any of the groups to this camp. I have no idea what that deranged

Linky guy was up to, but we better not meet again. I'm a 50-something-year-old female who is an avid listener and a first-time submitter. My story took place approximately 18 years ago. I was in my second year of nursing school and I was rotating into psych nursing. It was a little nerve-wracking for me since this meant that my group from school was going to a psychiatric institute. We were sent to one of the few psych institutions that were still open at the time. The institution housed many patients with varying disorders. This place has housed patients who have committed violent crimes, which included murderers.

The patient I was assigned to was a young man a couple of years older than me. We'll call him John. John was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was institutionalized for stabbing a psychiatrist multiple times, with a letter opener during one of their sessions. Thankfully, the psychiatrist lived from the attack, but they were left traumatized mentally as well as physically. I don't remember much about the case, except that John's defense team went for an insanity plea, so John didn't serve much jail time before being institutionalized. Honestly, he may not have served any jail time at all.

My assignment was basically to hang out with John for two days, talk with him, and hopefully establish some kind of rapport. Our first day of meeting each other went well, we sat in the common room, and talked about life and the good old days. Come to find out, we went to the same high school and knew several of the same people. We talked about our teachers and our favorite subjects. We also talked about the concerts and keg parties that we went to. John and I really hit it off. After a couple of hours of conversing with him, it was time for me to leave with my group from school. I could tell that John was disappointed when I had to go, but he was excited when I told him I'd be back the following day. I returned the next day, and it didn't go so well. I arrived

at the clinic and asked for John. The nurse told me that he was in bed, and she went into his room with me in tow. She tried to coax John to get out of bed by saying that I was there. She told him that he needed to come out to the day room to speak with me. Since I was there, I said good morning to him. He looked at me, rolled over in bed, and pulled the covers over his head. The nurse and I just looked at each other and shrunked. We walked out of his room, and I went to tell my clinical instructor what happened. I assumed I was going to have an easy day after that since John wasn't interested in talking.

But my instructor wasn't having it. She and the nurse went into John's room, and they made him get out of bed, get dressed, and come sit with me in the day room. The day room was nearly deserted. One of my classmates was in there with her patient, and they were on the other side of the room, putting a puzzle together. I sat down on the couch waiting for John. When he walked in, he came over and sat next to me, and he was less than thrilled to be there. I attempted to continue our conversation from the day before, but I was receiving either single word answers or silence from him in response. He kept saying he wanted to go back to his room. But when he did this, I tried to change his subject and talk about something else.

As I sat there thinking about why he was in there in the first place, I was concerned that this would be a case of idle hands being the devil's workshop. In an attempt to break the silence and tension I asked, John, do you want to play cards or a puzzle? I should preface his response by mentioning that John had crystal blue eyes. After asking the question, John whipped his head around, got within inches of my face and yelled, how am I supposed to know? In that moment, his eyes seem to go black as night.

As a nurse now, I understand the physiology of how eyes can turn black like that when people become enraged. Their pupils will reach maximum dilation. They stretch over the iris, making the eyes appear black. The iris itself can't turn black, but when the pupils are dilated enough, the iris, making the eyes appear black. The iris itself can't turn black, but when the pupils are dilated enough, the irises can appear to be black as well. I didn't have a full grasp on this medically back then, so I was horrified, naturally. This was something I had never witnessed or experienced, and I knew I never wanted to again.

In this anger-fueled moment, John was so close to me that his rancid morning breath blew my hair back. I sat completely still and turned my head away from him as he leaned back on the couch. Then, after what seemed like an hour, but was only a few seconds, he got up and left the room. As he left, I exhaled a large sigh of relief. As I hadn't realized, I had been holding my breath the whole time. I didn't even notice that my classmate had come over to my side of the room. A few staff members came over as well as they asked me if I was all right and offered

me tissues in some water. After calming down and processing what had just happened, I told my clinical instructor what transpired with John. She apologized profusely and stated that she never meant to put me in harm's way. She claimed that he was no longer a threat, and that's why he was deemed acceptable to interact with a nursing student. Needless to say, John was immediately removed from that rotation list. I returned to that clinic the next week and continued to go there for the remainder of my six-week psych rotation. I never saw John again, but I had a few other interesting patients.

This situation, and completing this part of my program, was definitely an eye-opener for me since I was able to see how terrible mental illness can actually be. After graduation, I worked in a rehabilitation center that doubled as a diagnosis psych facility for a short time. Between what I experienced with John and working at the center, I realized that psych nursing isn't for me. I give so much credit to the medical professionals and staff who choose to work in this field.

God bless them all. I hope they all stay well and safe. Oh yeah, and John, let's never meet again. I work overnight at a 24 hour diner, so you can probably guess what kind of company I have during these shifts. I'm used to encounter strange people and I'm used to odd things happening, but this night was just too much. The restaurant backs up to a field that has a tree line. One night, my cook and I went out to smoke. We could hear someone yelling in the distance, but we get a lot of transients

coming through town so we assume that that's what we were hearing. They are generally harmless so we shrugged it off and went back inside. Later, I went out to smoke again as I was throwing away some trash in the dumpster which is right next to the field. As I was walking away from the dumpster, I heard a man say, Hey, come here, hey, come here." This time, the voice was much closer than it was when my cook had heard him yelling the first time. I didn't respond, and I went back inside and got my coworker who had a car with a spotlight on it. We drove his car over to the field and we shined the spotlight

out into the field, but we couldn't see anything. As we were looking for him, he kept saying, hey girl, come here! I called the cops by this point because it was just too weird. As soon as I got off the phone with them, he emerged from the field. He was an older man wearing a tan trench coat. My coworker and a customer ran back inside because this guy was hauling it towards them from across the parking lot. He started to come towards the door, so I called the cops again. My cook cut the man off at the door and told him that he needed to leave.

The man was acting erratically, yelling at the cook and saying, I'll end your life next time I see you." And he kept sweeping his jacket up at the waist like he was flashing a weapon. But I couldn't see anything from where I was inside. He left, but the cops intercepted him down the road. An officer came by and said that the guy seemed to be mentally unstable. We told the cops everything that happened and my cook pressed charges on him. The officer told us that there wasn't anything that they could do, and since he wouldn't

give his name, they let him go. They ended it with, oh, we've been called about this guy before, and he's known to carry a knife in his waistband. Keep an eye out and call us if you need us. Bye. The man wound up coming back. When we spotted him again, he was hauling it across the parking lot again

until he was back in the field. We continued to hear him yelling, hey, come here in the distance again and again. When the bar is closed down that night, our diner got busy so after a while, we couldn't hear him anymore. We haven't heard him since, but I know he's still back there,

since I've caught him sleeping behind the dumpster. I'm going to ask my manager to let me take a picture of him from the security tapes so that I can warn other third shift workers about him. Hopefully, he'll move on and leave us alone. This field also borders a middle school, so I hope that the police can locate him and remove him so that nobody gets hurt. I'm a long time listener. I've been listening since the original first run of Let's Not Meet.

Here's my story. This took place a few years ago during the summer of 2018. I'm a female, and at the time I was 20. I had attended a free kickboxing class at a local gym with a coworker. The class served as a free trial, in which the gym staff would try to get the attendees to buy a membership. It was a fun class, but I never ended up enrolling in the gym or going back. I made this decision due to what happened to me after.

The kickboxing place was in a large and relatively new plaza. It was situated between a hair salon, some restaurants, and a bowling alley complex, so there were plenty of cars in the parking lot. After class, my coworker and I walked out to the parking lot. It was late afternoon, but it wasn't dark. She had parked much closer to the kickboxing gym's entrance than I had, so we parted ways when we reached her car and the lot. I continued walking ahead to get to my car. Then I got in and immediately locked the doors, as all of us women are advised to do. Really anyone should.

After settling in, I pulled out of my spot and proceeded to the parking lot exit to begin my 15-minute drive home. I had made this drive there and back again a hundred times over. I always opted to take back road shortcuts when going back and forth from town to my house. And I lived with my parents for 20 years. I guess what I'm getting at here is I was very used to this drive so I was on autopilot and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary going on around me. About 10 minutes into the drive, my boyfriend, who was now my fiance, called me to see what I was up to that evening. After a quick chat,

we decided that I would swing over to his parent's house where he lived at the time. His parent's house was about ten minutes across town. I had just pulled into my street, so rather than parking at my house, I just kept going past it and rerouted myself to my boyfriend's place. It was around this time that I took a good look at a truck that had been behind me. It was a grey pickup truck and the driver was a man wearing dark sunglasses. I noticed him, but there didn't seem to be anything peculiar about him, other than the fact that he had been behind me for quite a while. Honestly, since departing the parking lot, I don't remember not seeing him behind me.

Whatever, I told myself, people drive around town all the time, it's not a big deal. It was a bit odd that he was pulling onto my street, though. I knew every car that lived there, and this grey pickup was not one of them. But still, I told myself that I was being ridiculous. Since a new residential development was being built nearby, I reassured myself that this man was probably just using our street as a shortcut as many people were at the time. I drove down the street, taking the left turn that would send me back towards town and to my boyfriend's house. The grey truck remained behind me, making a left turn as well. They

didn't continue straight towards the new development, so this crushed my shortcut theory as we exited my neighborhood together. It was at this point that I began to get that gut feeling, something was off. I kept an eye on my rear view as I headed into town, and he continued following. I drove through our main street rotary, which is essentially a roundabout, and I decided to see if I could lose him. Instead of taking the exit that I needed, I continued around the rotary, making a full circle before continuing to my destination. And the truck did the same. I knew that I was in trouble then. The weird thing was, it was still late in the afternoon, so it was still

light out. Cars were out. People were out walking their dogs. I told myself it's not like anything strange could happen in broad daylight. Next I deliberately took a bunch of unnecessary turns and went in circles. I did the whole nine, but no matter what, sure enough, the truck stayed behind me. I headed towards my boyfriends and continued to take the most obnoxiously long route that I could. When I was just a few minutes away from my boyfriend's place, I called him and explained what was happening. He and his mom were both home, and they said that they would stand outside of the house to greet me and bring me inside. The neighborhood is a maze, and all of the streets are named after lakes. The streets wind around in weird turns and

there are cut-throughs to navigate around. I took as many of these cut-throughs as I could, driving much faster than a reasonable and residential area. I saw the truck falling behind, and after a couple more turns, I didn't see it anymore. I pulled up to my boyfriend's house and then put my car into the driveway. He and his mom brought me inside and I sat at their bay window where I watched out for the truck. Not even two minutes later I saw it. It was driving by, dramatically slow, peering into each and every driveway. I was shaking, I yelled from my boyfriend to come look out the window. We both watched as the guy idled in front of the house, looking at my car in the driveway. Then he looked up at the bay window where we were standing

before speeding off. I'd like to say that we wrote down a license plate, or that we called the cops, or that we found a perfectly reasonable explanation for this guy intently following me all over town. Of course, none of that was the case. I'll never know why he followed me across town, and then back in the opposite direction when I had changed course. There's no way to justify this in my brain. It doesn't make sense.

All I know is, he wouldn't have sped off like that if he had good intentions. I even thought that perhaps I had a tail light out, and he was being a good smaritan, but we checked. My car didn't have any lights out. This is just one of those things that will sit, albeit uncomfortably, with me for a long time. Ever since this happened, I don't let myself go on autopilot, and I pay much more attention to the cars behind me. To the man in the sunglasses and the grey pick-up, let's not meet. I used to be employed as a child protection worker.

A report came through about a stepfather who was being abusive to his children. I was assigned to his investigation by my team leader. When I interviewed the eldest child with the police, she had very visible physical injuries and told me exactly what happened. I'll spare the details, but it was horrific. Since the children were in the sole care of their stepfather, we knew that they needed to be removed immediately. We sent a team of two workers out to the children's school, while myself and a colleague called the stepfather into the office. I led the interview. It was horrible. He didn't even try to deny

that he had hurt his stepchild. He essentially said, that's my kid. I'll do whatever I want. You can't stop me." When I served him with the paperwork, he lost his mind. He was swearing and screaming as he threatened. If we were outside this building right now, I would kill you. My team and I ended up running out of the interview room, engaging our emergency alarms, and even had to file a police report about the whole thing. It got really messy.

The next day, we had to go to court for the children. My manager decided that I shouldn't attend due to everything that happened the previous day. My colleague who attended told me that this man yelled several times during court. At one point he shouted, calling me names, saying that I took his kids. I remember feeling a bit freaked out, but it's not uncommon to hear things similar to this when you have to remove a child. Understandably, emotions are very high. I've built up a bit of resilience working in this field, so while it was concerning

to have this client talk about me like that, I mainly felt relief that those children were safely placed with their aunt. About two weeks later I was working on an unrelated job, and I had to stay back late at the office. It was about 9 pm when I was finally wrapping wrapping up and I was the only person there. I walked out of the back of the building to my car. It was dark, but as I was approaching my car, I thought I saw a shadow moving around the front of my car. The movement was so brief, I saw it only for a, and then it was gone. It was about 20 meters away, so

it really startled me. I stood there for a second just looking at my car wondering if I was being paranoid. While staring into the darkness, I heard tiny wrestling noises. As I was trying to figure out if all of this was my imagination or not. All of the true crime horror stories I ever heard flashed into my mind. I sprinted back to the building and called my boyfriend. I asked him to come and pick me up, explaining what had happened. By the time he arrived, I had fully convinced myself I was just being silly and asked him to drive me around to my car. We circled with the headlights, shining on my car, and I could very clearly see that all four of my tires had been slashed.

I was an absolute mess after seeing this. I called the police immediately. I was fairly certain that that angry stepfather I had dealt with before was responsible, but, since I hadn't seen him, I couldn't say for sure. It took a few days off, and when I returned I had a meeting with my manager, who had put together a safety plan for me and the other staff. She organized to have a security guard escort us to our cars and said very clearly that no one was to stay in the building after hours alone. Then, about a week later, a letter was delivered to the office

addressed to me. Any mail that comes to this office is filtered through our reception staff. The letter was opened by the receptionist. It was a death threat that included the foul names that the man called me while in court. She burst into tears when she read it. The letter didn't have a return address, but I was convinced it was from the same man. Over the next few weeks, the letters kept coming, and each one was getting longer. These letters always addressed me with the same vulgar names, and also referred to me as a home wrecker. They implied that I kidnapped and abused

children. It was horrible, horrible stuff. The threats in these letters were the worst. The person writing them threatened to assault, torture, and kill me. The writer said that they were going to find out where I lived, and they were going to burn the entire building down to the ground. To be completely honest, the police were less than helpful. They said that given the nature of our work, they couldn't conclusively say that it was this man, although they had questioned him. It all seemed like more than a coincidence to me. I had never had anything like this happen before.

At least they seemed to be taking the letters very seriously. They were tracking down where they were supposedly being posted from, but I never heard anything back about that. My workplace took the threats very seriously too. All of the security was bumped up across the building and all staff completed refresher training on emergency management. One day when I was on my way home from work, I noticed that a car was following me. A dark green camera.

At first I thought that I was being paranoid so I drove down a bunch of little streets. Then I doubled back onto the same route in a way that made absolutely no sense. Even after all of that, this dark green camera was still just keeping pace, a little ways behind me. I was freaked out, but I had already planned in my head what I was going to do in this kind of situation. So I headed straight to the police station. I planned to pull up right to the front of the building

and hog my horn until someone came out. The second I pulled into the police station. I planned to pull up right to the front of the building and hog my horn until someone came out. The second I pulled into the police station, the green camera drove straight past and disappeared down a nearby side street. I sat in my car at the station for a good 20 minutes. I was too scared to even get out of the car since I felt like they could come back around the corner at any second. Then in my panic, it finally dawned on me. I hadn't even gotten the green can raise license plate number, and this still upsets me to this day. I went inside the station and told the police everything that I knew, but when they looked

up the man's information, they said that this man didn't have any vehicles registered in his name. This was the final straw for me. I was a nervous wreck. I was looking over my shoulder constantly at work and home. I knew that he lived relatively close to me, so I even stopped going to my usual grocery store to avoid running into him. I wound up going out on stress-lead for a month.

Even in my absence, I heard from colleagues that the letters kept arriving. I was ready to quit, but then COVID hit, which changed everything. Everyone went into lockdown and access to the office was restricted. I started working from home, and I drove a work car to and from appointments.

I wasn't going to the office regularly anymore. Office staff was allowed to go in and work in small groups, but only when it was absolutely necessary. Over the next year, the letters slowed and eventually stopped. By the time we were approved to work in the office again, there hadn't been any sign of this man for almost seven months. About a year later, I left child protection. I don't know what happened with those children, but I hope that they're in a happy, safe place with their families. As for the man who stalked and threatened me for doing my job, let's never meet again. episode. If you'd like to get access, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast

to sign up and support the show today. You'll get access to weekly bonus episodes with stories you won't hear anywhere else, as well as daily uploads. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. This week you have heard creeper on the beach by anonymous, the forest by noodle zero three, psych patient by anonymous, the man in the Field by Ok.5889, Ballowed All Over Town by Monica, and finally, Stalked by a Client by Boop Berry. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission

of their respective authors. Let's not meet a true horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. Make sure you send your stories to Let's Not Eat stories at gmail.com if you'd like to hear them on the show. And finally, check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, and the Old Time Radiocast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcast.

Everyone have a very safe and happy New Year. See you next time. This happened to me in my early 20s. you