Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 12x14: The Hills Have Eyes In Texas

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Stories in this episode: Creeper in the Woods | djbuffoon (0:39) The Guy Who Chased Us Up the Stairs | gagliad (9:13) "Can't You See How Much I Love You?" | G1rlVeteran (18:12) My Paranoia Saved Us | barracudab1tch (24:16) "I Was Hiding From Your Mom." "My Mom is Dead." | Jerasunderwear (27:54) Home Alone With My Old Dog | MaRs1317 (35:21) Was I Almost the Victim of an Elaborate Mugging or Kidnapping? | illerateaardvark (40:47) My 'Hills Have Eyes' Moment in Texas | wolf_dream (45:10) Extended Patreon Content: Dan and Dee | Kenzie Doughnut Shop Stalker | Matthew Hansen He Waited For Me at My Car | Brittney "Don't Worry, I'm Not Dangerous" | Kay Bedtime Disruption | Adeline L. Yep, I Was Kidnapped | Savannah Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Follow: - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/ - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ Check out the other Cryptic County podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radiocast at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts!    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! To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan - go to nordvpn.com/lnm -  our link will also give you 4 extra months on the 2-year plan. There's no risk with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee! The link is in the podcast episode description box Start the year off right with The Good Habit by going to TryFum.com/meet and getting the Journey pack today. Fum is giving listeners of the show 10% off when they use my code “meet” to help make starting The Good Habit that much easier. 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].

Changing a light bulb should be simple. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen. Quickly submitting and tracking a claim on the Bel Air Direct app actually is simple. Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstoriesatgmail.com.

Enjoy the show. This happened about 13 years ago. I was a sophomore in college attending a liberal arts school in New York. Within the first month or two of freshman year, I found myself a very tight-knit group of fellow theater geeks. This group consisted of six guys, myself included, and one girl. All of us bonded over our love of horror movies and ghost stories, so I felt that I had found my crew. Getting through freshman year was tough, but we all held each other up and made the whole experience more enjoyable for one another.

At the beginning of our sophomore year, we decided that in October, as the Halloween season was ramping up, we would find a creepy wooded spot in a nearby town and scare the crap out of ourselves. So we did some research and found that there was a particularly isolated area about 30 minutes away, infamous for paranormal sightings. This was perfect. On the night of this outing,

the seven of us split into two different cars and headed out to this place. Allow me to set the scene. You turn off a busy main road, flooded with strip malls, restaurants, and whatnot, and you're almost immediately greeted by complete darkness. Again, this area is very heavily wooded. It was essentially a large web of winding roads surrounded by trees with very few streetlights and even fewer houses. Without GPS or at least a good sense of direction, one could easily get lost out there.

We all made sure to have fully charged cell phones and flashlights just in case since our goal was to keep driving until we collectively agreed on a spot to pull over and go exploring. So per the directions, we made a left turn off of the main road, driving for about 30 minutes or so, picking directions at random, basically intentionally getting lost. After our cars had made the final turn, to our surprise, there was a huge log in front of us. We had reached a dead end of some kind, with nothing but trees beyond it. We all got out, stepped over the log, and noticed two narrow trails, leading in different directions. This seemed as good a time as any to grab our flashlights

and do some amateur ghost hunting. We flipped a coin to decide which trail we were going to head down and then set off on the trail to the right. The trail was so narrow that we all had to walk single file to avoid getting whacked by tree branches. For whatever reason, I ended up in the back of the line. I'm usually pretty rational and level-headed, but I have to say, the further we went in, the more I was overcome with an uneasy feeling. I kept hearing sounds deep in the woods, unable to shake the feeling that we were being watched.

But I seemed to be the only one who heard these things, so I shrugged it off as my imagination. In any case, the whole point of us being there was to get scared, not to mention we were seven able-bodied college students. What could we possibly come across that could take us down? We headed down this trail for about twenty minutes, and just when I thought it would never end, we came upon a massive clearing. And I mean massive.

It was a large, open field of unkempt grass. It was comparable in size to a golf course, but not nearly as well manicured. Trees surrounded the entire clearing, which was so large that we couldn't see the end of it from where we were standing. I was thrilled to get out of that narrow trail, but I don't think any of us were expecting to find an area so vast. One of us looked to the right and said, hey check that out. We all turned and there was an old dilapidated house several hundred yards away. It all turned, and there was an old, dilapidated house several hundred yards away. The house was completely dark.

There were no cars or any signs of somebody living there. We walked over and shined our flashlights at it, and sure enough, the windows and doors were all boarded up. I was able to peer between the boards on one of the windows, and what I could see was an old white couch covered in plastic, but it was sitting in an empty room. Whoever used to live there was clearly long gone. Since there was no way in and because we all felt sufficiently creeped out by the house anyway, we decided to walk closer to the trail we had entered the clearing from. We figured that from there we could

take a seat in the field and figure out where to go from. We figured that from there we could take a seat in the field and figure out where to go next. We made our way back closer to the narrow trail, but before we could sit, my friend Mark stopped in his tracks. His expression dropped and he pointed. We all turned, and on the very far side of the hill, directly across from where we had come in, we could see what appeared to be a tall, lanky, pale man. He was dancing among the trees. And by dancing, I mean, he was skipping around, grabbing a tree, swinging around it, and then doing the same to another.

Basically like a do-si-do. The moon was so bright and the woods were so dark that it actually took a second for us to understand what we were looking at. Jay, the six-foot-four skeptic of the group, said he wasn't seeing him. I leaned into him, pointed in that direction, and said, J, look where I'm pointing, don't you see him? He squinted a bit, and the second that he saw him, he gasped with everything he had, clutching his arm and whispered,

Who the fuck is that? What happened next sent shockwaves through all of us. Whoever this was stopped dancing, looked in our direction, and started charging straight at us. Without even thinking, we freaked out and ran back to the trail. Yet again, Jay was the only one who didn't see what was happening. He shouted after us, Guys, where are you going? After about 15 seconds of running like hell, I heard Jay scream, holy shit.

I looked back and I saw his flashlight following the rest of us back down the trail. While the walk into the woods took about 20 minutes, we made it back to our cars, hopped in, and were peeling away and closer to half that time, maybe even closer to half that time, maybe even closer to five minutes. Once we were a safe distance away, we pulled over, got out, and checked in with each other about what we thought just happened. My heart

was pounding and I knew that everybody else was feeling the same way. Nearly 15 years later, we're all still friends. We live in different states, yet we keep in touch with each other through marriages, divorces, children, etc. But occasionally out of the blue, one of us will send a group text to the others to the effect of, the woods that one night. That really happened, right? Well, it most certainly did.

That experience has always been in the back of my mind, and I'm pretty sure it always will be. Here's the thing that still resonates with me about that night. Whoever he was, he was dancing, almost maniacally in the woods, seemingly by himself, at one in the morning. Then he charged directly toward a group of young adults, unfazed by the fact that he was severely outnumbered. Did the person know that we were there from the second we parked?

Was he the sound that I kept hearing as we walked down the trail? Whatever the case may be, when he came for us that night, you can be sure that none of us wanted to stick around and find out what he was capable of. This happened to me and my boyfriend about two years ago. We live in a city that has a main downtown area. I was living in the downtown area at the time, having just recently graduated college and wanting to be close to the nightlife. My best friend, who I met in college and I, were roommates.

Our apartment was right in the middle of downtown. It was the perfect setup. My boyfriend, who we'll call Jack, happened to live on the next block over and then about five or six blocks south of that. It was about a ten-minute walk give or take. His place was even closer to the heart of downtown, so you can imagine how convenient that made it for hanging out and not having to take a car or worry about where to park. One overcast Sunday morning, Jack and I woke up at my place and decided to walk over to

his apartment so that he could grab some things. The route to his place is really easy. It was pretty much a straight shot from my place and we were on sidewalks the whole time. We were walking on the right side of the road and the street was on our left. We were under a minute away from my boyfriend's place when I suddenly noticed something ahead that made me feel a bit uneasy. There was a guy walking in front of us in the same direction that we were going, with

his back to us. I could see that this guy had both of his earbuds in. He was walking at a steady pace, so we weren't worried about running into him or anything, but in front of him, facing and walking towards all of us, was a different guy. He was about 5'8", and he had a small frame. He was wearing dark pants, a red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and a backpack. Even though his hood was up, I could see his face. Some of his short black hair was poking out of his hood,

and he had these crazy black beady eyes that I'll never forget. The guy in the red hoodie wasn't looking at me or Jack, but rather the pedestrian with the earbuds in, who happened to be further up the block, in front of us. All of a sudden, the guy in the hoodie literally rushed the pedestrian in front of us. He ran up on him and stopped about six inches from this guy's face. Since the guy had his earbuds in, he was taken by surprise, so he stopped and took one of his earbuds out to see what this guy wanted. While I'm generally a bit of a risk-taker, I don't like intentionally putting myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seeing this freaked me out, and I didn't want the guy to notice us and come for us next.

So I stepped to the left off of the sidewalk and into the street. The lane I stepped into was pretty wide, so there was room for street parking. It was lined with parked cars, so I conveniently hid myself from view behind a parked car and continued walking. I heard the guy in the hoodie start yelling something at the poor guy who was walking ahead of us. My boyfriend and I were less than a hundred feet from the entrance of his apartment at this point, and after witnessing this unfolding, I wanted to be inside.

Now my boyfriend's apartment building did have a main entrance from the street, but my boyfriend just moved in and didn't have the code for that front door yet. All he had was his fob to the parking garage, which had access to a stairwell leading up to his place, so we were using that as an entrance to get into the building. We walked up to the parking garage door and clicked the button so that the door would start rolling up. I hadn't looked behind me since seeing the scene. I knew I probably should have, but most of the time you ignore eccentric or angry people

on the street and they won't come after you or bother you. So I guess I was subconsciously using this as a tactic and hoping that Jack and I would go unnoticed. Once the garage door was open, we went inside and my boyfriend clicked the button to close it behind us. From there, it was just a short walk from the garage to the stairwell. The garage door was nearly closed and I don't know what prompted me to look back, but I did and what I saw still gives me chills. It was the guy in the red hoodie. He was squeezing himself under the garage door while he still

could. I remember the chill that ran down my spine as I locked eyes with his. I yelled, Jack, he's following us. I don't know what I expected my boyfriend to do. He was ahead of me. So he pushed the door to the stairwell open and we started running. This became an oh shit moment for me when I realized this guy had access to the whole building since the door to the stairwell didn't require a fob. It didn't even have a lock. Not wanting to be close to this guy, I took off running

after my boyfriend. As I pushed the door open and got inside the stairwell, I could hear the guy behind me doing the same as it was swinging closed. I looked back and locked eyes with him once again. I realized my only option was to keep running and try and get inside Jack's apartment, then close the door before he got there. And yeah, this guy was smaller, so I figured I could probably take him. But what really freaked me out was he had a backpack. I had no idea if he had a knife, gun, or some other sort of weapon. I mean, why else would a man chase down two people just to be outnumbered?

My boyfriend lived on the third floor, so of course we had three flights of stairs to sprint up. All the while, I could hear the guy's footsteps pounding behind me up the stairs. Once we got to the third floor, we opened the door to the hallway and sprinted toward his unit without even looking back. We unlocked that door as fast as we could, which felt slower than hell in that moment. Once the door was unlocked, we slammed it shut behind us. I remember looking through the peephole and expecting to see the guys standing there,

ready to yell at us, but after that there was nothing. My heart was pounding. I mean, what just happened? Then we called the cops. I was freaked out since this guy was inside the building with access to all of the apartments and residents. I just imagined him hiding in the stairwell, waiting for the next poor soul to come up or down the stairs. The cops ended up coming by after we made the call. They drove around the perimeter for a few minutes, but they weren't able to search

inside the building because they said that they didn't have the authorization. They left after not finding anyone. They probably did all that they could, but it didn't feel like it. I'm sure that the guy probably left the building after realizing that he would be screwed if he were found inside after the cops were called. As a listener of this podcast, you're already keyed into the significance of safeguarding your privacy. That's why you need a reliable and efficient VPN or virtual private network on all your

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It's worth it for your peace of mind. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash LNM. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Now back to the show. When I first got out of the Army, I was in a relationship with a guy who was in the 3rd Ranger Battalion. Let's call him Jim.

He and I had an apartment together. I thought I loved him, so instead of going back to my home in Nebraska, I stayed in Columbus, Georgia to be with him. Our relationship started with him being what I thought was protective over me. Even though I was very attractive at the time, I had very low self-esteem because of an assault that I experienced while I was living in the barracks and the bullying that I endured afterward. Things between me and Jim moved very quick. In fact, we were inseparable from the bullying that I endured afterward. Things between me and Jim moved very quick. In fact, we were inseparable from the night that we met. Any time any other man looked at me, he would get very confrontational toward the guy.

At the time, I felt safe and protected by this, and it made me feel special. I thought, he must value me if he would get so upset by a guy simply looking my way. But then I noticed when we would be out at the bar, he would get hammered and start acting very nasty toward me if he thought that I was looking at another guy. This would cause bitter fights, which would always end with me in bed, in the fetal position, sobbing. But, even though this was happening regularly, I stayed. I always ended up staying because he would always apologize the next day.

He would say that he only acted that way because he was so drunk, but then he would proceed to explain that what I had done was wrong. It wasn't long before I found myself completely isolated from my friends and family because he was so insecure. He made me take all of my phone calls on speakerphone. My family begged me to leave him, but I was afraid that I couldn't get by on my own. Then one night, we came home from the bar in the usual fashion.

He was screaming in my face and I was sobbing. I told him I was going to get a room at a motel and he lost his mind. He yanked the keys out of the ignition and threw them past the tree line and into a wooded area that I had parked by. Then he got out of my car them past the tree line and into a wooded area that I had parked by. Then he got out of my car and proceeded to kick the front quarter panel of the car.

He used so much force when kicking my car that the hinges to the passenger door were bent. After that, he screamed at me to get inside the apartment, but I couldn't unlock the door without my keys, which he blamed me for. He then grabbed me and shoved me into the door. First he grabbed me by my shoulders, then he wrapped his hands around my throat. He screamed,

Can't you see how much I love you? No, no I can't. I managed to choke out. He let go and I fell to the ground. That night, I finally had enough. I was finally so angry that I didn't feel afraid anymore. The next morning, while he was sleeping it off, I began to make plans. I started telling him that he had to leave and move back into the barracks.

When he refused, I had to get his chain of command involved to make him leave the apartment and go back to live in the barracks, on someone's couch, or in the street. I didn't care where he went just as long as he wasn't with me. After he moved out, he stalked me mercilessly. I filed complaints against him, but he bullied me into dropping everything I tried to file. I knew I would never be free from him if I stayed in Georgia, so my parents sent me some money via Western Union. It was 2002.

I rented a Penske truck with a trailer. Then, when the sun set, I moved the truck and trailer from where I had been hiding it, and I got help from Guy Friends to load it up. My best chance of leaving successfully was to leave under the cover of darkness, which wasn't easy since I was really sick that night. I was running a fever of 103 degrees, but I knew I had to get going. I couldn't wait. I just told myself that all I had to do was get out of the city limits, then pull over

and sleep somewhere for a bit. I then put my puppy in the cab of the truck with me, attached my car behind the truck, and left. I don't know how except through divine intervention, but somehow I managed to drive non-stop from Fort Benning in Georgia to my parents' rural home in Nebraska. I only stopped for fuel where I would feed, hydrate, and walk my little dog Scruffy. After driving all through the night for 14 hours, I pulled into my parents' driveway at 10 a.m. the following morning. I crashed on their old couch and slept nearly 24 hours straight.

I still hoped for nothing but pain and suffering for Jim. During our relationship, he turned me onto pills, then coke, and then crack, all while he was on active duty. He was a scumbag of a soldier and a man. He reached out to me on social media a couple of years ago, and when he did, I told him what a steaming pile of shit he was and told him to rot in hell. It felt amazing to say that to him, even after all these years. I felt vindicated, as I was the one who left him stammering for once. I'm actually glad that he reached out to me, because I wouldn't have had the opportunity to verbally rip him to shreds otherwise. I'm not afraid of you anymore, Jim, and let's not meet ever again.

Three years ago, my roommate and I made a last minute decision to go night swimming at the river in our city. It was around 8pm, so there were still a few people hanging out in the area, but it was quite dark. About 15 minutes after we got there, I saw a man walking around, shining his flashlight. He was seemingly looking for something near where we put our stuff, so I turned to my roommate and said, Hey, let's keep an eye on that guy. I said this loud enough for him to overhear me, and he obviously did since he quickly

scurried away. Even though he appeared to be gone, I began to feel anxious, but I waited a bit before saying something to my roommate. When I finally said something, we decided to leave. We packed up our stuff and began walking up the staircase that led to the parking lot, using our flashlights to see the steps. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark shadow dive into some bushes by the top of the stairs. I stopped, grabbed my roommate's arm and said, nope. And we started walking back down the stairs.

My roommate didn't see what I saw, so I told her about it when we got to the bottom. She said I was probably being paranoid, it was likely just a tree blowing in the wind. As she was justifying what I saw, I started getting the strangest feeling in my stomach that I had never had before. I just knew that if we went up those stairs, something bad was going to happen. I stood at the bottom of the stairs. I began to shine my flashlight up to the top, trying to see any trace of anyone hiding up there. And sure enough, I saw the outline of a man for a split second.

As soon as the light hit him, he ducked deeper into the bushes again. I went into full-blown panic mode and started looking for other people lingering around, hoping that someone could walk us to our car. Luckily, we found a couple not far from the steps, and they walked us to our car but seemed quite annoyed by it. Especially since by the time we got to the top of the steps, he was nowhere to be seen. We got home after a few hours and I got a notification on my neighbor's app which is an app available for Ring doorbell users.

It sends alerts of crimes in your area to you. I got a notification that said that somebody had been stabbed by a man in that exact area. I'm 100% sure that my gut feeling was letting me know that the man who was hiding in the bushes had bad intentions. I don't know if he was planning on kidnapping us or robbing us, but the feeling that something really bad was going to happen was undeniable. I'm not sure what would have happened if I hadn't been paying attention and we did walk up those stairs. Needless to say, that notification chilled me.

Even when I think about it years later, I still feel sick to my stomach, but I'm glad that my roommate and I avoided a different fate. One of the creepiest stories that I personally know is from my best friend David. This happened when he was babysitting a friend's kid at his house. The kid, whose name was Junior, was roughly four to five years old. David's dad was a courier, and he often made deliveries late at night. David was a teen, and due to his home life, being home without an adult was no easy task. It's important to mention that his father was a pretty paranoid individual who bought into a lot of fear-mongering in the world, so he had

cameras set up all over the place. Anyway, David was in his bedroom minding his own business, but then he decided to head into the den where all his dad's cameras happened to be set up. But the den was locked. David knocked on the door, and Junior opened it. Why did you lock the door? David asked. Because of the lady, Junior replied. What lady? David questioned. Your mom. I saw her in the kitchen, Junior explained. The living room of this house was connected to the kitchen, and if you were standing in

the kitchen entryway, you could see the door leading outside since the kitchen was attached to one of those screened-in sitting areas. It's like a sunroom. Junior claimed that he had seen David's mother right there in the doorway. This struck David as very strange, considering that David's mother had passed away just eight months prior. David was chilled by the remark, but the skeptic in him knew it was likely just Junior's overly active imagination.

David agreed to go and check it out with Junior, but before they went to look, he stopped in the kitchen to grab a knife first. Then David and Junior walked down the hallway and into the kitchen, where the door was open. It was pretty normal for the door to be open since it was summer and the house trapped in a lot of heat. David stepped through the open door and onto the screened sitting area. He then looked left and down the ramp his mother used to use to get outside. But he saw nothing. Then he looked to the right, through the length of the yard, still

nothing. Junior continued to be insistent that there was somebody there. It was strange because usually in situations like these, kids tend to feel better after you poke around for them. But even after seeing nothing, David couldn't seem to calm Junior down, and Junior was absolutely certain about what he saw. He kept saying, I saw your mom, she was there. David told Junior, everything is recorded on cameras, so we'll just go look at them, and that way we'll know for sure whether somebody was here or not." So they sifted through the camera footage, and David looked for a timestamp around when

Junior claimed that his deceased mother had shown up. He stared at every camera monitor as the timer ticked on, but nothing was showing up. And suddenly, he watched a figure enter his backyard from the front by pulling the latch on the gate. It was an older woman who appeared to be in her mid-sixties at least. She confidently walked into their backyard with a cloth grocery bag in her hand. She headed up the ramp, then stood in the kitchen's screened-in sitting area for a few moments. She then reached for the door in the kitchen, cracking it open as she brazenly stepped inside.

After some time, Junior saw her. Based on the camera's timestamps, she stood in the kitchen for about 10 minutes. The insane part is, she left as David went to investigate with Junior. The camera footage showed him looking around, and her leaving just as he started to do this. When he looked left down the ramp where she had come up, she had already headed to the right to take the long way back through the length of the yard. When he looked right, he quite literally just missed her. This took place in maybe half of a second.

Someone wandered right into his backyard, and then into the kitchen, then stayed there for ten minutes doing God knows what. It was so bizarre. But at least nothing was stolen, and nobody was harmed or anything like that. The rest of the night carried on and nothing else came of it. Personally, I would have phoned the police, but David wouldn't. I think he decided not to since there's a chance that his dad may have had some guns that were acquired through some not-so-reputable methods. It's likely that David's instinct was that his dad would be furious if the police were

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At that time, my family lived in a very well-known East Coast city in a blue-collar neighborhood that was starting to take a nosedive. As a teenager, I was a bit of a loner. I wasn't necessarily a nerd or anything. I was a big guy who had friends and went on dates, but I'm naturally introverted, so I cherished the rare alone time that I got. Since my family was gone for the evening, I was looking forward to

engaging in my normal empty house routine, play some PlayStation on the big screen TV, then late night takeout, either pizza or Chinese, and pig out while watching some Dragon Ball Z. These nights always wound down around 2 a.m. when I generally fell asleep on the couch with my old dog Cecil. Cecil was a beagle who was as old as the hills, and he had been in our family for about eight years. He was quiet and peaceful, and spent his time begging for food or sleeping. Unlike most beagles, Cecil never howled or barked. He was more than content to just rest his head on your lap and spend the night there. Anyway, back to the story.

At approximately 1 a.m., I had just finished the last slice of pizza and was starting to doze off on the couch when I heard a bang coming from the back alleyway. I didn't think anything of it. when I heard a bang coming from the back alleyway. I didn't think anything of it. Anyone who's lived in a city knows that outside noises happen at all times of the night. Cecil's head popped up off of my lap and the hair on her back stood on end. He was always a bit skittish, so I calmed him down

and started dozing off again. Not more than two minutes later, I heard another bang, which prompted Cecil to do something I had never seen him do before. He leaped off of the couch and ran like the wind towards the door leading to the basement. He was barking and growling like a dog twice his size. The look on his face reminded me of a German Shepherd canine unit. I had never seen him like that before, which got my adrenaline pumping. Through Cecil's incessant barking, I finally managed to hear a persistent banging.

There was a seldom used door in the basement that led to the back alleyway. It was old and rusted. It was very hard to open even with a key, but it made a lot of noise. I suddenly realized that somebody was trying to break into my home through the basement door. For a bit of context, for anyone who hasn't lived in a bad neighborhood, if somebody tries to get into your house but moves on after they realize the door is locked, they want your stuff. If someone is persistently trying to get into your house despite the door being locked, then, well,

they want you. Knowing this to be the case, I rushed upstairs to grab a heavy wooden baseball bat that I always kept under my bed for situations like this. Then I headed down to the basement. I probably should have run, but I was a macho teenager with a tough guy complex, and I had nowhere to go anyway. While I was heading down the stairs to the basement, Cecil blew past me with the speed of a dog half his age, and then suddenly I heard a man's voice say, oh fuck, and the banging stopped. I didn't call the cops or

anyone else, which was probably the dumbest thing I had ever done. I just sat up for the rest of the night with my baseball bat in hand. My brother came home the following morning and I told him about what happened. We went to the basement door to take a look, and when we gave it a tug to open it, the whole door fell off. This psycho was one good shove away from getting into my house, but good ol' Cecil scared him off. I'm pretty sure that lazy dog saved my life. When I tell this story to people, they dismiss his actions as a dog doing what a dog is supposed to do, but when I tell you that Cecil never barked or moved that urgently in his life,

you can take that to the bank. It was almost like he understood the danger of the situation, like he knew that the door was going to give out. A few years back, we had to put him down because he no longer had the will to live anymore. Before that event, I had a moment alone with him. I thanked him one last time for his friendship and for what he did that night. At that point, I was a grown man, with a wife and kids. I'm convinced none of that would have happened without the protection of old Cecil. Thanks, pal. I miss you.

I do some volunteering at a hospital three times a week which involves me reporting to the hospital at 5am. I enjoy the volunteering, I've been doing it for almost two years, and I have never had any issues, until recently. On a recent volunteer day, I was a bit early, and I had about 30 minutes before I had to report in. Normally, I would have just waited in my car, but I had been pretty stressed about things in my personal life, so I thought that I'd go for a little walk to blow off some steam

and clear my head. After all, I was in a nice upscale neighborhood in West Los Angeles, so I figured what could go wrong. Since it was 4.30 in the morning, the streets were naturally quiet and it seemed so peaceful. But then up ahead, I noticed that somebody was walking in my direction. This should have struck me as odd, but I didn't think anything of it at the moment. Seeing somebody else out and about at that hour didn't seem inherently suspicious. After all, if it did, would that automatically make me suspicious for being

out here too? So I kept walking, and we made quick eye contact as we crossed paths, which suddenly gave me a bad feeling. I can't explain it other than the fact that I felt it in an instant. Sometimes you just get a sudden bad gut feeling about somebody, you know? That's exactly what I felt when I passed him. I immediately went on high alert and made sure that he wasn't turning around to approach me from behind or anything like that. Very soon after walking by this man, about 15 to 20 seconds later, I passed by one of the many parked cars on the street.

This car was parked different. There was a man sitting at the wheel. The man waved at me. He then beckoned for me to come over to him. This was pretty creepy, but still not really worth freaking out. But then as I kept walking, I realized that while the car was parked, it wasn't turned off. His engine was running, but the car was in park.

Then he pulled out and started driving in the same direction I was walking. He was driving at a pace that essentially matched my walking speed. I decided I had had enough and my brain was saying, nope, so I immediately turned around and started speedwalking back in the direction that I came from. Then I saw something that in that moment scared the fuck out of me. When I turned around, the man that I encountered also turned back around at some point because when I started walking in the opposite direction, he was standing pretty close to me, like way closer than somebody who had just been walking

in the other direction should be. Then he made eye contact with me and started walking in the same direction that I was going. I was incredibly suspicious and more than a bit nervous at this point. Since it was pretty dark out, I decided to play a hunch. My car keys fold out in a manner that is similar to a switchblade, so I pulled it out and pressed the button to make the key flick out. Then I stood there and stared at him. It caught him off guard because he stopped walking for just a second. The second that he stopped was all I needed. I promptly took off running at top speed and quickly crossed the street.

This wasn't just a two-lane street, we're talking main street in Los Angeles with six lanes and a median divider. I'm no Olympian, but I was on the cross-country team at a D2 college and I still run multiple times a week, so I'm pretty confident that I could outrun the average person, especially one who's up to something by a comfortable margin. I didn't take any chances with my getaway and I ran the entire way back to the hospital. I'm not necessarily saying that I was going to be the next prominent murder victim or kidnapping victim but there was definitely something going on there and I'm glad that I got away.

In 2010, I was driving from Louisiana to Oregon. I'm a 24-year-old female, and I was alone with my 2-year-old pitbull in a 14-foot U-Haul truck packed with everything that I owned in the back. I was also equipped with a fancy flip phone and printouts of directions from MapQuest to guide me on my journey. I think that early versions of some smartphones were available around that time, but I didn't have one. Cellphone service was also much spannier back then, and there were long stretches through the desert where I had zero service for hundreds of miles.

I was driving down a lonely stretch of highway through central Texas when I realized that I hadn't seen a town or exit for a very long time, which was concerning as my giant U-Haul was running low on gas. Just when I was starting to freak out, I saw that there was a small town coming up just ahead. I had other things on my mind, so I never paid attention to the name of the town, but it was very small. There were only about six streets in the whole place. After I pulled into this town, I went to gas up and I got ready to get back on the road.

But for the life of me, I couldn't seem to find my way back to the highway. I circled the town about four times and started getting frustrated since this was such a tiny town. I was wondering, why could I not find my way out? I could literally see the highway, but I couldn't figure out how to get to it. I returned to the gas station to ask for directions. When I had got gas initially, I paid at the pump and I never went inside the store. This time I entered.

There was a skinny, nondescript guy who had black hair hanging down in front of his eyes that looked like it could use a wash. He wasn't particularly creepy, but he was rude. He never really met my eyes since he was looking down at a magazine the whole time. He gave me directions that didn't sound right at all. He told me which road to take in order to get back to the highway, and said that he would need to drive down the road for about 17 miles to reach it.

For a moment I was dumbfounded. Then I pointed out that I didn't drive that far from the highway to get to town, so I asked why so far to get back? Why did I need to take a road that seemed so out of the way to get to the highway when I could see it from the town. He was so casual about it, almost like I was an annoyance. He pretty much acted like my choices were to follow his directions or not. Why should he care?

He gave me some explanation about the road curving around, resulting in a longer drive back to the highway, but it didn't really make any sense. He just sat there, half-heartedly, as he gave me bland explanations and continued not looking at me. When he felt he had given me ample directions, he just kind of dismissed me and waved his hand in the direction of the door. When I got into the parking lot, my whole body started trembling violently and my heart started racing, seemingly for no reason.

I didn't think anything of it, I just thought that my body was reacting to being frustrated about the interaction. I got back into the U-Haul and as soon as I put the key into the ignition, I burst into tears. I was overcome with this terrible feeling that no matter how nonchalant he acted, he had bad intentions. I didn't know what he could possibly be up to, but I knew right then and there that there was no way I was going to follow his janky directions.

Yet, this was the only store in town, and short of knocking on doors, which I wasn't going to do, there was nowhere else to go to ask for directions. I decided I didn't care if this town seemed like something that dropped out of the Twilight Zone. I was going to drive around until I found my way out, even if it took all night. Then, this big red pickup truck, consisting of equal parts rust and metal, pulled up and a man got out. He was a big Texan man, huge and husky, wearing flannel and work boots.

When I saw him jump out of the U-Haul, I approached him quickly, yet warily. Looking into his eyes, I saw a kind human being, or at least I was hoping that I did. I asked him if he could please give me directions to the highway. I told him I knew it was silly, but I couldn't seem to find my way back. He looked concerned as I was visibly upset, So he made me laugh and very cheerfully gave me directions for a hairpin curve turn off right at the end of a small concrete tunnel that I had passed several times. He said it often confused travelers because it was so hard to see. He even said that the town needed to put up signs or something since it's so easy to miss.

With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I asked him how far I would need to drive, in miles, to get back to the highway. He laughed and gave me a funny look. Miles? He said. I'd say a quarter of a mile at most. You can see the highway from right here. It's not far at all. I thought about the directions that the gas station guy gave me. You can see the highway from right here. It's not far at all." I thought about the directions that the gas station guy gave me. I just had to know. I gave him these strange directions. The man looked at me very intently and asked me how I knew about that route. He explained that it was pretty far out and usually only locals knew about it. I told him that the man working at the gas

station had given me these directions. He was quiet for a few minutes and then asked what the attendant looked like. He asked if I had a map of the state. I told him I only had my printouts from MapQuest, which were not very helpful in this kind of situation. He went back to his truck and grabbed a raggedy local map from his glove box. He spread it out for me, tracing the route I described to him. The way that the man from the gas station had told me led away from town, away from the interstate, and to seemingly the middle of nowhere. The man that I was talking to told me that the road did run for about 17 miles, but it

stopped at a dead end in the desert. I asked him what was out there, and he told me it was nothing, except for some scrapped cars and a few mobile homes and trailers. It's all owned by the same family. The family was known, locally, as troublemakers. They were drug addicts and alcoholics, and these were the nice things that the townspeople would say about them. The clerk was part of this family, and he lived down that road.

I'll never forget the look in that man's eyes as he told me this. He also said that I was smart to listen to my instincts, and he told me to be careful while traveling. I don't know if the man at the gas station wanted what was in the back of my U-Haul or possibly wanted what was in the driver's seat, but thankfully I didn't have to find out. Oh, and I learned that sometimes angels can appear in the form of ruddy-haired Texans with scruffy faces and rusty pickups. And with that, I say thank you to the random Texan stranger. He really saved my ass, and I will remember him with tons of love.

Thanks for listening, and stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode with bonus stories. And 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 instant access to hours and hours of bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else, all ad free. This week you have heard The Creeper in the Woods by DJ Bafoon. The Guy Who Chased Us Up the Stairs by Gagliad. Can't You See How Much I Love You by Girl Veteran. My Paranoia Saved Us by Barracuda Bitch.

I Was Hiding From Your Mom, My Mom Is Dead by Jera's Underwear. Home Alone With My Dog by Mars1317. Was I Almost the Victim of an Elaborate Mugging or Kidnapping by Illiterate Aardvark? And finally, My Hills Have Eyes moment in Texas by Wolfdream. 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 that's 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 don't forget to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, and the old time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you all next week. Everyone stay safe. I'm sorry. Right after I graduated from high school, my family moved to a different neighborhood.