Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 12x21: The North Slope of Alaska

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Upcoming LNM Live Tour Dates: Ticket links will only work after 10:00 am Pacific on Monday 5/20/24. 8/10/24 : San Diego, CA @ House of Blues: GET YOUR TICKETS 8/11/24 : Los Angeles, CA @ The Moroccan Lounge: GET YOUR TICKETS 8/18/24: Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s: GET YOUR TICKETS 9/19/24: Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall: GET YOUR TICKETS More Dates to be announced soon! Stories in this episode: Unwanted Visitor in the Middle of Nowhere at 3AM | the_art_hoe_ (1:13) Man Waited for Me After My Friend’s Shift. | binchlauren (9:20) Unsettling Not Knowing Who He Was | Brokethecamelsback (12:51) I Woke up to a Girl Watching Me Sleep. | giaona (20:18) A Lady Tried To Jump In My Car! | chelseyelric (25:20) Driftwood Drifter | External-Yak5576 (30:18) Came Face to Face with a Murderer | Anonymous (37:44) The North Slope of Alaska | clyde2003 (44:58) Extended Patreon Content: Was I Almost Murdered? | MissFigs Tiny Wrenches | Lauryn Hey, Sweetheart | Charlotte A Near Miss in New Orleans | Ericka 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! 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].  

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show notes or you can find them at let's not meet podcast.com. This is a great opportunity to hear your story in person if you're a local who's able to make it out to the show. Make sure that you let us know in your story submission so that we can add it to the setlist and get it to us quick. Write to us at letsnotmeetstoriesatgmail.com. More dates will be added later in the year,

so stay tuned. For now, enjoy the show. This happened about four years ago at my grandma's house. Before this all took place, I went to get McDonald's at the nearest city, which is about 20 minutes away. I was planning on going home, but I decided to go down to my grandma's house instead of going home right away. For context, she lives down a long farm road, and once you turn onto her driveway, you have to drive another half mile to get to her house.

I arrived there at around 9 p.m. and I went to visit with my grandmother and my brother. My brother had been living with her ever since our grandfather passed away. He did this so that she wouldn't have to live there alone. My brother and I took my grandma's dog outside at around 10 30. We just sat outside listening to music and talking for a while. I was starting to get cold because we were in East Texas. I wasn't used to it getting down to the low 40s at night, so I was ready to head inside. But then I noticed something moving in the corner of my eye near the large metal shop and boat shed that sat a few hundred yards from the house. I didn't think too much of seeing movement though because it's not uncommon for deer or

raccoons to snoop around the yard. Plus my grandma's dog wasn't barking. So I thought that it might've just been my eyes playing tricks on me. My brother and I finally headed back inside. And then when my grandma went to sleep at around 11 p.m., my brother and I stayed up and played Among Us and watched YouTube for a while.

At around 2.30 a, I was very tired and ready to go home, so I asked my brother to walk with me to the door and watch to make sure that I got out to my car since I was pretty paranoid, especially late at night. He joked and said that he was just going to turn off the light in the front of the house and lock me out immediately. This freaked me out so I begged him to please at least walk me to my car. When he finally agreed to humor me, we walked out and I got into my car and quickly locked the doors before starting the car and pulling away. As I reached the end of the driveway, I saw the porch lights turn off as I turned down the dirt road. I got home within 10 minutes, and I got myself a bowl of ice cream before I sat down to put

on some creepy horror stories on YouTube. Another 15 or so minutes passed when I got a FaceTime from my brother, which I picked up immediately. I could tell that he was freaked out about something, but he wasn't saying anything right away, so I asked him what was wrong. The following is my best attempt to paraphrase what my brother told me. He said that after I left, he went back outside to listen to some music and sat on the porch. He had the volume of the music that he was playing on his phone pretty loud, which usually

masked any noises of animals coming from the nearby woods. After a few minutes of listening to music, he said that he heard what he thought was the sound of metal banging around. So he paused the music and he listened to see if he could hear the sound of metal banging around. So he paused the music and he listened to see if he could hear the sound again. He then stood up and looked towards the metal shop and the boat shed. They were adjacent to each other across from the porch.

As I mentioned before, they're a few hundred yards away. He saw a faint light shining around near the boat shed, but it quickly flickered off. He was freaking out, so he quietly crept back inside the house and locked the door behind him. He said that he ran to his room in the back of the house, I guess not thinking to wake up our grandma, and he grabbed a revolver. He quickly ran back outside and saw the glow of a flashlight moving around. The light shut off as soon as he noticed it. He walked out to the edge of the concrete carport, and he stared out towards the boat shed with the revolver at his side.

The only thing illuminating the boat shed was the faint light coming from the house. He tried to muster up the most intimidating voice that he could manage, and he shouted, who the hell is out there? There was no verbal reply, but he heard a slight bumping sound, which confirmed the fact that someone was indeed out there. Now keep in mind, this is out in the middle of the country in a town with the population of just over a thousand people. The nearest houses are either across the lake or miles down the farm road, so no well-meaning person would just happen to stumble across my

grandma's house that late at night. Also my grandma has had problems with people snooping around the property in the past, so this wasn't anything any of us took lightly. I can understand why he didn't call the police, as there is literally one cop in this small town and it was 3am, so it would take at least 30 minutes for anyone to even show up and check it out. So anyway, my brother again called for the person to show themselves. He repeated his question and asked for them to identify themselves. He said that he practically shit his pants as a tall lanky figure slowly emerged from

the boat shed with a flashlight in hand. Although my brother couldn't see the distinct features about the person, he could definitely tell that it was an older man, and it wasn't anybody that we knew. It certainly wasn't anyone who had any business being at my grandma's boat shed at 3 a.m. My brother then raised the revolver to point it at the man and shouted,

who the fuck are you? The man remained silent and began slowly walking towards him. My brother pulled back the hammer of the revolver and gave one last verbal warning to the man. He said, I swear I'll blow your fucking head off. Who are you and why are you here? The man then raised his hands and said, "'Whoa. Calm down, man.'"

He said this in a taunting manner as he continued walking towards my brother. My brother fired a single shot just above the man's head, which finally cued the man in that my brother meant business. Then he hurriedly took off on foot down the driveway toward the dirt road. As the man ran off, my brother screamed, Next time I won't miss. My brother then quickly ran inside to wake up my grandma, who had somehow slept through the entire commotion. When my brother told her about what happened, she didn't seem worried enough to actually

call the police. After hearing this, all I could think about was, what were the man's intentions? Was he just some random person snooping around, looking to steal some tools to sell? Or were his intentions more sinister? Another question that haunts me about this whole situation is how many times has this happened after my grandma and brother went to bed and they just didn't know? Had the man been watching us from the shadows all night? Was he watching me as I walked out to my car? What would have happened if my brother had actually turned the lights out and locked me

outside before I could get to my car? To the stranger who was lurking around at 3 a.m. in the morning with God knows what planned. I hope my brother taught you a lesson. I'm a 23 year old female. This happened when I was staying with my friend who is also 23 and female. I was staying with her for a couple of weeks in the town that I grew up in. My friend works at a restaurant. Without giving away too many details about the location, it's located in a plaza with a river nearby. There's also a movie theater, other restaurants, and boutiques in this area.

One day, I went to the shopping area with her, even though she had to go to work. Her shift was going to be about six hours, so I decided to do some shopping, walking around, and listening to music before eating at the restaurant where she works at towards the end of her shift. When we got there, we entered the plaza through the parking garage on the bottom floor. The parking garage has three levels,

and each level has elevators and stairs, which is important to note. After I wandered around, I went to the restaurant where my friend worked and sat in the corner at the bar by myself, listening to music. As I was sitting there, a man approached me. He was wearing a security guard beanie that was incredibly tattered up. He was muttering, and his eyes were barely open.

I couldn't gather much of what he was saying since he kept trailing off. Are you… I like your… Is anyone sitting here? None of the sentences were finished. I could only guess what he was trying to say. I told him multiple times that I could not understand what he was saying. After a bit of back and forth that was going nowhere, I put the headphones back on and he left me alone. I told my friend about what happened

immediately and I tried to shake it off. About an hour or so later, I saw someone approach the bar to my left, out of the corner of my eye. I felt their eyes on me. I didn't look, but I somehow knew that it was him. He came back. My heart started beating fast, and I texted my friend to let her know. He wandered away after lingering for a bit, but I still felt sketched out. I wanted to believe that I was misreading things or letting my anxiety get the best

of me, but I couldn't shake my nervous feeling. Finally, about half an hour after that, my friend got off of work. As we walked towards the parking garage stairs to get to her car, I saw him sitting on a bench. He was clearly waiting for me. The second I spotted him, my blood ran cold. When he saw us walking towards the stairs to the parking garage, he started running towards us.

I was face to face with him by the time we got to the top of the stairs, so we booked it back out to the restaurant. We explained what happened, and another employee at the restaurant escorted us to her car, and we used the employee-only elevator to get there. I'm incredibly thankful that I was on alert as we left the restaurant. If I hadn't been, I'm not sure I would have seen him sitting on that bench, and I don't know what would have happened if I didn't see him. I don't even want to think about it.

I'm a 29-year-old female who grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood. I lived in the same house my entire childhood and only left once I moved out as an adult. Living there for so long, I always felt safe leaving our doors unlocked and the windows open. The whole neighborhood felt so safe, so safe that I would even go out late at night for walks as a teen. When I was around 17 years old, I noticed strange things started happening around my house.

My house was also haunted, so weird noises and things moving on their own were not out of the ordinary, which is probably why my family and I dismissed my observations and experiences for as long as we did. As a teen, I worked at a movie theater. I tended not to start work until in the afternoon, which meant that I would get off very late. This schedule turned me into quite a night owl, so it was normal for me to stay awake until about three in the morning. I started noticing that my dog was reacting to things outside. I would peek outside my window, but I never saw anything, so I assumed that my dog was just hearing noises and overreacting. Not too long after this started,

I noticed that there were handprints with a smudge between them on my window, as if somebody had put their hands up to the glass and then pressed their forehead against the window. At the time, I just dismissed it since I had plenty of friends coming in and out of my house. Sometimes they would knock on my window as they arrived, as my window was right by the driveway en route to the front door. The weird thing about this window is that it's very large. The window started low, about three feet from the ground, and it was at least eight feet tall and four feet wide. The handprints and possible forehead smudge were at least six and a half feet from the ground. I definitely did not have any friends who were that least six and a half feet from the ground.

I definitely did not have any friends who were that tall, and everyone in my family is five, six or shorter. Soon after noticing these things, one early morning, I was woken up at around five in the morning to my car alarm going off. Again, I didn't think anything of it and just dismissed the situation. This happened a few more times over the next few weeks, always between 4 and 5 in the morning. And then I noticed handprints on top of my car as if somebody was trying to crawl through my open sunroof. After that, I made sure to close all my windows and lock the doors, but I continued to dismiss it as thinking it was some troublemakers trying to get into unlocked cars. Not long after noticing handprints on my car, things did start to escalate.

One morning as I was leaving to go to school, I found a small stepladder outside my window. It was leaning against the house as if somebody was looking through my window. I had blinds that I could move from the top and bottom. Normally I had the blinds closed on the bottom but left about two feet open on the top to allow sunlight in, but still have privacy. When I looked at my window, I could see that there were handprints and a forehead smudge right above the opening of my blinds, which only confirmed that someone was able to use a stepladder to get a good look into my room.

to use a stepladder to get a good look into my room. Seeing the stepladder prompted me to start to piece together the events over the last few months, and I realized I had a peeping tom. I brought this up to my parents, but they didn't seem too worried, even though over the next year, I found the ladder leaning up against my window many more times.

This person would use the old stepladder that we had in the side yard. They were able to easily access it since the gate to our yard was always unlocked. I would continually put the stepladder back in the side yard, but it would continue to reappear right next to my window many mornings. I have two other sisters who were living in the house with us, but they never seemed to notice any weird happenings. About a year after I noticed these occurrences, we found my sister's bra out in the yard. We didn't have any explanation for this.

This made me think that somebody must have been successful in getting into the house when we were gone, which made me extremely paranoid. We would often hear male voices outside our front door, but again, it was common for us to hear disembodied voices due to the house being haunted. My sisters and I were often home alone when unexplained voices happened, so we would just go to our room and turn on some SpongeBob and try our best to ignore it. The last incident that finally made us call the police was after a rainy night. We found bare footprints in the mud outside of my sister's window. The screen had been tampered with as if somebody was trying to remove it from the window.

Once this happened, my parents finally started to take it more seriously. They decided to report it, but the police couldn't do anything about it. They offered to send police to our neighborhood every once in a while to fill out their paperwork in front of our house to make it seem like there was more of a police presence. This only happened one time, and they never came back. My older sister made her boyfriend aware of the situation, so they decided to sit in the car all night and watch for this pervert to show up. Every time they would try to pull an all-nighter to watch for this person, nobody would show

up. After a few years of these experiences, my sisters and I all moved out and we haven't noticed any weird happenings since. It still bothers me knowing that this person was never caught and that we still have no idea who it was. Looking back now, it makes me think that it was someone who lived very close to my house. It frustrates me to know that it could have been the next door neighbor who we thought was normal, but actually was a pervert.

This was all happening around 2010, which was before households had easy access to affordable security cameras such as Ring and Blink. All I know is, now that I'm an adult, I will always have security cameras around my house, especially if I have young daughters. I've also bought my parents some security cameras since they still live in that house. Maybe one day those cameras will catch a peeping tom, but I think the interest is gone now that me and my sisters have all moved out. I'm a 22-year-old female. This happened when a female friend of mine came to visit me for a long weekend.

Let's just say, I won't be letting her stay with me ever again. For a bit of backstory, she and I were friends for approximately three months before we both moved to separate states. We continued our friendship virtually after we moved apart, and it has been a healthy friendship with open communication. We've had our disagreements, but we've almost always been able to talk things out and move on. Her issues with me mostly revolve around her believing that I don't open up enough.

But for me, I feel like she does things that are inconsiderate at times. She tends to be jealous of my long-term friends, and she'll express her jealousy to their faces. Sometimes she also has an odd attitude problem that has only come out a handful of times. She can also be a bit obsessive, and she gets upset when I don't text her for more than a day. She's also got loads of my photos saved on her phone. She remembers every little thing about me, and she keeps track of my interests with a list that she updates.

I've seen all of this, and I've always found it endearing. Until recently. Now, let's talk about our long weekend together. The first day of our trip was great. She was enthusiastic and bubbly, and she brought me a gift with a sweet note of appreciation. We went clubbing our first night, and afterward we headed to our separate beds for the night. This was when things started to get weird. Although we went to bed and slept separately, when I woke up she was in my bed.

But she wasn't under the covers. She was sitting upright on top of the blankets next to me with her legs stretched out and her back against my headboard. When I looked over at her, she wasn't even looking at me. She was just looking straight ahead, at nothing in particular. I was startled so I instinctively said, Oh, um, hi. Then she just looked at me. She never explained why she was there or why she was essentially waiting for me to wake up.

I was expecting her to maybe say that she was uncomfortable on the couch, but she said nothing. She just silently left my room, and I have no clue how long she was sitting there. Later that morning, we walked around the city. She was acting like her bubbly self. She was engaged in our conversation, and she wanted to hold my hand while we were out and about. But by midday, her attitude had shifted entirely and she was near mute.

She wasn't conversing with me and she wasn't enjoying any activities. She wasn't even smiling anymore. For the remainder of the day, she was completely withdrawn. At the bar, at the arcade, completely withdrawn. You know those driving games where you can take a silly little photo of yourself for a profile pic on the leaderboard? I decided to make a little kissy face on mine.

I glanced at hers and her head was tilted forward, looking vacantly up at the camera. She had this blank expression with dark eyes. I felt like I was looking at a poster for a horror film or something. I was hoping that her mood would shift at some point, but for the rest of the trip she continued to have this blank stare and never smiled. She was cold to me and every service worker that we encountered. She only responded with single word answers and only elaborated to complain. I kept asking her if she was okay, and when she would answer, she said that she was fine but evaded eye contact every single time.

I backed off from asking her if she was alright, but this resulted in painfully silent meals and car rides. On our last day of our trip, I drove her to the airport at 3am. I asked if she enjoyed her visit, and she said that it was fine. I told her I enjoyed having her, but she got out of the car to get on her flight without saying anything else. When she arrived home, she didn't reach out to me, but she posted photos and videos of me with a caption that said, mine.

I haven't addressed this with her yet, and I have no idea what to say. I'm a new Uber Eats driver, and I had only been working for about a month when this happened. I was completing an order in the midtown part of my city. It wasn't an area that was too suburban, but it also wasn't an iffy area, either. I live in a major city, so going in and out of areas of varying income is pretty normal. As I approached my customers to deliver their orders, they were standing in the doorway waiting. I was delivering to a man and a woman, and there was another woman across from them on the sidewalk.

Upon seeing the other woman, the woman in the doorway, timidly shifted herself behind the guy whose jaw appeared to tense up. The woman didn't break eye contact with me as I walked up, so I didn't pay it too much mind. The guy accepted the order, said thank you, and rushed him and his girlfriend into the building. I started to walk back to my car when I noticed that the woman on the sidewalk was gently calling for me to stop. She said, hey, so gently that I almost didn't catch it. But what I did catch was that she was trying to keep pace with me as I was on my way to my car.

That sent my haunches up, and I did a quick little shuffle to get a bit ahead of her. Then I jumped into my car without breaking eye contact with her and quickly pushed the lock button on my door. She still proceeded to try and reach for my passenger side door as if to open it. But since she heard the door click, she stopped herself from grabbing the door handle. She bent down to look at me through the window and her eyes looked so far off and bleary.

She kept mouthing something, but just like before, her voice was very quiet and gentle, so I really couldn't hear her. I cracked my window just a bit so that I could hear her, but not enough for her to be able to get a hand inside. I said, what's up? Pretending to be callous and hard, even though I'm very soft and easily intimidated. I'm not good with confrontation and in most dangerous situations I tend to panic, so I was really proud of myself for being quick enough to think of all of these solutions

to keep me safe thus far. Then the woman began to talk in circles. What are you doing? Where are you going? You can't possibly be working for Uber. You're in high school. I'm 30 years old, even though I have a baby face. I was polite, but Kurt with her and told her that yes, I was working for Uber

doing deliveries and I let her know I had to go. She kept talking in circles and right as I was about to peel out, she said, Hey, let me come with you. I got this really weird feeling. I had shivers down the back of my neck because she made eye contact with me and looked like what she just said was a perfectly sane request. Also keep in mind that the entire time she was speaking with me, she was using a very gentle and quiet voice, as if she were talking to a small, scared animal.

I said no, but she insisted, and she kept saying, "'Just trust me.'" I was getting nervous, but I said no again and I told her to step away since I was going to pull out and I didn't want to run over her feet. But then she tried to get closer. I think she thought, if she didn't move, I wouldn't move, but she was sadly mistaken. I started rolling forward slowly while saying, you better step back, I'm about to crush your feet. You better step back, I'm about to crush your feet." I guess she didn't believe me because she then started laughing and said,

"'You're so funny.'" So I peeled out of there. I was so confused, I had never come across anyone like that before, and I've been in much rougher neighborhoods. I called my husband, who was used to living in the rougher part of my large city, and he said that she could have potentially been trying to trap me so that another person or car could roll up on my driver's side behind me to potentially jump me or try to steal the car.

I was grateful for his insight as I grew up rather sheltered. I had no idea about all of these strategies that sketchy people have concocted to try and get one up on unsuspecting people. Stay safe out there. This happened around 2009 when I was 19. I can't remember which day it was, but I remember it was a weekday, and I was off from work. I decided to go to the beach by myself and brought my guitar along. This was in rural North Carolina where the beaches are well below cliff faces and it's usually pretty desolate.

There was a particular beach where someone had built a driftwood hut into the side of a steep cliff. The hut was about 100 feet above the cliff with the beach below. You can just barely see the roof of this structure from the highway. I had always seen it and wanted to check it out, so I parked my car on the highway and I made my way along a narrow trail to get to the hut to explore. It was a beautiful day, so I set up my stuff near one of the windows of the hut. I was just hanging out there, playing guitar, watching the waves, when suddenly I unexpectedly

heard someone else walking down the trail. I was a bit nervous, however I figured maybe this was a well-known spot to locals or something like that. And then a man appeared. I was immediately creeped out by him. He appeared to be in his late 50s. He was unshaven, and he was wearing thick glasses, sloppy sweatpants, and a dirty white shirt.

He immediately initiated a conversation with me. First, it was just nice pleasantries, talking about the view and the weather. Then he started asking questions that became increasingly specific and personal. Do you live around here? Do you go to college? Are you working today?

Did you come here with anyone? I answered his questions as vaguely as I could, but each question made me feel more and more uncomfortable, and I started to feel trapped. The hut was very long and narrow, and there was no way for me to get back onto the trail leading back to my car without passing him. So, I tried to remain calm and only said the bare minimum to him in an attempt to show him that

I wasn't interested in conversation. I looked away from him and he snapped a picture of me on his disposable camera. I asked him what he was doing and he said that he wanted to show his friends back home how beautiful girls were in California. So then I started brainstorming my options. I figured I could try to run past him, but I would have to get close to him in order to do so. I also considered dashing into the hut and then jumping out of one of the windows towards

the ocean, but it was a pretty steep cliff face. It was at least a 100-foot drop from the window to the beach. My gut started telling me that this was a dangerous situation, but I was frozen and I had no idea of what to do. The man then said that he needed to go to his truck to get something, and he mumbled something about a camera. I knew he had already used his camera. He then headed up the narrow trail, but there was still no way for me to get past him and get to my car without having to brush past him on the way up. As I continued brainstorming, I started thinking that maybe I was overreacting.

I scrambled to the entrance of the hut and peeked up the trail. I noticed that he was already making his way back down the trail towards me, and he had something under his arm. So I then ran into the hut and I jumped out of the window, but I jumped out to the ledge of the steep cliff instead of jumping onto the beach below. In that split second, I had to make a decision on what to do next. I looked in the sky and I saw two hawks fighting each other. I had just read The Alchemist and a general theme of that book is that the universe sends

omens and signs. One particular omen in the book is two fighting raptors, which was essentially a warning sign meaning something bad was about to happen, and it was time to run. That being said, at that moment, I knew I had to scale the cliff to get down to the beach below, and I decided I'd rather die falling or swimming than find out what this creep had planned. So I started scaling the steep cliff. When I got back down to the trail, he saw me. He ran to the edge and asked where I was going. I didn't answer and he angrily yelled at me to come back. My adrenaline kicked in so hard that I made it down to the beach surprisingly fast without

falling or getting hurt. Luckily, he didn't follow. He stood by the hut the entire time, continually yelling at me to come back. I was shaking and when I made it to the beach, I hid in some vegetation for what felt like forever, but it was probably just 20 minutes. When I finally decided it was safe to walk down to the beach to where an actual trail was, I could see a man standing at the top. But it wasn't the guy that I had just escaped from.

I could tell by the silhouette that it was a different man, which made me feel terrified that he might have an accomplice. I decided to risk it and run back up the main trail to ask for help. I ended up bumping into the second man that I saw and it turns out he was a park ranger. I told him the whole story and he walked back to the hut with me, but the creep was gone. He put out a radio call for law enforcement in the area. He told them to be on the watch, and I got to file a police report. When I jumped out of the window abruptly, I left my purse and all my stuff there in

the hut. It was all still there when I returned with the ranger, but I was terrified that the man had gone through my belongings. Maybe he saw my address on my ID. I was scared to be alone at home for months after this. I think that the creep would have done something awful if I had stayed in the hut that day. I couldn't tell what he had under his arm when he was coming back down the trail, but I was scared that he might have gone to his

truck for a weapon or rope or something like that. I knew that something was off about him in the situation, but at 19, I didn't know how to trust my gut. Now I know not to worry about what anyone thinks if I feel like I'm in danger. I know it's just okay to bolt if I need to. I'm not religious or anything, but I'd like to thank the universe for sending me a very clear sign at such a pivotal moment. Nothing ever came of the report that I filed, but sometimes I search for the town name and crimes in the area just in case. I won't be surprised if I ever see his mugshot. In 2002, when I was 16, my parents went on vacation. While they were gone, I stayed at my older sister, Lisa apartment with her and her 8-year-old niece Sarah. It was during fall break, so Sarah and I were out of school.

Since it was only a two-bedroom apartment, Lisa let me sleep in Sarah's room, and Sarah slept in Lisa's room with her. Lisa was so excited that I was staying with them, so she wanted to stay up all night watching Disney movies, and that's exactly what we did the night before. Lisa fell asleep on the sofa, so I picked up Sarah and put her in Lisa's bed before going to bed myself. The next morning, Sarah and I had both slept in, and I woke up to a man's voice, Lisa's boyfriend. Gary had a very recognizable deep voice, kind of like Vin Diesel, but this voice wasn't Gary's at all. This was the voice of an older man. He sounded very agitated. I went into the living room to see who was there, and I found a man sitting on the love seat closest to the front door.

Lisa was sitting in a chair adjacent to the love seat. He looked to be in his 60s, and his shirt and jacket were nearly covered in blood splatter. She shot a fearful, surprised glance at me as she had forgotten I was there. The man stopped talking once he noticed that Lisa had looked away from him, and then I made eye contact with him, and he smiled. He then placed a gun that he was holding onto the coffee table in front of him. I couldn't move. I didn't know what to do.

My first thought was to get between him and Lisa somehow, but I knew I had to stay where I was because he would have to get past me to get to the bedroom where Sarah was still sleeping. I searched the man's face, trying to figure out who he was. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. He broke the silence and said, Hey, I didn't know anybody else was here. I'm Eddie, Gary's stepdad.

I faked a smile and I gave a meek wave as he took out a cigarette and lit it. Lisa was still sitting on the sofa, seemingly bracing herself for whatever Eddie had planned. Eddie motioned for me to sit on the bigger sofa across from him, and I did as he said. Then he took a bag of weed and some rolling papers out and began to roll a joint. You smoke? Eddie asked. Lisa spoke up. No, he doesn't. That's my baby brother. He's only 16. Eddie laughed, looked at Lisa, then back at me and said, Damn, what the hell are y'all feeding these kids? That's a big motherfucker."

Lisa laughed nervously, and Eddie joined her, seemingly unaware of how uncomfortable we were. Oh shit, I got sidetracked, Eddie said. Let me finish telling you, Lisa, what this bitch did. Eddie went on to tell Lisa that he had just shot and killed a woman that he knew because she stole a hundred bucks from him the previous night after he passed out drunk at home. He said he knew it was her because he pistol-whipped Gary's mother and made her tell him who went

through his wallet while he was sleeping. He then told Lisa that he regretted not killing Gary's mother because he felt like she had set him up. He said he had also shot the woman's husband, but was unsure if he was dead. He laughed and said that he knew the woman was dead for sure, since, as he put it, her head exploded like a watermelon. My stomach was in knots. I was sweating.

I could no longer hide my fear. That's when I heard Lisa's bedroom door open. From where I sat, I saw Sarah walking across the hallway and into the bathroom. Eddie looked in the direction of the hallway and said, Damn, Lisa, who else is here? Lisa quickly responded, it's Sarah, please, Eddie. You know, I don't allow smoking around her. Can you go to the patio with that stuff? Lisa's voice was trembling

and Eddie must have heard the fear in her voice because he replied, what are you scared of? I'm not gonna do anything to you. You're good people. I just wanted to come and see you before I go. The police are probably looking for me by now, you know? But I just couldn't let them take me away without seeing my favorite spade's partner first." Then Eddie smiled as he stood up and gathered his bag of weed, the joint that he rolled, and the gun. I heard the toilet flush and then the that he rolled, and the gun.

I heard the toilet flush and then the sound of water running in the bathroom. I then prayed that Sarah would not come out into the living room before he left. Eddie must have shared my concern because he said, Don't worry, I'm going to get on out of here before the baby can see me like this. Then Lisa and I both stood up as he walked to the door. Lisa opened the door for him and he walked out. We watched through the window as he got into his car and drove away. Once he pulled away, Lisa quickly grabbed the phone and called 911.

When Sarah came out of the bathroom, she asked if the scary man was gone. Lisa said yes and hugged Sarah. Sarah told me she never liked Eddie because he acted strange and he looked scary. When she heard his voice in the hallway while she walked to the bathroom, she said that she stayed in there because she didn't want to come out and see him. As she was telling me this, I was pacing back and forth trying to process what just happened. Lisa explained that Eddie was a drug addict and alcoholic. Gary's mother had kicked him out, but he would keep popping up at her house.

She was already aware that Eddie had attacked Gary's mother because Gary called her to tell her, though she didn't know he had killed anyone before he came over. Eddie was arrested shortly after this encounter, and we had to talk to detectives. They told us that the man he shot had died on the way to the hospital. It took years for me to forget the way that he gleefully described killing that woman. He died in prison not long on the north slope of Alaska. The work that we were doing required us to travel far out into the Alaskan Petroleum Reserve which was basically an untamed tundra wilderness that spanned for hundreds of miles.

The oil companies would build these long ice roads in the winter, which would lead to the drilling paths. Our job was to go out after they finished the initial drilling to explore and test rock formations for their oil-producing qualities. This was in mid-January, and the sun hadn't quite come up yet. And when I say the sun had not come up yet, I meant that it hadn't come up for almost a month and a half. Polar nights are long and intense.

The particular well site that we were traveling to was about 60 miles west of Alpine, Alaska, deep in the wilderness. This job took a week to complete, but once we finished, we headed back to camp to finish the rest of our hitch and go home. At the beginning and end of the ice roads, there are guard shacks that you have to check in and out with for safety reasons. If you don't check in or out at expected times, the guards come looking for you to ensure that you're not a popsicle as there's no cell reception

and radios only work up to a certain distance. It was about four in the morning, not that it mattered in the land of endless night and we were halfway across the ice road. Travel was slow as the speed limit on the roads was only 25 miles per hour. As we were driving, something appeared on the road in our headlights. It was a man. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie.

He was walking down an ice road in wilderness tundra at 4 a.m. and it was negative 20 degrees outside. It's not unusual for the local Inuit people to be out this far hunting, so when I saw him we figured maybe his snowmobile broke down and he was trying to get back to the guard shack. It seemed plausible. He didn't acknowledge us as our trucks rolled up next to him. He just kept shuffling along the side of the road. He didn't seem cold, even though his

clothing was totally inappropriate for this extremely cold weather. He surprisingly appeared warm and dry. We also noticed that he wasn't Inuit. He was Caucasian. As we drove past him, I rolled my window down and asked if he was okay and if he needed any help. He still did not acknowledge us and continued shuffling forward. His face was completely blank, devoid of all thought and emotion. The other guys in my truck suggested that he may have been in an accident and was in shock. I continued rolling my truck alongside him as he trudged down the road and I kept trying to get his attention. Even in this extreme cold, I could occasionally get whiffs of a peculiar smell coming off of him. It smelled... acidic, if that makes any sense. There was a lot about

this guy that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The guy behind me in the truck's crew cab decided that he had enough of all of this, so he rolled down his window and reached out to grab the guy. He later explained that he was just going to try and shake him out of his stupor. Before my buddy's hand could reach him, this walking popsicle spun around and latched onto my buddy's outstretched arm. He glared at my buddy, and then at me. It was a look of pure rage. He didn't remove his grip from my buddy's arm. If emotions had a physical temperature, this guy would have melted the entire tundra that night.

My buddy groaned in pain as he tried to get his arm free from Mr. Popsicle. At that moment, this guy started screaming in our faces. There was so much hate, rage, and anger in that scream. It was absolutely terrifying. I slammed on the gas so hard that we spun out in the ice for a second before the wheels regained traction and launched us forward.

The popsicle guy still had a hold of my buddy's arm as we tried to get out of there, and he was trying to pull him out of the truck. He was running alongside the truck while the other guys in the cab held onto my buddy to keep him from being pulled out the window. After several moments, my buddy tore free from this guy and we hauled ass straight to the guard shack, which was another 30 miles down the road.

We checked with the guards and reported what we had just seen. The guard was looking at us like we were pulling a prank, but their policy stated they had to check it out regardless. My buddy's arm was sore and, when he pulled back his sleeve, there were noticeable bruises in the shape of a hand around his arm. We filed a report with the guard and we were told to head back to our camp. After that, none of us really wanted to talk about what happened, so it was a pretty quiet drive for the rest of the way back to camp. We flew home the next day.

The next time we saw the guard at his shack, we asked him if he ever found Mr. Popsicle on his patrols. He told us they searched up and down that icy road for a solid 12-hour shift and they saw nothing, not even tracks and the snow leading off the road. He told us it was a good prank and that he'd get back at us for making him waste an entire shift driving around. But it wasn't a prank. Who would make up a story like that? Who would willingly bruise their own arm for a dumb prank? We never got a satisfying answer as to what happened that evening, but I still wonder about that guy.

The Alaskan Tundra is a strange place, and this was just one of the many weird stories from my time up there. Thanks for listening and make sure you follow those links in the show notes if you want to get your tickets today for Let's Not Meet Live. If you're a patron, stick around after the music for your extended ad-free version of this week's episode. 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 to get access to hours and hours of bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else. This

week you have heard Unwanted Visitor in the Middle of Nowhere at 3 a.m. by The Art Ho. Man waited for me after my friend's shift by Binch Lauren. Unsettling not knowing who he was by Broke the Camel's Back. I woke up to a girl watching me by Giona. A lady tried to jump into my car by Chelsea Elric. Driftwood Drifter by External Yak 5576. Came face to face with a murderer by Anonymous and finally, The North Slope of Alaska by Clyde2003 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. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Finally, make sure you check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, and the old time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time, Stay safe. It's been nearly 20 years since this happened.