Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 13x04: Creepy Church Encounter

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Upcoming LNM Live Tour Dates (NEW DATES ADDED): 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 10/09/24 - Seattle, WA @ The Triple Door: GET YOUR TICKETS 10/30/24 - Portland, OR @ Show Bar: GET YOUR TICKETS 11/09/24 - Houston, TX @ The Secret Group: GET YOUR TICKETS 11/10/24 - Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum Art Co: GET YOUR TICKETS Stories in this episode: Creepy Church Encounter | Fickle-Language-3619 (0:41) The Creepy Appalachian Trail Hiker | kepplet (5:29) Hide and Seek | twigvicious (11:45) Home Intrusion Happened Right Under my Roommate's Nose | PrankyButSaintly (23:30) My Coworkers Tried to Drug Me | rosegirlie (26:31) My Friend and I Were Stalked for Years | Temporary_Papaya_194 (30:53) Extended Patreon Content: Followed for a Half Mile | areyounotentertained Dog Park Creeper | Arson The Ugly Green Vintage Car | Emily Sin City and a Dive Into Madness | Alec Nygard 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]. 

Get ready for Las Vegas style action. Head Bet MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service,

there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambiance of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus the wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling

or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 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. When I was 16 years old, I was approached by two women in my neighborhood who asked me if I wanted to know about Jesus. I felt really bad walking away, as they seemed nice, so I stopped to listen to what they had to say. After a quick chat, they invited me to their church and told me to come that Friday night. I invited my then boyfriend because I figured we could probably learn something new about religion. A few days later, when we got to the church after they had seated everyone,

they played a PowerPoint presentation about motherly love. It was mostly about animals and how animal mothers have love for their babies. For some reason, my boyfriend and I thought that it was hilarious and thankfully, we were able to prevent ourselves from actually laughing. This church was called the Church of God. They basically believe God has two counterparts, and one of the counterparts is a woman who they refer to as God the Mother. The two ladies that I had spoken to earlier in the week approached me at the end of the counterparts is a woman who they refer to as God the Mother. The two ladies that I had spoken to earlier in the week approached me at the end of the

night and they asked if I wanted to give my life to God and get baptized the following Sunday. I told them that I needed to think about it since I felt like I still didn't really know much about the religion and I said that I wasn't sure of my relationship with God yet. Now there was an English teacher that I had at school who was a Christian and I told him about the church and the whole mother-god thing. He told me in all his years of Christianity he had never heard anything about God having a counterpart who was a woman and a mother. He advised me to be wary of the church since it sort of sounded like a cult. After having this conversation with my teacher, I texted the main lady that I had been talking

to from the church. She was the one who was adamant about me being baptized. I told her that after giving it some thought, I didn't think that I was interested in doing it. She was defensive and seemed angry right away. She kept asking me why, and she told me that I needed to do it. She said, this needed to happen soon because if I went any longer without being baptized, I would go to hell.

Again, I was 16, but she wouldn't let it go. She called me at least 20 times and continually sent me more text messages saying that I was 16, but she wouldn't let it go. She called me at least 20 times and continually sent me more text messages saying that I needed to come back to the church and get baptized before it was too late. Since it was clear that she wasn't letting up, I just blocked her number. Two weeks later, I saw her in my neighborhood again,

but she was by herself this time. When she passed me as I was walking, she noticed me and her facial expression was so angry. She got close to me and made these weird hand gestures right in front of my face. I don't have any idea what she was doing, but it looked like sign language, but somehow more aggressive. After this bizarre nonverbal interaction, she walked away. Now fast forward to four years later.

I wound up working at a coffee shop in my neighborhood, and one day, I locked the wrong gate while I was closing up. I forgot a key, so I wasn't able to lock the outer gate. My friend was with me, so she watched the store while I called my boss. My boss told me to stop at her church down the block to borrow her copy of the key. It was the same church I had been to when I was in high school. It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday, and as I walked in, I was hoping I wouldn't see the lady who tried to convert me. I was looking around for my boss, and there were at least 50 women inside the church.

They were all dressed up in wedding dresses with veils draped over their heads. There wasn't a single man in the church that night. It looked like they were doing some kind of weird ceremony. When I found my boss, she gave me her key and told me to make sure that it didn't happen again since she didn't like being interrupted during church. As I walked back out, I just kept wondering, what the hell type of ceremony or ritual they were doing? Why were all of those women dressed up as brides at 10 PM on a Saturday night?

I did more research into the church after that, and I found out it was actually a cult as my English teacher predicted back in high school. This happened during the summer about four years ago in Asheville, North Carolina. My boyfriend and I were camping with my dog along the river where we were kayaking. We were done kayaking for the day and were relaxing at our campsite before dinner. Our site was only 10 feet from the trail and the river was right beyond that. We had some swims and a few stressful events while kayaking, so we needed to unwind and relax. We were running low on weed, so we ate some edibles.

My boyfriend was half asleep in his hammock that was at the river's edge, and I was lying on a towel near the tent when a man came walking up to our campsite, blabbing something about giving us his trash. I was confused, but he was wearing a backpack, and I quickly realized he was a serious hiker and he wanted us to help him out and take his trash for him. This was a pretty reasonable request, however, only a five-minute walk down the trail. There was basic civilization including a dumpster and whatnot. I let him know about this, but then he pulled out this large bag of weed and said that we could have some if we took his trash.

This made me a bit more confused. But I would never turn down free weed, so I told him, sure, whatever, I'll throw out your trash for you. He then gave me a small handful of nugs and threw his trash into my bag. I asked him some basic stuff about his hike and he said that he was through hiking the Appalachian Trail and had been for a couple of months and asked if he could stay for a beer. I thought that this guy seemed like he just needed someone to talk to or something. Since I wasn't doing anything and he seemed fine, I figured why not.

I thought that maybe he had only stopped with me since he assumed I was alone, since I was sure that he hadn't noticed my boyfriend in the hammock yet. I thought at worst, he would be mildly disappointed that he couldn't hit on me when he found out I wasn't alone. I kept the conversation friendly and asked him standard questions. I also asked him if he had any interesting trail stories to share, as he was a few months into the hike. He was answering my questions normally enough, but he kept peppering in comments like, don't

worry, I'm not one of those creepy people. My boyfriend popped his head up at some point and the hiker seemed surprised to see him, which confirmed that he thought I was alone. My boyfriend came over to us and we decided to smoke some weed. Of course, we offered some to the guy since he had given us the weed in the first place. He took a hit and coughed a bunch, which was when things started to get weird. As stoners, my boyfriend and I were used to seeing people get too high, and maybe acting a little off.

But this guy was incredibly strange. He began talking a lot, but it was so quiet that we couldn't hear a thing he was saying. I tried to seem interested and responsive, but I had no clue what he was saying. He was just staring at the river talking to himself and occasionally looking back at us like we were part of the conversation. It was strange and confusing. He also drank three beers and had two cigarettes during the time, and he wouldn't leave. He started talking to Siri on his phone when we stopped interacting with him, and he was

yelling at Siri, calling her a bitch. Then out of nowhere, he asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I seem like a serial killer? My boyfriend and I exchanged glances with each other, like we both just had the same thought, which was that this guy had gotten way too creepy. We both nervously laughed and said, a one for sure. We tried to act casual, like it was just a joke, but we were both thinking, what the fuck?

After that, I got in the hammock and so did my boyfriend. We just sat there talking to each other a bit without really acknowledging this guy. He had said that he was going to smoke one more cigarette and then leave. And I swear, that was the longest cigarette I had ever witnessed in my life. It took him so long to finish it, especially since I was just watching it get shorter and shorter since I was ready for him to leave already. Then he finally got up, put his backpack on, and left. But since it was almost dark,

we knew that he wouldn't get too far before setting up camp for the night. That night, we thought that the guy would come back and kill us. couldn't get too far before setting up camp for the night. That night, we thought that the guy would come back and kill us. Throughout the night, we heard people walking by our campsite multiple times, but it was other people that we had seen around the trail throughout the day. Just in case, we planned what we would do if he came back, which was grab the dog and jump in the river then float to the boat ramp downstream.

Thankfully, he didn't end up coming back that night, and we didn't see him again. But it was enough to freak us out. It's possible that this guy was just lacking some social skills due to being on a hike by himself for quite a while, but it was also possible that he had some creepy shit on his mind. I'm definitely glad I wasn't alone like he thought I was when he first walked up to the campsite. This happened when I was in college. There was something about my early years in college that just seemed to bring on a slew

of experiences that ranged from creepy to terrifying. I don't know what it was about that time in my life. This experience was somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Anyway, one night at the beginning of summer following my freshman year of college, some of my high school friends and I were going to a party. We hadn't seen a ton of each other in the preceding year due to all of us being away at college. We mostly just saw one another during school breaks and a few random weekends here and

there, so we were all feeling kind of giddy about having the whole summer together. I wouldn't have ordinarily gone to this party, which was hosted by someone else that we went to high school with, but everyone else wanted to go, and I wanted to hang out with them so I agreed, and that is not the mistake that I made in this story. No, that would come later that night. We got to the party and we realized it was almost exclusively people from high school, which was kind of nice, actually. It was like a big reunion.

Soon my prior inhibitions were gone, and that was only partially because I started throwing back screwdrivers the moment that I got there. A couple of hours later, I was more than a little tipsy. I was full-on drunk, though not entirely plastered yet, which would prove to be my saving grace in this story. After a while, a group of my friends decided to split off. The host of this party, Stephanie, was still living in her parents' house. This house was forest-adjacent and basically in the middle of nowhere.

Forests at night both scare and enthrall me, so Trunkme decided that we would go exploring. This idea eventually became something my friends would not let me live down. Ever. Anyway, this exploration group consisted of my friends Lauren, Hillary, Jared, Alex, Hugo, Dean, and the party hostess, Stephanie, plus myself. When we arrived at the woods for a midnight walk, I'm not going to lie, it was pretty creepy, but in a very cool way. At least I thought so. A couple of people in the group, namely Hillary and Alex, were pretty scared. But Hillary went because her best friend Lauren had come. They kept making comments about

how creeped out they were, and I kept telling them to relax. No one else is out here, I told them. Let's just enjoy our time together. Being drunk makes me weirdly sentimental, I guess. We walked through the forest for a bit, and then we came into this clearing with a lake, a dock, and a lot of tall grass. There was also a shed there, and what turned out to be a boathouse, both of which had seen better days. So, this was my first time exploring the forest, but Dean and Hugo had been out there before, so they remembered this place.

I mentioned that Stephanie's parents wouldn't let them come back out here since it wasn't their property, which was true. Just then, it was like suddenly Stephanie realized where we were. Her eyes widened and she looked nervous. She didn't look scared exactly, her expression was more worrisome, like she was concerned that we would get in trouble, and she said that we should go back. I told her that everything was fine, since you can totally trust the judgment of a drunk person, and since everybody else was drunk they all agreed with me, save for Steph. But she was outnumbered and not about to go back alone. Even Hillary and Alex were okay

with staying. I suggested that we play hide and seek, and mostly everyone agreed. Honestly, I don't know why people kept listening to me. This was where things went wrong, though. Hugo was forced to be the seeker, because we were assholes and we told him he didn't have a choice. So, he went into the woods and counted while we all ran out to hide. I saw Dean dart into the shed, but everyone else ran into the woods.

I decided to duck down in the tall grass, which varied in height. Sometimes I could kneel, and sometimes I had to be on my stomach to be completely concealed. As I was hiding, I heard voices from the trees nearby, whispers, like the people speaking were trying not to be heard. I was curious, so I made my way toward these voices, first on my hands and

knees, which eventually turned into army crawling as the grass was getting shorter. I nearly shit my pants when I bumped into Stephanie in the grass, who turned out to be doing the exact same thing I was. When we got closer, we realized it was Lauren and Jared. And that was how Stephanie and I realized they liked each other. We were listening to them flirt and looking at each other, hopefully. At that moment, I swear, we had this telepathic conversation about how good they would be together.

But that's when we heard somebody barreling towards us, through the grass. Heart pounding, I turned to see it was just Hugo who threw himself down into the grass next to me and Stephanie. He looked terrified. Hugo, what the fuck? I hissed, since there was no way he would have counted as high as we were making him. We were being real jerks to Hugo that night, which I'm still sorry about.

He first looked around frantically, and then told us that we had scared him. I'll never forget this because of the sheer terror that I saw on Hugo's face, and heard in his voice. There's someone in the woods, he told us. Stephanie tried to tell him that it was probably just somebody else from the party, but Hugo insisted that no, he had seen a guy who ducked behind a tree. He explained that this was an older guy who seemed to possibly be in his 40s. He said that this guy looked rough, that he had a bad feeling about him, and booked it.

It was just by chance that he had found me and Stephanie. It looks like he's looking for something or someone, Hugo said, telling us that the guy was shining a flashlight around. Then, as if on cue, a man came walking out of the woods and called out. Jim, are you here? It sounded kind of the woods and called out, Jim, are you here? It sounded kind of angry, and the situation quickly made me feel stone cold sober. This wasn't right, and it was about to get worse because that was when we saw the shadow of somebody rowing a boat in the lake toward the dock.

The guy who emerged from the woods walked onto the dock to meet the other guy, presumably Jim. The guy in the woods called out to him with a demanding tone, Where is he? He sounded angry like he was expecting another person to be there. The guy in the rowboat replied, I fucked up. They proceeded to argue, though I couldn't make out what they were saying, and they just

went into the boathouse. I was pretty sure that nobody had hidden in there, but I was worried that maybe somebody had, especially since these guys seemed to be so shifty, and seemed to be doing something shifty. We needed to get out of there, and I knew that, but Dean was still hiding in the shed which was too close to the boathouse for comfort given the situation. Lauren and Jared were now making out, totally oblivious to what was going on while Hillary and Alex were who knows where.

Why had I suggested hide and seek? That was what I kept asking myself while I tried to formulate a plan. Then we heard somebody running through the woods, but they were trying to do it so quietly. I then turned and saw Hillary. It looked like she was trying to find somewhere else to hide, unaware of what was happening. And I saw her run toward the boathouse.

It was like time stopped. I didn't know how to stop her. Honestly, I just froze. But then Hillary hesitated as she got next to the door of the boathouse. She would later tell us that she heard voices inside that gave her pause. Thank Jesus for that. Then the door swung open. It was like something out of a movie.

Hillary was now hiding behind the door, and the first guy stood in the doorway looking around. I think he must have heard Hillary, who wasn't nearly as quiet as she thought she was. If he would have stepped outside and closed the door from the outside, he would see Hillary. And then we'd truly be fucked. Luckily, instead, he went back inside and closed the door. The urgency to get the hell out of there was growing with each second, Luckily, instead, he went back inside and closed the door. The urgency to get the hell out of there was growing with each second, but we still had to get Dean, Lauren, and Jared, and we needed to find Alex.

I didn't think that we had a lot of time, so I knew we had to be fast. Then suddenly, Hugo stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and bellowed out these sounds of a bird, like, ca-caw. I just looked at him with a what-the-fuck-Hugo expression on my face. It wasn't what I would have done, but I'll be damned it worked. Hillary came sprinting toward us, as did Alex, who had been hiding behind the boathouse. Likewise, Dean emerged from the shed, and Lauren and Jared detached themselves from each other.

Alas, the two men in the boathouse heard us, so they came bursting out. But at that point, we were all sprinting away. I swear I've never before nor since ran that fast. At one point, Stephanie tripped and practically ripped her arm out of socket while pulling to her feet. The guys chased us for a bit, at least, though I don't know how long because we just kept running until we got back to Stephanie's house. The party was still going, and the men hadn't followed us beyond the woods.

But we were too freaked to stay. I called my brother to come pick us up and we all left, even Stephanie, who left her house unattended save for the remainder of drunk partygoers. We spent that night at my brother's house. Then the next day we went back to Stephanie's house to help clean up because honestly, this experience weirdly bonded us. Lauren and Jared are now married, and Hillary and Alex were both in the wedding party. Alex even briefly mentioned this incident in his speech.

I lived with Dean for a bit following college and Hugo is one of my best friends, as is Stephanie, which is weird because we weren't really all that close before everything happened. But I swear, we all thought that we were going to die that night, except for maybe Lauren and Jared. It's impossible to go through something like that with a group of people and not come out closer. It's strange, but also kind of nice. It's like we have this shared history, which goes beyond just going to school together.

It's been different ever since. I wanted to go back to investigate that area in the light of day, but Dean was the only one who wanted to go with me. I thought that just the two of us going out there wasn't enough people, since I was still pretty scared, though intrigued. Stephanie told us later that she told her dad about what happened since her parents got home later that day.

My dad and a few of his friends went back there and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. They moved shortly thereafter, not because of this. So we never found out what happened. But we've never forgotten. This happened two years ago. One day when I came home from work, I went to let the dogs out in the backyard. The back door is in the kitchen so as I was on my way to let them out, I passed by the oven and noticed that it was on my way to let them out, I passed by the oven and noticed that it was on.

It surprised me a bit because my roommate, Mandy, was the only other person at home, and she had been spending most of her time in her room due to feeling ill. Even so, I figured that I had better ask her first before turning it off, in the off chance that she was actually using the oven. I walked to the end of the hallway where her room was, knocked on her door and asked, hey, is the oven supposed to be on? Are you using it right now? Confusion and concern immediately washed over her voice when she replied,

what? No, I haven't even been in the kitchen today. I shared her confusion and concern upon hearing this, but then pondered the possibility that Carl, who is her brother and our other roommate, had been the one to leave it on by mistake. I asked her if this could be the case, but she told me that Carl was at work and had been gone since early that morning. This was when she and I began to piece together that something very strange had to have happened. I told her that I had just gotten home a few minutes prior.

It was a little after 3 p.m. at that point and I had left the house at 7.30 that morning. She then informed me, with horrific realization, that at around 11 a.m. she had heard noises coming from the living room. She said that she heard the door opening, a woman's voice, a chair moving, and then she heard the front door again. She didn't realize that I was at work so she she just assumed that it was me, and didn't even think anything of it. She then mentioned that in hindsight, this should have struck her as odd since the dogs were barking an unusual amount during this time.

I asked her how long the noises were coming from the living room, but she said that it was hard to say since she was drifting in and out of sleep. But she added, if she had to guess, they lasted about 20 minutes. Mandy, Carl, and I are the only residents of this home, and as mentioned before, Carl and I were both at work. I thanked her for informing me of this, and then went back to the front half of the house and did a quick comb of the area to check if anything else looked out of place or was missing.

I didn't discover a thing, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing else has come of it. But it is easily the strangest thing that has happened in our home. My former workplace tried to drug me. I know this sounds crazy, but let me explain. I used to work at a pretty popular restaurant not far from where I live. I won't share the name of the restaurant or what my position was there for privacy reasons. But I will say there were a couple of different things I needed to handle while working there. One day when

I was working I was a little busy ringing people up who were ready to pay for their bills. I was juggling multiple parties so I asked my co-worker if they could get me a refill on my drink. My coworker helped me and got me the refill. All was fine. On this particular day, I remember feeling energized and completely healthy from the moment that I woke up. I drank half of my drink that my coworker refilled for me, and I started to feel sleepy

and dizzy. Thankfully, another coworker noticed this, and they kept an eye on me until it was time to clock out. When I got home, I legitimately passed out on the couch with my family. I didn't think anything of it until later when I woke up, feeling very confused. I thought that it was a little strange but I let it go. A few days later, I was working with another co-worker who was a peer and had the same position that I did.

We had plans to hang out that night after work. When we were done hanging out, we went back to the restaurant where our other co-workers were still hanging out and drinking. This was allowed at my restaurant after hours. Right when we walked in, my manager and his brother asked if I wanted a cocktail or something to drink. It was already late, and I had to drive so I told him that I was okay, but they kept pressing.

Not even water? They asked. Again, I told them that I was okay and I didn't need a drink. They ended up making my co-worker a drink, and then they made me one that I put in a to-go cup and took to my friend's house. I never drank that to-go drink, so I just gave it to my friend when I was at her house. I immediately left her house and she drank the drink the next day. After she had the drink, she said that she felt completely out of it. She found it to be odd, as she never had issues with drinking alcohol before.

She told me this and explained what happened to her and how it made her feel. She experienced the exact same thing that I had just a few days prior. I talked with my mom and I asked her about the symptoms of being drugged. After that conversation, I do not doubt in my mind that my co-workers were putting something in my drinks to do God knows what. The more I think about this, the more I wonder what would have happened if I would have drank that drink at the restaurant the night before. If it wasn't for my co-worker looking out for me the first time I was given the drink

that had something in it, I don't know what would have happened. After that, I refused to eat or drink anything without seeing it made in front of me. Luckily, I have since left this workplace, and I haven't had any issues since. We've added some new live dates to the Let's Not Meet tour this year. I'll be in Seattle, Washington on October 9th at the Triple Door, Portland, Oregon on October 30th at Show Bar, and then I'm headed to Texas on November 9th in Houston at The Secret Group, and then I'm hopping over to Dallas on November 10th to perform at Deep Ellum Art Company. Tickets for those shows will be available at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, July 15th. Links to those tickets will be in the show notes. And if you haven't picked up your tickets for the previous leg of the tour,

we still have some available for San Diego on August 10th, Los Angeles on August 11th, Sacramento on August 18th, and Salt Lake City on September 19th. I can't wait to see you there. Now back to the show. This happened in 2019 when me and a friend started to attend a summer camp. This summer camp conducts surveys in the community every summer based on a chosen topic. The goal for this is for campers to get better at public speaking while listening to generalized opinions from others.

After getting our survey assignments, my friend and I teamed up with two counselors and hit the town. Our last stop was at Walmart, where we talked to a bunch of different people. The most memorable person that we spoke to that day was the second to last. He was an older man who asked for our names and all about us after he finished answering our questions. At the time, we were both fourteen with hardly any concept of stranger danger, so we gladly answered his questions about ourselves honestly.

A few days after the encounter, an account popped up on our friend requests with the first name Ed. The account had gone through both of our profiles, liked a bunch of old posts, left comments with a bunch of fire and rose emojis, and called us hot and sexy on our posts. This person even started to send us inappropriate pictures. So my friend and I ended up blocking the account. A few days later we noticed the account was permanently deleted since it didn't show up in our searches. So we hoped that was the end of it. But obviously,

it was not. When we went back to school in August, we nearly forgot all about that weird profile that we blocked altogether. But then, yet again, this time on both our Facebook accounts, we got a notification from someone named Ed requesting to be our friend. We immediately blocked that account, but not before they left unsavory comments on my baby pictures. He commented on how pretty my baby blonde hair was and how I looked good in a short dress. After that, my friend and I both talked to our parents about the situation.

We reached out to the police, who said that, other than keeping our accounts private, deleting the app entirely was the best we could do. There wasn't anything that they could do about it with the minimal information that we gave them. Of course, since we were teens, we couldn't bring ourselves to delete our apps, so that wasn't an option for us. Until around the end of 2021, this man kept sending friend requests from different accounts with variations of the same name.

It was annoying that we had to keep dodging these accounts that were so obviously made by the same person. This was getting mundane, but at the beginning of 2022, things started to ramp up. Accounts with the names and pictures of our friends started showing up in our notifications, so obviously, we added them, thinking that they were our friends. We were wrong. Almost immediately, most of our posts had likes and comments on them from these accounts, and there were multiple DMs sent to both of us. Once we realized what was going on, we blocked the fake friend accounts.

This became the new recurring cycle of whoever was doing this. We would get friend requests from accounts containing a friend's info and pictures. Some of our friend's accounts were getting hacked, stolen, and duplicated just so that this person could friend request us again and again. Finally, it got to the point where we stopped adding anyone who appeared to be from our school. The final time that this happened was in the summer of 2022. The final time that this happened was in the summer of 2022. The swarm of fake accounts had seemingly stopped, and when I saw a friend request that looked legit from a school friend, I decided to try it out. My friend didn't, as she was still wary.

But I decided to go ahead and see what would happen. We decided we would fully delete our socials and start new accounts if this account turned out to be the same. I was 17 when I made the decision, so try not to judge me too harshly. The account proceeded to interact with me like any normal school kid would. A like here and there, on new posts, a like on a story. But they never commented on the posts. This seemed pretty normal.

So finally, we thought it was all over. But then, strange things which seemed more intentional rather than coincidental started to happen. For example, one day, I posted a picture of me and my friend at the park, and a couple of minutes later, this white truck pulled up into the lot. They parked eerily close to my car, on the driver's side, but I tried not to think too much of it. I was with my friend on the swings, which were in line of sight of the parking lot.

The truck just sat there, phasing us with its lights on for a long time. My friend and I finally started getting worried and anxious, so we hopped off of the swings and decided to take a lap around the park instead. The truck was far too close to my car for us to be comfortable with chancing it and trying to get to it in time. Mind you, it was about 10pm that night, so we were the only ones there. We waited it out and roamed around the park for nearly an hour before the truck finally drove away.

That's when we raced to my car and I drove home, looking behind me frequently just in case. I had hoped that this was a one-off occurrence, but things like this continued to happen. For a while, it didn't dawn on me that we would see this truck around after I posted pictures or updates saying where I was when I was with a friend. I was seeing this white truck just about everywhere that I posted about. I even saw it waiting outside of my high school when I posted a story about walking to my

mom's store from school, which was only a mile away. However, my friend never mentioned seeing a white truck around. Meanwhile, I started to get nervous every time I saw one. In fact, one time, I was walking to my mom's store and I saw a white truck, so I decided to glance over at the driver. It was the same man from the survey trip that my friend and I took for camp back in 2019. It was so bizarre to see him. I was never expecting to see him again, especially since my friend and I met him a few towns over from where we lived.

Yet there he was parked right in front of my school. When I realized he was in the truck, I ran to my mom's store. This continued happening. I kept seeing this man around in his white truck, so it was pretty evident that I was being stalked. As unsettling as this was, things seemed pretty stagnant, so I'm going to fast forward to the event that occurred on the last day of summer camp in late July 2023. I was still 17 and since I was older than most of the new campers, I felt that I should

have basically been considered a staff member. I drove the kids to camp and back home every day. It didn't bother me, since they were in the same town as me. There were other campers who lived further away, but the counselors typically drove them home. On this day, I posted throughout the last day of camp. I was trying to save my phone since it was suffering from glitches and a lack of data. My phone wasn't letting me call or otherwise communicate with others

since its storage was too full. I tried to dump a bunch of photos and stuff, but it didn't fix the problem. My phone was essentially broken. At the end of the last day of camp, at around 9.30 at night, I was driving a bunch of the campers home, and had an older camper, a 19-year-old male, in my passenger seat. In the back seat, I had three more campers. Between the five of us in my car, we had two working phones among us. Both phones were dead, though. One of the campers had their phone plugged

in to charge on my carport. As I pulled off of the back road of our camp up to the intersection, the light turned green, so we continued ahead. In the lane next to us, there was a white truck that kept flashing its brights on and off. It was a bit weird, so I sped up and didn't think too much of it. Eventually I didn't see the white truck behind me anymore so I slowed down a bit. There's this back road that's a bit curvy that leads close to my house and directly into an upscale neighborhood. I'd typically take this road to get back to my house from camp when I had no one to

take home. But I often drove in that direction out of habit. Everyone who was a regular in my car called it the detour. It was a pretty road with a bunch of full evergreen trees and wildlife. The campers were in the back and they were begging me to go on the detour since it was the last day of camp. By the time the turn was coming up, I caved and I hit the blinker to turn right onto the back road.

Eventually I let them convince me to take them around the upscale neighborhood since they wanted to see all the cool water fountains and covered bridges on their streets. As we drove around, we noticed one of the covered bridges was caved in. So we had to go around it, on this very narrow street, right next to a large drainage ditch that was at least 15 to 20 feet deep. As we were going around it, a vehicle came up behind us. I assumed it was someone who lived in the neighborhood, so I was going to speed up and let them get around me. As we were going around the bridge, we came up to a four-way stop.

Straight ahead was a dead end, which is what I was originally going to pull into. To the left was the broken covered bridge and to the right was a roundabout that would take us back to the beginning of the street. There weren't any houses or lights around the roundabout since the neighborhood was still under development. The 19-year-old in my passenger seat told me to go right instead of pulling into the dead end. I didn't really want to, but I trusted his instincts and turned right.

As soon as I did, I heard honking behind me. I was a bit startled, and so were the kids in the back seat. I glanced out using my side view mirrors, but I couldn't see anything past the bright LED lights. I thought that whoever this was just honked, since I took too long trying to maneuver around the covered bridge, so I sped up a bit after I turned right. The car behind me turned right as well. They started flashing their LED brights, and they were honking loudly. They even rolled down their windows, and I heard them screaming at us.

They were trying to get next to us, and by the way that they were driving, it seemed like they were trying to run us off the road. I instantly started screaming at the kids in the backseat to settle down, buckle up, and roll their windows up. They barely managed to do that by the time I hit a bend around the road really hard and gunned it off the street, driving around the drainage ditch. As we continued driving,

I was speeding down the back streets as the car chased me and kept trying to run me off the road, multiple times. When we came upon sharp corners, I noticed that they would slow down significantly, which told me that they didn't know the area well. I used that to my advantage. As I approached a stop sign for me to go left or right, my house was to the right, so I took a left. I yelled at my passenger to check my right since I wasn't stopping for the sign

After he told me I was clear. I sped past the stop sign That's when I finally noticed the car behind me was the white truck that I had thought nothing of before They tried to hit my bumper again So I swerved into someone's yard and I remember the next day I drove past it their grass was damaged. I Booked it down the street, though. I was hitting every turn as fast as possible. Eventually, I lost the truck. So I sped down the road, past my high school and onto the highway again, where we got off

in the first place. I didn't see the truck behind us anymore, but we were all still freaked out. I took a right onto another main way and passed by a gas station on the way. I stopped at the gas station and handed the kids in the back some cash so that they could go get themselves a drink or a snack to help calm them down. None of them were crying, thank God. They thought that the chase was more exciting than anything. We waited at the gas station for about 20 minutes, just in case, before I got back on

the road to take them home. I asked them if they had seen the white truck at all, as we were driving. And only one of the kids said that they thought they had, but its lights were off. In any case, after piecing everything together, I figured out that they followed us for nearly 25 minutes. After I dropped them all off, I was a bit shaky, so I decided to try and see if my defunct phone would let me call someone so that I could talk about what just happened. The only contact who would load was my friend, who has been a part of this whole ordeal since

the beginning. She was the person who I called most part of this whole ordeal since the beginning. She was the person who I called most recently on my phone and luckily I was able to call her. She picked up, but all I could hear from her side on the line was crying. I panicked and asked her what was wrong. She proceeded to share an eerily similar story to what just happened to me. As she was driving, she had her baby in the back seat. Her baby had started crying so loudly that she could barely focus on the road so she

pulled into a gas station that was right outside of our high school. I drove past this gas station when I was driving but I didn't stop there because it was closed. My friend was giving her kid a bottle when a white truck pulled into the lot. Immediately she was nervous since the station was closed, and she was right to be nervous. Less than 30 seconds later, this truck parked horizontally in front of her in an attempt to block her in. She immediately started her car, locked the doors, and pulled onto the grass curb, blocking her from the street. She wasn't chancing the safety of her baby at all.

She told me that the person driving the truck was the man that we had seen years ago at that Walmart. His eyes were staring at her like she was a piece of meat. As she raced home, he caught up to her. She turned onto her back road, running on fumes, and the truck started flashing its brights and honking while trying to run her off the road. A couple of streets before hers, a little red car pulled out in front of her. The red car started to brake check her as the white truck tried to hit her from behind.

So, she took a chance. She sped up and swung onto her street to at least get around the red car. The truck booked it after her. Thankfully for her, both of her brothers were waiting outside for her with some of their friends to help her bring stuff into the house for her baby. Upon seeing her brothers, as she pulled into the driveway, the white truck sped off. If her brothers weren't outside, I'm sure it would have been a different story. It turns out, when the man in the white truck couldn't catch me, he found my friend and

went after her. After this happened, we found out that there had been several instances of a white truck going around our town following others who drove similar cars to ours, and doing similar things like honking and trying to hit them or whatnot. We filed a police report after someone posted a white truck's details on Facebook. It took years to get this man off of our trail, but I'm grateful to say we no longer have to worry about him anymore. Make sure to get your tickets while you can for the Let's Not Meet Live Tour.

Again, you can get those at letsnotmeetpodcast.com forward slash tour, or just follow the link in the show notes. And make sure you stick around after the music on this episode if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode. If you want 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 all of our episodes ad free as well as hours and hours of bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

This week you have heard creepy church encounter by fickle language 3619. The creepy Appalachian trail hiker by Keplit. Hide and seek by by Twig Vicious. Home Intrusion Happened Right Under My Roommate's Nose by Pranky Butt Saintly. My Coworkers Tried to Drug Me by Rose Gurley. And finally, My Friend and I Were Stalked for Years by TemporaryPapaya194. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories.gmail.com.

Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. Finally, make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my True Paranormal Podcast, and the Old Time Radio Cast, all at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you all next week. Stay safe. I'm a long time listener. I often enjoy the podcast while I'm taking my morning walks through town.