Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 13x12: Early 2000s Internet Predator

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Stories in this episode: My Encounter With a Would-Be Axe Murderer | hundmeister420 (0:41) The Fifth Floor | 8bitfarmer (10:49) Random Person in my Driveway at Midnight | Southern-Builder-121 (17:03) The Hostel Creep in Seoul | semper-eadem96 (22:28) No More Laundromats For Me | Cannibal-birdies (26:33) My Earliest Memory of a Nightmare Turned Out to Be Real | BestMossadAgent (31:42) Barely Escaped a Group of Guys in a Car. | Flowerlilly97 (37:14) Early 2000s Internet Predator | kf1746 (43:09) Extended Patreon Content: Untitled | Anonymous Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Upcoming LNM Live Tour Dates: 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 Follow: - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/ - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ - TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@crypticcounty Check out the other Cryptic County podcasts like Odd Trails, Cryptic Encounters, 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].  FÜM has served over 300,000 customers, and you can be the next success story. For a limited time, use my code meet to get a free gift with your Journey Pack! Head to tryfum.com. Join EveryPlate today and pay only $2.99 per meal, PLUS get 50% off your first box, for all box sizes! Get this amazing deal by going to EveryPlate.com/podcast and entering code meet299.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. So, to preface, I would like to state that this story is probably going to be read like the plot of a campy 80s horror movie. However, the story is true. I'll be changing names, locations, and some details in order to protect the privacy of the innocent.

A buddy of mine and I tried to camp twice a month now that I have a vehicle that can be trusted to get me to some of the more remote areas in our state. We planned a camping trip for a weekend in late February 2022. We chose a fairly remote location that we had been to the previous weekend. That previous weekend, we were the only people to be seen within a mile of our campsite. We got there on Friday night and set up. The story I'm about to share took place the following night, Saturday night. It was about 9 p.m., so the sun was long gone, but the moon hadn't fully risen yet.

It was pitch black out, other than what was illuminated by our fire. Suddenly, from the otherwise quiet woods around us, we heard a man screaming. We listened intently, silently exchanging anxious glances. At first, we were hoping it was someone who would be intoxicated and having a little bit too much fun, but it quickly became obvious that this wasn't fun. This wasn't somebody having a party and screaming, this was… pretty jarring to hear, in the middle of nowhere in the woods, at least five miles from the nearest cell phone signal. Plus, we hadn't seen anyone in hours. The scream continued for what felt like hours, but in reality it was probably only five minutes. My buddy and I had no idea what to make of it, and started feeling extremely paranoid.

We gathered up anything that we could find that was remotely close to a weapon, while trying to come up with explanations for the screaming as we kept our eyes on the forest around us. After about fifteen minutes of fear-induced paranoia, I nearly fell out of my seat as I watched a flashlight and lantern slowly approach our campsite. I greeted the stranger with a general, how's it going, before he was even lit up by our fire. He responded quickly but flatly by asking if we could do him a favor.

"'That depends on the favor,' my buddy and I said in unison, feeling obviously tense and clutching our weapons close to us. The stranger proceeded to ask if he could hang out for a second by the fire. Given that there were two of us and one of him, plus a myriad of weapons we had gathered around us at our camp within arm's reach, we decided to agree and let him hang out. After a moment of awkward silence, I asked him what the hell was going on. He proceeded to tell me, and my buddy, that he was camping down the trail with his buddy, and he said that his buddy snapped and tried to kill him.

Wait, what? I asked before I even finished processing everything in my head. Is that the screaming that we heard earlier? The man slowly nodded, blankly staring into the fire, and continued. We were just hanging out, man. We came up earlier today, and my buddy just freaked out. He started screaming and screaming and just wouldn't stop. Then he attacked me. He lunged at me.

My friend and I kept quiet as we waited for him to carry on. I told him to just back off and chill, you know. Well, he kept coming after me, and it started getting pretty violent. I was sure that he was going to kill me, so I grabbed my car keys and my lights, and I ran. I don't know what to do, man, he just chased me when I ran. I don't know what to do. Neither of us have any firearms or anything, but he does have a hatchet.

My friend and I looked at each other for a second, completely astonished. Then something horrible dawned on me. Wait, he chased you? I asked. Like he's on his way here, right now? The man slowly nodded in response and, right on cue as if some terrible horror movie came to life. We heard screaming from maybe 30 to 40 feet from our camp.

It was coming from the main trail. The screaming voice said, I just want your fucking balance, Gary. I want your balance. Gary, where are you? I had never in my life heard a man scream like he was screaming. I've never heard anything like it in my life. It was brutal, guttural screaming that was shrill to the ears yet deep in pitch, the sound of somebody gone completely mad, and the way that he said the stranger's name would switch

erratically from long and sing-songy to short, guttural punches of sound. We instantly killed our lights, became silent, and listened. By some miracle, the madman didn't notice our camp and continued to walk down the trail, screaming the entire way. We ended up chatting with Gary for hours. We listened as the screaming got further and further away. Come to find out, they had just taken four and a half to five grams of magic mushrooms each and his buddy was fine for the first three hours, but then he suddenly snapped.

It seemed as though Gary's friend thought that he could kill Gary and steal his good trip. We heard the screams get further and further away as they continued over the next two hours. By this point it was 11 PM. The moon had fully risen and it was below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The guy looking for Gary had no jacket or flashlight, according to Jerry. Now my buddy and I were way too drunk to drive away from our campsite to get cell service, as it was snowy and icy and required 2-3 miles of highway driving after getting off of the trail.

Gary was still lightly feeling the effects of the weed and mushrooms that he had consumed, so he couldn't drive either. We had to decide to let the guy wander, hoping that he'd sober up and find his way back. And he did. He eventually found his way right to our campsite. We suddenly heard more yelling after about an hour of hearing nothing. Finally, about 40 feet from the campsite, we heard, hey, help, please help me, I'm lost. We saw a man approaching our camp from the woods.

My friend and I told Gary to hide just in case, and we greeted the man with my 12 gauge shotgun and my buddy carrying his AK-47 style rifle. We grabbed our flashlights, put them on the brightest setting, and shined them right at him. He was about 6'3 and approximately 300 pounds. We talked to him, decided that he was calm enough to walk with, and helped him get back to his camp. He seemed remorseful.

He said that he had blacked out and didn't remember anything that happened, but he knew that he had some sort of falling out with his friend Gary. We escorted him back to his camp down the trail and settled him in, then returned to our camp and told Gary that if anything else happened, we would help him out. It ended up being a happy ending. We made friends with Gary, and I got his phone number to make sure that he got back into town safely the next day. He safely returned to his wife and kid, who were actually planning a camping trip to take

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awareness. I was walking back to my dorm from class in the early evening. I was speed walking, actually, since I had another class at night and wanted to get back to my dorm to relax beforehand. I had my earbuds in, listening to music, and I passed a very tall, broadly built guy on the sidewalk as I was coming up to my dorm. I only took notice of him for a second because he was walking rather slowly and taking up the middle of the sidewalk.

I had to step off of the sidewalk and into the grass to get around him, but I don't think that I did this rudely. Seeing him was such a small blip in my day that I probably would have forgotten about him entirely if the following events didn't occur. After sidestepping this guy I crossed the street. I walked up to my hall's entrance and swiped my key. The resident advisors warned us dorm occupants not to allow other people to tailgate as we entered.

Tailgating means letting someone follow you through the door into the building after swiping your card. Sometimes the person following you might not have authorization to enter the building, which isn't ideal. But no one followed this rule, and I always had a tough time with closing the door on someone right behind me,

since I didn't want to seem rude. As I opened the door, I noticed the guy I had just passed was close enough to me to grab the door and let himself in. I allowed this to happen and genuinely thought nothing of it, since that was something that I and many others in the building always did. I lived on the fifth floor, which was a girls-only floor. The genders were separated by floors, so floor 4 and floor 6 would be the two men's floors closest to mine.

After we walked into the building, this guy and I got in the elevator with a few other people. I pressed the button for the fifth floor, and I noticed he hadn't pressed a number. I still figured this was fine, maybe he was getting off on a floor before mine, and someone else in the elevator already pressed the button for his floor. We stopped at the second floor, and a couple got off of the elevator, but he stayed on. We stopped again at the fourth floor, and the only other person besides us in the elevator left.

Then we were alone. That's when I started to feel weird. He wasn't standing too close or anything, but he seemed to be looking anywhere except in my direction or at me as we ascended to the fifth floor. except in my direction or at me as we ascended to the fifth floor. I did think it was odd, but I still figured it could be explained away as a mere coincidence. We then stopped at my floor and I stepped off first, relieved to leave the confines of this elevator and continue on my way.

Now my building was Y-shaped. Upon leaving the elevator, there was the option to go left or right down two separate wings. I went left as my dorm was in just about the corner of the left wing. That's when I noticed that he stepped off the elevator as well and was now following me. I even picked up my pace and he kept up with me. He wasn't exactly hurrying, but it felt like he wasn't walking with a destination in mind. He could have easily passed me if he wanted to, but he remained steady, at a slight distance

behind me. I knew I was being followed. I started to panic when I reached my door, especially since I realized how empty my floor was at that exact moment. I could tell that he was going to officially catch right up to me just as I opened my door so I decided it would be better to stay in a public space in case I needed to scream for help. I also had the option to run further down the hall and go down the stairs at the end

of the wing. If I opened my dorm, it would be too easy for him to overpower me, come right in, and lock the door. I always kept my keys in my pocket, but as he approached, I swung my backpack off my back so that I could leave it if I needed to run. I then fumbled around inside as if I were searching for my keys. I don't know why I was trying to act cool as if I wasn't scared. I probably did this just because I still thought there was a possibility he might

pass me and actually be visiting someone who lived further down the hall. That's when he stopped just two yards away from me. He stood there for a moment, and I ignored him, hand fumbling uselessly around the inside of my backpack. I didn't look up. He then turned and walked back down the way that he came, and I heard the elevator door open. This finally made me feel safe enough to open my dorm door without fear that he

might come charging back down the hallway, so I hurriedly got inside and locked the door. I immediately called my mother, just in case. I just needed to feel not totally alone since my roommate wasn't home. I gradually calmed down and I waited until my roommate returned. I skipped my next class since I didn't want to walk in the dark. Initially I had felt good about my quick thinking, but then I realized one really bad important detail. I should have kept walking.

I shouldn't have stopped at my door, because now he knew which dorm was mine. Thankfully I haven't seen him since, but to the stranger who inexplicably followed me from the street to my dorm when I was a freshman, let's not meet. This happened when I was going to university. I was working the late shift at the time to pay for university and generally got home at around midnight. I was sharing the house with my mom. I parked my car in a garage that had remote operated entry.

From the garage, it's possible to go straight into the house through a door that connects the garage with the basement. I ordinarily did this every day except for Thursday, which was when I would go around the house to pull our trash cans up to the street and then enter through the main door. Our house was surrounded by tall bushes, so you couldn't see much of the street, and we were living in a small rural village where we knew all of our neighbors very well. On one Thursday night, I was returning home from my shift.

When I drove onto our street, I noticed an unfamiliar car with its headlights on. Since I know my neighborhood so well, I was confused about the car. I was especially confused by it since I couldn't see the license plate or the person sitting in the car clearly, their lights were blinding me. I proceeded to the house, opened the gate and the garage door with my remote, and drove inside. From that point, I could only see the street through the gate since the bushes were so high on both sides.

Ordinarily, I would have walked outside to grab the trash can right after pulling into the garage, but that day I had a long voice message from a friend, so I stayed in my car to listen to it. Seven minutes into the message, I lifted my gaze to look into my rear-view mirror and I saw a man standing in my driveway behind my car. He wasn't moving at all. He just stood perfectly still and watched me. I panicked and locked my car doors right away.

Then I grabbed the remote and hit the button to close the extremely slow garage door. I sat there for a moment. I was too scared to leave the car, since I wasn't sure if he would be able to enter the garage before the door was all the way down. I also had to call my mother because I know the door leading into the basement was locked since I had planned to use the main door. She later told me that she immediately went to the window. She has an overview of the street from there, but she couldn't see the man or the car from the window that she looked out of.

I told myself it was probably a neighbor who didn't realize what they were doing. I figured that had to be it, and I just didn't recognize who it was in the dark. But I asked around later on, and nobody owned up to it. As I asked around, I was told that the unfamiliar car I initially saw when I pulled into my street had been slowly driving around the neighborhood for the past few days. My mom thinks that it was somebody who wanted to catch me off guard and force me to let him into the house to rob us. She thought that this person was waiting behind our tall bushes and got impatient or confused

when I didn't exit the car right away. Thankfully, nothing like this has happened again, and I'm grateful for that, since it's really unsettling to see an unknown person unexpectedly standing in your driveway. Especially after midnight. I can't believe how expensive it is to enjoy a decent home-cooked meal nowadays. I can't even go to the grocery store without getting sticker shock. My recent trip cost nearly double what it was just a few years ago. And that's why I'm glad I can rely on EveryPlate. EveryPlate delivers dependable, affordable, and delicious recipes right to your door.

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That's code MEET299 at everyplate.com slash podcast. Now back to the show. I traveled to Seoul for a week by myself back in 2018. I was still completing my studies at that time and I was doing a semester abroad in Kyoto. Seoul is expensive, so I decided to book a room in a hostel. It was supposed to be a mixed dorm for six people. Upon arrival, I found out that I was going to be sharing a room with five other men who were already staying at the hostel.

During this time in my life, I was still quite naive, so I didn't think much of it. Besides, the hostel was already fully booked. There was one guy from Japan, one from Korea, two guys from China, and a German guy in my room. The German guy gave me weird vibes from the beginning, especially by the way that he stared at me, but I brushed it off since I knew that I would be out and about all day. Every day he would ask if I wanted to hang out and go see the sights together, which I prefer to do on my own,

so I always came up with an excuse. One time I accepted his invitation to explore Gangnam. It was just awkward. We had very little to speak about outside of making small talk. When I would get ready in the morning, as in apply makeup and do my hair, he would just stand there and watch, saying nothing. I found this to be annoying, so I asked him if he had anywhere else to be several times, but he just shrugged.

One time we ran into each other at a cafe in the city center, which I found strange because what are the odds? I was weirded out by him for the entire week but I did my best to avoid him. The other guys in my dorm room were very nice though. We even went out for dinner one night. On my very last day, I woke up earlier than I needed to, so I drifted back to sleep. The next time I woke up, the German guy was sitting by my bedside and caressing my arm and shoulder.

I felt so disgusted that I immediately sat straight up and asked him, What are you doing? I always thought of myself as someone who would scream and curse at someone in a situation like that, but I was completely dazed and shocked. He then went on to confess his love for me, how he wanted to meet up when we got back home. I'm from Germany as well, by the way. He then told me how special I was.

When I pointed out that he couldn't possibly be in love with me since it had only been a week, he insisted he just knew it and that he wanted to show me his affection. This made me nauseous. Of course, he was leaving the same morning I was and offered to go to the airport together. I insisted on taking the later bus, and he, thankfully, left it at that. I couldn't wait for him to just go and leave me alone. I'm glad that I didn't run into him at the airport since, at some point, I burst into tears because it had been so exhausting warding off his advances all week.

I was upset that, even after gently telling him I wasn't interested, he still fucking touched me while I was sleeping. I don't even know how I managed to remain so calm and polite to him, but honestly, women are conditioned to act that way, because who knows what would happen if we ever opted for a more aggressive approach. In hindsight, I think at the first inkling of discomfort, I should have pressed the hostile to let me switch rooms, but I figured I never had good enough defense until that very last morning.

I haven't doubted my instincts since, when I was 22. I went to the local coin-op laundromat. I went there late, at around 10pm, since I had been studying. The laundromat is pretty small, closer to the edge of the beach town I live in. The town is pretty well known for having drifters and people experiencing homelessness, but people are friendly, and even though there is an excessive drug use problem, I've never really felt scared. Everything was going fine until I moved my laundry from a washer to a dryer.

I was listening to music on my headphones but it was rather quiet. Suddenly, I'd just got the feeling that someone was watching me. I can't really explain it. I just felt a sudden presence. I turned around and there was a man standing just a few feet from me. He had pink hair and he was wearing a full face mask, like a ski mask, along with the hoodie, gloves, and sunglasses, even though it was dark outside. The gloves and sunglasses are what made me feel particularly uncomfortable. I assumed maybe he was a drifter or just high on something, but I didn't want to be rude.

Seeing him so unexpectedly put me on edge, so I tried to laugh it off, and I told him he surprised me. He immediately started talking, but a lot of it was disjointed, and it didn't make any sense. He was talking about coming up from Brazil to bring his brother money to get a classic car. None of it made sense, but he would ask me questions and wait for me to respond, so I tried to go along with it.

I still thought he was just high or something, but he was standing between me and the only door leading out, which gave me this gut feeling that he was blocking the door on purpose as he was talking with me. As he inched closer to me while talking, that gut feeling got stronger. I knew that logically something was off, but mostly I just had the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I needed to leave and keep him talking until I could. I started to edge to the side, but he stayed in front of me, only intensifying my gut feeling. So I started to grip my keys in the attack position just in case.

He talked more and then backed off a little as he took his backpack off, which was a child's unicorn backpack. He put it down on a nearby dryer. I looked over at the door just for a second and when I looked back at him, he was pulling something out but I couldn't see it. He quickly put whatever it was behind him. While I never caught a glimpse of what he was hiding, I did see the other items in the backpack.

And there was duct tape. Instantly it was like an alarm went off. There was no more worrying about being rude, and no more second-guessing myself in thinking that he was just off but harmless. It was like this cold, numb dread was washing over me. I almost felt calm, like I knew the next steps. I knew I had to do something. Time seemed to move in slow motion, and he turned back toward me and took a step forward

without saying anything. I gripped my keys as tightly as possible and tried to mentally prepare to fight. I remember being afraid that I would move too slowly or be too weak, like in a nightmare. But then all of a sudden, the door to the laundromat swung open and a woman walked in. She barely even looked at either of us as she went to get her laundry. It was like a scene in a movie when a moment of intensity gets interrupted by something innocuous and suddenly it's over. With that, he turned around, picked up his unicorn bag, and left.

I was so scared, I stayed put for a minute. I waited until I could get my laundry and then I went home. I didn't report it to anyone. I never knew what to say since there wasn't a chance for anything to actually happen. But when I think about it, I think the scariest thing is that he left as soon as someone else walked in. If he was just crazy, that wouldn't have mattered. I think a stranger's laundromat timer saved me from something terrible.

I don't go to the laundromat anymore. I just decided to join a laundry service. The extra cost is worth never having to go back. So to the man with the pink hair and the unicorn backpack, let's not meet again. My story begins with a nightmare. I'll start by describing the nightmare first. It was very short but my brain has always registered it as a very clear memory, just due to how scary it was.

I was no older than six, and my twin brother and I had a bunk bed in a room at the furthest end of the house that we grew up in. In the nightmare, I was in my bed, looking out the window at the red sky. It was the kind of red sky that is generally seen in early dawn hours before sunrise. The next thing I remember in this nightmare is that a man with vivid blue-colored eyes and a bald head appeared at the window and stared right at me. The nightmare ended there, but I've never been able to forget just how much I screamed about it.

I don't know where my brother was at the time when I woke up screaming. The only thing I can remember from when I woke up was having my mom come into my room and get me to take me to her room down the hall to calm me down. I only remember that detail so well because I wondered where my dad was at the time. Fast forward to this past May and my father was in the ICU at the hospital in the country he lives in, Colombia. My twin brother and our oldest sister were staying in a hotel about a five-minute walk away from the hospital.

One night, after a long day of being there for our dad and the extended family, my siblings and I returned to the hotel and sat together to have a couple of beers and tried to relax. We started discussing things and trying to unwind. Somehow, the discussion of nightmares and dreams came up, and I brought up the above story. Without missing a beat, my sister explained that my nightmare had really happened. There was a bald man with blue eyes that looked through my window. She remembers the whole thing.

My sister was five years older than me and my brother, so this would make her around ten or eleven years old when this happened. Her bedroom was adjacent to the bedroom my brother and I shared. Her room faced our front lawn and the street, while our room faced the neighbor's house and their driveway as well as the very low fence between our two houses. While she didn't get into too much detail about the days before this happened, she said that she had been followed by this bald man in a truck as she rode her bike home from school a couple of times.

At this time, she was a latchkey kid since my brother and I had to go to a special school about 45 minutes away from our hometown for a speech impediment that many twins have. My mom had to pick us up rather than be home for my sister after school, but she was never home alone for more than an hour. That afternoon and the evening were pretty normal, as she remembers it. My dad came home from one of his jobs. He worked as a part-time cop and worked in a local hardware store. We all had dinner, did homework, played, and did the usual family things before bed.

That night, at around 1 a.m., this bald-headed man had parked down the street at a small industrial park and walked up to our house. He then tried to get in through my sister's window which woke her up. She screamed when she saw the man nearly opening the window since it wasn't locked. My dad stormed in and tried to shove the guy out and tried to hit him with the nightstick that he had, which caused this guy to run off only for a short time. He came back moments later and

tried to get into the window of my room instead. He tried opening the window, but it was locked. My sister said that after I screamed, my mom went into my room to get me and my brother while my dad tried to go after the man. My dad ran out the front door to chase him, but to no avail, as the guy hauled ass out of there through the backyard. The way our backyard was situated had it backed up right against a small rail yard, that is part of the aforementioned small industrial park

where the guy parked. Between our small neighborhood and that rail yard was a bunch of very dense trees that always made the backyard very dark. My dad didn't want to go get attacked or otherwise blindsided by the man, so he went back inside our house and called the police. He also called our elderly neighbors to make sure that they were okay while my mom looked after us kids.

That's all my sister could remember from that night. Neither of us could recall anything else that happened after that, so the story just kind of stops right there. My father, sadly, has since passed, so we aren't able to ask him, and asking our mom never dawned on me and my siblings until fairly recently. So, I may ask her about it soon. But for now, to the bald-headed creep from the nightmare who was actually 100% real,

I don't know what you had planned for my family. But let's not meet. I'm a 26-year-old female and this happened about a month and a half ago when my 36-year-old boyfriend and I decided to go to the store to get oil. We were looking for a very specific oil, so we had to make a 45-minute trek from our neighborhood out to a bad part of the city. This bad part has the only European store that has the actual stuff that I grew up using.

My family and I are from Ukraine, but we live in the US, and it's difficult to find authentic places that have exactly what we had. This specific store is the only place I've ever been able to find that not only has the oil but also has the exact brand that I grew up with. We were driving on a three-lane road. We needed to get into one of those middle lanes where you could make a turn. We got into our left turn lane, and a black car blitzed from the far right lane through

the middle lane to cut us off at the left lane. My brother and I were confused by this maneuver, especially since after cutting us off, they came to a complete stop at the green light. My boyfriend gently honked in a polite way. He didn't lay on the horn or anything like that, but he did honk twice just in case the driver was distracted or on their phone since the light was green. They went forward and we went through the light as well.

After our turn, we went into the parking lot directly to our right to get to the store we were going to. The car that had cut us off was in the far left lane, and after we turned, they hastily crossed back over to the right, through two lanes, and drove over the sidewalk to get into the parking lot we just went into. They got behind us and nearly rode our bumper, pressing their horn the entire time. My boyfriend decided to stop a few feet further from the store instead of parking right in front of it.

My boyfriend had his camera that records what is going on in the front and rear of his vehicle, and at that point I realized his car camera wasn't on. Usually it starts recording when it feels motion, so I gave it a tap, but it didn't turn on, which meant that it was somehow disconnected. As he was trying to get the camera plugged back in, the car pulled up next to us and I saw three guys who appeared to be 18 to 20 years old. They rolled down their window and I saw the driver reach for something. I was freaking out, so I screamed,

Just drive! Go! Just go! So my boyfriend slammed on the gas pedal, and we drove off. The black car followed. My boyfriend suddenly began doing donuts in the parking lot to try and get their car to back off while I was screaming, call the police, we need to call the police. I managed to dial 911 as he did one last donut

before impulsively pulling out of the parking lot. The car was still chasing us when I finally got through to the dispatcher. The dispatcher asked where we were and I totally blanked and stuttered that we were being chased. Thankfully, my boyfriend yelled the name of the road we were about to pass. He worked for Uber for seven years, and he knows every street name by heart, which came in handy since the dispatcher then started directing us to the closest police station. We stayed on the line with the dispatcher the entire time, as those guys continued coming after us.

Finally, when we were about three to four blocks away from the police station, they realized where we were going and swerved into a random road on our left. We were disconnected from the dispatcher, but they called me right back and stayed on the phone with us as we pulled into the station. We explained what happened to the officer at the station and he was really nice. He offered to escort us back to the store in case the guys went back there. He followed us there and we showed him the tire marks that were left over from the chase. As he did the paperwork for our police report, we grabbed the oil that I needed.

After that, we cut our day short, thanked the officer, and went home. My boyfriend said that he was amazed at how quickly I made all the right decisions in such a high-pressure situation. He was even surprised that I thought to call the police, since he's aware I have a history of being assaulted by two on-duty police officers. Ever since that happened to me, I've been too terrified to call or speak to any officer. But this situation was just too terrifying, and I knew I needed to prioritize our safety. This was so stressful and scary.

It made my chest hurt. But I'm also happy that we stayed safe. As I've been sharing this story with our friends, my boyfriend keeps joking. All of that just for some damn sunflower seed oil. He wants us to keep that bottle and keep refilling it as a memento of dealing with that just to get one thing. I genuinely hope that I never run into those three guys again. Let's Never Meet.

Tickets are still available for the Let's Not Meet live tour. I'll be in Salt Lake City, Utah on September 19th, Seattle, Washington on October 9th, Portland, Oregon on October 30th, Houston, Texas on November 9th, and Dallas, Texas on November 10th. You can get tickets at let'snotmeetpodcast.com slash tour or follow the links in the show notes. I'll see you there. Remember the early days of the internet? As a refresher, this was when AOL software upgrades arrived in the mail on a CD-ROM. Family members shouted across the house at one another if an incoming call on the landline interrupted the painstaking 10 minutes that it took to get from the sign-in screen to hearing, you've got mail.

And let's just be honest, the emails we were receiving back then were mostly multicolored chain-letter emails. Especially the ones that included the urban legend about a serial killer camping out in a young girl's shower and killing her guard dog. These seem silly in hindsight, but in real time, I remember truly pondering the threat against my luck for at least seven years if I didn't abide by the message's command to forward it to at least seven friends.

Social media was also in its infancy back then. Zanga was the go-to haven for teens and tweens to vent their angst while informing the world that they were currently listening to Screaming Infidelities by Dashboard Confessional, and of course, everyone was friends with Tom on MySpace. In those days, finding everything there was to know about a person online, something anyone can do today with just a few keystrokes and a credit card, was a lot harder to do. But not for Cory. I was 16 years old.

At the time, ambiguous and exotic usernames like Pina Colada 33 or Brunette Baby 87 were all the rage. As naive as we early screen name pioneers were, at least the anonymity was smart. AOL Instant Messenger didn't exist as a standalone messenger service just yet, so it was MSN Messenger or Bust. But if you had a true AOL account like I did, you were set up with all you needed to discover this new hyper-connected free-for-all world of the early 2000s worldwide web. First, you had your own email inbox.

You also had a whole page to create a personal profile, and on top of that, you had access to chat rooms on just about any topic or hobby that you could possibly imagine. It was exhilarating. Until it was terrifying. One afternoon, I jumped into one of these chat rooms. A random chat participant asked ASL, to which I replied, 16 Female Boston. I then sat and watched the exchange between two total strangers scrolling up my screen

for several minutes hoping to find my opportunity to finally chime in and chat some more. Ultimately, I got bored and decided to leave the chat without typing another word. As I was deciding what to do on AOL next, I heard that all-too-familiar bleep, and an instant message appeared on my screen. You didn't say anything after you answered ASL. The message read, Why? Who is this? I responded, confused by the username. I didn't recognize it. I'm Cory, he responded. I'm 16, in the eighth grade, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. How about you?

16 and in eighth grade? Yikes. And yet I was intrigued. So did you get held back twice or what? I teased. The conversation began and we struck up a brief online friendship that afternoon. He shared a photo of himself with me. He had a freckled face and brown hair.

Nothing that I would rate above a five on hot or not. Yet despite the friendliness, I refused to tell him where I was from or anything personal about me beyond my first name and age. I knew little about the dangers of the internet, but I wasn't dumb either. The username was a fruity drink and some numbers which was safe enough, I figured. For context I should mention that I did have one of those AOL user profiles. Its standard features allowed you to include a profile picture and fill out a questionnaire with fun facts about yourself.

The photo I uploaded was of me with several friends with no indication which one was me. A few days later, Corey messaged me out of the blue. You're beautiful, he said. What? I thought to myself as I hesitated to respond. Burnets with green eyes, man, he continued. Somehow despite my photo containing three other friends, he accurately identified me. I would love to see you sometime, he concluded.

I felt my skin prick as goosebumps started to form. I politely told him something to the effect of that not being possible and quickly logged off. The following week on Friday, I was sleeping over at my best friend's house. I was logged into my account in the background as we thirstily roused cute guys on a hot or not. Then suddenly, there was a bleep. Who is messaging you?

My friend asked. I knew who it was. It was Cory. Hey, I think I figured it out. You live in Houston. Your parents' names are James and Sarah Miller. You live at 1655 South Grand." He said all of this with information that was accurate for me.

My parents' names, my city, and address are all made up here, but I wanted to give you an example of how in-depth that he went with reciting my information to me. You know that feeling that you get when you're on a rollercoaster, and during a sharp drop your heart jumps into your throat? That's exactly how I felt at that moment. Fortunately, we managed to find that AOL did in fact have a block user feature, so I figured after a few clicks that would be it. I could say so long to that creepy 16-year-old middle schooler with scarily good online sleuthing

skills. But the block didn't last long. The next day, a scream named similar to Cory's messaged me. I quickly blocked it, but this happened five more times, so I finally went dark for a while. Sure, I missed the thrill of seeing the yellow envelope appear in my virtual mailbox, but spending some time offline was better than the possibility of being harassed by Cory. A few weeks later when I got home from school, right when I walked through the door, I found out I had a phone call.

My sister was a baby at the time, fourteen years my junior. So she had a nanny who stayed with her during the day while my parents were at work. It's for you, my sister's nanny said, with a quizzical look on her face. Who is it? I asked. I don't really know, she replied. Some boy with a twang in his voice, sounded like he was from East Texas or Louisiana.

God, I thought to myself before muttering, hello? Into the phone. Hey, pretty thing, it's Cory. Hey, so my friends and I are all into the show Jackass. We're thinking of making a trip over to Houston and doing some pranks around there next week. How hilarious would it be if we surprised you at your front door? I choked out a nervous laugh. I mumbled an excuse about having a quiz to study for and quickly hung up.

For the next few weeks, I slept with a knife under my mattress. I was terrified that I would wake up to a strange boy from Lake Charles on the balcony outside my window. I was astounded. How did he get my phone number? But just as quickly as he seemed to invade my sense of security, he essentially disappeared. There were no more instant messages, no unexpected calls to my home, and two months passed. It felt glorious and safe. So the knife finally went back to its respected kitchen drawer, until the phone rang during

the first week of summer break. I picked up the phone and was greeted with a curt but twangier, Hi. Who is this? I demanded. It's me, Cory. He responded. To be clear, this wasn't the same voice I had heard two months prior.

That voice was dripping in southern syrup. It was sketchy and full of mischief. The tone of this new voice was different. It was cold. It was older. I knew I was speaking with a full-grown man. I'm sorry I haven't been able to talk to you, he hurriedly blurted out. I feel terrible, but the police came to my house.

They took my computers away from me. I can't say why, but don't worry. I'll come to Houston very soon. I didn't even dignify that with a response. I hung up on him with a very satisfying click that is now lost as many of us no longer have landlines. That was the day I decided to retire that fruity drink-inspired username. I deleted that account entirely and created a new one.

I embarrassingly told my parents I had made a huge mistake, despite having shared nothing that could easily have revealed my personal identity. Even if I had, the threat back then wasn't what it is now. This was nearly 25 years ago. People simply didn't have the online presence that they do today. As a teenager with no social media yet, I was virtually a ghost. But still, I was convinced I was somehow culpable for this stranger, this man, a predator who clearly had advanced knowledge of computers and the internet.

He singled me out and made it his mission to learn everything about me through whatever means possible. He was determined to get to me. I'm only grateful that even at 15 I knew better than to trust this freckle-faced kid from an online chatroom pretending to have fully benign intentions. Over two decades later, I still wonder where Cory ended up. Hopefully behind bars. Stick around after the music to hear your extended version of this week's episode if you're a patron and if you'd like to sign up and get instant access head over to patreon.com

forward slash let's not meet podcast to support the show. You'll get access to the extensions at the ends of all of our episodes with bonus stories you won't hear anywhere else. And all our episodes are ad free. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. This week you have heard my encounter with a would be axeer by Hundmeister420, The Fifth Floor by 8BitFarmer, Random Person in My Driveway by SouthernBuilder121, The Hostel Creep in Seoul by SimperEdom96, No More Laundermats for Me by CannibalBirdies, My Earliest Memory of A Nightmare Turned Out to be Real by Best Massage Agent.

Barely Escaped a Group of Guys in a Car by Flowerlily97 and finally Early 2000s Internet Predator by KF1746. 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 not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. If you got a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com to hear it on the show. Make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, Cryptic Encounters, and the old time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get

your podcasts. Finally, don't miss the upcoming show. So I've got a show this week on September 19 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then I'll be in Seattle, Washington on October 9. October 30. I'll be in Portland, Oregon, November 9 in Houston, Texas, and finally, November 10 in Dallas, Texas. You can get tickets at let's not meet podcast.com slash tour or simply follow the link in the show notes. I'll see you all next week. Everybody stay safe. In 2019 I was diagnosed for the second time with an...