Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 13x15: Highway Hunting Grounds

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Stories in this episode:  The Time I was Almost Kidnapped | ssanford0704 (0:40) Followed Home From Jail | Silent_Tea_9788 (9:16)  Post-Disco Psychos Who Attacked Me | BrilliantBex1992 (12:03)  A Young Woman Tried to Lure Me Into Her Car Late at Night | will_droid (20:57)  We Were Followed | DieMrCupCake2 (25:24)  Highway Hunting Grounds | VorUKR (32:10)  I Think I Was Almost Murdered With My Then-Boyfriend | SillyOldBears (37:45)  I was Attacked But I Don’t Remember Anything About it | MorbidFnLydia (42:03)  Extended Patreon Content:  I'll Never Use Dating Apps Again | Mochinni431 I Was The Monster | Rylan The Knife-Brandishing Man at My Bus Stop | Allison Creepy Contacts Guy and A Single Kitchen Chair | Connor  Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Upcoming LNM Live Tour Dates: 10/09/24 - Seattle, WA @ The Triple Door: GET YOUR TICKETS 10/23/24 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall: GET YOUR TICKETS (NEW DATE) 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].  This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/notmeet today to get 10% off your first month. Head to Smalls.com/MEET and use promo code MEET at checkout for 50% off your first order PLUS free shipping!  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.

O-O-O-O'Reilly! Need a little help? O'Reilly Auto Parts can help. Need advice? We've got advice. No matter what you need, we have thousands of professional parts people doing their part to make sure you have it. Exceptional customer service. Just one part that makes O'Reilly stand apart. The professional parts people.

O-O-O-O'Reilly, auto parts. 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 in high school, I worked at a family-owned plant nursery and garden store. I was a cashier there, and when this happened, I had been working for about two and a half years. It's important to note that while I went to high school,

I also attended a vocational school. The students enrolled in this vocational school came from high schools all over the county, so it wasn't uncommon to have friends or to know people from a few towns over. The place where I worked was the perfect spot for a teenager to get a job. It was a good mix of adult and teen employees, and

it was a fantastic place to work. During the summer, one year, a boy started working there. We'll call him Connor. I recognized Connor from the vocational school we both attended. We got a bit friendly at work, but I never really considered him a personal friend. He was a co-worker and acquaintance. Honestly, I always had an off feeling about him. His mannerisms and actions made me uncomfortable, but I had no reason to be mean to him or dislike

him since he never really outright gave me a reason to. It's hard to explain. It was just a gut feeling of some kind. Before I go any further, I should provide a bit more context about my job. To get to and from work, I took the bus or got a ride from my dad. The bus stop was a 15-minute walk from my job, and the ride included a transfer at some point. If the buses were on time, it was a 25-minute commute, but with rush hour and schedules varying at times, it could take 45 minutes or more.

I mainly used the bus during the week, but my dad would drive me to and from work on the weekends. After a few weeks, and after having more interactions with Connor, I started to get the feeling that he liked me. I started picking up on this when I noticed he would start making frequent passes by my register, no matter which one I was on. There were multiple throughout the store. He would pass by frequently and even occasionally stop to chat for a minute. I always made sure to maintain a friendly co-worker vibe with him,

and I never did or said anything that may have suggested otherwise. One day, he asked me if I wanted a ride home. I found it odd because I didn't think he had a car, as I always saw him skateboarding to work. I just declined and we went about our day. The next weekend he asked again and I declined for a second time. I asked him if he got a car and he said that he didn't but mentioned that he could borrow a car from his parents to drive me home. I told him that wasn't necessary since it was the weekend and I had already arranged to have my dad come and pick me home. I told him that wasn't necessary, since it was the weekend, and I had already arranged to have my dad come and pick me up.

This exchange happened five or six more times during our shift. I politely declined his offer the first few times, but after the third time, it started to creep me out, especially since I thought that I was making it pretty clear I was not interested in spending any more time with him. When my dad brought me to work the following weekend, he let me know that he wasn't going to be able to pick me up after my shift. I'm not sure why this changed, but I'm sure that he had something planned with his girlfriend or something like that.

In any case, I was feeling pretty bummed about having to walk and take the bus since, if I remember correctly, it was supposed to thunderstorm all day. Connor came up to me as I was opening my register and said, Hey, I finally got my own car. I was happy for him, as our conversations at work in recent weeks were about his parents possibly taking him to go car shopping. As we talked about it, I congratulated him, and he asked if I wanted a ride that day. I was honestly a bit fed up that he asked after I said no to him so many times the previous weekend.

But I thought, what the hell? Maybe if I say yes and I let him drive me just this once, he'll stop asking." So I agreed. The day went on and eventually lunchtime rolled around. I took my break and went to eat in the break room. When my break was almost over, another employee came to the break room and started talking about how there were a couple of cop cars in the parking lot with their lights on. Two officers then went into the admin office.

The rest of this story is what I pieced together from what others told me. The local police made the occasional drive-bys at my place of employment. The owners had some family friends who were officers and they looked out for them. On this particular day, one of the cops who who was a family friend, did a drive-by and noticed a car in the parking lot that had been reported stolen that morning. So he pulled over to investigate. He called it in, and when another officer arrived

at the scene, they spotted a backpack. The backpack was poorly hidden behind a tree. After they did some investigating, they went into the admin office. The police officers told the owners what they found and Connor was called in to speak with them. As it turns out, Connor had stolen his uncle's car that morning. The backpack that was found had his ID in it along with rope, duct tape, and a switchblade. When he was called into the office, his uncle and parents were called as well.

His uncle said that he didn't want to press charges, which is why Connor didn't have to leave with the police. Our boss then asked Connor to leave for the day and he did. I never found out if he was questioned about the contents of the backpack. If he was, I don't know what his answers were or what the reasoning was for having those things. Nobody knew that he was going to give me a ride home that day. I hadn't told anyone.

It wasn't until after all of this went down that I told my mom. Connor didn't continue working there much longer after that. The whole thing creeped me out so badly that I made it a point not to run into him at vocational school. And I remember using humor as a coping mechanism about the whole ordeal. Oftentimes my mom and I would joke around about

the guy who was going to kidnap me. I only remembered this when I was scrolling through Facebook years ago. I happened to come across an in memoriam post that was shared. I recognized the face of the person in the photo, but couldn't place where I knew the person from. When I clicked on the profile, I suddenly realized where I knew this face from. It was Connor.

I had completely forgotten about him. His name that we worked together, what happened, and by this time it had been eight years. It was a crazy flashback and This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It wasn't until I hit my mid-30s that I really started to feel comfortable taking off my mask and being the real me. Just completely unapologetic and unashamed of my true self. I only wish I would have learned this sooner in life. Therapy helped me learn to accept all of the little parts of myself that I was scared to get in touch with.

I was finally able to take off my mask. After all, masks should be for Halloween fun, not for our emotions. Therapy worked for me, and it can work for you. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash not meet today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash not meet. Now back to the show. This happened several years ago when I was working in a downtown jail in a large city as a counselor. I worked a weird late shift which ended at 2am. Needless to say, it was generally dark when I got off of work. This meant that most of the people on the roads were people who had just been out at the bars downtown until closing time. At this job, I interacted with inmates who

were at various levels of stable and sober. Sometimes, some of the inmates in custody were released at the same time I was leaving work. The garage where I parked was a couple of blocks away from the jail, but I was cautious when walking to my car and I didn't usually have issues. Anyway, on this particular night, I got to my car safely and started home, which was about a 25-minute drive. Very quickly after I pulled out of the garage, I noticed a car right behind me with its highbeams on. It followed me through downtown, onto the highway, and then exited at the same exit

as I did. I wasn't too freaked out yet, since I lived off of a major road, but then it took every turn that I did and even pulled into my apartment complex right behind me. At this point, I was very concerned. But it was a big complex, so I just headed towards my building. Even so, the car was still right behind me. I used to reverse into my parking space, but the car behind me was so close that I literally could not.

So I just pulled into my spot. The car then drove up behind me and stopped, blocking me in. I was so scared. I considered calling someone, but I knew that all of my friends were probably asleep. It was about 3 AM. And calling 911 felt like an overreaction. After thinking about my options, I finally dialed 911 on my phone, but didn't press

the call button. Then I stepped out of my car. A man got out of the other car. He was tall and wearing a vest and a fedora. He stared at me for what felt like an eternity, even though it was probably just about ten seconds, and then he got back into his car and drove away. Even though I never got an explanation for why I was being followed or blocked in my parking space, I'm grateful that nothing happened.

It was still one of the weirdest encounters of my life. This was so bizarre. This is a memory that I basically turned into my own fun anecdote to make it less scary. But reflecting on it, 11 years later, it's still scary. And I know how lucky I am for getting out of this situation. For context, I had just turned 21 and rediscovered a love for dancing, which made me start enjoying going to concerts and festivals. I attended my first festival at 20 as a volunteer

and had the most amazing time meeting people. It was an unexpected last minute decision to go to the festival that first year, but after having an amazing experience, I was hooked. It's prudent to add that I was extremely naive at that age and obviously new to that scene. The next year I had cut off the friends that I had gone to festivals with before, but still had friends of friends that went.

So even though I was going to my second year at that same festival, I was going solo and just camping with friends of friends, which I suppose was the beginning of the problem. I got going kind of late, so when I got to the festival the lines to get in were extremely long. I had packed diligently, but the service wasn't great, and I was having a hard time contacting the friends that I was camping with. By the time I found them and set up, it was dark. It was a newer but pretty large festival, and I have a really bad sense of direction. It didn't help that the festival took place in a different location than the year prior. In future years, I learned to bring battery power packs and solar lights for obnoxious decorations because of this night.

So I was unfamiliar with where I was camped, and I was unfamiliar with my surroundings in general. My ex-roommate Tom and his girlfriend Gina were the ones I was closest with in the group. Tom was bringing some special acid for me as a kind of apology for not sticking up for me in a roommate situation. We all went to the first show together, but we all got really high, really fast. I took too much, and I knew it pretty quickly. So I was aware that the night was going to go sideways.

But by the time I realized this, Tom and Gina had wandered off, leaving me completely alone. I tried to find my way to my tent, thinking that I would lie down for a bit and be okay, but I couldn't remember where it was or how to get to it. It was dark, so I was starting to panic. Being that I was high as shit and didn't know where anyone was, and I didn't know how to find my campsite or anything, being that I was high as shit and didn't know where anyone was, I didn't even know how to find my campsite or anything, being that I was high as shit and didn't know where anyone was. I didn't even know how to find my campsite or anything. I was in a crop top and jeans shorts in the high desert at nighttime and it was starting

to get cold. I wandered over to the disco area because it was the first landmark I found. It had a legit disco ball and all. I was wandering around and I saw this woman in the most unusual clothing, almost pioneer-esque. I went to talk to her. I genuinely to this day don't know if this person was real and that's how messed up I was. We ended up wandering around trying to find my campsite when we reached the RV slash car camp area. This man who was probably in his 30s was over there with glow sticks, and he asked if we wanted any and we said yeah.

She approached him first, and as soon as she had a glow bracelet on her wrist, she went skipping away. I called out to her, but she didn't stop. The man looked at me and said, are you okay? Do you think you'll be able to find your friend? Naively, I responded, I don't really know her. I can't find my campsite and she was helping me. He responded, you remind me a lot of my little sister. I wouldn't want her running around lost like this.

Look, my buddy and I are going to watch some of the shows and I wouldn't feel right leaving you. So you could stay in his RV for a few hours and sleep it off. Well, I was too high, too young, and too naive to see where this could go, so I complied and followed him. It was fine at first. The back end was like a U-Haul that stayed open. The guy I had been talking to put an album on that I had previously loved as a teenager,

tucked me in, and left. I hadn't seen his buddy yet at this point, though. Now fast forward god knows how many hours. I was tripping out to this music and was actually getting to the point of being okay when they finally returned. For the record, I didn't request the music that he put on for me, and it was on a loop. Right away the guy who told me that I looked like his sister climbed on top of me while I was half-conscious, kissing my neck with his hands on me, and then the second guy joined in.

I was still too high and out of it, but immediately told them to stop and said I wasn't in a good place for that. They got angry, and the one who offered to let me stay there was the most frightening. I saw his eyes change in that moment, and I knew that I was fucked if I couldn't get away. It didn't matter how high I was, I just knew that I had to get away from them. I don't recall formulating a plan, I just remember him saying, we helped you, now you owe us.

I then slammed my knee into his groin. I think I may have forgotten that he was on top of me at that point. The second man seemed a bit nervous about the whole thing and didn't do much, while the other one held me down with the weight of his body. After that, all I remember is running for my life into the very prickly bushes, not knowing where I was going but desperately running away. I met a couple of kind souls who calmed me down, and I was completely freaking out, crying, covered in dirt and thorns.

They gave me a safer place to stay. However, I didn't sleep at all that night. I was far too nervous to trust the kind strangers, but I also couldn't find my camp. It was only ten yards away when I discovered it the next day. So to the two men who tricked me, trapped me, and would have done something inevitably bad to me, let's not meet again. Being allergic to cats is torture for me because everyone that I know owns them, plus I love them so much.

Now I may not be able to last long at someone's house without having an allergy attack, but I'll be damned if I don't stop to pet a kitty on my nightly walks before rushing home to wash my hands. However, I'm still able to feel good about my contribution to the feline world because I've turned so many of my friends on to Smalls. Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes with preservative-free ingredients that you'd find in your fridge, and it's delivered right to your door. That's why Cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food.

Here's a review from a real Smalls customer. Jennifer M. said after every feeding, he gets this burst of energy and starts running around the house, and his fur is softer and more vibrant with higher contrast. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend anything else. Smalls was started back in 2017 by a couple of guys home cooking cat food in small batches for their friends. A few short years later, they served millions of meals to cats across the U.S. Everyone I've sent Smalls to has told me stories about how their cats'

digestive issues are gone, and they're feeling and acting so much better than before. It really seems to be making a difference. I mean, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements, and that's a big deal. So give your cat the gift of great cat food this holiday season. Now is the time to make the switch to Smalls. Head to Smalls. Head to Smalls.com slash meat and use promo code meat at checkout for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. That's the best offer you'll find.

But you have to use my code meat M E E T for 50% off your first order. One last time. That's promo code meat for 50% off your first order plus free shipping at Smalls.com slash meet. Now back to the show. This encounter happened a little over ten years ago. I'm a male and I was 26 or 27 at the time. I can't precisely remember what year this was now, but it was sometime between 2011 and 2013.

At the time, I was frequently going out with my friends to bars and parties and hanging out until pretty late most weekends. The friend's house that I usually hung out at was on a side street just off the main road where a lot of popular or crowded bars and restaurants were. You had to park on the street at his house, and during the weekends when it was busy, it was pretty common to have to park a number of blocks away. The street closer to the bars was pretty nice, but if you went a few blocks in the opposite direction it got a little sketchier, especially at night.

After a night of hanging out, I had to walk back to my car pretty late, which was parked blocks away towards the slightly sketchier area. This was during the winter, so I was wearing some kind of heavy pullover and a knit beanie. This detail is only important since you couldn't really gather much of an idea about what I looked like from a distance in the dark, aside from my general height and build. There wasn't much traffic as you got further away from the bars, and the roads were pretty dark as they were without any streetlights.

As I was walking down the sidewalk, a car started slowly creeping down the street, matching my pace as it pulled up beside me before stopping entirely. The window of the car rolled down, and the driver of the car was an attractive young woman who said that I looked cold and that I should let her give me a ride to where I was going. She seemed very friendly. I indicated that I wasn't parked very far from where we were and said that I appreciated

the offer but I was just going to keep walking. She then persisted and tried very hard to convince me to get into the car with her, since it was quote unquote so cold. There was no small talk for her to establish any information about me, or at least make sure that I wasn't a weirdo. She just asked me to get into the car, and pretty aggressively too. Based on what I was hearing and how dark it was, there was no way that she could really have had any idea

about what I actually looked like to possibly find me attractive. Even if she did, I don't know many women who would pick up a male stranger after midnight when they were in a car alone. There were about ten bars nearby, so she could have gone to any one of those if she wanted to just pick up some guy. There was no reason that I could think of that she would have to drive around offering to pick up strangers unless something else was up.

She continued to drive alongside me and offered me a ride again, which I declined as I kept walking. I picked up my pace and she eventually drove off. As soon as she was a few blocks away, I quickly got to my car and made sure that there was nobody close by lurking around. The whole scenario felt off, and it didn't make any sense to me. I asked my friend about it later, and all of the women agreed. They would never offer a ride to a random guy at night, especially at that time in

that kind of scenario, even if the guy looked like Ryan Gosling or Channing Tatum. My suspicion is that there was someone lying down in the backseat of the car, just out of view. I feel like she had someone with a weapon hiding and waiting there to rob anyone who accepted the ride. I've never been able to figure out any other logical reason as to why she would be offering rides to strange men in the middle of the night like that, it would be very unsafe for her to just pick up random strangers, especially as we were headed for a very sketchy area. There had to be something nefarious going on in that car. And ever since, I've wondered what might have happened to anyone who decided to just

hop into that car with her. This happened when my friend who I'll call Robert and I spent the day in the city a few hours from our own. We had just spent a day at an event in which we both practically participated, and we had a blast. After the event, we decided to go out and get dinner with a group of our friends, and ended up staying in the city almost until midnight before we decided that we should probably head back home.

The drive home was uneventful for most of the way. The roads in between the two cities are very rural, with only a few small towns between the two. Since it was dark, we spent most of the drive looking for animals that might run out into the road while chatting with each other. As we got fairly close to Robert's house, we saw a car parked on the opposite side of the road facing the wrong way. There was a man walking next to it. The car in front of us just so happened to be an ambulance which stopped to try and help the man.

As we drove by, I made eye contact with the man walking on the road, but we continued on our way and I didn't think anything of it. We drove for another 20 to 30 minutes before turning onto the access road to get to Robert's house. As we got farther up the road, we noticed another car had turned onto the road behind us. Robert lives in a gated community, so we had to turn onto the driveway so that we could get through the gate.

This was when we noticed that the car that had turned before also turned again and was now right behind us. As we pulled up to the gate, Robert opened it and we drove through. The car behind us had also managed to make it through before the gate closed. Neither of us even thought that we were being followed until this point, but even then, we just joked about it. We then drove for a while inside of this fairly huge neighborhood, and we noticed that his car was still behind us. The route we took was a large curve, so we figured he should have turned off by now. As we got close to his house, we decided to keep going as the road would loop around,

thus helping us confirm we were being followed. At that point, we called my friend's dad, who had just watched us drive by with the car behind us. As we came around the loop, we had come to the realization that we were actually being followed. Robert then started driving much quicker through the neighborhood and the car behind also sped up. We were going about 55 miles per hour on these small roads, but the other car kept up. We drove for a while before we decided to head to the front gate, which had a 24 hour security guard.

And we still weren't sure if the person following us had a key fob to open the gate or not. We left the neighborhood and pulled a U-turn back to the front gate. We were still driving very fast at this point, and to anyone who might have been watching, it should have been apparent that we were being chased. As we came back to the front gate, Robert was able to open it in a way where we couldn't be followed in. But as we turned the corner, we saw the gate opening again

and the car that had been following us drove in as well. This is where we made a huge mistake. We turned down a road without realizing it was a cul-de-sac. As soon as we noticed our mistake, Robert was able to flip the car around so we could get out of there. As we drove by the car, I made eye contact with the driver but could barely see his face. When we turned out of the cul-de-sac, we turned off the lights and booked it. After that, we finally managed to shake him and get to Robert's house. We waited at Robert's house for the police to arrive and shortly after, an officer arrived. He got a call on the radio. A few minutes later, two more police cars showed up

and we were informed that they found the car. It turns out the man who had followed us was the same guy we had passed on the side of the road an hour earlier. When police first made contact with him, he refused to speak and didn't look like he was in a right state of mind. As the traffic stop proceeded, he began threatening officers. We later found out that he was an unstable veteran from a couple of states over and had no reason to be anywhere close to where we were. The man had broken the back gate when he followed us in.

And worst of all, the guy at the front gate, whose only job was to not let people in if they didn't have a fob, let this guy in after we had just sped past him. He was fired by the security company shortly after this. Looking back on this, there is only one thing I would have changed. I would have called the police sooner, a month because I started using every plate. It's been especially nice when the holidays roll around.

And now you can hack the busy season. Let every plate save you time and money with $2.99 meals. Give your budget a break this fall with affordable recipes from America's Best Value Meal Kit. Indulge in flavorful variety with EveryPlate's rotating menu

of 26 weekly recipes that you can count on to be delicious. Focus on making fall plans, not planning meals, with dinner options ready in 30 minutes or less. Save time with every plate's tasty, no-fuss recipes and pre-portioned ingredients delivered to your door. And if you're juggling a busy schedule, you can save yourself a trip to the grocery store like I do. Just add grab-and-go snacks and easy-to-assemble lunches to your

weekly box. With affordable dinners for just $2.99 per serving on your first box, EveryPlate helps you save money for fall family fun. 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 slash podcast and entering the code MEET299. That's code MEET299 at everyplate.com slash podcast. Now back to the show. This happened to me in the fall of 2020. My friend who we'll call Jay and I were on our way from New York City to Michigan since

we were hired to do a couple of vinyl flooring jobs. We also planned to scout some potential properties to purchase and then renovate and flip. We were using his work truck for the trip, which was a Ford F-150. We decided to leave in the evening and drive all through the night to get to our destination. We were on I-80, which varies in size as it stretches across the entire U.S. We were on this part of I-80 that passes through the mountains of Pennsylvania, which is a two-lane highway. This highway is far from safe. It's elevated in mountainous terrain, and there are constant turns, and it sneaks around a lot.

If you take the turns too sharply and go through the guardrail, you'll end up flying down into the darkness of a ditch. Anyway, I was driving while Jay was trying to get some sleep. I stopped at a service plaza to refuel and went into the shop to get some drinks and snacks for the road. It was a little past midnight and I noticed one other car refueling a few pumps away from us. It was a red or burgundy SUV, probably a Mazda or Suzuki. In any case, I didn't pay it or the driver any mind, and I ran back to the truck.

About 30 minutes later, as I was back on I-80, I was cruising in the left lane doing 90. I then noticed the headlights behind us, and they were from the same red SUV at the service plaza. At first I didn't think anything of it, but then it dawned on me that this guy had been following me since the service plaza. I decided to do a quick test to see if I was genuinely being tailed or not. Since I had been doing 90 consistently, I slowed down to 70 and waited to see if he would pass me.

This guy also slowed down, so that put me on alert. I woke up Jay and told him about the situation. Bro, I think this guy is following us, I explained. My friend Jay is an ex-army ranger who is a lot more vigilant than I am, and he's also a little bolder." He immediately replied, "'That's the car from the gas station. I noticed the driver was looking at you extra hard when you passed him.

Switch lanes and we'll see what he does.'" So I switched lanes, and so did the SUV. Jay continued, "'Okay, now slow down to a stop and pull over on the shoulder. Let's see what he does. I listened to Jay and slowed down to a complete stop on the shoulder of the highway. The guy, as expected, slowed down and parked behind us. Wow, this guy has a lot of balls.

I bet he definitely has a gun on him. Jay remarked. Then Jay said, Okay, I have an idea. Pull back onto the road and gun it to 90. Before tearing back onto the highway, I took stock of what we had in the truck that could be used as a weapon. We had a hatchet and a machete, and each of us had a folding knife on us, but no firearms. I then pulled off of the shoulder and stayed in the right lane as I pressed

down on the gas as hard as I could. Jay's plan was to essentially brake check the guy so that he'd crash into the back of us. Then we were going to hop out and charge at his car with a machete and a hatchet and hope for the best. As we continued gunning it down the highway he continued to follow. Jay looked around inside of the truck, grabbed a high powered handheld spotlight, and opened the back window of the truck.

Alright, I'm going to light his ass up and see if we can get a good look at him, Jay said. Then he turned the spotlight on and guess what? The guy's front windows were so heavily tinted that we couldn't even get a look at his face with the spotlight on and guess what? The guy's front windows were so heavily tinted that we couldn't even get a look at his face with the spotlight. I'm going to switch lanes, I said. See if you can aim at the side windows. Maybe they aren't tinted. I then quickly swerved into the left lane and as I did so Jay turned the spotlight on

again and I made sure to turn my head toward the SUV exactly as this was happening. We only had him illuminated for a few seconds, but I'll never forget what this guy looked like. He was tall, maybe 6'3", since he was hunched over the steering wheel. He had the face of Uncle Fester from the Adams family, and the hair of Kramer from Seinfeld. He also had a five o'clock shadow. Once he saw that I wasn't alone, he abruptly turned into a rest stop.

To this day, we still get into a debate about whether I should have breakchecked the guy or not. He was under the impression that the guy was some kind of serial killer who ended up finding another victim instead of being killed by us. I've analyzed the situation and concluded that this guy's intentions were evil. How evil? Robbery, at the minimum, kidnapping, or murder at the worst. Thank God I never found out. This happened when I was in college during the summer.

I was back home and working. My boyfriend was also home for the summer. He was working as well and he was living with his parents about an hour and a half away. We finally had a rare day where neither of us needed to work. So he drove me so that we could spend the day together. We were saving money for the upcoming school year so we tried not to spend too much money which ended up meaning we ate lunch and dinner with my family, at my house.

After dinner, we wanted to get some time alone as a couple, so we decided to pick up some root beer floats at Sonic and drive out to a local skate park where young couples like to hang out. We parked and walked out to one of the little covered picnic tables that were situated in the woods. While the parking lot was well lit due to how thick the woods were, it was quite dark sitting at the picnic table, but we had hung out there late into the night before and always felt pretty safe.

However, another couple emerged from the woods and started making out as they leaned against the other end of our table which made me feel a bit nervous So my boyfriend and I left the table and got into his pickup My boyfriend turned on the radio and we sat in silence attempting to eat our ice cream before too much of it melted It was hot outside. So we had the windows rolled down After a bit the couple that we had seen prior came out of the woods and left. Then, as I looked around, I realized something odd. Although there were normally at least half a dozen vehicles

parked in this particular lot on any evening, we were now the only vehicle in sight. Even so, I didn't think anything of it and continued drinking my root beer float. Then, suddenly, I got the worst feeling. You know that feeling when the hair stands up on the back of your neck and you can just feel somebody looking at you when you thought you were alone?

It started like that, but it got progressively worse. I had the distinct feeling that I needed to run in the pit of my stomach. I started looking around and realized that my boyfriend was also nervously looking around at the same time that I was. I asked him if he had a bad feeling and his reply was an empathetic yes, and he immediately started the truck and began to drive out of the park. Since we were facing into the park, we had to make a U-turn. As we passed by the area where we had been parked, a man stepped out of the edge of the

woods. About a week later, there were bodies found in the woods just past where we had been sitting at that exact picnic table. When the crime was eventually solved, authorities revealed that a man was living in a shack on the property and working as a maintenance worker for the park. He had murdered people at that park, and when his photo was printed in the newspaper, I realized he was the same man that we had seen stepping out of the woods and watching us leave. Seattle, Washington, don't miss out on tickets for this week's show.

I'm coming back to the triple door for a night of scary stories and a few laughs on Wednesday, October 9th. Then I'll be in Salt Lake City for our rescheduled show on October 23rd at Metro Music Hall. Remember, if you purchased tickets for the original date last month, you've been refunded and you can now get them for the new date.

Don't wait till the day of the show and end up paying extra. Get them now. After that, I'm going to Houston, Texas on November 9th at The Secret Group, and then Dallas, Texas on November 10th at Deep Ellum Art Company. Tickets are available at letstnotmeetpodcast.com slash tour or just follow the links in the show notes. These are very intimate and special occasions with stories you aren't going to hear on the regular show. You I'm going to share happened almost exactly four

years ago. There are a lot of things that I do not remember, so some of the information was told to me by others after the fact. That being said, everything is true, and this actually happened to me. In 2020, during the start of the pandemic, I moved into a very cool, old second-floor apartment on my town square. It was the first time I had ever lived completely alone in my entire life, and I was truly in love with the piece.

One day in late July, I left to go shopping so I locked my apartment. This is something that my mother ingrained into me from my childhood. I never left my doors or windows unlocked. When I got home from shopping, I noticed a few things weren't where I left them. I mentioned this to my cousin, Michelle, and told her that I thought someone may have been in my apartment when I was gone.

After discussing it with her, we came to the conclusion that I must have simply forgotten that I had moved the items myself, and I didn't think about it again. A couple of nights later I was watching some scary movies at about two in the morning when I decided to get ready for bed. I remember walking into my bathroom to change into pajamas and do my nightly routine. That's the last thing I remember until I woke up the next day. When I got out of bed the next morning I immediately noticed something wrong with the

clothes that I had on. I was wearing those PJ shorts that had drawstrings around the waist. I always tied the drawstrings to make the shorts fit, but when I stood up the drawstrings looked like they had been broken. The drawstrings were still tied, but my shorts were practically falling off of me. I told myself I must have moved around a lot when I was sleeping, which must have made the drawstrings snap or something. I brushed it off and headed to the bathroom for my morning routine.

When I walked by my bathroom mirror, I turned to look at myself and I didn't register that anything was wrong, but I felt strange. I felt all out of sorts, I guess you could say, even more so than usual after I first wake up. The longer I was awake, the stranger I started to feel. I noticed that I had a headache and my vision was kind of blurry. I went to grab my phone from the nightstand to check and see what time it was, but I forgot to plug it in and charge it before going to bed because my phone was dead.

So I took my phone to the living room, found the charger, and plugged it in. I stood there and waited for my phone to come on. When it finally did, I was completely shocked to see that it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon. This was highly unusual for me because no matter what time I go to bed, I usually wake up at around 7 or 8 in the morning. This was when I began to feel slightly panicked. Like I said, it wasn't normal for me. I began rubbing my face in my hands, and that's when I felt that there was something wrong with

my face. I ran back to the bathroom mirror, and this time when I looked, I discovered my vision was so blurry that I could hardly see my face, no matter how close I got to the mirror. It felt like I was looking through a dense fog, or like when you take a super hot shower and the mirror fogs over. This was when I realized something was very wrong with me. I was disoriented and confused, so I walked back to my living room to check and see if my phone was charged enough so that I could call a family member or have a friend come over. The phone was only at 5% so I kept it plugged in as I tried my cousin Michelle or my son.

When I picked the phone up, I just stared at it. I couldn't remember how to use my phone to call or text anyone. It's tough to explain. It's like I knew how to use my phone, but for some reason I didn't have the ability. I was beginning to get very upset and scared. But most of all, I felt frustrated because I knew that I knew how to use this phone, but my brain could not register what I needed to do at all. Soon after this, a flood of messages and missed calls came through. I was finally able to text a friend

and tell them that I was having some sort of emergency. I let him know that I needed him to contact my sister to get someone to come to my apartment as soon as possible. My sister lives in an independent living facility because she was born with cerebral palsy and can't walk. She relies on a wheelchair to get around, and while I knew she would not be able to physically help me, I knew she could get a hold of my son.

Meanwhile, I was becoming more confused the longer I was awake. But thankfully, my sister had gotten a hold of my son and he was on his way. I figured I should probably go downstairs to unlock the door to the stairway, so I just sat on the steps and inched my way down to unlock the door. It turns out, it was already unlocked, but in my confused state I accidentally locked the door. So then I went back upstairs the same way I went, by sitting and inching my way back up.

Soon I received a call from my son telling me that the door was locked and he couldn't get inside. So I had to repeat that entire process all over again. When I finally opened the door for my son, he was there along with his girlfriend and my seven-month-old granddaughter. My son took one look at me and his eyes widened in shock. Jesus Christ, mother, what happened to your face? He asked.

I didn't have any idea what he was talking about, so I went back to my bathroom mirror and discovered a horrific sight. I had a goose egg in the middle of my forehead the size of a tennis ball. My right eye was completely swollen shut, and I had one hell of a black eye.

My left eye was partially swollen as well. This certainly explained all the confusion, the headache, the blurry vision I was experiencing, and why I slept for fourteen hours straight. I informed my son of everything I had done. I told him everything that I could remember from before getting ready to go to bed the night before. But I did leave out the detail that the drawstring on my shorts was somehow snapped. Michelle also showed up and told me that I needed to go to the ER and get checked out.

We kept discovering other injuries besides the goose egg and black eye. I had bruises in the shape of large fingerprints on my upper arms. They were certainly not my own. I'm tiny, five foot tall, about 117 pounds. It sort of looked like someone was standing in front of me, facing me, and had grabbed my arms to lift me or shake me. Then, we noticed I had red marks around both of my wrists and my ankles. I also had rug burn type injuries on my shins and knees.

I was still very confused as I was taken to our local hospital's ER, which is truly nothing more than a glorified first aid station. The on-call nurse practitioner kept asking me what happened, even though I kept telling her I have no idea. All I managed to suggest was maybe I fell or something like that. She then asked if I was in a relationship with someone, and I informed her that I was single and was not seeing anyone at the time. She didn't believe me and had another nurse on site call the police.

I was in a very confused state, so I understood why she didn't believe me. But then she said, well, if you can't remember what happened, there's nothing much I can do. But I can tell you with 100% certainty that you did not cause these injuries. Someone did this to you." The police never came to talk to me, and I was discharged into the care of Michelle. I couldn't be left alone due to my condition, so it was arranged that I would be staying the night with Michelle and her mom, my aunt Kay. I was told if I started getting nauseated, began vomiting, or my confusion and headache

worsened to call an ambulance immediately. And that's exactly what ended up happening two hours later. I was horribly dizzy, and I had tried to eat something because, by this time, it had been over 24 hours since I had eaten. But after they got me something to eat, I began hallucinating. At first it was just auditory hallucinations. I was sitting with my Aunt Kay in her bed, watching TV, when all of a sudden I noticed that the movie we were watching had completely different dialogue than I remember

being in this particular movie. Then the characters in the movie began speaking to me directly. I don't remember what they were saying specifically, but I kept glancing between the DV and my aunt to see if she was hearing the same thing. I was totally aware that I was hallucinating, but I had absolutely no control over it. Then the paranoia started when my daughter called to check on me. She lives in a different town, and even though I was on the phone with her, I was convinced that she, along with several other family members, were all outside of the house, talking

about me. That's when I started to throw up, so my cousin called 911. When the ambulance showed up, the police showed up as well and they were talking to my cousin. When they asked me which hospital I wanted to go to, I told them the name and my cousin, who knew me very well, knew I would never ask to go to this particular hospital. Which is another story for another time. However, since I was so insistent and seemed with it enough to the paramedics, that's where they took me. I wish they had listened to Michelle. Since this happened incredibly late at

night and the hospital I was taken to was 25 minutes away, no one in my family met me at the hospital. The hospital didn't even try to call my family for information. I don't remember what I did or what I said to anyone after that. I was so confused and hallucinating so much that it must have been pretty bad as I was committed to the hospital's psych floor for a traumatic brain injury for 11 days. That's also another story for another time. I still to this day have no recollection of what happened to me, but I honestly don't want to remember seeing as all of the medical professionals and my own healthcare providers who saw my injuries say that I had to have been attacked by someone.

It's scary to think of all the possibilities. Was someone hiding in my house that night without me knowing? Could it have been one of the carnival workers I saw working around the town square earlier that day? Or worse, was it someone I know and still have in my life? I have no idea which is worse, not knowing at all or having the memories of it forever.

Thanks for listening. I've been very reluctant to share this story, but I also found that writing out all the details that I can remember was very therapeutic. Thanks for listening and stick around after the music for your extended ad free version of this week's episode. If you're a patron, if you'd like to sign up and get access, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today where you'll get access to ad free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate and hours and hours of bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. This week you have heard the time I was almost kidnapped by Sanford 0704, followed home from jail by Silent T 9788, post disco psychos who attacked me by brilliant becks1992 A young woman tried to lure me into her car late at night by Will Droid We were followed by Diet Mr Cupcake Too Highway Hunting Grounds by Vor UKR I think I was almost murdered by my then boyfriend by silly old bears And finally I was attacked but I don't remember

anything about it by morbid effin Lydia. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of the respective authors. Let's Not Meet a true horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any of the message boards online. Make sure you send your stories to letsnotme meet stories at gmail.com to hear them on the show. And finally, make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like odd trails, my true paranormal podcast, cryptic encounters and the old time radio

cast at cryptic county podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, you can get tickets for all the live shows at let's not meet podcast.com slash tour. I'll be in Seattle, Washington, Salt Lake City, Utah, Portland, Oregon, then Houston and Dallas, Texas, get the tickets at the links in the late summer of 2021.