Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - Let's Not Meet BONUS - Pam!

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

We're coming up on the season 2 premier! As promised, here's a bonus episode from author HannibalsViolin to keep you company. It's a story that aired last year titled Pam. It's a long one! Buckle up! See you on June 16th!

Wake up your taste buds with Java Jolt, the newest pint-sized flavor from Bluebell. This delicious coffee ice cream blends dark chocolate flavored chunks and a coffee-fudge swirl. It's the Jolt you need to make it through your day. So skip the coffee and grab a pint of Bluebell Java Jolt. Look for Bluebell ice cream at your favorite grocer if you can't find it, ask for it. Hey everyone, it's Andrew Tate here from Let's Not Me to True Horror Podcast. Obviously, obviously it's me. But for those of you that are new, we just ended season one,

wrapped it up just a couple weeks ago. Season two will be starting this Sunday, June 16th With season two episode one. I'll have some new guests some new music some new sounds I'm really excited about it. I think you'll enjoy it in the meantime I wanted to drop a few little bonus episodes and stories in between during this week This one is called Pam now. this was an episode that I did last year. I believe it was episode 34 of the first round of Let's Not Meet. It's a lot longer than most of the stories that I'd like to drop in at the ends of the episodes as you know, sort of the bonus stories. This one I had to kind of release on its own. Like I did with Blueberry

on the season finale of season one. So without any further ado, titled Pam. The story I'm going to share occurred over the course of several years, and only recently ended. It affected almost all of the most important people in my life, affecting us even today, and likely for the rest of our lives. I wanted to share it, so everyone can understand just how out of control a seemingly harmless situation can become. My brother has always been my closest friend. He is easily the most loving and genuine person I've ever met, and is loved by pretty

much everyone he meets. Despite this, he hasn't been in many relationships. I think it's partly due to the fact that he's a very all-or-nothing type of guy. When he falls, he falls deeply and blindly, a blessing and a curse, I guess. The few girlfriends he's had, I've known quite well, despite being nearly eight years younger than him, most of them have been nice, normal, pleasant girls, with the exception of a few. We had high hopes that he'd settle in with a long-term, wonderful girlfriend as he entered his adult life.

We had no idea we'd spend six years sharing a hell with him, our family, and our closest friends. All by the hands of one girl, I'll call her Pam. I met Pam when I was 11, my brother 19, and she was 17 graduating high school. I remember being surprised to have him introduce her right off the bat as his girlfriend, since neither my parents or I had heard anything about her. But she was kind, warm, and honest student, and beautiful. I admired her immediately. For the first year of their relationship, Pam never seemed off. She was always happy, always kind, and always had good stories to tell. She and I grew

closer, and she seemed eager to bond with me, and it was like having an older sister. We shared many of the same interests, and friendship came easy between she and I. As I was mature for my age, and she was so inviting. But halfway through their second year of dating, we started noticing things about Pam, just small odd habits she had. If someone was having a conversation with my brother that did not directly involve her or that she wasn't a part of, she tended to insert herself as best as she could, sitting closer to my brother, laughing a little louder, calling him away, etc. If any of our family or friends would ask my brother questions about college or future

aspirations, she'd grow increasingly uncomfortable and sometimes make comments like, I hope you have it all planned out because I'm going wherever you're going. My parents and I would chuckle about these behaviors, assuming that Pam just loved my brother and was a bit protective. We liked her a lot and had high hopes about their relationship. I hate to think now how blind we were. One night my brother came home late from a party. I was 13 at this time. He was about to turn 21. He walked in the door. Our parents were already asleep, but I was up in the living room. I could immediately tell he was upset about something, and I asked him what was wrong. As he walked into the kitchen, I realized he had a large welt on his cheek.

I asked, what happened to you?" He said. I got in a fight. It's cool. This immediately raised suspicion, as my brother was as far from the fighting type as you could be. A fight over what, I asked. Pam, he said simply, and went to his room. The next morning, he was driving me to soccer, and I cried again about what had happened.

He didn't answer me at first, but then said, Pam is kind of weird. I asked how so. He said, I don't know. She likes to start things. Pam was a pathological liar. Apparently, she did it all the time, looking back the constant news stories of places she'd been,

and things she'd done didn't seem to be truthful. That night at the party, Pam had told my brother that another man at the party had attempted to rape her. My brother being the man that he is confronted the guy, and he said, I've never seen her before. And a fight ensued over the accusation. On the car ride home, Pam said that my brother must have misinterpreted her words and that

she said nothing close to rape had occurred. The lying seemed to be a detrimental bump in the road and my brother broke things off. After several weeks, Pam contacted me, asking me if I wanted to go shopping with her. Having had a good relationship in the past with Pam, I agreed. My parents thought it was strange that a 20-year-old woman wanted to spend time with her ex-boyfriends 14-year-old sister, but they let me go anyway. The days started pleasantly. Pam caught me up on her life and asked how I was and how my family was, as well as my brother. Nothing seemed strange until she began to bring up uncomfortable conversation. She explained to me that she had a sexually traumatic childhood

and that's why she lied so much. But she also aggressively defended herself saying, whatever your brother told you was a lie. He was the one telling lies. That's why I had to break up with him. She seemed to jerk around the conversation from normal to deeply personal and strange topics. She explained in detail a lesbian experience she had after ending her relationship with my brother and told me that I should try it when I came of age, of course.

I became increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. She noticed and immediately apologized, saying that she really liked being my friend and that she loved my brother and that's why she was acting so crazy. I told her I liked being her friend too and that I understood her feelings. That was a mistake. And this is when the phone calls began. It started with just one. She called me a week after we had hung out at about 10 pm.

She was sobbing and saying that she was so sad about my brother and that she needed to get him back. Then they happened nightly. Later and later each time. I had to be dead asleep at 2am and receive a sobbing hysterical and desperate phone call. I felt so much pity for her that I continued to answer. One call was different than the others, though. She wasn't hysterical and she wasn't crying. I picked up the phone at 1.30 in the morning and I heard a level voiced monotone Pam. She said in one sentence,

tell your brother, I'm going to slit my fucking throat tonight. And then she hung up. I felt numb. I had never experienced that before. No one I knew had ever behaved that way. I texted her over and over again asking if she was okay and telling her not to do anything. I panicked. I thought I had done something wrong and that since she told me I would be responsible

in some way. The next day, I told my brother what had happened, and he said he'd go to her house and check on her. A week later, Pam arrived at my house, arm and arm with my brother. They had gotten back together and seemed as if nothing had happened to them. She smiled at me, and never once mentioned the phone calls she had made to them. She smiled at me and never once mentioned the phone calls she had made to me. The next month is when things escalated again.

I came home from school to my entire family sitting in the living room. They told me to sit down and I thought someone had died. My mother told me, your brother let us know how you're feeling. I had no idea what they were talking about. Feeling, I asked. My brother looked at me with pity in his eyes. Pam told me that she wasn't the one who called you, that you called her, and you were the one who wasn't feeling well. What the fuck? No, that's not what happened.

She called me every night for two weeks crying and saying that she wanted you back. That's not what she said. She said that you called her with your problems and that she wasn't sure what to do, my brother said. She said that you called her with your problems and that she wasn't sure what to do," my brother said. I was immediately angry that her lies were continuing and that my own family believed them enough to stage an intervention. I showed them the text messages she sent me and played the voice messages and showed them the text messages he sent me, and played the voice messages and showed them my call history.

And that put an end to the lie. After that I wanted nothing to do with her. My brother broke up with her again. She called him hundreds of times and sent hundreds of text messages. She showed up at her house a few times with baked goods, wanting to apologize, but we ignored her. Eventually, she left us alone and we didn't hear from her for almost a year. On my last day of class before winter break during my sophomore year, I walked out of school

and was met by an incredibly unwelcome surprise. This is where things got scary. Pam was pacing in the front of the school, biting her fingernails and scratching her head. Her face looked sunken in and she had bags under her eyes. I almost didn't recognize her. I began to cut across the front lawn with my friend Liz to avoid her, but she saw me and walked as fast as she could in my direction. She outreached her arms for a hug, but I stopped. The first thing that she said was,

you're mad at me? I asked her what she was doing there, and she laughed quietly. I wanted to apologize for whatever your brother told you. I'm sick, Oz. She used a nickname, only my brother called me. I know. Please don't talk to me anymore. I started away, knowing my brother was parked waiting for me around the corner. Pam reached out and grabbed my shoulder as I did. I quickly pulled away and said, I'm serious,

leave us alone. I think you need help, Pam." She immediately began to cry, but I turned away and left. My brother pulled into the front parking lot of the school and opened his door for me. Is that fucking Pam? He looked through his front mirror. Yeah, I don't know what she's on, but she's crazy. That night, around 1 a.m., there was a knock at her door. My dad went to it and looked through the people. He said, surprised. I think it's...

What the fuck? I think it's, what the fuck? I think it's Pam. Don't open it. I think she's doing drugs, my brother said. My mom wanted to call the police, but my brother and my dad said we should just wait until she went away. A few moments later, she wrapped on the door harder and more violently. We heard her whaling and yelling, I hear you fucking let me in as she cried.

She has a baseball bat or something my brother said. Coming from his room where he'd looked out the window. I looked from the den window. She looked like something out of a horror movie. She was wearing a grubby dress and barefooted. Her hair had been cut above her shoulders and was in a wild halfway and a bun halfway out mess. She had wiped her makeup down her face like a ghoulish movie character. She looked even thinner than she did in the daylight, and she swung a metal baseball bat

back and around, as she stumbled about our yard. I'm calling the police. She must be drunk, my mother said. No, it's fine. She's just giving a show. She'll leave." My brother said. We didn't know people that actually behaved like this.

It was all eerily entertaining for a moment like watching a true crime show, but just as she had been manically stumbling around, she stopped. She stood still, staring vacantly, up towards the upstairs bedrooms, tilting her head from side to side up and down, and licking her lips. What is she on, heroin or something, my dad asked. Pam began to shift back and forth between laughing and yelling, then crying. We all sat down as my brother, tried her phone, and her mom's phone to try and get her to leave. We sat there and listened to the frightened animalistic sounds of her outside. But then they stopped. We checked the windows, and she was gone.

We sat in silence for a moment, taking in the strange encounter. My father just chuckled and shook his head. My mother shook hers, pitting the girl for being so disturbed. But I was frightened. No one except perhaps my brother had seen just how quickly her demeanor, her mental state, unraveled, from overprotective nature to small lies, to pathological lies, to full-blown manic outbreaks. But this was her worst, and we didn't expect anything more to come from it.

And we expected her to fade away from our lives now that she knew we weren't giving in to her desperation. But in the next two years, we learned how wrong we were. After the wintertime incident at our house, Pam stopped coming around. She was still very present, however. Every member of my family endured daily text messages and phone calls. They ranged from apologetic and stable to incredibly distraught and outraged, cursing and making threats. I remember wanting to sleep with the lights on for several months after the incident, afraid that she'd climb the fence of our backyard, and I'd find her standing at my window

with the same vacant, crazed look that she had the night in our front yard. All four of us eventually decided to have our phone numbers changed and block her from our devices and social media accounts. She still had our home phone number, however. Pam left some of the most frightening and haunting messages I'd ever heard. I can remember standing in my kitchen with the family and my brother playing the messages back for us. One stood out. It showed us just how unstable and potentially dangerous she was.

My parents and I returned from an early morning indoor soccer game in February of 2015. My brother asked us to come to the kitchen because we had to hear the new crazy Pam had become. The first message was about 30 seconds long and received at 12.30 a.m. the night before. Pam sounded mildly angry and demanded that we return the batch of cookies she had brought to a fourth of July party some years ago because she didn't want us to have them anymore.

We all exchanged humored glances at how ridiculous of a request it was. My mother turned to leave, amused, my brother stopped her, saying that that wasn't the crazy part. My brother played the message, received roughly at three in the morning that day. We were confused at first because the first 15 seconds was just a white noise, the kind that you hear when a device plays the sound recording of an empty room. If you know what I'm talking about, but all of a sudden, in a deep animalistic and enraged voice she screamed, stop fucking playing with me. You're going to get it.

And abruptly ended the call. We were all startled by this. I want to call the police. They need to know that girl isn't all there and who knows what she can do. My dad decided that if anything physically happened again, we'd file a police report, but that they were just phone calls. My brother assured that she was all talk and wouldn't come around again. At this point I agreed with my mother. I no longer feel safe. I had never been around someone who behaved like this. I was constantly anxious and I had no idea what I'd do if she came around again. I felt as if I were stuck in a lifetime movie because I didn't think that things like

this actually happened. That someone I knew so personally could be hiding such a deeply withheld, violent, and manic side. It had always been there, but we said it in motion. After disconnecting the landline, the personal phone calls stopped. We didn't hear from her ourselves, but some of the friends my brother shared with Pam would come to him, saying that Pam wanted to speak with him and that she would call and message them regularly, wanting his phone number. Luckily, none of them gave it.

it. Just before summer, Pam disappeared. No one got any messages. No one saw her in town, nothing. Nothing until my brother received an email from Pam's mother, whom my brother continued to speak to occasionally. She informed my brother that Pam's family had moved her to the East Coast to undergo treatment for a drug habit. Pam's mother had given us to the East Coast to undergo treatment for a drug habit. Pam's mother had given us more information about the mental state of her daughter. Her mother had not spoken to or seen Pam much during the time she unraveled when she came to her house or when she had made the phone calls. Pam's mother had been under the impression my brother was still in a healthy relationship

with Pam and only just learned about their breakup and the incidents following it. She explained that her daughter had always been a white liar, making up stories that didn't make sense, blaming others for things she had already been caught for, arguing the truth of things that were already proven facts. I don't think she ever thought anything she did was wrong, even when it was, I don't understand it, because she was not raised that way. She had explained to my brother, Pam's issues were something that had always been present, but settled comfortably

beneath an intelligent and attractive exterior. She fooled us and maybe even herself. Without Pam to worry about, our lives could go back to normal. I still looked over my shoulder every now and again, but I was preparing for 11th grade. My brother was beginning a new career, and dating a new girl, the daughter of a close family friend who he'd grown up with. Pam started to fade away from our minds for a while. As myself and my friends began to drive, I remember noticing a car quite a bit.

You know that car you see repeatedly around the area you live in, you notice it more than the others because you noticed it once and now you can't stop noticing it since you know it exists. You know it belongs to someone, but you've never seen the driver, just the car. It was like that. I'd notice it out of the corner of my eye at a stoplight or out the window of a restaurant as it drove past. I didn't think much of it, but I noticed it pretty much every time I was out, walking, driving, and many times with my brother. I didn't think much of it, but I noticed it pretty much every time I was out, walking, driving, and many times with my brother.

I didn't understand how often I'd seen it until one day it clicked and it startled me. It scared me. I saw it parked in my neighborhood and I remember thinking, that's that fucking car. What is it doing here? We lived in a smaller older neighborhood. Most of the people who lived there had been there for a long time. We knew a lot of the neighbors and houses were pretty much never on the market. New people showed up, maybe once every other five years or so, and

when they did, most people knew about it. So when out of place, but oddly familiar car came as a huge surprise to me. I pointed it out to my brother who had been in the car with me at the same time. He said, oh yeah, I've seen it a few times. I didn't feel right about it, but I assumed I was being paranoid. A few months later I was well into school, had a job, and was too busy to let myself worry, even though I did. One day at work I was wiping down tables in the front of the restaurant, and it was a pretty slow day, only a few people in the front of the restaurant, and it was a pretty slow day, only a few people

in the store. I remember seeing someone standing outside the front doors, at the window. I was busy and assumed that they were deciding where to have lunch, as another restaurant was directly next to ours, and people did this often. They weren't there anymore, and I assumed they'd gone next store. When I went out to clear the dishes off the front patio and clean up, I saw them walking away from the store down the strip of businesses in the plaza. Back inside as I worked, I noticed the same person walked back and forth several more times.

I was wary at this point as the person seemed to linger for about an hour. I didn't think anything of it afterwards, though. I was a theater student and had to take some time off for a play that I was in. My family came opening night, the fourth show, and the closing night. Leaving with my family from the fourth show is when I snapped back into my anxiety-ridden reality that car was in the parking lot. It was parked a few rows from my parents' car. I had seen it at my school before, and I knew it didn't belong to any of my classmates. What is Pam drive? I asked my brother. Pam? I don't know why.

That stupid card freaks me out. It's like everywhere we are. A few days later, I had an answer. At closing night of my show, I went out into the lobby of the theater to greet everyone when we finished. I hugged my parents and my brother, but I noticed that they all looked distraught. My brother visibly upset, and my parents were trying to make conversation the way they do to avoid something. What happened, I asked? Uh, Pam. She was here, my brother said. I sort of felt the color run out of my face. I didn't know how much Pam had done, had frightened me until then.

Did she leave? I don't know, my brother said. Don't worry about it. I went and got my things, and remembered how strangely violated I felt. That Pam had watched me for the past two hours. Without me knowing she was in the same state, let alone the same building. I decided to go home straight away. We left the building, and there she was. She was looking at her phone, standing at the mouth of one of the hallways in front of the theater.

I stopped for a moment, but the four of us decided to walk as hurried as we could towards the parking lot, hoping to ignore her and breeze past her. She looked different, still skinny, but she wore makeup again. From a distance she looked almost like the old Pam. But as we got closer, she looked up from her phone and still had that vacant, animal quality to her face. A bit of anger flashed over her face as she noticed us. She looked like she was going to say something, but we all pretended not to notice her and continued on. She followed us closely behind. Hey, wait a minute. At the front of the school, my brother stopped as we kept walking. At the front of the school, my brother stopped as we kept walking. I heard him say, you need to stop.

We got to our car and watched them talk from a distance. I wanted to get into the car and leave. My mom and I got in while my dad stood outside. Pam was yelling at my brother at this point. He made his way towards the car. Pam smiled artificially and waved towards my brother shouting, a good bite to him as he went before storming off to her car. My brother stopped to talk to my dad a moment, got in his own car, and left after Pam peeled out of the parking lot. In the same car I had seen her in for the past month and a half. Well, just as crazy as ever, my dad said as he started the car, we may need to call the

police. We lived a short distance from the school, but I was shaken up and what did my dad to drive as fast as possible. Every headlight we saw chilled me. I stared at my phone, trying not to look at the window. I nearly dropped it. We reached a street convergence in our neighborhood at the stop sign to the right of us, was her car. Dad, that's her. He drove straight, and she turned in the same direction. Dad, she's following us.

I had never felt so panicked. Call the police, please. My dad said to my mother, his voice as level as ever. I stared at the back window, ducking low in my seat. My dad turned down another street, and she followed. I'm going to go in a circle to see if she follows us, okay? My dad said. I was crying at this point, as I came to a realization.

Before more turns, my mom spoke to a 911 operator, unable to accurately name streets as they were not lit and it was pitch black outside. I laid across the back seat, listening to my parents yell at each other, frustrated, and I'm sure frightened, and my dad cursed as she continued to follow more closely. My dad turned the mirror away to keep the light out of his eyes and sped up the car. Eventually the light was gone and I could no longer hear the drone of her engine behind us. She was gone.

We got home ten minutes later and turned every light on in our house. My dad checked every closet in our back and side yards carrying his gun with him. She's been fucking watching me and my brother. I was almost hysterical in my realization. For the past month, Pam had been stalking both my brother and I, seeing that car had not been a coincidence. She knew what we were both doing. She came to my school function on both nights my family was there, maybe all three.

She knew where I was, she had followed me all over town, she'd been around our neighborhood and had been lurking around my workplace. All of a sudden, the threats became real. Pam was no longer afraid of crossing boundaries, if she ever had been. We were now in the middle of a full-blown nightmare. My family was no longer safe. She had gone away to cure one disease, but returned having fed and grown another. She was our personal terrorist with the powered single-handedly pulled our everyday lives apart, and she had already begun to do just that.

What may seem like the plot to a bad horror movie, the psychotic ex-girlfriend Reaking Habic, became our reality times 10. I cannot express to you how terrible it is to be kept awake by something you cannot see but you know exists and is waiting for you when you get out of bed. And never expected a human being could terrify me more than any horrible monster of boogieman. Those things don't exist. I'm sharing this sort of deal to help others understand warning signs and pressure to take action to protect themselves. Despite the terror of that night, things would come to a boiling point. After we told my brother about what Pam had done the night after my show, he finally began to confide in me the details of his relationship with Pam.

She had come to his high school as a sophomore during his senior year. She immediately caught the attention of my brother and his friends as she was beautiful and expected to be reserved as a new student. However, my brother recalled his female friends saying she was aggressive in trying to make friends and liked to talk about how her family had moved here from an affluent community in Texas, so elite that it didn't have a name. Many of his friends had also gotten strange vibes from her and penned her as weird and snobby right away.

My brother met her again a few years later when she came into where he was working at the time and said how she seemed so mature, vastly. He took her out on one date and almost immediately she wanted to officiate their relationship. He thought it was a bit forward, but didn't hesitate because she impressed him with her elegant way of speaking, kind words, and pretty face. However, he noticed red flags only a few weeks into the relationship. Pam was very insecure, constantly asking my brother if he still had feelings for her,

if he was angry with her, and if he thought she was attractive enough. Eventually, this insecurity took a different shape. Pam would send my brother unsolicited nude pictures of herself in the middle of the day attached to messages asking if he still liked the way her body looked. If my brother went a period of time in their conversations without calling her beautiful or telling her how nice she looked,

Pam would point this out. If he protested in any way, she'd become emotional and claim he didn't love her anymore. This behavior mellowed until the end of the second year of their relationship. This is when the narcissism became apparent. Pam would often talk lowly of my brother's previous girlfriends and female friends, boasting about how much more attractive she was than them. Pam refused to attend several of the events my brother asked her to go to, like my birthday

dinner or our aunt's funeral, because she wouldn't know anyone and would have no one to talk to. She also enjoyed referring to herself as a princess, and wanting to constantly be doated upon. She often argued with my brother about him spending time with his friends without her, because she didn't understand why he wanted to be around anyone else, but her. She was 100% convinced she would one day be a celebrity and marry my brother. At this point, I was in disbelief that my brother, a smart, kind and good-looking man, was wasting any more of his time with a girl who behaved like that.

However, any time my brother hinted at wanting to end the relationship, Pan would fly off the handle, becoming belligerent and promising to kill herself. My brother was trapped by the fear of her harming herself. He'd often think that she was simply bluffing, and she wouldn't actually do anything, but one day he discovered several bottles of prescription pills in Pam's home. He asked her about them, and she told him that they were antidepressants

prescribed to her after the death of her brother, a brother who he later found never even existed. Eventually, Pam became very angry when my brother would want to spend time with his family without her around. He also told me Pam fixated a lot of that anger on me. She proceeded to refer to me as a slut, and made comments and theories about how my mother must have had an affair of which I was the product because I was so ugly and my brother was not, so my brother decided

it was time to end it no matter what. This information troubled me as all of her actions following that, asking me to spend time with her, she wanting to be my friend, showing up at my school, and all the phone calls seemed heinous, ill-intended, and even more psychotic than they had been at the time. But for the final year and a half of our deal with Pam, psychotic could not begin to explain what she did to us. I slept very little in the weeks following the car incident. My brother who lived across town visited and called more regularly.

I expected he felt as uneasy as I did. The nights I did sleep I often sweat through nightmares of girls with axes or gowned women standing at the foot of my bed or in my window. One night, an early December of 2015, it was a rainy and particularly windy night. I wanted to let the cold air in and I thought that the sound of the rain would help me sleep so I cracked my window only enough to where I could reach the second latch. I also placed the piece of wood my father had cut to help me with security behind the window.

I pulled my curtain in front of the window, leaving the cracked part of the window uncovered to allow air to pass the heavy blackout curtain. I remember waking up from sleep vaguely hearing a foreign noise against the roof of my window. My room was on the second floor of our house. Our house had three levels, and the second story was only six or seven steps up from the primary floor of our house. All of the spaces were different levels, but the bedrooms were the highest, slightly lower

than they'd be in a classic two-story home. What I'm getting at was that my room was hard to get to from the outside, but not if you were aware of the parts of our home, and the access points from the other roof levels over the living room and garage. I shook the noise off as it was storming, and I thought maybe some leaves or branches were moving around. I turned over to face the wall opposite the window. Not even a second later, my room was illuminated by a surge of white light. I shot up in my bed. I was momentarily paralyzed

with horror. Every one of my limbs felt as if they were floating as I tried to make sense of what had happened. Then again, myself and every item in my room became a black silhouette as another flash filled the space. I threw the blankets off of me and ran as fast as I could down the hallway. I was screaming so loud, I surprised myself. I ran into my dad as he threw open his bedroom door. He was panicked and held me by the shoulders in the doorway to their bedroom

and yelled at me to tell him what was wrong. Someone was taking pictures of me through my window. The roof and house was checked and they of course found nothing and no one. My mother set up with me and asked every basic question a parent would ask, were you dreaming? Are you sure it was lightning? There was no thunder and I was sure that there had not been any lightning at the time. The flashes did not have the same hue that lightning did. I had taken enough cellphone pictures in my life to identify the flash of a camera.

I don't know if they believed me then, but I would eventually have proof that would astonish them. My brother adopted Ike in January of 2016. Ike was a two-month-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever, with one golden eye and one green eye. He had a very distinct white marking on his chest that looked like an hour glass, and a white sock on his front left paw. Ike was the love of my brother's life, aside from his now fiancé Cara. Ike would end our torture just three months later.

The holidays and my brother's engagement to Cara, who was amazing, beautiful, and whose family we had all known our whole lives, had lifted my family's spirits immensely. My brother was starting his family, almost done with the police academy, and seemed untouchable by any memory of Pam. We felt optimistic for the first time in a long time. Pam hadn't been around to our knowing in several weeks. All was normal and things were looking up, but that again did not last. A month or so after bringing him home, after letting him into the backyard

for a few minutes by himself, Kara told us that Ike had escaped from the yard. She panicked and ran around the neighborhood looking for him. She got in her car, called me upset, and drove around the block looking for him. She picked me up and I helped her look in the creek area behind where my brother's house was. We couldn't find him. However, when we arrived back at my brother's house was. We couldn't find him. However, when we arrived back at my brother's house, Ike was sitting on the front porch. We were relieved as he was unharmed and seemed to be as happy as ever, despite missing his collar.

I helped Kara check the yard for ways he could have gotten out. We both decided he must have shimmied through a small gap in the gate on the side yard. I couldn't help being confused to find no grass or burrs under his fur. We thought nothing of it. A few weeks later, both my brother and Kara were going on a weekend trip with some friends and I offered to take care of Ike. They dropped him off on Friday before the 3-day weekend. Ike was happy to play with our older lab, Des. The second night he was with us.

I was out with friends and my dad had let both the dogs out into the yard around 8 p.m. He sat in his chair in the living room watching a show with my mom. They said they remember hearing Dez barking because he yelled for him to be quiet, but they assumed the puppy was riling him up. A few minutes later, Dez came to the door to be let in. He ran inside and barked at my dad. My dad was confused as our dog was not a regular barker. He called for Ike, but he didn't come. My dad went out and looked around the bushes and still did not find him. He became concerned and hurried into the house to get a light. My mother joined him and they both scoured the large yard and did not find him. When I got home they had just finished

searching the front and side yards. I told them that he had escaped once before so we decided to take the car and look for him. As we drove around yelling for him, I tracked in the help of a few neighbors. I thought how strange it was that such a well-behaved puppy had suddenly become a master escape artist in the past three weeks. Our yard had seen three or so dogs grow up in it, some younger, and smaller than Ike. And we had never had that problem. The fences were high and well built, and my dad had replaced the ones on the side of the house just a few summers ago.

I hope that he'd return that night, like he did the last time, but he didn't. I informed my brother on Sunday and proceeded to look all day in the surrounding areas, the pound shelters and vet clinics. We found nothing. My brother was heartbroken. I helped him make flyers to post in her neighborhood and his. A few weeks passed and we heard nothing. My dad was doing yard work in mid-February. He came in after a few hours and he set something on the kitchen table. What's that, I asked? I knit my brows as I saw it. It's Ike's collar. It was in the

front yard. I almost hit it with the mower. You'll have to take it to your brother. It was Ix-Caller. His first caller, not the one that he had been wearing the night he went missing from our yard. It was his puppy caller, which he had lost the day he got out of the yard at my brother's house. I called Kara and asked her if they had found it and she said they had it and had bought him a new one.

That's when it clicked. Someone had stolen my brother's dog not once, but twice. I told my brother, Kara, and my parents my theory, and it was not a difficult one for them to understand. It had to be connected to everything else. Right when we thought she was out of our lives, we decided to take it to the police and add it to our case file on Pam. I also told them about the night that I had been photographed

from my window. The police, like many times before, told us they could not do anything as there was no proof she had done any of these things. Frustrated, defeated, and frightened again. But a few short weeks later, an April of 2016, new developments would finally end at all. of 2016, new developments would finally end at all. By complete, God sent coincidence, Cara was with her mother in a small town 45 minutes away from ours. We were planning for my 17th birthday that month, so preoccupied, we almost put Pam in the fact that she undoubtedly had been watching us

for months and had stolen and probably killed my brother's puppy and thrown his collar in our front yard to help us connect the dots and give us credit for the crime. However, while Cara, when no shopped in the center of the town, she and her mother noticed a car parked on the street, a car with a puppy in it. It was a bit warm out, so they walked to the window and peaked in at the animal. Cara immediately recognized him by his eyes and the marking on his chest, and the fact that he had been crying as soon as she called his name, and he saw her. She phoned the police, phoned my brother, and sat on the back of the trunk of the car.

The police arrived as the owner of the car came back to it. The girl was immediately upset by the presence of the police and Cara's angry accusations. The girl was not Pam, and she became rather helpful. The girl said that she had purchased a dog only a few days ago from an ad online. She told the police that the girl she purchased it from was super shady and eager to get rid of the dog who was skinny and a very cheap price. The girl that sold her the dog claimed that she didn't want the stupid dog. It was a present from her boyfriend, but it was the wrong kind.

Pam had always liked small dogs. She told the police that she had met the girl to purchase the dog at an apartment complex a few minutes from where they were. But that she wasn't sure what apartment the girl lived in. The police, after Kara had informed them of our situation, used Pam's name to find out that she indeed lived in the apartment complex with two roommates. They interviewed Pam's roommates the next day, but Pam was not there. They told detectives that they almost never saw Pam. Her room was always locked, and she was almost always gone.

She didn't have a job, though she claimed to have one. However, when they did speak to her, she talked a lot about her past relationship and switched between how much she loved him and his family to how they all deserve to die and they were going to hell. With the information given by the girl who had purchased Ike and by Pam's roommates, the police finally had sufficient evidence to search Pam's apartment. I don't know much about what they found, but what I do know horrified my family and horrified me. On Pam's computer, they found hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of my brother, my parents Cara, and of me. Of our cars, our houses, my school, my brother's school, and of Ike. Pictures taken through our windows at night.

Pictures of us sleeping. Photos taken from our social media of vacations, the pictures of my brother's proposal to Cara, she even dogged her herself into some of them. She still had pictures of her and my brother and her with my family up around her room. She had kept Ike and her closet for weeks on a towel and with just water and little food. And her search history, they found everything

from rape fantasy and other violent pornography to weapon research. The police now had sufficient evidence to arrest Pam. Pam had been obsessively stalking my family for more than two years. She had stalked us from her car, following us around town. It had been her snapping photos of me from the roof outside my window. She had watched my brother drop off eye at our house.

She had documented her opinions of us, our habits, and her plans in a journal which we will not get to see until the case is taken to trial next month. My brother, myself, my father, the girl we found Ike with, Pam's roommates, and several of my brother's friends and Pam's mother will testify against her. It will be the first face-to-face interaction any of us will have had with her in many months and I am terrified. And I'm angry. I'm angry that an evil narcissistic, malevolent, psychotic parasite like her had latched onto

my brother, onto my family, and single-handedly stripped us of our security, our sanity, and our trust. Every creek, every bump, every unknown face, and every vehicle following us too closely will send me into a telspin of dread, and I'll see her again, standing in my front yard in her dress, looking up to the sky with a vacant, animalistic gaze. My life became a real horror story, not because of a haunted house or because of an axe-wielding murderer, but because of a sick girl with a broken mind and a fixation on something unobtainable, I'm 17 years old and I've experienced an ordeal most will read and think is a sad attempt

at a thrilling fiction post. My family is healing. I'm healing and she did not break us. I hope that the story helps anyone who has gone through something similar. Feel not so alone. I hope that those of you who read this and think of someone who shows the same warning signs Pam did are now prepared to take action to protect yourselves. Don't wait until things get as bad as they did for me. Be aware of the power of mental instability and the danger behind it. Pam, let's Jesse Kelly.

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