Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 12x15: The Whistler In The Woods

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Stories in this episode: The Man in the Window | flowersflowers200 (0:40) The Whistler in the Woods | Tyler (10:39) Home Invasion | Spooky_Mennonite (18:29) The first and only hitchhiker I have ever picked up | saltysirenxo (23:26) My dog alerted me to something at my window | YaGirlDisco (28:21) I was 13 and left home alone. Big mistake! | Glittering-Return316  (31:58)  Stalked by a Psycho at Summer Camp | Em-O_94  (37:21)  Extended Patreon Content:  The Man in the Teal Car | Jackie Hiking Turned Running For My Life | Erin N. The Man on My Doorstep | KatKillz Creepy Man at the Dog Park  | Gillian Marcus | svw1990  Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Follow: - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/ - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ Check out the other Cryptic County podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radiocast at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts!    Get access to extended, ad-free episodes of Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast with bonus stories every week at a higher bitrate along with a bunch of other great exclusive material and merch at patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast. This podcast would not be possible to continue at this rate without the help of the support of the legendary LNM Patrons. Come join the family! All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. To submit your story to the show, send it to [e-mail]. Give all the moms in your life a unique, heartfelt gift you’ll all cherish for years—StoryWorth! Right now, save $10 on your first purchase when you go to StoryWorth.com/meet. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/notmeet and get on your way to being your best self. With DraftKings Casino, new players start playing with just FIVE BUCKS and get ONE HUNDRED BACK INSTANTLY in Casino Credits. Download the app and use code MEET to book your one-way ticket to fun with DraftKings Casino!

This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. Three years ago, during the height of COVID-19, a group of my friends and I wanted to live with each other while we were completing remote learning at university. We were attending a very popular school in California. As a group of girls living together during these times we spent most of our nights watching movies, drinking wine, and hanging out together.

Let me give some context by describing the layout of our house since it's important to know. We were living in this massive house that was renovated into three different apartment units. We chose our unit specifically because it was in the very back of the house. This made us feel safer since we were further from the street and it was nearly impossible to see us from outside. Inside our apartment unit, we had four bedrooms upstairs, and one bedroom right off of the

open concept kitchen and living area. The ground floor bedroom faced our tiny garden and tiny parking lot, which could accommodate three cars. Our kitchen and living room space was facing a little alleyway that ran alongside our house which led to the front door. It was a pretty big apartment. The bedrooms were small but the communal kitchen and living room area was a great hangout spot. Now since we got the apartment in the middle of COVID-19, we hadn't furnished it properly, and we didn't have any curtains or blinds on our windows, but they had some flimsy bug screens on the outside.

In the weeks leading up to this incident, my friend, who was the one living in the bedroom on the first floor, was complaining to the other four roommates. She was saying that if we wanted to bring anyone over, we needed to be at the door to grab them so that they didn't jiggle and try to open the locked door every time. She said that she frequently heard footsteps right outside her window that faced our tiny parking lot. She also told us that she sometimes heard somebody trying to open the front door or window.

Looking back on it now, I don't understand why none of us were freaked out when she told us this. I think we just had such a false sense of security since there were so many of us living together. We did have boys coming in and out of our house at night, so I guess we didn't think it was very unusual for her to be hearing footsteps. After a while, my friend's complaints died down so all of us forgot about any issue that had happened. Besides, we constantly got into fights

because we were all cooped up inside all of the time. So things were said, but they just went in one ear and out the other. That is until this happened. All five of us, plus two of my roommate's boyfriends, we were all sitting in the living room for a Harry Potter movie marathon. We had three couches placed in a U-shaped formation surrounding a tiny shitty TV that we bought at Best Buy for 150 bucks.

So it was a tight squeeze for all of us, but it felt so safe having so many people around, especially since there were two huge guys hanging out with us. For our marathon, we all thought that it would be kind of cute to make Harry Potter themed treats, so we made cupcakes and filled them with different colors representing all of the houses, and one of my other friends made a sparkling cocktail, so we were all having fun with it. We had all of our lights turned off because, as many of you probably know, the Harry Potter movie series was filmed with a lot of darkness.

Since our TV was so crappy, it was genuinely hard to see what was going on at some points, but we were enjoying the film. Suddenly, one of my friends asked to pause the movie. She explained that she had been hearing some crunching noises, or maybe footsteps, coming from outside for the past 30 minutes. This was my bad entirely, but I didn't take her concern seriously. I told her to stop scaring all of us and said that our building had two other apartment units and those tenants occasionally walk by our front door after they've parked.

Then we went back to watching the movie, but we started hearing giggling. It was just a short burst of laughter, and then dead silence. We all went silent. It was almost like we couldn't believe we heard the giggling so close by. We turned the TV off again because it was just really unnerving. We sat there, stunned in silence, and there it was again. Whoever it was was right outside of our door giggling. And it didn't sound like a child's giggle either. It was more like somebody. An adult.

Imitating a child's giggle. It really freaked all of us out. We went to the bedroom window, which was right above the front door so that we could see if anybody was outside, but there wasn't. There wasn't even anyone in the alley. The boys decided that they would check the perimeter of the house outside, and our parking lot and garden, to see if they could find anyone or anything. The boys came back and said that they didn't find anything weird or unusual. They said that we were probably hearing noises from our neighbors since they were throwing a little kickback.

Maybe it was the false sense of security coming back into play, but we were pretty satisfied with that answer. Plus, the boys weren't freaked out at all, so we figured, why should we be freaked out? So we decided to turn the TV back on, make some popcorn, and chill. Once again, maybe it was that false sense of security, but we opened one of the kitchen windows for some air since one of my friends burned the popcorn. The kitchen window we opened was on the very far end of the kitchen, which was the window furthest away from where we were, so I guess it felt better knowing that even if something

were to happen, at least we had some distance. As we settled back in to watch TV, we heard another giggle. This one sounded almost like it was forced. It was so odd. We looked towards the open window, and we didn't see anything. We were all silent again, so one of the boys decided to shout out, shut the fuck up! For a little comic relief, I guess.

We decided to continue the movie, and seconds later we heard another giggle. This time when we looked over at the window, there was a man's face pressed up against the bug screen. He was opening and closing his mouth as if he were trying to chomp through the screen. His eyes were wide open, just staring at all of us as he kept chomping. Literally, all of our survival instincts went straight out the window because, while the boys ran to the window to try and shut and lock it, everybody else was just screaming, running upstairs and locking themselves in whichever bedroom they got to the quickest. I cannot recount how this ended since I ran upstairs, but according to the boys, after they were able to shut the window and grab one of the kitchen knives, the guy continued

to press his face against the window, making the same chomping motion, all while not blinking. They said that he stayed like that until he suddenly whipped his head back and disappeared into the darkness. There are some stories about my mother's life that I honestly never get tired of hearing. From hilarious to heartfelt, tear-jerking to plot-twisting, her retelling of the events always brings me joy. Just in time for Mother's Day, I have the perfect gift for your mother or your mother figure that will capture all of their stories for your family forever. It's called Storyworth. Storyworth helps you preserve precious memories and stories from your mom or mother figure for years to come. Here's how it works. Each week, Storyworth emails your loved one

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That's storyworth.com slash meet to save $10 on your first purchase. Now back to the show. This happened when I was 18. I'm currently 33. I grew up in rural Kentucky. I used to live next to the Senator of Kentucky who had bought our neighborhood when it was all just old farmland and woods. She's quite old and she's still alive today. She had bought this land back in the 70s before she was the Senator since she had a lot of money from her parents.

The yard of my house backed up to the senator's house. When I was 18, I worked for her on her farmland doing chores, just to make some extra cash in the summer. The senator's land was massive, and it borders on some unused public land that's relatively desolate and goes on for miles and miles. This land mainly consists of tiny streams, fields, and trees. Nothing too exciting. This area is next to a small highway that needed to be crossed in order to get to the

next part of the woodlands. My friend who we'll call Annie also worked for the senator doing chores and land work. He had a little brother as well, who we'll call Willie. He was fifteen. We all grew up in an area that was pretty safe, so our parents generally let us do whatever we wanted to do, just as long as we were back home at a decent hour. We often explored these lands during the day to see how far that we could go. We also liked going into the woods to see if we could find anything cool to explore. For the most part, we didn't find anything much.

Usually just some makeshift campsites, which we assumed were for hunting. One day we were out exploring. It was pretty close to dusk, but we happened to bring flashlights just in case it got too dark. This was around the fall of 2008, so the leaves were falling from the trees and they were coating the ground pretty thickly. As we were walking, I started noticing that we had been going in a circle, so I assumed that we were lost, and we could no longer hear the highway that was close to us.

The sun was going down fast, and we had maybe an hour left of daylight. When it eventually got dark, we started walking around the woods with our flashlights. It just kept getting darker and darker and the next thing we knew, it was around 10pm. And we were still lost. And before anyone asks why we didn't call anyone on our cell phones, I need to explain that I grew up modestly, so I only had a cheap flip phone and the service back then was terrible. Throughout the night we were trying our best to backtrack to go back the way that we came but it was nearly impossible to retrace our steps in the dark and the woods were very

thick. My dad always told me when in the woods, if it becomes extremely quiet at any point, it means that there is a large predator or a threat of some sort in the area. Now, mind you, we are technically in the Appalachia area, and we have all heard stories about what not to do while in the woods, specifically at night. So, Annie and Willie and I were walking when suddenly everything in the area fell extremely quiet. It was totally silent except for one noise, which was whistling.

We all stopped dead in our tracks and began to look around in every direction in an attempt to verify where it was coming from. Annie unintentionally whistled back, and we all know that whistling in the woods is not advised, especially if it's a response to an unknown whistle. And again, this was at night in the Appalachia region. This wasn't a good idea for several reasons, so I hit Annie with my hand and asked, Why would you do that? And with that, the whistling immediately started to grow louder. So I told everybody to start running.

As we ran, the whistling grew softer until it eventually went away. We were relieved by this, but if we weren't lost before, we definitely were after running away from the whistling. We continued wandering, and it was around midnight, so the full moon was lighting the area we were in somewhat well. We happened to come across an old rundown shack, otherwise known as a shanty. It looked like it still had somewhat of a door on it, so we peered through the door and saw a small fire going. As any naive or hopeful person would do, we cracked the door open and asked if anybody was around.

At that exact moment, we heard leaves crunching, so we all turned around, but nothing was there. Then right on cue, as if it were a horror movie, the whistling started again. It sounded like it was right next to us. We all turned towards the sound, and there she was. A woman wearing tattered clothing was only about five feet away from us. We slightly shifted back, and we just looked over at her with our flashlights, pointed at her. Then, in unison, the three of us all said, hello?

And as if we said something to make her lose her mind, she began screaming at the top of her lungs. It wasn't normal screaming, though. It was primal. Then she lunged at Annie, and out of reaction, Annie swung his flashlight directly at the lady's face, and she fell to the ground. We started running right away because we were terrified, and she chased after us while still screaming. We were hauling ass through the woods for at least 15 minutes, and she continued chasing

us. We eventually lost her, or so we thought, so we took a break to catch our breath behind some bushes, and we started hearing the whistling again. We sat there for at least an hour before we worked up the courage to come out from hiding and keep running. When we started running again, we could hear someone close to us running as well. We no longer heard the whistling. So we assumed it was the screaming lady and she was near us. We finally started to hear the highway again, so we got onto it and started walking alongside it.

Assuming she was still chasing us, we got as close as we could to the highway so that we could try to flag somebody down. We were terrified that she was waiting somewhere in the wood line, so we were frantically waving people down, even though traffic was scarce. It wasn't looking good at first, since the few cars we saw kept going, but someone finally stopped and let us in. He was pretty spooked by our faces. They were extremely pale.

He asked us about what happened. We explained and he told us that people who are in dire circumstances tend to live in these woods. He then took us home and we never went that deep into the woods ever again. I work the night shift, so I sleep during the day. Sleeping during the day may sound strange to some, but if it's something that you need to do, you learn to get used to it. For reference, I live on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. My closest neighbor is half a mile away. One evening at around 6 p.m. I heard what I thought was some loud knocking. It was coming

from outside and the dogs went absolutely ballistic. I woke up due to hearing the noise from outside, but I didn't think anything of it since my neighbors like to shoot their guns and this happened during hunting season. As I was starting to fall back to sleep, my heart started fluttering oddly, as if I knew something wasn't right. That's when I heard loud footsteps throughout the house. My dogs were still barking, but they were starting to quiet down, and that's when I really began to worry. The footsteps continued

around my house until they stopped on the other side of my bedroom door. I remember thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to die. Although I had a weapon in my room, I knew that I could not get to it without being heard by whoever was standing right outside my bedroom door. It felt like an eternity before the steps continued moving around again and whoever this was headed towards my brother's room. Some of his friends liked getting themselves into seedy situations, so I figured it had to be one of them, right? Rustling could be heard throughout the house as things were being thrown around.

I heard the footsteps coming back to my door, and the doorknob began to jiggle. I immediately turned my back towards the door and closed my eyes tight. I put one hand over my mouth to avoid making any noise. I heard my door open, but that was it. Because then I heard a car approaching my house. When that car pulled up, whoever had just opened my door, walked out of my room, left the house, and got into the car outside. I finally gathered enough courage to get out of bed when I heard the car leaving.

Everything in the house seemed to be present, but my brother's room was a mess. I immediately called my brother and asked if any of his friends were coming over. He said not that he knew of, and I told him about what happened. He got off the phone with me and started calling around. We moved out to the country to get away from the activity of the city life. I guess we let our guards down too much, since something like this happened. Sometimes, country life isn't so safe after all. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Right now, my social battery is maxed out. I'm full of energy and I'm filling up my days with meaningful experiences even during the times when it's getting low because I've learned, with the

help of my therapist, that it's beneficial to get out of your comfort zone sometimes. But I still have a problem with accidentally ignoring the times when my battery is a bit too low. I tend to spread myself thin, especially with social gatherings picking up after the winter. What's the right amount of socializing for you? How do you recharge? Maybe you thrive around people, maybe you need some more time alone. Therapy can give you the self-awareness to build a social life that doesn't drain your

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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 even switch therapists at any time, no additional charge. Find your sweet spot 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 N-O-T-M-E-E-T. Now back to the show. I'm a female, and I was 25 years old when this happened.

It was five years ago. One day I had a little time to kill before picking up my kids from school. Since it was a gorgeous day, I decided to spend some time cruising the back roads in my small, rural hometown while listening to music. I passed by this guy with his thumb out, trying to catch a ride, and I almost picked him up. He appeared to be in his late 30s or early 40s, and he was carrying a fishing pole and a backpack.

He was relatively innocent looking, I guess. but see, I was a lone female. I had been taught all I needed to know about hitchhikers via the hundreds of hitchhiker pick-up gone wrong stories that I had heard, so I just kept driving. As I continued driving, I was having this internal dialogue with myself because I felt guilty about my decision not to pick this guy up. I remember thinking, you know, if I were hitchhiking, I really hope that somebody would pick me up. I mean, really, what's the worst that could happen?

I was also on a self-improvement journey. I was trying to start doing things that I wouldn't ordinarily do, as well as things that scare me as often as possible. So I decided that if he was going to be walking on the side of the road when I looped back around, I would pick him up. And sure enough, about ten minutes later, he was still there. I was feeling a little nervous as I pulled over to get him, and once I was in the process of doing so, I knew there was no going back. What could I do in that instance?

Peel out while he was trying to get in my vehicle? Well, I went through with it, and as soon as he got in, I realized I potentially made a horrible mistake. This was because 1. He seemed like he was tweaking, and 2. He was looking at me, like I was a feast and he was starving. I didn't realize exactly how rattled I was by making this decision to pick him up until he asked me for a smoke.

My hands were shaking so badly that I was barely able to pull one out of my pack without breaking it. At least driving made it easier to hide my nerves since I could steady my shaky hands on the wheel. But I was internally freaking out as I was trying to figure out how I would beat this guy's ass if he tried anything. He told me that his name was Wayne, and he lived about five minutes away from where I picked him up.

He told me how he lost his license due to multiple DUIs, and he explained that he was living in a house nearby with an older man. As he talked about the old man that he lived with and the house, he was also trying to talk me into hanging out with him at said house. He invited me to come over for a drink with him the next day. When I finally got him to his destination, I was met with a little shack-like thing surrounded by all these junk cars and appliances and stuff. When he got out of my car, he was trying to get me to come inside with him, but I told him I couldn't stay and I left. As I drove away,

I felt relieved and a little proud of myself for helping somebody while facing a fear of mine. Fast forward to the following week. An instructor of mine was talking to me and they said, Holy shit! Somebody got murdered on the back roads! Do you know anyone down that way? And then they mentioned the exact same road where I picked up the hitchhiker. I replied, Wow, you know, that's really weird. I drove a hitchhiker down that road last week. I think his name was Wayne.

Not even 15 minutes later, I saw Wayne's picture all over Facebook saying that he had been arrested for stabbing someone to death at that very house I dropped him off at. He stabbed his victim in the lungs and the victim bled out in that little shack. I never figured out if his victim was the old man he was quote unquote living with or not. Who knows if that old man he was roommates with even existed. All I know is, I swear I'll never pick up another hitchhiker in my life.

When I was 17, my bedroom had a window looking out at my backyard. The backyard was fenced in, but on the other side of the fence were some woods and a retention pond. I had never been scared of this, so I kept my blinds open. That way, when the sun rose in the morning, the natural light would help wake me up. One night I was up late on my phone with my dog lying in bed next to me. At around 2 a.m. my dog jumped up and started barking at my window. At first I thought that he was just barking at his reflection so I told him to stop.

But then I realized he was looking at the left side of the window while his reflection was on the right. I couldn't see what was outside the window because the lamp on my nightstand was on. All I could see in the window was the reflection of my bedroom. Not wanting to alert whatever might be out there, I faked a yawn, set my phone aside, and turned off the lamp. I then got into bed, facing the window, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw a set of human eyes looking back at me from the left side of the window.

I drank a lot of water at night, so I had an empty bottle on my nightstand. I grabbed it and pretended that I just realized it was empty. I turned on the lamp and acted like I was going to get some water. I went straight to my parents' room, and my dad told me not to worry. Because we had these motion-activated floodlights and they hadn't turned on, he assumed that there was no way anything was out there. So I went back to my room and I told myself I was just seeing things. I closed the blinds, turned off the lamp, and tried to get some sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, I went to take my dog out and I decided to check out the pine straw that was stored underneath my window. It was visibly disturbed. I did my best to ignore that and remember what my dad said about the floodlights. I was on board thinking that everything was in my head until my dad tested the floodlights later that day and found that the bulbs had burnt out. I'm 22 now. This was five years ago, so I'm far enough removed from it that I can mostly just look

at it as a strange experience that I had, but there is a degree of paranoia left from this, and other things I've encountered. To everyone who has had a similar experience, I hope everything turned out okay for you, and I hope that you're doing well. In sharing this story, I've interacted with a few who have had similar experiences, and they are extremely strong people. To anyone who does this peeking through windows shit, fuck off. To this day I keep my blinds closed and my lamp off when I sleep.

I don't want to risk anyone being able to see me. To whoever or whatever was at my window that night. Let's not meet. I was 13 when this happened and it still gives me nightmares thinking about it. My parents wanted to go out on a date night so they left me home alone on a Friday night. We had a one-story home with a daylight basement that had its own entrance. We lived on a dead-end street that's pretty quiet in the evening, so not many cars come and go. My neighbors are pretty close to my house too, so I never felt uncomfortable being at

home by myself. My parents left at around 6pm for their dinner reservations, and I had a nice hot pizza delivered and was ready to watch some scary movies all by myself. I was excited. I locked the door behind them and popped the TV on. I was scrolling through the movie options and decided to watch one of the Halloween movies. I then snuggled with my nice warm fuzzy blanket on the couch, got comfy, and began my night

alone. About an hour had passed and I got up to use the bathroom. While in the bathroom, I thought that I heard noises coming from the basement. It sounded like somebody or something was moving around, but I figured since I was home alone it couldn't possibly be anything so I brushed it off as nothing. Then I went back to my couch to finish the movie. Another five minutes passed and again there were moving noises in the basement. I started getting that nervous feeling in my gut so I stopped the movie to listen for

more noises. I thought about that entrance door down there and wondered if it was locked. I assumed my parents locked it. They had to, right? I didn't know what to do. I took a deep breath and I decided to walk towards the basement and put my ear to the door. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

I froze in fear. This had never happened to me before. I had been home alone in the past, but mostly only during the day. I know the obvious thing to do would be call the cops, but did I do that? No, I ran outside, went to my neighbor's house, and banged on their door. Thankfully, they were home and let me in. I was out of breath and scared. I couldn't get the words out fast enough.

Can you please call the cops? Somebody is in my house. Hurry, please. They called 911 and the cops arrived within 10 minutes. I also called my parents to let them know what was going on. I let the cops check out the house while I stayed at my neighbor's house where I felt safe. After some time, one of the cops came over to my neighbor's house and said that they

didn't find anyone in the house, but said that whoever it was came in through the basement entrance, which must have been locked. Nothing was taken and everything was in its place. My parents got home and of course they were upset and scared. The cops assured us that the house was clear and they advised us to lock our doors and windows at all times. They think that whoever it was must have been watching the house, and when they saw my parents leave, they likely assumed that the house was empty.

Needless to say, that night, we all made sure every door and window stayed locked. They still left me alone after that, but they started letting the next door neighbors know when I was going to be alone, just in case. I think about this night, and it gives me nightmares. Please stay safe out there, and always lock your doors. You never know who is lurking around your neighborhood, waiting for an opportunity. Rewinded back to the days of chillaxing on the beach, and all-day fun with spring break on DraftKings Casino. Play exclusive games like the fan favorite Rocket. The excitement is endless,

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I should start by saying that I hated going camping. My parents sent me to summer camp every year in Colorado, which involves at least one camping trip into the woods. Despite the brevity of these trips, I always resented them. The heavy bag, the lack of toilets, the spiders that always found their way into my tent, just to name a few, inconveniences. When I turned 16, I became a camp counselor in training. However, my distaste for the whole experience briefly changed.

At that age, we were only a few years older than the oldest campers, but we were given considerable amounts of leeway in what we were allowed to do. Most nights, we would have to stay in the cabin with our campers, and it would be rumored that the counselors in training would get drunk, smoke weed, and hook up with each other after everybody else went to sleep. What I didn't know was that the events of this camping trip would dissuade me from ever going camping in the woods again. The trip began as any other.

All together, there were around 30 people on the trip, 4 counselors in training, 4 counselors, and around 20 or so boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 14. Walking in a single file line, up and down various trails trails you could hardly hear any sounds of nature over the conversations and laughter among the campers. Several hours went by and we made our way through a dense marshy area and up a steep incline with evergreens and aspens. I wasn't the most athletic kid, so it was around this point that I found myself at the back of the line with one of the other counselors in training, Jordan.

We were with two of the campers who were also struggling to keep up. The four of us started chatting, and in our distracted state, we began to fall more and more behind the rest of the campers, until the last of them faded out of view around a bend about fifty feet up ahead. Unconcerned, we just kept walking at the same slow pace, but after about thirty minutes or so, the trail started to level off, and I began to feel increasingly anxious. Not only had the rest of the group disappeared way ahead of us, but we had entered a stretch of completely dead evergreens, half of which looked scorched by a wildfire and the other

half appeared to have been killed by some sort of disease. The eeriness of the landscape was punctuated by a small derelict cabin sitting in the middle of the scorched forest, but seemingly untouched by the fire that must have spread through the area. We were so enraptured by the scene that one of the campers actually screamed when a twig broke behind us. Jordan and I started laughing a bit, but we quickly stopped when we turned to look at where the sound came from.

Not even twenty feet behind us was a man, with his eyes locked on us. He had a messy nest of black hair and a long black beard. He was slowly making his way up the trail. He didn't appear to have any hiking supplies on him, and we had no idea of how long he had been walking behind us. Being young teenagers, we were naturally freaked out. But Jordan managed to give the guy a slight wave before saying to the rest of us, come on, let's speed it up and we'll get back with the rest of the group."

As we turned and continued our way up the path, the man mumbled a question that was hard to hear, and I was shocked when Jordan turned around to ask the man to repeat himself. The man muttered again, slightly louder, "'Going camping?' Jordan replied to the man, saying yes, we were going camping, to which the man smiled slightly before ominously stating, Better be careful. We nodded and gave him a half-hearted thank you before continuing to try and find the rest of the group, this time at a much faster pace.

Although the man had been walking up the same trail as us when we saw him, he didn't continue. Instead, he just stood there in the middle of the trail and watched us. We made our way up the winding path until we disappeared from his view. Finally, we managed to catch up with the rest of the group who had been waiting for us, and we told the adult counselors about catch up with the rest of the group who had been waiting for us, and we told the adult counselors about our interaction with the man. They just shrugged it off and told us that the guy probably lived in that cabin and just wanted to know what we were doing near his property.

Still, I felt very unnerved about the encounter, and when we finally arrived at the campsite, I couldn't shake the feeling that the man had somehow followed us. Eventually though, I did put it out of my mind, and I managed to enjoy myself just a bit. After everyone else had gone to bed, Jordan and the other counselor in training from the boys' cabin had brought two warm Mike's Hard Lemonades that they had swiped from the counselor's quarters, and I took out the joint that I had stashed away for this exact occasion.

To avoid getting in trouble, we decided to hike into the woods just a bit to smoke the joint, and we had made our way to the edge of the river where we washed our pots and pans earlier in the day. The spot was eerily silent, and the thought of the man from earlier kept popping into my head. Assuming that I was cold, not anxious, Jordan gave me his blue hoodie. This prompted one of the other girls to suggest that we switch tents for the night so that I could sleep in the same tent as Jordan and I could sleep in the same tent as Jordan,

and she could sleep in the same tent as the other boy. I had absolutely no problem with this, so, after smoking the joint, we made our way back to our tents, which were pitched slightly away from the others. We discreetly sipped on the Mike's hard lemonades while telling scary camping stories. Some time had passed, and one of the boys, in the middle of telling a rather muddled story that was clearly being made up on the spot, suddenly stopped. In the silence, we could hear what sounded like footsteps crunching on pine needles about 40 feet away near one of the other campers' tents.

As we strained to listen to what was going on, the noises stopped. We assumed that it was one of the campers getting up to go to the bathroom, but being stoned and hopped up on the scary stories, we decided to call it a night and go to our respective tents. Jordan followed me into a tent and we awkwardly made out before eventually going to sleep. I don't know what time it was, it must have been quite late, when suddenly I woke up to the distinct sound of footsteps

walking around near my tent. Shot with adrenaline, I tried to lie there as still as possible and quiet my breathing. From the sound, it was apparent that somebody was less than three feet away from the front of my tent, seemingly pacing back and forth. I turned to wake up Jordan, but I was immediately put at ease when I saw that he wasn't next to me.

Assuming Jordan was the one that I had been hearing walking outside of the tent, I just closed my eyes and was beginning to drift back to sleep. When I heard the tent unzip, I felt him lie next to me, and after a few moments he put his arms around me and began to spoon me. After nearly drifting off to sleep again, I realized I had to go to the bathroom, and I muttered something about having to pee before beginning to unzip my sleeping bag. Seemingly annoyed by the disturbance, Jordan lazily turned over, pulling his hoodie up over his head, before going still again.

Quietly, so as not to wake him up, I unzipped the tent and quickly scanned the campsite for any movement. I comforted myself with the fact that Jordan had just gone pee and returned without incident, so I put my shoes on and began making the trek across our campsite to the designated pee zone. I had just made it to the area and pulled my pants down when I heard wrestling coming from the campsite, as if someone were rummaging through our supplies and bags. Still slightly drunk, I tried to pull my pants up.

In my haste, I lost my balance but tried to catch myself on a branch. It made a loud snapping noise when I grabbed it. I tried to recover myself as quietly as I could, but when I finally managed to look up, I could see that there was a figure making its way across our campsite in my direction. Before I could even think, I was blinded by the bright light of a flashlight shining directly into my eyes. The light was getting bigger, so whoever it was, they were coming toward me. I was frozen, and I panicked. The figure was just ten feet in front of me.

I then heard Jordan's voice say, Sorry, it's just me. I breathed a sigh of relief, but then Jordan asked me something that really confused me. "'Have you seen my blue hoodie? I know you gave it back to me, but I think one of the campers might have stolen it from my bag while I was sleeping.' After a brief pause, I managed to stutter. "'You were just wearing it when you got back into the tent with me."

What he said next made my blood run cold. "'What are you talking about? It's been missing since we got back from the river. I even went down there to see if I had left it by accident, but after I couldn't find it, I thought I'd go and check the boys' bags, and that's when I saw you.'" My confusion quickly turned to terror as I realized that the man in the blue hoodie who got into the tent with me just moments prior had not been Jordan. Sensing that something was wrong, Jordan asked me what happened.

I somehow managed to explain that whoever stole his hoodie was sleeping in our tent. Jordan was apprehensive, so he insisted on walking back to the tent to check it out. Then, as slowly and as quietly as possible, we made our way to the side of the tent. When Jordan flipped on his flashlight and shined it through the nylon lining, he let out a high-pitched scream. We could both see the clear outline of a man's shadow lying still inside our tent. What happened next was a bit of a blur, but we ran to the pod of tents on the other side of the campground where the older counselors were sleeping.

We frantically unzipped their tent and started yelling for them to come out since there was a man in our tent. I remember panic setting in as our counselors slowly and groggily woke up. But after a bit more frantic yelling, they finally managed to understand the severity of the situation when a commotion broke out on the other side of the camp near our tent. By the time they ran to the scene, however, they only found an unzipped tent and a bunch of our things littered on the ground that the man had apparently knocked over and thrown

during his escape. After that, we heard the counselors radioing back down to the camp to call the police. And we could tell they were as scared as we were. I don't think any of us were able to go to sleep after that. Luckily, we only had to wait a few hours for the sun to come back up, and by that time, a few of the other counselors had arrived with guns to escort us back to camp. On our way back down, one of the campers found Jordan's blue hoodie tied around one of the trees on the path like some kind of marker.

Needless to say, he didn't even want the hoodie back, so we just left it there. To this day, I'm uncertain if the man who was in our tent was the same guy that we ran into earlier on the trail. But this camping trip, and that night to stick around after the music for your extended version of this week's episode with stories you won't hear anywhere else. If you'd like to sign up for our Patreon to get access, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today. You'll get access to ad free episodes and all of our bonus content.

There are hours upon hours of bonus stories to check out. This week you have heard The Man in the Window by Flowers Flowers 200, The Whistler in the Woods by Tyler, Home Invasion by SpookyMennonite, The first and only Hitchhiker I have ever picked up by SaltySirenXO. My dog alerted me to something at my window by YaGurlDisco. I was 13 and left home alone. Big mistake by GlitteringReturn316 and finally stalked by A Psycho at Summer Camp by Emo94. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission

of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Finally, make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next week. Everyone stay safe. The Elementary School Playground was the best place for you.