Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 12x23: The Best of Creepy Wilderness Stories

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

 Upcoming LNM Live Tour Dates: 8/10/24 : San Diego, CA @ House of Blues: GET YOUR TICKETS 8/11/24 : Los Angeles, CA @ The Moroccan Lounge: GET YOUR TICKETS 8/18/24: Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s: GET YOUR TICKETS 9/19/24: Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall: GET YOUR TICKETS More Dates to be announced soon! Stories in this episode: Camping Nightmares | Kit (1:28) My Old Summer Camp Counselor | i_am_a_grocery_bag (10:51) Chased In The Woods | Hannah (16:49) The Pervert Who Stalked My Dad and I | Brandon M (26:16) Hidden in the Woods | Danishgirl92 (42:38) The Man in the Woods | Madi (45:24) Idiot Hunter in the Woods | Sir_Sillypants (50:11) Extended Patreon Content: My Time in Rural New England | Mark My Darkest Beachside Drive | Madeliene How I Learned to Stop Being Such a People-Pleaser | Gillian The Weekend Trip That Was Cut Short | Tariq One Way, Wrong Way | prdoncella 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].    This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/notmeet and get on your way to being your best self.  Get $50 in Casino Credits instantly when you start by playing just $5 with DraftKings Casino. All you have to do is download the DraftKings Casino app and sugn up with code MEET. 

It's summer at the Home Depot and that means it's time to kick off the season of outdoor doing. Whether you're planting in ground or in containers, we have your planting season covered with savings on soil and potting mix. Give your plants the nourishment they need with the continuous food release of Miracle-Gro.75 cubic foot garden soil on special buy four for $10. And give all your container plants the foundation they need with Miracle-Gro 25-court potting mix on special buy too for $16. Get summer savings happening now at the Home Depot. How doers get more done. 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. If If you're gearing up for a camping trip this summer, this is the episode for you. This week we're sharing a compilation of some of the creepiest wilderness episodes from the last 12 seasons of the show.

While we don't do this kind of thing all too often on the show, they are my favorite episodes because I get to go back and experience these stories again like it's the first time around. I'm particularly terrified of the woods at night by myself, so this was an unnerving episode to compile. It's also a great starting point for new listeners or for that friend that you've been meaning to share the podcast with. So be safe out there this summer on those wilderness excursions and enjoy the show. This happened to me ten years ago, and I still have nightmares about it.

I was living in Manhattan at the time. Every now and then, my best friend and I would take off and go camping in New England, escaping the city life for just a weekend. We didn't tend to go to any kind of designated campsites. We liked to go off the beaten track, away from other people. It made us feel closer to nature. Anyway, this time we decided to go camping, deep in one of the New England forests. We were pretty excited in the week leading up to our long weekend away.

This would be the most remote camping trip we had done so far. For reference, my friend and I are both females in our twenties at the time. We had pretty full on hectic work lives in the city, but we were both outdoorsy people at heart. I think that's part of why we always clicked. We had booked the Friday off and planned to drive through most of the day. We would stay the night at a B&B, and then we would continue to drive on Saturday morning, so that we could arrive and set up camp with plenty of daylight. This all went smoothly.

We had an amazing drive that Saturday. It was early autumn, and the sky was a brilliant blue. It was still warm, but pleasantly so. The leaves on the trees had begun to turn gold, and it was stunning to drive through the winding forest lanes. My friend and I were both in high spirits, drunk on the beauty of the surroundings. I'm from the UK, so these New England autumns always took my breath away. We don't have anything like it.

The both of us planned to park our car somewhere quiet and hike into the forest, but once we got there, we decided to camp near our car by the road. We had a ton of stuff and didn't feel like lugging it around. The road was incredibly quiet and very far from the main roads, so we didn't think that this would be any kind of issue. We would still get the isolation that we wanted, too. There was a lot of fallen wood and stuff by the road, so it was hard to find a space where we could pitch our tents next to each other.

We ended up pitching one by the road and the other one twenty feet or so into the forest. You couldn't see the second tent from the road due to all of the forest debris. I took the one further from the road. After we set everything up, we had a few beers and relaxed in camper chairs enjoying the scenery. The light had begun to fade by this point and we decided to get dinner on. We'd been there for about five or six hours, and hadn't seen one car come through. It was just one of those lanes that never gets used. We ate our dinner, and then headed to our separate tents. Now, before you ask why we slept separately, I'd like to explain that I'm a very fidgety

sleeper. I move a lot in my sleep, and it drove my friend mad for the first few trips that we took together. From then on, we'd always taken two tents with us. It became pitch black, very fast in the forest. Something I loved about being away from the city and nature. I always sleep very well without electricity. As I said, I was in a tent that was 20 feet into the forest rather than one right by the road, which my friend took. She and I had made a path in the forest from her tent to mine, just in case she needed to find it at night. I fell asleep quickly, lulled by the forest sounds and the darkness.

Something in the night woke me up, though. I thought it was just a dream. But I heard a noise. I couldn't place it, so I sat up trying to orient myself. It sounded like a truck. It was loud and seemed to be making its way up the road getting closer to our tents. I scrambled around from my torch, but I couldn't find it. I estimated that it had to be between midnight and 3 a.m. I remember feeling very uneasy about the idea of a truck passing,

although technically it was a public road. I tensed up as the truck drew nearer. To my horror, I heard it start to slow down. The engine became quiet and then stopped altogether. I was frozen. If it had stopped where I thought it had, it would be right outside my friend's tent. What felt like an eternity passed. It was deadly silent. Then the engine roared up, and I heard the truck pull away.

I realized I hadn't breathed in a long time, and finally exhaled. I was frozen to the spot. I wanted to run to see if my friend was okay, but I was still terrified. Out of nowhere, I suddenly hear footsteps running towards my tent. I remember, I sprang into a low crouch. I had no idea what I was doing. It was just fear and instinct at this point. Then my tent opened. idea what I was doing. It was just fear and instinct at this point.

Then my tent opened, and this high-pitched scream emanated from me. It was my friend at the tent door. She looked very shaken, but she asked if I was okay. She explained that the truck had woken her up, and she just laid there, terrified in her tent, as it stopped right by her. We debated just getting into our car and driving, leaving all of our gear behind. However, we were both a bit groggy, a little drunk still, and pretty incapable of navigating at this time of night, let alone driving. of navigating at this time of night, let alone driving. We decided there has to be some kind of reasonable explanation for what just happened, and we were being overdramatic.

We would get up at first light and decide what to do then. We did decide, however, that my friend would share the tent for the night. We wanted to be together, and it was good that the tent wasn't really visible from the road. After what seemed like hours, I fell into a shallow, fretful sleep. I remember feeling the dread before my mind worked out what was going on. It was that sound again. The low rumbling in the distance, getting louder.

The truck was back. It must be the same one, it sounded exactly the same. I could feel my friend tense up next to me. She was awake like me, but she didn't say anything. We both listened, barely breathing. I swear you could hear my heart beating. I took my hand out of my sleeping bag and reached for my friend. She must have sensed me because she also reached out.

We held hands, clenching each other in fear as the truck finally came closer. The truck stopped. It stayed there just rumbling for a few moments. Then the engine stopped. It was perfect silence. All I could hear was my friend's shallow breath. A door slammed, making us both jolt. It sounded like the driver had just got out of the truck.

I was absolutely frozen. Another few beats of total silence. The next noise I heard really stayed with me all of these years. A gunshot ripped through the silence, and then another. We were both as rigid as statues in our sleeping bags. After what seemed like an age, the truck door slammed again and the engine started up. The truck drove off. We heard it rumbling away, the sound getting smaller and smaller. We lay there, barely moving until light.

We were in total shock, like zombies almost. When it became clear that it was morning, we opened the tent and made sure that the coast was clear. We made our way over to my friend's tent, almost in a trance. There were two bullet holes in her tent where the entrance was. Two fucking bullet holes. As you might expect, I have not gone camping since. My friend and I reported everything to the police, but nothing ever came of it. I have no idea why this person wanted to fire bullet holes into our tent.

It's deeply sinister. Anyways, crazy truck driving guy in the forest, let's not meet ever again. First for some background, I'm a 22 year old college senior about to graduate and start medical school in the fall. This happened to me when I was in elementary school, so over a decade ago. Over the summer, way back then, my mom sent me to YMCA summer camp. I enjoyed going in every day and hanging out with all of my friends from school who also

went to the camp. But I especially loved one of the counselors, Mike. in every day and hanging out with all of my friends from school who also went to the camp. But I especially loved one of the counselors, Mike. Mike was always sitting in the same spot when I got dropped off in the morning and he would see me walk in and put a huge smile on his face. We would always sit there and play cards or some other board game in the morning while all the kids were arriving. Once the day's scheduled activity started, Mike would always be the counselor in charge of my group. He would always be just close to me. As a kid, I didn't know that that was weird.

I really liked him. As I said, I thought he was a really cool guy as an eight-year-old. Fast forward a couple of years. I don't remember the exact time frame or timeline, I'm sorry. My mom, my younger sister, and I were out at the state park in the area, about half an hour from where we lived. We had just gone down there to hang out for the day.

We have a great time on the playground, walking around the trails, etc., and then we head back to the day. We have a great time on the playground, walking around the trails, etc. And then we head back to the car. When we arrived back to the car, my mom was getting my sister all strapped in and ready to go for the ride home, and I was getting situated in the backseat as well. Now our car was in the parking lot, obviously, and there really weren't tons of people at the park that day. The lot was pretty much empty. So when I noticed that there was a car park right next to our car, I said, that's weird. But again, I was a kid and I didn't really think anything of it. Why would this car park literally right next to us when I can see 50 empty spots from right there.

Anyways, my mom is getting my sister and I all ready for the trip back home. Suddenly the driver door of the other car opens and out pops Mike. My mom recognized him so she just said hi and continued back to what she was doing. Mike says, and continued back to what she was doing. Mike says, "'Do you mind if I take a couple of pictures of your son? He's gotten so grown and I want to remember this.'" My mom obviously says,

"'No, you're not going to do that,' and shuts the driver's door, locks the car, and we leave. As we're leaving, I see Mike trying to take a photo through the car window. A couple of years later, when I was a bit older, my mom told me a little more of the details about Mike. At the time, my mom was pretty high up in a company that pairs kids with adult mentors. Adults would apply to be paired with a kid. So my mom starts telling me about how one day they were going through the applications to be a mentor and Mike's name popped up. Apparently someone else had interviewed Mike and recommended

him for approval into the system. My mom, on the other hand, essentially vetoed it because she obviously had known Mike from these other experiences and she got a weird vibe from him Mike from these other experiences and she got a weird vibe from him that something was off about him. So finally, we're watching the news at dinner one day a bit later. They start sharing a story about a man who was arrested and they show the mugshot of this man, Mike. The charge? Thousands of images and videos of child porn that he both made and was in possession of. He actually was caught by Border Patrol as he was acting weird when trying to cross into Canada and they decided to search his car and they found a bunch of it on his computer. They alerted the US authorities who then searched his house and they found a ton more.

I'm 100% confident that he wanted to add me to the collection. If not for my mom, having a great mother's instinct and the Canada US border, it might've happened. Summer camp counselor Mike, let's not cross paths again. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This year is flying by, and I still have new podcasts and projects that I need to finish up before it's 2025.

When life goes so fast, it's important to take a moment to celebrate your wins and make adjustments for the rest of the year. Therapy can help you take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for the next six months. Therapy has helped me with learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries, and it's also helped me to become the best version of myself. I'm able to prioritize things and organize my life so I can get things done in time. It isn't just for those who have experienced major traumas.

Anyone can benefit from therapy. 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 switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Take a moment. Visit BetterHelp.com slash not meet today to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. H e l p dot com slash not meet.

Now back to the show. Throughout my childhood, my family went on camping trips multiple times a year with a bunch of other families we knew. Those trips are some of my favorite memories of growing up because us kids would wander in packs together exploring the woods or playing hide and seek in the dark. One year, I was about 14 years old, we went to a campsite at Tyler State Park outside of Tyler, Texas. If you're not familiar with Tyler, it's a region of Texas with 300-foot pine trees, fall colors, and a lot of lakes.

The first evening we arrived at the park, I started feeling antsy and wanted to go for a walk. We had driven several hours to get there and I was disappointed at the idea of not really getting to do anything fun before dark. The parents were still setting up the campsite but said that I could go exploring if I took some of the younger kids along. They were also stir crazy and getting in the way. They told me to take a flashlight too, just in case. So that's how I ended up walking down the park road with a couple of girls who were around 10 years old

and my family's dog, Sophie. The girls who were with me were a little too young for us to really be friends. I knew I basically was babysitting them. But I didn't mind it. It let me leave the unpacking to my parents. We started walking down the main road and had seen a map of the park and it had shown the road as a giant loop.

I planned to follow the loop all the way around until we ended up back at our campsite. But I underestimated how quickly dusk sets in in a forest. Pine trees towered over both sides of the road, blocking much of the sky. I wondered if we should turn around, but reminded myself that the road looped back, though it hadn't occurred to me to consider the map's scale, and if the route might be several miles longer than I had thought. We'd started to get tired and nervous.

One of the younger girls picked up the dog to carry her. None of us had phones. It was the time of evening when everything in the woods had kind of a gray tone to it. It wasn't quite dark yet, but the trees and bushes were starting to look like shapes. We saw headlights approaching. They were blinding and bouncing over the road. We heard the driver slow down, and I half expected it to be one of our parents coming to find us. But the driver pulled right next to us, with his window rolled down. He was a man with a long gray and white beard.

He drove a beat-up ancient car like a 70s Plymouth or something with half-crunched empty beer cans covering the dashboard. But the part I remember most clearly was just how he stared at us. Without speaking, I sputtered out a hello, and he didn't respond. I believe in God, angels, and gut feelings. In that moment, suddenly everything in me set to run. I couldn't explain why, but I just knew I needed to. With one click, I turned off my flashlight,

grabbed the arms of the girls who were standing on either side of me, and we took off running. What happened next showed me we were right to be very, very afraid. When we ran, we ran the opposite direction of the car, towards the direction it came from. And when we ran, I heard the car behind us suddenly accelerate and swerve to turn around. If he was going to chase us in his car,

I knew he would see us with his headlights. We were just three girls running down the middle of the road with no one else around. We were the only thing to see. Still holding the younger girl's hands, I pulled us a few feet off of the road and into some bushes at the base of a tree. He must have seen us leave the road because he stopped the car. The headlights shut off, and a moment later, he cut the engine.

Everything went quiet. We were only maybe twenty to thirty feet away from the car at this point, and I remember trying not to breathe. It's that feeling you get when you're playing hide and seek, like the person looking for you might be able to hear your heartbeat. We were sitting there in total silence. I could feel the girls with me, their hands holding mine tightly. I remember one part of my brain being confused, trying to think of a totally innocent reason

for someone to turn off their headlights and cut their car's engine. But my gut told me he was looking for us. He turned off the headlights to try and adjust his eyes to the semi dark and he cut his engine. And then a moment later, I heard the sound of his car door opening. As an adult, I look back on this part of the story as the scariest part. There's still no reason I can imagine

for a man to pursue a group of little girls in the dark woods. If he were a nice person just concerned about us being lost, wouldn't he have said something to us when he first pulled up? And while there were three of us, plus a dog so cowardly that it didn't even count, we were probably combined, 170 pounds and completely and utterly lost. I heard him getting out of his car and I knew he would find us, so that's when I whispered for the girls to run. We took off into the woods, parallel from the road. We ran without even turning our flashlight on. The ground was uneven, so we inched closer and closer to the road until we were running again on concrete.

I think we ran for 10 to 15 minutes. Then we saw headlights again. One of the younger girls that I had with me, who had kind of a panicky personality, streaked away from me and the other girl directly into the woods. The car was some kind of SUV. The younger girl just kept running. I chased her down, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Don't run away from us, I said. I wasn't really thinking about being nice at that moment.

I was thinking about losing her in the dark or getting separated and one of us being found by the man. Then I grabbed her by the arm and practically dragged her to the road where we started walking again. By this time, everything was pitch black. I had to turn my flashlight on again. We walked in silence, and if we heard the sound of a car engine, I'd click the flashlight off and we'd dive to the side of the road until a car passed.

At one point, one of the cars looked like it could have been the older white car. But I wasn't sure. We walked until we found a camper with a little wooden sign on the front that said, Park Host. I knocked on the door of the camper, which was opened by a middle-aged woman who seemed shocked to see three girls at her door in the dark. Her husband started his truck and asked us to pile in with him. The younger girls did not want to.

We had been so terrified that night already and getting into a truck with the stranger was the last thing any of us wanted to do. But me? They seemed nice enough. The park host drove us back to our parents, who at that point had been searching all over for us. They might have even been driving some of the cars that we had seen when we were hidden from the road.

When I told my parents what happened, they were unsure at first if we overreacted to just meeting a stranger. But then, when they learned that he had cut his headlights and turned off his car engine, they became pretty freaked out as well. I remember my little brother was hanging around me all night, and I asked him why he was following me. He pulled out his pocket knife and said he just wanted to make sure I was protected. The next day, we went down to a swimming area at the park. My heart stopped when I saw a man sitting next to the water, watching all of the families swim. He had

a white beard that went all the way down to his chest. I grabbed my dad's arm and I told him, that's the guy. I don't know what my dad did after that, but it's hard for me to imagine my dad not having words with the man. All I know is that my dad disappeared after that for an hour or so before coming back and saying, you don't need to worry about that guy.

I followed him until he left the park. Just the same, I looked over my shoulder for the rest of that trip. Man in the old white car, let's not meet. The following story contains some dialogue of sexual nature that could be troubling to some listeners. Discretion is advised. I have never told anyone this story before, even though it happened just ten years ago. Because of the overwhelming sense of paranoia and violation that the memory still dredges up for me is almost too much. My therapist says I need to work on letting things out instead of bottling them up, though.

And if any experience in my life has warranted a story for the podcast, it's this one. My name is Brandon, and I'm named for my father, who has always called me Junior, more than he does my own name. I grew up near Seattle, and since my mother died from a long-term illness when I was seven years old, it's almost always been just Dad and I. We're really close, probably more than a lot of other guys are with their dads considering that we're all we've got in the world. Plus my dad is

just really cool and funny. I was sick a lot as a kid, diagnosed with lupus and epilepsy pretty early on in life, so I've always felt a deep gratitude towards my father for the way he never complained about his entire life pretty much revolving around me and my health issues after my mom passed away. He'd had it pretty rough himself. His dad was a piece of shit, and the environment in which my dad, Brandon Sr., grew up in, was enough to launch him headfirst into a life of drug and alcohol addiction. Crime both violent and nonviolent, and a host of undiagnosed mental health problems by his adolescence.

When Mom got pregnant with me, he got his shit together and cleaned up his act, got released from prison on good behavior after a series of cocaine and theft convictions, and discovered in his thirties that he's actually a very talented painter. He went to college and he works steadily now, making enough for me to grow up in a safe and comfortable household despite all my health issues as a kid, and he's always been very honest with me about his past which has contributed to my appreciation for the man and father that he fought to become for

me as an adult. I love my dad and he loves me and he raised me in a completely loving, honest, compassionate environment with no judgment or resentment. and he loves me, and he raised me in a completely loving, honest, compassionate environment with no judgment or resentment. So that's the backstory. One of our little traditions as father and son was this bonding time where we would spend the last weekend of every month camping.

We'd leave right after school ended for me to make the three hour drive to Willoughby Campgrounds, which is this beautifully dense forest that stays green and damp all year. It's a popular place for campers, but it's so thick and lush and sprawling that you can easily feel as if you're the only one out there at night, communing with nature. We'd usually arrive around six or seven p.m., just in time to set up our big tent and roast some sausages for dinner. We'd just sit out there for hours, talking quietly,

catching up, sharing things with each other that might have been more awkward, closer to the crush of the city. He'd tell me about the mistakes that he had made over the years that still haunted him, and I confessed all my stupid teenage secrets and feelings that might have been embarrassing to share otherwise. Like when I was thirteen and realized for the first time that I had a crush on another boy at school.

I still remember the nervous catch in my voice and the way that I couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes until he said, Come here, kiddo. And he held out his arms, and I knew how foolish I had been to think that my dad could ever have been anything but a safe person for me. So shit was hard sometimes, but we had each other, and we had our camping trips, and we were doing well. Until September of 2010, the last Friday of the month. My dad had already packed everything for us by the time that I got home from school.

I was fifteen that year, and college was still a few years away, but lately it had been preying on my mind, the anxiety I was feeling about leaving home, and my dad all by himself. He'd never remarried after my mom died, and he hadn't really dated much. Mom had taken a big part of him with her when she had gone. I knew it. But I hated the idea of him coming home to an empty, silent house every night after I left home. But it was one of those things that could have only been discussed at Willoughby, while

we fished and hiked and made our fire. We both had to go to the bathroom halfway there, so Dad pulled into a gas station to fuel up and pee. And while I waited for him to come out of the public bathroom so that I could use it, a man approached me. He was older than me, older than my dad even. My dad was 42 at the time, so the man had to have been in his 50s or even early 60s.

He was entirely average looking with a punchy belly and thinning gray hair in a creepy comb over. I figured he was waiting on the bathroom as well, so I stood there with my old ass little 3G phone playing Tetris or whatever until he spoke. You boys going camping? He asked. And that question alone set off alarms in my head

because unless he had been watching us when we pulled in, there was no way he could have known that I wasn't there with a girlfriend or a group of friends or whoever. I was just standing in the lot of a fairly well-used gas station. So I wasn't particularly worried. Plus, Dad had our canoe mounted on top of the old car,

and the fishing poles were clearly visible through the windows of our backseat. Yeah, my Dad and I was all I said. That's nice, a boy spending quality time with his old man. Kids don't seem to do that anymore. I only shrugged, unsure of what to say to that. Are you guys headed to Willoughby? Again, a weirdly specific question.

But we were driving in that direction with a car full of gear, so not entirely unfounded. Yep, I said. There was nothing especially off about the guy. And something was still raising alarms in my head, though. I couldn't place what it was. To this day, I think my dad felt the same way, because the second he stepped out of the bathroom, I sensed his hackles were immediately up at the sight of this man talking to me. He walked briskly over to me and inclined his head towards our car. Time to head out, Junior.

I needed to use the bathroom as well, but the look on his face silenced any protests of mine, so I just got in and resolved to pee in the woods later. What the fuck was that? He asked. He wanted to know what happened when we were back on the road. I don't know, some weirdo. Yeah, he was trying to make conversation with the kid all by himself in the middle of nowhere. Fucking creep. You gotta be more careful, kiddo." I thought my dad was maybe just being overprotective,

but I should have trusted his instincts. We made it to our campsite with no issues. There weren't many other hikers or campers around, if any. The silence was so deep and peaceful that it was easy to open up and talk as we roasted hot dogs and made s'mores. We also took a few pictures of some birds we saw just unwinding. It was getting late around 9pm and he was telling me a funny story about his time in art school when he heard a twig crunch. My dad was immediately alert, but I was kind of laughing at him. Like, come on, dad, just relax. That is until the guy from the gas station an hour and a half south of Willoughby emerged from the brush around our campsite. There was no easy explanation for this one,

and I felt my stomach clench. My dad was on his feet, like a shot, and he said, What the hell? Who are you? What the fuck are you doing out here? His anger didn't seem to faze the punchy, balding guy, not one bit, because he only smiled dreamily and just strolled right into our space. Just camping out here? Same as you boys? Bullshit, get the fuck out of here. The man wasn't dressed for camping. He wore a mint green polo and khakis. The man's attention was focused on me as he ignored my father entirely.

Brandon, isn't it? He asked. My blood ran cold. How the hell do you know my name? I asked. I camp out here a lot. I've come across your site several times over the years. Never got the chance to make friends, though.

Junior, get in the car, my dad said, almost snarling. No friends to take camping instead of your dad, huh? The guy wanted to know, sneering. Or do you and your dad come out here for other reasons, to be alone together. What the fuck? My dad and I both exclaimed almost in unison. Our horror was so pronounced, but the man seemed entirely unbothered, however. He went on to make more lewd comments about my dad and I. It was then that it hit me like a bullet to the gut. I told my dad about my crush on Peter at school over two years ago, at this very campsite.

There was no other way this asshole could have known about that conversation, save for his having been watching me and listening to us for years now, every single weekend, just hidden away, watching. All the blood drained from Dad's face, and I knew the same realization had just struck him. He was on the guy in one breath, hauling off and punching him right in the face, the crack of his fist slamming into bone, the bridge of the man's nose. It echoed off through the trees and sent the birds flapping wildly into the air, but the man seemed half crazed by now, and he only laughed with blood pouring down his face. I already had my phone out to call the police,

even knowing that it would have taken them some time to get there. I felt like I was going to throw up. Suddenly, aware that this fucking psycho had been hiding around our site, watching us talk, sleep, and bond, doing God knows what in the bushes as he listened. We'd been going out there since I had been roughly ten years old.

The man stumbled backwards, and that was when the second wave of disgusted horror seized me because it was very obvious he had been aroused, standing there with his nose possibly broken and my dad ready to dole out another beating. Get in the car, my dad yelled at me, and I bolted, but the creep seemed to have the same idea. He fled into the bushes, flailing clumsily in his khakis, and my dad seemed torn between chasing him and not leaving me there alone. In the end, he chose me, and we hauled our stuff back into the car without even breaking

it down, jamming the tent into the back seat with the canvas just crumbled up and the poles tossed onto the floor instead of folded up and tied neatly. He was dowsing our fire with a bucket of water when something seemed to catch his eye to the left. As I watched from the passenger seat of our car with the doors locked, he walked over to it and stomped it, and immediately emitted the most aggressively violent sound I've ever heard come out of my warm, tiredly gentle father. It took me a full minute before I realized what it was. A

cannon camcorder, presumably abandoned in the man's flight. I wanted to yell at him to save it. That it could be evidence if we needed to use it to press charges or something. I don't even know. But it was far too late. My dad had reduced the thing to plastic splinters. But some part of me was relieved, even though I was sure that wasn't the only home movie the man had made of us over the years. Halfway home, my dad's knuckles wide on the steering wheel. It struck me. Dad. I said slowly.

We've talked about home before out there. That guy probably knows where we live. It was clear that he had been thinking about this too because his jaw flexed as I spoke the worst of it out loud. I hope he does, he muttered darkly. I'll have a shotgun waiting for that motherfucker and I'll blow his fucking head off if he's got the balls to show up around my house. Well, that never happened,

and we never went back to Willoughby again. Camping had been ruined for us, so our monthly bonding rituals turned to movie marathons and museum trips instead. I almost forgot about what happened that day. But then, three years later, when I was eighteen, and I had just graduated high school, we got a postcard from the Willoughby Gift Shop, a photo of a clearing not too far from our campsite.

There was no return address, no signature, nothing more than a single line scrawled on the back. Good luck at school, Junior. I still don't go camping to this day. Psycho pervert campsite stalker, let's never ever meet again. ["Skyfall"] You better crank that AC because things are heating up at Draftkings Casino. The excitement is endless, the vibes are right, and the cash prizes could be huge. Play hundreds of games all summer long.

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with more than a mile to the nearest neighborhood. From the bus stop, there were two roads to my house. We could either walk along the big country road, or we could cut through the woods through a small man-made way to our backyard. I would normally take the safe road through the woods, which I did on the day that the story happened. I had gotten off of the bus with a friend, and we started walking towards my house, chatting away.

Halfway through the woods, we suddenly felt this silence. It became uneasy. We stopped, looked at each other, while trying to listen to the sound that made us feel less alone. After what felt like ten minutes, which might have only been one, our hearts sank to the bottom of our stomachs when we heard someone breathing inside the dense cluster of trees, followed by the crack of the layers of leaves and branches on the ground. Not wanting to think about the likely possibility that we were being watched by someone, we brushed it off to be the sound of a deer

or maybe another animal. We finally began to move towards the house a little faster now. When we arrived at the house, we were greeted by my mom who embraced us both with a big hug. I was confused since my mom isn't a big hugger. She then told us that she had arrived at the bus stop to pick us up and was happy that we're now safe.

She said she did this because she was worried out of her mind since she had learned that there was a wanted murderer on the run from the police in the woods around our house. My blood ran cold, and I told her about the feeling of being watched on our way home. I don't know if it was really the murderer that watched me and my friend, or if it was maybe just a deer. But the chance of it being him still haunts me to this day. A couple of years ago, my friend and I came home from a trip with her family from a mountain

resort. The road back is a two-lane highway through moderate wooded and mountainous terrain. Her parents wanted to go hike up to a lake near the highway for a swim, so we pull off the road and park in a small parking lot. This was not an official swimming lake, and a logging company used the parking lot, so although we were allowed to be there, there was no one else in the lot, and it wasn't well known. So we all pile out of the car and start figuring out what we needed to throw in our backpacks for the hike and swim, as we had not planned it when we had left the rental. Out of the corner of our eyes, we notice a man walking out of the woods on a small dirt

road that's snaking away from the logging camp and intended hiking area. He comes up to the car and asks for help, jumping his vehicle as the battery had died. He doesn't want to call for a tow, as we were in a pretty deserted area of the highway. There was something extremely odd about him and his mannerisms. However, I can't exactly explain why. I remember he was oddly specific about the make and model of his car that had broken down and kept repeating that it was only a minute or two of a drive down the dirt road.

My friend's parents are amicable and helpful, so they immediately agreed to give him a jump. No problem. However, being raised on crime television and law and order SVU marathons, I did not want to get into a car and go into the woods. Not wanting to make a scene, I suggested that my friend and I walk over to the small bridge that we had crossed to enter the parking lot so that we could take some photos. So she and I walk over there, and I start freaking out and telling her that something just fell off, and I don't like what was going on.

I began texting another friend, telling him where we are and that if I stop texting him, to call the police and tell them what was happening. Meanwhile, her parents had gotten back into their vehicle and had driven down the dirt road to follow the man who had walked back to his car. All of a sudden, we hear the car horn honking. We see that her parents had backed out of the dirt road, and then they drove down another road, honking again. Her parents went up and down a few different small dirt roads for maybe five minutes, trying to find the man and his dead car. They couldn't find him, and he never responded to their honks.

At this point my friend and I are getting very agitated by the strange circumstances, and we just want her parents to come back. When they do, we flat out state that we're highly uncomfortable with what had just happened and didn't want to continue our planned hike into the woods. The parents were scared as well and agreed we needed to get out of the area. We ended up stopping a while further down the road on the highway at some more populated lake.

To this day I have no idea what would have happened if my friend and I had gotten into her parents' car and gone into the woods to help that man. I'm sure glad I'm taking Let's Not Meet on the road this year. Tickets for my next Let's Not Meet live tour dates are available now. On August 10th, I'll be at the House of Blues in San Diego, California. August 11th at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles, California, August 18 here in Sacramento, California at Harlow's and on September 19 in Salt Lake City, Utah at the Metro Music Hall. Links to tickets will be in the show notes as well as at let's not meet

podcast.com. This is a great opportunity to hear your story in person. So if you're a local who's able to make it out to the show, make sure you let us know in your story submission so that we can add it to the setlist. Write to us at letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. I'll see you there. This happened back in 2004 in northern Wisconsin. I was 16 at the time and out hunting deer with my dad and a friend of his named Frank. I do remember this day like it was yesterday. The dialogue isn't word for word, but the idea of it is 100% accurate. As a side note, this was one day after eight people were shot less than two hours away from my location. My dad and I had a few stands over an area of maybe three quarters of a mile.

He had been hunting there for at least 10 years, and I had been going with him since I was five. Up until the age 12, legal age to hunt with a rifle, I had just been tagging along. This particular morning, we walked to the first stand. It was about 5 a.m., so still dark outside. I got situated, and my dad and Frank went off to our other two stands over a ridge, maybe another 500 to 600 yards off. Sitting there in the dark is always a little eerie. Not long after dad and Frank left, I saw a flashlight from the general direction of where they headed, maybe 200 yards away, roughly moving in my direction.

I figured they just forgot something from the truck, so I radioed to see what they were doing. We're sitting in my stand. Frank is about to head over to the other one, he says. Obviously, this flashlight is someone else. This isn't super uncommon and isn't really a big deal. Those woods get crowded sometimes and there's a spot to park in that general direction.

I turned on my light so that the hunter could see that there's someone there. He stops. I see the light turn and go in a different direction. No big deal. I end up dozing off while it's still dark out. When I wake up the sun is out. It's around 8 a.m. I sit there for a bit and radio my dad to see if he's heard or seen anything moving. Nothing yet. Just a couple of gunshots off in the distance is all. I get up and I go for a slow walk

to get my blood moving a bit. Not far, maybe 30 yards out and back, trying not to make a sound. I come back to my stand, sit down, and take a real good look around. Nothing really going on. I finally look to my left, where I had seen the flashlight before and I see orange.

For anyone unfamiliar, hunters have to wear blaze orange during gun season. I radio my dad and Frank to see if either one of them were moving around. Dad says no. I hear nothing from Frank. I grab the binoculars out of my backpack to see if it's Frank. It's definitely not. The guy is looking at me through his scope, rifle aimed directly at me.

This is a huge no-no. Massive rule we all learn in hunter's education. Never point your rifle at something you don't intend to shoot. Dumb people still do it though. It's few and far between but it happens. This is why normal people use binoculars. I first thought, what a fucking dick bag. Thing is, even with me looking at him, he doesn't put his gun down. Now I start to panic, thinking I'm going to be the next hunting murder victim.

I slowly grab my rifle, get up, staying behind as many trees as I can, walk down a little path to the side of my stand. My stand was on this kind of little knoll on the side of a much larger hill. I radio my dad and I tell him what's up. He tells me to sit tight and stay out of sight. Obviously as a 16 year old, I couldn't do that and had to keep looking. Every time I looked, the guy was still aiming in my direction, but was always standing in a different spot. Like I would look, go back to hiding, look again, and he would be 30 yards from where

he was the last time. About 10 minutes of this goes by when my dad radios me. How you doing, bud? Looking back, he was very obviously trying to keep me calm. At the time, I thought he just wasn't taking me seriously. He's still there, but he keeps moving. I don't know what his problem is, Dad. Dad told me just to keep hidden, and he'll figure it out.

That he'll be coming up near him in a minute or two. That's when I hear a shot. I lost my shit trying to get a hold of my dad. Did he just get shot? Where the fuck is he? Did he have to shoot the guy? What's going on? I sit there for maybe two to three minutes.

It felt like hours. Alright, come on out and head towards the stand I hear on the radio. I peek up over the little knoll. I was behind and I see my dad waving from along the ridge the random guy had been on. I make the trek on over to see him and what happened. It turns out Frank was feeling a little restless and took a little stroll and ended up on the other side of that particular ridge that the stranger was on, not knowing that he was there. He had knocked his radio battery loose while he was getting situated earlier in the morning and had no idea anything was going on. The shot I heard was actually Frank shooting a deer.

Dad said as soon as Frank shot, the guy walked off away from us towards the logging road. We helped Frank out with the deer and decided to call it an early day. Although I was extremely nervous the rest of the week, went on with no incidents. So dumbass stranger in the woods with no common sense, let's never meet. Thanks for listening, and stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended ad-free version of this week's episode. If you want to get access, go 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 versions of our episodes at a higher bit rate and hours and hours of bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else. This week you have heard Camping Nightmares by Kit, my old summer camp counselor by I Am A Grocery Bag, Chased in the Woods by Hannah, The Pervert Who Stalked Me and My Dad by Brandon M, Hidden in the Woods by Danish Girl 92, The Man in the Woods by Maddie, and finally Idiot Hunter in the Woods by Sir Girl 92, The Man in the Woods by Maddie, and finally, Idiot Hunter in the Woods by Sir Silly Pants.

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. See you next

week. Everyone stay safe. A A few years ago, my friend Natalie bought a six-year-old Grand Canyon University's RN to BSN online degree program makes earning your bachelor's in nursing possible. Balance online coursework with local in-person clinicals to position yourself for potential leadership opportunities in the time you have from wherever you are. Leaving room for what matters. Achieve your goals with your personalized plan and team behind you. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Visit gcu.edu