Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 14x17: I Think My Ex Tried to Kill Me

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Stories in this episode: I Think My Ex Tried to Kill Me | Sm0kythebandit (0:40) Creepy Guy With Crowbar | skippyuber (6:27) I'm Scared That My "Friend" Is a Future Serial Killer | Worried_Leek_7568 (16:32) Never Meet Up With People From Online | thebestdespairsister (20:23) A Man Watched Me As I Slept | ymerf (23:24) Odd Pizza Delivery Encounter | silvern_light (29:08) ‘Wizard’ Made my Mum Clean his House in Exchange for Speed | isaboobla (33:12) The Weird Woman Who Tried to Kidnap Me | Somekindofangel1 (36:47.) The Middleman | Philburt91 (41:17) Extended Patreon Content: Pete and His Demons | Junimo's Mama 93 Without A Trace | MynameisJey Strange Regular | Ray A Tale From the Light Rail | Lex Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/84WXQud4gE Follow: - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/ - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ - TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@crypticcounty Check out the other Cryptic County podcasts like Odd Trails, Cryptic Encounters, and the Old Time Radiocast at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts!    Get access to extended, ad-free episodes of Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast with bonus stories every week at a higher bitrate along with a bunch of other great exclusive material and merch at patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast. This podcast would not be possible to continue at this rate without the help of the support of the legendary LNM Patrons. Come join the family! Start your hair growth journey with Nutrafol. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code MEET.  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].   

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Lounge access is subject to change. See CapitalOne.com for details. 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. I met this person when I was 15 and he was 17. We're both male. When I look back at where it all started, I see the signs now.

Back then, it started with small things. When we would roughhouse like buddies, it would escalate to him taking me back behind the shed where the rest of our friends couldn't see. He would then hold me against the wall and fake-hit me. He was always laughing while he pretended to hurt me, but there were instances where he did actually hurt me. I would have bruises for weeks. There was also a time when he shoved my face into a stinging nettle bush, but as a naive fifteen-year-old, I thought that it was all in good fun. If only I knew what I know now.

We started dating at the end of my sophomore year, and things progressed over the summer. He used to always beg me to give him massages, and whenever I would refuse, he would pin me down and tickle me until I relented and said yes. And if I stopped the massage before he was ready, he'd go back to it. Sometimes he would just randomly pin me down and tickle me. I would beg him to stop, but the only way to get him to stop was to fight him off of me. This happened almost every single time that we hung out, so I grew to dread it.

I've questioned myself about why I kept going back, but I think it was just because I was so in love with him. I'm 5'3 and I weigh about 100 pounds soaking wet, while he's 5'7 with a more substantial build. At least, I was able to learn a lot about how to fight off someone bigger than me during those days. It wasn't about the tickling though. As I said before, he used to jokingly beat me up, but the force behind his punches was never really a joke.

I would have bruises all over my arms and thighs from him punching me. One time, I got in the front seat of our friend's car even though he wanted to ride shotgun. When I wouldn't move, he proceeded to punch my arm until I was almost crying during the entire 15 minute drive. I kept trying to move away, and I told him to stop, but he wouldn't, and my friend who was driving didn't do anything. After I had gotten my ear pierced, he thought that it would be funny to smack me on that side of my head.

He once made me bleed, and when I told him about it, he just denied it. I tried to talk to him about it so many times, I remember telling him, please, don't touch my ears. I made this request via text, since it honestly got to the point where I was scared to say anything to him in person. All he would do was just correct my grammar, though. We ended up breaking up but decided to stay friends. After the breakup, I spent all of my free time at his house.

This was when he started to smoke me out. But he would never smoke himself. This is a huge red flag, I know, but at the time all I thought was, hey, it's more weed for me. The reason I'm going into so much detail with all of this is so that you understand what our relationship was like and how utterly confusing it all was for me. To this day, I'm still confused by his behavior. So let's get to the part where I think he tried to kill me.

I was sixteen and he was nineteen. The day had started normally. We were just hanging out, from what I remember. The next thing I knew, he was sitting on top of my chest while pinning my arms down like he normally would when he was going to tickle me, but this time he put both of his hands around my neck. He began to choke me. He was applying pressure to my windpipe with both of his hands. I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't talk. I kept hitting his hands and his arms, trying to pry them off of my neck, but it wasn't working. I tried to say, I can't breathe, let go, but as I said, I could barely talk. I remember thinking, am I about to die? Is he really going to kill me? He was laughing and smiling the whole time. I honestly don't remember how I got him off of me, but I think I must have used my legs

to somehow roll over. The next day, I had almost forgotten about it, but then I realized my neck was sore and the bruises had formed by the time I went to school. I wish I could say that was the last time I hung out with him, but I did hang out with him a few more times after that happened. I ended up telling a friend of mine about it weeks later, and she was horrified. Her reaction was what finally put things into perspective for me, so I decided I was done after that.

I texted him and told him I never wanted to see him again, and he replied, That's understandable. I can't believe that's all I got. I have no idea how much further this would have escalated if we had kept hanging out. Honestly, I don't want to think about it. So to my crazy ex, let's not meet again. I'm a 19 year old female, and I work at a typical photo studio located inside of a retail store. I'm not going to name the store that I work at specifically, but your first guess as to which one is probably correct. On this specific day I was scheduled to work 3-7pm, which was a closing shift at the studio.

Usually only one employee is there at a time, unless there is an oversaturation of appointments for any particular reason. It's tucked away in a little back corner of the basement level inside the retail store. As I walked into work and settled into the studio my manager and co-worker were there. They had worked in the morning, and both of their shifts were ending at 3.30. I clocked in at our computers and started chatting with my boss about how the day was going. There was one family in the camera room at this time.

They were running a bit behind, so she assigned their photo session to me, and also encouraged me to get what is called a poll in. That means we try to get a customer from the retail store to come and take photos in whatever they happen to be wearing. If they agree to a spontaneous photo shoot, they'll get two photos for free, fully shipped at no cost to them. As my boss and I were still talking, a man was lingering nearby. He was wearing a prison-looking uniform, which definitely didn't look real.

It looked like a costume. Now it was October, so it wasn't crazy that he would be wearing a costume. It wasn't Halloween weekend or Halloween day, so I suppose it was a tiny bit strange. But we didn't have any solo men on our appointment books, so I knew that he didn't have an appointment. He was standing around this practically barren area that surrounded the photo studio. I don't think that my boss got a good look at him, since she asked him if he wanted to come in for some photos. She remarked something about how he was already in costume and said that it would be perfect.

I didn't hear much of this exchange, since I was also working on checking in the family that was ready for their shoot. My boss walked by me as I was about to head into the studio to set up. She let me know that the guy was interested in having some photos taken after I was done with this appointment. The family I was working with was great and things went smoothly. But during the session, I noticed that the guy that my boss pulled had sat down on the bench closest to the photo studio. This wasn't a big deal, but that bench was usually for customers to put their belongings on or for parents to watch.

But he didn't know that. My boss popped into the photo room one last time, before she left and told me something along the lines of, hey, I'm getting some weird vibes from that guy you're photographing next so I'm going to have the store manager check in with you and make sure that everything's going alright. After taking the photos, it takes a few minutes to edit them, so while I'm doing that, I'll generally send the customer outside of the studio space while I stay in the camera room to complete the editing.

After I was done taking pictures, the family went back out into the store, and they sat down at a different bench. At this point, that guy started walking into the studio to ask when it was going to be his turn. It was at this point that I noticed the crowbar that he had with him was fully real. It wasn't a prop. It began making me nervous because he started swinging it around. I told him I'd be able to help

him in a minute and asked him to continue waiting outside. After he stepped back out of the studio, he went to sit down on the bench and essentially folded over himself. He immediately started nodding off, but he snapped back up and moved around. His increasingly erratic behavior made me nervous, since it was just me, him, and a single mom and her two children in that little corner of the store. I stopped paying attention to my editing and started paying attention to him. I could tell he was starting to make the family uncomfortable. He started waving the crowbar around haphazardly.

So I was concerned about the glass and everyone's safety. He walked back into the studio a few times and made it apparent that he wasn't taking no for an answer. He just continually barged into the studio and asked, When are you going to take my picture? When I finally finished editing the family's photos, I was practically shaking at the checkout. The mom I was working with tuned into the situation pretty quickly,

and the guy kept looking over at the computer, trying to see her photos. So she loudly asked, Can I help you? The guy just rambled about how he was supposed to be having his picture taken. She then whispered to me and asked if I was okay. I printed out their appointment sheet

and said something out loud about the pricing. As I was doing this, I wrote on the paper that the guy probably wasn't going to go away, but the store manager was supposed to be on his way to come and check it out. At this point, it had been about an hour and a half since my coworker left. This mom still seemed on edge,

but we proceeded with her transaction. At this point, I felt completely paralyzed. I was one card swipe away from being totally alone in this tiny photo studio with this unpredictable man who was armed with a real metal crowbar. I went to scan her card on our in-studio card scanner, and by the grace of God, her card wasn't working on our local system. If a card won't scan on that system, we have to suspend the transaction and resume

checkout at a different register elsewhere in the retail store. I saw this as my moment out. I grabbed the appointment papers and walked her over to a different register at our salon. The second I was out of the man's eyesight, I burst into tears and explained the situation to one of the salon guys. He immediately paged the manager over our store PA system and asked me if I wanted to wait in the break room or the salon. I would have had to walk past this

man to go to the break room, so I stayed put at the salon. The mom who was with me during the whole experience told me that there was no way she was going to leave me alone with that man, no matter what. It was reassuring to hear. The store manager then got another guy, and the two of them went to confront the man with the crowbar. After waiting in the salon for about fifteen minutes, I hadn't heard anything, so I peeked out to see if the guy had been removed and thankfully, he was gone. I didn't have any other appointments that night, but I still had to sit alone in the studio for the remainder of my shift. Every time the elevator came down, it startled me a bit.

But he never came back. I think the scariest part of all was the part that I didn't see. About 45 minutes later, the manager came by and checked on me. I asked him about what happened with the guy in the crowbar. He proceeded to tell me that this man became absolutely furious when he was asked to leave. He caused a complete scene and threw his crowbar to the ground right near the manager. After calling for some extra help from mall security, they were able to escort him out. I was supposed to wait outside for an Uber after I was off work but I decided to call

my mom for a ride and waited in the studio instead. It took a while for me to recover from this and I still get uneasy when I have to work alone sometimes. Hair thinning is very common. It's a very frustrating problem that many people deal with, from stress and nutrition to hormones and lifestyle. So many internal factors affect what you see on the outside. Luckily, Nutrifol is here to help. Nutrifol is the number one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over one and a half million people.

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neutrophil for healthier hair. neutrophil.com spelled n-u-t-r-a-f-o-l dot com promo code MEET. That's neutrophil.com promo code MEET. The encounters I had with this individual whom I'll call Ben began in school in November of 2024. He was a friend of my friend, and eventually we all became a part of the same friend group. I had always found Ben to be a bit creepy, which seemed to mirror the general view other students had towards him. However, once we began regularly socializing,

I began to feel bad about my presumptions. This was short-lived, since after we were added to a WhatsApp group chat, things started to turn. First, it was the mindless constant images of gore that he would send depicting victims being tortured and murdered. I don't know if these images were real, but they made me feel very uncomfortable, so much so to the point that I had to ask him to stop. I was told to take a joke and stop being such a wuss.

This was followed by messages where he detailed his sick fantasies involving people that I knew. I was quick to distance myself, and I left the group chat soon after that. I wasn't sure if Ben was just your average edgelord, but something just wasn't right. Then, one Saturday, I was out Christmas shopping by myself in my town when I noticed that Ben was standing down the road just staring directly at me. I awkwardly waved at him, to which he just continued to stare before casually walking down a side street. For the rest of the shopping trip, every time I turned, Ben would be standing at a distance

staring at me. Eventually, I had enough of this, so I just gave up on shopping and went home pissed off. I texted him and asked him about this directly, but he just stated that he didn't know what I was even talking about. Then, in school during lunch, Ben and another friend convinced me to go with them to the woods behind our school. I was naive and bored, so I accompanied them against my better judgment. As we started getting deeper into the woods, Ben was becoming more and more weird.

He just kept laughing and repeating, closer, closer. Eventually both my friend and I agreed, this was creepy and very off-putting, so we just went back to school. When Ben returned, he seemed pissed off. So my friend and I asked him why he wanted us to go further into the woods. He said he wanted to start a fire. It was peculiar that he kept pressuring me to hang out after I had distanced myself from

that group of friends. But I eventually found myself hanging around them again. However, while I was on hiatus from that group, Ben attacked one of our friends with a homemade blade. This resulted in Ben being expelled from school, however no legal action was taken. After I got re-added to the group chat, I found out that Ben had been sending graphic photos depicting self-harm. He was also talking about his hatred for his family, since he blamed them for his misfortune.

I can't help but feel that these are serial killer traits. I often wonder about his true intentions from that time I went into the forest, and also the time I saw him while I live now and isn't far away. I'm sharing this since I want people to learn from my mistakes. For context, when this happened I was 17. I'm now 18. I was on a lot of apps to help me make friends, as I struggle to make friends in real life. I'm femme, non-binary, and also asexual, and due to the nature of these apps, I stated that I was asexual in my bio.

I also stated other things, such as my interests. I met this one guy who lived an hour away. I was looking for a friend to smoke with, and he said that he would come to see me. I was very naive, but we agreed upon a time, and I waited outside for him. When he arrived, we took turns hitting his cart. We had very meaningful deep conversations and

immediately clicked, which I thought was great. It was getting very cold so I told him I should get back inside. He agreed and started to walk with me towards my house. I was stumbling and unable to see straight once we were in my driveway, and he asked me for a hug before he left. I thought it was cute that he wanted to hug, so I did. But the next thing I knew, he was behind me and holding a knife to my neck. At first, I tried to fight back, but I realized that I was getting nowhere with that, fighting back only hurt me more.

In the heat of the moment, I thought I was about to become just another true crime headline, so I calmed down and I started doing whatever he was telling me to do. I was hoping that he would spare my life, but at the same time I figured the longer I stayed with him, the more evidence there would be, just in case. Then I remembered seeing the scars on his thighs. With that, I began to appeal to some sort of humanity that he had inside him, as I said, I saw your scars, so I know that you're hurting. Whatever you're doing here isn't going to fix it. I don't know how I was able to think so logically in such a panicked state, but it ended up

being what saved me. He agreed to let me go, if that meant that we would get to meet up again. I agreed to these terms and went inside, to tend to my thumb that was cut by his knife. After that I blocked him on everything. We never met up again, and never will. What scares me the most is how much we had in common. It's scary that predators like this will say stuff that they don't mean. Our deep conversations just felt so real.

Anyways, please be careful of anyone that you meet online. In 2013, my family moved to a rough area of Mobile, Alabama. We moved there to follow a football coach for my brother. We were renting a home from an older woman. The house smelled exactly how you would expect an old house that used to be occupied by an older woman to smell. It smelled like Chanel No. 5 and old carpet. There were only three bedrooms in the house, including the primary bedroom. There were also two bathrooms.

Now I have three siblings, two parents, and one cousin who were all present in the household on an average day. The house was pretty packed, but we were there for only a year, and it was cheap. To ensure enrollment eligibility at this football coach's school, We had to have an address near the school. So my cousin's dad, my uncle, got an apartment so that my cousin could come along too, since my cousin also wanted to follow the football coach. Their apartment was scantily furnished. My uncle had moved in just enough things for it to seem like they were living there. Since there wasn't much at the apartment, my cousin just ended up staying with us most of the

time. My uncle occupied that apartment occasionally, but not too often, as they didn't allow pets. As such, my uncle's boxer ended up staying with us as well. I was only seven or eight years old, but I remember this all too well. I have this weird issue with fabric when I think it looks too old, so I always slept on our couch in the living room since I knew that my mom bought it only a few years prior. Above the couch that I slept on there was a window with many blinds that were always closed, so I never would have expected this to happen. One night, I drifted off to sleep as I always did, and I woke up in the middle of the night.

I always slept with the TV on, running recorded episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because it helped me sleep. If it wasn't for the TV, I would have never noticed this. So I woke up, looked at my TV, and then rolled over to fall asleep again. That was when I noticed two eyes staring right at me through the gaps in my blinds. Whoever this was intentionally looked through the gaps and peered down on me. As a seven-year-old little girl, I screamed and ran all the way to my parents' room, crying.

My dad is a bodybuilder. He's quite large, so he shot up and barreled out the door to go look outside. When he opened the door, the person was gone, but I ended up sleeping with my parents for the rest of the night. No one believed me after the whole ordeal, so it was quickly forgotten. While I never slept on that same couch ever again, my brother drifted off to sleep on that couch after practice one day. He ended up staying there and sleeping through the entire night.

Around 2 a.m., my brother woke me up and asked me what I saw through those gaps in the blinds that night. I explained it, and he told me that he saw the same exact thing. It just happened to him. We woke my parents up and told them that my brother saw someone watching him in his sleep through the blinds, just like I did. So my dad went outside. No one was out there again, but my dad took a look around the window, and he saw that

there were huge footprints where this person was standing. I'm very grateful that the footprints were there since that proved that neither of us lied and we were honest about what we saw. The area that we were living in was very dangerous, so we just assumed it was a peeping tom. We never called the cops because we never saw who it was, plus we figured if this person ever tried to break in, we had our dad to protect us. My dad was very easy to wake up, and he springs into action, just in case my brother came up with a solution to this peeping tom problem.

He ended up adjusting the blinds so that they were pointing upward instead of down. This worked for us, and we didn't have any issues. At least for a while. Then one night, we were out of the house for a birthday party. It was late, so we were still out around the time when we would ordinarily be asleep. I accidentally left the TV on while we were gone out of habit, as I did this every single night. When we arrived back home, our house was an absolute mess.

As I said before, we had my uncle's boxer staying with us most of the time, and we let him roam the house when we weren't home. It looked like someone tried to get through the front door but was unsuccessful. There were claw marks from the boxer trying to get someone on the other side. At the back door, there were chips of wood missing from the frame of the door as though someone were trying to pry the door open with a crowbar. My parents concluded that whoever attempted to break in was after me or my brother. This is because the person who was watching us sleep seemed to only be interested in us.

I thank God every day that we weren't home when this happened. I have no idea what the person could have possibly wanted. Shortly after, we moved back to our old house in our safe neighborhood, where nothing ever happened again. I'm a guy who has been working as a pizza delivery driver for about two years. I usually really enjoy the job. Sure, there's a creep or a weirdo here and there, but overall, most stops don't result in alarm bells ringing like what I experienced on this night. The guy who placed this pizza order had a rough voice that sounded as though he had

been smoking his entire life, but he seemed friendly enough on the phone. When I drove up to his house, I immediately felt a bit uneasy. After I approached the door with his order, he didn't come to get it right away, so I had a minute or so to glance through the glass security door and into his living room. Usually I wouldn't be so nosy, but the inside front door was wide open, leaving only a rickety glass door between me and his living room. I tried to spot him inside his house.

I noticed that he had some photos above the kitchen door frame directly across from the front door. Normally, this wouldn't strike me as odd. But the stuff that he had hanging up there, and how it was placed, was very strange. The first two photos weren't framed, and they seemed to have been cut from something. They were small pictures and duplicates of the same exact photograph.

It was a grainy black and white portrait of a young boy who appeared to be around 8 years old. While it was weird to see duplicates hanging so close to one another, what was even weirder was that they looked like missing child photos, specifically the kind that you would see on a poster or even a milk carton during the 70s and 80s. At first I thought that these images might be a missing person reconstruction, since they were so grainy, flat, and just odd. Hung between those two pictures was a little bundle of sticks.

They reminded me of those scented brooms that are sold in stores, except without a handle. On the other side of the stick bundle, there was an old newspaper clipping with a woman who had a hairstyle from the 1960s or 70s. Just like the duplicate photos, the newspaper clipping was also not framed. It was just sort of taped to the wall. Before I could get a better look at it all, the guy came to the door and paid for his food, and I left with a tip and went on my way. Now there could be a myriad of reasons and explanations for the photos, but

I'm also currently attending college to get into writing, so I've got an imagination, and I've seen a serial killer story or two. I've tried dismissing my initial gut feeling by wondering if it was a memorial for a past friend or family member. I figured he could also be one of those people who try and solve cold cases from home in their free time. But honestly, the whole situation just gave me a very uneasy and disturbing feeling that I can't quite shake.

It felt undeniably sinister. If they were just photos, I wouldn't have noticed. But like I said, these were images that appeared to be from some kind of missing child posters. These weren't the kind of images someone would ordinarily stick on their living room wall. Even as someone who has a small vintage photo collection, my gut just had this very negative reaction to seeing these things. This happened to my mom, who gave me permission to share this story.

She's had a ton of weird, creepy, and scary things happen to her, but this is the one that stands out for me. This took place about 30 years ago, so some of the parts were hard for my mom to recall. This happened roughly around 91 or 92 in Brisbane, Australia. My mom was in her very early 20s, and she liked to party and do drugs whenever she could. One Saturday morning, my mom and her friend Fiku were standing on a footpath in West End,

which is a suburb in Brisbane. They were chatting about their weekend plans and whatever else a couple of 20-year-olds would chat about. Mid conversation, a man who looked to be in his early 30s walked past them and stopped. He turned to them and said, wow, did you guys just say wizard? My mom and Fiku replied, No, we didn't say wizard. But the guy insisted that he heard them talking about wizards.

He then said, It's crazy that you guys said wizard because that's my name. My name is wizard. He then proceeded to chat them up. They must have hit it off since wizard ended up offering some speed to my mom in Fiku, and they took him up on this offer. He said he had some back at his house, which was just a few blocks away, so they went with Wizard to his house to get the speed.

I've always questioned my mom about this part of the story in particular because who the fuck joins a stranger to go to their house to get drugs? Her reply is always something along the lines of, Things were different back then, and we really wanted some speed. Anyway, when they arrived at Wizard's house, he told them that before he gave them the speed, they needed to clean his house for them. This set off alarm bells for my mom and Fiku. But they were too scared to decline, so they agreed to clean the house in exchange for

the speed. He made them wash his dishes, vacuum his floor, and do other chores. My mom said she was so terrified but she didn't want to try and escape since she was worried that he would catch her and hurt her. Roughly an hour later, Wizard went to the toilet. The second that that bathroom door closed, his roommate, who was there and had been quiet the whole time, grabbed my mom and Fiku and told them they needed to leave immediately. He said that Wizard was definitely planning on hurting them. My mom says that she remembers escaping out of a window.

She can't remember why they didn't leave through the door, but she thinks they probably thought that it would make too much noise. Once they scrambled out of the window, they ran as fast as they could to the nearest train station. A few months later, there was a story on the news about a man fitting Wizard's description, who was wanted for abducting and assaulting several women in the West End area. I'm thankful Wizard's roommate was there to save my mom and her friend. This happened to me a year ago while I was waiting for the bus outside of a well-known department store in Mexico.

That day, I went there to buy a birthday cake for my best friend, among other things, so I had a lot of things to carry. I usually walk home since I don't live too far away, but since I had a lot to carry, I decided to wait for the bus. It was around 4 p.m., and since I was in a very central part of the city, there were a lot of people walking around and waiting for the bus. So I found what happened next very strange. I was leaning against a window of a department store while carrying the bags and trying

to keep my balance so that the cake wouldn't slip when a woman suddenly approached me and started talking to me. Even though I'm quite introverted, people are always quick to approach me to talk to me, so it didn't seem strange at the time. However, one of the first things she said to me was a warning. Be very careful with your things, she said. There can be very bad people around, and someone will steal from you. I took it as a kind of warning, but I didn't pay too much attention to it. However, the woman then asked me where I lived, what bus I took,

what my parents' names were, and what they did for a living. She also asked where I liked to go. Her questions were so probing, so it gave me a bad feeling. I lied in all of my answers, which was the exact advice that my mother gave me regarding interacting with strangers. Then the woman began to tell me nonsensical things about her personal life. She had no verbal coherence. I couldn't understand anything she was saying. It was as if she were telling random stories and connecting them as absurdly as possible. When I took a closer

look at her, I noticed that there was something off about her. Her face was… delirious, nearly looking up at the sky and her eyes were wide open as she spoke nonsense to me. I thought that maybe she might have schizophrenia or something like that. Then she began to get very close to me, invading my personal space and repeating the same warning from before over and over again. I was getting scared, so I moved away from her. A woman who was nearby saw the interaction and also seemed surprised. At some point, the woman cornered me and got close to my face. I forgot to mention that when I said which bus I often took, she perked up and said that

she would take the same one, even though she told me she was heading somewhere that wasn't on the bus line. She acted like she suddenly remembered that she was going to visit her brother and said that that was why she was going to get on the same bus as me. I then told her that I thought it would be better if I walked, since the bus was taking too long. But she wouldn't let me go. When I insisted that I had to get going, she told me she would accompany me since she was going to the same place.

Even though I was already quite nervous and scared, I told her that I was going to go ahead and walk. So I said goodbye and simply walked away. But then she started following me. She followed me the whole block. So I turned onto a different street where I had to disregard the cake that I had been holding and start running.

After I thought about it, I was under the impression that if she didn't have any intention of assaulting me around people, then maybe she was waiting for us to be alone somewhere so that she could do something worse. Luckily, it was the afternoon and there were a lot of people walking around, but I don't know what would have happened if I had gotten on that bus. Would she have followed me? To what extent? To do what?

So to the woman outside of the department store, let's not meet again. Would she have followed me? To what extent? To do what? So to the woman outside of the department store, let's not meet again. This is a story from my later teen years that I've never told anyone about. It involved me and several good friends with whom I am still friends to this day. I was 17 at the time. I'm now 34. Growing up I lived with my mom who was a single mom, and my brother in a pretty nice middle class area.

I'm a male, and I've been 5'7 since I was in the 8th grade. I've always been on the smaller side, roughly between 125 and 150 pounds. We were located in Texas on the outskirts of Houston. Since my mom worked a lot of night shifts and overtime, my older brother and I practically raised ourselves and we grew up quite fast. As such, I began experimenting with drugs, such as weed, LSD, mushrooms, and ecstasy

when I was in middle school. So as you can imagine, the majority of my friends were getting into trouble, hanging out with crazy kids from other schools, and even befriending older kids who had good connections to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. This continued into my high school years, and I had a very strong group of friends by then whom I did everything with every single day. So here's where things started getting a little wild.

I had a good friend, whom we'll call Donnie. One day, Donnie decided that he wanted to spend his Christmas and birthday money on a quarter pound of weed. He figured that this would be a way for him to try and make some money while also smoking some of the supply. So we planned to meet up with a guy that we'll call Abe. Abe was a childhood friend of the Twins, whom Donnie and I always hung around. We had been friends with the Twins for several years, and since they were childhood friends

with Abe, we thought nothing could go wrong with this transaction. But we were wrong. Donnie and I met up with the twins in the parking lot of the corner store where we used to hang out and skateboard. Donnie handed them the money, and then they went off to meet with Abe to do the middleman stuff. Several hours went by, and I got a call on Donnie's cell phone from the twins. They said that a bunch of crazy shit went down and Abe got robbed when he was trying to get the weed from another guy,

and he lost all of Donnie's money in the process. We couldn't believe it and demanded to meet up with them at a local park. Donnie and I decided to walk to the park, where we saw the twins in this heated argument with Abe, and they told us to stand back. Even though Donnie was ready to fight Abe over this whole ordeal, he backed down, because the twins walked over to us and said that Abe fought dirty and was known to carry weapons. So Donnie ate the loss, and we angrily moved on. Flash forward about two months or so.

I found myself hanging out with the twins, my other friend Dennis who was driving us around while we smoked weed, and my other friend Joe, who was selling weed at that time. It was close to sundown, and one of the twins got a call from Abe. Now Abe was wondering if we had any weed that we could sell him. Since the twins were still close with Abe, they said yes, and answered for Joe. Who was the one selling the weed? The twins agreed to meet Abe on the side of the main road. The twins agreed to meet Abe on the side of the main road. When we pulled up to Abe, he was standing awkwardly in some random person's side yard

while wearing extremely baggy clothes. I had a really bad feeling because I didn't have a good experience with him the first time around. That gross feeling happened for a reason. Within seconds, he ran up to the window with a hammer that he pulled out of nowhere and said that we needed to hand him some weed quickly or he was going to do something with the hammer. The twins, having known him for a long time, attempted to laugh it off, and they told him to chill out. The next thing we knew, Abe was swinging the hammer at Dennis' car.

Right when the hammer hit the doorframe, Dennis sped off as fast as possible. We kept talking it over throughout the night, and said how crazy Abe was as we made jokes about him. I had hoped that this would be our last encounter with Abe, but unfortunately it only got worse. Thankfully, there was only one other sketchy encounter with him, but… it was the worst of them all. A few months after the incident with the hammer, Dennis was driving me and one of the twins around town.

We had been skateboarding on a hot Texas day and we happened to see Abe while we were out. He stopped us and asked for a ride to his new apartment. Dennis was understandably hesitant after that hammer incident, but the one twin that we were with that day assured us that it would be okay since he thought that Abe was acting normal again, so we gave him a ride to his apartment. When we pulled up he asked us to wait a second while he went to get us some weed as a payment for the ride that we gave him. We sat in front of this apartment for a few seconds and then Abe came out very quickly

with a very large man. They both got into the car so fast that nobody could even process what was happening. Dennis was in the driver's seat, one of the twins was in the passenger, and I was sitting in the middle of the bench seat in the back. So I was uncomfortably stuck between Abe and this strange large man who seemed very off. The large man had sunglasses on, He was much older than us. He had a deep voice, and he was talking in a very short but demanding tone.

He was basically saying we needed to hand over money or weed. We were thrown off because we thought Abe was going to give us some weed for the ride we just gave him. After a few moments of us awkwardly laughing and not realizing it was serious, it hit all three of us that Abe and this guy were being extra weird and they weren't kidding. The older guy eventually looked to Abe and said, You know what you need to do. I'm not going to play with these little kids.

Get us what we need." As he said this to Abe, it was like he was staring right through me, as if I weren't just sitting there right between them. I could see through his stupid sunglasses that his eyes were very beady. He then stepped out of the car and slammed the door hard before rushing back into the apartment. We all turned to Abe and asked him what was going on. He began crying and drooling while he talked about how fucked up his life was. He explained that the guys who lived in this apartment were giving him a place to stay.

But then Abe told the three of us that if we didn't have any weed, we had to go find some. You need to find it faster, they're going to hurt all of you. He added. I looked at Abe and noticed that his eyes were glossy and buggy. There was crusted saliva around his lips. I knew that he had to have been on something hard, and I was starting to believe it was meth. He wasn't making a lot of sense. He couldn't sit still. His emotions were up and down.

So we agreed to contact a friend of ours to get a little bit of weed to give these guys, just to get them off of our backs, since we didn't want these weird older guys who lived near us watching us all around town. As I tried to get a hold of my friend with weed, Abe began getting impatient and furious. He kept telling the three of us that we didn't want to see what he had in his pocket. He repeated that he was going to pull it out if we couldn't get the weed fast. At the time I thought I was a badass, and I loved to carry various pocket knives with

me. I had a collection of around six or seven pocket knives, and they were all really nice. Every time my brother got a new one as a birthday or Christmas present, he would give me his old one. That day, I happened to have a pretty large one on me. I was scared for my life, so I slowly pulled the knife out of my pocket, opened the blade, and sat on it. I figured, if he pulled out a knife or a gun,

I would be the first target since I was sitting right next to him. I hated every moment of this ride. I was finally able to get a friend to leave a measly gram of weed in a random mailbox outside of a business. So we went there, picked it up, and gave it to Abe. I knew I needed to get out of this situation. I somehow managed to tell all of them that my stomach was very upset and I needed to find a restroom immediately. I got out of the car at this business and I ran as fast as I could into the thick woods

that were right behind all of the businesses. From there I called my best friend, who met up with me, and I told him all about it. I was trembling as I told him about the encounter. Sitting next to Abe in the car might have been only around 20 minutes, but it felt like the entire day. It was a day that I'll never forget. I later found out that the one twin and Dennis managed to drop Abe off somewhere and calmed him down a bit before doing so.

They also told me that Abe had noticed the knife I accidentally left in the seat when I got out of the car. Abe asked them both if they thought I was planning to stab or cut him. I guess this made him angry. They talked him out of thinking that way and said that I always played with knives. They convinced him that it was nothing. That was my last sketchy encounter with Abe.

But I did end up seeing him one more time when he was graduating from high school and getting ready to move away. I was hanging out with my friends, and we pulled up to the twins' house in an SUV. Once we got there, my stomach dropped. I made eye contact with Abe, and he said something to the twins, who then approached the SUV that we were in. They said Abe was a new person. and he said something to the twins, who then approached the SUV that we were in. They said Abe was a new person.

He allegedly got away from that scene and was moving away, and was going to be working somewhere, making good money. They said that Abe was embarrassed and asked them to see if I'd be okay with him approaching the vehicle to apologize to me. Even though every fiber of my being wanted to say no, I wanted to stay strong in front of my friends, so I said, yeah, sure. So Abe approached the vehicle, and my heart raced the entire time he spoke to me. I can't remember what he even said since my ears were ringing, but I do know his expression

seemed friendly. He even had this healthy smirk on his face that seemed innocent. I never saw him again after that, and I don't care to either. Regardless of whether someone changes or not, once you've seen an extremely violent and crazy side of someone, it can be next to impossible to unsee it. So Abe, let's not meet again. Thanks for listening and stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you'd like 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 all of our episodes at a higher bit rate with bonus content and stories you won't hear anywhere else released every single week at the ends of all of these episodes. Again that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. Be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like odd trails, my true paranormal podcast, cryptic encounters and the old time radio cast all at cryptic county podcasts

calm or wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow me on twitch at twitch.tv slash cryptic county for any of my live streams. This week you have heard I Think My Ex Tried to Kill Me by Smokey the Bandit, Creepy Guy with the Crowbar by Skippy Uber, I'm Scared That My Friend is a Future Serial Killer by Worried Leak 7568, Never Meet Up with People You Meet Online by The Best Despair Sister. A Man Watched Me As I Slept by Y. Murph. Odd Pizza Delivery Encounter by Silver and Light. Wizard Made My Mom Clean His House in Exchange for Speed by IzaBubla. The Weird Woman Who Tried to Rob or Kidnap Me by Some Kind of Angel 1 and finally The Middleman by Philbert91. 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 that's not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. And send your stories in to letsnotmeetstoriesatgmail.com to hear them on the show. I'll see you all next week. Everybody stay safe. I'm a woman, and at the time of this story I was 23 years old.