Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 16x05: Bumble BFF Date Gone Wrong

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Stories in this episode: When Cyber Stalking Became Real | CatSocksAndCoffee (0:38)Maintenance Creeping Me Out | Other_Entertainer200 (11:38) When Appearances Deceive | OppositePhase5951 (17:41) A Dream That Turned Out to Be A Memory | ruby_dreadful (26:12) Not The Ideal English Teacher For Your Kids | Anonymous (33:50) Stuck on a Sailboat in the Middle of the Ocean | kata-pie (39:45) The Red Sweater | Pumpkin (44:39) Bumble BFF Date Gone Wrong | GoodiesNGanja (48:40) Extended Patreon Content: Daughters Never Get Shy | PureaTwo Stories from Houston | GabriellePolice Impersonator | AshleyI Woke Up in a Fake House | AshDue to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate.Want Bonus Weekly Stories? Hate Ads? Join our Patreon for only $5 a month for over 100 hours of bonus content, and it's all ad-free!Send your stories to [e-mail].   This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/notmeet. Right now, DripDrop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code MEET. Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/84WXQud4gEFollow:- Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty- Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/- Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/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.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meet stories at gmail.com. I'm nearly 27, but back when I was 16, I briefly dated a guy named Tyler for almost five months. We broke up when my mom's job moved us three states away. We were young, and I didn't want to maintain a long-distance relationship, while I was trying to adjust to moving from what had been my home for ten years and starting at a new school.

We stayed casual friends until a mutual friend told me he had begun spreading gross rumors that he had popped my cherry before I left. After I called to confront him about it, he admitted it. I told him I never wanted anything to do with him again. I then blocked him on Facebook, and I blocked his number from my phone. I didn't even spare him a second thought until three years later. I had just moved into my first apartment with my boyfriend of two years, and two of our friends. I had a job that I loved, a great relationship with our roommates, and it was an ideal arrangement for all of us.

One night, I opened my Yahoo account for the first time in a little over a year from my desk. rather than my phone, and I immediately had an instant message from Tyler. I had forgotten that back when I used the desktop version, my settings had automatically logged me into Messenger, and I hadn't removed him from my contacts. By then, we were both nearly 21, and I had done a lot of growing up, so I assumed Tyler probably had too. So initially I was comfortable catching up with him. He had always been a bit awkward, but I was too. The conversation was fairly pleasant. It started with the usual, How Have You Been?

And the conversation developed. I did most of the talking since, in comparison, I had had more opportunities granted to me where I was living in comparison to my and Tyler's hometown, where he still lived. Eventually, we signed off since I had to work the next morning. and while I wouldn't have considered us friends again after having that catch up with him, I was happy that we had a civil conversation.

But then he started to get weird. Eventually, I added him back on Facebook, and he would randomly message me about how he was going through my pictures. He would remark about how he liked how much I had grown up and what a woman I had become. I brushed it off at first as awkward flattery, but then he started talking about the things that he wanted to do to me. They were sexual in nature, so I firmly reminded him, I had a serious boyfriend, and I told him how inappropriate his comments were.

He would apologize, only to do it again the next day. I got sick of it and just blocked him. I told him on Yahoo Messenger that if he didn't stop, I would be contacting authorities. This was a bluff meant to scare him, and it worked for a few hours before he decided to message me detailing the violent sexual things he wanted to do to me.

I was beyond, annoyed, and disgusted, so I told him that if he ever contacted me again, I would send the screenshots of everything he had said to his extremely Christian mother, who was graciously letting him live rent-free at her place. I blocked him on Yahoo after that, and I never heard from him again. So I assumed he was out of my life. But that was wishful thinking.

Fast forward a few years later, I was 25 happily married, and my husband and I just returned to the States after living in Japan for a few years due to his military career. Shortly after we settled in at our new place, I took a trip to my hometown to spend time with my family and catch up with a few friends. Over coffee, a long-time mutual friend of mine and Tyler's, Amber, divulged to me that Tyler had been cyber-stalking me. Okay, I thought, but that's not really anything serious, right? I didn't have anything to hide from anyone anyway. I was blissfully happy, but then she started going

into detail. I had moved three times to two different states, and then to just Japan since I had last spoken to Tyler. By the time I was having this conversation with Amber, I was now living in my third new state. Amber said that each time I moved, Tyler would suddenly talk about wanting to attend university in whichever city I had moved to. When I moved to Japan, he claimed to be saving up to go on vacation there. He specifically talked about visiting the area that we were stationed. rather than going to a place like Tokyo, Okinawa,

or any of the other big tourist cities. It was weird, sure, but then Amber told me that she knew Tyler was stalking me on Facebook under a fake name. He openly admitted this to her, but he would never tell her the name that he was using. She was really concerned about his behavior and admitted she was only still in touch with him

to try and keep tabs on him. In all honesty, Tyler had actually become infamous within our circle of mutual friends for being a creep and sexually harassing several women, successfully chasing all of them off. So I can't say this was surprising information. I felt uncomfortable with the knowledge, though. If her timeline of things was true, this meant he would have been keeping up with my movements for nearly six years. But what could I do about it? Neither of us knew what name he was using, and if all he was doing was following when and where I moved,

I didn't think there was any harm to it beyond just creeping me out, especially since it seemed like he was very unlikely to be able to afford to travel to wherever I was at the time. I went home and eventually forgot what Amber had told me since there really wasn't anything that I could do about it. I wasn't receiving any harassing emails or texts, so it was essentially out of sight and out of mind for me. Months passed, and I went to work as usual. I was a hostess at an upscale local restaurant. One night, a co-worker, a fellow hostess named Gina,

said, oh hey, you had a friend stop by here yesterday. Friend? I wondered. I had moved there nearly a year ago at that point, but the only friends I had in the area were co-workers. When I asked her who stopped by, I assumed it was just a regular, who I had been friendly with. I felt my heart drop, when she replied, he said his name was Tyler. I asked if she was sure. She went on to vaguely describe his appearance, assuring me that she had told him I was off that day,

and that she didn't know when I worked next. Hiding my panic, I claimed not to know anyone named Tyler and said that maybe he was looking for a previous employee. My first name is pretty common. I then excused myself to the bathroom. Sure enough, I had a message from Amber when I opened my phone. She had come home from work to see a Facebook post, which she screenshot and sent to me.

It was about a friend of hers and Tyler visiting the city next to where I live. This is a huge tourist attraction, and Tyler had gone with him. The restaurant I was working for had maybe seven locations scattered in various areas surrounding the tourism hub, each with the company name and add-on specific to the location in town to make them easy to find. The co-worker I was friends with would tag me as checked in with them on Facebook, when we would have drinks together after work, so it seemed, Tyler had used the check-ins to find out which location I worked out. Terrified, I spoke to my manager and told him everything that Amber had told me,

and I explained that Tyler had shown up looking for me, and he blessedly let me have the following day off. I still had to finish the remainder of the shift I was working, though, since we had no one available to cover for me to go home. But I was given tasks that kept me from working the front door, and since it was a slow night, Gina let me go home first after I had filled her in on the situation. I immediately called my husband when I clocked out,

and he picked me up rather than letting me walk home like I usually did. Thankfully, my husband had recently decided to switch military branches and would have to go to training for a few months, and we had decided that it would be better for both of us if I moved to his hometown to be near our family. So I gave my job the two weeks notice the next day, much sooner than planned, and my manager already knew that I would be moving anyway and understood that I probably wanted to quit now rather than later.

It's been seven months since then. I'm happily living near my mother-in-law, literally on the opposite side of the country from my hometown and our last location. I have a close-knit little group of friends in our apartment complex, and I did a complete overhaul of my Facebook settings. No one can tag me in any location or a picture without my manual approval, and my current location is unlisted to anyone, not on my friends list. Amber still has Tyler on her Facebook,

but she says they rarely speak anymore after he was recently served with a restraining order by a mutual friend of theirs. Seems I was the only person he was stalking, and I'm not surprised, given the stories of him that had been floating around our circle of friends. I still get a bit anxious, especially when I remember how close Tyler came to finding me, but I still don't understand why he kept track of me for so long,

and I don't think I ever want to know. I'm a 25-year-old female, and I got my first apartment about one year ago. When I moved in, I was nervous but excited about the opportunity. A few weeks after moving in, I bought a puppy so I wouldn't feel so lonely. My key broke in the door, so I had to call maintenance to come and fix it and let me in the apartment. The maintenance guy was instantly obsessed with my dog.

However, my dog was afraid of him right away. I passed it off as nothing since she was a puppy, and figured she might act that way around everyone that was new to her. A few weeks later, my dishwasher broke, so I called maintenance to come out again. I was working on crate training my dog, so I stated it was fine for them to come in while I was at work since my dog would be in her crate.

I said at most she might annoy them with some barking, but figured it shouldn't be a big deal. Upon arriving home from work, I found several places on my carpet where my dog had had an accident. Now, I didn't think anything of it at the time. I thought they might have been previous accidents that I must have missed while cleaning up

before I left for work. I took her outside to go for a walk and the maintenance guy stopped me and informed me that he let my dog out while he was working on the dishwasher. He then informed me that I was depriving her by keeping her locked up all day and he told me that I wasn't being a good pet owner.

He then stated that he could take better care of her. I was too shocked to say anything, so I didn't. I then talked to my dog's vet. The vet confirmed I was doing everything right by crate training my puppy. For several weeks after this, the maintenance guy would always stop and attempt to pet my dog when he saw us. So I started taking different routes on our walks. I even began driving to a nearby park just to avoid him. That was when I slowly began to realize that my dog

wasn't reacting the same way to other strangers as she would react to him. Whenever she saw him, she would hide behind me and bark aggressively, which she never did with anyone else. I mentioned the occurrences to my parents when they visited. My mom thought that I was overreacting since I was living alone for the very first time.

But then she walked my first time. But then she walked my dog with me around the complex, and the maintenance guy stopped us as we were walking and proceeded to make a joke about stealing my dog. Once we were back from the walk, my mom stated that we were going to buy some video cameras for the apartment. After that, things seemed to calm down. Whenever I had a maintenance issue, a different guy would come out. My dog would still be uneasy, but she never reacted aggressively. Recently I had a maintenance issue again and the original maintenance guy came out. My dog reacted aggressively just as she did before. I held her to help calm her down and she began to relax, but she remained on alert.

The maintenance guy mentioned that he noticed my family had visited and he proceeded to ask if they had left. He asked me if I was in school or working. I let him know that I was working and then he asked me how much money I made. This made me very uncomfortable so I laughed it off and said that I didn't remember. He wouldn't let it go

and he kept pestering so I said that I was bad with numbers which was a total lie. I'm an accountant. He then started pestering me about how many hours I work. My dog could tell that I was getting annoyed so she barked at him aggressively

until he left. Eventually he took the hint, and he left, but I felt so creeped out. My lease is almost up, and I decided I'm definitely moving to a different complex with a different management company. But I am not sure if I should complain to my current management company and risk having them retaliate by withholding my security deposit or not. I'm also nervous about filing a complaint and having to live with that maintenance man around for a few. few more weeks. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. February can make it feel like everyone else has their love life figured out.

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That's better h-elp.com slash not meet. I live in a small village, and on my street, everybody knows each other. The neighbor two houses down from mine moved out, and an elderly couple moved in afterward. They were really kind, welcoming, and generous. Their names were Joseph and Ellie. Joseph was very chill, a retired police officer who loved fishing, and Ellie was a generous former town hall employee.

My parents quickly became friends with them, and they were soon inviting each other over. Ellie seemed perfect. She even gave my little brother's sewing lessons and shared fruit from her garden. but my parents sometimes found that she said overly personal things or things that didn't always make sense

but they didn't pay too much attention to it at first one day my family learned that Joseph had been arrested for domestic violence against Ellie the entire neighborhood was shocked Ellie came to my parents' house saying she was very afraid of her husband she thought that he might return after being released from custody and insisted on staying with us, but my father reassured her and said that he would

regularly check in on her house to keep an eye on things. When Joseph came back to their place to get his belongings, he screamed, where is my rifle? We learned that she had given it to my older brother who was 15 at the time and passionate about weapons. Ellie had given it to him because, as she said, she thought it might interest him, which is a strange thing for a responsible adult to decide to do for a minor. But what really changed everything was what happened one morning.

Ellie asked if she could borrow a trailer, but my mother declined since my father was at work. She became very insistent about absolutely needing to borrow the trailer, but my mother held firm. From that moment on, over the following weeks, Ellie completely changed.

She was no longer the sweet, attentive, elderly neighbor. She started putting roses in our mailbox so that the thorns would prick our hands, and she even threw her trash into the field next to our house. She wrote crude messages on a chalkboard that hung in front of her house, insulting my mother's family and spreading lies about us. Ellie regularly went to the police station to accuse my family,

pretending to be a poor elderly woman being mistreated. One of her complaints was that she was receiving jihadist threats from my older brother simply because he often wore a hood and covered his mouth with a neck warmer. We learned she looked into my paternal grandfather. She also sent us insulting letters and racist audio recordings targeting my father, in which she was completely hysterical. Ellie eventually began following my little brother

and a neighbor, Bree, who went to school with him. She often sat on the bench in front of her house, watching the street, trying to turn the village against us. It was turning into a nightmare. It was to the point that my parents started doubting whether Ellie had been truthful about Joseph's alleged domestic violence. My parents heard that another family in the neighborhood, Bree's family, had gone through similar things before us, but they simply chose to ignore Ellie.

There was no stopping her when it came to my family, though. This was probably partially because my mother couldn't help but react to her provocation, which was understandable as it was awful. But that only fed her delusions. What Ellie wanted most was for my mother to snap. I think Ellie even wanted a physical altercation to happen so that she could play the poor elderly victim. One day, Ellie even scratched my mother's hands

to try and provoke her into slapping her. My mother kept her cool, but unfortunately, Ellie's scratches didn't leave marks, so there was no proof. My parents felt powerless because the police were against them, and Bree's family refused to file a complaint for fear of becoming a target. My parents had no way of having the neighbor committed, even though she was clearly acting with ill intent.

My older brother, being the reckless teenager, amused himself by provoking her because he thought it was funny, and he didn't realize it could be dangerous. One late autumn morning, it had rained recently, so nearby fields were muddy, which is a detail that will matter. I had to go pick up my little brother in Bree from primary school because Ellie often roamed around. I was walking along the side of the road on my street when I saw a white car speeding towards me

from the far end of the road. Bree's mother, Valerie, had a car that looked a lot like Ellie's, so when I saw it, I thought, oh, that must be Valerie. But strangely, Valerie didn't seem to be slowing down and kept coming fast. I then suddenly realized it was Ellie at the wheel.

She was laughing hysterically, blasting loud music staring right at me, while driving straight toward me. As I stood there, I realized she had no intention of breaking. When she was about five meters away, I managed to jump off of the roadside and into the field next to it,

which was very muddy from the rain. She swerved, driving a bit onto the field, leaving a muddy tire mark on the path until she screeched to a stop in front of her house. I was shouting at her, but she kept dancing in her car with the music blaring. She made a hand gesture, telling me to go away. At the time, I didn't think it was that serious.

I was only 11. I didn't really grasp how dangerous the situation really was. Later that evening I told my parents They decided to take me to the police station Even though all of the officers were likely To just look at us badly Because of all of the lies that Ellie had spread about us for weeks I was questioned alone without my parents by three police officers

But I felt like they didn't even believe me They kept asking me if I was sure that had happened And whether my parents had told me to lie As I left the interrogation room, fully convinced that the case was probably about to be dismissed, meaning Ellie would be after us again, one of the officers noticed my shoes were covered in mud. It was then that he began to think that I might have actually been telling the truth. He told me we were going to my street so that I could show him where the car had gone. And when we got there, we found the muddy tire tracks from Ellie's car.

they were still there. Ellie was arrested and questioned. Later I learned that she had said she did that to me because she wanted to scare me and that it was for fun. She was eventually committed to a psychiatric hospital, thanks in part to her sons. They told the authorities that Ellie had been schizophrenic,

paranoid and suffering from delusions for a long time, and that they had endured her behavior throughout their child. On top of that, everywhere that she moved to, she would pick targets and harass them mercilessly. And that's how this little horror story that my family endured ended. What would have happened if I hadn't stepped off the road? Would Elia have braked? And if the car accident hadn't led her to being committed, how far would she have gone? We'll never know, and thankfully so.

I've been writing my dreams for a while now because I remember them when I wake up, but I forget them once I'm fully awake. I do that because my therapist asked me to do so. Most of my dreams are a manifestation of my fears according to her. One dream stood out because it didn't follow the same pattern as the others. In this dream, I was walking in a bright, sunny alley when I suddenly was grabbed from behind and lifted from the ground.

Someone then placed a hand on my mouth to prevent me from screaming. I tried to get away by basically moving like the Tasmanian devil but it didn't work. And then I woke up. What tipped my therapist off to dig into this a little more is that all of my other dreams,

I see the danger from afar, so I hide and run away. And there's always this intense fear that paralyzes me momentarily. Turns out this dream was a repressed memory. I was 12 years old when this happened. I remember this specifically because of the distinctive haircut I had. I used to cut my hair myself,

I guess as a symbolic F-U to my stepmother, who just took great comfort in destroying me from the inside. She would forbid me to cut my hair, so I would always do it anyway. I liked cutting my own hair. It allowed me to express myself. Anyway, we were at my stepmother's brother's house, which was in the suburbs.

My dad, my stepmother, her brother, and his girlfriend were sitting on the patio in front of the house, drinking and talking. Right next to the house, there was an alleyway that led to a baseball field, and past that, there was a park that had these water games set up to help people cool down during the summer,

and there was also a regular park with swings. Not too far from all of that. There was also a pool, an elementary school, a high school, and a community center. The area basically offered the entire package for families. I was sitting there with the adults while all the other kids were walking out to the park. I was grounded for cutting my hair. My stepmother was delighted about this and seized the opportunity to shame me publicly for no reason, while my dad spinelessly sat there saying and doing nothing.

I couldn't take it anymore. I stood up and I left to join the other kids. I could hear my stepmother screaming at me behind my back, but I didn't care. I walked out to the front yard, took the alleyway, and went straight to a swing to forget about everything. I went to play with the others after a while, and we made this parkour route and tried to be like monkeys. then at six I knew it was dinner time so I decided to go back to the house.

Once we were there, the daughter of my stepmother's brother realized that her watch had fallen off while we were at the park. She was worried because she didn't want to be grounded for losing it. However, the other kids didn't want to double back because we would all get grounded for being late. Since I was already grounded, I told them to go back to the house and I went back to look for the watch at the park. Fortunately, we were all following the same path in the park, so it wasn't hard to find the watch. Once I saw it, I grabbed it and ran back to the house. At the baseball field, I crossed paths with a middle-aged man.

Now, he didn't look suspicious at all, and he suddenly moved as I was walking by, as if he wanted to cut me off and stop me from running. He then took a step back as if he had quickly realized he was doing this in a way too public setting. So I then doubted my speed, and I ran like the roadrunner. Just as I was about to clear the baseball field, another guy appeared from out of nowhere and grabbed me. I tried to resist, I fought, and I moved like I had the devil inside of me to get out of his grip.

The first man that I crossed then came to help this guy. But there was no way I was going to go down like this. I was kicking, biting, and hitting. Fortunately for me, they weren't very coordinated. I freed myself and fell to the ground, straight on my stomach. I remember then having the pain of my breath being cut short from having the wind knocked out of me. Nonetheless, I crawled in the opposite direction.

Then I got to one of those white things on the field. I felt a hand around my ankles, so I grabbed the white thing and I smashed it on the head of the guy who grabbed me. Then I got up and ran. avoiding the second guy. I was in such a rush to get out of there that I had crossed the street without looking, got into the alley,

and then finally reached the front yard of the house. The other kids were as dusty and muddy as I was, so my state was easily explained. I also ran home, so being out of breath was easily explained as well. I said nothing about what I had just experienced, though. I just sat down at the kids' table, gave the watch to the girl,

and listened to my stepmother Jubilate at the chance of reprimanding me. I don't know why I'm here or how I managed that. That was 20 years ago, and I don't live in the same province anymore. There's a baseball field near my house, though. When my therapist made me realize it wasn't a dream, I went to the field near my house.

Those white things on the baseball field are very heavy. I don't know if there are different models or different versions of them or what, or maybe they were made differently back then. But in my case, I'm not sure how a 12-year-old girl managed to lift one of those, nor how I managed to get away from two grown men. One thing I've learned the hard way is that when I'm even a little dehydrated,

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years ago when I lived with my parents and my sister. We lived in an average working class family household, nothing out of the ordinary. It was a happy time. We moved to a different house in the same town, but I was sent to a new school because this one was way closer to our new house. Curiously, I have these times pretty blurred in my memory, but there are some days that I see as clear as water. This was one of them. It was my first day at this new school. I was very nervous. I wasn't the most extroverted or talkative kid.

I was extremely shy and insecure, and I am to this day. But once I was at school, a very sweet and loving woman came and explained that she was one of the new teachers. She told me it was time for English class, and she took me to the next class. We walked in together, and I saw my new schoolmates and my new English teacher, whom we'll call Mr. L.C. Mr. L.C. was short. He was a heavyset man, and he was a heavy-set man. in his 30s with a thick black mustache. If you were really close to him,

you could see food debris in the mustache. It was pretty disgusting, to be honest. My classmates often said that his mustache was very much super Mario-like. He welcomed me and introduced me to the kids. I said hi and sat with them on the floor. Many of them introduced themselves and made some jokes. They seemed very nice and easy-going.

and I was somehow relieved. I felt integrated right away. Mr. Elsie proceeded, and he told me to stand up in front of the class to practice the English basics. He wanted me to say my name, where I was from, and how old I was. I said it once,

but he made me say it again a bit louder since I was shy and spoke a little too softly the first time. So I repeated myself and said everything for a second time. Then he told me to repeat myself, insisting that I speak even louder. I said everything a third time, but it seemed it was never enough. When I was finally through, his tone became angry, and he just said, again, again.

He had me repeating that introduction until I began to cry. And then he finally told me to sit down. My classmates told me it was okay, and they said, that he was an asshole. When I got home later, my mom asked me about my day at school and I said that everything was fine, except for the class with Mr. Elsie. I began to cry again, and I told her I didn't want to go to his class ever. I let her know that there was something about him, something dark.

I said, I didn't know what it was, but I felt it, and I told her he scared me. In the following weeks, I kept whining to my mom in the mornings about having English class, but all she would do was try to calm me down and say it was okay. She would tell me to have fun with my new friends and assure me that he was just a grumpy teacher. I went to that school for four more years. I got used to him and his peculiar character. For example, he got really pissed off when a kid was late for his class. He yelled and told the kid to wait outside,

sit on the floor by the door, and think. After that, everybody was scared to be late. But there were also days where he was nice and fun. Anyway, time passed, and nothing out of the ordinary happened except for one thing. He would talk a lot about the FBI. We would be on our computers in class, visiting the FBI website,

reading about the most wanted criminals, which wasn't an average English lesson for nine-year-old kids. He took pictures of us, saying they were for the design of our own personal FBI identification, which never happened. But we didn't think anything weird about it. And during Christmas time, he had taken pictures of the class to design a postcard. Years later, I was in high school, and an old classmate from that school told me that Mr. LC had been found dead.

This surprised me. I looked it up online, but I couldn't believe what I was reading. Law enforcement had recently found that Mr. LC was a pedophile. The amount of material found on his computers and hard drives was so vast that it made him one of the biggest they had ever found in the country. Once Mr. Elsie found out they were after him, he killed him. himself. As I read everything online, I reflected on the day when he didn't stop making me repeat my introduction until I cried. I remembered he scared me so much that I didn't want to go to

school. But I also thought about his FBI obsession and all the photos he had taken of us kids. Everything made sense, including that darkness that I felt around him. Due to his death, I can no longer meet Mr. Elsie. Nobody can. but I think that's a good thing. When I was 14 and a freshman in high school, I had some pretty intense behavioral issues. I was partying constantly and getting into fights with my parents. Little did they know, I was also doing drugs.

Most of my friends were seniors due to my being on the varsity team and hanging out with 18-year-olds wasn't doing anything to help my behavior improve that much. My parents, who were at their wits end, decided to try one more thing before military school. They sent me on a week-long sailing excursion out in the ocean. This was supposed to teach participants about discipline. Once we set sail, the boat was not to dock. We would be on the open water for seven straight days.

I was the youngest girl on the boat. There were two other girls, one was 16 and the other 17. Other than that, there were about five or six boys between the ages of 15 and 18. The rest of the people on the boat were crew, whom were referred to as counselors. There was only one bathroom on the boat, and it was directly in front of the girls' bunks. As in, we were laid out right in front of the door, and anyone who used the toilet in the middle of the night could pass within a foot of us and enter the little stall. On the very first night, one of the counselors had fixated on me.

Obviously, every kid there had problems, but I was by far the youngest and clearly didn't know anyone. He sat next to me all throughout dinner while we were on deck. He talked to me the entire time, despite the fact that I was trying to read the book that I had brought. He decided to hang out below deck with the kids after dinner. Now, I tried to be polite. but anyone watching us could tell that I was weirded out.

Eventually the counselor revealed that he was 19, and one of the other boys got on his ass about making me uncomfortable. He said, she's 14, dude. The counselor somewhat backed off after that, but I worried he was watching me for days. Unfortunately for me, though, one of the other boys amongst the participants decided he wanted to get to know me better.

I was friendly with him at first, as I didn't come to the program with any friends, and it was a long, lonely week, but things got weird fast. When I eventually told him I wasn't interested in him romantically, he threw this tantrum. He yelled, There's no love on this boat. I can't wait to be back home. His friends told him to leave me alone, but he was angry for the rest of the week. I tried to just ice him out and pretend that he wasn't getting to me, but I'd be became so paranoid, especially at night. I had trouble sleeping. I gladly took the late-watch shifts up on the deck because it kept me out of that damp, claustrophobic space where I constantly

felt like things were off. I guess I was feeling unsafe and I just had the feeling something was wrong. At the end of the week, all of the kids exchanged information so that we could keep in touch. Immediately after I got home I received a message from one of the weird kids' friends. He told me that I was right to feel uncomfortable around that guy because he had been watching me sleep. Apparently, the weird boy was so mad at me for rejecting him that he would stand at the edge of where the girl slept.

The weird boy convinced his friend to do this with him once, but his friend got uncomfortable and went back to sleep with the other boys on their side. leaving the weird boy watching me. The weird boy was 17, and at least a foot taller than me, easily had 70 pounds on me, so I wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing if he ever decided to do more than just watch.

I didn't sleep well in group settings for years afterwards. I still think about how there was a time when I was 14 years old and unaware that someone was standing over me watching me sleep. So to the counselor on the boat, let's not meet, and to the weird boy on the boat, let's not meet. Friend of the weird boy who didn't do anything, despite knowing what the weird boy was doing, let's also not meet. Something happened to me years ago, and I think about it quite often, and I admit that it still makes my blood run cold. When I was younger, around 10 years old, I was walking with my best friend, who was the same age as me, and we didn't have any adults with

us. We were walking along a small, not too busy road in a sort of subdivision that formed a loop with a few houses, but it was mainly just forest around. Something important to note is that we had already taken a tour of this neighborhood before, and this was perhaps the second or third time that we had been there. We were walking quietly, and I heard the sound of an engine. When I turned, I saw a white van behind us, driving slowly. We told ourselves that the van just wanted to pass us as the road wasn't very wide. We could see that a woman was driving,

so we moved aside to let her pass next to us. She advanced a few meters and then stopped. At that moment, my best friend and I didn't pay too much attention to each other. We just continued to move forward, knowing that the van had stopped just ahead. Now I'm not sure why, but I suddenly had this weird feeling.

I grabbed my best friend's arm to make us stop. I don't know how long we stared at the van, but it felt like we stood there for quite a while. It could have been only a few seconds, but it's tough to say for sure since this happened such a long time ago. Suddenly, we then saw the passenger door open towards the forest. I pulled my best friend's arm

so that we could go in the other direction, and we began to run. We ran for a while, and then we stopped, and we started to talk about what just happened. She was scared as well. We then sat in the park, which helped us to start to relax a bit, and then we laughed and told ourselves we were just panicking for nothing. After a while, maybe half an hour, we told ourselves that we were ready to go back. However, we had to go back along the road where the van had stopped.

We weren't actually reassured, but we told ourselves that everything was going to be. to be fine, so we went ahead and turned back. When we got to that road, to our great relief, the van was no longer there. So we proceeded quietly to where the van was. And that was where we noticed something. And just thinking about it today gives me chills. On the forest edge, maybe a meter at most from the road, we saw something red. We approached, and we discovered a little red sweater. It was a very bright red knitted wool sweater. It looked like someone had tried to burn it because it was blackened in some places

and there was a small empty plastic container next to it which I imagine possibly contained gasoline or something flammable. What was very strange was that I'm sure this sweater was not there during our first tour because it was so bright that we absolutely would have seen it. it, and it seemed like it had been newly placed there, as there were no dead leaves on it,

although the ground was littered with dead leaves at the time. We never told our parents about finding this strange, partially burned sweater, not even to this day. But one thing is for sure, my gut knew that the people in that van did not mean well to us. I also can't help but think that they were the ones who dropped off that sweater after attempting to burn it for whatever reason. To the people in that van, let's not meet. I'm a 24-year-old female, and this happened when I moved across the country for the first time. I didn't know anyone, and my line of work isn't great for meeting people,

so I downloaded Bumble BFF as a way to try and meet some friends in my area. I spoke to a few girls, and the first meetup I went to went astonishingly well. It went so well that I decided to give it another go, and I met up with a girl whom we'll call Amber, who was 22 years old. Amber and I spoke over Bumble BFF for a few days before we decided to meet up for brunch. We met at a coffee shop,

and as soon as she approached me, I noticed that she didn't look too much like her photos. There wasn't a stark difference, but it was enough to notice. It seemed like the photo she used could have been a sister or a cousin, or maybe she's just really good at taking pictures. I didn't mind since this wasn't a date, but it was something that I clocked as the first red flag.

Within moments of meeting, she immediately started trauma dumping. During the conversation, she mentioned that she didn't drive, and she also said that she had two young children. We sat there for a while, and it was like I couldn't get a word in. She was bulldozing the whole conversation. Now, I was trying to think of a way to leave politely, but since she mentioned that she didn't drive, I felt guilty leaving her alone. I finally told her that I needed to hit the ladies' room and get on with the rest of my day.

She offered to walk me to the restroom. For context, this coffee shop was at an outdoor outdoor outside. outlet mall. We had to walk all the way across the mall to reach the restroom since it wasn't close by. While I was in the stall, I heard, Mommy. And by the time I got out, she was holding a toddler. I remember thinking, where did this child appear from? Amber seemed just as surprised as I was, but she proceeded to introduce me to her toddler, who then hissed at me. Now, kids are strange sometimes, I know that, but it just added to the weird energy.

I washed my hands, walked out of the bathroom, and saw a man with a stroller. Amber walked out after me, and then introduced the man as her boyfriend. He was very unfriendly, and she pressured me to say hello to her baby in the stroller. I hesitantly pulled the cover down and said hello. The baby then started crying,

so I felt uncomfortable. I then thanked her for a meeting with me, and I watched her and her boyfriend walk off to their car. I knew that she didn't drive since she said as much, so I assumed that her partner drove her, but she didn't mention that they were also at the mall waiting for us to finish. I'm not sure how they wound up in the ladies' room, where we were,

but I figured maybe he had her location on her phone, or maybe she shot him a quick text. and said that brunch was ending. But she was never on her phone. After I watched them get into the car, I started to trek back to the other end of the mall. But first, I stopped to grab a pretzel. While I was waiting in line,

I got a call from a close friend. I told her all about the strange experience and how Amber's boyfriend appeared out of nowhere, thinking that that was the end of it. The employee at the pretzel place told me it would be a few minutes, so I sat down. And as I took a seat,

I saw Amber's boyfriend had been standing in line behind me. I was embarrassed because, although I didn't plan on seeing Amber again, it was never my goal to be nasty or hurt anyone's feelings. I made eye contact with him and between confusion and embarrassment,

I decided to leave without getting my pretzel and headed back towards the car. As I was walking, I looked behind me, and he was delivered. deliberately following me. Thoughts were now racing in my head. If he had been waiting the whole time, why hadn't he gotten something to eat? How did he know which area of the mall that we were in? Why was he following me? Was he going to confront me after overhearing my conversation on the phone?

Every time I looked over my shoulder, he was still there. I started running, and I told my friend on the phone that if I didn't call her back in five minutes, she needed to call my spouse. and the police. I finally got to my car and I saw him storming through the parking lot after me. I took off as quickly as I could, even though my heart was pounding. Once I was about halfway home, I called my friend back and I let her know I was okay. When I got home, I told my spouse about it and decided to delete my BFF account. And then I blocked Amber on Snapchat, which was the only other social media account that I added her on.

A day later she found my Instagram, which I had not given her my username for. She sent me a message that said, Hey, girlie, had a great time at brunch. We should hang again soon. I blocked her on Instagram as well, and thank God I haven't heard from her since. I'm not sure what their intentions were, particularly her partners, since he was chasing me down, but I truly do not want to find out. Thanks for listening. if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you want to get access, go to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. If you sign up today, you'll get access to ad-free versions of all of the episodes at a higher bit rate, plus access to those bonus extensions every week with stories you won't hear anywhere else. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. Check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the old-time radio cast, wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv.com. If you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not MeetSys.

Stories at gmail.com. This week you have heard when cyberstalking became real by cat socks and coffee. Maintenance creeping me out by other entertainer 200? When appearance is deceived by opposite phrase 59.51. A dream that turned out to be a memory by Ruby dreadful. Not the ideal English teacher for your kids by anonymous. Stuck on a cellboat by catapy. The red sweater by pumpkin. And finally, BFF, Dane, Dane, Gondh. All of the stories you've heard that. this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's not meet a true horror podcast as not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. We'll see you next week. Everybody, stay safe.

This happened last year, and I was first contemplating whether I should share this.