Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 17x01: Hannah Indiana

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Story Submissions: Letsnotmeetstories@gmail.com  Stories in this episode: Beware the Bike Trails | Egodram (0:43)Wrong House | gypseekittee-xo (6:16) Night Hike | SilentHernandez (10:51) She Appeare...d out of Nowhere | OkChart1375 (16:54) Anonymous Threats in the Mail | Glitter_Stilettos31 (21:42) Rainy Morning Run | Kelsbot (26:38) Hannah Indiana | sbanyan75 (31:54) Extended Patreon Content:The Men in the Forest  | AnthonyI Figured Out The Truth Years Later  | RachelHe Followed Me From McDonald's | NombuuAlone With a Maintenance Man  | Armed and Texan Due 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! Follow LNM:- 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. The stories shared on this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. Right now, DripDrop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code MEET. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to MintMobile.com/Meet. For a limited time get 40% off your first order plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungryroot.com/Meet and use code MEET. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/NotMeet.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:01 Hey, did you hear? Watermelon is back at booster juice all summer long. Nice. I love the watermelon explosion. And the watermelon wave. Yep. They even got a new watermelon assaye bowl this year. The one in a melon bowl. And what does that sound like? Mmm. Like that. Booster Juice. Canadian born. Blending since 1999. This podcast contains adult.
Starting point is 00:00:31 language and content. The stories shared in this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meet stories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. I'm in southeastern U.S. and I'm a bit of an avid cyclist. I have been my whole life. It's my preferred method of transportation. I also live in a town that is known for its ever-expanding network of bike paths, which are often used by pedestrians as well. The town has even won some awards for them over the years. I'm also an Iraq veteran.
Starting point is 00:01:38 This may explain something that happens later. The summers where I live tend to be quite humid, but otherwise pleasant, so one gorgeous August day off from work, I decided to go for a ride. I didn't have a specific end destination in mind, but I got the this idea to ride along the southbound trail that I didn't go through very often. There are enough traffic lights along that section, so it should have been a relatively safe ride. It also goes along the border of a rather popular city park. I figured there'd be plenty of people there, especially on such a nice day. Turns out, I was only sort of right about
Starting point is 00:02:24 that. About 20 minutes or so into my otherwise smooth ride, I came up to a couple of bins in the path not long before the park. A few people were jogging or walking their dogs, and one or two people were walking by themselves, nothing too unusual. The trails are paved and divided into two lanes, just like a regular road, and when you're on a bike, you're supposed to stay on the right-hand lane. Not too far ahead, I noticed a dark-haired guy walking in the wrong lane. It wasn't necessarily illegal to do so, but it could be dangerous. I noticed that he seemed to have no regard whatsoever for others walking in the proper direction and almost bumped into a few of them without a thought.
Starting point is 00:03:14 I figured he must have been drunk or something. But I also saw that he was wearing what looked like a blue puffer, jacket, something you would wear in a way cooler climate, not on a humid day in August. Call it situational awareness, but no one in the right mind wears a fall jacket in the summertime south of the Mason-Dixon line. I was about 30 or so feet away from this guy when he finally saw me. My stomach dropped as he paused mid-step, and his face melted into a downward-facing Jokerish smile.
Starting point is 00:03:52 Then he opened his jacket, revealing a sweaty gray shirt underneath as he reached inside of it. He was clearly reaching for something, but I couldn't see what it was. And that's when something clicked in my head. Now, I don't know what some of you might do when faced with something like this, but I got this batshit insane idea, or at least it felt insane. Instead of turning around, screaming, or stopping, I peddled faster. Without a second thought, I just spun the petals as fast and as hard as I could with the intention of charging at him like some medieval jouster.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Dangerous moments like these may only last a few seconds, but I swear I was building up speed and barreling toward this guy for a good minute or two. I don't know why my brain decided that charging him head on was the thing to do, and maybe it could just as easily have gotten me hurt or killed, but I didn't care. I was scared, of course, which was something I hadn't felt since I had been over there. So I think that's what ultimately drove me to do something. He saw me speeding up and hunkering down, but he wasn't getting out of the way. Only within a few seconds when I was maybe less than two feet shy of slamming into him
Starting point is 00:05:10 was when he finally dove to the left, and I continued peddling. I didn't stop to look back. I didn't even think about it. I just left and kept going. Later, I happened to pass a female jogger or two coming from the opposite direction. I gave them a heads up about this guy, and they promptly turned around.
Starting point is 00:05:32 I sought a different route home that day and locked all my doors when I got home. I haven't been on that stretch of trails since. I didn't think to tell the police at the time, given that I wasn't harmed, but maybe I should have. Then about a month later, a local news story crossed my Facebook feed. A fifth rotting body in less than two years was discovered near that same area of the trail near a creek.
Starting point is 00:06:00 The police said that they weren't sure exactly how the man died, but they said that it didn't look like a natural death. All five of the victims were known vagabonds, people that nobody would have otherwise looked for had they gone missing. I'm not saying that I definitely bull rushed a serial killer, but to this day I often ponder that possibility. To that bike trail dude who gave me some serious creeps, let's not meet again. I just moved back home with my parents after a divorce. They live in the woods away from the main roads. My old house, which I just moved from,
Starting point is 00:06:56 was in the next town over and on a main road. So if you called the cops, they would be there in two seconds. But out at my parents' house, it takes a bit. So I was having my coffee on the couch while my daughter was playing on the floor. We were the only ones in the house. I walked out into the kitchen to make more coffee, and I passed by the dining room windows. They looked out onto the road in front of the house.
Starting point is 00:07:23 I saw a man walking up the road, which was kind of weird because we were in such a private area. I watched him slowly walking up the road, and then he stopped in front of the neighbor's house. He was staring at the house, then he looked back over his shoulder. After I observed him doing this a few times, I slunk out into the entryway and locked the front door,
Starting point is 00:07:46 and when I walked back into the kitchen, I noticed that he was still looking at the neighbor's house. I then went to the back room to retrieve a gun and kept watching him out the window, but I stayed out of sight. I then watched him continue, walking and stop at our driveway. My daughter was still watching TV in the living room,
Starting point is 00:08:07 but I kept an eye on her as I was still looking at the man. Then I took out my cell phone and called 911. I said that there was someone about to try and break in, and I gave them the address. They said that they were sending someone as soon as possible and told me to keep the doors locked. I was also told to stay on the line, so I put my phone in my back pocket,
Starting point is 00:08:28 and then I heard two loud thumps at the front door. then again and then again I calmly walked over to the window next to the door and opened it while pointing the gun at the man he stepped back and said oh um wrong house he stared at me for a moment
Starting point is 00:08:50 which felt like an eternity before turning around and leaving I could still see him in view when the cops pulled up so I pointed at him and they went and got him They said they found a lot of drugs on him, along with two knives in his pockets, and a substantial sum of money. They said it seemed like he was up to no good. So to the guy who was approaching doors in my neighborhood, I have no idea what you were up to, but let's not meet. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly now than we ever have.
Starting point is 00:09:39 It's on social media, podcasts, it's in everyday conversations. but actually asking for help still feels hard for a lot of people. BetterHelp wanted to understand why, so they did research. BetterHelp's 26th State of Stigma Report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. That gap is wild. Almost everyone agrees that therapy is a good idea, and yet, the majority of people still feel
Starting point is 00:10:14 like the world around them pushes back against actually doing it. I think about that a lot with a show like Let's Not Meet, where we hear from people carrying all kinds of weight, and I wonder how many of them have thought about talking to someone but talked themselves out of it
Starting point is 00:10:31 because of how it might look. If you've ever encouraged a friend to consider therapy, you already know how much that nudge can mean. Sometimes people just need permission, So consider this yours. BetterHelp has over 30,000 fully licensed therapists and has served over 6 million people globally. With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 across 1.7 million client reviews.
Starting point is 00:10:55 They match you based on your needs. If the fit isn't right, you can switch any time. I had to switch a few times before I found the right one. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash not meet. That's better h-elp.com slash not meet. A few months back, my girlfriend and I were bored hanging around the house and spontaneously decided
Starting point is 00:11:27 to go out for a hike. We don't hike often, but the idea appealed to both of us, and even though there was only about an hour left at daylight, we figured we had enough time to go enjoy a hike before it got too dark. We quickly filled up our water bottles and put on the best walking shoes we had, and we were out the door, driving up into the mountains. Around my area, there are many hiking trails, with the variety of trails increasing as you go up into the mountains. We tended to stay around the base of the mountains, in the occasional case of us hiking, where most people would still be walking later in the day. But we wanted to change things up and progress further up the mountain road, to a trail, a friend of mine had mentioned,
Starting point is 00:12:13 We kept in mind our time and figured that we could hike for a bit and simply enjoy the new environment for us and finish up before it was too late. We arrived at the trailhead and saw that there were no cars left along the road where the trail commences. But we didn't think too much of this due to the time. We still had a good 45 minutes until dark so we continued. We started walking down a fairly steep hill that then recouped the elevation of the at the bottom with an equally steep hill that needed to be ascended.
Starting point is 00:12:50 We reached the top, and it was smooth sailing from there. We saw a lone coyote off the trail, a ways off, and some rabbits, and I made a quip about how those rabbits might need to be careful with that coyote lurking around. About less than a mile from the trail, we saw a large fallen tree that made a bridge over a dried riverbed. We decided to take a rest, climb around. round on it and take some pictures.
Starting point is 00:13:17 We were there for about ten minutes before we resumed hiking. We continued on the trail for a short distance until my girlfriend heard a rustle in the trees behind us. We stopped, mildly scared due to the presumed size of whatever made the wrestling, but briefly continued until she decided she was done and said that we needed to head back. It was twilight by then, so I agreed with her, and we continued around to head back. to the car. When we made it back to the fallen tree, my shoe had come and tied, so I used the trunk to fix my shoelaces and looked behind us for the first time on the hike. This was actually
Starting point is 00:13:57 uncharacteristic for me, but hey, I was having some fun. Why ruin a good time by being paranoid? I saw a person dressed entirely in black with their hood pulled up. They were at a significant distance behind us walking slow, but at an even pace. It didn't strike me as something out of the ordinary, though. So what if this person was wearing black and had their hood on? I wore black most of the time, and it was cold out, so I didn't think too much of it, and I didn't think that I should make assumptions. It did trigger me to be more alert, however, so I informed my girlfriend of this person's
Starting point is 00:14:38 presence. It was dusk by that point, so we continued at an intentionally faster pace and went through a winding section of the trail where I lost side of the person. When we came around the final bend of this section, I figured they were far enough behind us that there was nothing to worry about. The next thing I knew, this person was behind us again, but much closer. They were probably 50 feet away instead of 100 feet, as they were before, so we increased our speed since this alarmed us. We briskly walked around another bend, and as soon as we went around it, we booked it. It seemed to be a natural reaction on both of our parts, as we had just started running without even a word being said to initiate it. We were nearing the trailhead now with only the hills to deal
Starting point is 00:15:30 with. We caught our breath for a moment, and I turned around again. I saw the person seemingly halt their sprint upon noticing me looking back. It seemed as though they were trying to uphold the illusion of simply walking. At this point I just shouted, Go! And we sprinted down the hill. What little light was left struggled to make its way through the dense tree surrounding us, and the steep hill proved challenging to run down without a clear path to be seen.
Starting point is 00:16:03 We both stumbled down the hill, almost falling multiple times, and slamming our feet onto rocks and loose brush. But we didn't fall, and we didn't look behind us. We made it to the bottom, but we knew we had to continue up the initial hill, and then we would make it out. We persevered up the incline and made it back to our car. I briefly breathed a sigh of relief as I started my car, heart pounding in adrenaline racing, As I reversed onto the road, the person emerged at the trailhead, breathing heavily. That was when we finally caught a glimpse of him. His hood had fallen off his head, exposing his pale complexion in these dead eyes that were only illuminated by a single lantern at the start of the trail.
Starting point is 00:16:50 He was holding something in his hand, but it was too dark to see. I wasn't interested in sticking around to find out what it was. I shifted into drive and accelerated as fast as my car could muster. We left him behind in the dust of the empty side of the road. Nightstalker Trail Guy, let's not meet. I'm from France, and when I was 11 years old, I used to walk home from school. It was my first year doing that. To get to my front door, you had to go up a set of stairs,
Starting point is 00:17:35 and before that, there was a small gate. At the time, I lived at the end of a long time. driveway. That day I opened and closed the gate like usual, went up the stairs, and had just taken out my key to unlock the door, when suddenly an old woman appeared. She was pressing up against the gate behind me. Now to this day, I don't know if she followed me in, or if she had been hiding somewhere near my house, and came out when she saw me. I hadn't noticed anyone behind me while walking, but I wasn't paying that much attention either. My house was the only only one. house at the end of that driveway, so she couldn't have come from somewhere further down.
Starting point is 00:18:16 She asked me if she could pick apples in my garden. This seemed like a harmless request, but the way she appeared made me immediately suspicious. I honestly admire my 11-year-old self because I told her I would go ask my father and come back to tell her. But there was nobody home. I then opened the door and locked it behind me very quickly, almost too quickly. Once I was inside, I saw the front door handle move, meaning she was out there and she was trying to open my door, probably thinking that I hadn't locked it. The time between me entering the house and her trying the door was so short that it meant that she didn't even wait a single second behind the gate. The moment I went inside, she opened the gate and stepped through,
Starting point is 00:19:04 then climbed up the stairs. Honestly, trying to open someone's door instead of waiting for them to come back is already tremendously suspicious. That was when all of my instincts were confirmed. I panicked and I went to hide in the basement. As I was going down, I heard a hard knocking on the door. I was shaking, so I tried to tell myself she was just an old lady. But who's to say she wasn't armed? Or even that she really was that old?
Starting point is 00:19:35 What if it was a disguise? I hit on a couch in the basement with the lights off. After a while I went back upstairs and I hadn't heard any glass breaking or the door being forced open and my keys were still in the lock on the inside so she couldn't have used a duplicate. I looked out the window and I saw her. She was standing at a distance watching the house. She didn't see me but she eventually turned around and left. I was scared to come home alone by myself for about two months after that. I don't think that my parents ever really understood what happened. because they always downplayed it. I sometimes wonder if they were just uncomfortable with the idea. To this day, I don't know what that lady was up to, and I'm not sure I want to know. Summer completely changes how I eat.
Starting point is 00:20:34 The routine goes out the window. The days feel longer, and suddenly I'm either skipping meals or grabbing whatever's fastest. That's where Hunger Road has been a huge lifesaver. It keeps my eating on track, even when everything else is in chaos. I've been leaning into higher protein meals lately since I've been working out more, and Hungry Root has been building my orders around exactly that. The recipes have become weekly staples for me.
Starting point is 00:21:00 They're fast and easy to make, they're actually filling, and way better than anything I would just throw together on my own at the end of a long day. It's hard to think of what to even make sometimes. And I really like how they've learned my tastes over time. My orders just keep getting dialed in, and there's always quality there. hungry root screens out over 200 additives like high fructose corn syrup artificial sweeteners and preservatives and all of their meat and seafood has no hormones or antibiotics with over 50,000 chef-crafted recipes a lot of them ready in just 15 minutes i never feel stuck eating the same thing twice at this point
Starting point is 00:21:38 i genuinely don't think about meal planning it just happens busy summers used to mean that my eating went completely off the rails. But now Hungry Route has fixed that problem. You're going to love Hungry Route as much as I do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first order, plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungryroot.com slash meat and use code meat. That's hungryroot.com slash meat code meat to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. I lived by myself after my sophomore year of college. In my third year, I lived off campus in an apartment complex that was gated. You needed a key to enter.
Starting point is 00:22:23 Most of the residents were students. A few families lived there as well. Ryan was a kid who lived with his family there. I saw him around when I went to do laundry, and he liked talking to me. He was a fifth grader. He would talk to me and we would chat while I did my laundry. He would tell me about school. It was nice.
Starting point is 00:22:44 It kind of made me think back on when I was in fifth grade. He used to ask me, what was going on with me? I usually kept it general and just said that I was studying. One day, he asked me for my email address. He said he started writing stories and he wanted to send them to me. It felt harmless, wholesome even, so I gave him my email address. He started sending me these little horror stories. They were about abandoned houses, killer clowns, stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:23:16 I respected that he had a hobby. I didn't always respond to his emails, but I always mentioned something to him when I saw him. He then invited me to his elementary school graduation. I was in the middle of finals. I also didn't want to give up my whole Friday morning, so instead I sent him a Hallmark card congratulating him. I thought that that would be a sweet enough gesture.
Starting point is 00:23:39 The next time I saw him, though, he didn't seem happy with me. He said something about how it would have only been about an hour of my time, and he told me that he had seen me spend more time with my friends. I really didn't know what to say to that, because he kind of had a point. However, he crossed a line after that. He asked me to go to dinner with him. He said, just you and me. I don't think so, I replied.
Starting point is 00:24:11 But he kept pushing, saying things like, I just want to get to know you better. He was doing this while his mom was there. His mom could hear all of it, but she didn't even back me up. I thought that she would intervene, but she never did. She just laughed while her 11-year-old son
Starting point is 00:24:29 was pressuring a college student to go on a date with him after she had already said no. You'd think that would be a great moment for a parent to step in and help enforce boundaries. I didn't remain in that apartment for very long after this. I had one summer session that ended in August, and then I moved to a different place for the next year. I kept my distance during the remainder of that time.
Starting point is 00:24:55 I didn't want another invitation or anything. I gave that kid single word answers and replies, avoided eye contact, and blocked his email address. After I moved out, I didn't hear from Brian for a few months. Then, around October, I started getting anonymous letters sent to my new address. I opened the first envelope, and the note said, It's been so easy to follow you. Can you hear the footsteps behind you?
Starting point is 00:25:26 I felt nauseous, just reading that. I'm even uncomfortable remembering it now. I then got a second letter that read, I know what you did. It's funny how you think it's over. I had read enough of this kid's stories to recognize the tone of his writing when I read it. This was the way that the characters and his stories spoke. I knew instantly that he was the one sending me these letters. I felt ridiculous calling the police, but I did.
Starting point is 00:25:59 Imagine calling them and telling them an 11-year-old might be sending me anonymous, threatening letters. The police told me there was nothing that they could do because no laws had been broken. They could not trace the letters. They also said that these letters were more common than some people realize and that there was no concrete evidence to believe that they were from that kid. They also told me that sometimes these kinds of letters come from senders that the recipient had never even met before. I guess the police were right.
Starting point is 00:26:30 There was no way to prove it, but I knew for a fact it was the kid that I knew from my old apartment complex. There was never a third letter. I never heard from him again. I think he moved on to something else. Maybe he found other people to spend his time thinking about, hopefully his own age. Recently I went on a morning run at 6.30 a.m.
Starting point is 00:27:12 I went to a large park to do some trail running. Since it was raining, I didn't expect to find too many people on the trails. I started my run thinking that I'd do the entire five-mile loop, since there weren't any cars parked at the trailhead, and it was so crisp out. Then, at around the two-mile mark, I heard footsteps running behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw a large man in shorts and a rain jacket with a hood up. He was also wearing a hat which prevented me from seeing his face. He was about six to and lean.
Starting point is 00:27:46 I thought to myself, okay, I'll slow down and move over so that he can pass, since obviously he had a longer stride than I did. When I did this, he intentionally adjusted his speed to maintain the same distance behind me. To ensure I wasn't being paranoid, I then switched up my pace, running quicker and slower at random intervals. I kept doing this at random,
Starting point is 00:28:12 and he maintained the same distance behind me. Needless to say, this scared me. I had my phone in my keys on me, but they were in a zip pocket on the back of my running tights. I didn't want to tip him off to what I was doing, so I decided to find a pull-out where I could be facing him as he ran by while looking like I was adjusting my tights
Starting point is 00:28:35 when getting my keys and phone. When I saw the pull-out coming, I hurried to it and did exactly that. As I was retrieving my belongings, he slowed down to a jog and stared at me while continuing on the trail. nervously I said good morning and he nodded at me he then picked up pace and disappeared out of sight around the curve and the trail by then my heart was pounding and i was ready to get the hell out of there with my phone in one hand and my keys between my fingers and the other i sprinted the two miles back to my car i kept looking behind me to make sure that he wasn't there the entire way back when i finally made it back to the parking lot there was a truck parked next to me in the otherwise empty lot. I unlocked my car, but first checked the back seats. No one was in it.
Starting point is 00:29:28 So I jumped into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and started the engine. As I sat there trying to calm myself down, since I was beginning to feel safe, I looked up and saw the same man standing at the trailhead. This meant that things were serious, so I peeled out of the parking lot. As I was pulling out of there, I looked in my rearview mirror, and I saw that, he was still just standing there. I got back on the main road where traffic started to pick up, and I drove a few miles down the road, turned off into a gas station and called the police department. While I wasn't attacked, I definitely felt stalked.
Starting point is 00:30:05 I told them everything that happened, and they told me to come in and file a report. When I got to the station, they told me that there had been a string of assaults in the neighboring parks, and it was lucky that I was observant of my surroundings and got out of there. I haven't heard anything back from them yet, so I'm not sure if that man was intending to harm me. But I was so terrified by that experience that I'll probably never run alone on trails again. So to the hooded man who treated me an awful lot like prey
Starting point is 00:30:35 on a rainy, secluded trail, let's not meet. There are things in life that you don't want to be transparent, like your swimsuit or your search history, but when it comes to your wireless bill, transparency is everything. That's why MittMobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gotchas, just high-speed data and reliable coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. And right now, all plans are 15 bucks per month, even unlimited. Mitt-Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right,
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Starting point is 00:32:18 See mintmobile.com. This is a story I have wanted to share for a long time. It's very long. It's as long as it needs to be to say what I need to say, though. It took place between 1995 and 2002. Everyone has had a bad friend or two. I had an especially bad friend. If it hadn't happened to me,
Starting point is 00:32:45 I would have never known that people could behave this way outside of Lifetime Channel movies. I grew up in northern Indiana. I went to a large high school in the mid-90s, and in my senior year, I met another student named Hannah, who had recently transatlantic. from the main local Catholic high school in the area.
Starting point is 00:33:07 It was unusual to transfer from a private school to a public school so late, but I didn't think too much of it. Hannah said that she had been expelled because of a fight with another student over some drama about a boy. She said that the other girl had made allegations against her and accused her of attacking her. Whatever had happened, the police had been contacted, and she had a restraining order placed on her by the other girl.
Starting point is 00:33:36 It had forced her expulsion, and that was how I came to meet her. Hannah said none of it was true. She said that she had never tried to hurt the other girl. I later went to college in Indiana, while Hannah went to college in Florida. One day, a friend of mine from the dorms ran into a guy she had known from Catholic school back in my hometown. Once she left, she told me about this incident that had happened to him, where these two girls were fighting over him.
Starting point is 00:34:08 Neither one of them was dating him, and yet both of these girls thought that they were in a secret relationship with him. The whole thing had been very strange. Then she said one of them was a girl named Hannah. The next summer, I was back in my hometown, and Hannah was as well. I hung out with her casually and I told her what I had heard about her. She said that she would tell me what really happened. She had a crush on this boy, but she had seen him talk to another student named Julie,
Starting point is 00:34:43 and she became jealous. She said that she was convinced that this boy, Mike, wanted to be her boyfriend. She was sure that Julie must have said something bad about her. Hannah said Julie was a popular and pretty cheerleader, and she hated everything about her, so she decided she would try to see if she could push her to commit suicide. Hannah said it hadn't worked,
Starting point is 00:35:08 but that she had a nervous breakdown. I asked her what she had done. We went back to Hannah's house. Up in her bedroom, she pulled something out from the back of her closet. It was a set of books. One was a book on how to use tricks to get revenge on people.
Starting point is 00:35:27 and one was a book with a cartoon character on the front pulling their hair out. It said in big letters, gaslighting. Now I know gaslighting is a common phrase now, but back in 1995, I had never heard of it. I asked Hannah what the book was about, and she said that it was about how to drive someone crazy. She explained that it was simple. You just make people believe things aren't really true, or you convince that you're of things that never happened. Then she told me what she really did to Julian High School.
Starting point is 00:36:04 She had pretended to be friends with her. She got her phone number, and then she started making these anonymous phone calls to her. This was way before cell phones were common. She had a friend from her church who had a crush on her, and she would trade sexual favors with him, and he would pretend to be Mike on the phone. He would get a quote-unquote favor
Starting point is 00:36:27 every time he did this for Hannah. Fake Mike would tell Julie not to talk to him in school so that they could keep things private. Hannah would put notes on Julie's locker and sign Mike's name on them. Fake Mike would make plans to meet Julie at the mall or the movies and then never show up.
Starting point is 00:36:50 It sounds very stupid, but they would have been around 14 or 15-year-old girls when this happened. Hannah said that she had done something really embarrassing, but it had worked. She had a mixtape, and she would whisper nasty little phrases like, You Want to Die, or You Should Kill Yourself Between Songs, and had played it in her bedroom when Julie was over. Obviously, she commented on it,
Starting point is 00:37:17 and Hannah sat there with a straight face and said that she didn't hear anything and had no idea what she was talking about. She had set it up with her brother and had asked him to help her by saying it was a prank. Hannah's brother also came into the room and said that he couldn't hear anything and told Julie that she must be crazy and hearing things. Julie's parents eventually decided to confront Mike
Starting point is 00:37:43 and his family about his behavior towards their daughter. He had no idea what was going on because her parents had confronted him about something he was never even doing. As a result, Julie was essentially publicly humiliated at her high school, and everyone was talking about how crazy she was. Meanwhile, Hannah loved every bit of it until Julie's parents got their phone bill and decided to give it a good look. They discovered that Mike had not been calling their house, but somebody had been. They had numerous anonymous phone calls.
Starting point is 00:38:20 They checked it out and found out that they were all coming from a house. Hannah's home phone number. Julie confronted Hannah about it at school, and that was when something violent happened between the two of them in the stairwell. Hannah said that Julie was exaggerating about what happened, and that it had been an accident. She said she never tried to push her over the railing. She said she merely bumped into her. Hannah wasn't embarrassed about it. She was proud of it. The only thing that upset her was that she had been caught. Hannah didn't have anything to say in her defense. She mainly said that she'd just like the boy and she would do anything to be with him. That summer, Hannah started dating a guy named Derek. Every time I saw her, she told me tales
Starting point is 00:39:10 about her wild and crazy sex life and how much he was in love with her. Hannah said that it was a secret affair, and they were sneaking around behind his girlfriend's back. We saw him once at a party, and he screamed at Hannah to stay away from him and leave him and his girlfriend alone. Someone had been making strange anonymous phone calls to him and his girlfriend. He paid to have the number traced and found out that it was Hannah. Hannah admitted that she had been trying to break them up because he was taking too long to do it himself, but that she had overplayed it and now he was angry and had broken things off with her. She was depressed after Derek broke up with her, so I took her out to a bar.
Starting point is 00:39:56 Hannah started flirting with a much older guy in his 40s who was sitting by himself. She had recently purchased a cell phone. This was around 96 or 97 in our timeline, so they were still kind of new and novel. The next thing I knew, she had his phone out, and I thought she she was giving this older guy her phone number. Instead, he asked her what she wanted him to say. Then I noticed she typed a phone number in, handed the guy her phone, and he made disgusting comments to whoever answered.
Starting point is 00:40:29 Then he hung up, laughed, and handed the phone back to Hannah. Hannah gave him a $20 bill and said that the girl that they called was a bitch and deserved it for stealing her boyfriend. She was paying complete strength, to anonymously call people that she hated on her cell phone and recite some pre-arranged script to spread rumors about them. I ran into a mutual friend later in the summer and mentioned that Derek had broken things off
Starting point is 00:41:00 with Hannah. She gave me a very funny look and said that there had never been any relationship to even break off. A year later, Hannah and I were both temporarily living back with our parents and sort of adrift. Hannah had been kicked out of her dorm over an accusation made by another student and had never completed her degree. She started hanging out with some old friends from high school. One of those former high school friends was a young woman named Kelly, with whom Hannah had been pretty good friends. Something had happened between the two of them because Hannah went on and
Starting point is 00:41:38 on about how much she hated her. It had something to do with Kelly's new boyfriend, Dan. Hannah insisted that she was using him in some bizarre plot to make another man jealous and was worried that Kelly would hurt him. I happened to be driving in Hannah's neighborhood one night and there were two police cars out front. I went home and I called her but she said that she couldn't talk.
Starting point is 00:42:05 I went over and saw her the next day. I thought that their house had been robbed or something like that. All she said was that the police were there to talk to her. her about an incident that had been reported. Hannah was upset. She said that she had to tell the police that she smoked weed and got high because of Kelly. Hannah didn't specify what happened, but she said it was an accident and a misunderstanding. Hannah swore she hadn't been trying to hurt Kelly.
Starting point is 00:42:37 Well, I eventually found out the day after Hannah told me about how much she hated Kelly, apparently she had called her up and said that she wanted to talk about something she and another friend had shown up and the three of them had gone out to some local overlook to smoke a joint the other girl waited
Starting point is 00:42:57 down below while the two of them talked privately. Hannah had asked Kelly to look at something and when she turned her back Kelly said that Hannah grabbed her and tried to push her over the ledge they were about 100 feet up in the air and she would
Starting point is 00:43:12 most likely have been killed by the fall. Kelly said that they fought back and forth. She regained her balance and took off screaming about what Hannah had tried to do. Hannah said it was all a misunderstanding. It was an accident. She had been trying to show her something. But then she lost her balance because she was high, so she grabbed Kelly to stabilize so that she wouldn't fall off the edge.
Starting point is 00:43:39 She said Kelly had almost fallen off because she had hysterically overreacted. Kelly had been very upset and insisted that Hannah had done it on purpose, and she said that it was because she was jealous of her relationship with Dan. She said it was obvious to everyone that Hannah was obsessed with him. What Kelly had not done, however, was tell the police that they had smoked a joint right before this happened. And when Hannah did, the police said that they didn't have enough evidence, and they weren't happy with Kelly for omitting that part of the account. That was it for Hannah and most of her high school friends for at least a couple of years.
Starting point is 00:44:21 Kelly stuck to her version of what happened, and her friends sided with her. People began talking about the strange rumors that had followed Hannah around since high school. I thought it was suspicious, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that she tried to kill another woman. I thought that sort of thing only happened in movies, not small, towns in Indiana. However, I didn't want to be friends with her. She was an embarrassment to even be around. She had almost no friends left at that point.
Starting point is 00:44:54 She called me up to tell me that she had decided she needed a change, and she was going to pursue a different career and move to Minneapolis to make that happen. She moved in 98, and honestly, I thought I would never see her again. And I wish that were the case. She called me about a year and a half later. She said that she was doing really well and she said that the move had been good for her.
Starting point is 00:45:22 She had made friends and met a boy with whom she was in love with. She said that this was the guy she was going to marry. His name was Dan. And she told me that he was the guy who had gotten her interested in punk rock and heroin. I just kind of paused when she said that. I wasn't any kind of angel. my 20s, but I had never even dabbled in hard stuff like that. It didn't sound very cool.
Starting point is 00:45:49 Hannah insisted that it wasn't a habit. She said it was amazing and easy to control as long as you were careful. This was a complete change in lifestyle and scene for her, because before this, she had been somewhat of a hippie, and that was all gone now. At that point, her life revolved around hair, punk rock, heroin, and Dan. She then came back for a visit and we went to a mall. She stopped at a kiosk and said that she wanted to buy a cell phone. She lived eight hours away in a completely different state with a completely different area code.
Starting point is 00:46:26 We got into a small argument about it. Back in 2000, cell phones were purchased and billed from your local area code, and you paid through the nose if you were roaming. Hannah said to drop it because she had done her research and it would be fine. She bought the phone and listed her boyfriend Dan as the main user on the registration. After she left, I noticed she had left a curling iron behind
Starting point is 00:46:53 and I thought that I would surprise her by calling her new cell phone. She had set it up at my house and I got the number from the caller ID. Nobody picked up. Instead, it went to an answering machine for Dan. The same Dan who had been dating Kelly years earlier. The same Dan that Hannah had been accused of being obsessed with. There was no doubt about who it was. I hung up and I wondered why she had lied to me about who her boyfriend really was. A couple of minutes later, Hannah called me back on her original cell phone. She played it off as a coincidence that I had just called that other number. She
Starting point is 00:47:36 that she had run into hometown Dan and his friends, and he had lost his phone, so Hannah had done him a favor and given him the one that she had just purchased. I mentioned that it was strange that she would buy a phone for her boyfriend Dan, only to run into someone else with the same name and give it to him instead. Dan is obviously a very common name, probably one of the most common names for men of my generation, and Hannah joked about how many different people she knew with that same name. A couple of months later, she called me again and said that she wanted to visit during the summer. No matter what she said about being in control of the heroin use, it was very obvious by then that it had become a full-fledged habit. Things had taken a turn in her life. Her boyfriend,
Starting point is 00:48:30 and Dan had moved to Chicago. Hannah said that he was still in love with her, and they were still together, but that something had happened with his ex-girlfriend and they were taking a break and only seeing one another privately. Hannah said that he was trying to protect her. According to Hannah,
Starting point is 00:48:50 his ex-girlfriend had refused to accept their breakup and had been stalking Dan for months. It was one of the reasons he had moved to Chicago. She had taken an overdose of heroin when she found out that Hannah and Dan were together. That was the reason they decided that they had to keep their relationship secret. That was why Hannah was really in town.
Starting point is 00:49:13 And he was going to be coming later to join her and they had set up a get-together. I wanted to meet him, but Hannah said that he wouldn't act like her boyfriend when other people were around. I started to question her. She got angry and said that she wouldn't let me meet him because I wouldn't understand their relationship.
Starting point is 00:49:33 We got into a fight so I ordered her out of my house and made it clear that I wanted nothing to do with her. Her mother called me about a year later. She said that Hannah was living with them in Atlanta because something very bad had happened in Minneapolis. Hannah didn't have any friends left. Her mother begged me to forgive her so that she could have someone to talk to. She said Hannah had spent three months in rehab and was off heroin, but emotionally wasn't doing well. She said she had to make a trip back to Minneapolis to take care of some things and pick up some of her stuff. Her mother was worried that being back there and around her old friends would trigger her to want to use again. She said it was very important for Hannah not to relapse.
Starting point is 00:50:21 If she did, the consequences would be severe, and she wanted me to go with her. I said that I would Hannah wouldn't tell me what happened She just said that someone had almost died And that it had been an accident But it had still been her fault She drove into town to pick me up for our trip to Minneapolis But said we had to stop somewhere first
Starting point is 00:50:46 We went to the old bar downtown That we used to hang out in when she lived in town She said that she had to meet someone A young woman then walked in, and Hannah walked over to her, hugged her, and started crying. She was apologizing all over the place and kept telling her that she needed to realize that it had been an accident. The woman said that she forgave her, but that her life has been difficult since what happened, and she couldn't have anything to do with Hannah anymore. She also said that she could no longer be friends with her.
Starting point is 00:51:21 Hannah asked if she had ever spoken to her ex-boyfriend and had a chance to work things out with him. She said no because he was mad at her and he refused to talk to her. Hannah said he had a new cell phone and she gave her the number just in case she changed her mind and wanted to get a hold of him. Then the young woman left.
Starting point is 00:51:46 I was sitting there completely confused by what I had just witnessed. I was really uncomfortable with what I heard. heard. I asked Hannah if the ex-boyfriend she was talking about was hometown Dan and she said no. She told me it was someone else that I had never met. Hannah said that she and Dan had broken up because he was still using heroin and she said it was too painful to talk about him. She said not to bring him up. Her friends knew not to mention him around her and she asked that I do the same. Well, we went to Minneapolis, and the young woman we were staying with turned out to be one of Hannah's former roommates, and that was when I found out what really happened and what Hannah had been refusing to talk about. It turns out, the girl from the bar had been her other roommate. She almost died because of something Hannah did.
Starting point is 00:52:45 We settled in, and Hannah said that she could explain what happened a year ago. That was the first time I had realized that this happened much farther in the past than I thought. The former roommate said that she was happy that Hannah was clean, but she needed her to explain why she had tried to kill the other girl. Those were her words. She wasn't calling it an accident. She said that she was there. She saw it,
Starting point is 00:53:13 and Hannah had done that to her on purpose, and she wanted to know why. and this is what she described. Hannah had a friend from Indiana who had broken up with her boyfriend, Dan, after Hannah told her that she had found out he was cheating on her and had gotten another woman pregnant.
Starting point is 00:53:33 Hannah invited her to live with her in Minneapolis to get away from him and start over. She had no idea that Hannah was a heroin user. She didn't like Minneapolis. She had experienced a run of bad luck the couple of weeks she had been there. there, and even though Hannah kept trying to convince her to stick it out to see if she would like it, she had decided she was going to leave and go back home. She regretted her breakup with Dan.
Starting point is 00:54:00 She wanted to talk to him to see if they could work through it. They had been together for almost two years. She was worried because she had lost touch with him. Hannah had been able to track down his phone number for her through some mutual friends, but no matter how many times she called or how much she begged, he refused to answer her calls or call her back when she left messages. She was upset and told Hannah that she was going to stop by his apartment
Starting point is 00:54:29 to see him on her way back to Indiana. She was supposed to be leaving within a day. Hannah then kept insisting that she would like heroin if she would just try it a bit and had been pursuing her very hard to join in with everyone else. The roommate was angry about that,
Starting point is 00:54:47 She said that Hannah knew she was scared and didn't even want to try. Hannah had promised her that it would be safe and promised her that it was just a small dose. Hannah said she knew what she was doing, so she gave in. Hannah bought the heroin, and she bought a lot more than normal, which she said was for a party later on. She prepared the needles and said that she had just used a small amount. Instead, she had used everything that she bought. It turned out to be way more than was necessary to kill all of them. Hannah had given the girl the injection,
Starting point is 00:55:28 and she slumped over immediately and stopped breathing. Hannah then moved on to the other roommate, and in the other room, she told her everything was fine. She said that the girl was just enjoying herself. Then Hannah tried to convince her other roommate, to take her dose, but she wanted to check on the other girl first. Hannah then walked over
Starting point is 00:55:51 and had an imaginary conversation with the young woman who was completely unconscious and tried to convince the other roommate that she was fine. The other roommate didn't believe her. So she went in to check herself and immediately saw that she wasn't even breathing.
Starting point is 00:56:08 Panicked, she started screaming at Hannah and asking her why she was lying. Then she ran for the first, phone while Hannah ran after her. She dialed 911, but Hannah grabbed the phone and hung it up. They called back and she said it had been a mistake and that they were fine. Hannah wouldn't let the other roommate near the phone and kept trying to tell her that she was being hysterical and that everything was okay. Hannah tried to pin her down and force the needle in her, but she fought back, ran out of the apartment, and down the hall to a neighbors to call 911 from there. When the paramedics arrived,
Starting point is 00:56:45 the girl was clinically dead. They worked on her, got a heartbeat, and transferred her to a local hospital in a comatose state. She survived, but for a while, it wasn't clear if she would pull through. We'll get back to the last half of our story in just a moment,
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Starting point is 00:58:55 Stock up now at dripdrop.com and use promo code meat. Now let's return to the last half of our story. Hannah told the police that she didn't know why she had done it. After talking with a lawyer, she said it was because of heroin psychosis and that she had been temporarily insane at the time. She agreed for a long-time rehab stay and a year of drug testing and probation.
Starting point is 00:59:23 After that, the charges against her were dropped. That had been the reason that it was so important Hannah didn't relapse. She would have been looking at prison time. Hannah said that it had been a strange temporary hallucination that had caused her behavior and that she had never meant to hurt her, and the whole thing had been an accident and a misunderstanding.
Starting point is 00:59:48 It was the same excuse she had always used. Now, I'm going to spell this out, since the morons who work for the Minneapolis Police Department were too stupid to realize this 20 years ago. Hannah was obsessed with this girl's boyfriend, Dan. She had been obsessed with him for years. She had developed a detailed and detailed, deranged fantasy that the two of them were in a secret relationship together because she had a
Starting point is 01:00:16 peculiar and somewhat rare psychiatric condition called erotomania. She believed that this young woman was standing in the way of their romance, and so she ingratiated herself and pretended to be her friend so that she could find a way to get close enough to her to get her out of the way. She successfully managed to spread rumors and interfere with her relationship enough so that the two of them broke up. And then Hannah invited this young woman to Minneapolis to isolate her from her other friends and control what information she had access to. This was in 2000. We didn't have text messages or Facebook back then for keeping in touch with people. So she lulled her into a false sense of friendship and security so that she could manipulate her
Starting point is 01:01:07 and get close enough to her to hurt her. When she realized she was in love with Dan and wanted to talk to him, Hannah realized that she would eventually find out that the rumors she had been told were not true, and that Hannah was the source. She purchased a cell phone in Indiana and made a recording of Dan's answering machine message so that she could impersonate him on the phone
Starting point is 01:01:33 so that the young woman would believe she was in contact with him. She never knew that Dan, never received the messages. Hannah was using it to spy on her. When she said she was going to go back home and show up and see if Dan would talk to her in person, Hannah knew that that meant she would find out that she had given her a fake phone number and that she had gone to extreme lengths to prevent her from speaking to him, and it would have been obvious why.
Starting point is 01:02:05 She tried to talk her into heroin because she planned on killing her and her other roommate. After all, that would be a good way to make it appear that it was an accident. Hannah was about to have her obsessions with Dan, her delusional beliefs about him, and her bizarre mental disorder exposed, and she knew that.
Starting point is 01:02:27 She had known for at least a day or more before the incident, which is why it is clear that her actions were premeditated, because her motive was. All of this would have been remarkably easy to figure out if the police had contacted Dan and if they had taken a look at Hannah's phone records. Phone harassment has always been her favorite activity. Instead, they treated her just like any other 9-99 overdose
Starting point is 01:02:56 that they had to respond to every month and gave Hannah the old rehab or prison option. Since her family could afford a lawyer and a three-month rehab stay, that was the option that they took. The police never investigated her for anything. They also never contacted the man, Dan, who was at the center of this, and they never took any serious look into her background. It wasn't an accident.
Starting point is 01:03:24 It was an attempted murder, and a pretty easy one to prove at that. The police completely dropped the ball, and because of their incompetence, she was allowed to completely get away with it. At the time, I didn't know any of this. I was trying to act as a support system for a former friend who was on the cusp of a heroin relapse.
Starting point is 01:03:46 I was suspicious, but any time I asked Hannah questions, she just said it was too painful to talk about or would guilt-trip me about not respecting her boundaries. She had sworn to me that this young woman had never been in any relationship with Dan from our hometown that she had known years earlier. I returned to Indiana, and Hannah returned to visit her parents in Atlanta,
Starting point is 01:04:11 and I didn't talk to her for a while. She called later and wanted to visit her old hometown again. Once again, I let her stay with me. We ran into Dan. He had moved to Chicago, but just happened to be back in town that weekend. I hadn't seen him in years. Hannah had contacted him to get together.
Starting point is 01:04:33 She spent the whole afternoon trying to pull him aside to talk to him, but instead he made it clear that he had only showed up because he wanted to see me. He had broken up with Kelly years earlier, but I thought he had had a long-term girlfriend since then. Dan said that she left him a year ago and just disappeared. He had called her repeatedly, but she had completely cut him off. Now he was nice to me. He was handsome.
Starting point is 01:05:03 He was a lot of fun to be around, and he asked me out. We made plans to meet up the next day. I saw him at a bar, but he turned around and walked out the door, and he wouldn't even look at me. I was upset and confused. Hannah was sympathetic. She apologized for not telling me what he was like, and said he had this weird thing with lying to girls and playing with their emotions
Starting point is 01:05:29 by pretending to like them. It wasn't like I had never been lied to by a boy before, but this felt strange. A week later, my student loan came through, and I decided to go back to college and finish my degree. I moved a couple of hours away, and the first person who called me was Hannah. Once again, she wanted to come visit me.
Starting point is 01:05:52 She insisted that she had gone out and gotten me a surprise, and she needed to give it to me in person. She said she had something really important to talk about as well. She said that it would sound weird, but she asked me to promise her that I wouldn't tell anyone she was coming to see me. I humored her. She showed up at my apartment, and when she walked in, the first thing she asked me was if I had told anyone that she would be there. At first I said no. Then she said that she had something for me and reached into her purse. she paused and said that she just wanted to make sure that no one knew she was there.
Starting point is 01:06:32 I was frustrated, and I kind of offhandedly said that nobody besides my mom and my best friend knew she was coming. Hannah was furious when I said that. She was angry that I had told anyone that she would be there, and now refused to show me what she had brought as a surprise for me. She went and locked it in her glove compartment because she said, said she didn't want me to snoop in her stuff and find it. She kept saying she wanted to talk about something. But the time just wasn't right.
Starting point is 01:07:05 Then she decided to go home a day early. And then one day, a couple of weeks later, out of the blue, she just shows up on my doorstep one evening. I was on the phone with my best friend, who, by the way, went to the same Catholic high school as Hannah. And while she wasn't close friends with her, she knew who she was. I was talking to her when I saw Hannah walk up to the front door.
Starting point is 01:07:32 It was an eight-hour drive from Atlanta to Indiana. I got up and opened the door and still had the phone up to my ear. When I opened it, Hannah had her head down, and she had one hand inside her purse. I said her name, and she looked up at me and pulled something purple out of the purse. She saw that I was on the phone and swiveled around, and put whatever she had back in her back. She was acting very strange.
Starting point is 01:08:00 She was shaking. I was worried. I asked her to come inside. At that point, I was convinced that she was back on heroin, and that would be the secret she was trying to talk to me about. She said that she was upset about a boy and needed to talk. She said she had something that she wanted to show me, and she reached into her purse and pulled out a handgun.
Starting point is 01:08:23 It was a purple and black revolver, and I realized from the color that it was what she had pulled out from her purse when I first answered the door. She said that she had been checking to make sure that the safety was on, and I was lucky that she hadn't accidentally shot me because I had startled her. She said she had the gun because she was back on heroin and scared of the part of town she had to go to to buy it. I didn't know it back then, but revolvers don't have safeties. She told me about a musician in Atlanta that she had met, and she was frustrated because he had a girlfriend, and she hadn't been able to find a way to get him to pay attention to her. She wanted me to tell her what I had done to Dan so that she could use it on this guy.
Starting point is 01:09:17 She told me that he was still talking about me months later, and she wanted to know why he was still interested, even though we hadn't talked since the previous summer. From my point of view, Dan wasn't interested in me. He had ghosted me months earlier. Hannah kept insisting that I must have done something to him. It was like she was implying that I had hypnotized him or something ludicrous, and she wanted me to tell her.
Starting point is 01:09:44 I clearly explained that I hadn't done anything and told her, he ignored me, and he never returned my phone calls after I tried calling him. She cried and drank for a couple of hours And then turned around And drove eight hours back to Atlanta In the middle of the night And for the record Hannah was the one who gave me Dan's phone number
Starting point is 01:10:06 After this something very strange Seemed to get set into motion I got a phone call from an anonymous number And when I answered It was Hannah who said that someone wanted to talk to me Then she flipped me over to a three-way call with someone else. It was Dan's roommate and best friend in Chicago, and he started screaming at me, asking me why I was playing games with Dan and messing with him. Dan's supposed roommate was saying
Starting point is 01:10:35 that Dan was going out of his mind and said I needed to call him back and stopped doing whatever it was that I had been doing to him. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. I said Dan had never called me, but explained that I had tried to call a few times, and then we were disconnected. Then another quote-unquote anonymous call came through. I know it was really Hannah, but I picked it up. It was another three-way call with another group of boys yelling at me and telling me that they would kill me for what I did to Dan. Of course, that call disconnected before I could even ask them what they were talking about. I called Hannah to find out what the hell was going on after that, and it was the craziest and most disturbing conversation I had ever had with another person.
Starting point is 01:11:24 At first, she just kept saying that I hurt Dan, and I could never talk to him again or have any contact with him. None of it made any sense, since this was about a guy who hadn't returned my phone calls, or had any type of contact with me for months. Hannah started getting very upset and kept saying that I knew what I had done. I just wouldn't admit it. She then said that Dan hated me and had never wanted anything to do with me
Starting point is 01:11:56 but that I was doing things to him to make him pretend that he liked me instead of her. I had no idea what the hell was going on. She said that Dan was her secret boyfriend and that he was in love with her and had been for years. She said that the two of them had been together since they were teenagers and that I knew but I was pretending not to. I asked her how she could have been his girlfriend when I knew of other girls that he had dated.
Starting point is 01:12:24 She started screeching that those weren't real relationships. He was only pretending to like them. She said when he talked about them, he was really talking about her. But other people kept doing things to him so that he couldn't tell her how he felt directly, but she knew all along. She insisted that he'd find ways to let her know that he was really thinking about her. She said that all of his friends respected their privacy, which was why they would play along when he pretended that he was dating other people.
Starting point is 01:12:58 She kept insisting that he was in love with her and nobody else. She was sick of people pretending to be her friend and then stabbing her in the back by going after her boyfriend, and she said that she would not put up with anyone coming between them, and she would not let anyone hurt him. She said I was forcing him to forget how he really felt, and she wouldn't let me. I realized that she wasn't making any sense,
Starting point is 01:13:22 and that she was completely psychotic. I told her to never contact me again, and I hung up. At that moment, all I could think about was how she had pulled a gun out of her purse the last time she had shown up at my apartment by surprise. She had given a fatal overdose of heroin to another woman and had been accused by another of luring them to allege in trying to push her off.
Starting point is 01:13:48 The one thing we all had in common was Dan. I then called the number I had for Dan, but it was disconnected. I thought about that weird situation with the cell phones when she had purchased one a couple of years earlier. I found that old number in my address book and called it, except this time it wasn't Dan's voice on the answering machine. It was mine. This bitch had made a recording of my voicemail
Starting point is 01:14:18 and put it on a cell phone that she owned. Once I discovered that, everything fell into place. That was what had happened to that girl in Minneapolis, and that is why Dan had spent the last several months thinking he was contacting me. There was no relationship with Dan. It was all in Hannah's head, and she was frantically trying to keep other women away from him
Starting point is 01:14:42 to protect her fantasy from imploding. This was all due to her erotomania, which is the fixed delusional belief that another person is secretly in love with you. Not everyone who has it will be violent, but some people are, and in some cases other people are used in strange dramas and vicious smear campaigns that are aimed at trying to rearrange reality
Starting point is 01:15:07 so that it conforms to the delusions inside of their head. The people who are perceived as standing in their way can be the victims of extreme violence. Hannah showed up the next day at my apartment screaming at me to let her in. I wouldn't, and I was getting ready to call the police when she started crying and saying that Dan had killed himself. And then she walked away, and that was the... the last time I ever saw her.
Starting point is 01:15:34 I spoke to my parents, who told me that I had received several phone calls to their house from people letting me know the same thing. I changed my phone number to keep her from contacting me. I contacted the police in Indiana, who said that if she showed up again,
Starting point is 01:15:49 they could arrest her for felony intimidation, but not for anything she had done months earlier. I then contacted the Minneapolis police, but I knew very little information, only Hannah's name, not where or when it had all happened. I asked repeatedly to be allowed to speak to someone, but the woman on the phone said that they weren't interested in talking to me. I moved so that she wouldn't know where I lived.
Starting point is 01:16:18 I cut myself off from anyone from my hometown who I thought might know her so that nothing could ever get back to her about where I lived. The last I heard from her, she was stalking some new guy down in and in I would have been more than happy to meet this bitch in a courtroom, but unfortunately, the law is nothing like you see on TV. So unless I ever have the privilege of sitting in on her sentencing hearing, Hannah from Indiana, let's not meet again. Stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended ad-free version of this week's episode.
Starting point is 01:17:09 If you want to get access, go to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. To sign up and support the show today, you'll get access to ad-reversions of all of the episodes at a higher bit rate, plus bonus content with those stories you won't hear anywhere else. 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 in the Old Time Radiocast at Cryptic County or 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 Meet Stories at gmail.com. This week you have heard Beware the Bike Trails by EgoDram. Wrong House by Gypsy Kitty X-O.
Starting point is 01:17:50 Night Hike by Silent Hernandez. She appeared out of nowhere by OK Chart 1375. Anonymous Threats in the Mail by Glitter Stilettos 31. Rainy Morning Run by Kelsbott. And finally, Hannah, Indiana by Espanion 75. 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. We'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet. Stay safe.
Starting point is 01:18:51 In my hometown, there's a forest that connects our town to the neighbor.

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