Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 17x04: Drugged and Kidnapped

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Story Submissions: [e-mail]  Stories in this episode:The Burglar | dt (0:48)The Snowplowing Tractor | Anonymous (12:39) What Where They Going To Do To us? | BrilliantTrash (17:40) The Man Who Hunted Me | Prior-Emu-5918 (27:19) The Man Watching Me at Work | Link (32:34) Creepy Guy In Australia | MDiddly (39:44) The 3 am Knock at the Window | Beanswtf334 (45:13) Followed Through the Woods and to the Car | Transwiththeplans (48:47) Drugged and Kidnapped | Emily (52:11) Extended Patreon Content:The Man in the Vintage Red Windbreaker | RoxyThree Men Surrounded Our Airbnb | Lauren"You Grab One, I'll Grab The Other" | EdwardThe Mystery in the Maine Woods | RyleeThe Man with the Ice Cream Bar | SageThe Beer Wasn't Worth It | Spokane Lady 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/letsnotmeetpodcastAll 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. Head to Mood.com, browse their amazing selection of functional gummies, and find the perfect gummy for whatever you're dealing with. And remember to use promo code MEET at checkout to save 20% on your first order.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.

There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. This podcast contains adult 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.

This happened to me about six months ago. I'm originally from a town in the north of the UK, but I was living in a different part of the country at the time for university. I was just going into my second year. I had moved from student accommodation, which were like dorms, and into a house shared with four other girls. We were in a pretty nice house on a small dead-end street,

and all the shops and bars were at the end of our street. I was in the bathroom, which was located on the ground floor at the front of the house. It had originally been a living room, but had been changed into a bedroom for student housing. Because it used to be a living room, the window was a huge bay window that took up the entire length of the front wall. The house had a large driveway and a front garden, both of which were surrounded by fences. This meant that people didn't usually walk past the front of the house without intending to be there. So if anyone was walking up the driveway,

it was because they were supposed to be there and expected to be there. I had been living in the house for about two weeks when this happened. On this particular night, there were only two of us at home, and our other three roommates had gone to their respective hometowns for the weekend. The other girl who was home with me had a second floor bedroom, also at the front of the house. Anyway, it was around 2 a.m. and I was sitting up in bed watching Netflix. I usually didn't stay up that late, but I was talking to a new boy at the time, and I would often stay up late just to talk to him.

What can I say? New relationships are exciting. I remember wanting to go to sleep at about 12.30, but I decided to stay up a bit longer to talk to him, and because of what happened, I'm glad that I did. I should also mention that before this instance, I was quite naive and didn't really think much about the dangers of not locking doors, and I left windows open. I grew up in a very nice area where we didn't have to lock our doors, so I still wasn't out of that mindset. This experience most certainly changed that. As such, I I had one of my windows slightly open, and the curtains were open as well. The curtains being open isn't really relevant because of the way that the house was built, though.

The garden and the trees were in front by the window, so nobody could see in, unless they stood directly in front of the window. Being naive, I didn't think there was a possibility that anyone would try to do that. I was half lying down, half sitting in bed with my laptop in front of me. I didn't have the volume on my laptop too high, as there was another girl in the house. I wanted to be respectful, even though she was upstairs. While I was watching Netflix, I suddenly saw a shadow pass by my window, as if a person had just walked right past it.

I froze immediately because, as I mentioned earlier, there was no way for someone to just walk past the window, unless they walked down my driveway and were specifically coming to my house. I thought maybe someone had walked down the wrong driveway or was possibly cutting through so that they could jump the fence to get to another house. But even so, something didn't sit right about all of this. So I left my laptop running and just looked at the window for a second.

I couldn't see out the window at all because it was so dark, but I could make out shadows on the wall just next to it. For a second, there was nothing. then a shadow of a man went past then the shadow of another man two seconds afterward at this point I knew that something was wrong and I shut my laptop immediately

in the hope that if they looked in the window they wouldn't see me a bit of time went past maybe a minute or two and I just sat in the pitch black waiting to see if anything else would pop up after a bit one of the shadows went past my window, going in the opposite direction.

I had initially seen them both walk by the front of my window and toward the back of the house, but only one came back. I was certain at this point that they were doing something very sketchy, but for some reason I couldn't move. My brain was trying to process several things at once, and I was so scared and overwhelmed by it all that I just froze. I felt like if I moved, they would know I was there, and I had no idea whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. For all I knew, they could have been hoping for a young 19-year-old girl to be inside her house, and I didn't want to run the risk of letting them know that I was there.

I was also completely naked under my covers, and it definitely crossed my mind that if I got up they'd be able to see in the window and they would have seen me naked. After what felt like an eternity of just sitting and waiting, I heard a loud bang on my window. It sounded like someone had struck it with something, like a rock, and they did it with force. I assumed they were trying to break the window,

so I panicked, but still couldn't seem to move. I can't explain what was going through my mind, but it was almost like I was waiting for a completely definitive thing to happen before I got up. I think I thought that I was being over-dramatic or something. After the loud noise, I would say maybe 30 seconds went by, and then all of a sudden, I noticed my curtains starting to move. I saw a hand come around the side of them, trying to get them out of the way.

Then I looked over to the curtains and saw a figure of a man. He was climbing through my window. He was halfway inside. This was when my mind finally decided that this was a fighter flight situation, so I shot up out of bed and I ran towards my door on the other side of the room. It was locked, so I had to fumble with the key,

turn it, and then open the door before being able to run. I did all of this while making a huge amount of noise. I then ran up the stairs and knocked on my roommate's door. Remember I was still completely naked. so the image she must have got when she opened the door must have been quite surprising. She opened her door almost immediately, which I found odd because it was almost 2 a.m.

But I was thankful nonetheless. I told her what happened, and we locked her door and started panicking. Neither of us knew what to do, as we had never been in a situation like this before. Being young and naive, I decided to ring my mother, who was completely unhelpful in this situation,

but I wasn't thinking straight. She told me to call the police immediately, which should have been obvious to me. So then we called the police, and because we didn't know if the men were in the house or not, they arrived within just two minutes and treated the situation as if it were an act of burglary. I had left my laptop and all of my possessions in my room,

except for my phone, since it happened to be in my hand when I ran. So if the men were in my room, my room, they would have plenty to take. When the police arrived, my roommate and I threw down some keys from the top of the window to them so that they could let themselves in. They searched the whole house from top to bottom and didn't find

anyone. I went down, when they reassured us it was safe, and checked my room. Nothing had been taken. I knew for sure they didn't even appear to finish entering the room at all, as my laptop was clear as day on my bed and would have been the first thing they would have seen if they had. The police agreed that I must have scared them off by getting up, and they said that the men probably weren't expecting anyone to be in my room when they were climbing in. They probably thought it was a living room, as it made sense for it to be, and they were expecting to rob the

house while everyone was asleep upstairs. I had this crazy thought process through all of this, and started wondering if I had seen what I thought I had, and started doubting myself. I wondered if I was just insane. But when I went down to check my room again, I saw that my window had been completely opened to its fullest. I only had it open a crack at most. That confirmed that what I had seen was completely real.

I learned a valuable lesson about leaving windows open that night, for sure. While the police were still at my house, they actually got radioed about an attempted robbery just a couple of streets away from mine, and they suspected it was the same two men. We never heard anything back about that, though, so they probably didn't catch them, unfortunately. They told us that if they did catch anyone engaging in a similar crime, that they would get back in touch with us, but to this day they haven't. so those men have either been caught for something unrelated or they haven't been caught at all. Crime scene investigators came to our house the next day and actually managed to lift a fingerprint from my window.

They said that the person must have been sweating as the fingerprint was too smudged to get anything identifiable. I'm very glad that I decided to stay up later than usual that night. If I hadn't been awake for all of this, those men would have physically been in my room by the time I would have noticed that they were there. The thought of waking up to two men in my room is terrifying,

and I'm not sure what they would have done if they would have gotten into my room before realizing I was there, as there was no easy escape for them. They would have had to climb out of the window again and unlock my bedroom door, and then go out the front door. This could have led to a violent and nasty situation if they had realized they were stuck in a room with an eyewitness,

After the police left, my roommate told me that for some reason she had actually woken up about five minutes before I came flying up the stairs. She said that she heard a loud bang on my window when she was already awake. She started to get a bad feeling after that and waited up for a bit. She had been sitting on the edge of her bed next to the door just in case I came running up. Interestingly, she woke up during this, and the men weren't. at any point other than when they hit the window. I think that says a lot about the body's ability to detect danger. Unfortunately, I ended up being unable to sleep in that room after that,

without having all the lights on, at least. I decided to move back home from university because I felt too uneasy living down there. So to the men who climbed through my bedroom window and made me scared to sleep for about two months, please, let's not meet. I'm a 31-year-old meal. This happened when I was on my way to the grocery store to buy some stuff that I needed to make an apple cake.

At one point, as I was walking, I saw a tractor up ahead that was removing snow. It had been warm for the past few days, and most of the snow around had melted to the point where the roads and sidewalks were visible now. It was a bit strange, but I figured maybe there was a big pile of snow elsewhere or something like that. The tractor was blocking the sidewalk, so I decided to wait for it to move out of the way. I stood there for about two to three minutes, waiting, and I noticed something odd. The tractor wasn't picking up any snow. In fact, there was no snow for it to pick up. I had finally just decided to walk around it and continue walking.

As soon as I crossed the street at an intersection, the tractor slowly started following me. It was driving onto the sidewalk. where once again there was absolutely no snow to pick up, so it seemed like all they were doing was following me even closer. I moved slightly faster, not so fast that I had to run, but fast enough that I needed to pick up the pace a bit. Due to the bright lights from the tractor,

I couldn't see the driver, so I just kept walking. I assumed the tractor was going to continue moving forward, so not wanting to inconvenience the driver, the driver, I crossed the street again. The tractor continued to follow me. This alarmed me, so I decided to walk quickly around a cafe that was closed. I wanted to make it to some of the back streets, thinking that I would lose the tractor back there.

But as I kept walking, I heard the tractor on the other side of the building. Somehow, he had gotten there before me. I remember thinking, you have to be kidding me. thinking that this person was stalking me. I tried to run from behind one building to another, and just as I got to the next building, I pulled my left calf muscle. I was in a bit of pain,

but I limped through the gap between the buildings too small for anything bigger than a grown person to get through, so that I could take a moment to rest my leg and catch my breath. I could still clearly hear the tractor and see the light from it moving from the gap that I had just gone into. I sat there for five minutes listening to the tractor's engine run before it finally drove away.

I waited for a bit longer before emerging and continuing to the mall just in case. I was still limping a bit but not as badly as before. Once I was at the mall, I still saw the tractor driving around outside. I'm not sure if the person was just bored

or trying to be funny or if they were up to something with more ill intent. Either way to the tractor driver, let's not meet again. Let's talk about the online cannabis company that's changing how people get into the right headspace.

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There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. I grew up in a quiet suburb outside of Houston. I've heard a lot of stories about where people grew up in neighborhoods where they didn't have to lock their doors. This was not that kind of neighborhood. Situations in Houston notoriously went from zero to a hundred quickly, so while the neighborhood that I lived in was generally quiet,

the people who lived there tended to lock their doors and ensured that they remained locked religiously. That said, 90% of the time, the big neighborhood problems were usually teens vandalizing or car break-ins. It was annoying and inconvenient, but didn't seem too scary. I worked retail at a clothing store that closed at 9 p.m. And I worked with a woman, whom I eventually became friends with, and she asked if I could give her a ride home. She lived a bit out of the way, but I didn't mind.

Her neighborhood was pretty sketchy. I don't know if it had anything to do. with what happened later, but I drove to her apartment, and I sat in the car and chatted until she was ready to head inside. I sat in the car and I watched her go inside. Around me, the other residents were outside drinking and shooting the shit. It was around 10 p.m., so it wouldn't have been late for anyone in my neighborhood to be outside talking at volumes like this on a weeknight, but it was pretty typical in her neighborhood, so I didn't think anything of it. When she got inside, she blinked the lights a couple of times to let me know that she had gotten inside safely,

so I left her neighborhood to head to my family's home. I should note that this occurred at a time before cell phones, so my friend signaling to me like that was kind of a basic routine. And then I was to call her from my house once I was home and everyone would be confirmed safe. I don't remember the drive home, really. I probably blasted some tunes and said, sang along as I usually did, until I was parked in the driveway. When I pulled in, the outside lights were on, which was something that I didn't think twice

about, as my mom was good about turning them on for me. So with that, I went inside with no fuss. Now, here's a note about my parents. They weren't mean drunks, but they were alcoholics. They still functioned okay by day, but it wasn't uncommon for me to arrive upon the type of scene that I did that night. When I walked in, all of the lights were on, the TV was going, and my mom was passed out on the couch. My dad was presumably in the bedroom, or passed out in his man cave. From experience, I also knew that if I turned off the lights or the TV, my mom would wake up immediately and become grouchy with me for waking her up. So I left everything as it was, and I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash up for bed.

Once I was in my room, I changed for bed, and then I called my friend to let her know that I was home, and all was well. One of my more annoying habits is that it's almost impossible for me to end a conversation. Now, I was tired as hell and just wanted to read a book or something, but instead, my friend and I were just rambling at each other about work things and whatever else came to mind. I had also gotten into bed and turned the lights out. I was just lying there in bed, in the dark, listening to my friend rambling on. My room was at the front of the house.

It had a weird wall in front of the window, some stylistic mid-century modern thing that didn't really make a ton of sense, but it did block out some of the light from headlights as cars would pass by on the road. Our road wasn't highly trafficked, but cars driving by weren't an unusual sight. What was unusual, though, were specific beams of light bouncing around the upper part of the wall to the ceiling. I stared at these lights for a moment before realizing they were from flashlights. That was highly unusual, but I figured it must have been some kids. I wasn't the sort of kid who other kids bullied or pranked though.

We never had our house tepeeed, and I couldn't imagine anybody wanting to now, since we had all graduated. I really needed to sleep because I had college finals the next day, and yet spotting flashlights around the house made me feel very weird. My friend told me to call the police, but for a variety of reasons,

I'm not a fan. Besides carrying flashlights and my friends, front yard isn't exactly a crime, so I couldn't even imagine what the police would do. I see well in the dark, and besides, the lights in the living room were still on, so while I was still on the phone, but without turning on any extra lights, I got up with the intent to check the front door. I don't remember how long my friend and I were on the phone rambling. It must have been a while, though, because of what happened next. Once I got out to the living room, I heard something in the kitchen. It was this weird metallic slapping sound. It didn't make any sense at all.

I told my friend what I was hearing, and she continued to suggest that I call the police, but I still felt that I didn't have any grounds to yet. The kitchen lights were also on, so just so you have a visual. Just picture a bright-lit living room with a woman passed out on the couch. The TV was on and the kitchen lights were on, but the dining room lights weren't. But for all intents and purposes, this very much looked like a house where people were home, and someone was awake. Not my mom, obviously. She was out cold, dead to the world. Anyway, I headed toward the sound.

At the very edge of the kitchen there was a small window with metal blinds. The blinds were closed, but they were rattling, which explains that. the metallic slapping sound. So I thought, oh, is the window open? It struck me as odd. We weren't the window opening type of people. I know some people in the South opened their windows on a nice evening, but that just wasn't the type of people we were.

Sometimes windows would be open temporarily when my mom was cooking dinner in case she ended up passing out or something burned. But that only happened on occasion, and the window was always only opened for a limited time. She might have left the window open on this particular evening, but that was unlikely. So I just stood there, staring at it with my head cocked like a curious dog. And then I saw the front of a shoe on the sill. I screamed.

Actually, just saying that I screamed sorely understates the noise that I actually made. I'm a notorious low-talker, and I assume that I had just been saving all of that. volume for this precise moment. I wailed. I became a banshee and I threw all my power into my voice. The foot then vanished. My mom woke up. My friend screamed on the phone with me. And from the back of the house, my dad came bounding in with his gun. I got off the phone right away and called the police. I grabbed another gun and headed outside behind my dad. I'm not a gun person and going outside wasn't the best idea, but the scream to end all screams had apparently done its job, as nobody was out there. Being kind of an expert in criminology due to watching crime shows, I told everyone to stay away from

the window sill so that the police could investigate it. I had visions of them lifting clear shoe prints and molding them to find the culprit. It was adorable. The police arrived half an hour later, so it was good that we weren't actually under attack. In the meantime, my mom started to doubt that I had seen anything at all, and started to believe that she had left the window open. But no, the police verified that the window had been pried open. They confirmed that whoever it was had very carefully taken all of the bric-a-brac

that decorated the sill and set it to the ground, as if trying to remain very quiet. At no point before this did I consider what the invaders' plan was. Maybe it was shock or, like, lack of imagination, or just being tired, but they knew that it was a full house, and they were still sneaking in. These weren't robbers who just wanted to take some electronics for quick cash.

They were going to take us by surprise, but for what? What did they even want? Thoroughly chilled, I asked when they were going to take prints, and the cop basically laughed me off, and said they weren't going to because nothing was stolen. We locked down the windows, and stayed up all night trying not to imagine what exactly was going to happen that night.

Recently, I was walking by myself downtown in Long Beach. If you know the area, I was walking from the pike to the Weston Hotel parking structure to get my car. The walk is just about 10 minutes. Usually I'm completely oblivious when I walk. I love walking and being by the beach. I always wear headphones with my music blasting and I'm totally in my own world.

I also wear heels when I dress up. I was wearing a beige leather dress on this particular night. But because of how far the parking lot was, I decided at the last second to wear flat shoes. That decision, and leaving my headphones off, were probably what saved my life. I was about a block away from my car crossing the street when I noticed a man.

It's tough for me to say how old he was for sure, but he could have been anywhere from a few years older to ten years older than me. I noticed that he was watching me. He crossed halfway into the street, but then abruptly doubled back to the exact same block I was on. I made a left turn at the corner, and then he went straight. I continued walking for a while. I was close to nearing the edge of the block when I turned around,

and I realized that the same man who doubled. I traveled back was walking in the same direction as me. I began to panic. I tried to duck into an entrance to get off the street, but I couldn't find my ticket in my purse. And even if I had, there was no way to get in. I was trapped outside. I kept walking and looked back.

He had made a left and was closing the distance between us. Up ahead, I saw three girls who appeared to be heading to a club. I didn't think twice I just forced myself into their group and started walking with them so there would be four of us and only one of him I pulled out my phone

and I called the police because at this point he had crossed the street and was right behind us he still kept following us we made a left turn and the second we had a chance the girls and I literally sprinted sideways across the crosswalk

so that he couldn't catch up before the light changed There was a bar right ahead, and we ran inside screaming for help. When the man walked past the bar, he didn't even look at me. He just kept walking straight, like he hadn't just been hunting me down the past few blocks. The second his privacy was stripped away, he acted as if nothing happened. I made it home safe and unharmed because of those three amazing girls, and because I happened to have flat shoes on and no headphones. If I had been at my usual baseline, buzzed, cut off from my surroundings, and unable to run in heels,

I don't even want to think about what this man would have done to me when I got stuck at that locked entrance. Please trust your instincts. If someone feels like they're tracking you down, they are. Don't worry about being polite. Make a scene, find a crowd, and don't stop running until you are safe. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health moreover. openly now than we ever have. And yet somehow reaching out for help still carries this weight for a lot of people, even if it's an invisible weight. BetterHelp dug into why, and the findings are surprising. Better Helps 2026 state of stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% of society discourages people from doing

so. Think about that for a second. The vast majority of people believe therapy is a good idea, and yet three quarters of them feel like the world around them is quietly telling them not to do it. That gap is wild, and it costs people. It keeps them stuck, isolated, and carrying things that they don't have to carry alone. I think about all of the listeners of this show a lot when I read something like this, people who are drawn to true horror or real encounters, people who understand that the world can be a heavy place. And I wonder about how many of them have thought about talking to someone, but talk themselves out of it because of how it might look or what people might think. If you've ever nudged a friend to word therapy, you already know how much that can mean,

so consider this your nudge. 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. They do the matching work for you. And if the fit isn't right, you can switch anytime. Don't let stigma get in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash not meet. That's betterhelp.com slash not meet. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. I work at a convenience. I work at a convenience. in store, so dealing with strange customers isn't exactly uncommon. Most of them are harmless.

Some are a bit odd and having a bad day, but one customer still sticks with me years later because his behavior kept escalating until several strangers stepped in to help me. At the time, I worked the evening shift. This meant that I was alone for the last four hours of the night. Working by yourself after dark is unsettling enough, so you learn to pay attention to your surroundings. Earlier that day, a man came into the store who immediately struck me as off. He was incredibly jittery, constantly chewing on his lip, and fumbling so badly with his debit card that I practically had to complete the transaction for him. I brushed it off, though. I just figured he was having a rough day.

A few hours later, around 10.30 that night, I was sweeping the floors when the front door opened. It was him again. He walked straight to my register and asked, Can I have one of those lighters? I grabbed one to ring it up, but before I could scan it, he admitted that he didn't actually have any money. I told him I could not give it to him for free. The expression on his face changed instantly. He glared at me for a few seconds without saying a word before turning around and walking out.

Another customer was waiting behind him, so I finished ringing him up. While I was doing that, I noticed that the man hadn't actually left. He was standing directly outside the window beside the register, just staring at me. He wasn't looking around the parking lot. He wasn't waiting for someone, and every time I glanced up, his eyes were fixed on me. Eventually, he wandered off, and the customer I was helping lightened the mood

by joking about the strange guy, who asked about the lighter, without having to pay for it. But before leaving, he looked at me and earnestly said, Be safe. Something about the way that he said it made my stomach drop. That customer then walked over to the gas pumps, and then I went back to, sweeping, trying to convince myself I was overreacting.

I then turned around at some point, and the man was back. He was standing outside the window again watching me. I didn't know what else to do, so I hurried into the back room under the guise of needing to refill my mop bucket, mostly because I wanted a moment where he couldn't see me. When I came back out, he was still there. Five minutes passed before he finally wandered away again. I wasn't convinced he was actually gone this time, so I grabbed a random receipt to make it look like I had a reason to step outside

and walked over to the customer pumping gas. Trying not to panic, I asked if he was planning on leaving soon. When he asked why, I explained that the man hanging around the store had been watching me for several minutes and was making me genuinely uncomfortable. Without hesitation, he told me he wasn't going anywhere until he knew that I was okay. That simple act of kindness meant more than he probably realized. Unfortunately, seconds later, the man started making his way back toward the store. Not long after that, an older woman came inside, and I quietly warned her about the man

lingering outside. She leaned toward the window to look. What does he want? She whispered. I explained that he had tried to get a lighter without paying and had been hanging around ever since. Instead of worrying about herself, she looked back at me and said, I'm more worried about you. You're here alone.

After she left, I watched the man drift back toward the same window again. This time he wasn't even trying to look inside. He simply lingered near the glass as if he were waiting for the right moment to do something. Every time I thought he had finally left, he would show up again. Eventually, the daughter of a family friend stopped by with her girlfriend. As I rang their items up, I quietly warned them about the man outside. Before either of them could respond, another woman rushed into the store. She had been talking with the customer at the gas pumps.

The first words out of her mouth were, you need to call the police. At that point, my heart sank. I had recently transferred to that store and wasn't familiar with the local police department's non-emergency number. Everyone started telling me different numbers to call.

I was overwhelmed. I could barely think. My family friend's daughter offered to make the call while I tried to calm down. That was when her girlfriend told me what had happened outside. The man had reportedly threatened

to throw rock through the windows, robbed me, and hurt me. As I paced behind the counter, trying not to cry, I suddenly saw something that made me feel a bit safer. My mom's truck had just pulled into the barking lot. I practically ran outside to meet her and explained everything. She stayed with me and walked back into the store. By then, the man had crossed the street and was sitting outside, near Bojangles,

but none of us believed he was actually gone. A few minutes later, the police arrived. The customer from the gas pumps gave his statement first. I gave my next, followed by my family friend's daughter, who repeated the threats that had been made. And that was also when I learned something that I hadn't known while I was in the store. It turns out the man had started heading toward my car. The customer who stayed behind had intervened before he could do anything, though.

After taking our statements, the officers immediately drove across the street, to confront him. From inside the store, we watched him get questioned. There was a lot of arguing, a quick pat down, and after several tense minutes, they placed him in the back of the car. Watching that police car pull away was the first time all night. I felt like I could finally breathe.

I've dealt with plenty of strange customers over the years, but this was the only one who scared multiple strangers enough to stay behind, warn me, and call the police. So to the man who wanted a free lighter and turned an ordinary shift into one of the most terrifying nights of my life. Let's not meet again. When I was young, I lived in quite a small town in Queensland. The whole town was surrounded by bush in every direction for hundreds of kilometers,

and we had so much room to play. This story is about the first time we got drunk. In the winter, the water level would drop significantly. It dropped enough for us to camp in the riverbed. My best mate's parents owned a pub at the time, so we were in charge of getting the drinks for the camping trip, in which we planned to drink for the first time. The place that we had in mind was out near an old indigenous settlement

where a few creepy things had happened to us over time. We made our way down into the riverbank, which was low on the side that we came in, and really high on the opposite side. You couldn't see the other side through all of the trees at the top, and it was kind of unnerving knowing someone could be up there watching,

and we wouldn't even know about it. There were about seven of us kids going on this little camping trip, and our parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing. We lied to them and said that we were staying at a friend's place. We set up our camp and built a little shelter for all. all of us to sleep under.

We were all set up and starting to drink as the sun was setting. As soon as it was dark, we were in full swing. We were mixing drinks, singing songs, and throwing stuff in the water. In general, we were making a whole heap of noise since we were under the impression that we were out there all by ourselves. As we were starting to wind down, one of my friends said that he saw something move at the top of the riverbank on the steep side.

The rest of the group told him he was full of shit and advised him to calm down, but he was adamant that someone was up there. So, we all started calling out. Come out, you wuss, and other things like that. I guess we were feeling brave well beyond our years.

To our surprise, a bearded man emerged from the tree line. He stood on the edge of the bank and just stared at us. Our entire group fell silent, waiting for him to do something, but we just had a stand off with him for five minutes. He just stood there, and then he retreated into the tree line without saying anything. After he was gone, we talked amongst ourselves

and agreed that this made us feel a bit nervous, but we soon forgot all about it. About an hour later, the guy reappeared, but he wasn't on the bank anymore. He was coming out of the shadows from the other side of the other side of the bank and entering our campsite. He just strolled over and stood next to the fire. He simply joined our group of 12-year-old kids and stood there.

We were officially scared, but we didn't know what to do, so we just sat there in silence. Eventually, one of my friends mustered up the courage to speak to him. They asked how he was doing, and if he was okay. The man stared at my friend, then stared at each of us in turn, deliberately spending a little bit of time focusing on each of us. Then my friend tried again.

Hey man, are you all right? What's your name? The man then snapped his head back toward my friend and stared at him wide-eyed for at least two minutes before finally responding. Without blinking, he replied in a harsh, raspy whisper. That's none of your fucking business. After that, he hissed like a cat. Then the guy jumped back, screaming. and staring at the fire as if it had just appeared. He ran back up the steep bank in record time.

It was impossible to get up this thing, so we were all speechless as we stood there and watched him scramble. We decided that it would be best if we just stoke the fire up because it was about a 39-kilometer walk in the pitch black back to town. We were not confident enough to do that. So we stoked the fire and sat up for a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of, as long as we could, keeping watch. We were so unsettled by this encounter

that we weren't really talking at all. Eventually, we all dozed off one by one. When we woke up in the morning, everything was gone. All of our alcohol, our bags, our shoes, and our blankets, everything. The creepy thing was that none of us awoke as someone robbed us blind, and there wasn't a single footprint. We were sleeping in semi-wet sand,

so there should have been footprints everywhere, but there were none. It looked like we hadn't even been there. Needless to say, we bailed and ran most of the way back to town. Our feet were all cut up and messy by the time we got back. We never told our parents about our camping trip, and I don't think we ever will. This summer I decided to pick up some graveyard shifts at my full-time job, simply because it pays more.

And I am a university student drowning in student debt. About two weeks ago, on the rare occasion that I get to sleep during the time the sun is down, at around 3 a.m., I was suddenly awoken by a loud sound. Being half asleep, I honestly didn't know what the sound was exactly, so I chalked it up to being one of my neighbors dropping something because I live in an apartment with very thin walls, so ultimately I brushed it off and tried to go back to sleep. After about ten minutes of lying there with my eyes closed,

I heard the sound again. But this time I was pretty much awake, so I recognized what the sound was immediately. Someone was knocking on my window. For context, I'm a single woman living alone in a basement suite, so my windows are on the same level as the sidewalk. Anyways, I was obviously freaked out. I didn't know what to do.

I didn't want to move or make any loud noises, so whoever was knocking would know I was home. I was just frozen lying in bed. Then I heard the knocking again. I tensed up, and I ran to the front door, since that's where my keys were that had pepper spray attached to them. My keys were clinking together when I grabbed them, so they made a noticeable noise,

and the knocking on the window became even more intense and loud. This was when I realized the window with the screen by my bed was almost all the way open because my cat likes to sit on the edge. I forgot to close and lock it, so I started to freak out. I also started looking for my phone just in case I had to call the police. Whoever was at my window proceeded to slide either his fingernails or a sharp object down the screen. I realized this person's intentions were to either come in, or scare me, so without thinking, I ran to the window as fast as I could, slammed it shut,

and locked it while avoiding looking outside at whoever was there. The knocking stopped and I waited about 30 minutes without hearing any knocking, so I laid back down and went back to sleep. The next morning, I honestly couldn't believe that that even happened. I even started to think that it was possibly a dream, so I went outside to look around. I saw an empty beer bottle and a ripped blanket. I texted my only friend who knows where I live, and I asked them if they were messing with me.

They said no, which I figured, because they don't drive and I live quite far away. So I called my landlord and I told him what happened. He told me to ignore it and said that this had happened to tenants in his apartment before, which is very, very creepy. Anyways, I now know I should have done a lot of things differently and called the police right away. It hasn't happened since, but it was still terrifying.

I can't afford to move now, so hopefully it won't happen again. To the creepy person knocking on my window at 3 a.m., let's not meet. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. I attend high school at a religious college prep school. This was a challenging experience for me because I'm actually a closeted trans person and those schools pound ideas like homosexuality and transgenderism are sinful in nature. But I'm getting off topic.

My school is surrounded by a nice wooded area. And if you follow either direction, in or out of the school, you'll end up in a small shopping area in front of the school. I enjoy taking long walks through the woods to help clear my mind or simply be alone for a bit. However, I'm not sure if I can ever step foot in those woods without thinking about this again. There was a home football game that evening. My brother wanted to go, and naturally, my parents forced me to go. Law of Twins, the worst law.

I only stayed for about two quarters before walking around and forcing my to socialize a bit. Even though I didn't like most of the people I was socializing with, it was better than watching football. During the fourth quarter, or something like that, I asked my brother if I could go back to the car, which was parked in a shopping area across the way. I wanted to start the car up and get ready to go by the time he walked over, so he agreed, gave me the keys to our shared car, and I made my way over to it. While walking through the parking lot I decided to make a quick shortcut

through the woods I swore I could hear someone walking behind me though Every time I turned around I was met with an empty trail I found this odd but dismissed it as paranoia I kept walking but began to feed this paranoia and eventually I was able to convince myself

to speed up to a brisk pace so I could avoid getting snatched up by this invisible threat that was pursuing me. As I sped up, I realized the footsteps I kept hearing weren't my mind fucking with me, but actual reality. When I looked behind me again, I saw a guy in a black hoodie now sprinting after me.

Panicked, I began to pick up my pace. I could see the edge of the woods and the lights of the shopping center. But then, two other hooded guys jumped out in front of me, forcing me to take a left, into uncharted territory. I could hear all three of them screaming obscenities at me. I didn't even know who these guys were.

Their voices were filled with the strongest spite, darkest intent. It was horrifying, and I wouldn't wish this experience on any of my enemies. Eventually, I found myself in a neighborhood at the northern end of the woods and turned around to see nobody chasing me now. I stopped to catch my breath, and I cried. I couldn't help myself. Eventually I calmed down and I walked back to the stores across the street, found my car, and locked the doors as soon as I got inside.

I didn't even use my phone. I just scanned the area around me making sure these creeps didn't follow me. So to the hooded guys lurking in the forest, let's not meet again. This happened when I was 16. I'm now 19, and for what it's worth, I'm a female. I attended a party hosted by some older kids from my school. The only reason I went was that I thought it would make me look cool if everyone knew that I went to this party that was a little more adult.

It was during the summer, so it wasn't like I had to worry about being at school anyway. This one guy started talking to me and showed me where the alcohol was so that I could get a drink. He said his name was Jason. and he told me he was 25. When I told him that I was 16, he said that I looked older than that. I then made my fatal mistake.

I had to go to the bathroom, so I asked this guy to hold my drink. When I returned, he gave my drink back to me, and I naively finished it without thinking anything of it. He then made me another drink and proceeded to follow me around as I made my way through the party.

I'm not sure if it was just a few minutes or how long it actually took but I started to feel sick and dizzy and once this sensation came on it seemed to happen very suddenly Jason said that I should go outside to get some fresh air so I followed him it was honestly hard to think straight

but the rest of the night was a bit of a blur I vaguely remember getting into a car and bits of pieces of driving and then I just completely passed out. I woke up in a bed in a room all alone. I still felt woozy, so I just laid there, wondering how I got home,

or if I was even home at all. When I realized I wasn't in my own bed, I sat up and found that I wasn't wearing my own clothes. I was wearing some kind of matching pajama set. The worst part about it was I wasn't even wearing underwear, which I later learned meant that this creep took all of my clothes off

to dress me in this weird pajama outfit. At that moment I didn't connect the dots, but it wouldn't matter for too long because eventually Jason came into the room to bring me breakfast. I can only imagine he thought he was being unbelievably generous for bringing me coffee and two toasted waffles.

I'm not going to go over the deep, retailed retelling of the entire week, and quite honestly, I don't want to, but every day was pretty much the same. Basically, for an entire week, he made me act like a living doll in his house. He watched everything I did. He even watched me eat and use the bathroom. He had me change into outfits that he picked out, and he always put drugs like ecstasy in my drinks, or possibly my food, to keep me in a positive attitude. It didn't really work. though. The drugs only seemed to take effect for a few hours a day.

And then for seemingly no reason that I can conceive of, he brought me out to his car, put a cloth bag or something over my head, and drove me to someplace and dropped me off. When I got out of his car, he sped away, and I never saw him again.

Eventually I was walking along the side of the road and just collapsed from fatigue. I didn't pass out. I just couldn't keep going. somebody saw me fall on the side of the road and called the police, who then found me and brought me to a hospital. Well, they called an ambulance, which brought me there. The police joined me to ask what was going on. They knew I was missing, and they figured out pretty quickly who I was,

so they were able to call my parents. The next thing I knew, my whole family was there to see me and praise the Lord that I was alive. I did my best to identify the guy who kidnapped me, and there was a pretty thorough investigation as far as I know, but they never actually found him. He was a total ghost. The police questioned nearly everyone who was at the party

and learned the name of the guy who was probably the one that kidnapped me, but it wasn't a real name. The only phone number anyone had for him was disconnected, so, yeah, they never identified or caught the guy. It was easily the most traumatic thing to ever happen. to me, and I hope it stays that way. But despite that, I know it could have been much worse. I'm not sure why he never hurt me or assaulted me, and I'm thankful that he didn't. I know so many kidnapped victims who are treated much, much worse than I was. Stick around after the music

of your patron for your extended version of this week's episode. If you want to get access to patreon.com forward slash let's not me podcast, where you can sign up and support the show today. You'll get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate, plus bonus stories in those extensions. Stories you won't hear anywhere else. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radiocast 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 The Burglar by DT, the snow plowing tractor by Anonymous. What were they going to do to us? by brilliant trash, the man who hunted me by Prior Emu 5918, the man watching me at work by Link, creepy guy in Australia by M. Diddley, 3 a.m. knock at the window by Beans What the Fuck, 334, followed through the woods and to the car by Trans with the Plans,

and finally, drugged and kidnapped by Emily. 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. Again, if you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com. We'll see you all next week. Stay safe. This story took place in Poland. There's no shortcut for saving time.

But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com.