Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 17x08: Creepy Crime Scene Fanboy

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Story Submissions: [e-mail]    Stories in this episode: My Landlord Had Been Watching Me For A Year | Anonymous (0:42)Creepy Crime Scene Fanboy | calypso_cane (11:37) The Stalker In My Backyard | Worried_Possession43 (17:16) Unknowingly Stalked For Years | Responsible-Card-420 (23:58) Thinking About What Could Have Happened | _bubblegumbanshee_ (31:21) Someone Tried To Break Into My Home While I Slept | moonchild_86 (35:32) The "New" Neighbors | weknowaremotefarm (41:25) Extended Patreon Content: The Ride Home | LIaUmbrella Man | GoddessOfAwesomeMy Trip to Vegas Could’ve Ended Very Differently  | Mega MegThere Was Nothing Wrong With My Taillight  | Katherine V. 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. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com/NotMeet. Head to Mood.com and use promo code MEET at checkout to save 20% on your first order. Right now, Orion is offering our listeners 15% off at OrionSleep.com/Meet. 

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. I've lived around the Sacramento area for most of my life. I grew up there, went to school there, went to college there, and basically never had any reason to leave for more than a few days at a time.

my family was there, most of my friends were there, and until my first real job, I had always assumed I'd probably spend the rest of my life somewhere in that area. That changed in 2017, when I got a job in the Bay Area. It wasn't anything glamorous or particularly interesting, just a regular administrative job, but it was my first real full-time position. I was excited about it, even though it meant moving away from everything I knew. I obviously couldn't afford anything fancy, so I started looking for an apartment within a reasonable commuting distance. Eventually, I found somewhere to live

that was about a 25-minute drive from work. It was an old apartment in an unremarkable building. I'm purposely describing it so that you can visualize everything. The kitchen was small, the bathroom was old-fashioned, and the whole place had this slightly worn-out feeling that you get from an

apartment that has had a lot of tenants over the years. So why did I move in? The rent was cheap, very cheap, at least cheap enough that I didn't ask too many questions. I met the landlord before moving in. He was somewhere in his 60s. He had an intimidating presence, although I wouldn't necessarily have described him as such at the time. He was just unpleasant, very gruff and quiet, you know, not someone who seemed interested in getting to know his tenants. When we met, he mostly went over the standard stuff, gave me the keys, and told me to contact him if something broke. I remember thinking that he was probably just one of those landlords

who didn't want to have anything to do with his tenants, and honestly, that was fine with me. I wasn't looking for a friend, I just wanted a cheap apartment close to work. For the first few months, everything was completely, completely normal, and I established a routine pretty quickly. I would get up, drive to work, spend the day doing paperwork, and answering emails, drive back home, make dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. I started dating someone around that time as well. She lived a little further away, so sometimes she would come over and stay the night. Again, nothing unusual.

I never had a reason to think that someone else could see what was happening inside my apartment, and that's what makes this whole thing so difficult to process even now. Looking back, there were little things, but as things were happening, nothing was big enough to make me think to call the cops. The landlord seemed to know when I had been away, in some fashion. Once he asked me if I had been working late that week. Another time, he made a comment about having quote-unquote company over.

I remember being slightly annoyed because it felt like he was being nosy and invasive. But other than that, I didn't think too much of it. I just assumed he was seeing cars coming and going and figured that he had just seen my ex-girlfriend coming and going as well. There was also one occasion where he entered the apartment for a maintenance issue while I was at work. He had given me notice, so technically there was nothing strange about it. And at the time, I didn't question it. I mean, why would I?

What was there to question? It was his property, and I was renting it. I trusted that the apartment was still my private space. That's the part I keep coming back to. I trusted it. In total, almost 15 months went by. Then one evening, everything changed. I was taking a shower and the bathroom had this old ventilation grill near the ceiling.

It was one of those classic, ugly, plastic vents that you stop noticing after you've lived somewhere long enough. While I was showering, I happened to look up and I saw something flicker. It was a tiny red light. I just happened to catch it for a fraction of a second. When I moved my head again, it disappeared, so I thought maybe it was a reflection from something outside. But then I moved again, and there it was, a tiny red blink coming from behind the

ventilation grill. I immediately turned off the shower, got dressed, and grabbed a flashlight. At first, I was embarrassed by how paranoid this made me feel. I remember thinking, this is probably nothing. But I still took off the grill, and there was something behind it. A small camera. I stood there, staring at it. For several seconds, I couldn't process what I was seeing, and then I began to shake. I called my girlfriend and I told her not to come over. I don't remember what I said exactly. I think I said something along the lines of, there's a camera in my bathroom. She thought I was joking at first, but I definitely wasn't. Once I had first found the camera, I started looking everywhere, and that was when things went

from horrifying to shockingly unreal. I found another camera positioned to see a into the main living area, then another one in a position where it could see toward the bedroom. There were also devices that I was unsure of, so I took pictures of everything and stopped touching things. At that point, I was terrified that I had already destroyed evidence without realizing it. I spent the rest of the evening sitting outside my own apartment because I couldn't bring myself to be inside any longer. I kept thinking about everything that had happened during the previous 15 months. Showers, changing clothes, sleeping, my girlfriend staying over, having conversations that I thought were private, everything. At that moment, I couldn't even describe how I was.

I felt physically sick. So, the next morning I went to the police. I brought photographs of what I found and explained the situation. The officer was young and he initially asked me a lot of questions about the landlord, the lease, and whether I knew of any legitimate reason the devices might have been there. I told them absolutely not, and explained that these weren't cameras covering the exterior of the property.

They were positioned inside my apartment in places there was no conceivable reason for them to be. The police eventually came to my apartment and inspected the devices. I remember watching them walk around and thinking how surreal the whole thing was. They removed some of the equipment and started treating it as evidence.

At one point, one of the officers asked me a question that I still remember. How long have you lived here? I told them almost 15 months. His expression changed, not dramatically, but enough that I noticed. He basically said that the length of time was going to be important in the investigation. I spent the next few days in a hotel because I just couldn't stay there anymore. My girlfriend came to see me, and that conversation was awful. She was furious at first, then embarrassed, then devastated.

She kept asking me questions I couldn't answer. I remember she asked, could he have seen us? Was there a camera in the bedroom? Did he record us? But I didn't know. I think that was the worst part. I couldn't give her certainty about anything. I couldn't tell her what had been recorded. Who had seen it, whether anything had been

saved somewhere or how long the cameras had been there. The police eventually took possession of the equipment and investigated the landlord. I'm deliberately not going to pretend I know every detail of what happened behind the scenes, but the investigation did not end with him simply saying, I didn't do it. There was enough evidence connecting him to the cameras that he was arrested and charged. I later learned that some of the equipment had been connected to a system that allowed remote access. That revelation made me feel even worse. It meant that the person responsible

didn't necessarily have to be physically standing somewhere in the building to watch. I don't know exactly how many times he accessed the footage, nor do I know whether anyone else saw it or how long he had been doing it, and honestly, I'm not even sure I want to know. What happened with my girlfriend was almost as painful as everything else. For the first few days she was incredibly supportive, but I immediately saw that

something had changed. She couldn't come back to the apartment. Then she didn't want to come to the hotel, and then she started avoiding being alone with me. I understood why, even though it hurt, and a few weeks later she broke up with me. She told me that she knew rationally none of it was my fault. But every time she looked at me, she thought about the possibility that someone had been watching us and she said something that I think will mark me forever. She said that memories that were once private and intimate now felt contaminated. I couldn't argue with it because I felt the same way. The only difference was that I had to live with the knowledge that someone had violated my home. I eventually found another place and continued working for a while, but the whole experience

changed the way I look at privacy. I started checking everything that looked slightly out of place. I had never been paranoid about that kind of thing before, but now I was. About a year after everything happened, I left the Bay Area and moved back to Sacramento. This was just a few years before the pandemic started. It was strange coming home. But because of everything that happened, I came back feeling like I had aged 10 years. Even now, years later, the thing that disgusts me the most, isn't just that there were cameras. It's the amount of time. Almost 15 months. For almost 15 months, I thought I was alone when I was alone. And knowing that he may have been watching me and potentially my girlfriend for that long makes my skin crawl. He didn't just invade my privacy.

He took something from us that we can never get back. And that's something that I struggle with even today. About 13 years ago when I was in my late teens, I moved from a small rural area to the outskirts of Chicago. I hadn't been living there long when I got a job at a record store. This place was pretty famous. When my now husband went to Germany, he mentioned where I worked to someone and they said, she works there? Which one is she? I was lucky to work there, and I was able to shrug off the multiple creeps who always hounded the exclusively female cashiers. I also felt safe because during the night shifts, there was almost always a local cop providing security, and I made fast friends with most of them.

We had very strict policies, and it was, fortunately, not even close to a, the customer is always right kind of place. people would get really upset over our credit card and return policies, but we were pretty much able to do everything just shy of directly telling them to fuck off, and our managers would back us up. One day, a cop came in, asking to return a CD. I asked to look at them, as usual, and it had been opened. I always found it best to operate under the assumption that they were familiar with the return policy and deal with any outrage as it came up, so I said,

sure, just grab the same one and we'll swap it out for you. Of course, he got mad and replied, but I don't want the same one. I want a different one. I explained, I'm sorry, but our return policy is that an item can be exchanged for something else or store credit if it's sealed, but if it's open, we can only exchange it for the same item. Well, I didn't know that, he argued. I'm sorry, I empathized. The return policy is clearly written on the back of the receipt.

He started to get angry. He then put his hands on the counter and leaned over, getting as close as he could to me as he asked, well, what if I pulled you over on your way home from work? Assuming there was no way I'd heard him correctly, I asked, what? He said, I could wait until you leave and pull you over. I was incredulous, but unperturbed.

as I replied, uh, that's cool. I don't drive, though. Well, I could pull over whoever's driving you home then, he persisted. Cool, I'm walking,

I said. Tell me where you live. Give me your license, he demanded. I don't have a license. That's why I'm walking, I explained. So,

you're going to walk home alone? He asked. This is when I was starting to feel unsettled. So I finally said, look, I'll call the manager. She's just going to you the same thing. I can't change the return policy for you just because you're a cop. He left, angrily, before I could page my manager. At the time, I was pretty cavalier about the

whole thing. In my mind, he couldn't do anything to me if I didn't do anything wrong. It never occurred to me that a police officer could ever lie for their own gain, but I was still looking over my shoulder for the next few weeks when I would walk home. I casually mentioned it to one of the officer's working security later that week, I had never, ever seen him get so angry. He made me promise that if I ever saw the guy who was talking to me like that again, that I would get his badge number and gave me his phone number in case I needed anything. I didn't realize how messed up the whole thing was until then, and it freaks me out now to think that a police officer threatened me over a $15 CD.

If you're a woman who's already thinking about your online safety, you're not being paranoid. you're being smart. Hosting this podcast, I think about this a lot. The stories we cover are real, and the common thread is just how easy it is for someone with bad intentions to find information out about you, your name, your address, your phone number.

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is to go to JoinDeletme.com slash not meet and enter code not meet at checkout. That's Join Deleteme.com slash not meet, code not meet. Okay. I'm honestly such a grumpy tomboy. I never imagined that I would end up with a would-be stalker, especially not with the career I chose.

I was a forensic death investigator. Forensic police officers generally work with the DA's office and or the medical examiner's office that looks into cases of suspicious death, homicides, suicides, accidents, etc. Occasionally, I would run into people who had a passing interest, in what I did, because they had seen CSI or Law and Order a few times.

This never really seemed like a big deal, so I always brushed it off. But I learned that I was wrong in doing so. It started with a homicide scene I had been called to at an ungodly hour in the morning when Mr. Fanboy showed up. He was around his early 40s. He was average height and modestly fit. I saw him chattering away with one of the men. the uniformed officers guarding the scene.

This still didn't really strike me as a big deal. It happens because people are curious, but then he whipped out a camera and snapped a few pictures. At that point, I figured he must have been a really nosy, tone-deaf journalist and decided to give him a polite lecture on how inappropriate it was to take pictures of a crime scene, especially when we were getting ready to move the deceased's body.

I made sure to delete his pictures, sent him on his way, and figured that I'd never see him again. But he popped up again a week later at another questionable scene. It didn't click yet that something was seriously off until a week after that,

when he showed up at yet another scene. This one being a whole county away from the last one. So I worked in a major city in Texas through the medical examiner's office, so we took cases from several surrounding counties and covered a few thousand square miles, so it was odd that this guy would show up to a rather standard scene on the outer edge of our covered area,

even if he was with the press. I mentioned it to some of the coworkers when I got the chance, and they said that they had noticed him hanging around some of their crime scenes as well. When he showed up again, a uniformed officer and I shook him down to figure out who the hell he was, and figure out why he was rubbernecking all these crime scenes. I was used to people rubbernecking. As I said, I get it, people are curious and sometimes a bit morbid when they find out about something happening nearby.

But usually once the excitement and newness wears off, they go on about their business. We looked up Mr. Fanboy, and he didn't have a criminal record. Not like even speeding or parking tickets, so my superior had to talk with him and basically explained that he was making everyone nervous. He also told him he really looked shady hanging out at all of these crime scenes. The guy then disappeared for a couple of weeks before switching to a new tactic. If he couldn't hang around at the crime scenes, He figured, why not hang around the investigators?

But of course, only the female ones. So, fanboy started showing up at one of my favorite dithe bars that I frequented, because it was near my home. This was over 30 miles from where I work. I'm 5'7, and I don't look imposing in the least. My coworkers used to tease that I looked like I was some kind of kid playing dress-up in my uniform. Like most women, I tried to be polite with the guy who, at the time, was just about 20 years my senior, but I always decline any offer of a drink.

He wasn't taking any hints, though, and he kept chatting me up, asking me some of the creepiest questions I had ever heard. He was asking me things like, what's the worst crime scene you've investigated? Have you ever worked on a case where the victim was dismembered? Do you think murder cases are really about... power dynamics? These questions officially creeped me out. Those were things I didn't even want to talk about with a therapist, much less some dude who is giving me serious murder vibes.

I completely shut him down. I wasn't even trying to be polite, and he seemed a little put off, but not apologetic at the least. I went home, put my service weapon back on, and called my supervisor to give them a minute. heads up and start a paper trail for a restraining order. He was served with a cease and desist a few days later, and I figured that the threat of a restraining order and trouble with the police would deter him from escalating any further.

Not even 24 hours after the cease and desist was delivered, he was back to shadowing crime scenes like it was going out of style. At another female investigator's scene, he got into an altercation with one of the uniformed officers. He was then slammed with trespassing, obstruction, and a few other charges. But since he had no record, he was let out on bail. Then, not even three days later, he showed up to a scene I was working. We got into a scuffle after he broke one of my guy's noses to get onto the scene. He's not as strong as he looks, but I still ended up with a black eye. He looked worse by the time my partner and I got him cuffed. An investigation was opened, and we found a police skiskewerex.

scanner and a lot of creepy journals in his car. There were also notes on where I lived and worked, along with information on one of the other female investigators. I never thought people would be that obsessed with crime scenes, forensics, or the like. At least not to the point that they'd end up going to jail, but here we are. I'm also very aware that he probably had a lot of very unsavory things planned for me or one of my co-workers, which makes my skin crawl to this day. so creepy forensics fanboy, if you ever get out of prison, let's not meet again.

I had a stalker in high school. I was 16 and we met on Facebook. He went to a school nearby and we decided to meet up for a movie. We had a great time together and ended up dating. The first time he came to my parents' house, he had an ankle monitor since he was on house arrest. But he wouldn't tell anyone why. and since he was a minor we couldn't figure out. My parents didn't like this and didn't allow us to hang out after that, so we hung out at his house and around the YMCA camp.

I was rebellious and naive. Things started to get weird when I noticed his family was odd. One day we were hooking up in his bedroom and I saw his father looking in through the blinds. I screamed and called him out, and his dad ran off. This guy then told me that his dad was just into redheads and liked to watch us.

This made me realize that wasn't the first time. I went to leave and his mom was doing drugs in the kitchen, so I decided it was time to break up. But that's when things got bad. He started crying and told me he was in cancer treatment and that he needed me. He said that he didn't have long to live. I believed him, but I told him we could be friends,

and that was when he started stalking me. He switched schools and transferred into my high school, but never went to class. He would just stand outside of my classes, pacing around and looking inside, just waiting for me until it was passing period. When I would leave class, he wouldn't even address me. He would just follow me, about,

15 feet behind. He did this all the way to my next class. Then he would stand outside of that classroom and repeated the same process. I was too intimidated to say anything to him. He was 6'4, a heavyset guy, so I observed this happening for just a few weeks. It started to progress, though,

and he began following me home every day. He would get on the same bus as me, despite living across town, and walk 15 feet behind me, all the way to my house. Then he would stand outside, just staring up at the window until around the time my parents got home.

He knew their schedules, and he would wait until just before they were due home. Then he would just leave. When I'd finally had enough, I told him to fuck off and leave me alone. I told him we could no longer be friends or even acquaintances and asked him to forget about me. However, that only made things escalate further.

I started getting about 150 calls a night. Half of them were him screaming death threats, and he would describe torturing me in detail. The other half of his calls were him singing love songs that he wrote on his guitar. Every time I blocked his number, he seemed to magically get a new one, and he would just leave more messages.

I woke up one day to see that overnight, he had left me this singing slash dancing snowman on my porch. He had stabbed it in the head and left the knife sticking out. He covered it in his own liquid deodorant that I had mentioned

liking the smell of. I noticed there was a hole where the little song device was. When I pressed the hand, it wasn't the regular Frosty the Snowman song that played. It was his voice singing eerily, I'm never going to leave you be.

I was done at this point, so I finally told my parents who contacted the school. They suspended him, but he still waited at my bus stop every day and walked to my home with me. One day he ran at me, like he was going to tackle me. When I tensed up for the impact, he stopped and hugged me. It wasn't a regular hug, though. It was like he was trying to crush me. I was 5'1, about 90 pounds at the time. He ended up cracking one of my ribs.

I cried and he started crying too before running off. He left me a voicemail apologizing in a song. This one night is the night I'll never forget, and it's the reason we got a restraining order, and my dad got a gun. I woke up one evening for no reason. I was just completely awake. I got up to go to the kitchen to get a glass of water,

and in the reflection of my fridge I saw movement in my backyard. I couldn't see well because it was dark outside and light inside, so I went to the back sliding glass door to get a better look. When I got closer, I was met with the silhouette of a six-four man standing just outside the door. He, meaning my stalker, was in the backyard standing directly under my room at 3 a.m., just staring at me. I yelled and my parents got up, but he was gone by the time my dad went outside. We got a restraining order granted shortly after, and my stalker guy dropped out of school. I haven't seen him in person since, but every six months or so, he makes a new Facebook account and tries to send me a friend request.

I just block it and report his account every time. I don't know what he's doing now or where he went. But I don't really care to know. Let's not meet ever again. Let me tell you about the online cannabis company that's changed. how people wind down at the end of a long day, made with 100% federally legal THC, and they deliver everything discreetly right to your doorstep. You can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code meat.

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but I never liked texting, so the conversation went dry. He would often vent to me about how he just wanted to find an obedient wife who would do anything for him. A few days later, he texted me to ask me what I was doing. I was getting ready for my part-time job, and I told him just that. I had never mentioned to him that I had a job before, but he asked me to snap him something that was only sold at my restaurant in my area. Now, I didn't think anything of this until later.

Days passed and we spoke on and off until one day when he addressed me by my full first name. I never liked my first name, and I only used it on legal documents, so I always went by my nickname, especially on social media. I immediately asked how he knew my name, and he said that he said that he, may have had a tad bit of an obsession with me. I asked him where he even knew me from, and he said he saw me walking into my school three years beforehand, became obsessed, and hadn't been able to forget about me. He ended up telling me that he obtained my address by following me home as I walked out of school. He had found social media accounts for basically everyone in my

family. He was able to prove this by telling me the street that I live on and my mother's full name. I ended up telling my friend about this and tried to pry more information out of him. My friend told me to ask for more proof or information about this. Josh ended up telling me that he had followed me for over three years, but he was giving up on me until he ended up finding me on Snapchat. I asked him for proof, and he ended up describing a guy I had dated that year. He also described the exact color and pattern I had my hair dyed just a month before he added me. This was not a normal pattern, so the fact that he was able to describe it was terrifying. I asked him if I had ever seen him in person, and he said that we had run into each other multiple

times, but I had never spoken to him or paid him much mind. I asked where we ran into each other and he described a situation in which we met at our local grocery store, where I used to work. He said that I was with a short girl with long black hair. He was describing one of my best friends. We would often go to that particular store after school to get food and drinks before I started work. After all of this, he asked me if there was still a chance we would ever be together. I was very scared to say no because I had previously had an experience where a guy I knew would get aggressive or angry with me when I shut down the idea of us ever having a quote-unquote life together. So I kept saying, maybe. Not long after that, I was working when I saw the car

Josh had sent snaps of in the parking lot of my workplace. I had memorized his license plate so I was able to confirm it was him. I blocked him when I got home. Whenever I see a car that looks like this, my anxiety spikes. To this day, I'm terrified to leave my house. If I need to go anywhere, I need to be with one or two other people at all times. I've also been constantly looking over my shoulder. I haven't had any updates since I blocked him, but to the guy who started stalking me when I was 13, let's not meet again. This happened a few years ago now. I live alone with my two cats.

We live in a flat, but the front door is on the street level, so when you open the door, you go upstairs, and you're already inside the flat. I don't have a garden either. I'm in my mid-30s. I'm a female, and am very small and lucky enough to still look young. I still got ID for cigarettes and alcohol. I also smoke outside by the front door,

as I don't like smoking inside. I don't live in a rough part of town, so it's fairly usual to say hello to people walking by. They're just used to seeing me smoke outside, so we often exchange greetings. People also regularly use this area as a shortcut. My last cigarette is around 11.30 before I go to bed. Of course, when it's really dark,

it can feel unnerving, but as I said, it's a nice area. All that said, my flat is the only one of two in this area. It's not the best looking. The rest of the homes in this area are houses, and they're beautiful houses, with pretty decorations, nice cars, flowers, etc., basically upscale and a lot nicer than mine. For a few weeks before this incident, I kept hearing my front door handle moving, as though someone had tried opening it. I chalked it up to kids walking to school,

but I would hear this in the middle of the day and then in the evening, but each time I got to the bottom of the stairs, nobody was around. This one night, I went out for my last cigarette at around 11.30 before getting ready for bed, and once I was in bed, I fell asleep quickly. At one point, I woke up slightly

because I heard the cats playing. I rolled over and went back to sleep, but they woke me up again. I could still hear them playing, but I also heard them growling while I thought they were lying next to me in bed. I sat upright when I realized the sounds were coming from the front door.

The cats were still growling. I then snuck into the hall and peered down the stairs. I could see the front door handle turning. For the first time in my life, my brain thought faster than my mouth, and I switched the stair lights on. There was a pause, with my door opened just a few inches. Then I heard feet running away. I ran down the stairs and slammed the door shut again. Then I quickly ran back up the stairs to call the police. This was around 1 a.m. The police finally came at 5 a.m. I didn't sleep

while waiting for them. I sat in a chair watching the stairs all night, absolutely terrified that whoever was there would come back. I didn't even go out for a cigarette, even though I desperately wanted one. I was too afraid that whoever had been at my door would be there waiting. The police showed me how they got in. They had damaged the door frame, and the edges of the door were all cut and ripped up. I called my landlord first thing in the morning and had dead bolts fitted. I'm now overly cautious when I smoke. I don't stay in one place anymore.

I go for a little walk each time. I also don't stick to the same time anymore, and I definitely listen to my cats better. If they're growling about something, I now know there's a reason for it. I'm so glad they growled that night. If they hadn't, I would have ignored any other sounds and gone back to sleep.

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I live alone in a house in a big city. It's kind of a rough around the edge's neighborhood, but I've lived in the area most of my life. My block is tight-knit, despite half of it being vacant or abandoned. It's also the type of city that, like many others, tragically has a lot of folks living out of cars and RVs trying to eke out an existence. So I shouldn't have been too surprised when back in October last year, I got a text from a neighbor that said,

You might want to take a look out your back window. About 10 feet away was an enormous 40-foot motorhome in a dead-end alley. It was sitting on the edge of the small cliff that is my unfenced backyard. Having lived in urban areas my whole life, I'm no stranger to odd happenings immediately outside my window,

but this felt a little more intrusive than living in a ground-room apartment, no thanks to my back window being my bathroom window. It sat there for a few weeks without anyone paying much mind. A few neighbors. speculated that it might have been someone working on a couple of demolition or construction projects in the neighborhood. A supervisor from out of town, perhaps. Whoever it was,

I didn't really mind as long as there wasn't any mess, though I was slightly worried a wrong move would end with someone or the whole vehicle, rolling off the retaining wall and potentially crashing through my wall. Of course, there was the small fact that half of the block now couldn't access the alley. My city is very particular about removing vehicles if someone is potentially living in them, and after a few roundabout calls to the parking department, my neighbors and I were told we needed some evidence that it was a hazard. So I grabbed a cheap webcam off of Amazon, and I popped it in my window, and I went on with my life. About a week later, after some friends who came over for dinner had left,

I thought I'd check the camera to see if it picked anything up. After seeing what was on the camera, I didn't sleep the next few nights. Like clockwork, every night around midnight, the lights on the RV would flick on in the otherwise pitch black night. A couple of cars would pull up behind it, and the occupants would unload several very full garbage bags into the RV. Then these shadowy figures would creep down the yard of the vacant house next door into mine, and methodically circle my house, shining flashlights in each window. Cars would come and go all night until about 5 a.m.,

and then all was business as usual during the daylight hours. It is worth mentioning that my house is essentially a studio apartment on top of a garage built into a slope. My bed is about 10 feet from those windows. It's also worth mentioning my neighborhood had an alarming number of about 20 armed home invasions the summer before, not to mention the arson that had been committed on an occupied house across the street a few months earlier. So, vulnerable was an understatement of how I felt. I ended up moving most of my furniture around my bed as a makeshift barricade. I called 911.

They were a bit incredulous. Nothing was actively happening as I called, so they told me it wasn't an emergency and let me know that I could call the non-emergency line in the morning if I wanted to speak to an officer or a detective. The next morning, I felt that it was prudent to bring in any yard tools that would make a tempting window breaker and double-check that the back porch and security flood had working bulbs. And just my luck I managed to break both fixtures completely in the process. Almost immediately as I walked out my back door, the RV's door swung open, and a man and a woman stepped out.

They were dressed in t-shirts and shorts, despite the 39-degree weather, and they looked a bit like zombies. I waved, but they didn't wave back. They just stared past me, so I quickly retreated inside to keep an eye on them remotely, but not before noticing something even more startling. The RV had about six security cameras mounted on it, three of which were fixed at my back door. It turns out, while I was watching them, they were watching me. After a day or two more of this, I had become fully nocturnal, leaving all the lights blazing all night, and I started to feel like I was losing my mind. This was both mostly benign and deeply unsettling.

I kept texting friends and family in hopes of reassurance, but it didn't do much. They kept saying things like, They're probably just trying to find a quiet place away from the encampments. Maybe they work a night shift. If you were living on the streets, wouldn't you want a security camera? You have one on your house. I figured maybe I was being paranoid.

My neighbors were mostly preoccupied with the alley being blocked and subsequent missed deliveries, and it wasn't like the city was going to do much anyway. The cars kept coming and going all night, and the people with flashlights stayed just outside the edge of my yard, but I still caught the occasional flash through the window. After being reluctant to leave the house and my cat alone, I had to leave for an in-person work meeting. While I was gone, my camera pinged me about activity.

The RV folks had set up stakes around my property and were wrapping yellow caution tape around my yard across the alley, and they set up a barricade of traffic cones around their vehicle. This was getting weird. At this point, a few of us on the block started a group text to keep tabs on things. One neighbor a few houses down caught the female half of this duo in her backyard with a chainsaw, limming their oak tree in broad daylight. They confronted her, and she gave the same treatment as me.

just a mute thousand-yard stare. That neighbor called it in, and I watched a few officers poke around for a minute, clearly puzzled by the barricades and tape. I thought there might be some imminent resolution, but they booked it back to their squad car and took off with lights and sirens, since there was a shooting just a few blocks over, which I assume they were called to. Another night went by,

punctuated by the RV's alarm going off every couple of hours, and the engine revving menacingly. I still took the mid-morning nap I had become accustomed to over the past week, only to be woken by loud, angry yelling. When I woke up, I pulled the camera feed. Outback was another neighbor. He was venting his frustrations to a police officer

who was banging on the RV door with a baton, demanding that the occupants come out. There was a brand-new sports car parked behind him, one that I had barely made out on my cheap camera's night vision. I carefully left out the front so as not to be conspicuous and circled up the mouth of the alley to speak to the officer. I explained my story and near stream of consciousness ramble. He asked if I saw them leave.

I let him know that I hadn't. Then I played back the camera. The sports car showed up at 5.30 a.m. and nobody had left since. He said that the car was too new to have a. current registration, and the RV was registered to a deceased person four counties away. This was suspicious but nothing outright criminal, so he said he'd ticket them with a 24-hour tow notice. As he was typing up the ticket, the sports car came barreling down the alley in reverse, nearly plowing into the cruiser, and I was told very sternly to leave immediately.

I ran home and pulled up a police scanner feed to try and glean some information. they were calling for a gang officer, a domestic violence unit, vice squad, and CSI. So my gut feeling about everything wasn't too far off the mark. Later that night, the officer called me asking to send the entirety of my footage. I asked if there was anything he could divulge about what happened,

and he said, I can't tell you much, but this is a bad dude and he's going away. We towed the car for evidence, but we'll have to wait until morning to get a big, truck to move the RV. To say I slept well that night was an understatement, but that calm was shattered quite literally the next morning as I heard glass breaking outside. I looked out and I saw that three masked men were breaking into the RV with crowbars. One was up on a ladder

sawing through the roof with an angle grinder. I frantically called 911 struggling to explain the context of what was going on, and once again I was met with a verbal eye roll. The operator asked if it was my RV, and if it was a stolen vehicle that wasn't mine. I hung up and tried again, hoping to get someone else on the other end. The other operator said, we have a record dispatched to that location. Are you sure these aren't the tow operators? Sure enough, just as these guys managed to get the RV started, the tow truck was coming around the corner. They booked it so fast, it ripped up the gravel, and it's a miracle that it didn't end up through someone's wall.

Whatever happened, it's seemingly over. After everything, I quickly upgraded my camera to a couple of commercial-grade ones, with smart object detection, synchronized floodlights and automatic sirens, hoping to rest easy. But no, it was going off all the time. At least once or twice a week over a month, the cameras caught creeps, skulking around my backyard and windows with flashlights,

and plenty of other times I caught cars idling with their lights off in the alley for unsettlingly long periods. The one I can't shake was the guy at 3 a.m., slowly making his way up the alley in a low crouch, taking a long pause directly behind my house and then booking it towards my door, or the guy who managed to get past the camera, and I came face to face with his ugly mug pressed up against my kitchen window at midnight.

At least the alarms did their job. Every one of these guys took off since it lit up like a stadium with sirens blaring. For some comic relief, the last guy tried to hop a retaining wall and face-planted on the other side. Of course, again, friends and family had some not-so-reassuring platitudes.

They'd say maybe it was someone looking for a lost dog or someone got lost in the alley. Maybe this just always happened before I had lights and cameras. But here's the kicker. I filed a public request for the arrest and case report and I got it back months later.

It turns out my quote-unquote neighbor in the RV had kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and was likely trafficking her. She had called 911 but didn't know the neighborhood. And the cops were looking for them in a different part of town. He had a lengthy rap sheet

of felony burglary, fraud, and firearms charges. An acquaintance of his was interviewed by detectives and said that the RV was packed to the gills with guns and improvised weapons, and this guy told this witness that he would come back and kill whoever sent him to jail. Then, right at the bottom, in all caps, was my name and address,

with the phone number redacted listed as Reporting Party. The cops searched the sports car and found nothing of note. The RV, as you recall, was apparently stolen before they even obtained a valid warrant. The ex fled during the arrest, as I saw on camera and was never heard from again. The DA dropped the case, and this guy was released from jail 48 hours later. It's been about six months since my last quote-unquote visitor at night, but there still hasn't been a whole lot of peace of mind before I turn in for the night.

My apprehensions and fears are slowly fading, but I can't say I'm not a little on edge after dark, even though my house is now completely lit, 360. I put various dense and spiky plants around my windows and the perimeter, and I sleep with a rifle next to my bed. But unfortunately, new people have moved into the vacant houses on either side of me, and they're also good people. I just don't know if I have the heart to tell them about what went. down. If you're tired of ads and you want even more stories, head over to patreon.com forward

slash let's not meet podcast. To sign up and support the show today, you'll get ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate, plus bonus stories in our extended episodes every single week. If you're a patron, make sure you stick around after the music for your extension. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. If you have a story to share, make sure you send it to let's not meet stories at gmail.com to hear it on the show. And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails in the Old Time Radiocast and follow me at Twitch at twitch.tv.tv slash cryptic county. This week you have heard my landlord had been watching me for a year by Anonymous Crime Scene fanboy by Calypso Cain, the stalker in my

backyard by Worried Possession 43, unknowingly stalked for years by responsible card for 20, thinking about what could have happened by Bubblegum Banshee. Someone tried to to break into my home while I slept by Moonchild 86 and finally the new neighbors by We Know a Remote Farm. 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 next week. Stay safe.