Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 17x10: The Best of Season 3

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Over 2 HOURS of the most terrifying stories from Season 3!Story Submissions: [e-mail] Stories in this episode: Guy Who WIll One Day Kill Someone, Let's Not Meet Again | sammlite (1:03)The Fingers Under The Door | Fearnotmonkey (7:23) Housesitting Gones Wrong | BladingBeastie (20:01) Hunted Like An Animal | bubble085 (29:44) I'm Pretty Sure My Ex-Stepmother Was A Psychopath | SecondhandElephant (42:09) My Friend Claimed She Was A Witch | clcliff (55:18) I Attract Exactly The Wrong People | GhettoWedding (1:08:45) It Wasn't A Cat | misologous (1:17:54) My Creepy Friend Ben | MeltEarthToSea (1:22:44) Why You Should Always Lock Your Doors | MollieDenison (1:33:04) Tinder Nightmare | flowerstastebad (1:43:06) I Knew Him For 8 Years... There Was Something Very Wrong With Him | curi0us_kiwi (1:54:27)  Due to periodic changes in ad placement, time stamps are estimates and are not always accurate. Want Bonus Weekly Stories? Hate Ads? Join our Patreon for only $5 a month for over 100 hours of bonus content, and it's all ad-free! Follow LNM:- Twitch - https://twitch.tv/crypticcounty- Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com/- Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. The stories shared on this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team.  Right now, DripDrop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code MEET. Right now, Keeper is offering 60% off personal and family plans at Keepersecurity.com/MEET.   Right now, Larineco is offering our listeners up to 50% off at BuyLarine.com/Meet.  For a limited time, get 40% off your first order PLUS get a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungryroot.com/Meet and use code MEET. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/NotMeet. 

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. Welcome to the show. It's that time for another best of episode. This time around, we're sharing some of the scariest and most disturbing stories from season three.

So buckle up. This one's going to be a long and creepy. ride. Enjoy the show. So this is how my friend group works. We have this little circle of people who we hang around with most often. But for big events or bonfires or something familiar, we expand and a couple of different friends join the group. Ben is part of these extended friend groups. He is someone who always posts different or interesting things, who always has something to say, etc. I've gotten along really well.

with Ben at these events, and we always end up chatting. I've always found him to be a different and unique individual. Ben started going to my local college this year. He shot me a Snapchat, basically saying, hey, all my friends went away to different schools, and the only person I have to talk to from this area is now my ex-girlfriend. I was wondering if you wanted to get the group together and hang out because I'd like to have some new friends around.

It was actually really nice to get that message because, of course, I'm in. I don't get to make many friends, and all my close friends are spread out now. So I said yes. The hangout was initially supposed to be one of my friends, him, and one of his friends. It was the day after class, and I had just got home. He told me that he was going to take a quick nap before we all head out. When he wakes up, he tells me, it's now too late, and he has other plans. that he forgot about.

That's totally fine. I wasn't that upset about it. I cancel with my friends too, so I can just sit down and do some homework. He texts me a few hours later. One thing to note is I didn't give him my number. Somehow he found it. He told me that his other plans got canceled, and he was now available again in wondering if I wanted to do something.

I said that my friend was now out of the city, and he said he texted his friends, but they didn't answer. He decided to pick me up and go for a drive and just chat. Normal enough. Ben gets to my house around 10. I go and hop into his car and he speeds off. Oddly enough, he's talking in an accented voice, something like Jamaican or something similar.

I thought he was just being goofy, so I play it along. Sometimes I would answer back in the accent, but then I started to think it was weird and that he wasn't talking in his own voice at all. He was driving like a maniac down the street, telling me how he was drinking earlier because he thought he wasn't going to party. I asked him if he was drinking and driving, and he said, no, he only had a few sips. I know I probably should have gotten out of the car then, but at this point we were flying down the highway and I'm scared. He begins to rant about his ex, telling me that there was infidelity and trust issues on his end, and he couldn't tell me what they were because he didn't want me to think badly of him. He told me he was still going to marry this girl and have her children.

He ranted about her and got on tangents and started screaming and yelling. I started to think maybe he was on some kind of drug or something. We arrive at my college. half an hour to a 45-minute drive away in another city. He says that we should get out of the car. I'm already scared, and my phone is dying. So I just listen to what he says. At this point, I'm literally thinking he might kill me.

He took me for a walk through the light woods, but then he started to make sounds like some kind of creature. He would make these dinosaurs, like sounds and sounds like you would hear on the movie The Grudge. He would also walk like some creature, morphing his body into weird creepy movements. I requested for us to go home because I was literally terrified. We got back into the car and started to drive home, pulls out a pipe and smokes. I told him that he shouldn't do that, but he doesn't listen.

Now he begins to yell. He starts back on his tangents about life again. He pulls over the car to get out and do some jumping kicks. Yeah, like jumping in the air and kicking. At this point, my phone is dead. He gets back into the car and puts on his quote, favorite song. The song begins slow and then picks up a little later. It's like a four-minute song.

screaming along to the lyrics and smashing the windows and dashboard and his wheel with his hands, stomping his feet. I've seen someone passionate about a song before, but not like this. Ben swerves all over the road until we finally get to my house. He then turns to me and says, without an accent. I know it's late, but did you want to have sex? And the most casual tone in the world. I gave a nervous laugh and said, Actually, I'm good. He turned to the back seat to get something,

but I got out of the car and booked it to my house. I locked the door to my house and the door to my bedroom, as if he were to break in or something. It might not sound as terrifying as it was for me in the moment, but at that time I was shaking out of pure fear. I don't know if he was just on some crazy drug or if he had split personalities or something, but I've never met a person before who I've looked at and thought to myself,

you're going to kill somebody someday. I really hope he doesn't because I actually see him at school frequently. So yeah, fun life. Around nine or ten years ago, I was living with my mom, dad, an older sister, in an oldish house, in a very small village. And when I say small, I mean that its only main feature

was a small church with the few houses scattered about that were occupied, mostly by very old people. At the time, it was summer, so I wasn't at school or anything. And since we were so far in the middle of nowhere,

I spent most of that time at home, glued to one screen or another. The usual routine was I would wake up around 10 or 11. By this point, mom, dad, and sister had all left for work, so I had the house to myself. I'd go downstairs, make some toast, watch some random stuff on TV for an hour

before heading back to my room to continue with whatever game I was grinding through that particular day. The usual habits of a 17-year-old guy cut off from the rest of the world by many, many fields. I should give a quick rundown of our house. It was an older cottage with two rooms upstairs, mine and my sisters, and everything else downstairs. As you walk up the stairs, you got a very small landing, and it could go either left to my room or immediate right to my sister's room. Basically, the way this was laid out was that I could sit in my room with the door open, and my sister's room is directly opposite.

it. I also should mention that the ceilings in both our bedrooms are slanted. We were basically in a large attic where the roof slanted down because of where the slant met on the wall, we had a crawl space that ran the length of the house on either side of the rooms, both with a small door to access them. These were mostly used for storing normal attic stuff, like Christmas decorations and old forgotten toys. The doors to these were very thin, about four foot tall, with the small handle on the outside. This is important because turning these tiny door knobs opened them but only from the outside. If the door was pushed shut with you inside, there was no way to get back out. I discovered this myself on more than one occasion.

The door on my side ran along my room and along one wall in my sister's room, and hers ran along the other side along my room. This space was not very big. You had to crouch to stand in it, and most of the time you were there, you were crawling on your hands and knees. This is important, all of it, I promise. Anyways, this one morning I'm awoken to a familiar noise, some sort of small creature rustling around in the crawl space on my sister's side.

I could hear this because my bed was against the wall that ran along it. Not an unusual noise living in the countryside. We had mice almost constantly, and they pretty much had the run of the storage spaces, no matter how many traps were put out. I thought nothing of it, and I got up and went off to begin my morning ritual of toast and television. The first odd thing that I noticed while I was watching TV was that I could hear movement upstairs.

My sister's room was directly above the living room, so I assumed that she had just not gone to work that day for whatever reason and just continued munching. About an hour or two later, I went back upstairs and booted up my PC. As I was waiting, I turned around to my open door and faced my sister's closed one. and I realized that it was late in the day and she had not yet left her room, an odd thing since she normally parked up on the sofa in the living room on her days off and didn't move until our parents returned. We're not the most active family.

I started to think that maybe she was at work, and I imagined all of the noise from upstairs, but as I mused this, I noticed the crack of light at the bottom of the bottom of the, of her door as a shadow passed by it. Okay, so there's definitely someone in there, so it must be her, right? I once again pushed it from my mind and went back to my PC. More time passed, and a thought came back to me.

Why would she be at home and not leave her room? She only has a small TV in there, and no books, so what had she been doing all day? I glanced back around and saw another shadow under the door. She was still moving around in there, so what was up? I finally decided to knock on her door. I knocked a few times, then said her name. No answer. Weird.

But maybe she had headphones or something on. I knocked a bit harder again and said her name again, but louder. No answer. All right, I thought, Screw this, I'm just going to go in. So I cracked the door open and peered around. I found an empty room. No one inside at all.

Feeling slightly confused, but better that it was just my imagination, I stepped in properly and looked around and saw something that made me panic. Near the bottom of her door that led to the crawl space. there was a small hole that the mice had made

to get in and out at the bottom, really small but just big enough to fit half of your hand through. There, coming through that hole, were four fingers holding the door shut from the inside. At first I thought, no, it can't be fingers.

Don't be stupid. Until I watched them slowly, creep back through the hole into the crawl space. I completely lost my shit. Very quietly, though, I might add. I packed out of the room, shutting the door behind me and I ran back to mine. Being the stupid teenager that I was, I grabbed what might be the most imposing weapon that I could find, a fake Winchester rifle cap gun that I got from Disneyland a few years prior. I figured that if whoever was hiding in that bedroom didn't believe it was a real firearm,

I could at least hit them with it. I ran off downstairs to where my dogs were on the far side of the house and called my mom, who worked about a five-minute drive from our house. She told me to stay put and that her and her manager were on their way. In this time, I made a small upgrade

from a fake plastic rifle to one of my dad's golf clubs. I felt much better with that. Finally, my mom and her boss, John turn up and I tell them everything leading up to this point. They say okay and we all set off upstairs to investigate. Me

rather unheroically bringing up the rear with my golf club. We get into my sister's room and I point to the door. I'll never know if my mom is just hard as nails or massively stupid but while John and I watch she marches

over to the door, yanks it open and sticks her head in. A moment passes while she looks left and right, and John and I are preparing to yank her back from the clutches of the psycho-hopo murderer hiding before she shouts. Chris, what the fuck are you doing in there? Get out. Small amount of backstory. Chris was my sister's boyfriend. Unbeknownst to me, the night before, my dad had asked Chris to leave as he was staying with us, around five days at this point. He said, yeah, that's cool, and as far as my mom and dad knew, he headed home.

What really happened was instead of leaving, he and my sister had planned to make it seem like he had left, then he could stay another night. He would then wake up before my mom shouted for my sister to wake up for work like she did every morning and would hide in the crawl space and sleep there until everyone had left for the day. The one small hitch in the planned was that they didn't think. think of me. They'd forgotten that I was home and conveniently sat directly opposite the only exit for most of the day, so he was trapped. When I knocked, he hit himself behind the door and held it shut to prevent being locked in. Anyway, my mom swiftly told him to get the fuck out

and not to come back. Sadly, this was not the last time we saw the guy. As it turned out, he had stolen quite a bit of money from my sister's room while he was hiding out, and then got her her pregnant and proceeded to smash all the windows trying to get at her and her baby a year later. For a while, we lived in the same city when I went to university, and he was spending time at the prison there for stabbing someone in a completely different town. Super guy. Oh, and a small topper for all of this, as I mentioned earlier, the only rooms upstairs are mine and my sister's bedrooms. He had been there for close to 14 hours with no access to a toilet, but don't worry for this guy because he had lots of empty bottles to piss in, which he kindly left behind for us to

clean up. And finally, around a year later, as my mom was in getting the Christmas decorations out, which were at the far back end of the storage space, she found a small bag filled with feces. I should mention that where she found it is exactly next to where my bed is on the other side of the wall. That rustling that woke me up that day, it was him hiding his shit amongst our tensile and tree. So sisters, baby daddy, who hid in our crawl space and used it as a private bathroom, let's not meet. You know that feeling when the heat sneaks up on you and suddenly you're foggy, tired, useless for the rest of the day? That's your body telling you that you dropped the ball on hydration again. DripDrop is doctor-developed, proven fast hydration that helps your body and mind work better.

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This happened two summers ago while I was house sitting out in California for an older couple, that I had met at a conference for work. It seemed like a dream scenario. The couple wanted to vacation in Hawaii for two weeks, but didn't want to board their cats, and I had been chatting with them about wanting to visit California again, where they happened to live,

because I loved it the first time I went there, and we figured that we could mutually benefit if I came out there and house sat for them. So I flew out there, and they showed me around for a few days, They taught me how to care for the cats, two of them, one that was extremely shy, and I barely saw, which is important for later, and their plants. They gave me access to their house and cars. These people were very generous, and before I knew it, I had dropped them off at the airport, and I was on my own. At first, I was on a dream vacation. I was staying in Oakland and taking trips to San Francisco, Sonoma, Monterey.

in the mornings I could walk out the front door and shortly be hiking the paths surrounding nearby Mount Diablo, and I was ultra-content with the world. I was so enamored by the area that I had actually started looking into some steps to relocate out there. But one day, about halfway through my final week there, when I got back to the house, I felt really odd, almost like I shouldn't go inside. I shook it off and went inside anyway because it was getting late and I needed to put out dinner for the cats. Once I was inside, I forced myself to ignore how off it felt. And I made some food for myself, went to bed, and was shocked to find this shy cat hiding under my bed and crying.

This was the first time I had seen her close up. The entire time that I had been there, up to that point she never left my head. host's bedroom, unless she didn't realize I was around. Again, I ignored the weird feeling and just assumed she decided that I was okay, and I went to bed. I did start locking the bedroom door that night, though. I also remember about halfway through the night, I thought I heard someone walking around in the gravel outside the window, but after listening for a bit, I didn't hear anything else. I just went back to slum. sleep. The day after, in the morning, I still felt a bit odd, but kept up my plans for the day. I drove

out to a music festival in Sonoma and went clothes shopping. I had an overall great day. When I got back to the house, though, I found the front door locked in a way I hadn't left it. Basically, my hosts never locked the deadbolt, only the lower second lock. And that's the only lock my key worked on, so I never messed with the deadbolt, but it was definitely locked. So I had to call my hosts and find a hide-a-key, which, to their credit, safety-wise, was buried a whole foot underneath a bush outside and had definitely not been unearthed in a long time. So I used that when insiding, kept the key with me just in case it happened again. and it did

but with a different door and this time I had stepped out into the garage to get a drink and when I turned to go back to the house the door was shut and locked I could use my normal key

on that door but I was still pretty bewildered my own cats are whack so I think that in my mind I was trying to come up with a way that the cats

could be locking me out of the house but I was coming up empty. I decided I must have been misunderstanding how the locks worked and just rode it off and started checking and triple-checking the locks when I went out of the house or into the garage. That night, when I went to bed, I really felt this awful feeling of unease. It was still there.

And so was the shy cat, who was clearly unhappy to see me, but also wouldn't leave the room. But again, I just locked. my bedroom door and went to sleep. The next morning felt awful, nausea, body ache. I had no desire to leave the house, so I decided to stay in in Netflix for a day. This vacation stay was like a full two weeks, so I didn't feel like I was in any hurry to get all my touristy things in anyway. But as the day went on, I started to feel that feeling of wrongness again, and it morphed into an incredibly

watched feeling. Around mid-afternoon, I got to the point that I was so uneasy that even feeling awful, I decided to get out of the house for a bit and shake it off. I was getting a bit low on food, so I went to the grocery store and bought a couple of food items that I didn't think would hurt my stomach. And as I started to leave the checkout, the cashier said the generic, have a great evening. and I instantly I just started crying shocking myself and the poor cashier

because I had just had this intrusive thought that said you might be the last person to ever say that to me when I got into my car I was still crying and my entire body was telling me not to drive back to the house

I couldn't not though because I didn't want to neglect the cats so I drove back parked in the driveway and convinced my after about half an hour to just go and open the front door. Once I did that, I thought I would get over it and I would be able to at least feed the cats and maybe I'd go get a hotel room afterwards, but my body physically would not let me get inside. It was like I was stuck in the entryway.

I then made a deal with myself. I would yell into the house saying, I had already called the police and that they were on their way. In panic logic, I figured that would make anyone who was in the house leave. So I faced the inside of the house, looking down the hallway towards the bedrooms, and did just that. The second I finished saying, they're almost here, so if you want to avoid being arrested, you need to leave now. The light in my host's room turned on, and I heard banging. I immediately hightedled it back to the car, called the police for real, and proceeded to have a mental breakdown while talking to the dispatcher.

Once they got there, they checked the house and didn't find anyone, but the double doors to my host's bedroom were left wide open. I'm glad the cats didn't get out. There was also a pile of food wrappers in the corner behind the blinds, so they said it looked like someone had been there. What makes it so scary to me is that nothing was taken, and based on the shape of the house, that would have been the perfect vantage point to see me in the living room as I stayed home sick.

To explain this, the house was in an L shape, and from the windows into the garden that were in my host's bedroom, you could see the living room windows. Also, the minute the police were gone, they said they couldn't prove anyone was there. There were no signs of forced entry, and we couldn't get a hold of my hosts immediately to verify if anything had been taken,

which, once they were back, they verified that nothing had been taken as well. So they said they'd patrol a bit, but nothing else. The shy cat was, right back in the host's bedroom, and I didn't see her again until I left to go back home. So, basically,

I think the intruder had been there at least two days, forcing her to choose between two strangers and leading her to choose one that was at least a little less strange. Me. It messed me up pretty bad, especially because

they didn't catch the person and they didn't seem to have any desire to look. I still had to stay at that house for the next three days. Nothing else odd happened, and I didn't feel off the rest of the time that I was there, but the damage was done. I never felt completely safe in a home without doing a complete search before bed since. But I am extremely glad my gut spoke up. I guess I'd rather have some residual anxiety than be dead.

So whoever was in my host's house watching me, let's please never meet. This happened to me a couple of months ago, but when it first happened, given how crazy it was, it took me a few weeks to collect myself enough to type it up and post it. It's relevant for me to tell you up front

that I'm a military veteran and I have PTSD and anxiety problems. I also have a bad case of depression. I've read the CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy can massively improve PTSD symptoms and in turn help to reduce anxiety. So I have been trying various techniques at home. The problem there is my wife and I live in a small two-bedroom place. It's a ground floor flat with an upstairs neighbor with absolutely no concept of other people.

a jock douchebag type who's a personal trainer. But he trains at home too because gains, you know. The kind of guy who's only two topics of conversation are protein powder and steamed rice. I'm sure you can imagine the type. Anyway, with that being a constant issue, meditation and quiet mindfulness are just not possible with the constant noise. my solution is to do my normal routine during the day but take advantage of the insomnia that I have later on at around 2,300 hours I would put on my coat in my shoes

as we live near the beach I figured I would just walk to the beach now that there's pretty much zero people around I walk on the sand and I'm mindful to the sounds of the ocean sounds nice doesn't it? It was for the first two times, times, but you know what they say. Third time is the charm. The walk to the beach from my home isn't that far, maybe a little over half a mile, but once I got there, I would walk to the very end of the beach until you reached the cliff where there is a World War II artillery gun turret,

which was another half mileish. Sometimes I would walk up the path to the cliff and to the gun and stare out into the blackness of the midnight ocean, which was only broken by the occasional flash of light from the lighthouse. I would sit and listen to the waves crashing against the cliffs. Sometimes I would close my eyes and just concentrate on nothing but that sound. I felt safe there, knowing that I was alone, just me in the ocean. Usually before I turned tail and head home, I would walk down to a small row of benches.

They're all marked with plaques in remembrance of someone who also came and enjoyed the view, although I imagine they came during the day. The benches are close to an old pub that was shut down years ago, and I heard that the place used to be used as a dogging site or a brothel or something back in the day. So when I saw vehicle headlights coming towards the pub, I figured it was some young lads trying to catch potential doggers while they're at it. I sat on the bench and waited for the car to pass me, but as it rounded a bend and the road further up, I was momentarily lit up by the headlamps.

The headlights of this vehicle went off immediately and the car went off the road and out of sight for a moment. At this point, I was fully alert and a bit cautious, so I dropped to one knee. and ducked behind the bench that I had been sitting on. The vehicle drove past me. It was maybe 40 feet from me. And as the lighthouse illuminated the vehicle, I could now see that it was an old beat-up land rover kind of vehicle with this terrible camo paint on the wings.

At that moment, someone popped out of the top of the vehicle with the scoped rifle and a huge torch. In my head, I was back. in Iraq, and my senses felt razor sharp. I dropped onto my belt buckle and crawled into a patch of long grass adjacent to the benches. Then I got in a position where I could see them, but they couldn't see me. The guy with the rifle shone his torch at the exact bench that I had been sitting on. Then the others, all searching for me. He started looking all around him through this scope, looking for where I might have gone. My heart was pounding so hard, I felt as if I could

could hear it. I held my breathing, but more importantly, to try and hide the condensation of my breath. The vehicle started to move to get a better view of the benches, so I started slowly crawling towards the main road, as not only there is a row of houses, but an old stone bus stop that I could take a hard cover in if they saw me, and they opened fire. After about five minutes of hiding in the long grass, it started to rain, and they were still clearly looking for me, but were now 150 feet away. The guy with the rifle was scanning around with his eye down the scope, so I waited until he was looking away from me to seize my moment and run for cover. I pushed my hands hard into the wet dirt to launch myself onto my feet, then I sprinted towards the bus stop while throwing some zigzags in

there just in case they had seen me. Luckily they hadn't, and I was now far enough away that I could take my phone out to call the police. They were there with a riot van and a squad car in about 10 minutes, and as I was talking to the officers in the van, they spotted the gunner's vehicle and took off after them. The officers in the squad car stayed behind to talk to me. The rain was coming down in sheets by now. They asked me if I was absolutely sure if it was a rifle, and I told them yes, it was 100%. No doubt at all in my mind. The officers both looked at each other, and then one of them asked, and what exactly is your experience with firearms? I told them I was ex-army, and I've seen my share of all kinds of firearms. Then they asked me what I was doing there after midnight, which is a pretty fair question,

to be honest. I explained that quite ironically I was taking a mindfulness walk to ease my PTSD symptoms. They were satisfied with that explanation if not somewhat amused and told me that the armed response unit was en route. I asked if they needed me to stay

behind and make a statement, but the officers told me not to bother waiting around because they most likely wouldn't need to take a statement beyond the call that I made. And it also was pissing down rain, so I should get home and get dry. It was over, but I still felt super wired and my heart was still thumping hard in my chest. I started the walk home, and when I was

about halfway there, a police helicopter buzzed overhead and settled over the area where I had been sitting on the benches with this searchlight going. It was right then that it hit me like a shotgun under the chest. What happened? That was fucking real, and it was here. What the fuck? My head started swimming. My heart was pounding twice as hard now, and my legs felt like jelly. My lungs felt glitchy, like I couldn't breathe properly. I dropped to my knees, crying in the streets and the pouring rain, the only light coming from a nearby street lamp with a flickering bulb. I gasping for breath, thoughts flashing in my head, thinking that if I stayed still, if I hadn't hunched behind that bench, if I had done any number of things differently or hadn't, then I could

have gurgled my last breath alone in the dark, cold, wet, dirt. And my wife would be none the wiser till the following day. I had no idea if they were even there for me, and if they were, how could they know I'd be there? I'd been twice before, I suppose. It's not like there's animals to hunt there beyond foxes, and why hunt foxes from a vehicle with a rifle and a torch at midnight? Anyway, I'm not ashamed to say that my experience terrified me. I guess my army training helped me to stay alert and to stay hidden,

but I don't really know. Today I made a call to the police to try and get an update on what happened. After a quick description of what the initial incident was, the officer on the phone, I assume she was an officer, was able to find the incident report right away. Basically, the first officers on the scene confirmed that they had seen the vehicle and they had gone off the road in pursuit. They said that they had given chase over difficult terrain for as long as they were able to, and the vehicle turned off all its lights and made an escape using the dark as cover. The armed response units were also called as a precaution and patrolled the entire area while the helicopter was dispatched in order to try and locate the vehicle with heat cameras.

Both teams were unsuccessful in finding them because by the time they had arrived on the scene, they had gotten away. CCTV was also checked but yielded absolutely nothing. I told her I was sorry if they felt I had wasted their time and I guess that I must have overreacted. reacted due to my PTSD. She told me that as far as they are concerned, I did the right thing. She also said that there have been a few isolated accounts of gunshots having been heard in that area over the last few years, so maybe rethink taking my walks late at night. I didn't have the energy to explain again why I used to wait until it was so late to go walking, but any advice about avoiding getting shot is good advice. So instead I just agreed with her,

and ended the call. After I hung up, I sat down for a few minutes, going over the whole thing in my head. It was most likely nothing when all was said and done. But if nothing else, it's taught me that being hypervigilant isn't always such a bad thing. One weak password is an open door. An open door to your bank account, your inbox, your company's files. Keeper slams that door shut on every account you have with a strong, unique password for each one, so nothing's left exposed. Honestly, before I started using Keeper, I was that person reusing the same three passwords for everything,

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So I had known this woman since before I could remember. She was really good friends with my mom and dad through high school, so I already knew her before all of this. Unfortunately, my mother was an alcoholic and pill addict, which led to pretty bad neglect for several years when I was very young, which is a story for another day. After missing most of my third grade year, DCS got involved and my dad got custody of me. He was dating the stepmother at the time, and at first everything was fairly normal.

She was like an older sister or a friend. It wasn't too long before I noticed things started to change. One day when I was about nine, I was sitting on the living room floor, playing with my back against the couch. My stepmother crossed the living room to go down the hallway And as she did seemed to shoulder check the doorway As soon as she did this she turned around and started yelling at me Accusing me of pushing her I stared at her dumbfounded because I hadn't moved from the spot on the floor

She continued yelling and accusing me of trying to Rationalize it in my head Maybe I got up, I don't remember, but why would I push her? I really had no negative feelings towards her at this point. So it didn't make any sense, but she was an adult and I was a child. Surely she knew what she was talking about. My stepmother was a taller, skinny woman with long, golden, blonde hair, straightened through at the end with those poofy 80s bangs on top.

She typically wore high-wasted jeans and kept long, pristine nails that would end up being horrifying symbol to me in my teen years. Things got worse as I got older. I would speak to my mom on occasion over the phone or in a letter for the first few years, but each time I did, my stepmother would become more and more hostile towards me, claiming that my contact with my mother was making me misbehave. But I was always an introvert. I loved reading and school, and I was a bit of a nerd, and I hated getting into trouble. So this accusation didn't make sense to me even then. But what could I do about it?

Before too long, I noticed that my stepmother looked for any opportunity alone with me to treat me however she wanted. My stepmother quickly became extremely militant. Each morning she woke me up for school by bursting into my room and aggressively jerking the covers off of my body. Some mornings, even grabbing my feet, digging her nails in and twisting my toes. I was expected to follow a strict schedule on school mornings. 6.15 a.m. out of bed. 6.15 to 6.25. Get dressed for school. 6.25 breakfast.

At this time, I was expected. to stand in the exact center point of the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room, ready to make my breakfast and sit at my spot at the table. 6.35 a.m., done with breakfast, 635 to 6.45 a.m., finish getting ready for school, and finally 6.45 a.m. be sitting cross-legged in the center of the living room, waiting for everyone to be ready. If I didn't follow this schedule down to the minute, punishment would be doled out. She would grab my hands, Take my breakfast, twisting one or two of my fingers out of socket,

pulling me close to grit her teeth at me with glaring hateful eyes. On a few occasions, she even broke my wood hairbrushes across my face, leaving busted blood vessels and massive bruises. When the damage was too obvious, she would try to hide me for a day or so, gently waking me the next morning, acting as though I was sick and telling me that I was too ill to go to school, brushing my hair back and telling me to go back to sleep. This treatment rolled over into my days after school

and would evolve into other aggressive behaviors. She made sure to conceal any sign of mistreatment from my father. But still, some happened right under his nose. At the dinner table, she would dig her toes into my leg and scrape so hard that she would shave off chunks of skin from my shins with her toenails. even at church, placing what looked like an affectionate hand on my back, proceeded by giving me an extremely painful and deep pinch to my back,

leaving bruises in their place that no one would see. I was given an hour and a half after school each day to do my homework. After that, I was expected to go to our playroom, where I was to entertain her daughter. My stepmother's daughter was between five and seven when things started to get really bad. I was expected to play what. she wanted, when she wanted, and abide by any requests made. This was never said but understood and later learned the hard way.

One day during the summer, while eating lunch with her daughter in the playroom, she asked me to open her dessert. She had a kid cuisine that she had merely taken two bites of. My stepmother would typically leave the plastic over her dessert as a system to encourage her to eat her dinner first. Of course, when she asked me to open it, I asked her if she was done eating her meal, passively addressing the fact that she had barely touched it. I was about 14 at the time.

It seemed like a plausible thing to big sister her about. But when I didn't give her what she wanted, she got up in a huff to go tattle to her mother. As most six-year-olds would. Stepmother immediately was enraged and barreled down the hallway in my direction. I don't even think I was out of view of her daughter when she grabbed me by the hair and started dragging me. I tried to keep up, but lost my balance and fell on the floor. She continued to drag me down the hallway by my hair.

Once we reached my bedroom, she started kicking me in the stomach and then pulled me to my feet to face my bed. She then began rummaging through my belt drawer and pulled out a woven leather belt that she had already used more than once and then proceeded to beat me with the belt, starting with my shoulder blades

all the way down to my ankles. Heaven forbid if I screamed, she would beat me more. The abuse also did not stop with physical as she seemed to get a kick out of bullying me. This, she wasn't so worried about hiding from my father as she would make it seem light-hearted and juvenile when he was around.

One evening, while having a family dinner at one of our local go-to sit-downs, she started kicking me under the table, passing me horrible evil glares. After a few minutes of this, she spoke up. You chew like a cow, she laughed. Why can't you chew right? Doesn't she chew like a cow? My dad chuckled, thinking it was meant lightheartedly. But as he looked down at his meal again, her death glare, staring a hole through me with a tight jaw and gritted teeth told me otherwise.

This became a new target for her abuse. She did this again later when she noticed that I had walked on the inside of my house shoes, kicking me in the back of the knees, making me fall to the floor. she began kicking me in the back, knocking the wind out of me, all simply over the way that I walked. It became my daily life. Speaking out seemed ridiculous because of all of these punishments. They just felt so absurd. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, but as I got older, people around me started to get wiser. When I was in middle school, my dad and stepmother were called in for questioning by my school. Two of my teachers were highly suspicious of my bruises and constant swollen fingers.

My stepmother proceeded to put on an act, crying and acting hurt and shocked, that they would even think that she could hurt a child. I changed schools after that year. Things only got worse once I went to high school, as she seemed intimidated by my aging and gaining maturity. Male friends were off limits, and my curves were to be. hidden in horribly unflattering clothes.

I didn't really mind so much as I really had very little interest in boys or displaying my womanhood to any degree. However, one afternoon, while taking a shower, she burst into the bathroom to remind me of my timing as she whipped the bathtub curtain open. She saw hair growing below my waist. Before I could react, she grabbed the hair and jerked it down. pulling out a handful of my pubic hair. She cursed me for not telling her

that I had started maturing in that way. I couldn't tell anyone about that for years. After the belt beating, however, my stepmother's sister-in-law saw my backside and called my dad's work, cursing him and threatening to report it. I started going to her house on the weekends after that. After this, I got braver and became less scared.

Once I saw people reacting to what they saw of my stepmother's behavior, I knew I was in the right for sticking up for myself, so I did. In subtle ways at first, I brought jewelry and makeup to school and started to give myself space to express myself. Then one morning, while running a minute or two behind my breakfast, schedule my stepmother came into the kitchen in a rage. Why wasn't I finished getting ready for school? Before I could turn around from rinsing the dishes,

she was rummaging in the utensil drawer and pulled out a fork. She backed me against the kitchen counter, pressing the fork to my throat. I don't remember what she said to me in those moments, but I remember her hot breath in my ear hissing through her teeth at me, and I remember the chill of the cold metal prongs in my throat. I was 16. My last day there was field day at my junior year. I decided to wear a cute outfit that her sister-in-law had bought me for casual days.

It was a cute cap-sleeved striped t-shirt, cut femininely to suit my curves with long matching shorts. I knew that she wouldn't like it, but I also knew that it was completely appropriate for a girl my age. even very conservative in comparison to my other peers. She saw me as I was walking down the hallway towards my bedroom, and I saw the rage fill her. She came at me, nails first, grabbing my arms, digging her nails in.

This is when I snapped. I fought her off, shoving her into the wall. Rage filled me as I went into the living room to grab the phone. If you touch me again, I'm going to call the cops. She went pale. And suddenly I wasn't scared for myself anymore. I couldn't control myself. I laughed.

You're scared, I said, suddenly enlightened. Her face went blank as she walked towards me. If you have to make your dad choose between you and me, it's not going to be you, she said coldly. I ignored this sentiment because I knew she was delusional to think something like that. I went to my bedroom and packed my bags. She didn't stop me, but she did make sure to let me know that if I left, I wasn't welcome back.

I ended up spending that summer in Florida with my stepmother's sister-in-law and moved in with my grandmother for the next several years. I only ever saw my stepmother once again in my 20s. She had left my dad by the time that I was out of high school for the man that she had been cheating on him with. She and I spoke briefly over Facebook, and that next year and I confronted her about what she put me and my dad through. Her response? I'm sorry if you ever felt unloved.

I was just really stressed, and you were a pretty rebellious kid. These events happened over several months in 2016 when my sister and I were 16 and 14, and we had first moved into our most recent apartment complex with our mother. We now call the apartment complex the complex from hell, because there were many incidents like this. You may remember the recent story of Bob. Admittedly, we were still into the hoverboard craze then and would ride them around. This is how we met Savannah. She was our age and lived in our building.

She asked to hang out, and we were happy to hopefully make new friends. so we said yes. We hung out outside the complex at a little park area. It got dark, and we started making up ghost stories. Turns out, she liked creepy paranormal stuff like we did. Now note, I did not actually believe in this stuff, and still don't. Every time I reference the paranormal, it's a hyperbole. As we were walking home, the light in one of the apartment hallways flickered,

and I joked and said it was a spirit trying to communicate with us. Savannah made up a flash once for yes, twice for no system, to communicate with the spirit. And we messed around a bit. We thought it was just harmless fun. Well, the next day, she runs over to us, excited. She informs us that the spirit we had met last night told her its name was Kieran and that it meant light. so it all made perfect sense now. We asked her how she knew,

and she said she went back later that night alone to talk to it. This was the first time it occurred to us that she might have really believed in this stuff. Our aunt had given us an old Ouija board as a joke a year before, and we thought that Savannah might like it. Savannah lit up and said she wanted to try and talk to Kieran. So we huddled in the hallway, that was connecting the apartments and put our hands on the board.

We kept getting random letters that didn't make sense, but soon Savannah's questions were directed to Kieran. We felt her moving the planchette and called her out, but she got mad and said she'd prove it. She took her hand off of the planchet, and it no longer moved. She just huffed and insisted that it wasn't her. Over the next few weeks, we did mostly normal stuff with her, but she kept talking about the ghosts and Ouija boards until we broke down and played it again.

This time we were introduced to a new ghost, Evan. We knew it was Savannah moving the planchette, but we were curious about the story she was making. So we just let her follow through. Evan was a ghost, or demon rather, who was our age that wanted to. to be free from a greater demon controlling him. That greater demon's name was Kieran. Savannah's parents called her inside and conveniently, Evan had to go too.

He told us he'd protect us against Kieran, especially Savannah. Savannah commented on how cute that was for him to offer. A few days go by normally, but then Savannah's back to tell us that she has a boyfriend. We're happy for her until she tells us that his name is Evan. We are wondering what the hell she's talking about. And she explains that while sleeping over at another friend's house,

something had tugged off her shorts while she slept. She woke up and heard Evan's voice. Then he'd visited her in her dreams and asked to date or something like that. She said yes. Of course, we knew that she made up Evan, so we're kind of like, what's wrong with you? and we don't talk about demon stuff anymore. Now, Savannah was extremely possessive over her friends.

When she'd see us with someone else, she'd text us nonstop about why we hadn't invited her. We tried to keep our distance, but she lived on the ground floor and literally watched out her window waiting for us to come inside. She'd latch on to us. We didn't know much about her home life, but she'd, She always seemed troubled. She had scars on her wrist and even talked about running away from home. Her parents seemed all right, if rather strict and religious. We still hung out with her because we were worried, but we're starting to feel weird about it.

Worse, she randomly showed up holding her hand out, saying Evan was holding her hand. She'd look at random things and laugh when no one was talking because Evan had told her a joke. Once, she made us feel her cheek where it was supposedly warm from Evan kissing her. It wasn't warm. One day my sister and I were bored

from talking to Evan on the Ouija board and wanted some fun. I texted my mom to call my phone from a blocked number and play creepy sounds. Looking back, it was one of the dumbest things that I did, but it was one of the dumbest things that I did,

But at the time, it was just for fun. My mom made the call, and I put it on speaker. Savannah is living for it, especially when my mom played a track from a scary movie about a ghost. My mom took it a step further and threw a banana off our third-story balcony for us to see. Savannah said it was a sign that Kieran was winning. I had no idea of the fire. this would light inside of her.

We were about to tell her it was a prank, but again my mom called her inside. She found us again the next day. And I came clean about the prank. She laughed and said that there was no way we could have done that. I said, no, my mom literally did all of that. Well, Savannah had told her friend about it, who had told her that yellow objects like the banana

were a sign of the devil, and seeing them meant that the devil was hunting you. This was all she talked about for a while, but since nothing else happened, she gradually forgot. Things went back to normal for a while, until Autumn moved in. Autumn and Savannah connected instantly because of their history with depression. Autumn was a few years younger than us, but had a lot more of a past. This included significant time spent in psychiatric facilities and violence towards her classmates and family. Autumn claimed she heard demons talk to her at night, and just like that, the ghost stuff had started again. Savannah felt threatened by Autumn and felt the need to one-up her with ghost stuff.

She told her Evan was her ghost brother that looked out for her. and I said, hold on, you claimed he was your boyfriend. She giggled and said, that's gross, he's my brother. Her story had completely switched. Now, she was dating another demon named Jacob, and they were engaged. She even showed us a ring to prove it. The next week or so was literally like a match between them to see who was the darkest and most involved. in the spiritual world, or whatever.

They'd compare scars on their wrists and brag about cutting themselves and doing things like sneaking out at night. In a move to one-up autumn, Savannah drew a giant pentagram in the parking lot with chalk. Her parents found out, and she backed out, blaming it on autumn. The next freaking day, I swear,

people come to repave the parking lot. The pentagram is now buried under it forever, literally. Savannah moved on to saying her friend had found Jacob's body and was going to put his spirit back inside of it. Savannah continued to take advice from this friend who fueled everything she did. Savannah now said the friend was teaching her witchcraft. We mostly avoided her at this point, but she'd ask us to do similar things like make holy water with her and try to summon her a familiar.

From that point on, she insisted she was a fire witch and walked around wearing all black with Halloween-like makeup on her face. She and Autumn frequently snuck out together and occasionally we'd see cop cars at her house. My sister and I were avoiding them both, but now we'd get fiery texts from both of the them if we hung out with other people, especially our guy friends. Once, they saw us get home and stood in the parking lot pretending to be possessed. Autumn also cut off her hair and claimed to have tried to kill her teacher. My sister and I knew it was bullshit, or at least we hoped, but Savannah took it seriously. She'd go around telling neighbors of terrible crimes she committed or wanted to commit.

She even told us that she'd first seen us outside with hoverboards, and she wished for them to blow up. One day, we saw the police come to her door, and the officers had jackets that said they were from the juvenile justice department. Her mom pulled me, my sister, and our mom aside to explain what was going on. Apparently, two years before, they discovered, Savannah talking with a man online. Her messages to him were, quote, hiring him to come literally kill her parents

after making threats of killing them a few days before. We were able to confirm the story after pet sitting for them and finding court papers about it. We'd known she was on probation, but she'd always tell us different stories as to why. Savannah continued to beg us to hang out with her after that, even inviting herself to spend the night. We avoided her at all costs, but she would follow us everywhere. It kind of died down when Autumn moved out, and Savannah moved in with her family shortly after.

Since then, she started doing service hours at horse stables and graduated high school. I really hope she's gotten happier and more stable. Autumn messaged my sister a few months ago asking to call her mom to confirm she was with us. She wasn't. And later, we saw her with a 19-year-old dude. She's 14 now. My family has moved as well. There were too many incidents in those apartments.

Our new place is so quiet and peaceful, but to Savannah and Autumn, let's never meet again. I'm always ready to upgrade my routines. And in the last few months, I've been chewing lorinochew chewing gum. It's a gum that actually makes your teeth stronger every time you use it. And it's been one of the best upgrades to my routines. Lerenco is a better-for-you-chew-chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made of to support daily enamel health. It's made with nano-hydroxyapatite, which is literally the same mineral your enamel is made of. so it's strengthening and repairing while you chew.

It comes in a bunch of flavors, mint, cinnamon, bubble gum, berry, and they've even got a fluoride-free toothpaste if you want to go all in. I ordered a bunch of their berry, and I've been giving them out to my friends. I'm already a huge fan. It tastes really good. My mouth feels fresh, and it's got that real solid chew to it. Like, it doesn't have a lot of give. That's the type of gum that I like.

It feels good to know that I'm helping my... teeth stay strong and healthy every time I use it. It's just an easy way to make sure that I'm actually taking care of my teeth without changing anything else about my day. Right now, Lorene Coe is offering our listeners up to 50% off at bylorine.com slash meet. That's by Lorene, L-A-R-I-N-E-com slash meat for up to 50% off. When I was in junior high school, I was quite an odd kid. I liked having colorful hair, piercings, and all that kind of stuff.

The school that I went to was near Atlanta. So there weren't many people like me. I tried to find friends that liked the same kind of music and had the same interests as I did. And I could normally kind of brush off any weird energy that people put off and ignore it. But I just wanted friends. Anyway, I was at the gym one day hanging out with a group of weirdos

and there was this guy that I hadn't seen before. He was wearing a Guns and Roses T-shirt and jeans that were about a size too small. His name was Ernest. We immediately clicked with each other in a platonic way, because we laughed a lot at the same things. We started hanging out in the gym together every day, people watching and making fun of people that play basketball. It wasn't too long,

until he started making fun of my appearance and making me feel absolutely terrible about myself. I had really bad acne in high school and he joked saying that I had meth skin. First strike. Me being tough, I kept hanging out with him and eventually it led to hanging out after school. He would invite me over to his house

and we only stayed in his room. He refused to let me meet his family. His parents didn't really speak English, but I still wanted to meet them. I always thought that it was weird that Ernest didn't know Spanish, but his siblings did. And when he did speak, it sounded Russian. He pretty much only played It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on the TV. He rambled about superheroes and would always come up with these strange scenarios where he was an evil villain and how much power he would have. Fast forward.

I get a job at a pizza place. Ernest gets the same job at this pizza place, so inevitably we are always together. Always. I mean, he pretty much never let me out of his grasp. It got to a point where he took me to school every day in his PT cruiser, which is still something that gives me chills every time I see one of those damn shoe-shaped ass cars.

We started skipping school. A lot. I mean, we pretty much went to school about two to three times a week. And this is where it starts to suck pretty bad. He started pressuring me to do sexual things with him. I don't really want to get into details because it's pretty disturbing, but he manipulated me and the situation in such a way that I felt like we were in a relationship because I thought I needed him. He really convinced me that we were a couple, but I was so repulsed by him that I couldn't fully accept that. He started telling our other friends that he had sex with me

and that we were in a relationship. I denied it all. To this day, I deny it. I lied to a therapist. I've lied to my friends. But right now, I'm admitting to all of it. At one point, he ended up living with me and my family. He stayed in the same room as me. He had convinced my entire family that he was gay so that he could live with me. He literally dressed up in pink and put on a scarf and pranced around my aunt to win her over with this fake personality.

I was so used to living in chaos that this was barely a problem for me. During all of this, he was such a rude piece of shit to me as well. I remember asking him for a ride one day. I can't remember to wear. and he just said no for no good reason. I started getting really pissed off because he couldn't actually give me a reason. He just kept smirking at me.

He did this type of thing frequently. We were sitting in the living room and he silently got up and drove somewhere, came back, walked to the living room doorway, and just stared at me for like 15 seconds, then walked into my room. I hear a bunch of rustling, so I storm in there thinking he's up to something

sketchy. He's gotten completely dressed into his sleep pants with his hand in his pocket. He just wouldn't take his hand out of his pocket. At this point, I'm scared. I force my hand into his pocket and I pull out a knife.

I don't remember how the night or days continued after that. Fast forward again, I'm at my best friend Kayla's birthday party and everyone is camping in the backyard. Ernest hated Kayla because she was a way out for me, in his perspective at least. She got in the way of

us. I'm sweating typing this out. This is probably one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me. This sequence of events is a bit blurry, but I do remember it. I had made it clear to earnest at this point in time that we were not a thing and that he needed to let go of that fantasy. I had a crush on this boy named John, and we slept in the same. tent together. Morning comes and I hear earnest outside just asking people if they knew where I was. Someone said, she's in a tent with John. I was scared immediately. I knew something bad was going to happen. The tent rips open. I don't have a shirt on. He begins screaming as loud as he can, cussing all of us out and pitching an absolute fit. Then he storms off. He goes to a

his car and calls me and tells me to get in the car now. Everyone there was freaked out and Kayla advised me not to go to the car because she knew how scary earnest was just as a person. I didn't want anyone to be uncomfortable so I figured that if I went to his car it would ease everyone just a little bit that he wasn't there. I went. As soon as the car door closed, we sped off. fast, very fast.

I looked over at him wide-eyed and he's screaming, crying with absolutely no expression on his face, tears streaming, but emotionless. He says, You were supposed to love me. He said it over and over again. He starts speeding faster.

He says, if I can't love you, then no one else can. I'm actively having a straight panic, hack in the passenger seat. I can't hear because my ears are ringing. I can't see a thing. Meanwhile, Kayla has already called my mom and somehow my mom left the house fast enough to track us down in that PT cruiser. He parks at a church and my mom is watching us. Ernest has a box cutter at his side. I get a call from my mom. I can't remember exactly what she said, but I remember it was something along the lines of,

I'm going to slit your fucking throat to earnest. He started coming to his senses, if you can even call it that, and he drops me off back at Kayla's and tells me that he's going to kill himself after he drops me off. Kayla and I were frantically trying to call his parents about a possible imminent suicide.

However, they could not speak English. He called the police on himself because he thought that he was going to harm himself or someone else. He was gone for a couple of weeks. And when he came back, he parked outside of my school waiting for me to come out. He runs up to me. I noticed that he had a plaid button-up shirt on and it was tucked into his pants, which was extremely odd to me and I knew immediately that it was some kind of fake personality.

He was speaking differently as well. Proper, almost. Like, a few weeks had turned to him. him into a saint. It wasn't long after that that I had admitted myself into a mental institution because I just kept breaking down. Everyone in the groups told me to get rid of him, and I had not realized how serious this was until I saw everyone's reactions to the stories. There are so many stories about this psycho, but I can't even type it all out. I did get rid of him. I found new friends, and without them, I don't know how this would have gone.

I haven't seen or spoken to him in about three years, but let's not meet ever again. A bit of preface here. I was around 10 or 11 years old when this happened, old enough to stay home alone, but not old enough to recognize some red flags. I attended camp over the summer, the typical 8 to 3 routine. My house sits close to the end of my street, which forms a U, but for some reason the bus driver would never drop me off at my house. I would always get dropped off at the end of my street, where I would toddle myself along back home. Both my parents worked late hours, sometimes not getting home until 8 p.m. And it would be very expensive to hire a babysitter for four to five hours a day, five days a week.

So, starting sixth grade, when the bus dropped me off at home, I would be by myself. I'd do the usual middle school routine, play games online and watch TV. occasionally my neighbor's cat would come into my backyard and I would feed and pet her as a way to get outside. The only computer in the house was in my dad's workroom, which has a window overlooking the deck and a window overlooking the side of the house. We have large bay windows in the living room, dining room, and kitchen of my house, and since we sit on a hill, you can pretty much see the entire backyard from a nice vantage point. So most days, when I got home, I'd toss off my backpack and go right to that room, and you could see me walk from my front door and pop up by the computer from the outside. Unfortunately, this would lead to something that I had forgotten about up until now. When I got off the bus, I did as expected, go into my dad's workroom and play computer games.

About 30 minutes into this, I can hear faint meowing coming from the outside window. I paused the game and look outside, thinking maybe my neighbor's cat had wandered over. Nothing. I sat back down and resumed playing, only to hear the meowing again. It was quiet, but noticeable, and so I checked the other window. Nothing again. This routine happened a good ten minutes, and eventually I got frustrated and went to the living room to watch TV. not even two minutes later,

meowing from the window that I was sitting right beside. Now I was confused and a little creeped out, so I shut the blinds and kept trying to watch TV. The meows continued, but only when they came from the window right behind me did I jump and leave the living room officially skewed. I went into the bedroom, where the blinds were still down but cracked just for some sunlight.

I tried to read a book, only to hear the meow come from outside my bedroom window. This was enough to make me call my dad concerned that maybe the cat was hurt, but I couldn't see to be sure. Ten minutes go by, and I get a call from my dad saying he was coming home from work. Nothing urgent in his voice, just that his job had gotten canceled and that he was able to come home early. I thought nothing of it. When he got home, I realized that the cat noises had stopped. Fast forward to the present, and I asked my dad about the strange incident, thinking it was funny that the cat had followed me around.

What he told me next makes my blood run cold. After I called him, my neighbor did indeed come to check out the house. What he found were large footprints, leading in circles. around the house, clustered close to the walls, so close that even if I looked outside I wouldn't see anything. Someone had been stalking me through my house, seeing where I was going through the windows and making cat noises to try and get me to come outside. They must have known that I was home alone, since it was easy to see me, walk by myself down the street and let myself in. My neighbor immediately called my dad and searched the property, but no one was found.

The police were called, since there was nothing but footprints that led off into the woods and got lost, they never saw anyone. My dad stayed home with me for the rest of the week. It sickens me to know that there are people who would just use these tactics to try and lure kids out of their homes, and from there, do whatever they wanted with them. I had a very creepy friend. We'll call him Ben. I believe he might be a dangerous psychopath, or at worst, a serial killer. Ben and I met on Facebook in 2014, and he came to meet me in Romania in the summer of 2015. He seemed a bit odd, but otherwise okay. One strange thing about him was that while he was at my house for a week,

he didn't bathe for some odd reason, so he stink. So I show him around Transylvania and we both rent an apartment in another city before his departure. We hang around and he leaves. Our friendship continues online and in 2016 I moved back to Canada. In May of that year I fly over to Vancouver to hang out with him. Now it's important to know that this guy is a major gun nut. He collects a lot of firearms and claims to have been briefly in the Canadian Army. He also claims he worked as a mercenary and was in Georgia during the Russian invasion

of 2008. He claimed to have shot two people and also suffers from PTSD. I get there and his apartment is filthy. I'm talking trash everywhere, two cats that made the place stink of cat piss. the guy kept the lights on 24-7, and on his wall was a clock that played a very loud tune every hour. His behavior to me while I was there was somewhat disrespectful, but I just took it as a buddy messing around with me. He said mildly creepy things, but again I brushed it off as him being some kind of prankster. I leave and again our friendship continues online. during this time his conversations with me become darker and more hostile

and a passive-aggressive sort of way Ben is also a hardcore alcoholic who drinks until he passes out he does all sorts of antisocial and downright vile things when he's drunk during this time 2016 to 2017 he said that two men briefly lived with him for a short time

time. When I'd press him about what happened to those two men who lived with him, he'd change the subject quickly. After what happened in 2018, I have a strong suspicion something bad might have happened to them. So fast forward to 2018 and me and my parents are driving to Vancouver from Calgary. Perfect time to meet up for a day or two with Ben. Big mistake. Ben. Ben, and is traveling to Vancouver, and we meet up at a bar near his house. We have a few drinks, and he goes home for the night. The next day we meet up, and his behavior towards me is disrespectful in a passive-aggressive way, and very creepy.

We go to his workplace, and he's very subtly disrespectful to me and his coworkers. He's putting me on the spot and trying to make me look stupid to everyone around. He was a supervisor, so most of the people underneath him were too complacent or afraid to say anything. This man is obviously a psychopath. This is where it gets to the point where I believe my life was actually in danger. We go back to his place. He's drinking beer, and I'm rolling a joint. A movie is playing, and Ben is getting tipsy.

He's basically now adopted a speech pattern in our conversation where I feel as though I'm being interrogated and toyed with. He's playing a video game on his computer and I'm watching a movie. By this time, I'm feeling very uneasy and my gut instinct is telling me to leave. Generally speaking, you always listen to your gut. That primal thing inside of you linked to your fighter flight is best to be obeyed. Now, as the day progressed and has been, was becoming more and more drunk. He starts saying very weird things. He was mumbling about,

I don't care for anyone but myself. I don't give a shit about other people. And there it is, a loaded shotgun beside the table. He looks at his computer screen and starts mumbling about being a madman with a gun. A few minutes later, he turns to me and says, hey, what if I put some MDMA in your drink? Followed by, Ha, I'm just kidding. The cat and mouse game continues. Now he starts talking about knowing a guy who is HIV positive

and how he's going to get the guy to give him an infected needle to infect himself with HIV so he can live on government benefits for the rest of his life. This guy is fucking, unhinged. I'm sitting there in disbelief at just how vile he really is. I want to leave, but I also don't want him to know that I'm ready to go. It's an awful, vulnerable feeling if you've ever had it. He has another beer and turns to me. I'm now very uncomfortable. The talk is now about food. He turns to me and looks me straight in the eyes and asks, So if this were your last meal, what will you have?

The look on his face was one of stone-faced sincerity and malice. I knew that I had to flee. My heart was pounding. I need to make my move. With adrenaline rushing through my body, I tell Ben in a very calm manner that the weed I had is making me feel funny and I need a breath of fresh air. I quickly put on my shoes and leave before he has any chance to stop me. He makes me promise I'll be back.

I go down the stairs into the sunlight. I feel like an animal that's just escaped slaughter. The place I'm staying at is not too far from Ben's house. I'm wise enough not to tell him where I'm staying exactly, but I start walking, feeling like I've just escaped certain death. The phone rings. Ben is asking where I'm at and that he's panicking.

I tell him I'm still taking a breather. Meanwhile, I'm arriving at my cousin's house. I somehow managed to get inside. Night's fallen. The guy's calling my phone constantly. When I answer, he's trying to get me to meet up with him and go for a ride. The tone in his voice is flat and fake.

He says that We've just had a bad night. He's desperately trying to get me to go for that ride with him. I block his number. I block him on social media. And that was the last time I spoke to that scumbag. In our many online conversations over the years, then would drop clues here and there about his past,

that he did horrible things during his supposed gig as a mercenary. He would get drunk and, rant about being a bad man having done bad things. He was going to AA meetings and trying to put on a facade of normality by volunteering at some old folks home. Deep down, I do think he was a psychopath, a potentially dangerous one at that, and I just hope that he never actually murdered anyone other than the two people

he allegedly shot while in combat. Vancouver is a very sketchy place full of missing people. I guess we'll never know. Anyone else feel like actual home-cooked meals just don't happen once things get busy? That's been me for a few months. Recording, editing, and somehow still trying to eat like a person who has their life together on top of taking care of the pets, seeing family, going to the gym, taking care of the house.

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They screen out things like high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, and the meat and seafood is high quality. No hormones, no antibiotics. I know what I'm getting every time. At this point, I genuinely don't even think about meal planning. It just happens. My order today looks completely different from when I started. Way more variety, less second-guessing.

And I do want to be clear, it's not just a meal kit. It's more like a meal kit and a grocery store having a baby. So I'm getting both convenience and actual choice. you're going to love Hungry Route as much as I do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first order, plus a free item in every box for life. Go to Hungryroot.com slash meat and use code meat. That's Hungryroot.com slash meat.

Code meat to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. This encounter was not too long ago and solidified in my mind why I always close the blinds at night and why, even in a quiet suburban neighborhood, you should always lock your door. I've been reading creepy stories online since I was about 12 when I first discovered Tumblr and read it. So I have long since taken to checking all the windows and locks before I go to bed

and closing blinds and curtains for fear that I might look out to see some creep in a clown costume with a knife in my garden or a child with their head at a natural angle. I always sort of wished I had a creepy encounter so that I could write about it. But if I never have another experience like this for the rest of my life, it will be too soon. For context, this nice suburban neighborhood, as I say, is the home of my parents. Little town in Cheshire, England, quiet streets where we all know each other. low crime rate except one house which has been heavily burgled twice in about 10 years. Both opportunistic, though.

Once, because the keys were near the front door and the invaders smashed a small pain to reach them and let themselves in, and the other, they left their blinds open overnight, leaving their laptops, wallets, and both cars keys on full display. Anyway, I don't live with my parents anymore, but I was back in town and staying with them for a few days over the summer. I was sat in the kitchen which faces onto the street and working on my laptop, just glancing up occasionally to watch people pass by walking dogs or strolling. I'd see something moving in my peripheral, so, like every time, I looked up hoping to see a dog walker or one neighbor or her newborn grandson. Nope. Two people. A man in a semi-casual suit and a woman in plain

jeans and a blouse, but they were moving weirdly. The woman had her head craned over to one of her shoulders, and her arm on that side was bent backwards and unnaturally upwards with her hand rhythmically flicking. Her other arm randomly but smoothly glided out, guided by her elbow. It was a bit like when you tried to push two magnets together at the same point of polarity. That's how I'd describe it. I have friends with you. with epilepsy, and I've never seen them contort or flick like that. The man looked more like one of those dancing inflatables that you see at a used car dealership. That's the only way that I could describe his movements.

They walked past my parents' house, and I instinctively called to my cat, checking that he wasn't outside with those weirdos. I found him upstairs in my old room. He was looking out the window, and as I followed his gaze, I see two, of the kid neighbors in their double-burgleed house waving across to me. Well, to my cat, but I waved back, all the same from their parents' upstairs bedroom window. I went downstairs to tell my parents about the strange moving people, and my dad just burrowed his brow, asked if they were gone, and said to double check that the door was locked.

I headed back to the kitchen to check our back door and make sure that it was locked. The door doesn't have any windows on it, so you can understand that I jumped out of my skin when, as I put my hand on the door handle, it was pushed down from someone on the other side. I push on the door immediately before anyone can push from the outside.

I also must scream because I hear my dad call back. I hear his footsteps coming through the house. then I hear a loud gasp on the other side of the door and out of the kitchen window. Guess who I see making a retreat? The creepy moving people. By the time my dad's made it through the house, they're gone. He doesn't seem to believe me,

although that also doesn't seem doubting either. He's never seen them before and takes a free pop at me for being discriminatory against potential house guests with movement disorders. We make jokes like this because I had a movement disorder as a kid, and one time a parent wouldn't let me into their son's birthday party because they would be playing Simon Says, and I would make it difficult for the other kids.

But I digress. These people were gone. I don't sleep well due to that movement disorder, actually. And those scary stories I read meant I always listened, to the excessive creaking in this house and the noises on the street outdoors at night. Like people walking home drunk or foxes mating. Most of the sounds are quiet, though.

So imagine my shock when my straining ears are suddenly attacked by a child's scream. It takes me a second to locate the sound and another to lurch from my bed into the window. Looking straight over to the upstairs window, the same one where not 12 hours ago my neighbor's children were waving to me from it. I scanned down the house and saw their front door was wide open.

I shouted to my parents, hoping to wake them up as I flew down the stairs in my PJs, with 999 already dialed on my phone to report this, likely home invasion before I do anything else. I'm remembering to scream, fire, not burglar, as I stride across the road, attempting to wake the other neighbors and gather their support. There are two kids in a teenager in that commonly burgled house, kids who I babysit for 10 years, and one of them just screamed at 2 a.m. with their front door wide open. I make sure I say this out loud to the emergency responder on the phone.

As I near the door, I can see a figure inside. moving frantically. So, after telling the phone responder what is happening and answering their brief questions, I shout into the door from a safe distance some phrases the police gave me to say, The police are on their way. I'm outside with the family and we're getting help. Has anyone hurt? And I also told the intruders, we know you're there. Police don't hurt anyone. The police can help you. I get a response from the upstairs window and step back. onto the road to see the mother holding all three kids in her arms. And she tells me that the middle child, who is nine, found the intruders on the stairs when

she went to get a drink in the night. The girl, Imogen, tells me they're like clowns. This extra detail is the straw that broke the camel's back. And my vision darkens. Shit, I'm gonna pass out. The last thing I hear is Emmy. Telling her mom, I said a bad word. I came to in the middle of the road with a foil blanket on.

I could see lots of blue lights, three police cars, and an ambulance. That one was for me. And I could see my neighbors out of the corner of my eye. My hearing returns as Emmy tells me that her little brother volunteered his soft toy to put under my head because I hit it when I fainted. Suddenly, I'm up and looking around to count all five of the family members. and check for injury. Over the top of their heads,

I can see an arm frantically waving in and out of view. The moving weirdos broke into my neighbor's house. I see the woman is standing still, her head still slumped to the side, just as she's lowered into the police car. I was later told that as I spoke to my neighbors out of their bedroom window, their dad had gone to fight the intruders

and kicked the woman down the stairs as she was climbing them. The man was the frantically moving shadow I had seen from the doorway. Police reckoned they'd been trying doors down our street and finally found one that was unlocked. I told them about the couple trying the door earlier

in the afternoon. I'm guided to the ambulance and sat on the bed whilst the paramedics tend to a large cut on the back of my head from the fall. I vaguely feel them removing gravel, cleaning, and gluing and dressing it, but I'm preoccupied watching two police try to contain the human dancing inflatable man. They can't catch both arms, and at the same time, to cuff him,

so eventually one policeman is cuffed to one of the man's hands, and thus his arm flung every which way as the man continues to move. I have no idea what they've been tried with, if they were on drugs or had a movement disorder. Me and my dad do have a small bet on this matter. Or when the court hearing is yet, but as a key witness, I'll be told when they need me in court. But I would happily go the rest of my life without hearing a kid scream at 2 a.m. and seeing those two weird moving creeps. So creepy dancing people, let's not meet.

I just came out of a relationship and felt like a bit of casual dating would be fun, so I went on to tender. I made it clear to a few people that I actually matched with and spoke to that I didn't want anything serious, just a dinner date or a pub night here and there. I matched with a really cute guy, let's call him Pete. He had just moved to the city and wasn't looking for anything serious. He just wanted to meet some people and see some local spots. For the first night, we met up at a tapas bar.

I chose this place because I had a few friends that were waitresses and bar staff there, so I felt safe meeting a stranger here. He was on time. We had a nice chat, and he seemed like a really cool guy. We spoke about work to which he responded that he's a software developer, and that he's just started his freelancing career. We spoke about where he stays now that he's moved up here. And he says that he's sharing a place with some friends.

rent is quite pricey in this city, so that made sense. He asked where I lived and I told him that I was lucky enough to have my own one-bedroom apartment in quite a nice and popular part of town, mostly thanks to my parents that helped me save and gave me a portion of the deposit money for my 21st birthday, which I invested and grew until I had enough to put down a decent deposit. He then offered to drop me off at home, but I said no, I'd prefer to Uber myself. They asked if this was because I'm going to meet someone else after him, and I laughed because I genuinely thought it was a joke.

The next time I saw Pete was about three days later. He knew it was fast, but he actually couldn't stop thinking about me, and he wanted to see me again. This time, we met at a different restaurant, also one that I chose because I went to school with the owner, and I knew all of the staff pretty well. The place is a bit more pricey, and he got really annoyed with me for ordering as much as I did.

I couldn't understand why, since I insisted on paying for my own stuff both times that we met. That night, same story. Let me drop you off at home. Please. Again, I said no. While we're in the middle of this conversation, he gets a call. He stepped away, but I could still hear a fair amount.

He said, No, I think I'm going to stay with you again. Yeah, I'm with her. Don't worry about it, okay? I'll be home soon. So now, I think he's chatting with his roommate or maybe his mom, but I don't ask. He comes back to our table. Please, I insist, bad things happen to women that Uber this late by themselves.

I'd feel a lot better if I dropped you off. Not having the energy to argue. I tell him fine, and I put my address into his GPS. As soon as he got home, he messaged me, and he tells me he'll be picking me up in the morning to go for a picnic. I reply that I actually have cleaning to do, but again, he insists that he'll see me at 10. Come 10 a.m. that next morning, you better believe he's right outside my apartment. I get into his car, and as he leans over to kiss my cheek, I notice that his breath stinks.

Obviously, I'm a little grossed out. We have our picnic, and it's actually quite nice. nice. He tried to kiss me a few times, but I avoided it with everything in me. By about 4 p.m., I tell him that I really want to go home. And the park we went to is about an hour and a half drive from my apartment, so I couldn't really Uber back because it would cost me a fortune. He agrees it's time to go, so we get into his car and we're off. I fell asleep in the car on the drive back, and when I woke up, he asked if we should finish the rest of the bubbly that we got for the mimosis at my apartment. I said to him, I don't want to, and he snaps. He raised his voice and said something along the lines of,

what are you hiding from me? Just be honest. Why are you so desperate to keep me out of your apartment? I was confused. I actually just kept quiet. He dropped me off, but I could see his car across from my apartment. for about half an hour before he actually left. About five minutes after he left, he let me know that he's home safe and he thinks he's starting

to fall for me. So naturally, I'm freaked out because I made it clear that I didn't want anything serious and he said he felt the same. I said to him, if that's the case, I think we should take a break from hanging out with each other. About five days later, he messages me and asks if we can go to to dinner again. He found an Indian cuisine place that he knows all love. I tell him it's cool. He should just send me the address. He tells me that he'll pick me up. So 7 p.m. comes. He tells me that he's

downstairs and I go down to meet him. And I see he's standing at my gate. I press the remote control to open the gate and he walked inside to meet me. Show me which one is yours. I'd love to see how you live. He didn't say hi. He didn't say how are you. That was his opening line. So now I'm naturally unsettled. I say to him that I'm starving. Could we go to dinner and I'll show him my place at a later stage? At dinner, he gets a call again.

This time he didn't step away. He says, Yeah, I don't know. I can let you know by about 10. Then he turns to me. Am I sleeping by you tonight? He asked. Um, no, I don't know, I have work tomorrow.

Pete to me. Yes, me too. Then he says to the caller, I'll let you know, okay? I can actually hear the caller. No, you're not. Can you just get your things, please? And Pete says, And do what with them?

The caller says, take them to that girl that you're seeing. I'm done asking you. Now, I'm sitting here, an absolute shock and terror. What the fuck is going on here? Our food arrives, and we barely speak. I say to him,

why did you ask me if you could sleep over by me? We're not spending time together like that. You know this. He then spends a story about how he just wanted to hang out and again see how I live. I then say to him very frankly that I don't like having strangers in my apartment. He gets very touched, and the bill arrives.

As per usual, I pay for myself. He pays for himself. I say to him that I'm going to get an Uber home, and he says, what's the use? I already know where you live. Let me drop you off. By now, I've already decided that this will be the last time that I see him. I get into his car, and I reach for my jumper that I threw in the back when he fetched me.

I noticed a bag in the back of the car, full of his car, full of his car, clothes and toiletries as well as a pillow. I don't think too much of it. I don't personally drive my own car, but I know my sister has the most random shit in the backseat of her car. On the way home, he's dead quiet, when suddenly he says, do you know how selfish you are? I had no issue driving you around, but you don't want me to sleep over by you. I say to him that I've never had an issue with Ubering. and if he's so upset, I also have no issue with paying him what the Ubers would have cost me. I'm over this and I'm not even playing nice anymore.

His phone rings again, I hear the caller. Your stuff is at the security boom, at the gate, Pete. Stay with your girlfriend or stay with your mom. You're fucked for taking advantage of everyone like this. Pete responds. I don't speak to my mom. You know this, you bitch. He then hangs up.

Now, I think this may be an ex-girlfriend that he needs to collect things from. Before I even have a chance to process what happened, he turns to me and starts yelling at me. I have nowhere to go. Are you fucking happy, you spoiled brat, living off of mommy and daddy's money, getting driven around by me like I fucking work for you? You bitch, my whole body got stiff with fear. I don't know if I'm going to cry or throw up. In my head, I'm just planning how I'm going to grab my bag

the second he stops and run straight to the cafe under my apartment. If you run through the cafe, you can get to a gate that takes you to the back part of the apartment, and it works with fingerprint access only. There wasn't time to still find my keys in my bag, and I didn't want the main gate that I normally used to open wide enough for him to get in when I go in. He stops at my apartment, and as planned, I jump out.

Run into the cafe, run out back, and use the little gate up to the second floor. However, my apartment is on the fourth floor. I hammered on a neighbor's door. I went inside and told her and her husband everything that happened and asked if they wouldn't mind calling the cafe to explain why I ran through with no explanation in such a state. I blocked Pete, and I haven't seen him since. I'm still not sure what his case was. From what I gathered, he was basically homeless, and I think he wanted to get into my apartment to maybe sleep over for a while.

I'm not sure if that girl that kept calling him was also a tender date that let him into their apartment. And he just never left. All I know is that he scared the living daylights out of me, and I never want to see him again. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If I could wake up tomorrow and instantly be better at one thing, it would probably be putting my phone down. I catch myself doom scrolling before bed way more than I'd like to admit, and I know that's not doing my sleep or my stress any favors. It's been a really hard habit to kick. Better is a feeling defined by you, and for better help, it's a better help therapist who really gets you.

It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries. It's progress, and it's getting better at putting your phone down and actually being present. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash not meet. That's better help.com slash not meet. This isn't scary per se, but it's always creepy when someone you have known forever and thought of as a mentor is revealed to be something much, much different. So I had this boss. His name was Mike, and he had come to fill in for a few months

while my regular boss was on maternity leave. He was pretty amazing. He inspired me to work harder and even ended up promoting me. The two of us and a third employee, all called James, were always working shifts together. It was fun, just laughing and kicking out. because we all had a similar sense of humor, and James and I were definitely the best employees there.

After Mike's time to Phil was over, James and I were super bummed because he was seriously the best manager. He was fair and rewarded hard work and truly cared about the employee's satisfaction. Plus, he just made everything fun, even though we were working harder. We both looked up to Mike as a manager

and a human being. We had the utmost respect for him, and we vowed to keep in touch when we parted ways. Well, fast forward a year or so. James and I ended up dating. We kept in touch with Mike, and he was happy that we ended up together because he thought we were both great people who deserved each other. We saw Mike a few more times and kept in touch over the years through social media. When James proposed, and we started planning on. our wedding, we knew we wanted Mike to be in it. He was part of our trio back before James and I ever

knew that we would be together, and the three of us had a bond. We asked him to read something during the ceremony, and he accepted, expressing how honored he felt. When it got to the day of the wedding, Mike was nowhere to be seen. We kept calling him as the ceremony was quickly approaching, and finally James got a hold of him. Mike told him he couldn't get out of work and wouldn't be able to make it. We were both taken aback a little bit because the Mike we knew and looked up to would never bail like this and not even let us know. We figured there had to be some reasonable explanation and were pretty disappointed, but the wedding had to go on. We had James' niece do the reading even though Mike's name was printed on the program. Fast forward a few more years.

We had only spoken to Mike a handful of time since the wedding, but he had also, taken the time to write me a beautiful and lengthy recommendation letter. There were no hard feelings about the wedding, and James and I still shared the highest opinions of our friend. Mike kind of disappeared off of social media, and the next time we tried calling him, his phone number had changed. James and I exchanged sentiments of concerned and hoped that he was doing okay,

but I didn't go much past that. One day, James got a random call from a number that wasn't, on his contact list. He answered. It turned out to be Mike, so he put it on speakerphone so that I could say hello. We had our brief pleasantries,

but then Mike got into the reason for his call. He wanted to know if he could stay with us for a day or two. My initial reaction was, of course, but James shot me a sharp look. So I added, Well, let's discuss it, and we'll call you back. Before concluding the call, James inquired about what was going on.

Mike had been living with his father to care for him because he was terminally ill, but that he couldn't stay there another night because he had checked the camera footage in their home and seen his dad on tape, standing over him with a knife while he slept. When the call was ended, James said he thought something was off. He didn't really get why he'd instantly felt suspicious. I mean, the story was insane and all, but it was Mike. James just said something like, We haven't heard from him in forever,

and now he's calling us for a favor? He lives two hours away and we're the ones he calls? Why wouldn't he seek help from someone closer? He has family in the area, too. I agreed that it was all odd. And it definitely conjured up a lot of questions, including why were the cameras inside their house. But I still didn't like the idea of leaving Mike hanging if he was truly out of options. I told James we should call him back and probe a little more.

When we called back, James asked if it would be easier to have someone close help him out and asked about his family in the area. Mike gave a vague explanation of why everyone in his life had turned against him. Then with the most mopey disappointed voice, he said, it was okay if we couldn't help, that he understood what was going on. It wouldn't bother us anymore. Well, James and I looked at each other and said that we'd call him right back.

We quickly discussed that this was all very strange, but that he had to be pretty desperate to contact us for help. We acknowledged that his little bit about understanding if we were unable to help was meant to manipulate us and we felt conflicted about everything, but ultimately decided a few days couldn't hurt. We called him back and told him that he could come and figured we'd give him the address and that would be that.

However, he said he no longer had a vehicle and would need to be picked up. We asked about catching an Uber and he said he had no money that he could access at the moment, which we didn't pry on him. It was getting late, and it was a long drive to his location,

so we asked if he had anywhere to stay for the night and we could make the trip in the morning. He said he'd just sleep on a park bench or something, which again we knew was meant to manipulate us, but we didn't cave in that one. We asked where we should pick him up the following day, and he gave us his dad's address. Immediately after we got off the phone, we were like, what the fuck has been going on with Mike that has ostracized him from all his friends and family and caused him to lose his car?

He had been making four times our salary when we first met, had a brand new car, and now he didn't have any money for an Uber. We went and picked him up the next day, and I got out and ran up and gave him a big hug. He seemed oddly unresponsive to my affection, so I just shrugged it off and showed him the front passenger seat where I'd been sitting. He was super tall, so I let him sit up there and I hopped in the back. When we got back to our house, we showed him our guest room, and he put his things down, and then immediately asked if we could take him to the grocery store. James said he was done driving for the day, so I said I would take him, but commented that I thought he didn't have any money on him.

He told me he had food stamps, which there was no way he would have qualified for them with his old job. So I knew something was up, but I wasn't going to dig into the personal details of his finances, so I just logged it in my mind and kept my mouth shut. You might be thinking it just sounds like someone who fell in hard times, and that was basically Mike's story as well, but it was all just very vague and important areas

and full of story after story about people that seemed determined to destroy him for no reason whatsoever. One or two bad eggs is believable, but no one is the innocent victim in every scenario. He was telling us that he had no idea why his life had fallen apart and why those close to him seemed to turn on him out of nowhere. Or why so many people were out to get him

without seeming to have any motivation. Two nights turned into a week, and finally James asked Mike what his plan was. Mike acted hurt and said he'd be gone by the morning. We told him he didn't need to leave immediately, but we'd like to have some kind of an idea, something about his plan, moving forward.

That night in bed, James and I discussed it and decided that we'd tell Mike that he could stay for as long as he needed if he wanted to help out around the house and keep his room relatively clean because it contained several antique items of James' mothers. We also were going to ask him to help me with some entrepreneurial decisions, as Mike had claimed to be a totally self-made successful entrepreneur before his streak of bad luck,

series of unfortunate events, I had recently been laid off. We presented our offer the next day, and Mike excitedly accepted. We thought it was going to be a rewarding trade-off for the parties. Now, this isn't a story about my marriage, so I'm not going to go too far

into the wealth of problems James and I had, but for a little info, James was highly critical of me and often talked down to me and seemed to have nothing but negative opinions. I wasn't perfect, but I wanted to be loved and worked my ass off for James's approval. I was constantly trying to make him happy, but no matter what I did, I would fail in his eyes. After a few weeks, Mike clearly started to see the cracks in the marriage despite the fact that James toned it down in Mike's presence. Trying to be a good wife, I act like it was all fine in front of Mike and never mentioned any dissatisfaction in my marriage. Mike and I started to spend a lot of time alone in our entrepreneurial pursuits. He was supposed to be teaching me the tricks of the trade within several

avenues of making money, but we kept coming out with little success. He had excuses and explanations for why his wisdom didn't seem to be progressing us forward at all. But he was someone I greatly looked up to as a professional and a friend, so I believed that it would all pay off soon, just like he said. After living together for weeks, enough talking among all of us had been done to start noticing weird contradictions to many of the things that Mike had told us, but he always worded things in a way that left a slight amount of room

for doubt if you were to question any of it. There was never a way to straight up catch him in a lie. Mike also wasn't fulfilling his end of our deal and kept saying that he'd take his turn to do the dishes and such, but probably only did it once or twice, and he completely trashed the guest room. Not only was there garbage everywhere, but he'd bring in food and drinks,

and they'd be lost in a sea of clothes and trash, and we could smell things rotting. There was a melted tub of ice cream sitting on the bedside table for weeks. I didn't care as much as James did, and I suggested we just move his mom's things from the room. But I did agree that it was disrespectful. Meanwhile, things were getting more and more icy with James and I, and one day I was out with Mike on a job, quote unquote, and I broke down in tears about how much I was hurting about,

how James was treating me. Mike offered words of comfort and reluctantly admitted that he had picked up on how mean James could be to me and said he was very sorry and that I didn't deserve it. Mike agreed that it was incredibly unjustified but made me promise not to tell James that he'd said anything because he didn't want to appear like he was taking sides. The next day, Mike once again volunteered to take a turn doing the dishes, so I didn't do them. I hate doing dishes, and I happily left them from Mike when he assured me that he would handle it. Well, Mike got a call informing him that his dad didn't have long to live, so he wanted to go see him. James didn't seem at all interested in helping, so I volunteered to take him and stay for moral support, and we headed out.

On the way to see his dad, Mike started to tell me that his dad has dementia and makes weird things up, so he advised me not to take anything to heart. He cited a few examples of things that he had previously said, and they were all more like accusations, one of them being that Mike had stolen all of the money from his savings. I thought that was pretty odd, but couldn't really reconcile the vast difference between the Mike that I had met eight years before

and someone who could rob his dying father. While we were visiting his dad, I didn't say much as I didn't want to insert myself into private family moments. But I kept noticing things that were weird, like his dad was fully conscious and talkative and didn't seem like a dying man at all. He even asked us to get him Burger King in the middle of it all. I kept trying to justify things in my head like,

who am I to say a dying man can't want a final meal at Burger King? A few hours in, James called, I rate that I had left again without doing the dishes, that Mike had promised to do. He chewed me out and threatened to divorce, which was always his go-to to try and whip me into shape, and having the recent affirmations from Mike that I wasn't the only one who saw James' emotional abuse,

I said, Fine, divorce won't be thrown in my face anymore, so divorce it is. Back in Mike's dad's room, his dad was yelling about his will and money and such, and Mike looked at me in a way to signal that the dementia was talking. I had started to really question what happened with his dad and if he was really even dying at all, but it wasn't something I could really handle investigating at the moment, given that I had just separated from my husband on the phone. When we left the hospital, Mike's dad was still alive, eating candy bars.

I had nowhere else to go, so I went back home and slept upstairs on the couch. I didn't speak to James for two whole days, and then Mike said he would talk to his mom and that I could stay there for a week. Then I wondered why his mom wasn't the one helping him if they were in contact and on good terms, but I just accepted the offer. I couldn't stand being at that house anymore. Mike said he was going to go with me and stay there too, which I thought looked really bad. But he said he spoke to James and that he understood and was fine with it.

I spent the entire week crying and talking to Mike about how I felt. He even woke up in the middle of the night with me if I woke up and started spiraling downhill. He made no advances on me or anything of that sort. After a week, I went to stay at my parents. and Mike went back to stay with James. I eventually saw both of them when I'd come over to get things, and in talking with James, he was very much ready for Mike to leave. They barely seemed to talk and didn't seem to be on good terms whatsoever.

One night I got the weirdest impulse to ask James if Mike ever said anything about me that he made him promise not to tell me. James hesitated for a second but said yes, through a series of questions we inched through both of our experiences with Mike. He had been playing into a rapidly declining marriage and was using everything he observed against us. He had been going out and quote unquote teaching me things to make money. And he did the same thing he did as my boss all those years before, told me about my strengths and complimented my ability to catch on to things quickly.

We didn't have much success, but it was very obviously not on account of me. However, he was going back and feeding into James's terrible opinion of me and claiming that we weren't making any money because I was so dense and hard to teach. Mike would also comment on the very things he told me were unacceptable that James did, except he told James he doesn't know how he lives with someone like me and that he'd go insane. He has carefully and strategically forced our marriage to fall apart by exacerbating our personal fears and insecurities and systematically validating and encouraging our resentment for one another. He did it in such a way that neither of us doubted his sincerity for a moment, until I finally got a weird feeling and decided to ask that night.

And even then, I didn't really anticipate finding out that he had been two-faced and manipulative to that. extreme. James kicked him out that night. I haven't spoken to James in one and a half years. I proceeded with the divorce despite this, because even though Mike was an insincere piece of shit, he caused me to get enough distance from James that I was able to see I deserve so much better. Last I heard about Mike was from his mom who called me to see why he'd been asked to abruptly leave James' house. I told her, or what he had done, and she didn't seem surprised at all. I asked if she was aware of any mental problems that he may have,

and she said she didn't want to betray her son by giving out details, but that he isn't right in the head. I asked about several of the traumatic events Mike had claimed to be the victim of, and she said there has never been any evidence that any of it really happened. I don't know why he actively initiated the final downfall of my marriage, because I never felt it was an attempt to be with me. I just don't get what his motivation or gain would have been. Mike's mom texted me a few days after he left James' house

to tell me that he had been admitted to a psychiatric facility and wouldn't be out for a long time. So former boss turned, friend turned, delusional sociopath, let's not meet again. If you're tired of hearing ads and you want to get bonus stories every single week, make sure you head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today. You'll get all of the episodes without ads, add a higher bit rate, plus bonus stories that you won't hear anywhere else.

Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast. If you have a story to share, make sure you send it into Let's Not Meet Stories at Gmb. com and be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like odd trails in the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv.tccounty. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet a True Horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. We'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet. Everybody stay safe.