Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 1x03: Monkeytown - Let's Not Meet

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

Stories in this episode: Monkeytown Horror Story - tantanmeeks94 Sociopath kidnapper in supermarket parking lot - officefern007 RING doorbell stolen and used to scare me - cheeseylump The importance of internet safety. - marthfromhell Creepiest truck driver ever. - SpinPsycho BONUS STORY: He Was Living In Our Crawlspace - scaredsprout Send in your stories: [e-mail] Follow Let's Not Meet: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/433173970399259/  Twitter - https://twitter.com/letsnotmeetcast  Website - http://letsnotmeetpodcast.com  Patreon - http://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast  Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/crypticcounty  

AT&T Fiber presents a straightforward moment. Your wine? Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a Gagillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward.

Me too. Ugh, this wine. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better. No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Gagillionaire with AT&T Fiber, limited availability and select areas, visit ATT.com slash Hypergate for details. My name is Andrew Tate and this is season 1 episode 3 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror

podcast. If you'll recall during the first run of Let's Not Meet, a frequent guest of ours was Soranarnia of the KnifePoint horror podcast. He would come on to tell some of the most frightening stories I could get my hands on. Now he's not my guest for this week, but I will try to get him on as soon as possible. I love his delivery. And hopefully I can do that performance justice because the bonus story at the end of this episode is going to be one that he performed last year. Remember, around the 30-minute mark at the end of this episode is going to be one that he performed last year. Remember, around the 30-minute mark at the end of each episode, I'm going to be doing a bonus story, which will be one of the best stories of the first run of Let's Not Meet as voted by the listeners. So listen now to season one episode three of Let's Not Meet.

I'm a 24-year-old male who was born and raised in Northern New England. I grew up hearing all the scary stories and urban legends that haunted my dreams, but there was one local legend that everyone in my high school knew about, Monkey Town. Monkey Town was supposed to be a Christian retreat camp. You'd have to take this road in between a funeral home and a cemetery down this big hill, and you'd enter what looks like the set from the movie The Village from 2004. It was a big circle of old-style houses with a big white church in the middle. I'll describe it more later in the story, but it was always a dare to see how far you could walk down into the camp without chickening out. I remember a couple of times in middle school, a few friends and I made it halfway down the hill, then bitched out.

The year was 2011, junior year. I had just gotten my license in my first car, a classic Chevy Blazer. One night I was driving around with two friends, one who went to the same high school as I did, let's call her Bessie, and one who didn't will call him Kale. Bessie and I thought it might be funny to take Kale down to Monkey Town to see what happens. So the three of us hopped into my blazer, and there we went. I remember putting on some of the instrumental music from the movie Halloween to set the mood and how dumb that was. As we got down the hill, mind you, we are in the car the entire time. We made our way around the circle, mesmerized by this entire community separated by society. One thing that stuck out was this red light at the top of the church's steeple.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. That's when I remember thinking, no way. I quickly turned my head to the left, and I see a giant man in overalls running at full speed towards my car. The most fucked up part about this man is that he was carrying a bat or a tool of some sort. I didn't even think. I slammed on the gas and we got the hell out of there.

The three of us couldn't believe what the fuck just happened. I'm pretty sure we just went back to the house to recover from the scare. We passed out. all was well. The next day, I was chilling with another friend, James, and his girlfriend, Sadie. I had just told them about last night's events, and they sure as shit didn't buy it. Me, a 17-year-old teenage boy, wanted to prove them wrong, so we all jumped into my blazer and headed back to Monkey Town. This time, my blazer was full. We had picked up two other girls who coincidentally had the same name and another buddy of my name Joe. I made James drive my blazer

and I sat shotgun. As we all headed down the tension rose. We got halfway around the circle until one of the girls started screaming. This time there were at least five men running at my car, and three of them definitely had weapons. James didn't know what to do. It's like he froze. The men were all yelling, get the fuck out of the car! They were legitimately shaking my car back and forth. I remember being crouched down so far in the seat as if that did anything. Finally, James slammed

on the gas and peeled out of there. As we began taking all my friends home, I got a call from my mom, apparently, two police officers were in my kitchen. One of the monkey town civilians had called the police and told them that we were trying to run them over. What bullshit? I was furious. We raced to my house to explain to the officers

what actually happened. All in all, the cops didn't seem too interested. No crime was committed. To this day, I can't help but think what would have happened if we had gotten out of that car. What kind of Christian retreat camp was that? My husband and I were at the supermarket, and our baby was being especially fussy. So he took her for a quick drive while I shopped, and the motion of which usually calms her

down. It only took about 10 minutes to settle her, and I was still in the store. However, I was unsure how much longer I'd be, plus there's poor cell reception inside, so he pulled back into the parking lot to wait for me. It was an unreasonably nice day, so he took her in the car seat to sit on one of the benches outside of the store. He took a business call and had just set them down. Absent mindedly, rocking the carrier, when a woman well-dressed mid-30s average height and fit build approached them. It's not uncommon for people to ask

to play with our baby. She's got big red, rosy cheeks, soft wisps of golden hair, and the most adorable, gurgly, toothless grin, especially when she's deep into a good nap. But her nap schedule is paramount, so my husband was preparing to tell the woman she actually couldn't play with her baby right then. She walked over right in their direction, brimming with nonchalant confidence, and before he could even finish his sentence explaining that she was napping, and not to be touched. She picked up the carrier and started walking off. He was in shock for a minute, not fully believing someone would be bossy enough to do something so sinister and plain daylight. So he said, Excuse me, put her down. And his panic mounted.

She remained calm this entire time. But when he called after her, she started walking away more briskly than when she had approached. He ran full speed ahead, tried to grapple the carrier out of her hands, finally resulting to restraining her arms. The woman yells, help! He's trying to take my baby! Kidnapping! 911, help! Kicking him in the shin and pulling a pink bottle of pepper spray out of her handbag. Of course, no one in the parking lot was clocking the earlier interaction and

assumed he really was a kidnapper. A lone man and a dead pulled T-shirt versus a tiny well-dressed woman. Immediately, a man knocked my husband to the ground and was holding him down. I could hear bystanders encouraging the woman to file a police report, but she was doing a very convincing job of acting shaken up and insisted she just wanted to get home. To make matters worse for my husband, she was driving a minivan. He was in a raw state of panic, realizing the entire parking lot had just banded together to inadvertently facilitate the kidnapping of our daughter. He was begging and pleading with them, but no one was listening.

They just kept screaming at him that the jig was up and he needed to lie still and wait for the police and stop terrorizing a young mother. My husband finally had the novel I did to show them family pictures on his phone, but too panicked to think clearly, this manifested as him shouting, I have pictures of the baby on my phone, which of course everyone interpreted as him having either stalking photos or worse, pornographic images of the baby. It was at this point that a man, I can't entirely blame the man considering what he thought was going on, kicked my husband as hard as he could in the ribs.

It was at this point, I was coming out of the store, and I thought he was being robbed by these people. I was yelling for security, so panicked, my chest constricted, and I could barely get out any sound. It was only then I realized he did not have our baby with him. When I saw she was being held by a woman, I was relieved. I thought maybe the woman had intervened to move my daughter out of harm's way while my husband was being robbed and was walking away to get help. I couldn't find security outside of the store, so I ran up to the

people holding my husband down, waving my wallet, pleading, take everything you want, just let him up, leave us alone." One of the men holding him down said something like, lady, we need to wait for the police to deal with him. And I was so confused, why would the muggers have called the police? I just kept stammering. What do you mean? What are you talking about?" And made out someone saying, he tried to abduct that woman's kid. I didn't understand. I was sure I misheard him. My husband would never hurt a child. And we have four kids. If he were

going to commit a crime, bringing home another kid would be at the bottom of the list. I kept trying to understand what the man was saying, and suddenly it all clicked. I looked around for the woman who had the baby carrier, and she was halfway across the parking lot. I went into total ballistic tiger cub mode, literally leapt out of my heels and sprinted across the parking lot. Now, I'm not a UFC fighter, I've never even taken a self-defense class, so all I could think to do was grab this woman by her hair and squeeze her throat with my other hand. Which didn't do much. She was getting away even as I grappled with her. Amazingly, none of the other bias standards had yet to connect that my husband was telling the truth and this woman was taking my baby.

I yanked on her hair as hard as I could and that was enough to make her drop the carrier. I was so scared and surprised that I actually threw myself on top of the carrier, covering the entire thing like a blanket, and stayed that way without saying or doing anything else. The woman left. No one person tried to stop her. Even though she was clearly leaving without the child, she claimed was hers, which would be pretty damn incriminating if I'd watched the scene unfold. Within the next couple of minutes, police had arrived. After all that, there were still several bystanders who explained that it was my husband who was trying to kidnap

the baby. The police, to my horror, assumed that she must not have had bad intentions. The first question they asked me after getting her description weren't investigative. They were questions thinly veiled, trying to convince me not to pursue charges, still placing the blame on my husband. They asked things like, do your husband and the baby look dissimilar? Is there any chance she thought he was abducting the baby and she was trying to intervene? Could your husband have been doing something inappropriate or violent to the baby that would make her feel compelled to take the baby from this situation? Did she seem groggy or confused? Could she have mistaken either of them for her own family members? They spent more time verifying that the baby was actually mine than they concerned themselves

with the fact that the baby was not actually hers. My husband had called his brother at that point who works in an office with a lot of lawyers and connected with one as soon as possible who gave us the priceless advice to get every officer's name and badge number, to request copies of the store's security tapes right away, and to escalate our complaint, hire up the chain if these officers weren't taking this seriously. Finally, we had reason enough to believe we were being taken seriously and we went home and both just shook and cried until we had to get our other kids from school. My husband is seething with rage and grappling with the feeling of helplessness from how little he was able to do.

And he has two cracked ribs from the man that kicked him. To the officer's credit, they did ask if he'd like to press charges, but considering the man was genuinely convinced at the time that he was on the right side of intervening in a kidnapping and stayed to talk the police and apologized profusely when the truth came clear. He declined to press charges. Amazingly and frustratingly, there were still people who stuck around to talk to the police who were giving my husband dirty looks, and one man who even implored the police to involve CPS to verify it was really our baby. Parking lot kidnapper and parking lot skeptics. You better hope we don't need.

I live in a pretty rough neighborhood. I have four of their housemates, but they're all away for the holiday season. At Christmas, I was gifted one of those ring doorbells that has a camera. I attached it to the frame outside of my door, which looks outwards towards an old pub. A couple of days went by, and then a postman rang the doorbell, which was pleasant, because it worked like a treat. However, a couple of days later, on my way back from work, I noticed that the bell had been stolen. I hadn't even thought about this. Of course, it had been stolen. I was annoyed, but I wasn't surprised. This is where it gets creepy, though. Last night, the doorbell rang through my phone. It was very late, and I was still alone in the house. The screen was completely dark,

but it was just an image of the house. The person that stole it was sitting outside filming my house with my own doorbell. I was shaken. The area is rough and I've been assaulted and robbed once before. The image quickly turned black as if the culprit had placed the doorbell back in their pocket. I peered out the curtain out around the area where I thought the person had been filming the house from. But no one was there. So, a long time ago, I had a falling out with a friend who liked to cyber harass people she didn't like. Because I knew of this, I took precautions on all of my social media and added the two

step verification where it would send codes to your cell phone if someone tried to log in or change your password. Seems like a safe step, right? I never thought about it any further until a few days ago. I got a random SMS text from a random number that addressed me by my full first name, which freaked me out a little because the spelling of my

first name is pretty uncommon where I'm from. No big deal. Maybe it's just an old friend who changed phones. I gave the classic, who's this? Back at them, to which I received an even stranger text back. Oh my goodness, it's you. Are you 18? I have something I want to cash at you. Well, that's weird, I thought.

Probably just some scan to hack my cash app. I said again, who the fuck is this? I never received a text back from that number. No less than five minutes later. I got three calls and two spam voicemails from a different unrecognized phone number. Then a text. Pick up the phone and they address me by my full name. This is alarming. I immediately took screenshots and had my boyfriend call from his phone, but no luck. I blocked the number and hoped that that was it. Maybe 30 minutes later, I get five calls from a new number, and a new, even more alarming

set of texts. I am a 40-year-old man, and I am in love with you. I will keep trying to reach out until you respond. I won't stop. I immediately blocked the number and called my parents. Within two minutes, he made a new number and texted me again. Wow, I just wanted to talk to you for five minutes. I'll even pay you, but after that, consider me gone. Again, blocked. I alerted my boss, then the text stopped.

After work, I filed a police report and bought a baseball bat, then set up some security alarms in my apartment. My first instinct was that it was a guy I had recently worked with who had been fired recently for sexual harassment. One of my friends, who's also a coworker and good with tech stuff, changed his phone number and texted the number pretending to be me on a burner to get some more information out of him. It was a bit of a long conversation so I'll sum it up by saying that this guy basically wanted me to talk on the phone while he chirked off. He called me 26 times and

got no answer so he stopped trying. We assumed that that was the end of it. The next morning, I get a text from a new number again. He was claiming to be one of my friends' fathers. I started to freak out. Both of my parents and my boyfriend were at work, so he sent his mom over to calm me down and stay with me while I was alone in my apartment. He called my phone again and she answered. However, all that he said was, please, in a creepy, raspy voice, then abruptly hung up. I was having a full-blown panic attack at this point, so she called the police department and had an officer come out to update my report.

She was still texting the guy while the cop was there, and once she told him law enforcement had been contacted, his whole story changed. He said he doesn't know me or anything about me, he doesn't even live near me, and means no physical harm. He's just a lonely guy who got my phone number from Facebook and decided to harass me. I might remember this wrong, but I could have sworn I had my phone number set to private, but I know I still had it up there because of the two-step verification. I recently posted something on Facebook

market, so I'm assuming that's where he found me. I have since deleted my account and changed my phone number, and nothing else has happened. So creepy dude online, let's never meet. or I'll be busting your fucking kneecaps. Being a young woman in a nearly exclusively male dominant industry, I have plenty of stories about creepers I have encountered over the years. This particular story is about one creep who is likely the worst of them. At the time I was working for a steel pipe processing plant as a receiver. Trucks with 40-foot long pipes would come in, and it was my job to offload them with a giant forklift. First though, I had to collect the BOL from the driver. BOL stands for Bill of Lating.

It's a shipping document that has information about what's on the load, where it's going, and where it's from, etc. So I would retrieve the BOL from the trucker and I would compare the sheet to the cargo and sign off on it if everything checks out. I would see a lot of the same drivers on a regular basis. I got a lot of joking comments about how I looked too young to be driving a machine that size. A few of them asked me out, but I'm married, and most of the guys respected that. So when I encountered a new driver from one of the trucking companies, it really didn't surprise me

when one of the very first, if not the first thing he said to me was, how old are you? 23, I replied, with a half-hearted chuckle. Are you married? I'm engaged. So pretty much. I replied, starting to get reasonably uneasy about this guy. Not wanting to make small talk or answer any more increasingly personal questions from this guy that I just met.

I asked him for the BOL. Anything for you, sexy girl. Um, excuse me, what did you call me? It's really sexy to see a girl like you driving a big truck. Now I'm a bit of a hothead, and need to stand up for myself in situations like this or else I risk becoming a welcome mat for this kind of attention. He hands me the paperwork with the trademark creepy grin like he was getting off on the fact that I was within grabbing distance from him. Listen, old man. I said as I snatched the paperwork out of his hand. I do not come to work to be spoken to like that.

I'm here for a paycheck, not a date. What? It was just a compliment. Don't be like that, sexy girl. Don't fucking call me or say anything to me that you wouldn't say to any of your male co-workers. I have a fucking name, and it's not fucking smart to talk to anyone like that before you know what it is. A bet? It's bitch. He said. I signed off on his shit, dropped his copy in the mud, and went over to the other driver waiting in line, took his paperwork, and made creeper wait about 30 minutes,

offloading two other trucks before I got to his. We have a safety rule that the driver must be inside the truck while it's being offloaded, so I took this opportunity to be a bigger bitch, laid on the horn of my truck and angrily yelled at him to get in your fucking truck. After I offloaded him, I went to my supervisor and told him what had happened. Not a formal complaint, but to make him aware of everything that transpired and to let him know that the driver might end up complaining to his superiors about how long it took me to see to him. My supervisor sided with me.

He knows that if I lost my shit on someone they deserved it, he knew about a few other incidents prior so he was supportive. He told me to report anything else that this guy does that's fucked up, and said he'd be willing to send someone else over to deal with that particular driver if and when he brought another load. Later on that day, he made a funny comment about how sexy I looked in my uniform, which is oversized overalls, grease stained high-vis hoodie, boots, and a hard hat. I didn't wear makeup or perfume to work.

I looked like and was mistaken for one of the guys on a few other occasions. So the creeper must have been thinking, oh my god, a girl must say nasty shit. Anyway, I thought I made things pretty clear to the creeper and that he wasn't going to bother me anymore. Nevertheless, I wasn't keen on the idea of having to walk up to his cab to get the paperwork from him again. The next day, I guess, who shows up with

a new load. I call over the radio. My favorite driver is here. Can someone come grab his paperwork? A couple of minutes go by and one of the co-workers. I get along with, well, drives up in his smaller tow motor to approach the driver for his BOL. I waited off to the side and took the opportunity to have a smoke next to my machine while I waited for my co-worker to come back with his paperwork.

He comes back and of course, he wants the scoop on everything that's happened the day before. I guess the driver asked why I wasn't there to collect the BOL. Co-worker told him I was busy. Meanwhile I was having a smoke and clear view. And no hurry to offload the asshole. I told the coworker what transpired when suddenly my coworker interrupted me. Uh, don't look. but I think he's taking pictures of you. Of course, my head whipped around and sure enough. Buddy was holding his phone up, pointing it at me, taking pictures, I assume.

I scurried up into my machine and got on the radio for my supervisor. Your favorite driver is taking pictures of me. 10-4. All-call security. Do not offload him. Given the nature of what we do and why we do it, there's strict security guidelines at this place. Once a month, we had a bomb-sniff or dog and spec the property.

It was that big of a deal. So even if he wasn't taking pictures of me, he had no business taking pictures on the property. It was that big of a deal. So even if he wasn't taking pictures of me, he had no business taking pictures on the property. Security shows up, and I watch as the driver hands him his phone. My coworker was there with him, and later told me that the guy said he was trying out his new phone, bullshit, but whatever. They didn't find photos of me, or the property on his phone, but he had a few minutes to delete them. Either way, he was barred from the property, and my supervisor reported him, and what had happened the day before, to the driver's employer. I never saw him again, but the story doesn't end there.

Few weeks later, another driver from the same company. Nice guy that I had a good rapport with, filled me in on my favorite driver. Your buddy got candy. Oh, that's too bad. I'm gonna miss him. Yeah, he was on thin ice, because the girls in the office were getting weird vibes

from him, always hanging around the office is way more than necessary. Nothing to fire him over though, but his police check came in. Turns out he has prior sexual assaults on his record. Oh, lovely. So wherever you are, creepy predator truck driver, let's not meet. I have a phobia that goes by the name Scopophobia, the fear of being watched. I have this weird compulsion. Whenever I see a doorway, a window, or virtually any surface that I believe someone could hide behind, I imagine a face peering out at me, staring.

I imagine what I would do. What could I do? Well, you'll soon find out why I have this phobia. I'll try my best to remember all of the details, but my mind has repressed a lot of it. Around June of 2016, my mother and I were living in a small apartment. There was no basement or attic, obviously, but there was one tiny crawl space in the closet floor of my bedroom. I never looked in it. I suppose some people would have been overwhelmed with curiosity, but my mind had already imagined all of the worst scenarios. I decided to leave whatever dead bodies and ghosts were down there for whoever rented after us.

It was a nice apartment, small but perfect for the two of us. We lived there for a few peaceful months until the noises started. It was nothing extreme, just the odd bump in the night, and particularly the scratching. My mom just brushed it off as rats in the walls as long as they stayed in there. I had no reason to get rid of them. But we could too later. I had already grown used to the noise. It became almost comforting in a way. After all, I never really liked silence. That as until I woke up one night to a different noise, a rolling sound, eerily similar to the sound that my closet made when it opened.

I peaked my eyes open and looked over, but I couldn't make out anything in the dark. I thought maybe I saw something move, but I was well aware of how the mind placed tricks on you in the dark. There was only one way to find out. I turned on my lamp. I feel like crying, just writing this out. It's been almost a year since I've had to recall this night, when I turn on the light, I expected to just see a closet full of coats, but what I saw was much, much worse. It was an eye, not just an eye, but the entire half of someone's face barely visible in the tiny crack that they had opened. They didn't even react to being caught, no smile, no fear, just watching.

My heart has never beat faster than that night. I wish I would have screamed or maced him or anything, but I just stared back, frozen in time until I couldn't hold it in anymore. I began sobbing, loudly. I think I tried to say something along the lines of, what do you want? But it was garbled, am I crying? He opened the door more. I could now see his entire body. Which I don't care to describe as I've been spending the last two years trying to forget that face. Then he shished me.

Shhh. I lost my breath at that. Hearing him made it real. I couldn't pretend that this was some fucked up hallucination anymore. At this, I sat up and pressed my back against the wall. It's okay, he said, then he called me by my name. So cheerfully, then he called me by my name. So cheerfully, it gives me chills remembering it. This is when I finally had the courage to run out of the room. This creep knew my name, my fucking name. My mom still had to sleep while she called the police, thought I had imagined it. Of course, by the time the police got there, he was already long gone. All that was left of him was that damned crawl space.

I still never looked inside. Though writing this now, I kind of wish I did, having some sort of proof of this would, I don't know, maybe comfort me. Because at least, you would all know that I'm not crazy. The apparently hid been living in there. For how long I don't know, but the officers who first arrived on the scene said that there were tally marks inside the crawl space. I don't want to know how many, and I don't know whether he was marking days or weeks.

I just wanted to leave that fucking apartment. And we did. The police never found him, not for certain. They thought they found a homeless man who matched his description, but he was apparently unresponsive. I always thought they didn't take it all that seriously. They just thought he was a squatter. Even after I told them that he knew my name, they thought that given how long he had seemingly

been squatting, he had probably just heard my name through the floorboards. Since that night, he has been the face I always see when there's an open door or closet. It's going voter-storted. His time goes on, but I can always make out part of his purse lips as if he's still shushing me, even now. It's gotten easier with time, but I don't think I'll ever get over it, and it'll never leave me completely. Anyways, I guess we didn't actually have rats. Thanks for listening to season 1 episode 3 of Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast. This week you have heard Monkey Town Horror Story by Tan Tan Mix 94, sociopath kidnapper and supermarket parking lot by OfficeFern007, Ring Doorbell Stolen and Used to Scare Me by Cheesy Lump, The Importance of Internet Safety by

Martha from Hell, Creepy as Truck Driver Ever by Spin Psycho, and finally a retelling of he was living in our crawlspace by Scared Sprout. Don't forget to visit Let'sNotMeatPodcast.com for links to the social media. We have a Facebook group that everyone's very active in. I also have a Twitter link on there. And there's also a link to email me at Let's Not Meet Podcast at gmail.com if you have any stories or if you would simply just like to let me know what you think of the show. Also visit patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet Podcast or follow the link in the show notes.

If you'd like to be a patron and donate monthly to the podcast even if it's just a book, everything helps and it's greatly appreciated. You'll also hear your name on the last episode of every month, so look for that at the end of this month. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode with some brand new guests on Let's Not Meet. before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a Gagillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward.

Me too. Ugh, this one. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better. No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Gagillionaire with AT&T Fiber. Limited availability in select areas. Visit AT&T.com slash Hypergig for details. TNT Fiber.

Limited availability in select areas, visit at ATT.com slash Hypergig for details.