Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 2x01: Grey Cloud Island - Let's Not Meet

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

Stories in this episode: Small Town Stalker - Keri Hargus Grey Cloud Island - Randyb My Story - Monica Medaris 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   

Amplify your career through training and development solutions specifically designed for federal government professionals. From courses to help you attain or retain certification to individualized coaching services, to programs at home, your leadership skills, and business acumen. Management concepts optimizes your professional development. Online in-person, individually, or groups. It's training that's measurably better. Learn more at managementconcepts.com. That's managementconcepts.com. My name is Andrew Tate and this is season 2 episode 1 of Let's Not Meet the True Horror Podcast. This happened to my mom back in 1987, when she was around 17 years old. She's told this story to me many times, and I thought this would be the perfect place

to share it. My mom and her family lived out in the country ever since she was a little girl in a very small town in South Texas. The neighborhood was very tight-knit. Really, the entire town was the same way. It was and still is a very close community where everyone knew everyone, which is why this story is so creepy. One summer night, my mom was visiting her boyfriend at his apartment as she had done almost every night for weeks. She had just graduated high school and was soaking up some of that freedom. The apartments were located in a large residential neighborhood. It was a fourplex apartment, two

stories, two apartments on each level, so it was very small. My mom always parked in the same spot in the back of the building because there were only a few spots in the front which were reserved for the residents. There were no other parking spots around the building, and the road in front of the apartments was fairly narrow, and no one ever parked there. My mom usually went home around 1 or 130 am. This night her boyfriend fell asleep early so she decided to head back home around midnight. She got into her car and pulled out of the small lot.

She immediately noticed a truck parked idling on the narrow road in front of the apartment. It was parked partly in the grass and partly in the road. That's what made her notice it immediately. And as I said before, no one ever parked there because there wasn't much room. She thought she recognized the truck and believed it to be her best friend's boyfriends truck. Occasionally my mom's friend and her boyfriend randomly showed up at the apartment to hang out. She slowed and rolled down her window to say hello and to let them know she was already leaving, but the driver did not reciprocate.

She couldn't see the driver well because of the time of night and the extremely dark tinting on the windows, which also freaked her out a bit, so she only stayed for a second before figuring out it wasn't who she thought it might be, and then she drove off. My mom drove through the residential area where the apartments were located, which served as a quicker route to the outskirts of town where she lived. She made it to the back roads that led to her house in only a few minutes and had come to a halt at the stop sign.

She sees a vehicle trailing behind her, but it was far enough not to raise any red flags. She just shrugged it off and figured that they were going to town for some reason, which would require them to turn left. She turned right and headed home. She was surprised to see that the vehicle also turned right, heading in the same direction as my mom. It was close enough now for her to realize that it was the same truck from the apartments. She was starting to feel really uneasy at this point. Why was this driver seemingly following her? Why were they outside of the apartment at this time of night?

She didn't think to try and lose the driver before she got home because like I said, everyone knew everyone and of course, the small town cliche, nothing bad ever happened there, rang true in her head. It took about 10 minutes to get to our house. She pulled into her driveway, got out of her car as quickly as possible and ran into the garage, all while trying to remain calm. She hid behind some old furniture that was being stored in the garage as not to be seen, and she watched the truck slowly

drive by. After the truck was a safe distance past her, she peeked out of the garage and she saw it pull into a driveway, several houses down. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and laughed at herself for being so paranoid. But that relief was short lived. The truck then slowly backed out of that driveway and started to head back towards my mom's house. She bolted into the house through the garage, locked the door and crawled to the large bay windows in front of her home.

This window is huge and has three almost floor-length panels. She waited a minute, and then slowly stood up to look out the window. What she saw still haunts her to this day. A man was standing there. He was directly in front of her, standing on the road and an abnormally wide stance with his arms crossed. The living room was pretty dark, so he couldn't have seen her, but she hit the floor again and crawled to her bedroom, directly into bed, covering herself up with the blanket. Normally, she would have closed her bedroom door, turned off the light, turned on the TV, and started getting ready for bed. This night, she laid in bed, with her bedroom door wide open in the covers up to her eyes.

She stared out of her bedroom window that faced to the backyard. She didn't have any blinds only curtains that were wide open, of course, but there was a small shelf that obscured part of the window. Not more than two minutes had passed when she saw him walk directly in front of that window. She said that she wouldn't have noticed if she didn't already know he was at the house or if the lights were on in her room. She was terrified. My mom believes he had gone around to the back or side windows to make sure the lights

were off and everyone else was asleep or he was wondering why my mom's bedroom was still dark when normally it would be lit up, and he had walked around to investigate. Then, not a minute later, his head slowly came into view from the side of the window, and he was staring into my mom's room. She absolutely lost her shit at this point. Through her covers off, jumped out of bed and ran to her parents room. She yelled that there was a man looking through her window, and her dad, my grandpa, got out of bed and grabbed his shotgun.

He went outside and searched all through the yard, but found no one. My mom says the man most likely saw her run to her parents room because the hall directly outside of her bedroom was illuminated by a night light, and he would have been able to see into the hallway. He would have had enough time to Rondour's truck and drive off by the time my grandpa got outside. My mom says the most terrifying part of the whole ordeal was that she believed this was not the first time the man had been to her home. She had an eerie feeling that he was waiting for her at her boyfriend's apartment earlier that night, like he knew exactly where she would be.

It wasn't hard to pinpoint her location because she pretty much followed the same nightly routine since graduation. She also said that there was no way. He could have found her bedroom window so quickly had he not been there before. The house was relatively large and had many windows in all of the rooms including the bathroom, but he knew exactly where to go. Another terrifying part of the story involves my mom's dog, Lady. Lady barked at literally everything, even at my mom every single time she pulled into the driveway.

My mom later realized that night she had never heard Lady barking when she arrived home earlier because her mind was obviously somewhere else. Then they realized Lady was gone, and the backyard gate was wide open. Early the next morning, they found her safely roaming the neighborhood. The mom thinks that the man must have visited their home earlier that night before going to the apartment, to release Lady from the backyard so that she wouldn't warn my mom that there was someone back there. The man obviously knew Lady was there, and that she barked regularly. So he let her loose. Most strangers were normally afraid of the dog because she was a large German

shepherd. Obviously this man was not afraid of Lady. He could have gone back there before that night and easily calmed the dog with some treats whereby petting her because she was a sweet dog and warmed up to most people very quickly. My mom can't help but believe that the man had more sinister plans that night. She believes that if she wasn't more aware it could have ended much worse. My mom frequently kept her bedroom windows unlocked and even cracked them just a bit most nights as she liked to hear the whistling of the wind as she slept. Her windows were unlocked that night.

Fortunately, my mom doesn't believe the man ever came back. She thinks he was too scared to ever try it again after getting caught, but she knows she must have known the person because of how small the town was back then. My grandpa also installed floodlights directly over my mom's bedroom window the following day. My mom thinks about that night often, and still gets chills. She actually lives in this house again because it was left to her after my grandparents passed away.

So there are constant reminders of that night. She wishes she would have remained calm enough to get a good look so she could identify the man. She always made sure to be watchful after that night and warned me and my sister to do the same. So peeping Tom that seemingly stalked my mother and almost likely had much darker plans that night. Let's not meet. MikeLates.com's got something for everyone, with over 500 Texas license plate designs to

choose from. Like Boulder T, the biker, who loves his rescue kid. My personal last plate on my route for my little binky. Judy W, the tailgator, who loves to grill before the big game. MyPlate sports my team color, yeah. All of this happened yesterday morning, so I wanted to get it into writing as soon as possible. My girlfriend and I were both sitting around, thumping through dumb content on our phones together. It's early June here in the Twin Cities, and according to the weather, it was going to be a beautiful day. It was a rare Sunday morning where

neither of us had to work so we were also trying to figure out what kind of adventure we could get ourselves into. By 9am we decided we were going to go to the local zoo. We both started getting ready and as I waited for her to finish putting her makeup on, I decided to plot back down on the couch and surf social media. Within a few minutes, I wound up stumbling upon an article that my cousin had posted. It was something along the lines of the most haunted place in Minnesota, and you've probably never even heard of it. My girlfriend and I both have a fascination for all things Macabre, so naturally, I clicked on it. My girlfriend and I both have a fascination for all things macabre, so naturally I clicked on it.

The article was pretty short, and it focused on a very small town called Grey Cloud Island. A quick Google Maps search showed me that it was only about 25 minutes from where we lived. Even with its close proximity to my home, I'd never heard of it. According to the article, the town is located on a small island in the middle of the Mississippi River. It has no police force or fire department of its own, and is sparsely populated by fewer than 300 residents. A single Google search showed that the island itself had been populated for over 2,000

years. It had been a significant burial location for both the Dakota Sioux and the Hopewell people that predated the Sioux by centuries. Hopewell burial mounds were said to still be dotted throughout the island. Very prominently featured in the article was the French settlers' cemetery

that had been continually used since 1873. This cemetery was said to be the epicenter of the paranormal activity on the island. Sightings of a spectral su-chief, wondering the cemetery alone holding a green lantern, a woman sobbing over the grave of her long dead infant, a row of graves that when you count each of them from west to east they total 12, but when you count them from east to west they total 13. This is all I needed here, without doing any further research on the subject I turned to my girlfriend and said, never mind the zoo, we're going on a spooky adventure. She was more than game.

To my surprise when I typed the cemetery into my GPS, it came right up. About 20 minutes later we were getting off the busy highway 61 and heading south on Grey Cloud Island Drive. Once we were less than a mile off of the highway, the din of the highway and the city completely disappeared. The town was nothing more than a blip on the map. Boarded up farmhouses, collapsed barns and large parcels of unkempt land were pretty much all that that quote unquote town had to offer. We drove by a small abandoned brick building that said Grey Cloud Island Town Hall. This was the only municipal building in the entire town, at least as far as I could see.

This was a grey day that was unreasonably cold, much more like a November afternoon than a June one. The island was completely windless, though the quickly moving clouds overhead, gave off that feeling of electricity that is usually only present and late fall. A little further down the road, the GPS told me to turn left onto a dirt road. The only problem was this dirt road appeared to be either a private drive or someone else's driveway.

I pulled in nonetheless and noticed that about 20 feet down the road was a stop sign. Below this sign was a very clearly marked no trespassing private property sign. These by themselves sent a clear enough message that outsiders were not wanted. The thing that really set me on edge though was the large motion-activated camera that set on top of the signpost. I looked up at its lens and unblinking red light, pointed at our car. Knowing that the cemetery itself was public property, I figured that it was the fault of the GPS and maybe it happened often enough that the landowner was tired of people coming up to his drive, looking for some spooky cemetery. The whole thing really made me uneasy though. This was the first time I'd ever seen such a strong,

keep-out message on someone's private property, let alone the very expensive and capable looking camera that was attached. I backed out of the drive and back to the main road. I continued heading south and made a left turn after about a hundred yards onto the next road. It was an old washboarded out dirt road and I pulled over to look at the satellite map on my phone. Sure enough, there the cemetery was on the map, but it seemed to be completely surrounded by private property. We slowly continued down the thickly wooded dirt road, thinking that there must be a public entrance

to the cemetery somewhere. As we continued down this road, there were locked gates in front of several spaced out driveways that led in the direction of the cemetery. All you could see was the woods, overgrown driveways, and the occasional house, no sign of our destination at all. We drove a little farther, and in my surprise, there was a young family doing yard work in

front of their house that was directly across from where the cemetery should have been. Certainly this family would know where the public entrance was. So to us, this was our best shot of finding out how to get there without accidentally trespassing and winding up shot on someone's property. The family and their yard was a young man, maybe in his 20s, his wife and their two young girls. The girls were playing in the large yard with two great Danes, and when we stopped our car at the end of their driveway, they both started to yell.

People, people, daddy, don't you see? The father turned his head from our car back to his family, and said something sharply that it couldn't quite make out. The mother quickly gathered their children and dogs, and were out of sight. We both got out and took a few steps down their long drive, and the father met us at the end. He was wearing gloves that were gripped tightly to a metal rake, and looked at us with what was obvious annoyance and distrust.

Hey man, sorry to bother you like this, but we were trying to find out how to get into this grey cloud island cemetery. Would you happen to know where the public entrance is? My girlfriend asked, with as much diplomacy as she could muster, trying to temper the annoyance in his eyes. His eyes only seem to sharpen further as he quickly shot back. What? He leaned into us a little, and I repeated back what my girlfriend said. He just continued to stare at us for a couple more seconds before saying, I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about Surprised I said back

Isn't there supposed to be a cemetery near here? Turning back to walk down his driveway. He said facing away from us Not that I know of The air was thick and quiet and all I wanted to do was get the hell back to the car. We both got in, pulled a U-turn and headed back to the opposite direction, down the dirt road. As we put that house behind us, we both remarked at how strange the whole interaction was. I mean, maybe he literally didn't know

that there was a cemetery in the woods just across from his property. Maybe he and his family had just moved in and hadn't explored the area yet. He's worth plausible, but not as plausible as that he may have just wanted us to fuck off. Leave him alone and get off his property. I mean, either way, it had to be there.

I'd just been staring at it on the map. Needless to say, at this point we both figured that it was time to abort the mission. Between the motion camera on top of the sign and the cringey interaction that we had just had with that neighbor, one thing was clear. Out-siders were not wanted here, and pressing our luck any further would just about be the biggest scary movie cliche imaginable. I started back in the direction of the highway, but slowed down when I saw the dilapidated old town hall building. I figured since we'd driven all the way out here, it would be a shame to leave empty handed. So, I pulled into the tiny dirt parking lot and hopped out with my old Canon film camera

to take a couple of pictures. The building itself was simply made, and couldn't have been more than 60 years old. It was all sender block, with only one set of glass block windows on the front of the building. A giant, ancient oak left the tiny building in total shade. I found a decent spot to take a picture and held my camera up to my face. While I was adjusting the lens, I heard the sound of tires loudly breaking and the gravel just behind where I was standing. I turned around to see that a pickup truck

with a man probably in his late 60s had just pulled up to my girlfriend and I, and had stopped about 5 feet from us. Can I help you guys with something? He shot out of the rolled down window. He was thin with a full head of white hair and a neat white beard. The thick accent of the lifelong Minnesotan was immediately evident. The tone that he used to ask us this question was very severe, which was contrasted by the large, easy smile he had on his face.

A few of his teeth were missing, but for some reason his smile was still very disarming. The most notable thing about him, though, were his eyes. They were still gray and very milky. Those eyes scanned us for an answer. We were looking for the cemetery around here, my girlfriend said. And why? Do you have a relation buried there? He snapped at us before she'd even finished her sentence, still smiling. He still scanned us with those eyes trying to get a definitive read on both of us. No, we don't, but we were hoping just to have a look, I said. This didn't seem to do anything for him. So my girlfriend took the will from here. I just got my master's in American history,

and this whole island has a lot of historical significance. It's interesting, and we just wanted to have a look. My girlfriend said this with as much charm as she could muster, given the fact that we were just getting grilled by a stranger and an old pickup truck. I know it does," the man said indignantly. The smile gone. Look, there have been a lot of people who just come out here looking for ghosts, and we don't want any of that crap here. No, no, that's not at all what we're here to do, I sure am. Even if it was exactly what we were here to do.

This seemed like hardly the time to come clean. He thought for a minute. Then sigh deeply and said, all right, follow me. Now, I know what you must be thinking. There is no way in hell that they followed that man. Who knows where he came from or what his intentions were? Well, you'd be wrong. For whatever reason, we were so fixated on the idea of seeing the silly little cemetery

that we were willing to follow an old stranger down an unfamiliar dirt road and nearly abandoned town. Darwin award material without a doubt. He turned down the dirt road where we had spoken to the man doing yard work, and we followed him. He pulled his truck to a stop just shy of the other man's property, and pulled a quick U-turn, and pulled up next to us. Alright, this is the entrance, he said, pointing across the road to a locked green gate. The gate was old and white enough for two lanes of traffic to get through. There was a long field behind the gate, and

at the far end you could see Dint's Forest. Just before that forest, however, was the small, old cemetery. Just go around the gate, don't worry. Nobody will give you any trouble, just don't get off this property here. All the rest of this is private property. He looked back towards a cemetery for a minute before narrowing his eyes and saying, make sure that when you're back there you say hi to my mother, father, two brothers, and more neighbors than I can count, okay? The tone of his voice had a hint of discipline to it. As though by sharing this information, he was entrusting us to be on our best behavior. We got out of the car, locked it, and walked towards the gate.

He stared at us both in his rearview mirror as we walked. After a few steps, he looks at my girlfriend from the head to toe in the mirror. Finally, after a few seconds, with a six smile on his face, he says, Wow, you're a colorful young lady, and drives off. My girlfriend is 5'11. Dark olive skin with black hair and has large colorful tattoo pieces all over her body. We walk together toward the cemetery and chalked it up to him being friendly, but a weird, weird, old man.

However, as we walked, neither of us could shake, not only his words, but the creepy, deliberate way that he said them, just one of those things that makes you feel like you need to immediately go wash your hands. The cemetery itself was set on a small hill against the woods, with the graves that started at the end of the 19th century and went up until present day. Many of the graves were very unusual, and on some of the older ones,

they even appeared to be homemade. One odd thing about the cemetery was that many of the graves, even some of the oldest, were still maintained with flowers, wooden crosses, stuffed animals, unopened whiskey bottles, and too many types of trinkets to count. Many of the last names were the same, so this led us to believe that this place was still a central part of this incredibly small town. Honoring the dead must be a local tradition,

and no matter how long dead ancestors are, they are to be remembered. Odd, I thought, but kind of endearing. Just like the rest of the island that day, the air was dead quiet and cold. The cemetery was certainly one of the more unique ones that we had seen, but the feeling of eyes on you through the cold air was one of the more unique ones that we had seen, but the feeling of eyes on you through the cold air was one of the most memorable parts of the day. Whether it was

the cameras and the woods or something more, I'm not sure. The bottom line is that we were not alone in that cemetery, and we knew it. We spent less than ten minutes in that place. It was obvious that it was the town's opinion that outsiders were not welcome in this place, and that feeling was penetrating. On the drive out of town, we started asking ourselves the same questions over and over. Why did the camera on the stop sign? Why would that man clearly lie to us about his knowledge of the cemetery and how on earth did the man and the truck know how to find us? And who was he?

What did he mean by his creepy comment about my girlfriend's color? As I drove, a girlfriend did a little more reading on the experiences that others had had with Grey Cloud Island. She turned to Reddit, as well as a few other paranormal forums on the internet. It turns out it is very common, especially late at night, to be violently chased off by a man in a pickup truck. They'll come up on you quickly and try to run you off the road if you're in his opinion, up to no good. I guess on that front, we got lucky. The last thing that we read though was the thing that made us decide to never return to Grey Cloud Island, and may have given us the answer about the man's odd comment.

As it turns out, the town is also well known in history as a gathering place for the KKK. Even going so far as to host a retreat at a camp on the island. So everyone on Grey Cloud Island, let's never meet again. My parents separated when I was in third grade. I had an older brother and a younger brother and sister. After my dad moved out, we saw him a couple of times a month. He would bring us money or gifts. My mom got a job and my older brother was our daily babysitter. When I was in sixth grade, my older brother got into some trouble, and then got sent to a juvenile facility. My mom hired a lady a few houses down to babysit the three of us after school until she got

home from work. The way it worked out was when we got home from school, we were to go home and get the dinner that my mom had packed up for us and take it to the babysitter's house. One day, as soon as we got home, the phone rang. I answered it, and the caller asked, Is your mom home? I said no, she's not home. He goes on to say that he is a friend of hers, and he wants to buy a gift for her, but

needs to know what size pantyhose she wears. I hold the phone for a second. Something feels weird about this, but I walk into her room, open the drawer, and pick up a pair of her pantyhose until in the size. He thinks me and then says he has one more favor to ask. Now I'm annoyed at this point, but my parents raised me to be polite to adults, so I say, okay, no problem. He says, can you fit in them?

I say, I don't know, maybe. I guess. So he says, can you take off all your clothes and try on the pantyhose? At this point, I feel myself getting scared. I ask him, what did you say? He repeats that he wants me to take off all of my clothes and try these pantyhose on. I'm afraid at this point, and I really do not know what to do. I say, okay, and lay the phone down for a few seconds. I stand there, and I pick it back up and lie and say that I

did it. He says, no you didn't. At this point, I'm terrified because of the fact that he knows I didn't. And if he knows that I didn't, he can see me. I drop the phone, tell my brother and sister to get out of the house and we run down to the babysitter's house. I dropped the phone, tell my brother and sister to get out of the house, and we run down to the babysitter's house. I tell her and my mom about this, and they just brush it off as some kind of dirty print call. The next day after school, as soon as I unlock the door, the phone rings. I answer it.

I hear the voice saying, I can see you. I'm looking at you right now. Once again, I drop the phone and run out with my siblings. It turns into a thing. Every day after school is soon as we walk in the door, the bone rings. We were so afraid. We started running in, grabbing the food, and running right back out. We stopped answering

the phone completely. He didn't stop calling us though. This went on for about a month, then, finally. It just suddenly stopped. We never found out the identity of the caller, but we had a strong suspicion. There was a lady who lived next door, and right around that time, her brother came to stay with her for a few months. My mom says that she never trusted him. He was always looking at the kids, and one day she remembers him saying something really inappropriate to one of us,

and my mom called the police. It didn't do anything, and this really discouraged my mom. Later we found out that he molested his sister's two sons when he stayed with them. I still think about him to this day. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. This week you have heard Small Town Stalker by Carrie Hargis, Gray Cloud Island by Randy B, and finally My Story by Monica Maderas.

All of the stories this week were listener submitted. I appreciate all of the emails and the stories. If you'd like to send in your story and hear it on the show, make sure you email Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com. And if you have any general questions, just email me at Let's Not Meet Podcast at gmail.com. Thank you to everyone for supporting me so far. It's been a great ride. I'm happy to be back in season 2.

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