Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 7x21: Chained To the Ceiling - Let's Not Meet
Episode Date: January 17, 2022Stories in this episode: -The Crazy House Across The Street - JD (0:58). -Chat Line Stalker - Spokane Lady (18:52). -A Man Chased My 11 Year Old Friend And I Down An Alley - Anon (30:51). -Un...titled - Cortini (37:12). -Chained To The Ceiling - VM Bourge (TW: Domestic Abuse) (44:42). Extended Patreon Content: -Presents On My Doorstep - sky-pilot. -Late Night Beers And Lifelong Scares - KatieP98. -Man At The Trax Station - Brooke A. -Lock Your Doors - G-Berg. 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. To submit your story to the show, send it to letsnotmeetstories@gmail.com. Get access to extended, ad-free episodes of Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast with bonus stories every week along with a bunch of other great exclusive material and merch at patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast. This podcast would not be possible to continue at this rate without the help of the support of the legendary LNM Patrons. Come join the family! Make the switch to PrettyLitter TODAY! Get 20% off your first order by visiting Prettylitter.com and use promo code MEET. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and my listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/MEET. Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan–all online. Find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today when you go to upstart.com/meet. Try 5 pairs of glasses at home for free at Warbyparker.com/meet. There’s no obligation to buy! Ships free and includes a pre-paid return shipping label. Try Acorn TV free for 30 days, by going to Acorn.tv and use my promo code meet (all lowercase). - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/433173970399259/ - Twitter - https://twitter.com/letsnotmeetcast - Website - https://letsnotmeetpodcast.com - Patreon - https://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsnotmeetcast/ - Twitch - https://twitch.tv/andrewtatelive
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                                         My name is Andrew Tate,
                                         
                                         and this is season seven episode 21
                                         
                                         of Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast. Music These events take place during the summer of 2020.
                                         
                                         I was 21 years old at the time and living in a two-bedroom apartment with a woman who
                                         
                                         is now my ex.
                                         
                                         We had moved in only about two months before, but had lived in a duplex just on the other
                                         
                                         side of the street the year before, so we knew the neighborhood.
                                         
                                         It was a well-populated street on the north side of my college town.
                                         
    
                                         Now, this town essentially only existed because of the university. And that meant that the
                                         
                                         population was low, but could get very drunk and very intense, especially when
                                         
                                         the majority of students left for the summer break. We had many friends in the
                                         
                                         surrounding apartments, and to set the scene, we were on what was your typical
                                         
                                         suburban street, but some of the houses had
                                         
                                         been split into different apartments on each floor, with separate doors to each window.
                                         
                                         In the six apartments between the house I lived in and the one next door, we knew personally
                                         
                                         eight of the eleven people who inhabited them.
                                         
    
                                         One of my friends was selling marijuana at the time, so we were all very aware of our surroundings
                                         
                                         and reported any strange incidents to him or each other just to keep us all aware.
                                         
                                         This is why we were sure to let him know before he moved in that the house directly across the street was home to some of the most intense neighbors that I had ever had in my life.
                                         
                                         More negative adjectives were soon to come.
                                         
                                         I could hear and see them doing all kinds of drunken and irresponsible things the first year that we lived on that street, but in the summer of 2020
                                         
                                         things picked up in a serious way. I'm a night owl and a smoker of cigarettes, which
                                         
                                         meant I was sitting on our front porch, either with a friend who smoked as well or by myself
                                         
                                         very often. Being up late so much, I spent many dark hours on that porch and got to witness the late-night
                                         
    
                                         regularities of what appeared to be a normal street.
                                         
                                         Aside from the infrequent animal sounds from the woods nearby and the very frequent police, fire, and ambulance
                                         
                                         sirens heading through the nearby intersection, there were very few things that stuck out to me as very peculiar.
                                         
                                         First were the footsteps.
                                         
                                         I sometimes played episodes of my favorite podcasts, but always at low volume, because
                                         
                                         as you fellow true crime fans can probably understand, I'm rather skeptical and paranoid as a person.
                                         
                                         No matter what I was doing, however, I would hear the footsteps probably three or four
                                         
                                         times a week.
                                         
    
                                         There were deer around, but they always moved in groups at very regular speeds. And anyway, they had four legs of peace, so they made much more
                                         
                                         noise than these careful, slow-moving steps that I would hear around the side of my porch.
                                         
                                         We lived up against a ravine, which sat directly behind our house, so it was a tall order
                                         
                                         to walk up the side of our lot from the back unless you took the
                                         
                                         stairs that are on the far left if you're sitting on the porch.
                                         
                                         These sounds always, without fail, came from the right.
                                         
                                         A crunching of leaves followed by silence.
                                         
                                         It made my eyes dart directly to that side of the porch with lightning
                                         
    
                                         speed. This was made worse by the fact that my neighbors and the lowest unit on the house,
                                         
                                         the ones who sold weed, was woken up one night by the shadow of a person peering into their
                                         
                                         window from the little ledge that you could only reach from our street.
                                         
                                         Sitting there on the porch, I would have been well aware of someone going into our property
                                         
                                         and on my right side as it wasn't a large yard at all.
                                         
                                         We all knew when someone was moving around the house at night and we knew exactly who,
                                         
                                         or at least where they stayed.
                                         
                                         I never figured out with certainty what those creepy footsteps were.
                                         
    
                                         One of the other things that I had noticed while sitting out those late nights was the
                                         
                                         rather steady stream of creepy, sketchy, slow-moving people who flowed in and out of the house
                                         
                                         across the street.
                                         
                                         Not constant, but systematic.
                                         
                                         There were plenty of regulars who I came to recognize as the weeks went on.
                                         
                                         I was sure that it was a drug thing, and more than likely, not weed.
                                         
                                         My money is on heroin or meth, or both.
                                         
                                         The two brothers who lived there, permanently, were very different. The older brother, who
                                         
    
                                         all called G, and who does not really have much relevance to the story, was calm and a
                                         
                                         very nice man. Probably early 30s, had long hair, average height and build. His younger brother, who were going to call
                                         
                                         T, could not have been more different. Tall, lanky, and absolutely insane. It was a
                                         
                                         habit of his to sit on the roof and blast slayer while pounding tall boys at all
                                         
                                         hours ranging from 7am to 1am. This practice became
                                         
                                         very frustrating very quickly, and it wasn't long before he took notice of our reactions
                                         
                                         to his presence. Sometimes we would shoot him a knowing glance, but often we would just
                                         
                                         go inside when he chose to perform those songs and a terribly loud voice on his roof.
                                         
    
                                         And he didn't like being ignored.
                                         
                                         He began yelling, obscene things at my friends and I,
                                         
                                         calling us names that I don't need to repeat,
                                         
                                         and telling us to go fuck ourselves.
                                         
                                         And that we were just little fucking moron kids.
                                         
                                         Needless to say, none of us were excited to entertain his ramblings
                                         
                                         about his many guns and his hatred for the people that he saw every day. The best part
                                         
                                         is, there was a friend of theirs, I say, friend loosely, who hung around a lot and caused
                                         
    
                                         many outbursts from him.
                                         
                                         Her name ironically was Charity, and she was a short, real thin drug addicted looking
                                         
                                         person.
                                         
                                         Now, I feel no concern in using the name that I knew her by because she made my life a
                                         
                                         living hell for six months, and anyway the two brothers used a fake last name, so it isn't much of a stretch
                                         
                                         to assume the charity might not be her legal name. She was frequently spotted attempting
                                         
                                         to open the doors of the other houses on the street, and when confronted, would mumble
                                         
                                         something about being high or on one, and put her hands above her head with a bit of a shrug like, it's cool I'm walking
                                         
    
                                         away, it's no big deal.
                                         
                                         As well, she could be seen stripping almost nude and emptying bags of random little
                                         
                                         items all over the sidewalk, only to slowly throw them away and other people's outdoor trash
                                         
                                         cans.
                                         
                                         When the weather got really hot and humid, we put our little baby pool out, maybe five
                                         
                                         to ten feet around and only two feet deep.
                                         
                                         She would sometimes be caught washing herself in it, face or feet or other places.
                                         
                                         These things happened a lot in the early months of that summer, so much so that my friends
                                         
    
                                         and I in that house
                                         
                                         all chipped in for cameras and motion sensing lights so we could hopefully deter any late night
                                         
                                         creeping that she or T were to get up to. What an IE of idea that was. In June, the whole lot of us
                                         
                                         left for the weekend to attend our friends wedding, in which
                                         
                                         my girlfriend and I were made of honor and best friend.
                                         
                                         While we packed our cars to leave that Thursday afternoon, Charity was watching quietly from
                                         
                                         the drive-way making shameless eye contact with everyone who dared to return it.
                                         
                                         This naturally made us all nervous.
                                         
    
                                         We doubled and tripled checked to be sure that all
                                         
                                         of the doors and windows were secured as tightly as possible. We were successful, because
                                         
                                         when we returned on Sunday at around 1 p.m., there was nothing missing from anyone's homes.
                                         
                                         I was, however, quick to notice the marks on the door which plainly told the story of an
                                         
                                         inebriated charity or tea attempting to pry it open with what appeared to be your classic
                                         
                                         crowbar.
                                         
                                         In fact, I did not mention to my partner so as to keep her from fearing them every night
                                         
                                         and losing sleep, something I was already dealing with on a regular basis.
                                         
    
                                         A few nights passed, and my specific concern had mostly faded, but I was still up late,
                                         
                                         and that wedding weekend, in combination with our stressful and potentially dangerous living situation,
                                         
                                         had begun something of a year-long alcohol binge that has since subsided for the most part.
                                         
                                         It was probably only three or four days after we had gotten home that I was finishing one
                                         
                                         of the bottles of wine that we had taken home from the reception and having a cigarette
                                         
                                         on the porch at two in the morning.
                                         
                                         Now drunk and with my partner asleep upstairs, I was enjoying some music, and the cool summer night.
                                         
                                         Eventually I found my eyes growing heavy and retired to the bedroom where I joined my
                                         
    
                                         partner and promptly fell asleep.
                                         
                                         I woke up in the morning to a question asked forcefully from the kitchen on the other side
                                         
                                         of the apartment. Did you rummage through my purse last night?" she asked calmly at first.
                                         
                                         No?
                                         
                                         I replied grogally as I set up in bed.
                                         
                                         Are you sure?" she asked with more fear than suspicion.
                                         
                                         By the time she had finished those three words, I had flown into the kitchen as my heart fell
                                         
                                         into my guts. There were receipts, and personal effects littering the kitchen table around
                                         
    
                                         her purse. I didn't say a word as I rushed to the front door. It was open about an inch,
                                         
                                         having been left unlocked by my drunken self the night before. I muttered angrily, and with rather cutting-wool
                                         
                                         guarantees, as I accounted for everything that could have been stolen from our
                                         
                                         apartment while we slept in that room. Ignorantly unaware of the intruder or
                                         
                                         intruders. Among the things taken were my small, over-the-shoulder bag my
                                         
                                         Bluetooth speaker, all of our cash, which was about $200.
                                         
                                         And, a can of black beans from our pantry, and a jug of sweet tea from our refrigerator.
                                         
                                         The last two seemed like it was just a junkie move.
                                         
    
                                         But as time went on, and combined with the two most upsetting takes, I became convinced that it was a message
                                         
                                         saying, fuck you.
                                         
                                         I was all over your apartment while you slept and you had no idea.
                                         
                                         Most disturbingly of all, a large, victorious, secret, duffel bag that belonged to my partner
                                         
                                         was taken from the back of my closet, in the room that we weren't sleeping in, which would
                                         
                                         have required some kind of light and moving about of all my hanging clothes.
                                         
                                         This person had been through every inch of the apartment.
                                         
                                         Most frustratingly taken was the glass jar of about 150 quarters that I saved up to use
                                         
    
                                         for laundry. They had been dumped into
                                         
                                         one of the bags, but the glass jar was still there mocking me. How had I not heard that
                                         
                                         sound? I'm not the heaviest sleeper, and that must have been incredibly loud. Another
                                         
                                         thing to kick myself for. In the dark and unfamiliar with the apartment. I estimate a total of
                                         
                                         around half an hour that they must have spent in my home.
                                         
                                         We called the police who predicted that they could do nothing, but they were well aware
                                         
                                         of the people who we mentioned as our top suspects. They had been causing trouble around town for years. As the police left
                                         
                                         our company, I thought of it. The camera. I called my friend who answers my very infrequent phone calls
                                         
    
                                         with haste because we never communicated electronically in any other way but text. I asked him to
                                         
                                         review the taped footage of our porch from the night before, because
                                         
                                         my house had been robbed. He shuffles up the stairs after a few minutes and says, there's
                                         
                                         no feed running to that camera. I sink into the chair behind me, and light a cigarette
                                         
                                         as he pulls the cord that runs around the right side of the porch until he finds a tangled knot and the line.
                                         
                                         Tied to keep anyone from noticing that it had been cut clean at some point.
                                         
                                         These fuckers had been casing my house the entire time watching and waiting for someone
                                         
                                         to slip up, which is exactly what I did that night.
                                         
    
                                         They were plainly crazy and did nothing to hide it.
                                         
                                         Maybe that's how they chose to hide the fact that they were predatory as well.
                                         
                                         The next several months were filled with bouts of rage and anxiety,
                                         
                                         as well as insomnia, which most definitely fed into my drinking habit.
                                         
                                         What if they had been violent? We clearly weren't
                                         
                                         as aware as we assumed. What if they came in while my partner was home alone? How unhinged
                                         
                                         were they, really? The crazy neighbors across the street could be seen peering at us from
                                         
                                         their windows, frequently flashing us the middle finger, and chatting in voices
                                         
    
                                         just loud enough to hear about how we were fuckers and pieces of shit for calling the police
                                         
                                         on them.
                                         
                                         As good as a confession, but we could do nothing about it.
                                         
                                         They loved their games with us.
                                         
                                         Around September or October, they were evicted for one or more of the many infractions that
                                         
                                         were consistently happening, and still shamelessly they were committing them in that house.
                                         
                                         When they had moved the last of their stuff and the locks were officially changed,
                                         
                                         we threw the best and most celebratory party for every neighbor who wanted to send them off with hate.
                                         
    
                                         I was left with a sense of dread and impending danger that lived in and around me every night
                                         
                                         that I stayed in that house, and still lingers to this day even after moving.
                                         
                                         So to my hard drug using thieving and creeping former neighbors. Let's not meet again.
                                         
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                                         I haven't shared this story with anyone, with the exception of my mom, years after it happened.
                                         
                                         The only other people who knew about this story were my friend that I was with that night
                                         
                                         and the creep who terrified us.
                                         
                                         To paint the picture, my friend and I will call her Mac, we're about 14.
                                         
    
                                         We were inseparable and always found some kind of harmless trouble to get into.
                                         
                                         Spokane is a town where there isn't much to do for young teenagers, at least there wasn't
                                         
                                         at the time.
                                         
                                         So finding mischievous things to do was pretty easy.
                                         
                                         One night, Mac had this crazy, stupid idea to call a party chat line and see if anyone
                                         
                                         was online and spoke in.
                                         
                                         For those of you who might not know what that is, it's an 800 number that you can call
                                         
                                         and listen to messages from people in and around your area who want to meet up.
                                         
    
                                         Some of it is platonic, but a lot of it is more for erotic purposes.
                                         
                                         When you first call, they ask you to record a greeting or all the other collars to
                                         
                                         hear. Once recorded, it will play it for other people in your area, and they can choose
                                         
                                         to send you a message or skip your greeting. Anyways, I thought that it was a nutty idea, but then realized it was just to mess with
                                         
                                         someone.
                                         
                                         Neither one of us actually wanted to meet up with some random guy on the party chat line,
                                         
                                         regardless of the reason.
                                         
                                         This was our idea of fun on a Saturday night after our parents went to bed.
                                         
    
                                         Innocent, right? So, we called. We playfully listened to different greetings from men within
                                         
                                         50 miles of us giggling and laughing like teenage girls about how silly and desperate they all sounded.
                                         
                                         This went on for probably ten minutes.
                                         
                                         When all of a sudden we heard a chime on the phone.
                                         
                                         A bot lady said,
                                         
                                         You have a message from Steve.
                                         
                                         We stopped and looked at each other, both a little nervous, just to listen.
                                         
                                         Steve said,
                                         
    
                                         He heard our greeting and liked it. He was in Spokane for a few nights and
                                         
                                         wasn't looking for sex at all. He said he was just looking for someone to talk to on
                                         
                                         the phone and pass the time. We laughed and moved on with other greetings.
                                         
                                         About two minutes later the bot lady chimed in again and said, you have a request to chat live with Steve.
                                         
                                         We hesitated.
                                         
                                         But he sounded innocuous,
                                         
                                         so we decided to do a live chat with him.
                                         
                                         For the first five minutes on the line with Steve,
                                         
    
                                         Mack and I just played along with whatever he was saying.
                                         
                                         Chit chatting about why he was in Spokane, where he was going stuff like that.
                                         
                                         After a few minutes, Steve changed his tone.
                                         
                                         He started to flirt with us over the phone, telling us that he would really like to meet
                                         
                                         up, just to see what we look like. He kept saying things like we can meet somewhere in
                                         
                                         public and you don't have to be afraid of me. I know, I know, red flags all over the
                                         
                                         place. I'm sure we can all look back on stupid decisions that we made when
                                         
                                         we were teenagers and this next move was about to be one of mine.
                                         
    
                                         We whispered to each other and made a plan. We were going to tell Steve that we would meet
                                         
                                         up with him at a nearby 7-Eleven gas station. Only we wouldn't actually be there.
                                         
                                         We planned to sit across the street in the parking lot of our junior high school and watch him show up.
                                         
                                         across the street in the parking lot of our junior high school and watch him show up. It sounds weird when I typed this out, but we thought that it would be funny to just
                                         
                                         watch the guy show up and wait for two girls that weren't going to be there.
                                         
                                         We told Steve where the 7-11 was and to meet us there in 20 minutes.
                                         
                                         We headed out of the house with our parents fast asleep and walked to our junior
                                         
                                         high which was about six blocks away. Once we got there, I don't remember much of what
                                         
    
                                         Mac and I talked about, but I do remember the cold metal bench that we sat on. It was
                                         
                                         planted right in front of the new football field and sat under a large maple tree. Keeping our eye on the 7-11
                                         
                                         parking lot, we noticed a black pickup pull up in park. No one got out and the lights stayed on.
                                         
                                         We thought this was probably Steve. After about five minutes of him waiting, Steve called us to ask how far we were, and
                                         
                                         we told him that we would be there soon.
                                         
                                         Both of us were completely toying with this guy, not even sure what the end result would
                                         
                                         be, except for laughing.
                                         
                                         The night was cold.
                                         
    
                                         Mack and I were in our pajamas, which made it even colder. We watched Steve sit and wait another 10 minutes and decided the joke was up, and we were
                                         
                                         going to head home.
                                         
                                         As soon as we stood up from the bench, our cell phone rang again.
                                         
                                         It was Steve.
                                         
                                         He sounded very irritated and annoyed, asking why we weren't there yet,
                                         
                                         saying things like,
                                         
                                         You girls better not be messing with me. I didn't drive all the way out here for nothing.
                                         
                                         We swiftly hung up on him and began to walk in the direction of our house, until the
                                         
    
                                         deafening sound of screeching tires halted us.
                                         
                                         He turned around to see Steve peeling out of the parking lot of the 7-11 and coming down
                                         
                                         the road that we were on.
                                         
                                         I don't think Steve knew we were down this road.
                                         
                                         I think he was just leaving in a huff and turned down this road unknowingly.
                                         
                                         However, we absolutely panicked because we knew that if Steve had made the connection
                                         
                                         that we were the girls who had messed with him, we would be in a world of trouble.
                                         
                                         We immediately tried to get out of sight of the headlights creeping down the road, so
                                         
    
                                         we ducked and hid behind a metal bench.
                                         
                                         As Steve's truck gradually approached, I think I stopped breathing.
                                         
                                         I was so focused on that truck, trying to think of how we were going to get away from him.
                                         
                                         I couldn't breathe.
                                         
                                         The truck creeped along the quiet road until it was parallel to the bench.
                                         
                                         When all of a sudden, Max phone rings.
                                         
                                         It was Steve calling us again.
                                         
                                         An inarpanicked stupor.
                                         
    
                                         We forgot to turn the phone on silent.
                                         
                                         The phone rings obnoxiously loud and illuminates the area where we were trying to stay hidden.
                                         
                                         Steve stops the truck and looks right in our direction.
                                         
                                         He sees us.
                                         
                                         Mac and I screamed.
                                         
                                         We started to sprint in the opposite direction towards the baseball field.
                                         
                                         Just past this baseball field was a big tall fence that led into an industrial yard.
                                         
                                         We were headed straight for it.
                                         
    
                                         I don't think I've ever ran that fast in my life.
                                         
                                         My legs were cramping.
                                         
                                         My breath was short and heavy.
                                         
                                         My heart felt like it was beating so fast it was going to give out.
                                         
                                         This is where the story gets very, very scary.
                                         
                                         As we were running, we looked back.
                                         
                                         We saw that Steve had jumped the curb with his truck and was now driving in the field,
                                         
                                         chasing us.
                                         
    
                                         His headlights were so close to us now that they were like spotlights through the dark
                                         
                                         baseball field.
                                         
                                         He got so close to us that I thought he was going to run us over.
                                         
                                         We finally reached the fence and only had about five seconds to start climbing up before he ran into
                                         
                                         us. We climbed nearly to the top of the fence when he stopped his truck and turned off his lights.
                                         
                                         his truck and turned off his lights. I don't think either one of us stopped climbing. We didn't look back. We were petrified, throwing ourselves over the top of the fence and
                                         
                                         ungracefully falling to the ground on the other side. He was sitting there, watching
                                         
                                         us, with this very unsettling smirk on his face. We didn't stick around much longer to find out what he was going to try next.
                                         
    
                                         So we booked it out of there.
                                         
                                         Running through some random backyards until we finally found a garage to hide behind.
                                         
                                         We stayed there for about 20 minutes, making sure to listen carefully for his truck.
                                         
                                         We wanted to make sure that he wasn't following us before we ran home. After a while, we convinced ourselves that he was gone,
                                         
                                         so we ran the remaining four blocks home. We got inside, locked the doors, and never told
                                         
                                         our parents about this terrifying experience. Needless to say, we never called the chat line again. If
                                         
                                         there are any young teenagers listening to this, please know that you always think
                                         
                                         it won't happen. You always think that these stories only happen to other people.
                                         
    
                                         Stay safe and make better choices than we did. And stay alive. And to the Chatline stalker who chased us through the baseball field with his truck, let's
                                         
                                         never meet.
                                         
                                         When you love a good barbecue but want some fireworks of your own, trolley sour gummy
                                         
                                         worms are there to give you a thrill.
                                         
                                         With varieties like trolley sour bright crawlers very berry, the worms soft and chewy texture,
                                         
                                         surprising flavor combinations, and neon bright colors will give your fourth that extra pop.
                                         
                                         So when burgers and dogs don't quite do the trick,
                                         
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                                         I had completely forgotten about this until today. I was listening to the podcast while at
                                         
                                         work, and one of the stories jogged my memory. This happened about 10 years ago in my hometown.
                                         
                                         My town is small, a tourist-dependent beach town on the east coast. My friend and I were about 11 years old at the time.
                                         
                                         My friend was a slightly precocious kid and an only child.
                                         
                                         This meant that her parents let her do things that were a little too mature for her age.
                                         
                                         One of these things was that they let her walk around town by herself.
                                         
                                         Our town is home to some pretty seedy characters, was that they let her walk around town by herself.
                                         
    
                                         Our town is home to some pretty seedy characters, so the idea of letting a child walk around
                                         
                                         by themselves was, and still is, a little out of touch.
                                         
                                         One day my friend and I were at her house.
                                         
                                         She wanted to go shopping downtown.
                                         
                                         The novelty of this was so exciting because my parents never let me go anywhere by myself.
                                         
                                         I was more than on board.
                                         
                                         We walked downtown and my confidence was through the roof.
                                         
                                         This was my first venture into adulthood, and I was living for it.
                                         
    
                                         We hopped around town, going into different stores, and the independence
                                         
                                         was thrilling. One of my first feelings of we probably shouldn't be doing this was when
                                         
                                         we were walking through a side street. This sketchy man started following us. My friend
                                         
                                         grabbed her little flip phone and started to pretend like she was having
                                         
                                         a conversation.
                                         
                                         Hey, Dad, she projected loudly enough for the guy behind us to hear. She waved her hand
                                         
                                         and stared into the crowd of people ahead on the main road. I also kept my eyes straight
                                         
                                         ahead looking back only once. I didn't want the man to know that we were startled by his presence.
                                         
    
                                         She continued projecting,
                                         
                                         Yeah, I see you.
                                         
                                         Are you going back to the station later?
                                         
                                         As I'm sure you've already guessed, her dad was not a cop, nor was he downtown.
                                         
                                         This worked though, and the man vanished.
                                         
                                         We thought that was that, and continued our adventure.
                                         
                                         Maybe an hour or so had passed.
                                         
                                         We had our fill, and we're ready to head back to her house.
                                         
    
                                         She told me, as we were walking, that she knew a shortcut, an alley between a restaurant
                                         
                                         and a hookalounge.
                                         
                                         She said it was full of coal graffiti, and that I would love it, so of course naive me
                                         
                                         followed.
                                         
                                         About halfway through the alley, the man from earlier appeared blocking the side that
                                         
                                         we had entered from.
                                         
                                         He was massive.
                                         
                                         A middle-aged man, very scary looking. My friend and I looked at
                                         
    
                                         each other and silently agreed to play it cool. We were mature young adults after all.
                                         
                                         But then he started to get closer. We picked up the pace feeling a little freaked out.
                                         
                                         We picked up the pace feeling a little freaked out, and he started speeding up. Hey, girls!
                                         
                                         He said in what I remembered to be the roughest voice I had ever heard.
                                         
                                         This thankfully made us run.
                                         
                                         We sprinted out of the alley, and he began to run after us, laughing.
                                         
                                         Without looking back, we booked it to her house. All I remember from that moment
                                         
                                         was adrenaline. When we got to her house, we ran inside and went straight to her room.
                                         
    
                                         The man disappeared and we never saw him again. We didn't tell our parents, I think, even
                                         
                                         though we were scared. It was also kind of exciting. I told the story to my
                                         
                                         other friends and they laughed about it. We didn't have any idea how much
                                         
                                         danger we were actually in. And that to me is the scariest part. So to the creepy
                                         
                                         man who followed two 11-year-old girls and chased them down an alley and brought daylight while laughing. Let's not meet.
                                         
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                                         That's managementconcepts.com. I had my son right before the pandemic started here in Arkansas.
                                         
                                         At the time of the story, he was just one and a half years old, and we had just gone to
                                         
                                         the grocery store for our weekly trip.
                                         
                                         Now I will admit I should be more aware of my surroundings when I'm by myself as we
                                         
                                         live in a city with a lot of crime, including sex trafficking.
                                         
    
                                         Alas, this was not a day that I was being overly aware of the people around me.
                                         
                                         I was at a popular grocery store.
                                         
                                         As I'm pushing my son into the store, I look around and I get a feel for where I need to go
                                         
                                         to not get in people's way. As a note, this store is not an incredibly large store, maybe six aisles max. As I'm
                                         
                                         entering the first aisle, I see an older man maybe in his late 60s. He's just standing
                                         
                                         there. Now, I like to look at my options, as well, but this man was not looking at anything in
                                         
                                         particular.
                                         
                                         In fact, it was almost as if he were attempting to hide his face for some odd reason.
                                         
    
                                         I didn't think much of it and continued my trip.
                                         
                                         Around the third aisle, where I was getting juice, I had to step away from my son for just
                                         
                                         one moment, not even five feet away, to grab the juice.
                                         
                                         As soon as I took the seven steps it took, I had this gut feeling to turn around, and
                                         
                                         as I did I saw the old man standing right next to my son staring
                                         
                                         at him. My son is incredibly friendly, which is surprising for a pandemic baby in my opinion.
                                         
                                         And he was reaching out for the man that he thought was probably his grandfather, that
                                         
                                         he calls Pa. Now, I know my son is gorgeous, and we are constantly stopped so people can admire him,
                                         
    
                                         which is why I, and the five seconds of all of this, was going to muster my best smile
                                         
                                         and ask him, if we were in the way.
                                         
                                         But as he quickly reached for my son, a smile is not what my mouth did.
                                         
                                         I yelled at him.
                                         
                                         Do not touch him.
                                         
                                         The man looked at me, and I could see Malice, or maybe fear.
                                         
                                         He bolted out of the store.
                                         
                                         I'm not finished, though.
                                         
    
                                         I continued chopping, keeping my son in my cart within inches of my arms.
                                         
                                         I checked out and honestly didn't even think about the old man until I went outside and
                                         
                                         started loading up the goods.
                                         
                                         As a rule, I always put my son in first so he's not sitting in the Arkansas weather. I finished putting my groceries
                                         
                                         away and had to walk roughly 25 feet to put the cart away. And then the worst thing I could see
                                         
                                         as a mother happened. I turned around and I saw the old man opening the car door where my son was in his car seat.
                                         
                                         I wish I were making this up, or I could say that the old man was just confused, but I
                                         
                                         started screaming like a banshee and running to my car.
                                         
    
                                         The old man once again turned around, and he glared at me with an angry glare. The other customers at this point who
                                         
                                         had been in the store during the first encounter started to stop their shopping to look. This
                                         
                                         is a very small parking lot with businesses all around, and an incredibly busy street.
                                         
                                         The fact that he attempted this at 3pm in broad daylight, with a full road of traffic and
                                         
                                         a store full of people baffles me.
                                         
                                         The old man, despite his age, ran.
                                         
                                         He ran across a busy main road and into a Walmart parking lot, where there were woods
                                         
                                         not too far off.
                                         
    
                                         I reached for my son and thankfully the man had only managed to undo one of his car seat
                                         
                                         buckles, thanks to the triple buckle.
                                         
                                         Another mother nearby called 911 in this situation was clearly not a good one.
                                         
                                         Unfortunately, the man was in very big clothes and had a baseball cap on, which obstructed
                                         
                                         a lot of the camera's evidence of what happened.
                                         
                                         He had a very basic face, I guess you could say.
                                         
                                         I wish this had a happier ending, but my son was unharmed.
                                         
                                         I don't know whatever happened to that old man.
                                         
    
                                         I just hope the next attempt he makes at child snatching will result in an arrest.
                                         
                                         So old man who made the bold move of messing with a mother with fantastic gut feelings.
                                         
                                         Let's never meet again or it will be your last time you meet anyone.
                                         
                                         My brother-in-law died suddenly, and now my sister and her kids have to sell their home.
                                         
                                         That's why I told my husband,
                                         
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                                         An agent offered us a 10-year, $500,000 policy for nearly $50 a month.
                                         
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                                         This is the smell of the leftover tuna fish sandwich
                                         
                                         you left in your lunch box over the weekend
                                         
                                         in a wimpy trash bag.
                                         
                                         Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!
                                         
                                         Yeah!
                                         
    
                                         And this is the smell of that same sandwich
                                         
                                         in a hefty ultra-strong trash bag.
                                         
                                         Halty, hefty, hefty!
                                         
                                         Ah, smell the difference.
                                         
                                         Halty ultra-strong has armen hammer
                                         
                                         with continuous odor control,
                                         
                                         so no matter what's inside your trash. Hmm can stay one step ahead of stinky. And for bigger jobs, try
                                         
                                         the superior strength of hefty large blackbacks. The following story contains some depictions of
                                         
    
                                         domestic abuse. Listener discretion is advised. This story started about 93 or 94.
                                         
                                         I was five or six at the time, and we were living with my mom's boyfriend and California.
                                         
                                         Some back story here, my mom had divorced my dad in 1990, and had become hooked on a
                                         
                                         multitude of drugs, and had been hanging with the wrong crowd.
                                         
                                         Fast forward some years later, and she had settled
                                         
                                         down a bit, got a job, and was trying her best to support us and said, Boyfriend's son.
                                         
                                         We'll call the Boyfriend, Kevin. While I don't remember much about the time that my
                                         
                                         mom was on drugs and partying, I remember being relieved that we would finally be living
                                         
    
                                         in a house. However, Kevin did not own his own home, and we would soon come to realize
                                         
                                         that he was not the knight and shining armor that my mom thought him to be.
                                         
                                         Kevin lived in a house with his brother, mother, father, and grandmother, all of which never seemed to clean the home
                                         
                                         and all had their own individual issues. His brother was anti-social, father and mother
                                         
                                         alcoholics, and the grandmother had dementia and was not receiving the proper care that
                                         
                                         she needed. There were many days where I remember turning on a light to a room and thinking the light bulb
                                         
                                         burned out only to realize that the room was actually just covered in cockroaches. There were
                                         
                                         other days where there wasn't any food in the house at all because most everyone was incapable
                                         
    
                                         of shopping. In addition, Kevin was also heavily using drugs and alcohol, and would become very violent
                                         
                                         when he mixed the two.
                                         
                                         He would fight anyone in the house, and I mean anyone.
                                         
                                         No one was safe.
                                         
                                         His son and I tried our best to stay in his good graces, and would occasionally meet the
                                         
                                         metal buckle of his belt across our backs.
                                         
                                         When my mom found out that he had been hitting us kids, the last time I saw Kevin was through
                                         
                                         the window of my mom's best friend's house as he begged and pleaded for my mom to take
                                         
    
                                         him back.
                                         
                                         As you can imagine, I've repressed a lot of things from this time as it was pretty traumatizing.
                                         
                                         Ending and my mom shipping me off to my real dad when I was 8 while she was on the run
                                         
                                         from Kevin with his newborn son, my baby brother.
                                         
                                         Fast forward again to 2006.
                                         
                                         I was now 15 living with my mom again in a more stable environment, but had horrible
                                         
                                         insomnia because when I would sleep, I would have night terrors. Some were just my own
                                         
                                         vivid imagination messing with me, while some occasionally would be from time to time that
                                         
    
                                         we lived with Kevin or a mixture of the two.
                                         
                                         Because I had trouble knowing what was real or not, I would always go to my mom in hopes
                                         
                                         of clearing some things up.
                                         
                                         But one particular dream scared me so bad that I couldn't sleep, or even look at my mom
                                         
                                         in the face for an entire week.
                                         
                                         My mom eventually found me sneaking out for a drink
                                         
                                         of water late one night and asked me what was going on. I finally broke down to her and
                                         
                                         explained my dream. In Kevin's home, his brother lived in the garage that they had renovated
                                         
    
                                         for him, and sort of doubled as an entertainment room, as well as a large TV,
                                         
                                         and computers on one side, and Kevin's brother's room on the other.
                                         
                                         Kevin's brother had games. He would allow us kids to play them, and we hung out there a lot.
                                         
                                         In my dream, I was little again. We couldn't go to sleep because we had gotten up to see if
                                         
                                         Kevin's brother or my mom would let us play the game. When I entered his room, it was
                                         
                                         dark, except for a single lamp in the corner of the room. I had only taken one step in when
                                         
                                         I noticed something hanging from the ceiling in front of me. As my eyes adjusted, I could make out
                                         
                                         that it was actually a person. It was my mom. She was unconscious and being suspended
                                         
    
                                         from the ceiling by chains. I was so freaked out, even retelling the stream to my mom. I was shaking. When I finished, I looked at
                                         
                                         her, and noticed all the color in her face was gone. After a few moments, she said,
                                         
                                         I'm sorry you had to see that. She went on to explain that Kevin's abuse was taken out mostly on her to protect us and the rest of the household.
                                         
                                         Sometimes to teach her a lesson, he would beat her, chain her up, letting her down before his
                                         
                                         brother got home from his night job. I'm 31 now. My mom has since passed, and while I have since been in therapy and I take medications,
                                         
                                         the memory of the dream that was not actually a dream still haunts me.
                                         
                                         I spent so many of my younger years angry with my mom for putting me through that, but
                                         
                                         now.
                                         
    
                                         I realized she was doing the best that she could with what she had at the
                                         
                                         time. She had kept me and a boy that wasn't even her biological son alive and safe.
                                         
                                         As best as she knew how, and I think her every day for what she gave up for me, as far
                                         
                                         as what happened to Kevin. I last heard he was in prison for possession
                                         
                                         of drugs. He's tried to reach out to my little brother to, quote unquote, explain his side
                                         
                                         of the story and to get information to contact me, but my brother has refused to give him
                                         
                                         anything. Kevin, you piece of shit.
                                         
                                         I hope your other son made it out alive, and you better pray that we never meet again
                                         
    
                                         because I'm way past traumatized.
                                         
                                         And now it's just a pure, blinding rage.
                                         
                                         Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Let's Not Meet, a true haul or podcast,
                                         
                                         and if you're looking for your true paranormal fix, don't forget to check out the new episode of my other podcast on
                                         
                                         Trails at oddtrails.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This week you have heard the crazy house across the street by J.D.
                                         
                                         Chatline stalker by Spokane Lady. A man chased my 11 year old friend and I, down an alley by a listener that asked to remain
                                         
                                         anonymous.
                                         
                                         A story by listener Cording.
                                         
    
                                         And finally, chained to the ceiling by VM Rorg.
                                         
                                         All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission
                                         
                                         of the respective authors.
                                         
                                         Let's not meet the True Horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.
                                         
                                         As always, if you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com
                                         
                                         and don't forget to stick around after the music if you're a patron for your ad-free
                                         
                                         extended version of this week's episode.
                                         
                                         And if you want to get access, head over to patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet Podcast
                                         
    
                                         or follow the link in the show notes to join today.
                                         
                                         I'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast.
                                         
                                         Stay safe. This specific story takes place in 2018 when I was a junior in college.
                                         
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