rSlash - r/Letsnotmeet I Was Hunted by Human Traffickers

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:11 Stalkers 7:21 Creepy woods 15:47 Lost in Baltimore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, you can do this. I know, I know. Carvana makes it so convenient to sell your car. It's just hard to let go. My car and I have been through so much together. But look, you already have a great offer from Carvana. That was fast. Well, I know my lessons played into my heart,

and those questions were easy. You're almost there. Now to just accept the offer and schedule a pick-up or drop-off. How'd you do it? How were you so strong in letting go of your car? Well, I already made up my mind, and Carvana's so easy. Oh yeah, true.

And sold. Go to carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. Welcome to r slash let's not meet, which is a subreddit where people describe really strange or scary or creepy real life encounters they have with other people. Our next reddit post is from Peaky Lou. Back in early December, I had ventured out to do a bit of late night shopping. I am a 31-year-old stay-at-home mother of two young children, so once my husband gets home from work, I like to take some time to myself and go shopping, take a drive, or run errands, kid-free. It was around 8.30pm when I arrived at the target that I frequent. I am by no means a

paranoid or anxious individual, but I did attend several seminars in college about human trafficking and I've done plenty of research on my own learning to identify red flags. And what precautions to take when out in public alone, especially at night. I carry several self-defense items on my person at all times. A kabuton, an alarm, and a universal handcuff key, just in case. I parked directly in front of the store next to a cart caddy and took a mental note of the vehicles parked nearby again, just as precautions.

As I entered the store, I began browsing like usual, following the natural flow of the store departments, following the main aisle around. I'd been browsing for only 10-15 minutes when I noticed a young guy in his mid-20s. He was tall, skinny, and dressed in a dirty grey two-piece sweatsuit and brown work boots. He looked over at me. I smiled and said hello, but his facial expression was blank. He looked like he might have been high on something by the look in his eyes, but he didn't seem to care for my gesture and he quickly moved on.

At first glance, there was nothing in particular that alarmed me about him. Except, I did notice that he was just wandering down the main aisle with no cart or basket, hands in his pockets, and he didn't seem to be with anyone. I continued shopping with no second thoughts, and I made my way to the next apartment. Several minutes passed, and that's when I noticed a second young man, wearing the same grey sweatsuit, a similar pair of work boots, and again, no cart, no basket. He also glanced at me, then quickly darted his eyes away when he realized that I was looking directly at him. I became a bit more alert, but still

remained composed and continued browsing. Another 15 minutes or so passed, and that's when a third older man caught my attention. And you guessed it, same grey sweatsuit and work boots. No cart, no basket, hands in his pockets. I assumed they were in some kind of work uniform, maybe construction workers? But then why weren't they walking around together and why didn't they have any items to purchase? At this point, it was difficult to focus on browsing.

I had a bad feeling about these three men and it became clear that something was a bit off. Over the next 20 minutes or so, I felt like I was being monitored by these three men because they were all communicating my whereabouts as I continued to make my way through the store. And it didn't take long for me to notice one of the three men pass by whatever side aisle I happened to be in. I stayed completely vigilant while trying not to panic or allow my suspicions to overwhelm me. Something about their presence felt very heavy and dark, so I decided to test their intentions

to prove that I wasn't overthinking the situation and that my bad gut feeling was valid. I began picking random aisles and traveling back and forth between departments in a very unorganized and random fashion, just to see if the men would continue to pass by me as frequently as they had been before. With every aisle that I popped into, it was just a few minutes later that one of the men would make an appearance, staring me down as they passed and it felt as if I was being surrounded like a wild animal. Hunted even. They were no longer trying

to be stealthy, which was the scariest part of all. And all of my instincts were screaming at me to get out of there. I gripped my cart so tightly and I figured if they got too close, I could use the cart to push them away or at least create some distance between us. By this point, I'd been shopping for about an hour and I was ready to purchase my items. But honestly, I felt too uncomfortable to continue browsing even if I wanted to. The men had been following me all that time, and I was becoming more annoyed if anything. The store was pretty empty around this time, one of the main reasons I liked shopping at night.

But that made this particular situation even more unsettling. Two pre-teen girls were wandering around by themselves, which quickly caught my attention because the men had passed by them making similar advances, but the girls were seemingly oblivious. So I quietly got their attention and asked them to go find their parents and stay with them, trying not to freak them out. The mother in me was in full on protection mode. As I made my way to the checkout, I noticed one of the men coming up behind me, walking at a quicker pace this time. So I immediately stopped and turned to lock eyes with him as he approached.

I will never forget the darkness in his eyes. An eerie smirk formed on his face as he nudged my shoulder, continuing to stare me down. And then he walked backwards to hold his sinister gaze on me as he exited the store. I'd lost sight of the other two men, and I hated the uncertainty of it all. He made his message clear in that very moment. My stomach dropped, and my entire body began to shake. It was a feeling that I hadn't felt since I was a kid getting lost in the supermarket. A feeling of desperation.

I quickly walked to the checkout, discreetly asked the cashier if I could speak to a manager and I told the manager what had transpired over the last hour. And I politely asked for a male employee to walk me to my car and for them to alert the security team member. When I told the manager what happened, her face sunk as if she'd already known about these men. And once I described them, she confirmed that she knew who I was talking about. She expressed that several of the female employees had found these men unsettling in the past.

And she reassured me that someone would escort me to my car. She made a report about the incident and she said that she would alert the authorities. She took my information. Then a young male employee walked me out to my car. What I saw when I exited the store made me so sick to my stomach, solidifying all of my suspicions. A white, windowless van was parked in the parking lot directly beside my car. One of the men was seated in the driver's seat and the other two men were leaning against

the side of the van facing my car attempting to hide out of view. I mean, how cliche and obvious can you be? Your license plate might as well read Lady Snatchers at that point. Whatever their intent, it didn't seem pure. I pointed them out to the male employee and said, there they are, which then prompted the men to scurry into the van and speed out of the parking lot without hesitation. I truly don't know what would have happened if I walked out to my car alone, and I am so freaking grateful that I made it home safe and sound and lived to tell my story. Over the following week, I'd heard there were several abduction attempts in the shopping

center parallel to that target, and I'm almost certain it was the same individuals. To the three matching sweatsuit creeps, let's not ever meet again! Our next reddit post is from Outworlder. I grew up in Ohio in the 70s, and me and my childhood friend, Joe, were outside all the time that we could manage it. Joe lived on a farm that bordered a pretty big forest, and my parents would drop me off in the morning and we'd stay in the woods all weekend. We'd only come out for school. We loved pretending that we were frontiersmen.

We'd build shelters, traps, practice making fire with sticks, the whole nine yards. When we got in high school, we got the notion that we would pull a Stand By Me. That's based off of the movie of the same name that just came out. The idea was that we'd walk the railroad tracks out in the country. But instead of looking for a dead body like in the movie, we'd find cool bridges to fish from and camp a little ways off the tracks. Of course, we knew this was dangerous and we'd likely be trespassing, but we were kids.

We had a lot of fun. We did find beautiful rivers, we discovered bridges no one went to, we fished, and we hid from trains. At night, we camped in the woods just near the tracks and made small hidden fires. Nothing bad ever happened. It was idyllic. In fact, it was so fun that we did it multiple times and we never had a problem. After high school, me and Joe went our own ways.

We both left home, but always stayed in touch and always tried to coordinate visits so that we'd see each other occasionally. Well one summer in the mid 90s, it worked out that we were both in town for about a week. We would do stuff with family during the day and at night, we'd either catch drinks at a bar or sit outside Joe's house around a fire and talk about the good old days. One day, me and Joe got to talking about our Stand By Me trips. Well, nostalgia and beer are a hell of a mix. Soon we decided to take the day off, walk the rails,

camp one night and then walk home. The day came and we started out early morning. We had my wife drop us off in our old spot where we used to start our adventures, right outside our hometown. She thought that we were absolutely crazy and made sure to mention that fact. When she pulled away, Joe suggested that instead of walking the usual route, we'd go the opposite direction, just to be adventurous. We knew the area well and we had a map, so I thought, what the hell, and off we set. The day went fine. It was fun and a little sad, but in a good way. We found a bridge, sat on the edge, smoked a joint and moved on.

We had no fishing gear, but we brought some canned food and other stuff. Before night started to set in, we picked a spot to camp. It was a thick forested area with trees on every side of the train tracks, so you felt like you were in a tunnel. We had brought small hammocks to sleep on, but before we set them up, we decided to do a little scouting of the perimeter. Now this is what we used to do in the old days too. We'd walk around the area a little bit just to make sure that some dude's house wasn't

just over a hill and that we were actually camping in their yard. We walked maybe a hundred or so feet into the woods and up a small incline. We figured that if we didn't see anything from the top of this short hill, then we'd be fine. But when we got to the top, we saw an old building down at the bottom, about a hundred yards into the woods. It was barely visible. We pondered over what to do. We both assumed that it was a sugar shack or something, because there didn't seem to be a clear road to it. For those who don't know, a sugar shack is basically a shack out in the woods where you

take sap that you collect from trees and then boil them into syrup. From where we were, there didn't look to be anyone inside of it either. All was quiet, no movement could be seen, no lights. We decided to walk a little closer, just to make sure. We came down the hill very slowly, and as we neared the building, we saw that it wasn't a sugar shack at all. It was an old church. It looked like it had been abandoned for years.

It was a squat, sagging building whose wooden planks were almost black from years of moss and rot. A cross was still standing on top of the church, also weathered in black. None of the windows had glass and there were no doors, just open doorways. We got close enough to see inside. There were rows of pews and a built-up section in front for a preacher to stand. We didn't go all the way in. We didn't want to. Beyond all that, there were no signs of anyone else. No footprints, no paths, no roads. It was just an abandoned church. We left immediately and went back up the hill to our spot that

we had picked to camp. Having a hill between us and the church made us feel better, but we were still a little uneasy. We chalked it up to the natural creepiness of seeing a church in the middle of the woods. Besides, at this point it was dusk and we just decided to rig up our hammocks and go to sleep and move on an early morning. Night set in, and as we laid in our hammocks and shot the breeze, we began to hear something in the direction of the church. Our conversation about it went a little like this. Do you hear that? What the hell is that? It sounds like people singing. And it did sound just like singing. We both slid out of our hammocks and hunkered down, straining to hear more. We listened

for a minute or two and the singing continued, but it wasn't getting louder. Finally, we decided to creep back up the hill and see if we could spy where the sound was coming from. We could still move very quietly in the woods from the old days. It was like second nature to us. The moon was barely out, but it provided enough light so that you wouldn't walk right into a tree. But still, it was nearly pitch black.

We didn't use flashlights as we crept slowly up the hill and we didn't talk. When we got to the top, we saw light in the distance. It was coming from the church. And the singing was coming from inside. Joe and I put our heads close together and had a hush conversation that boiled down to – can you believe this shit? The light looked to be candlelight from the way that it flickered.

And though we tried, we couldn't make out what was being sung. It sounded like church music, but in another language. We sat and watched for a while, trying to see who was in there, but we only saw occasional shadows. We had no intention of getting closer either. We had about a football field between us, and we aimed to keep it that way. The singing continued for a bit, and then it stopped. After that, a booming male voice began to chant. I was already freaked out, but this voice thoroughly terrified me. It sounded like some Old Testament preacher you'd see in movies.

But again, it was like he was speaking in a different language because we couldn't understand a single word. Eventually, it got to where the single male voice would say something and then a bunch of voices would answer in song. This lasted for a while and then they all broke into this long, sustained wail that just kept getting louder. It got so loud and so disturbing that I covered my ears. Then it stopped.

At this point, I was getting ready to say, let's get the hell out of here. When Joe put a hand on my shoulder and hissed, they're coming out. We were far enough away that we couldn't make them out really well, but what we could see was a line of figures walk out the open doorway, all holding hands in single file. We could see that some of them had flashlights. They began to sing again, and the light from the flashlights began to move towards us and the hill. We booked it back down to our campsite, grabbed our stuff and ran to the tracks. Once there, we ran down the tracks in the direction that

we came from. After a few minutes, we stopped and looked back. We saw lights coming down the hill that we were just on. They were moving erratically, like whoever was holding them was shaking them. We continued to run in spurts and walk as fast as we could. We eventually stopped seeing the lights and came to a road. Based on our map we knew that a small town was about 15 minutes down the road, so we walked there, got to a 24 hour gas station and called my wife to come get us. My wife and other friends all just thought that it was kids messing around. But I heard those voices and they sure as hell didn't sound like kids to me. I'm not sure who those people were, but it was definitely the creepiest thing that happened to

me out in the woods. What's funny to me about this story is whenever you watch a horror movie you always think, I would never let that happen to me, I would never put myself in such a dangerous situation. But then you have a story like this where OP and his buddy find a creepy abandoned church in the middle of the woods and are like, okay, let's camp next to it. Our next reddit post is from Deleted. When I was 19 in the early 90s, my brother and his wife were newly married and living in Baltimore. I was from Maryland, but I hadn't spent time in that city.

I knew that it wasn't totally safe in parts, but I also knew that I was just going straight to my brother and sister-in-law's house, so it should be fine. Until I turned onto the wrong street. This was MLK Boulevard, and back when it was a stretch of abandoned gas stations, sketchy bars and boarded up houses. A few people were walking in the middle of the street drinking out of paperbacks. I knew that I had messed up, and instead of freaking out and getting more lost, I pulled into an abandoned gas station.

There was a bank of payphones and I parked about 10 feet from them, hopped out and called my brother. My brother was impatient at first because he knew the city quite well, but it was my first time driving in it and I was trying to write down his directions as he gave them to me. Just then something caught my eye and I looked over at my car. Three men were leaning against it. Two on the passenger side and one against the driver's side front door. They were all staring at me with their arms crossed. I started to silently cry, thankful that I had on sunglasses. My brother heard me sniffling and said,

Why are you upset? I'm giving you directions. But I couldn't tell him what was going on because the men were within earshot. I got the rest of the directions, put them in my pocket and walked to my car. The man leaning against my door reached up and wiped the tears from one of my cheeks. Then he said, "...Why you crying, baby? Nothing bad has happened yet." Without even thinking about it, I responded, fully sobbing now, "...I just shot my boyfriend and I'm in a lot of trouble. The cops are…" That's all I got out. The three men had all taken off in separate directions at full

sprints away from me. If I hadn't been gifted with that lie from my guardian angels or whomever saved my butt that day, then who knows what would have happened? Dudes, I no longer live in Maryland, but let's not meet again. That was r slash let's not meet, and if you liked this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.