15x09: My "Magic" Mirror

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We're taking Let's Not Meet on the Road again this year.

Phoenix, Arizona, I'll be at Rebel Lounge on November 17th. St.
Paul, Minnesota at Turf Club on November 19th, and Chicago, Illinois at Beat Kitchen on November 20th.

Get your tickets at let's not meetpodcast.com/slash slash tour or follow the link in the show notes. I'll see you there.

This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised.
If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

I live in a small house in the suburbs. My neighborhood is predominantly populated by older adults and the occasional college student.

My house is a single-story house with an attic that has been converted into two separate rooms.

From the main level of the house, the attic stairs lead directly up to my brother's room, and my room is just beyond their room. Neither of us have doors to our rooms.

My typical routine usually consists of going to school from 8 to 4. Then, when I get home, I do homework for about an hour and do whatever seems necessary to get done.

My brother goes to bed at around 8:30. I'm usually in my room when they go to bed, either playing guitar or just playing video games.

For them to be able to get sleep, I go downstairs and watch TV until around 10, and then I go back upstairs to read before going to sleep.

I usually leave my light on when my brothers go to bed because the lighting helps keep them at ease as they go to sleep. Also, it's much easier for me to make my way back up there.

So one night I went upstairs at my usual time, and then I climbed into bed, picking up the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and I began reading. This was my third read-through of this piece of art.

By the time I'm at this part of my day, I feel like my usual routine is done, and I mentally check off another successful day. Except for some reason, I didn't feel right this night.

I remember this very vividly, because it was like the first time I had felt something this intense, yet so irrational, or so it seemed. I had a burning sensation that someone was watching me.

It was like one of those feelings you get when you see something that you know you weren't supposed to see, and you just hope to God there are no consequences for it.

It felt like I had seen someone in the shadows, but I had hoped that they hadn't realized I noticed them, so I had more time to escape.

But the thing was,

I hadn't seen anyone, so there was no reason for this primal sense of dread to be kicking in, and that's exactly what was happening.

I'm sure every one of you are very aware what physically happens when you feel something like this. All the hair on the back of your neck standing up.

It feels like every sense is heightened to an extreme. Well, I had that feeling.
But it's so much scarier than I can describe.

It's like you just feel this impending doom about possibly having to run from something that has yet to be seen. And there is no immediate or apparent reason as to why you're feeling this way.

So anyway, all of my senses were heightened at that moment, and it was to the point where I could hear my brother's breathing.

So I put the book down and turned off my AC unit so that I could hear everything clearer. Then I stared into the darkness of my brother's room, looking for the source of my assumed delirium.

This was the scary moment. My brothers have this mirror in the back of their room next to the window.

It's a big old oval mirror that's about five feet tall, and it rests on these hinges that tilt up and down.

My brothers would play with it sometimes by pointing a flashlight at it and trying to shine it in my face via the reflection. The mirror is a heavy piece of work.

It's heavy enough that it naturally leans at about a 35 degree angle from the ground, and if you want it to stand vertically, you have to get on your knees to tighten and twist by hand these screws to get the hinges to defy gravity and keep it upright for about 15 minutes tops.

Because it's so heavy, it naturally weighs itself back down.

Now, my brothers had been asleep for almost two and a half hours at this point.

I was sitting in my room, in dead silence, staring into their pitch-black room, and I saw the mirror slowly start tilting backwards until it revealed me sitting in my bed, eyes wide open.

It was the scariest moment of my life. I was just sitting there, waiting for something to come out of the shadows.
But all I could see was me.

I knew that there was no way it could have been gravity moving the mirror, because I had played with that mirror before out of sheer boredom.

Even after I'd twisted its hinges as hard as I could, it would only stay upright, like I said, for a maximum of 15 minutes.

As soon as I saw the movement, I got out of there. I jumped over the stairwell divider and I ran down the stairs, skipping every other step as I went down.

Then I went to the couch in the living room, and I laid down, terrified, out of my mind.

Now would be a good time to note that the living room is located directly below my brother's room. Looking back on this, this is honestly the scariest part.

See, I was lying there. I was shaking and trying to push it out of my mind.

Nothing happened the rest of the night, and eventually I convinced myself that I had to get to sleep so that I could go to school the next day. And I did exactly that.

When I got home from school the following day, I told my parents about what happened.

As we investigated, we noticed that the plastic accordion-like cover for my brother's window, the part that the AC unit didn't cover, had been opened to fit something approximately the size of a baseball or a hand through it.

My dad started getting antsy about this, so he went to the roof to check the other side of the window.

When he came back, I asked him what was up, and all he told me was that my brothers would be sleeping downstairs in the guest room for a couple of nights.

He clearly saw something disconcerting up there.

Later, I overheard my parents talking about the situation. My dad expressed the necessity of getting motion sensor lights installed in the backyard.

When she asked him why, he later told her that he had seen muddy boot prints on the roof and said that there were two hard indentations left on the shingles, as if a ladder had been placed there and removed.

He said that they weren't fresh either, so it was as if this had been a reoccurring incident.

Like I said, I think the most terrifying part is the fact that I went into the room their room where someone was peering in.

The couch in our living room is placed up against the wall that the ladder would have been on on the other side. So whoever this was was right there.

I'm a female, and I was eighteen when this happened. I was out with my friends, drinking and hanging out in some random field.
We had such a fun time, and there were around ten of us in total.

We chose to hang out in a wooded area, as we really wanted our own space.

After a long night, we decided to head home. By the time we made this decision, it was around two or three in the morning.

During the first part of the walk home, we got to stay together, but then it got to a point where a few of us had to split off to take a different route to get home.

It is worth mentioning that we were all living in a small town, so the walk wasn't very long.

After some of my friends had split off, it was just me and two of my other friends left to walk home.

At one point, we crossed the road to a bus stop, and there was a man inside the bus stop. He was wearing a mask that covered his whole head and a gray track suit.

I live in the UK, so his choice of attire wasn't exactly anything new to me.

Once my friends and I had crossed the street, I couldn't help but look behind me, as I was confused as to why someone was at the bus stop at two.

because this was a bit scary.

We then started walking faster, and the next time I looked behind me, he was quite literally running toward us.

So I told my friends, Guys, run The guy's coming towards us.

We froze for a second, since we didn't want to make it obvious that we were scared, but when I started running my friends followed suit and ran with me.

A few minutes later, we turned into an alleyway and hid behind someone's fence. We stayed there for a bit trying to catch our breath after running.
After that we never saw him again.

I'm not sure if he lost track of us or what, either way. It was definitely creepy and bizarre.

This wasn't the first time I experienced being chased at late hours of the night, but hopefully it was the last.

I'm a nineteen-year-old female, and this happened when my 21-year-old boyfriend and I were at a pretty river in our town. It was a bit out of the way, but definitely worth the trip.

We were there at about 7 p.m., which doesn't sound that late, but it was a bit late to be there.

This place was essentially open from sun up to sundown, and it was still a bit light out, so we figured we would be fine. We were only planning on being there for about thirty minutes or so.

While we were there, we were relaxing and taking turns playing music on our phones.

Then, about ten minutes later, this man suddenly emerged from one of the houses up on the hill, and shone a bright flashlight on us.

I wasn't wearing my glasses, but my boyfriend said that he appeared to be in his fifties or sixties.

We immediately turned our music off since we assumed he wanted us to leave, but it wasn't dark yet, so we knew we were allowed to be there.

My boyfriend remained friendly as he called out to him and said, Hey, what's up, man? Or something like that. We called out to him a few times, but he never responded.

He just shut his flashlight off and walked to the other end of his balcony.

We were already creeped out by this, so I kept looking at the balcony, and about three minutes later, he turned around and shone the flashlight on us again.

We weren't even playing music anymore or making much noise at all. We weren't really talking since we were so focused on him.

He eventually turned it off again and went inside, but I kept looking in the direction of his house since I was a bit freaked out.

Then he came back outside, climbed over the balcony, went down the hill, and just hid behind a tree.

He then peeked at us from behind it, just staring.

I stood up and demanded that we leave. As we were leaving, my boyfriend, who is a bit of a hothead, yelled, fuck you to the guy.

Almost immediately after that, he shone his flashlight on us again, so we booked it out of there.

I think the clincher for me was when he hopped over his balcony just to hide behind a tree and peek at us. That was definitely the breaking point.

I don't care if he was just trying to intimidate some kids into leaving the public river that was by his house, but creeping on them from behind a tree. Who does that?

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This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone. We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including of course the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

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I'm a 28-year-old female, and I work as a bartender at a bar/slash restaurant. Recently, at work, I had a very strange old man come in for a drink.

As soon as he sat down, I had a bad feeling about him. He ordered a beer and started talking about his day and whatnot.

He said that he was from the area, but he moved to the state capitol back in the 70s or 80s. He said that he likes to visit for one week every July.

Now this conversation was normal for about ten minutes. He told me about his family and what it was like growing up in the area.

After the conversation had finished, he pulled out some envelopes that had stacks of photos in them.

My gut was telling me that the photos were something bad, but I had hoped that they were probably just photos from his trips.

The first picture on top of the stack of photos was an AI-generated image of a cat on a surfboard.

But after that, the pictures were all of young women.

The photos were all AI generated, and the women in the photos that he was showing me were celebrities wearing a Daisy Duke type outfit.

Now I tried to be friendly, and I told him how crazy it is that the Internet can make these photos of celebrities look so real.

At one point, he showed me a regular picture of a real woman whom he said that he liked to watch on YouTube. It was similar to the other photos.

She was wearing tiny shorts, but she was bent over the engine of a truck.

It was starting to get late, so the cooks were leaving for the night, and I was the only employee left in the building other than the owner, who was in the office doing paperwork.

I went back and let my boss know that I was getting a really weird vibe from this guy.

He agreed and said that the cooks were talking about him since a co-worker had talked to him a previous night outside of work.

He thanked me for letting him know and asked me to get him if anything else happened. So I went back to work.

When I returned to the floor, he was shuffling through his photos again, looking for some to show me.

He let me know that he didn't think that he had any others that he could show me since the women were only wearing their panties or nothing at all.

I tried to avoid this guy after that, but there were only a few other patrons in the building, and they were all sitting at tables.

I went to do some cleaning behind the bar, and he began talking about this girl from YouTube and how young and pretty she is.

He pointed out that she was in her thirties, but she looked like a teenager. He stated that was why he liked her videos so much.

As a woman similar in age and looks, this made me extremely uncomfortable. I ignored his comments about her, and he started talking about his family again.

I was responding with bare minimum responses, trying to make it to closing time in just 15 minutes.

All the other patrons had left at this point except for him, and I let him know that we would be closing very soon and he should start gathering his things.

Instead of picking up his photos, he said something about why he moved to the state capitol.

I was barely listening until he said that he was told to leave the city.

I didn't say anything or ask about it, but he continued saying that the county court had sent him away years ago.

I was about ready to tell the owner to kick him out when he started talking about why he was sent away.

He shared a story about how he did something breast-related, in his own words, to a girl in elementary school.

I'm not very good at guessing people's ages, but there was no way that this man was in elementary school in the 70s or the 80s. He said that the girl told the teacher about him and what he did.

He said it didn't happen, but no one believed him, so he got sent away.

He said he was resentful towards the girl for many, many years until he heard that she had special needs and wasn't mentally capable of making up a lie like that.

I couldn't tell if he was saying that he did it or if he was implying the teacher was the one lying.

We were only two minutes away from closing, so I tried to wrap up the conversation by saying, I hope your trip was nice. Have a safe trip home.

He then slowly packed his things as I walked around the bar and past the tables to go to the front door. Then I stood there waiting so that I could lock it after he left.

After he got all of his stuff together, he walked toward the door, slower than I had ever seen anyone walk.

I was terrified. I called my husband and I put my phone in my pocket just in case something happened.
Right at that moment, the owner turned half of the lights off and walked over to me.

I politely told the man he had to leave right away, and again told him to have a safe trip.

As he opened the door to leave, he turned back around and made eye contact with me, which he hadn't done the whole time he was there.

Then he said I'll probably be back to morrow to see you.

I don't leave town until Sunday.

The next day was Saturday, and when I got to work, I immediately told my coworkers about the encounter.

We were all just kind of joking around about the man, and at one point I told him if he did return, I was going to card him just so I could get his name, so I could do a Google search.

I wanted to know if he was just creepy or if there really was a legit reason my gut just wasn't sitting right about him.

My co-worker who had talked to him outside of work interjected and told all of us the man's first name.

The rest of the night went by smoothly, and the old man didn't come back.

Some of the male co-workers walked the women employees out to their cars just to make sure that they got home safely. And he wasn't lingering outside.

When I got home, I spent an hour or so searching for this guy online. I looked at all kinds of mug shots belonging to all kinds of men who shared that first name.

When I finally found him my heart dropped. I clicked on his mug shot and was met with an article about a murder that happened in the nineties.

In the article it stated that he was the prime suspect in the murder. The only DNA evidence police found was linked to him.

He was sent to prison, and after investigations revealed his mental state, they did another round of testing on the DNA. The second round came up inconclusive,

so he was then released. Then I found a handful of Reddit posts from the state capitol about this old man.

He was somewhat infamous in the area for creeping on young women at their workplaces. The stories were all eerily similar to mine, and even happened to several mothers when they were in their teens.

Many of them shared how he was doing the same thing with their teenage daughters.

I learned that the majority of people strongly believed that this man was guilty of the murder, and after everything I had read, I believe it too.

I had an overwhelming sense that I should not have engaged with this man as much as I did, and I shouldn't have been polite.

I'm not necessarily scared of this man, but I can't stop thinking about the teen girls who have seen him regularly, especially since I had one encounter, and it shook me to my core.

I hope I never meet this man again.

For reference, I work as a barista in a coffee shop inside a larger store. I am one of a handful of male baristas at my shop.
I'm gay and very open about this.

I wear pride shoes, I have a pride flag attached to my name tag, and I have a couple of wristbands with rainbows.

One has a phrase that says Orlando Strong, and the other is from a local LGBT plus center.

So, recently, I was working my shift at the register. and a gentleman came up to me and smiled.

I think he noticed the pride flag on my name tag, but he didn't explicitly mention it at first. He said that he didn't know what to order and asked me for my opinion.

Now, I'm not particularly a coffee drinker, but I do know what drinks fit what tastes, so I asked him what he likes so that I could try to give him some recommendations.

As I was talking, I could tell that he was paying more attention to me than what I was saying, which I was completely okay with.

He was a shorter, well-built man, he had beautiful eyes and a nice beard.

Eventually he decided on a very sweet iced drink that we had, so I went to make it for him.

As I was making his drink, one of my co-workers leaned over and whispered, I think that customer just took a picture of you.

That was a big red flag, but I thanked her, and ultimately, I didn't think anything of it at the time.

After I finished making his drink, I gave it to him and he smiled. He then pointed to the pride flag on my name tag and said, I love that flag.
Where can I get one of those?

I laughed and said, I got it from a pride event just a few years ago. He then replied, and where can I get the person it's attached to?

I immediately felt a rush and started blushing, but I was trying to remain professional, so I brushed it off.

He eventually took his drink and sat down at one of the tables. I continued going on about my day, debating whether or not I should give in to this guy.

Now and then I would glance at his table and I would see him looking at me. No matter when I looked, it seemed like he was always looking at me.

I sort of had heart eyes at first, but then I started to get this weird feeling since I noticed he hadn't taken a single sip of his drink.

It was an iced drink, so I could see the level of his drink through the clear plastic cup.

When there was was a break in the line, I went to wipe down some of the tables. As I was doing so, I stopped by his table and asked if he didn't like the drink.

I told him that if he didn't, I could make him a new one, free of charge.

Then he handed me the drink and said that he wasn't sure if it was too sweet for him or not, so he asked me to try it.

I politely declined, telling him I don't drink coffee. He was shocked and asked me why I was working here if I didn't like coffee.
As we continued talking, his questions began to change.

So do you lift at all? he asked. No, not really, I answered.
Well, how much do you think you could lift if you had to? he questioned.

My job requires me to be able to lift fifty pounds, so I guess I'd say that much, I replied.

Well, I've learned that it's good to be able to lift at least half your body weight, he explained. How much do you weigh?

This officially set off alarm bells.

There was something about the combination of the drink and the two questions that made me feel like I was being asked how much of a fight I would be able to put up if I were drugged.

I've been drugged at a party before, so I've learned to pick up on red flags regarding this pretty quickly. So I kindly ended the conversation and got back to cleaning up tables.

As the hours went by, he continued to sit there, not drinking his drink.

Other employees and a couple of the managers asked him if everything was okay, but all he would say was that he was perfectly happy.

Every now and then he took a phone call, and at one point I swear I could see a guy on his phone who appeared to be in a different part of the store.

This made me start to feel like there were more eyes on me than I realized, so I pulled one of my managers to the back and I told him I was getting a weird feeling about that guy.

My manager listened to me, and they kept an eye on him. I was the closer on this shift, and as we got closer and closer to closing time, I noticed that he was still sitting there.

When the announcement that the store would be closing in half an hour was made, he came up to the counter and asked if he could walk with me to my car after I was off.

I told him that closing duties would take at least 45 minutes to complete after after we close, hoping that that would deter him, but he said he would be happy to wait.

I then fully declined his offer, and he asked me when I was going to be working again.

I told him I would be off for a couple of weeks, so then he said, Well, I feel like I should walk you to your car.

Especially if I might not be able to see you for a couple of weeks.

There was no way that that was happening, so I politely declined, and eventually he left. After I finished my closing duties, I headed to the employee area.

As soon as I got down there, I told one of my managers about the situation and asked if I could go through the side exit of the store.

See, at our store, all employees exit out of the main doors after we close, but there is a side door that we can get into the building before we open.

He agreed to let me use the side door and told me that he'd walk with me to my car to make sure that I got there okay.

A few minutes later, I walked walked out of the side door with a couple of managers.

I got into my car and as I was driving away, I saw a large van with extremely tinted windows parked right in front of the front door.

There was no way to know for sure if my customer was in that van or if it was as ominous as I thought it was,

but I know that I was not about to stay and figure that out. And just in case, I took a long and winding path home that night.
So, to the very attractive guy who I sold coffee to, let's not meet.

Unless, of course, I just read all of those things wrong and you're just socially awkward and were actually into me and not in a creepy way.

But let's be on the safe side and just say, let's not meet.

I'm a female in my twenties. I'm a student at a pretty big university in the Midwest.
In addition to taking classes at the university, I also work as a desk clerk at one of the student libraries.

I basically check books and equipment in and out, give directions around the building and surrounding area, and help patrons with whatever else they may need.

I'm also quite talkative and friendly, which makes me a good customer service employee. I'm someone whom people can easily stop and chat with.

I know most of the regulars by name, and most of the people I see in the library are great people.

Most of them.

One night, at around 9 p.m., another library employee, Mark, showed up and started chatting with me.

He works in another department that has him walking all over the building, so he frequently passes my desk and says hi.

I had a headache, so I wasn't particularly up for casual conversation, and knowing Mark pretty well, I told him that I wasn't feeling too well and was eager to be off of work soon.

He wished me well and went on his way.

During this exchange, a patron had come up behind Mark to wait for my attention, which was normal considering that I work at the front desk.

As Mark left, the man stepped up to take take his place in front of my desk and just stared at me for a second, with an uneasy smile on his face.

I had seen him mulling around the library a few times in recent weeks. He usually sat in the cafe area reading a local paper.
He looked to be in his mid thirties.

He said he overheard that I wasn't feeling well, and asked if I wanted him to grab me a drink from the vending machine down the hall, as the cafe closed at eight.

I politely declined, as I didn't want to accept drinks from any kind of strangers.

He seemed a bit miffed, but didn't mention it. He then said that he overheard that I was off soon and asked if I wanted him to walk me to my car.

Becoming wary and alert, I again declined and started to consider my options for escape.

The desk is only staffed by one person at a time on weeknights, and considering that it was the spring semester, there weren't a lot of people around the library.

With no coworkers available to cover the desk for me, I couldn't leave.

My bosses were working on the second floor in the administrative offices, but I knew my favorite supervisor wasn't working that day.

I also felt like even if I called them upstairs, I wouldn't be able to sufficiently explain the situation over the phone since he was right there.

I knew that he would overhear everything that I said on the phone, so I didn't really know what to do.

I couldn't think of any other legitimate reason to have them come downstairs, so I felt like there was no point in calling.

Unsure of what to do next, I turned around to hide the confusion and fear on my face.

Then I stood up, grabbed the disinfectant wipes, and began wiping the counters, just to have a job to do, rather than sitting there idly while this creep continued to stand at my desk.

I was turned away from him for less than a minute when I heard the sound of the keyboard clicking at my computer. I whirled around and saw that he had my Facebook page opened.

He must have done some kind of keyboard command to switch tabs to get to it quickly. My Facebook was open and logged in, but in a different tab.

This situation was getting worse since now this guy has my first and last name. At this point I was scared, but honestly, in the moment, I was more pissed off than anything.

I asked him what he was doing, as he had turned the monitor at an angle so that he could see my screen to analyze my profile.

After reciting my name, he then said, It's so nice to meet you.

I couldn't lie. I couldn't say that my name was something else, because the picture on my profile was a clear shot of my face.
That really got me.

So I told him how rude that was and how it was an invasion of my privacy. He responded by saying, we're on public property.
So all that he was doing was using a public computer.

Personally, I wouldn't consider a computer behind a library desk as public.

I went back behind the desk, and then he made a move toward me. He leaned over the desk a bit and tried to grab my arm.

I was about to start getting heated when Mark came down the stairs saying he had heard me from the stairwell. I must have been talking pretty loud at this point.

Mark could tell that I was visibly pissed as I explained that this guy was trying to buy me a drink and walk me to my car.

I also told him how the guy essentially stole my personal information by looking at my Facebook page on my computer.

This also pissed Mark off, so Mark, who, by the way, is a pretty big burly dude, stepped right up to the guy's face. He told the guy to forget my name and face and get the hell out of there.

This guy just put his hands up and smirked. And as he took a few steps back, he said, Hey man, it's cool.
I'm just trying to make some friends out here.

I audibly scoffed and told him I was going to call Building Security if I ever saw him at my desk again.

He told me to fuck off. and called me ugly before storming off and leaving.

After he was gone, Mark asked if I was okay.

I asked him to cover the desk for a few minutes while I went up and explained what happened to my boss.

He was also pretty pissed at this guy and told me that he would get security to look at the camera footage to possibly try and identify this guy. He said that he'd be banned if he showed up again.

Turns out he was a student at the university a while back and had a history of stalking female students.

Thankfully, I haven't seen him since. I called campus police, but I never heard back.
Mark now makes multiple rounds by my desk whenever I work at night. Creepy library stalker, let's not meet.

Breaking news, everybody! Not everything is terrible. I repeat, not everything is terrible.
The ripple effect with Jenna Kim Jones is proof that the internet, it hasn't ruined humanity entirely.

Let me start by saying it's a great day to be a gray shirt, Team Rubicon. You know, it truly is a team.

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So put down your Doom scroller and pick up your faith in humanity and join me, Jenna, for the Ripple Effect. It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything.
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Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone. We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

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Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Before I get into this story, there are a few things that I need to explain about my country, South Africa, for you to fully understand the story.

In South Africa, it's normal to have high brick walls with electric gates, electric fences, alarms, etc., because crime is rampant here. It's also pretty normal to have big gardens.

My family and I are big animal lovers, so at the time of this story we had six dogs.

With that being said, our dogs roamed freely in and out of the garden, and it's secure and fully enclosed. We usually left the veranda door open during the day for them to do their thing.

Another thing about South Africa is that it's normal to have live-in domestic workers, like a housekeeper and a gardener. Average families employ these types of workers.

It's not only for wealthy people. And I'm only mentioning this since it seems to be different in other countries.
For this story, I'll be referring to our housekeeper as Ellie

usually leave our veranda door open at night due to security reasons, but I remember it being a hot summer night on this particular night.

So of course, this night of all nights, the veranda door was wide open and the dogs were doing their thing in the garden.

My brother and I were in my parents' room, excitedly setting up our new cell phones. Ellie's daughter, we'll call her Anne, was 18 years old.
She was like an older sister to us.

She was helping my brother and me. My dad was elsewhere in the house, and my mom was in the bath.

Now I specifically remember Anne commenting that the dogs wouldn't shut up and how annoying it was.

That was when I noticed it too. Sure, they would bark, but it was usually the dachshunds that yapped, while the bigger dogs stayed pretty chill.

Typically when the dachshunds yapped, it would only last for a few minutes and then they'd get over it, but something was different that night, and even the bigger dogs were barking non-stop.

My dad appeared in the room and mentioned that he too noticed the dogs' incessant barking, and he was going to check if everything was okay.

No alarm bells went off in my head, and I don't believe that my dad thought anything was amiss either. Because of this, when my brother asked to go investigate with him, my dad agreed.

Meanwhile, I was too engrossed in my new Sony Erickson.

My dad ventured out into our garden with my brother and toe when my dad had noticed the dogs were all grouped. They were growling and going crazy in a dark corner behind our in-ground swimming pool.

And here's the best way I can describe it. Our garden, beyond our pool, hits a slight incline, so we have a few steps leading down the hill to the bottom end of our garden.

We usually have a lamp that lights up, but my my dad noticed that the lamp seemed to be off, and this confused him because he could have sworn it was working just the other night.

My dad then got this gut-wrenching feeling because of this, and how the dogs were acting.

He called after them, and they would usually come running, but on this night they all seemed to just glance at him before turning back around and continuing to go crazy at this dark corner down the steps.

My dad told my brother to go back inside the house and get a torch.

He essentially did this as an excuse to get my brother to go back inside the house instead of going with him, since he had a gut feeling.

When my brother went back inside, my dad slowly approached the steps. He noticed how the dogs seemed to be snapping at whatever it was, hiding just out of view of the darkness.

As he approached the steps, he noticed that the lamp had been smashed. Confused, he put two and two together, as he inched backwards towards the steps.
But it was too late.

My dad, being an ex-vet and an avid hunter, felt something cold against his temple and immediately knew that it was a gun.

Out of the darkness stepped four other men in masks, all armed.

Shocked, he stood there frozen on the steps. The man holding the gun to his head was instantly aggressive and asked him where my brother was.

The man said that he saw my dad come out with my brother and saw my brother go back into the house, so he asked why.

My dad said that something came over him, and before he knew what he was saying, he responded, He's gone inside to press the panic button.

As he said this, he saw how all of the guys began to panic. They started speaking in an African language called Zulu.
They assumed that my dad couldn't understand.

It isn't common for white people to speak it, but my dad had actually grown up on a farm where he learned Zulu fluently from the farm workers.

The aggressive guy holding the gun then said, In Zulu, shit, the cops will be here any minute. Let's just kill this fucker and grab what we can, then go.

The others seemed apprehensive, and the smaller guys seemed particularly on edge as he continued to say how he couldn't go back to jail again.

He insisted that they needed to get out of there before the cops showed up, which would be any minute. He was really panicking.

My dad fed on this guy's fear, so he interrupted them speaking in English, pretending not to understand what they were saying.

He let them know that there were armed response vehicles that regularly drove in our area, and since my brother pushed that panic button so long ago, they'd probably be here any second.

And that's what did it for them. My dad watched as their plan unraveled before them.
The smaller guy full-on started freaking out on all of the other guys.

He told the others that they needed to leave as soon as possible, or else they'd get caught and put in jail.

This seemed to make the others more nervous, and they all lost confidence and began bickering amongst themselves as their plans slowly, as one of the guys said, turned to shit.

The aggressive guy who had kept his gun to my dad's head slowly lowered it as their bickering escalated, so he lost focus on my dad and shifted his focus on to his crew.

My dad then used this as an opportunity to slowly back up the steps and turn to dart to the house.

As luck would have it, as my dad ran through the still open veranda door, my oblivious brother was heading back out with the torch.

Mid-run, my dad scooped him up under his arm, like a football, and sprinted into the house. He didn't even close the door behind him.

I know this is silly, but I think he just wanted to get my brother inside as quickly as possible so he wasn't thinking properly.

Anne and I were oblivious to everything, so we were surprised when we saw my dad rush in through the bedroom door, slam it shut, and tell us to go upstairs and into the attic.

There are five guys outside with guns, he said. They're here to hurt us.
Go upstairs now.

My heart sank. I remember my body automatically responding and I sprinted to the stairs with Anne right behind me.
My mom ran out of the bathroom in a towel, and she wasn't too far behind.

Once we were up in the attic, we sat there in the darkness, in total silence. I swear you could hear a pin drop.
I think we were all just waiting to hear something below us in the rooms.

My mom cursed, saying that she didn't have a phone. My dad didn't have his phone either.
But who happened to have their phone with them? Me.

Clutched in my hand was my brand new Sony Ericsson, and we already had an emergency to use it for.

My mom dialed the police, and I kid you not, they asked where we lived. We explained, and they curtly told us that it wasn't even in their jurisdiction.

They just said sorry, which was followed by an abrupt click, and then the line went dead.

At that point, we were not only shitting ourselves, but we were flabbergasted as well. My mom began cursing like a sailor, and that's when my dad realized.
He forgot to close the veranda door.

What about Ellie and Vince?

They were in their rooms, blissfully unaware of the danger they were in.

So he then retrieved his firearm from the safe in the attic and told us that no matter what we heard, don't come downstairs. He told us that we needed to stay hidden no matter what.

I was sobbing at this point, begging my dad not to leave us, but he told us he had to go get Ellie and Vince before something bad happened to them. This resulted in even more tears as reality hit us.

There were two people still in danger. Anne was understandably in hysterics because she was fearing for her mother downstairs.

Then my dad disappeared, and the air was thick with tension. We could hear the dogs still going crazy, indicating that those men were still on our property.
My mom then called another number.

She called the armed security that drives around the area. She said that they would be over in ten to fifteen minutes.

They told us to wait and stay hidden until they arrived and rang our bell at the gate.

We waited there in silence, fearing that we would hear gunshot or something else indicating that these men were outside. But there was just silence.
The only sound was the dogs barking outside.

After what seemed like hours, but was most likely a couple of minutes, we heard stomping coming up the stairs, and my heart rate quickened.

I remember shutting my eyes and praying that it was my dad with Ellie and Vince. Luckily it was.
We all hid together for a while, and no one dared to speak.

The dogs seemed to have calmed down considerably, but they were still barking now and then.

When the gate intercom rang, my dad told us to wait while he checked to see if it was the security company, and sure enough it was. He opened up, and the nightmare was over.

I remember standing up, and then my knees buckling from the adrenaline my body endured. The Armed Security somehow notified the right police and everyone investigated the garden.

They found that there were actually seven pairs of footprints. They were also able to figure out that these guys bent the spikes on our wall to climb over.

We got an electric fence shortly after.

This meant meant that there must have been two other guys hiding in the shadows that my dad hadn't even seen, which is creepy in its own right.

South Africa's violent crime is quite bad, and it's sickeningly common for torture and assault to happen during these home invasions.

I was so young at the time, so I didn't know the horrors of the world, and was just scared of my family getting hurt.

Now that I'm older, just the thought of four women being in the house and my mom being in nothing but a bath towel gives me chills.

The cop said that the fact that there were so many guys indicates that this group of seven men likely had sinister intentions.

Thank goodness nothing happened to my family, and I'm forever thankful for my dad's quick thinking regarding the panic button.

Also, I'm so glad my dad understands Zulu and could manipulate the situation to benefit us. Lastly, my family will forever be in debt to our good boys and girls who warned us that night.

A terrifying and life-changing outcome would have been 100% what happened that night had it not been for our incredible dogs.

From that day onwards, my dad always gave them leftover rice or meat with their dinner. In conclusion, I'd like to say rest in peace to all of our dogs.

I'm sure there was a special place in heaven reserved for you angels.

Don't forget to get your tickets for the Let's Not Meet Live shows November 17th in Phoenix, Arizona, November 19th in St. Paul, Minnesota, and November 20th in Chicago, Illinois.

Links for the tickets can be found in the show notes or go to let's not meetpodcast.com/slash tour.

If you're a patron, stick around after the music for your extended, ad-free version of this week's episode. If you want to get access, go to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

To sign up and support the show today, you'll get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate for the best listening experience, plus bonus content every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

That's at patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, the old time radio cast, and our new podcast, podcast, Degrads, the Degrassi Rewatch Podcast with Shane Kipple and Mike LaBelle.

You can find all these shows at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This week you have heard Magic Mirror by Noah EXE,

A Man Chased Me and My Friends at 3 a.m. by Alternative Farm 225,

Creepy Experience at Nature Spot by Angel Nike,

Old Man at the Bar by Garbage,

Hot Guy I Sold Coffee To by The Dark Wolf, Good thing Mark Was Working by Aquatic Kitten19. And finally, My Family's Dogs Prevented a House Break-In by Midnight Schnacks.

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. Send your stories to let's not meetstories at gmail.com to hear them on the show.

We'll see you next week, everybody. Stay safe.

When I was growing up, I lived with my mom and my sister in a journey.

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This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankl. Let me tell you something.
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