15x07: God Said I Belonged to Him

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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 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.

As a long time fan of Let's Not Meet, I have found the inspiration and courage to share a story that has haunted my brother and me for a while.

In 2007, I was heading into my sophomore year of college, and my brother Martin was still in high school.

We have two much younger siblings, and at the time, they were around elementary school age.

My parents decided to take a cruise for their twentieth wedding anniversary that year, so my brother and I were told to watch the younger brother and sister, Cole and Charlotte.

My brother's best friend, Christian, stayed with us while my parents were gone, and he helped us to plan fun activities with the younger siblings.

One idea they were particularly excited about was taking a camping trip, as our family had never been very outdoorsy.

Their eyes lit up at the prospect of cooking our dinner over a campfire and fishing in a stream.

Since it was early summertime, we had great luck with the weather since it was warm but not too hot, with clear skies, perfect for stargazing.

Finally packed and ready for the somewhat long drive to the mountains, we checked into our campsite before dark and Cole and Charlotte helped us to set up the tent.

It was strange, but there were no other people at the campground, which was unusual for this time of year.

Once we finished dinner, Cole and Charlotte were ready for sleep, so Martin, Christian, and I stayed awake a little bit longer so that we could catch up and get things ready for the next morning.

Then, suddenly, a white astro van pulled up in the camping spot directly next to ours.

This person had dozens of unoccupied spaces to choose from, but chose to park right next to us.

Oh well, Christian said, at least we'll have company now.

Christian then called out a quick and polite hello to our new neighbor.

But he didn't get a response back.

I got an uneasy feeling almost immediately, but I decided to push it aside as I continued to get the fishing poles ready for the morning and put the food away to ward off the bears and other wild animals.

Over the next hour or so, things started to get a bit weird.

The man who parked next to us eventually got out of his van and sat at a picnic table as he built a small fire.

The roaring fire that we had made had a lot of light, so I could see that he was looking directly at us.

His fire died out completely several minutes later, but he continued just sitting there, staring.

I could feel the stares,

but I couldn't see his face any more.

He was just sitting there breathing audibly.

Christian and Martin noticed that I was uneasy, so they picked up on how creepy the situation was starting to become.

Martin whispered, Why is he breathing like that?

I don't feel safe anymore.

I told Christian and Martin that I was going to stay awake since I didn't trust this guy.

As soon as they moved from the fire to go into their tents, the man rose from the picnic table and started moving toward us.

I called out Hello to him, and I was once again met with no response.

Finally, in a panic, I demanded that we pack up and get out of there immediately.

Christian and Martin got out of their tents and saw the figure of the man just standing there, staring at us, still breathing deeply.

We tried to stay as quiet and as calm as possible, so that we wouldn't alarm Cole and Charlotte while we packed up.

After throwing everything into the trunk, we drove away, not looking back.

Before leaving the campsite itself, I asked if we could go to the check-in area at the lodge to see what the hell was going on and maybe see if they knew anything more.

I just wanted to know, what was this guy's deal?

But to my surprise, there was nobody else registered at the campsite that evening.

And the story doesn't end there.

About six months later, when I was officially in my sophomore year of college, a local hiker went missing in a county over from where we had camped and where I went to college.

She was doing something so normal, she was just hiking with her dog.

Sadly, she turned up several months later, murdered, and found in a white Astro van.

When the news finally released photos of the van and the man's face,

I saw that it was him,

the same guy.

I got a phone call from both my brother and his friend when the story broke, since they had recognized him too.

Several years later, we came to find out that it wasn't his first murder.

He became known as the National Forest Serial Killer.

I sincerely mean it when I say that I am incredibly cautious as a camper now because of this encounter.

Thinking that it could have been us or my younger siblings still gives me nightmares to this day.

Christian, Martin, and I recently had a reunion, and we talked about what happened that night, even though more than 15 years have gone by.

It was amazing.

We were consistent with recalling every detail as they are etched in our memories forever.

So, creepy, heavy-breathing would-be serial killer lurking at a nearby campsite, let's never, ever meet.

At my old job, two of my co-workers and I had gone on a work trip.

One of them was a man and the other was a woman.

Everything went well at first.

We just did what we were there to do.

The first night, I was really tired, so when my co-worker invited me to go to dinner, I declined and went back to the hotel room.

The next day, my male co-worker was kind of acting quiet and insisted that I sit in the front seat of the car instead of the back.

I thought that it was strange, but didn't think too much on it.

After we were done working, my female co-worker invited us to have some drinks in her room.

I figured, why not?

A couple of beers wouldn't hurt.

Everything Everything was normal at first.

We drank, talked, and had fun.

But then, all of a sudden, she started flirting with our male co-worker, telling him he should get more comfortable and take his shirt off.

Mind you, he's happily married, and so is she.

This understandably made him uncomfortable, so he told us that he was going to go to bed.

I'm sure many of you are thinking that I should have said something, but let me provide some context.

Both of them are fairly older than me, and this was my first job.

While I thought my female coworker's remark was inappropriate, I didn't know what to make of the interaction.

Weirdly, I also thought they were just flirting.

After our male coworker left, I decided to stay, and this ended up being a huge mistake.

Up until then, the female coworker's behavior toward me wasn't alarming.

She then started showing me pictures of her kids and family, but then she pulled up this page for some model on Instagram.

Now, the model didn't have very many followers, but he was a physically attractive guy.

She told me that they were having an affair and that she'd soon be divorcing her husband to run away with him.

Her demeanor completely changed as she divulged this information.

It's hard to describe, but her eyes essentially went wild.

As she kept talking about their plans, I didn't say anything.

I just kind of nodded along and let her tell her story, which she was gradually embellishing.

I figured she was just trying to impress me or something, so I still wasn't getting any major alarm bells regarding her yet.

But then she started showing me these paparazzi-style pictures of him on her camera roll.

These were pictures she had clearly taken without his knowledge.

She had pictures of where he worked, his friends, his family, and even more stalker shit.

I felt sick to my stomach.

You know that feeling when something is just wrong?

Like, you know you're in danger and you need to get out?

That's exactly how I was feeling.

Every part of me was screaming, run.

So I told her I was getting tired and I stood up to leave.

She flatly said, okay,

and then I got out of there.

The next day, she acted completely normal.

I later talked to our male co-worker and asked him why he seemed so tense after he spent time alone with her.

He then let me know that she made a move on him.

Well, let's just say, since then, I've become more in tune with my gut feeling, and I'll never ignore it.

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During my younger years, I typically worked two to three jobs if I could manage the schedule.

At the time that this incident took place, I was working full-time at a beach bar with the occasional side gig as a bodyguard.

It wasn't uncommon for people from out of state to come down for the weather, as there is good money to be earned during the busy tourist season.

Many took up housing at the short-term lease studio apartments, and it wasn't unusual to find out that several people you worked with were all renting from the same place.

It was the early 90s, and the beach tourism scene was wild.

Handling a rambunctious bunch meant needing to unwind from the stress later, and it was standard to meet up with co workers to commiserate after the long, hot shifts.

As such, a couple of co workers asked me to come hang out with them and some guys that they knew who were in a rock band.

I grew restless with the crowded studio apartment, so when I was ready to call it a night I left.

Two of the band members followed me outside, as I recall.

They delayed my departure and started chatting me up.

It was right around then that another co-worker, whom we'll call Tina, pulled up in front with a slightly muscular blonde fellow whom I recognized as someone who worked at a different bar.

It was the way that the van careened into the parking lot that caught my attention.

Then the guy got out and stomped over to the passenger door.

He then yanked the door open, open, grabbed Tina by her long blonde hair, and dragged her across the parking lot and into her apartment a few doors down.

Tina was maybe five feet tall and thin as a whip.

I can still see it in my mind, her feet kicking as she was grabbing at his unyielding clutches.

Aren't you going to help her?

I exclaimed to the two dolts, who observed this with mild curiosity.

They both indicated that they were not.

I angrily huffed at them in disdain and went over there myself and busted through her apartment door.

What I saw next spurred my anger.

That guy had pinned her to the bed and he was choking her.

So I grabbed a large, heavy lamp nearby, and I held it like a baseball bat.

After giving it a little test swing, I hoisted it over my shoulder at the ready.

When he saw me, he instantly let go of her and and started towards the door carefully.

Watching him close, I warily kept my bat cocked and stared at him, never flinching, never looking away.

Once he reached the door, he ran the rest of the way back to the van, and Tina ran after him.

I yelled, No!

Over her shoulder, she screamed back at me and said that he had her purse, which had all of her money inside.

I told her it wasn't worth it.

However, she reached the van and opened the door, despite his attempt to drive away.

He leaned across and tried to hold the door closed, and then he grabbed her by her hair again.

He then began to drive the van through the lot while she tried to run alongside it as it picked up speed.

Sprinting, I dove through the open door of the van and clutched at his hand.

I was cursing at him, digging into his pressure pressure points with one hand and clawing at him with the other.

The two of us girls were now being dragged through the lot, and his hand remained wrapped tightly in her hair, while her hands were wrapped around her purse.

This only went on for a couple of seconds, but it felt like forever.

His face eventually shifted from this maniacal smile to a painful grimace, and he finally let go.

The two of us landed on the pavement with no more than scrapes and bruises, while he gunned the gas for the last few feet and furiously sped off down the road.

The next time I saw Tina at work, she had a scarf wrapped around her neck to cover the bruises.

Tina and I had never been particularly close, but after this happened, she made a point to thank me publicly at work for saving her life, twice.

She got the authorities involved, and charges were pressed against the lunatic.

I never saw that blonde guy or the other boys in the band again.

Remember, they did not want to step in and help at all.

So, honestly, good written to the bad rubbish.

I think about that blonde guy once in a while, and I'm sure he's thought about me too.

But it bears saying to the blonde crap nugget who had enough sense to realize that he was up against someone who could deliver the hits Let's Not Meet.

I'm from a small town in coastal British Columbia.

One summer night, a friend of mine and I went to a well-known beach spot to lay out and look at the stars.

There was only one other person at the beach at this time.

It was a middle-aged man who had a whole setup, including a small fort made of logs.

Resting on one of the logs was a small red lantern.

It was oddly ominous.

My friend and I walked past him, as he had his setup right by the main entrance of the beach.

As we passed him, we said a quick hello and carried on walking to find a private spot for us.

As we continued to walk away, he asked us if we'd like to join him.

It's not very unusual for strangers to interact in this way, since the community around the coastal British Columbia is so small.

Around there, people are typically rather trusting of one another.

My friend and I politely declined, and the man replied, No worries.

I hope you two have a nice night.

His tone started friendly, but as his sentiment continued, it took this weird and suspicious tone.

Despite this, we dismissed it.

We figured that he was just some random beach guy who had too many beers.

A little while later, when we were much further down the beach, we were hanging out on our blanket and talking under the stars.

Suddenly, we heard some twigs cracking, and we could tell that the noise was coming from the forest behind us.

We dismissed this as well, and assumed that it had to be some deer or something like that, since there were hundreds all over our town.

We were there for about another fifteen minutes when we heard an Android text tone sounding off in the trees right behind us.

My friend and I both went completely still, since there were no roads, homes, or people that we knew of in this area where the sound came from.

And then

we thought of that one guy that we saw when we were walking onto the beach.

I nearly froze in fear, but luckily my friend had a better response to the situation.

He then made the call to pack up our blanket and walk back to our car.

He also suggested that we stick with walking along the moonlit beach instead of using the forest trail that we initially used.

Once we were back at the entrance, we couldn't help but notice that the man we had briefly interacted with was nowhere to be seen.

We knew that he was still around.

His creepy red lantern and guitar were still there.

I'm so sure that he was stalking us.

I'm not sure if he was just a creep who wanted to purve on some young people or actually cause us harm in some way, but his idiotic mistake of leaving his ringer on gave him away.

So we were able to leave the scene.

I still wince whenever I think about what could have happened.

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This happened when I was in

But I'm not sure why.

I assume we decided to shop separately so that we could get our shopping done quicker.

I was wandering the grocery aisles when I noticed this girl who was about my age.

In a friendly manner, we casually smiled at each other and continued with our respective shopping.

It didn't seem weird at first, but I kept noticing that she would wind up in the same aisles as me.

On top of that, I noticed that there was this big muscular man never far behind us.

Eventually I texted my boyfriend and asked him where he was as I continued shopping.

The The next thing I knew, the girl approached me and remarked that she loved my jacket.

I gave her a quick and polite thanks and tried to move on.

She then stopped me and said, Hey, you look like you're my age.

You seem really nice.

I just moved here for a new job at a company that my friends and I are starting.

Then she proceeded to ask me questions about where I was from.

I was untrusting, so I was vague in my response, since this interaction just didn't feel normal.

Then she continued.

I'm looking for more people like you.

I want you to work for our company.

It's kind of a warehouse job.

I would love to have you be one of our bookkeepers.

You should give me your number.

I replied, That's nice of you to offer me a job, but I'm not a desk person, and I already have a job that I love.

That's a bummer, she said.

I just thought that we could work well well together.

Would you maybe want to give me your number so we can hang out?

I would love to have a friend who could show me around the city.

I realized that I wasn't getting out of this situation until my boyfriend showed up or I gave her a number.

So I eventually rattled off a fake number and then said, Hey, I'll catch you later.

I need to get going.

As I walked away, I was praying that my boyfriend would be near so that we could get the fuck out of there.

While I was looking for him and trying to call him, the girl caught up to me and said, I tried to call you, but all I got was a recording saying that your number was out of service.

Just as I was about to tell her she must have typed in the number incorrectly, her eyes shifted to the unlocked iPhone that was in my hand.

She quickly snatched it and called herself.

I was so flustered and mad at her that I snatched my phone back right as my boyfriend was coming around the corner.

He instantly recognized that something was up and said that we needed to go.

When the girl saw him approach me, she looked so disappointed to see him and stopped trying to interact with me.

We ended up buying nothing and leaving.

That night we called our parents and the police.

The police said they didn't think it had to do with anything ill intended.

I was going to switch my number because I was so scared, but I decided to just block the number that she called me from, and I disabled all location access on my phone.

I was too scared to go anywhere alone for a while after this happened.

Well, a few days after all of this, I got a text from a random number.

It was the girl from Walmart, and she was reaching out to me from a different number.

She sent me a picture of my best friend.

who was out drinking downtown with some of her friends.

The text said, I met your best friend.

She gave me your number because I told her I was looking for new friends.

She showed me a picture of you and I said, what a coincidence.

I met her the other day and I lost her number when I got a new phone.

A few minutes after that, I got a text from my best friend that said, I gave your number to a girl who wanted to make friends around the area.

She's also looking for people to join her business.

And since I'm moving this week, I thought of you.

I freaked out.

I couldn't believe that my best friend was with this girl.

I told her to try and get away from her and not leave or go anywhere alone with her.

I was so worried that I stayed up until my friend got home.

The next day, my friend apologized and told me to block the number.

She and her friends tried to ditch her at some point since they felt like something was off, but she kept showing up at all of the bars that they went to.

My friend said that this girl was relentless and texted her all night, trying to get my friend to leave and go hang out with her at her place.

My friend also said that when she asked about the business, the girl wouldn't give her any concrete details other than it was a warehouse in town somewhere, and the job would pay great.

She also kept offering to take her out there and give her a tour of the place.

I've been thinking about this so much, and I'm glad that I had an uncomfortable gut feeling that helped me steer clear of this situation.

I'm also glad that my best friend eventually caught on and didn't go anywhere with the girl.

I am upset that the cops ignored my concern and told me it was nothing.

I hope they at least have a record of receiving my tip that night, but I highly doubt they do.

I live in a regional city in Australia.

It's relatively big, but once you leave the city center, it's pretty much all bushland and trees.

When I was seven or eight years old, during year three of school, my school took the entire year three class on a camping trip at a campground about 45 minutes out of town.

It was a single night trip, and we were all very excited.

After a long day of archery, basketball, tennis, and all the other camp things, we had dinner and went to bed.

I distinctly remember laughing and messing around with all my friends before we all fell asleep at around 11 p.m.

The next part of the story that I'm about to share is something that I had forgotten about for years.

This very recently came back to my mind, and now it has become the clearest memory from from that camping trip.

I used to be terrified of the dark, and I used to wake up multiple times at night.

During this instance, I woke up in my cabin at around 2 a.m.

I remember this, as I had a watch that was very special to me, and for some reason, looking at it and checking the time always comforted me in the dark.

When I woke up, I felt like something was off.

Nothing felt wrong per se, but something was definitely off.

I looked around my cabin and I didn't see anything of interest, but then I was struck with an intense feeling to just look out the window, which was right next to my bed.

Our room was on the second level of this cabin complex, so when you looked out the window, you had to look down to see the ground below.

When looking out the window, I didn't see anything, but just as I started to look away, something caught my eye.

I could have sworn I saw something right below the window, just out of sight.

I looked down, and I saw a person.

He was tall, maybe six, three, or six, four,

and his skin looked like he had just fallen hard on cement.

He was covered in scrapes and grazes.

He looked to be about forty, and his buzzed haircut and super skinny build made him seem like he could have possibly been in his mid-twenties.

He was wearing a dirty black hoodie and black jeans that looked like motorbike pants.

He was also wearing this hat that looked like a mix between a fedora and a cowboy hat.

When I looked down, his eyes caught mine instantly since he was staring into the window.

But he didn't move his head when he saw me, so I could tell that he had been actively staring into that window for a while.

He stared at me with such wide eyes.

It was like he was straining all of the muscles in his face so that he could pop his eyes out as much as possible.

The second we locked eyes, I ducked back down and hid under the covers.

I wanted to scream and tell my friends, but I was so scared that I couldn't even move.

So I waited under those covers for what felt like hours.

When I finally felt like it was safe, I slowly peeked out from the covers again and checked the window.

He was still there.

He had moved a bit to the right, but he was still there, staring intently at my window.

I didn't even get to become fully level with the window before I ducked out of sight again and went back under the covers, whimpering.

I'm not sure how, but I managed to fall back asleep.

When I woke up, the light was out, and all of my friends were happily waking up after their sleep.

I woke up and checked the window right away, praying that he was gone.

And luckily he was.

I told my friends about it that morning, and they all laughed at me for having a nightmare.

They were so insistent about it that I think I believed them.

I had forgotten about this for ten years, but as the memory came back to me, I realized that it couldn't have been a dream.

It was very real.

Plus, I have bizarre dreams.

I've never had one that actually makes sense.

My dreams always flow so weirdly.

So, that, in and of itself, is proof to me that this really did happen.

I have no idea who was outside my window that night or what he was doing.

I just hope that he hasn't continued with whatever he was doing.

The look in his eyes told me that whatever he was doing there,

he wasn't messing around.

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Last summer, I relocated from Seattle, Washington to the greater Washington, D.C.

area.

My new job paid for a moving company to relocate my furniture and even my car, but I opted to take three to five days to drive cross country with my friend, assuming I may not have an opportunity, or the determination, to do this again.

My friend and I are both young women, around 30 years old, and we did some research into where we wanted to stop along the way.

We also discussed how long we anticipated being on the road daily, and agreed that 12 hours, including detours, sounded like a fair of time.

Our first day was a bit different, as we left later than we had expected, and we stopped in Spokane.

The next day we were planning to take some small detours in Butte and Bozeman, with the possibility of stopping at other scenic viewpoints while in the Rockies.

We were planning on stopping at a hotel that evening in Dickinson, North Dakota, which is the largest town in the area beyond Bozeman.

As we approached the North Dakota border, there was still some traffic on the highway, but we had noticed that a lot of trucks were pulling off at various stops.

It was around 11 p.m.

by the time we entered North Dakota, so we were somewhat bummed as Dickinson was still an hour away.

Beach is the first town after the border, and they have a large gas station and a welcome center just off the exit, so we stopped at the gas station to fill up, and as two young women in an unfamiliar town at night, we were slightly uncomfortable.

I pumped the gas while my friend went inside to use the restroom.

We both had noticed there only appeared to be men around,

at least from what we could tell.

While pumping the gas, I particularly took notice of a car parked near the entrance with a man in the driver's seat.

I could see the ember of his cigarette going in and out, as well as a reflection of light on a pair of glasses.

I was uneasy since I felt like he was staring right at me.

I was caught between trying not to look, but also trying not to let him or his car out of my sight.

Once my friend returned, we quickly left and got back onto the highway.

As I drove away, I really wanted to get out of there, so I exceeded the speed limit as much as I felt comfortable with.

I was driving close to ninety.

For anyone unfamiliar, there is almost nothing between Beach and Dickinson, and the night gets incredibly dark out there.

It had to have been ten to twenty minutes into driving when my friend told me that there were headlights behind us that had been steadily keeping their distance.

Perhaps for my own comfort, I just told her that we were on a highway and having someone driving behind us was normal.

Plus, I reminded her that we were going as fast as we could.

Minutes later, she piped up again and said that the car was still behind us and maintaining roughly the same amount of distance.

As rattled as I was, I assumed my friend would be paranoid until we got off at the next exit, Dickinson.

After we exited, I was at a light waiting to take a left when the car that was behind us also pulled off the exit, and they pulled up right behind us, very close.

From my rear-view mirror, I saw the glow of a cigarette being smoked, and the man in glasses from the gas station.

As I got a better look at him, I realized he was maybe around 40.

He had shaggy hair and a little bit of facial hair.

My friend turned around to take a look, even though I told her not to.

I was worried that he would get out of the car, especially since it was just us sitting at this traffic light.

There was very little traffic, so I was tempted to run the light, but it finally turned green.

The guy followed me through the light and continued following me as I turned into the hotel parking lot.

Now, normally, when pulling into a hotel, I would park in a parking spot, but I decided to pull into the loading area right out front, and my friend and I quickly got out of the car and locked it.

We rushed to the door, but there was no one at the front desk, and the hotel locked its second set of sliding doors after 11 p.m.

Hotel staff can manually open these doors for guests, but since no one was at the desk, we were stuck in the entrance corridor, buzzing the bell over and over again.

Meanwhile, this guy parked his car and got out.

The man then walked through the first set of doors and said something along the lines of,

Are you ladies staying here?

Right then, the desk attendant showed up and manually opened the second set of doors.

Then the man turned out of the corridor and walked away as soon as we entered the hotel.

As we approached the front desk, we told the desk clerk that we thought someone was following us, and he told us that we were okay, and the front doors would remain locked.

He was nice enough to get another employee to come help us unload our car and help us park it.

When we woke up, I was convinced the car would be tampered with in some way, but luckily it was fine.

I have no idea what that guy wanted, but it was very scary, and I don't understand why he would drive an hour just to ask us a nonsensical question.

Ever since, any time I travel, I always limit my driving at night and ensure that I fill up my gas during the day.

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This happened seven years ago on the day of my 28th birthday.

I was working at a small drive-through only coffee stand about 30 minutes outside of Seattle.

I had been working there for about a year at this point, and was always scheduled to work the closing shift during the week and the opening shift on the weekends.

In the seven years that I had worked as a barista at this point, I had never been confronted with a situation that challenged my feeling of security while working alone.

And despite having heard numerous stories over the years from other baristas in the area who experienced violent or dangerous interactions with some of their customers, I considered myself fortunate not to have to place myself among them.

But unfortunately on this day, that would change.

One Thursday evening, about fifteen minutes before closing, I was preparing to close the stand at 7 p.m.

as usual.

It was very rare that I would have customers come through the stand past 6.30.

Because of this, I felt myself jump slightly when I saw a man standing behind the glass of the closed window beside me when I looked up from the espresso machine I was cleaning.

Adding to my alarm was the fact that he made no noise whatsoever as he approached the stand, and he made no attempt to grab my attention once he got there.

Instead, he stood behind the window in complete silence, his mouth awkwardly fixed to an unnatural-looking smile.

At first, I wasn't sure if he was a customer at all, as I considered the idea that he may be a part of the large group of transients that were known to reside in the area at that time.

They would occasionally come up to the stand to ask for free coffee or water.

For safety reasons, I typically refrained from serving walk-up customers after dusk, but because he now knew that I had seen him, I figured that I at least needed to acknowledge the fact that he was there, so I reluctantly decided to serve him.

He introduced himself as Ivan.

He was around my age and seemed reasonably well kept.

He had a slight Eastern European accent, and his English wasn't very good.

His eyes, however, were utterly unnerving.

His gaze made my stomach feel uneasy.

My intuition immediately alerted me that something about this individual was very wrong.

Red flags were beginning to wave in my mind, which made it even more impossible to shake the deep, almost overwhelming sense of darkness that I felt radiating from this person.

There was an evil in him that I could not ignore, though I would soon find out exactly why I was feeling this way.

After greeting him as politely as I could manage despite my growing hesitations, I began preparing the machine to make him a drink.

He didn't seem to know what he wanted to order, so I asked him what I could get started for him twice before I silently recognized the fact that he was very likely not there for the coffee.

Eventually he abandoned ordering altogether, and instead directed our interaction toward continued small talk.

He asked me where I was from, how long I had been working at the stand, etc.

I answered each of these questions with short, abrupt answers, hoping that my tone and clear lack of engagement would convey the fact that I wasn't interested in continuing the conversation any further, since he wasn't a paying customer, and because I was about to close.

After a long pause, he slowly asked,

So do you have a boyfriend?

Annoyed, I curtly replied, No.

At this point, point, I was completely ready to end our interaction, so I told him that I needed to finish up with closing so that I could go home.

Upon hearing this, he walked away from the window that he had been standing at, mentioning in his descent that he was looking forward to seeing me again very soon.

A minute or two passed, and he was out of sight.

However, my gut told me that he was not far away.

I could feel his dark energy nearby, and I knew he was watching me from somewhere beyond my line of vision.

So, I cautiously closed up the stand, locked the doors and windows, walked to my car, and drove home.

By the following day, I had all but forgotten the encounter that I had had with the guy, and went on with work as usual.

Closing time rolled around, and once again I was just about to close the stand and end my shift.

I was nearly done closing up the register when a brief moment of movement caught my eye from outside the window on the opposite side of the stand.

I turned my head toward the area in question, and there, in full view of both me and the security cameras, stood Ivan, whom I had just met the day before.

My stomach sank quicker than I previously knew to be possible.

I was immediately made aware of how cold it was inside that stand.

He He smiled at me with this predatory grin, waved, and then proceeded to pull the closed window open in front of him, instead of waiting for me to cross the small distance within the stand to open it for him, as I had done before.

Although he didn't present himself aggressively, there was something incredibly threatening about his choosing to do that.

It left me feeling helpless and hopeless, unsafe in that moment, and that was not a feeling that I was familiar with or, as I learned, particularly fond of.

Once I was able to bring myself back into a present state of mind, I cleared my throat and told him as firmly as possible that I was off the clock, and wouldn't be able to make anything for him as my machine was already cleaned and my register was closed out for the day.

His smile widened further as he replied, It's okay, I didn't come for the coffee, I came for you.

Upon hearing this, I noticed a shift in the energy building between us.

The fear I had previously been overcome with now made a sudden and jolting transition into a redlining level of irritation.

I don't care what you came for, I said as sternly as I could manage.

It's going to have to wait until tomorrow because I am fucking closed.

He chuckled at this, before finally raising both of his hands as an indication of surrender.

All right, all right, he said, fair enough.

His smile then disappeared, and his eyes became even more focused on me as he intensified his gaze.

I will see you tomorrow, then, he said, in a way that felt less like a statement and more like a threat.

I swallowed hard, and once he was out of view, I rushed to the window and slammed it shut, throwing the lock into place.

Again, despite not being able to visibly confirm his presence nearby, I knew that he was there, and I could feel his eyes fixated on me.

I left the stand quickly and got into my car to drive home.

This time, however, he remained heavily on my mind for the rest of the night, robbing me of getting any sleep.

The following morning was a Saturday, so per my usual schedule, I got up insanely early to work the 5 a.m.

opening shift.

I arrived at the stand at 10 minutes to 5, and for the first few hours of my shift everything was going as it normally would.

At around 8.30 a.m.

the sun had broken through the clouds, and the autumn chill in the air was steadily burning off.

November mornings tend to be freezing, dark, and dreary, so I was admiring the weather as I was looking out the window.

Then I noticed a familiar truck approaching.

As it neared the stand, I recognized the driver as my ex-boyfriend Jonathan.

I found this exceptionally odd.

He and I were not on very friendly terms, due to his cheating that ended our relationship about six months earlier.

He slowly pulled up to the ledge of the open window that I was occupying, and I skeptically asked him what he was doing there.

I'm sure I'm probably not someone that you're wanting to see today, I know, but I just wanted to come by and wish you a happy

even if another customer pulled in behind him.

I told him that he needed to stay until Ivan was gone.

I could tell that he was able to register the fear in my eyes since he immediately agreed to stay.

I brought as much focus into my demeanor as I could manage as I turned to face the window on the opposite side of the stand, just as Ivan approached.

As I walked over to him, I noticed right away that he had been crying.

His eyes were bloodshot, and a few tears were dripping slowly down his cheeks.

Disregarding his obvious emotional state, I informed him that he needed to leave, as I wasn't going to serve him.

Before my statement reached its conclusion, however, he cut my words off abruptly and said, I don't need this any more.

You can have it.

As he said this, he threw his Russian passport into the stand through the open window.

I picked it up, puzzled, and with a mix of both caution and disinterest, I asked him why he would no longer need his passport.

I just won't, he responded vaguely.

I allowed his words to hang heavily between us while I attempted to make sense of what this gesture might mean, if anything at all.

I felt a strong bite of dread inside my chest, and from there, the fear crept up slowly into my throat before finally escaping past my lips in an audible gasp, bringing Ivan the confirmation that he was hoping for.

I understood what was about to happen here.

No guest to a foreign country would willingly discard or abandon their passport unless they intended to see an act of absolute finality to completion.

In an effort to sever the nonverbal conversation taking place within the locked gaze Ivan and I currently had on one another, I glanced over my shoulder at Jonathan, who now had the what the fuck is going on look on his

He instantly recognized the desperate, pleading fear in my eyes.

This caused his own expression to quickly change to one of panicked urgency as he attempted to understand what had just taken place between me and this stranger.

As I turned back to Ivan, I noticed that his crying had stopped.

His tears were now replaced with a look of what I can only describe as complete and utter insanity.

This is the point where the dynamics of our interaction shifted indefinitely.

God came to me last night in a dream, Ivan began slowly.

He told me that you will be my wife.

You are my wife.

You are mine.

You are for me.

A saddened, sadistic smile curled up at the corners of his mouth in such a way it was almost physically painful to witness.

My heart began throwing itself violently against the inside of my chest as adrenaline surged through my system.

You are my wife, he stated again.

You'll come with me, right now.

At this, he planted his hands firmly onto the ledge of the window that stood before him and began to lift himself into it.

Realizing now that he was attempting to crawl through the window and into the stand with me, I practically threw myself across the small distance between him and quickly slammed the window shut, locking it.

He pushed his weight back down off of the ledge, paused, and then proceeded to give me a look that made me truly understand the meaning of having one's blood run cold.

I felt the inside of myself begin to quiver in a way that I had never felt before.

An anxious vibration was working its way through my entire body.

This was not over yet.

And I understood this.

At this, Ivan offered me a quick wink and began to move with obvious purpose towards the back of the stand.

Soon I could hear the faint beeping of the buttons being punched on the electronic keypad that secured the lock on the back door of the stand.

Ivan was trying to get through the actual entrance.

In my mind, I knew that there was no way he would manage to guess the four-number code, so I dismissed any arising concern that he would manage to gain entry.

It's not going to be that easy, I said under my breath, though I was unsure if I truly believed that.

A sudden realization that I had spoken far too soon arrived like a dead weight thrown directly at my gut.

The dread that followed what I heard next is something that I'll never forget.

It slammed itself violently into my present state of mind with so much force that I fell back a few steps.

The adrenaline immediately overtook my system in its entirety, and in an instant my vision vision tunnelled as I heard the fateful sound of the electronic keypad indicating a successful code entry.

I then heard the loud and heavy thunk of the steel deadbolt retreating into the door.

The next thing I knew, all I could see was the door in front of me, nothing else.

It was as if there were a glaring spotlight illuminating that door and evil was about to walk through it.

Everything else around me fell into darkness.

Time felt as if it had stopped entirely.

I no longer had a sense of it or of the space around me which I currently occupied.

As the door began to slowly push open from the outside, I could hear an almost deafening scream resonate powerfully through the walls of the stand, expelled solely by a force of fear.

As I stood there completely paralyzed, I witnessed the largest knife I had ever seen.

First, I saw the knife.

Then I saw Ivan's firmly gripped hand around it.

It was only then that I realized the scream I was hearing was my own, as Ivan passed the remainder of his body through the opening of the back door and into the stand, and my scream suddenly silenced itself.

Before I continue any further, let me say, Until you personally experience a situation that demands you to access your fight-or-flight response, you have no idea what that response is going to be.

The type of fear that's required to trigger this defense mechanism in the first place is more than most people ever realize.

How you will react to it will be entirely involuntary.

In this moment, I recognized the simple fact that regardless of whatever this guy had planned for me here today, I intended to survive it.

And not simply survive, but I intended to execute a lesson that this guy clearly needed to learn.

Never underestimate someone's capability to persevere.

Jonathan was still in his truck on the other side of the stand, so I ran to the window and screamed desperately through the now closed and locked panel of glass.

Jonathan, he's got a fucking knife.

Jonathan's eyes grew, and he threw open the driver's side door and flew from his truck towards the back of the stand.

Then, in the furthest corner of my vision, I caught sight of a dark looming presence entering the space of the small interior of the stand.

Ivan was now standing no further than ten feet from me.

He reeked of an evil that overtook every inch of space within the small structure that we were now both occupying.

It made the air so heavy around me that breathing started to become difficult.

The air felt thick and toxic in my lungs, nearly causing me to choke.

As my struggle to breathe increased, Ivan began to close the few feet of space between us by taking slow, taunting steps in my direction.

His knife was gripped firmly in his hand which rested at his side, but the look that he had on his face in this moment was so intense that it felt as if it were made of its own blade.

He used his eyes to cut into me deeply over and over again as he softly spoke.

You are my wife.

You are my wife.

Ivan ultimately managed to only take a total of three steps towards me before I saw an arm being thrown around his neck from behind.

As I stood there in a state of paralysis due to fear, I watched as Jonathan pulled Ivan by the neck with so much force that his feet flew out from beneath him.

In that one swift movement, both Ivan and Jonathan were on the ground right outside the door, with Jonathan securing Ivan in a headlock that proved nearly impossible to break away away from.

Jonathan yelled strict instructions to Ivan not to move a single muscle, or he would choke the fucking life out of him.

Surprisingly, Ivan remained still, never once making any attempts at resistance.

Jonathan kicked the knife away from his reach and told me to pick it up, secure it, and call the cops.

It would feel like hours before the cops arrived, thanks to the massive amount of adrenaline still in my system, though in reality, it was probably only a few minutes.

Soon the entire area was completely overtaken by more law enforcement than I had ever witnessed.

Having moved very little from the space I initially stood, as I called 911, I watched as at least six cops descended onto Ivan at once.

They relieved the grip that Jonathan had around his neck and forcibly detained him, practically hog-tied, and carried him into a waiting cruiser.

While speaking with the cops, after being securely restrained and unable to flee, Ivan insisted continually that I was his wife.

God had told him, after all, that I was intended for him.

I belonged to him, God said.

He was simply there that morning to collect what he had been promised.

Stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended 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 bitrate, plus bonus content every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

You can get tickets for the upcoming Let's Not Meet live shows at let's not meetpodcast.com/slash tour or just follow the links in the show notes.

This November I'll be in Phoenix, St.

Paul, and Chicago.

Again, that's let's not meetpodcast.com slash tour.

Follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash cryptic county to catch my live streams and make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week you have heard Campfire Shadows by Possum Cat.

My co-worker was a deranged stalker by Not Faye.

The Time I Saved a Coworker by Essay.

Stalker on the Beach in Small Town by Lean Fariel.

Almost Taken in Walmart by Dry Entertainer72.

A Memory from Year 3 by Zach.

Followed during Cross Country Move by Keener.

And finally, God Said I Belonged to Him by Devil Doll X.

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.

If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com.

We'll see you next week.

Everybody, stay safe.

I guess I'll just jump right in and tell you what happened in the middle of springtime in early 2020.

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