15x01: He Tried to Pay us to Make a Baby

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This happened when I was eight.

I lived in a very small village which was more of a patch of houses, really.

There were barely any people there, and it was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone.

I don't even know if it had a real name.

We just called it the Ridge, because of the tall hill near the east side of the area.

My best friend back then was a girl named Emmy.

We were both eight, maybe nine.

We did everything together.

We biked, played in the woods, and made little hideouts behind everyone's sheds.

Summer lasted forever back then.

There was this old lady who lived at the edge of town named Mrs.

Telly.

She was always kind.

She gave us little candies whenever we passed by.

One day, Mrs.

Telly told us she was having her 80th birthday party that weekend.

She said that she needed two full pails of blueberries to make her birthday pie and some jam, and she asked if we could go out and pick them for her.

We said yes right away.

There was no hesitation.

I remember feeling proud that she trusted us with this task.

We went out after lunch with two rusty metal buckets and started picking blueberries in the fields near the old road.

It was hot that day, like you'll be sunburnt after five minutes hot.

We picked for what felt like hours, but barely filled half of one bucket.

The bushes were mostly picked over, and many of the berries left were shriveled and dry.

I was sweating through my shirt, and Emmy had tied hers around her waist.

Her cheeks were bright red.

We were about to give up and head back when we saw them.

Two men were walking towards us from the side of the field.

They didn't look old, but they weren't young either, probably in their twenties.

They were both wearing button up shirts, black pants and sunglasses, in the middle of a heat wave.

One of them leaned down, smiled, and said something like What are you kids up to out here?

We replied, Picking blueberries.

He nodded and crouched down next to us.

His friend stood behind him, not saying anything, as he looked around like he was waiting for something.

There's a whole patch of em up over that hill, he said, pointing behind him.

Real big ones, too.

Hardly any one knows they're there.

Emmy was looking at me strangely.

She didn't say anything, but I remember her hand tugging ever so slightly on my sleeve.

We can show it to you if you want, the guy offered.

You'll have your buckets full full in no time.

Now for some dumb reason I said yes.

I didn't even wonder who they were.

I didn't ask why two grown men were walking through the fields without any buckets or gear or anything.

I just said yes, and we followed them.

As we walked, Emmy stayed quiet, but I kept trying to ask questions.

Is it far?

Do you guys live around here?

What are your names?

The guy just gave vague answers like, you'll see, or we're almost there.

Meanwhile, the second guy hadn't said anything at all.

The grass was getting taller, and the sun felt worse the higher we climbed.

We couldn't even see the village anymore.

That was when I remembered my stomach started to feel weird.

But I wasn't feeling sick, I was just feeling off.

It was like a knot was forming.

Then Emmy leaned towards me and whispered in the softest voice that I had ever heard, Something's wrong with these guys.

Run.

I barely had time to process what she said before she bolted.

She went at full speed down the hill and didn't even look back.

I then dropped the bucket and ran after her.

I don't even know if they chased us, because I didn't look.

I just ran like my life depended on it.

The grass slammed slammed against my arms, my legs hurt, and my chest was burning, but I didn't stop.

We stopped when we finally saw the tiny village again, and the tiny road, and the roof of Mrs.

Telly's house.

We ran straight into her yard.

She was sitting on her porch, sipping sweet tea.

We tried to explain what happened, but Emmy and I were both breathing so hard that we must have sounded insane.

She got us inside, locked the door,

their faces and that guy's smile.

I'll never forget the way that they kept looking around like they were waiting for something.

This occurred in Pakistan when I was driving from Islamabad to Kashmir.

I live in Kuwait, but whenever I get winter vacation, I usually go to Pakistan to spend time with my cousins.

My five cousins and I decided to visit Kashmir, which is incredibly beautiful.

We planned to stay there for three days.

So we packed up our stuff and left.

The issue was that we had to use two cars.

I borrowed my uncle's car since it was big, and because of that, all of the suitcases were stored in the car that I was driving.

After the car was packed up, there wasn't any space for anyone to sit with me.

I played it off as a joke and said, Oh, no one wants to sit with me.

But deep down I was honestly terrified that I was going to be driving in that car alone.

I knew it was going to be particularly eerie at night.

We decided on a shift system so that I would get to sit in the other car with my cousins whenever I got tired.

At around ten thirty that night, after I had already sat in the other car a few times, I was driving the car with the luggage while one of my cousins was driving the other car.

Everyone else was tired, so we were the only two who were up for driving at this point.

We reached a historical landmark, and that meant that we had driven a considerable distance.

From there we were officially in a desolate area.

It was just mountains as far as we could see, and there was a sparse tree line on the side of the road.

The wooded area became more dense beyond the tree line, and just past a creek there was a huge forest.

Keep in mind, at this time, the only light on the road was coming from my headlights.

Now, if you live in Pakistan, you already know how nature sounds out there.

Crickets and birds are normal.

But there's a specific type of bird that sounds exceptionally chilling.

These birds are naturally found near forests and trees, although they do gravitate towards graveyards.

I thought I heard somebody whispering, which is exactly what these birds sound like, so I was a bit on edge.

Since I was so focused on the forest and the whispering that I was hearing, I lost focus on the other car with my cousins, which I was supposed to be following.

I couldn't believe I lost track of them.

I tried to honk the horn to get their attention, but I quickly realized that probably wasn't wasn't working since I knew they had their music on pretty loud.

I was worried, so I decided to call them.

They told me not to worry, and they stopped their car so that they could wait for me.

I then sped up, but as I looked out my windshield, I suddenly saw a girl.

She appeared to be about 19 years old and she was just lying down in the forest.

She was dressed in typical clothing.

I rolled my window down just a centimeter and asked, What are you doing here?

Keep in mind that there was no light.

I could barely see her.

So I wasn't even sure if I was talking to a 19-year-old girl or some fancy discarded bag, she then replied, Leave me alone and forgive me, please.

This was beyond creepy, but I still managed to calmly ask, Do you need help?

She then looked up at me.

I was still shocked, so so I couldn't really hear her.

She looked concerned and frightened, so I couldn't really get a read on her.

She looked concerned and frightened, yet somewhat relieved.

She was hesitant, but she eventually said that she did need help.

I again asked her what she was doing there, and she said that three days ago two men had kidnapped her from her town.

They threatened to kill her and her family if she didn't consent to having sex.

When I got a closer look at her, I realized she was wearing a peach native Pakistani dress, but the back side was completely torn out.

She was covered up from the front but completely bare in the back.

Her back and hips had several bruises, and there were visible handprints on her forearms.

I immediately got into the suitcases and pulled out some clothes from my female cousin's suitcase.

I also gave her a nail clipper so that she could remove the splinters that she had all over her from hiding out among the trees.

She said that the men come back every night to look for her, and she let me know that this day was the first day she finally built up the courage to try and find a car to get her out of here.

She also said that the men were probably looking for her right now.

I was building some trust with her, but then I realized that could be a bad thing.

I was worried this seemingly innocent girl was trying to manipulate me so that I could be kidnapped or worse.

So I told her to show me her pockets and shoes.

She had no weapons in them.

This made me feel safe, but I also wasn't sure if there was anyone else lingering around, waiting for me to get out of the car.

I started to drive up the road a bit to separate her from the scene and where I found her, and after driving for a bit, I didn't see anyone, so I let her into the car.

I then told her we need to catch up to my cousins.

When we got to them, I assured her that she had no reason to worry, and I said that we would call the police.

We went to a nearby checkpost, found the guards, and handed her over to them so that they could get her some help.

I really do hope she's okay, and I certainly hope that I never meet the men who took her from her town.

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In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you.

Don't let them down.

Unlock elite gaming tech at lenovo.com.

Dominate every match with next-level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit.

And push your gameplay beyond limits with Intel Core Ultra processors.

That's the power of Lenovo with Intel Inside.

Maximize your edge by shopping at Lenovo.com during their back to school sale.

That's Lenovo.com.

Back when I was 14 years old, my family had moved from our home in England to the Republic of Ireland, where we lived for six years.

We had just moved to the northwest of the country, but after a year of living there, we relocated to the Irish Midlands, as my dad had gotten a new job working in Dublin.

My parents had bought a cottage on the outskirts of a small village, which acted as a stopping point from one of the larger towns and to the next.

This village was so small and remote, there was basically nothing to do.

But not long after moving there, I took to exploring the surrounding area with my border collie, Macy, and in doing so, I eventually found a large stretch of bogland containing a man-made forest.

Every weekend, or during breaks from school, I went to this area with Macy.

To get there, I would follow along a railway line that was used for transporting peat.

However, after months of trekking around this very same bogland, I stopped going there.

I can't quite recall the reason why, but maybe it was because, I don't know, I felt as though I was trespassing, even though I wasn't.

Or maybe I stopped going because the bog land was so bumpy and uneven.

I was always going home with horrific blisters.

Although I stopped going to this bog land to walk my dog, outside one of the nearby towns where I went to school, there was a public forest.

Because this forest was a twenty-minute drive away, my dad would take me and Macy there and drop us off, and then pick us up two to three hours later.

What I loved about these woods was that it was always quiet.

I only saw the occasional family, dog walker, or jogger pass us by.

On one particular evening, I had gone back to these woods with Macy, and my dad planned to pick us up later after running some errands.

As we made our way along the trail, the evening had already started to dim.

Wanting to make my way back to the car park before it got too dark, I decided to take a shortcut through the forest via one of the many narrow side trails.

Following one of these side trails, Macy stumbled upon a small tepee shaped hut made from logs.

Loving a good game of hide and seek, I would sometimes hide inside the teepee when Macy wasn't looking.

She would spend the next couple of minutes circling around the hut trying to find me, not realizing that she could go inside.

Whether I pulled this trick on Macy that day or not, I'm not sure, but as we followed this exact side trail, I stopped and turned to look behind me.

While I was staring from the entryway of the hut, I then saw a man walking twenty meters behind us, having just taken the same side trail.

A few minutes later, although I had reached the main trail, the evening had already turned much darker.

I turned again to see if the man was behind me and I could still see him around the curve, only ten meters away from me now.

I tried to tell myself that I was just being paranoid, and this man was most likely not following me, but my gut instinct told me something was off.

Thinking ahead, I pulled my phone out to call my dad to make sure that he was already in the car park waiting for me, but there was no answer.

And since there was no answer, I just assumed he was probably still driving, and I hoped that my dad was nearly there.

By the time I made it back to the car park, it was essentially pitch black.

There was just one single car in the parking area, and it wasn't my dad's.

So I sat down by a picnic bench to wait for him to come and get us.

All I could do was hope that he would be coming soon, and that that strange man from the woods wasn't really following me after all.

Not a minute or two later, I could hear the footsteps of the very same man approaching the car park from the darkness.

Anxiously anticipating him to walk by, I tried to distract myself on my phone or at least make myself seem less approachable.

Thankfully, the man just walked right by me.

He just entered the car park and got in the vehicle.

But he didn't drive away.

He just stayed there and sat in his car with both the engine and the headlights turned on.

Twenty minutes must have gone by, but my dad still wasn't there, and yet that same stranger hadn't left.

I kept trying to call or text my dad to remind him that I was waiting for him, but I was met with no answer.

While I continued to wait, I tried to rationalize why the man hadn't driven off.

But the reasons I came up with weren't very convincing for me, and for that whole twenty minutes, I sat outside that car park in those woods in complete darkness, hearing nothing but the hum of this stranger's engine softly puttering and providing an eerie contrast to the silent night air.

What made the situation even more anxiety-inducing was that my dog Macy had been endlessly whining at my feet.

She was anxiously scraping dirt away from beneath the bench and made a surprisingly deep hole.

Macy was a very nervous dog in general and whined at everything, but perhaps she too felt as though something about this situation wasn't right.

Thankfully, right after what felt felt like far longer than twenty minutes, the strange man reversed from his parking spot, exited the car park, and went onto the main road, leaving me and Macy in peace.

Although we were both alone and stranded outside of a dark forest, I couldn't help but let out a huge sigh of relief.

My dad eventually came to get us about ten minutes after the guy had left.

But do you know what my dad's excuse was as to why he was late?

He forgot.

I don't know if that man was following me through the forest.

I don't know why he sat in his car for twenty minutes.

But if I learned anything from that experience, it would be the following: one, my dad can sometimes be a careless douche, and two, never hike through the forest alone, especially late in the evening.

When I was 18, I was desperate to find a place to stay for university.

There was a massive housing shortage where I was living, so I went on Facebook to find a room.

Eventually, a man from Egypt messaged me and said that he had a private room available.

He told me that he moved back to Egypt due to being ill and decided to rent out his three-bedroom house.

He had no profile picture or any information on his profile other than his name.

He gave me the address and suggested that I go tour the house before the current tenant moved out.

His son was the one who approved me to have the house tour, and he sent me a set of keys in the mail.

The house had three separate bedrooms, all occupied by students, and there was a kitchen and a bathroom that were common spaces.

As I toured around, everything seemed to be normal and clean in this house.

I asked the former tenant why they were leaving, and they told me that the landlord was a weird guy.

Since they didn't specify too much, I thought nothing of it and decided to sign the contract via email.

After signing the contract, the landlord got my phone number and messaged me on WhatsApp, saying that he wanted to build a friendship with me.

I told him that I was too busy with school, but he proceeded to call me, sometimes up to ten times a day, and he always asked why I wasn't picking up.

He called me because he said he was lonely and needed company.

Most of the time, I wouldn't respond to his comments.

I just tried to move past them and pay the rent.

About one month after I moved into the house, his messages became stranger and oddly specific.

I noticed you have a heater and an air fryer on your table, he said.

Could you please not use those?

He also asked, Why do you own two laptops?

That's kind of strange.

This man claimed he was living in Egypt, plus I had never seen him in person, and my windows and doors were fully shut and locked, all of the time.

How did he know that those items were sitting on my table?

I received multiple messages like this from him, commenting on the kind of objects that I had, or how I organized my room.

He attempted to charge me 150 euros extra for my rent for using my air fryer too much in my room, but I have no idea how he could tell that I was using the air fryer since I never brought it outside of my private room.

As for the roommates, they were pretty chill, and as I mentioned, they were students as well.

When I told them about the messages I was receiving, they said that they hadn't gotten anything like that.

They never heard anything from the landlord.

The other roommates said that they'd never contacted him.

I was doubtful of this, so I asked to see their WhatsApp, and there were no messages between them and the landlord, other than transactional like, the rent has been paid messages.

Since I felt like I was being targeted, I started to test him.

I would put unique objects on my table in my private room and see if he would say anything about it.

He noticed, and when he mentioned the items that I had out, I was obviously freaked out.

This was in the middle of a class lecture.

Then, two days after I had been ignoring all of his comments about the objects, I got several calls from unknown numbers.

I answered only twice, and the person calling me had a voice that vaguely sounded like the landlord.

This person always said, Come home.

When I went home that day, I saw that the trash that I threw out that day was all over the front door of my private room.

Finally, after a year of dealing with this, I found a safer place to stay and filed a restraining order against this odd Egyptian landlord.

I still have absolutely no idea how he knew what objects I had in my private room or how that trash ended up on my front door.

A friend of mine believes there were hidden cameras in the room, while another believes one of the roommates might have been spying on me.

I'm not sure what was going on, but I don't think I really want to know.

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I was a 19-year-old new mom when this happened.

One late night, my now ex-husband came home from work with my 17-year-old brother in tow sometime after 1 a.m.

They wanted to go out and get something to eat, and as I had barely left the house in months, I jumped at the opportunity to go with them.

Our baby was awake anyway, so I grabbed the baby and put him in the car seat on the rear passenger side.

I called shotgun, my husband drove, and my brother crawled into the back to sit with the baby.

We lived in a small town, and nothing was open that late, so our only option was to drive a few miles out of town to a nearby truck stop and gas station where there was a hardy's that was open 24 hours.

Now, the building itself is pretty small, but the lot was huge.

There were quite a few 18 wheelers lined up on the far side of the lot, and a few cars parked in front of the building.

There are some street lamps in the lot, but they are far and few between, so the lot is mostly dark.

We parked in one of the few spots on the side of the building closest to the entrance to Hardy's.

The baby had fallen asleep by then, so I told my brother and husband to go ahead and go inside to order something for me.

As they left, I immediately locked the doors, as my mother had always drilled into me to do so ever since I was little.

Honestly, I'm thankful.

My husband and brother had been gone for about five minutes.

I was just staring straight ahead and listening to music when I happened to catch some movement out of the corner of my eye.

I turned my head and I saw a man walking in my direction.

He appeared to be just about in his mid-thirties.

He had a mop of curly brown hair poking out from underneath a red baseball cap.

I figured he was going towards the entrance of the restaurant, as it was, at most, twenty feet away from me.

So I went back to spacing out.

A couple of minutes passed, and I heard one of the car door handles jiggling.

I whipped my head around and I saw the man with the curly brown hair pulling at the car door behind me.

He was pulling at my baby's door.

He gave up on that door and took two steps to my door.

I knew that my door was locked as well, but I quickly double and triple checked that all of them were locked.

Thank God they were.

He then tried my door and failed.

Then he proceeded to walk to the other side of the car and try those door handles while I was still there in the car.

I was completely freaking out, but still frozen in fear.

This happened during the era of flip phones when not everyone had a cell phone.

I definitely did not.

Time seemed to be going in slow motion as he circled the car two more times, checking each handle as he was circling.

I was watching him this whole time in the mirrors, and he didn't look directly at me, not even once.

I finally placed my hand on the horn and decided to lay into it if he pulled a weapon or tried anything else.

I took a moment to try and look into the restaurant at my brother and husband, but through the partially obscured windows and glass doors I couldn't see them.

I looked in the mirrors to see where this guy was, but he was gone.

I even fully turned around in my seat to look for him, but I still didn't see him anywhere.

I relaxed a bit, as I realized he must have given up and left.

But I remained vigilant.

After what felt like forever, I saw my brother and husband walking out of the restaurant, food in hand.

I can't even begin to explain the relief that washed over me right at that moment.

I quickly unlocked the doors for them and they got in.

My brother then asked, Hey, what was that guy doing crouched behind the car?

My pulse quickened as I replied, Is he still there?

My brother pointed at another car in front of the building and said, No, when he realized we were walking over to the car, I watched him jump up and run over to another car.

To this day I don't know if he was after me, the baby, or the car, but whatever it was, I know he was up to no good.

And I can only hope he never got the opportunity to do this to anyone else, or hurt anyone.

When I was nineteen in my second year of university, I lived in a semi small city, if you can even call it that.

Now, due to some other ongoing stuff that I won't get into, I often went on long walks by myself at the time for my well being.

I know a lone person should try to avoid walking by themselves at night, but I think I felt safe to do so as I was in such a small city.

So, while I was on this walk, a man approached me.

At first he was just trying his luck, so to speak, asking for my phone number.

After I declined, he started becoming more and more aggressive, trying to force me to give him information.

He wanted to know where I lived, and what times I walked alone.

Essentially he was trying to figure out how to follow me.

As he was getting aggressive, I became quite scared, so I told him to go away and leave me alone.

He then tried to grab my phone and said, You're coming with me.

Then he proceeded to grab both of my wrists.

As he was dragging me away, I began to panic.

He must have been over six feet tall, and I was no match against his strength and large stature.

By the grace of something, there happened to be a pub nearby, and the people who were in there saw this happening, so they all came over to intervene.

Thankfully, I got away and took the long way home in order to prevent the man from following me.

I glanced over my shoulder constantly, so I felt confident that I had lost him, but clearly I had not.

Because in the weeks that followed, there was this black car parked outside my address at midnight every single night.

I always tried to see who was in the car, but the person inside always intentionally concealed themselves.

This person would watch the outside of my house for hours.

However, the person got out of the car occasionally to lurk around the perimeter of the house.

I didn't understand what was going on, so I naively didn't think to call the police.

One night, when the car came, I wasn't home, and neither were my housemates.

That night, our neighbors had to call the police as there was a man trying to enter our home.

He was looking around for any open windows, and he tried to see if our front or back door was unlocked.

Alarmingly, they mentioned that he was specifically trying to enter my bedroom on the ground floor.

A while after that happened, one evening, my housemates and I were all sitting in the kitchen drinking some cheap booze, as university students tend to do.

As we were hanging out, the exact same man who approached me before and forcefully tried to pull me away from the street all those weeks ago jumped over the back of our fence.

Then he ran through our garden and once he reached the window, he just stopped and stared at us.

This man had a look in his eye that I had never seen before.

It was like a look of pure evil.

He wasn't even alarmed that he had been seen, nor did he seem scared.

We called the police right away and luckily they came quickly enough so he was finally caught.

He was arrested shortly after, trying to run away from them.

Also, credit to the police here, they were there in literally three minutes.

The fact that we lived so close to a police station may have helped.

Anyway, whenever I do think about this, it sends chills down my spine.

This man had a knife on his person when he was arrested, so I can't help but wonder what his plans really were.

What was he going to do?

If there is a lesson for anyone here, I think it would be: don't walk the streets alone at night.

Even if you live in an area that seems small and safe, these types of people are in every corner of the world.

So, to the man who followed me and hopped over my fence with a knife, let's not meet again.

This happened five years ago in January when my boyfriend and I celebrated our first anniversary.

We went out to a really nice restaurant and got all dressed up, the whole works.

I gifted him a jar full of fifty-two different pieces of paper saying things that I loved about him, one for each week that we had been together.

He brought this into the restaurant so that he could read the little notes while we waited for our food.

The people who were around us loved this.

We were around a lot of older couples, and they thought that we were adorable, so we kept getting sent free appetizers.

At a table behind us, there was a large party.

They were drunk and eating dinner.

Most of them were around fifty or sixty.

Sitting at this table was an older man who, halfway through our dinner, came over to our table to sit down and make conversation with us.

He gestured vaguely toward his table and told us that he and his wife found me and my boyfriend very attractive, and he invited us to join them for their quote-unquote after-party.

We couldn't tell if he was joking or not, especially since he pointed at an elderly woman who was at his table and said she was going to be partying with them as well.

My boyfriend and I politely laughed, even though we just wanted to have our dinner in peace.

He then offered to buy us a bottle of champagne to celebrate our anniversary.

My boyfriend and I were underage, so I declined but thanked him for the offer.

He then insisted on buying us dessert instead before returning to his table.

When the desserts were brought over to us, the man came back over to our table and sat down again.

He once again asked us if we would like to join him and his wife at the after after party, and we declined again.

He then started asking us about our sex life.

He remarked that we were both very attractive, and said that we must be going to bang after dinner.

This was awkward enough, but then he added, You are both so good looking.

You would make beautiful babies.

We laughed uncomfortably, and said we were too young for that.

Then he pulled out his wallet, opened it, and retrieved one of the multiple $100 bills that were in there.

Then he said, I'll give you $100 to go home and make a baby right now.

My boyfriend and I were flabbergasted.

We really didn't know how to respond.

I joked about how my boyfriend didn't want a baby for at least a few years, which was a common joke for us at the time.

The man winked at me and said, So what?

Poke a hole in the condom.

At that point, my boyfriend and I were now looking at each other in shock.

The man's wife finally came over to collect him.

She ushered him out the door as he made some excuse about being drunk, as if that gave him the right to interrupt our anniversary dinner, to grill us about our sex life, and ask us to party with him and his wife.

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We the man to be home!

Winner, best score!

We the man to be seen!

Winner, best book!

We the man to be qualified!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Last year, two of my best friends and I went to Europe to visit my friend Carrie's daughter, whose husband was in the Navy and had been stationed there.

On the last leg of our trip, we decided to visit Dublin, Ireland, just for a few days.

Everything was great while we were there.

And on the last night, we decided that we would go and have a couple of drinks at the pub that was just a few blocks down from our flat.

Well, my friend Carrie is a rather friendly lady, and after a drink or two, we were all feeling a little more comfortable in our surroundings, so she started chatting it up with this Irishman, whom we'll call Dave.

Right away, Carrie's daughter and I felt that there was something a little off about this man.

After about an hour of talking, Carrie wanted to take a picture of him, but he seemed to get pretty upset about this.

He told her that he didn't take pictures, and he said he didn't have a Facebook, so he didn't want his picture out there on any kind of social media.

I understood that.

There are lots of people who don't have Facebook or Twitter or whatever for their own unique personal reasons.

I respect that, but this guy was acting downright paranoid about everything.

I thought maybe he just had a wife or girlfriend, and he was afraid that somehow they would see a picture of him hanging out in some place that he wasn't supposed to be on some American woman's social media account.

I tend to be very paranoid myself, so I told her daughter we needed to take a selfie together, but instead of taking a selfie, I snapped a picture of the man.

I'm not saying that this was right, but I've been through some pretty crappy stuff in my lifetime.

I've learned that one thing you should not do is ignore what your intuition is telling you, and mine was telling me that something was off.

And if anything happened, it would be good to have a picture of this guy.

As we were hanging out, Dave looked around a lot and tried to get my friend to go outside and smoke with him, even though she told him several times that she didn't smoke anymore.

So he encouraged her to drink more.

Eventually, Carrie's daughter was ready to go back to the flat, so knowing how my friend has the tendency to wander when drinking, I asked her if she would watch my purse for me and told her not to go anywhere while I quickly walked her daughter back to the apartment.

By the time I arrived back to the pub, Dave had convinced Carrie to go outside to smoke, and he didn't look the least bit excited to see that I had returned.

Now, I'll admit that I sometimes tend to over-dramatize people's facial features and expressions in my mind since it makes the conversation more exciting in my head.

But in this case, I'm pretty sure I saw some genuine disappointment on Dave's face.

Since the pub was closing, Dave asked us if we wanted to go somewhere else to keep drinking with him.

When I pointed out that everything was closed, he said there were a few other places that were always open that we could go to.

Carrie was eager to go, so I followed, even though my gut was telling me this probably wasn't going to end well.

But I also wasn't ready to return to the apartment and go to bed.

So, lo and behold, Dave walks us to a door that had a flashing neon sign above it that said open 24 hours, but there was no name above the door, just the sign.

We walked down a little flight of stairs, and Dave paid 15 euros for each of us to enter.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, there was a blackjack table on my right and a roulette-esque table on my left, and in front of me was a row of five bar stools with five scantily clad working women perched upon them.

At this point, Carrie and I looked at each other apprehensively while Dave started claiming that he didn't know this place was what it was.

He then urged us to act like we belonged there so that we wouldn't stir up any trouble.

I was immediately overcome with a grim feeling because he didn't hesitate to shell out the money for us to go down there.

I found it extremely hard to believe that someone would do that without knowing what this place was.

My suspicion only grew stronger when I noticed the bartender was quick to bring him a Heineken before he even asked his friends, meaning me and Carrie, if we wanted anything.

Dave then ordered each of us a Heineken as well.

After they gave us our drinks, Dave told us that we should go downstairs so that we could have somewhere to talk without looking suspicious.

Of course, Carrie and I had already been questioning the sex workers, asking them about how much they liked their jobs and everything like that, so I'm pretty sure there wasn't much else that we could have done to bring attention to the fact that we were newcomers.

After we went downstairs, he sat us at a table, and a man who kept trying to talk to him came down after him.

He told the man that he was talking to his family.

He raised his voice when he said family, as if he were trying to signal something to the guy, and he just wasn't getting it.

He then told us that he didn't even know the guy.

So the guy sauntered away, exclaiming, Fine, if that's how you want to be about it, we can talk later.

I should also mention that Dave has told us that he was born and raised in Dublin, so it's even more doubtful that he had no idea where he was taking us when he brought us here.

At this point, with my overactive imagination, I was 97%

sure something bad was going to happen.

I I genuinely thought this was the end for us, especially as I sat there and listened to him ask my friend a bunch of questions, which included, is there anyone waiting for you back at home?

I knew she interpreted this as, do you have a boyfriend?

Because she launched into this whole story.

Meanwhile, I was getting up to pee every once in a while and dumping my drink into the sink since I didn't trust this man or this place.

Eventually, as the conversation got weirder, I pulled out my phone and started texting one of my friends back home.

Then, suddenly, Dave started paying more attention to me.

He asked me what I was doing and told me that I should put my phone away before I get in trouble.

He punctuated this sentiment by telling me that I shouldn't be on my phone anyway since I was supposed to be on vacation.

When I didn't put it away, like he told me to, he asked who was so important that I had to be talking to them.

He was ranting as he said everyone who was back home should be working right now.

I told him, I'm texting my boyfriend.

Carrie then started to say, you don't have a boyfriend, but I played it off like she forgot that my ex Andrew and I got back together right before we left.

Dave angrily remarked, What do you need to text your boyfriend for right now?

Now, I may have been underestimating our surroundings.

It It could be that he was acting this way because he was afraid that we would get beat up or something like that, since my phone was out.

But there were no signs that said no phones or anything like that, and no one said anything to me about it when I had it out when I was upstairs.

So I felt like he was acting this way for a completely different reason, especially since he also said, You're not taking pictures of me, are you?

So whenever I told him the reason I was texting my boyfriend, I said it was because I had given him my iCloud information before we left, along with a list of the places we were staying and which nights.

I let him know that I shared this information with him since I knew it wasn't safe for us to be traveling alone with no idea of what we were getting ourselves into.

I finally said that my boyfriend had messaged me since he noticed my GPS was showing that I wasn't back at our apartment yet.

So he wanted to make sure that we were okay.

Now remember, none of this is true.

but I didn't feel bad for saying any of it.

After telling him that, he was fairly quick to get us out of there, saying we had been there long enough so that it wouldn't look funny if we went ahead and left.

He then asked if he could walk us back to our apartment.

I tried to say that we were fine, but Carrie told him that that would be just peachy.

So he walked us to our flat.

Thankfully, we had rented a place that had a gate that needed to be unlocked before entering the area where the doors to the rooms are, and our room was on the second floor.

As we approached the front of the building, Dave was trying to talk Carrie into letting him take us on a drive around Ireland before we went back to the apartment.

I found this odd since earlier, he said, he walked everywhere or took a taxi.

Between that and the fact that it was almost 3 a.m., I told him no, we weren't going on a ride with him right now.

But I said that maybe after we had slept, we could meet up and he could take us somewhere.

Now, I didn't really mean that, I just wanted him to leave us alone.

He said that would be a great idea, but then he told us he wanted to come up to the apartment with us until we were ready to go.

Carrie thought that this sounded okay,

but then she asked me if I thought it sounded okay.

She said she wasn't sure since she had been drinking, so I told her and Dave that it probably wasn't appropriate since we weren't the only ones staying there.

Dave said that he would would be extra quiet and asked us how many other people were staying there.

And he asked if they were girls as well.

When he asked us this, I was trying to shove Carrie through the gate away from Dave, and he was trying to get into the gate as well.

So I told him that we'd meet him at 8 a.m.

at the bridge so that he could take us out on our ride.

He tried to tell us that 8 a.m.

was going to be too late, so I said, okay, and told him seven would be fine.

He was reluctant to leave the gate and tried one more time to make it through, but I had wedged my foot into the crevice so that he couldn't shove me out of the way.

Finally, he slipped away and I pushed Carrie up the stairs.

I told her to go open the apartment door, and here's how you know that I've lived through some stuff.

I then went right back down to that gate to make sure that he didn't slip some rock or some other thing to obstruct the gate and prevent it from closing.

I wanted to make sure that there was no way he could try and sneak up to our room later.

When I got to the apartment, I locked all of the doors and checked all the windows, only to see him staring up at where our apartment was.

I don't know what he was thinking, but something was off.

I'm not sure how he even knew which floor we were on, but it's possible that Carrie told him earlier when I took her daughter back to the flat.

We didn't meet him in the morning, and I hope that we never meet him again.

But I still have this picture that I snapped of him.

Thanks for listening and send your stories in to let's not meet stories at gmail.com to hear them on the show.

If you're a patron, stick around after the music 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 the episodes at a higher bitrate and bonus content every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else in the episode extensions.

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

Be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the old time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

And follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash cryptic county for my live streams.

This week you have heard The Eerie Min by Max, My True Late Night Driving Story Story by Rich Somewhere 2182,

I Think Someone Was Following Me Through the Woods in Ireland by Cosmic Orphan 2020, My Creepy Landlord by Rosalia,

Truckstop Creeper by Gen4Eternity, followed by Major School 2026, He Tried to Pay Us to Make a Baby by Sarah EXE, and finally Weird Irish Experience by Sammy Dale21.

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 ports online.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.

Everybody, stay safe.

I'd like to start by mentioning that I'm a 36-year-old male.

I currently work as a

coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratches from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today, it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new Game Day Scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.