14x04: The Body at the Dam

Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for type 2 diabetes campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.

Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose, in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mountjaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Mountjaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Manjaro with a sulfinal norrrea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once-weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.55, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIRX 800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mountjaro indication and safety summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.

Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

United Healthcare nurse Crystal checked in on a patient.

We do a routine call after surgery, and I could tell in her voice that she was struggling.

Crystal knew she needed help.

I knew that this is very serious.

This is like septic.

This is life-threatening.

And she knew just what to do.

And I called the hospital and said she's coming in, here are her labs.

And got her the help she needed.

I see my role at United Healthcare as a life-saving role.

Hear more stories like crystals at uhc.com.

Benefits, features, and/or devices vary by plant area.

Limitation and exclusions apply.

This podcast contains adult language and content.

Listener discretion is advised.

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

Enjoy the show.

I wasn't exactly the most popular kid in high school.

I was just an average girl.

I wasn't cool enough to hang out with the popular crowd, but not quirky enough to be bullied either.

Honestly, if you ask most of my classmates today, they'd probably say that they don't even remember me.

I grew up in a big city.

I won't say where where exactly, but think of somewhere along the lines of Detroit, Chicago, or Philadelphia.

I grew up in a big city like that and lived in a neighborhood with a mix of faded brick buildings and concrete jungles.

There was always noise, honking horns, sirens, and stuff like that.

It had its own kind of charm, but sometimes it felt a little heavy.

And yeah, there was definitely a fair amount of crime.

Like I said, I wasn't super popular.

My claim to fame was that my dad owned a junkyard with an iron shredder.

This might sound a bit odd, but honestly, it was kind of fascinating.

A few people wanted to come by just to watch that machine shred old washing machines and rusty bikes into tiny bits.

Personally, I was about 10 years old the first time I saw it in action.

It was impressive, and the noise was like thunder.

I remember feeling scared watching the metal get twisted and crumpled like it was nothing.

But it was oddly beautiful in a way.

All the girls in school were crushing on this guy named Marco, and of course, I was too.

He was a basketball star who worked out all the time.

Plus, he always seemed super smart, like he had stocks figured out or something.

Everyone knew that he had some family problems, but he still radiated this confidence.

One night during a football game, he came over to talk to me.

My heart raced.

This was unexpected, so I half expected someone to pinch me to wake me up from this dream.

He didn't say much though.

He just said that he wanted to talk to me and asked where he could find me at halftime.

I told him we could meet at the front entrance.

At halftime we met up and immediately slipped away to his car.

He said he wanted to go to McDonald's.

The whole situation felt very random, but I wasn't going to complain.

This was my first chance to hang out with Marco, and it was starting to feel like a date.

While we were driving, he suddenly pulled over and asked if he could show me something.

I said yes, and he revealed to me that he had a gun.

My heart dropped into my stomach.

I was not ready to see that.

And when he said, I need you to get rid of this,

everything kind of went blurry.

When someone is holding a gun in front of you, all rational thought vanishes.

I was terrified.

I didn't want to be in that situation, but I also felt like I couldn't say no because he was holding a gun.

My mind raced with all of the things that could go wrong, and it felt like the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders.

I didn't ask questions, though.

I just nodded, hoping to make things better.

Then he instructed me to text him and say, It was nice seeing you at the game, to indicate that I had successfully gotten rid of it.

We then went through the McDonald's drive-through, but obviously I had no appetite whatsoever.

This situation escalated quickly, and it was getting weird, seriously weird.

I almost felt like I had been kidnapped, and in a way, I kind of was.

He didn't force me to get into the car with him, but he did force me to get involved in this, and I knew that he wouldn't let me go.

It was very intimidating.

He gave me the gun, dropped me off at my car in the school parking lot, and we said goodbye from there.

I went home, grabbed the keys to the junkyard, praying that my parents wouldn't catch me.

Thankfully, the keys were on the fridge, and they were upstairs.

As I took the keys and headed out the back door, I felt like I was living in some sort of bad movie.

While I was en route to the junkyard, panic finally set in.

What if opening the gate was too loud and someone heard me?

What if an alarm went off?

What if someone showed up while I was there?

What if I couldn't figure out how to operate the shredder?

This was a genuine, deep concern.

I had never operated that thing alone.

What if the gun got stuck in the shredder?

What if I accidentally hurt myself?

What if this whole plan backfired and made everything worse?

I knew this was not going to work out, so instead I returned to McDonald's, ordered a large meal, since fries make everything better, and carefully slipped the gun into the bag with the fries and burger.

I then looked on Google Maps and found a park about thirty minutes away and tried to stay as calm as I could as I drove there.

When I got to the park, I felt strangely detached from everything around me as I tossed the McDonald's bag into the trash can.

Then I sat on a bench with my heart racing while trying to think of what to say if someone asked me what I was doing there.

If anyone had approached me that night and asked if I was okay, I probably would have asked them to call an ambulance for me.

I felt so guilty that I was literally sick.

I have no idea how long I spent there trying to calm down, but eventually I did, and I went back home.

Later I found out that Marco's sister had gotten mixed up in something very horrific that night.

She was involved in a violent robbery, where she had used a gun to threaten a store owner.

The store owner wasn't co operating with her, so she beat the man's head with the gun, leaving him bloodied and dazed on the floor.

Thankfully nobody was killed, but the brutality of it all was shocking, terrifying, and very sad.

I couldn't believe I had gotten caught up in something way darker than I had ever imagined.

When Marco's sister was arrested and charged, I was so scared someone would find out about the gun I'd discarded at the park and link it back to me.

I felt like I was carrying around this heavy secret, and I was suffocating.

I thought of being questioned by the police.

It haunted me, but I never brought up the incident.

I would see Marco around school, but made sure to never make eye contact with him.

Thankfully, I never heard anything else about it.

Eventually, the rumors faded and life went on.

When girls continued talking about heartthrob Marco, I would contribute to the conversation, but only just say enough that everyone thought that everything was normal.

I still visit home occasionally and have seen Marco around.

He's always surrounded by friends, laughing, living carefree.

But we haven't spoken since, and we'll never talk again.

It's terrifying how easily I was intimidated into participating in something so horrific.

Each time I see him, it leaves me with a chill.

About seven months ago, when summer was just at its end, my friend Rose and I decided to go for a drive up the mountains.

I grew up nearly out of the city limits, and I drove around on mountain roads often.

Rose is a newer friend in life, and had only been up to the mountains a few times, so I was eager to show her how cool it was at night, especially with the city lights twinkling as you head back down to town.

I should also mention that I love listening to creepy videos and watching scary movies, which may have been a big help for me and Rose on this particular night.

So she and I headed up the mountain in my van.

It was a dependable 2003 Toyota that had made the journey with me dozens of times before.

Along the route that we were on, there was a part where the pavement ended and a a gravel road took you deeper into the mountains.

Just beside this asphalt-to-gravel transition, there is a dirty pull-out that people sometimes use to park their trucks and trailers.

As Rose and I drove by the pullout, I noted that the pullout was empty.

This didn't raise any suspicion.

That was normal for this time of night.

It was 10 p.m.

and the sun had set, and all of the lights in town had been turned on.

I'd never seen any lights up on the mountain though.

Almost all of the farming fields in the mountains were fenced off with locked gates.

Most gates also had private property signs displayed.

Some of these signs even had bullet holes on them to indicate that the landowners were armed and ready to stand their ground against any idiot who tried to trespass on their fields.

Every field in the mountains is watered via the center pivot irrigation system.

Those are the long repeated arched systems with metal frames and wheels that are commonly seen all over the agriculture districts in the United States.

I had seen a few irrigation systems in town that had lights with timers on them, so at first I wasn't too surprised when I saw a light, a singular light out in a field.

We had gone a quarter of a mile deeper down the road when I suddenly remembered that not only had the light not been there before, but it was also in the wrong place.

Ah, fuck, I sighed, which was probably not what Rose wanted to hear in the middle of her first nighttime mountain excursion.

What's up?

Rose asked.

Well, I know farmers are harvesting now, so I guess seeing a light in a field makes sense, but at the same time, I've never seen that light before, I said, as I gestured to our right.

There was a very random, amber light casting from the edge of the field.

It was dark enough that I couldn't see fences or any of the borders, but I was familiar enough with the mountains to know that the light was right on the edge of someone's property.

I started to tap on the wheel anxiously, as I was filled with a mix of emotions.

I was eager to keep going because the view was only going to get more beautiful with the half moon above, and Rose had never seen the views that I had seen before.

At the same time, my brain told me that if I was going to listen to a few dozen hours of horror stories per month, I'd better at least take some meaning out of them.

I'm sorry, Rose.

I'd keep going if those were tractor headlights, but I've never seen one singular light right there, especially in that field.

I've never seen it farmed, so it wouldn't make sense to waste energy or money lighting it, I explained.

Rose is amazing and didn't mind that we were turning around after only being a quarter of a mile in.

So I turned around and we headed back down towards the asphalt.

As we did this, I had no idea why, but I felt like there was a clock that had suddenly started ticking.

Hey, Rose, could you please hold on to the handle?

I'm going to speed up, so you might want to hold on to something.

I promise,

had not been there less than ten minutes before.

There were five or maybe six men around the truck, and the headlights were on.

One guy was in a utility terrain vehicle, reversing it off the flatbed trailer so fast that I thought he was going to crash into one of his friends.

I raced by, and somebody ran out of the pullout and behind my car.

I then sharply turned onto the road that would lead to the main road.

Rose, I asked, while inching my way up to 70 miles per hour, were those people at the pullout when we drove by earlier?

I asked this because I just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy.

Nope, Rose said evenly.

I sighed in response as the speedometer jumped up to 75 and I started glancing in my rearview mirror.

As far as I could tell, they weren't following us, but we had eight miles of straight flat roads with no cover to get through before we managed to reach civilization.

Did they seem like they were in a hurry to you?

I asked.

Just a bit, she nervously chuckled, looking over her shoulder to check for any cars as well.

Thankfully, we made it back to town without incident.

We drove to a crowded restaurant and sat in the car while we calmed down.

We tried to think of a reason why those guys had shown up so abruptly in the middle of the night.

Rose suggested that maybe their friends were camping and in need of assistance.

But all of that land on the mountains is mainly private property, so nobody camps out there.

I'm glad that Rose and I left so that we didn't have to find out why six guys decided that they needed to rush up the mountain in the middle of the night.

Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for type 2 diabetes campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.

Share your story at mountjaro.com/slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose, and adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mount Jaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Mount Jaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Maljaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing pregnant plan to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once weekly, Mount Jaro is available by prescription only in 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIERX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mount Jaro indication and safety summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mount Jaro.

Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or or affiliates.

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I'm a 35-year-old male.

A few years ago, I had a terrifying experience that still haunts me.

I live in a busy city and I had just finished a late work shift.

It was around ten PM and I was walking home through the quieter side streets of my neighborhood.

I'm someone who's always been somewhat cautious, so I was alert, keeping an eye out for any unusual activity.

As I walked down the street, I noticed there was a guy about twenty feet behind me.

At first I didn't think anything of it.

He just seemed like another person who happened to be walking along the same route.

But something about his movements caught my attention.

He wasn't walking in a normal manner.

He was intentionally trying to keep his distance, but his pace matched mine, no matter how fast or slow that I went.

After walking for a few blocks, I decided to take a detour.

I turned onto a side street that was a little less populated, hoping that he wouldn't follow.

After a while, I checked over my shoulder and sure enough, he was still there.

It's hard to describe, but it felt like the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my instincts were telling me something just wasn't right.

I crossed the street, hoping that that would throw him off, but he crossed as well, without any hesitation.

I remember thinking, Okay, this is getting really weird now.

I knew that I had to make a decision.

I wasn't that far from home, but something about this guy's persistence was making me uncomfortable, so I decided to stop at a nearby 24-7 convenience store to try and lose him from there.

The store was empty, save for the cashier who barely looked up from their phone.

I quickly grabbed a drink and stood by my door, hoping to see the guy pass by, but he didn't.

He stopped right outside the store.

At this point, I could see his face clearly through the glass and he was staring directly at me.

I panicked and ran back into the aisles, trying to calm down.

I could hear his footsteps growing louder as he approached the door.

So I knew that I couldn't stay there too much longer.

I tried to pay, but I was so rattled that I couldn't even focus on anything.

The cashier just stared at me, probably wondering why I was looking so frantic.

I threw the drink on the counter, paid quickly, and bolted out of the door.

I ran down another street, not wanting to look back, but knowing that I had to.

I didn't see him for for a while, so my heart rate slowed, and I started to calm down.

But as I turned the corner onto my street, I saw him again standing at the far end of the block.

It was like he had been waiting there the whole time.

I wasn't sure of what to do next.

I considered calling the police, but he hadn't technically done anything illegal, so I didn't want to overreact.

But I also couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't a coincidence.

He was just standing there there watching me.

I took a deep breath and looked up the block both ways before making a beeline for my apartment building, not daring to look back until I was inside.

When I got into my apartment, I locked the door and stared out the window for what felt like hours.

I didn't see the man again after that night, but the whole experience left me unsettled for weeks.

I never felt comfortable walking home alone late at night ever again after that, even though I've lived in this city my entire life.

If you're listening to this and happen to be the guy who followed me for hours that night, let's not meet again.

This happened a few months ago when I went to see the new Wicked movie with my family while they were in town for Thanksgiving.

After seeing the movie with them, I arrived back at my house at around midnight.

I live alone in a house that's been divided into three separate apartment units, so, besides myself, two other tenants are living in the building.

One tenant is upstairs, and the other tenant is downstairs with me.

My apartment is in the back of the house, and can be accessed via the back porch after walking up the whole driveway that spans the side of the house.

When I got home, I sat in my bedroom and I worked on something for about half an hour on my computer.

During this time the house was very quiet, but I kept hearing a man's voice continuously talking.

The tenant above me is a man, and his bedroom is right above mine, which I only knew since I previously lived upstairs.

It sounded like he was talking on the phone, or having some kind of exchange, since he was talking continuously, as the conversation seemed to be volleying back and forth.

I tried to listen and figure out where the voice was coming from, but I couldn't exactly pinpoint it.

It sounded like it was either coming through the ceiling or from the other side of my room.

Now, it must be noted that my bedroom connects to the porch with a door.

But I have it blocked with my dresser.

There is a main door from the porch that leads into the main house, but there is also this strange secondary door that connects directly to my bedroom.

As I kept listening, I couldn't make out the words being said, but due to how firm the tone was and how much was being said, I assumed it had to be my housemaid upstairs.

It was the only explanation that made logical sense, but I couldn't help but think about how I never heard this voice coming through the ceiling like that before.

As I mulled all of this over, I chalked it up to being paranoid and worrying about nothing.

After I was done tinkering around with work on my laptop, I got up to brush my teeth, feed my fish, get ready for bed, etc.

When I got into my bedroom, I turned off the lights and got in bed.

Keep in mind at this point, it had been about an hour since I initially heard the voice, and I was still hearing it.

Damn, I thought, my housemaid is chatting up a storm on the phone up there.

But I was wrong.

After lying in bed for about five minutes, I suddenly heard my porch door creaking open, as well as a man's voice.

The same man's voice.

The door has a very distinct sound, so I immediately knew what I was hearing.

So I crept across my room and put my ear to the door that I had blocked with my dresser, the one that connects to the porch.

Sure enough, the talking was coming from my porch, and I could hear the door moving as well as shuffling on the porch.

My heart absolutely dropped.

All the lights were off in my house at this point, so I had a bit of a sneaky advantage to creep around my house and maintain a view of what was going on.

So I crept down my hallway and peered into the kitchen, which is where the main door on the porch leads into.

Across the kitchen, through the door, and, in a streak of moonlight, I saw a man with long, scraggly hair, curled up in the center of my porch.

His back was to me, as he rocked himself back and forth, muttering something aloud to himself.

My fight or flight kicked in, and I whipped open the door and screamed at him to go away.

In hindsight, I realized that this was very impulsive, and I probably shouldn't have made myself so vulnerable without having a weapon handy, but that's easier said than done when it comes to fight or flight.

When anyone's in that mode, it's really tough to explain any actions taking place.

Anyway, this dude didn't even react to me whipping the door open or screaming at him.

He didn't even flinch.

He simply turned his head to the side very slowly and said, My name is Evan.

This freaked me out so much, especially since he still hadn't turned around or showed his face.

I just said I didn't care what his name was, and kept cursing at him to leave.

He finally slowly rose with his hands up and said, I know, I know, I'm hiding.

He didn't say it in a pleading way.

He said it with almost a childlike or playful tone, which freaked me out.

The fact that he kept trying to reason with me while acting so mysterious and still not even turning around to show his face seriously pissed pissed me off.

So I threatened him and ran off the porch.

Needless to say, I'll be double-checking my porch every night from now on.

It's funny because, having my room connected to the porch, I've always had this horrific, intrusive thought that I would hear someone out there one night.

And it looks like it came true.

Anyway, Evan, please let's not ever meet again.

This happened years ago when I was around 19 or 20.

During that time, I was working retail, part-time at the mall.

I was on the closing shift that night and left at around 10:30 p.m.

to head home.

I often took inside streets versus the freeway.

This route included a small stretch of back road that was usually pretty empty, especially during that time of night.

On this particular night, I noticed a car about ten minutes into my 30-minute drive.

I noted the car as I realized it was going the same way as me, but ultimately I didn't think anything of it.

As we were approaching the stretch of back road that's usually desolate at night, the driver of the car behind me began flashing their high beams.

They also started alternating between slowing down and backing off, and speeding up to tailgate me.

I remember feeling panicked that they might hit my car, since in some instances they were getting pretty close.

Eventually the car pulled up beside me, which enabled me to see that the driver was a middle-aged man.

He was pointing towards the back of my car and motioning for me to roll my window down.

I did so about halfway, and I heard him say something about how my tire looked like it was flattening.

He warned me that I was going to damage the rim if I didn't pull over and take care of it soon.

I yelled, I don't know how to change a tire, but added that I wasn't too far from home.

So I was insisting that I would be fine.

However, he was adamant about having me take care of it right away.

He said that it would only take a few minutes.

He was happy to help.

I knew that something was off, because my car seemed to be driving fine the entire time, so I politely declined.

After I rolled my window up, he continued to drive next to me for what felt like forever, but it couldn't have been more than another minute or so.

Even though I could still see his car next to me out of my periphery, I was afraid to look over or even glance in his direction again since something just felt so off.

So I focused on the road as best as I could, and he eventually slowed down and got back behind me.

A few minutes later, we reached a more populated, well-lit part of town where I saw him make a sudden U-turn and then disappear.

When I got home, I took a look at my tire, and it was perfectly fine.

I have no idea how long the man had been following me or what his intentions were, but it's safe to say they probably were not good.

I even had my dad check all of my tires the next morning and he assured me that the tire pressure was normal.

I still think about this night from time to time and it makes me nauseous to think about how different things could have ended up if I had decided to pull over that night.

Lily is a proud partner of the iHeartRadio Music Festival for Lily's duets for Type 2 Diabetes Campaign that celebrates patient stories of support.

Share your story at mountjaro.com slash duets.

Mountjaro terzepatide is an injectable prescription medicine that is used along with diet and exercise to improve blood sugar, glucose, in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Mount Jaro is not for use in children.

Don't take Mount Jaro if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, or vision changes.

Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems.

Taking Manjaro with a sulfinyl norrhea or insulin may cause low blood sugar.

Tell your doctor if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia.

Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

Once-weekly Manjaro is available by prescription only in 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, and 15 milligram per 0.5 milliliter injection.

Call 1-800-LILLIERX-800-545-5979 or visit mountjaro.lilly.com for the Mount Jaro Indication and Safety Summary with warnings.

Talk to your doctor for more information about Mountjaro.

Mountjaro and its delivery device base are registered trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

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So many amazing growth opportunities, high-paying jobs in technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering, life sciences, and more.

You'll soar to new heights, just like the Wright brothers, John Glenn, even Neil Armstrong.

Their careers all took off in Ohio, and yours can too.

A job that can take you further and a place you can't wait to come home to.

Have it all in the heart of it all.

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I grew up in a beautiful, bucolic, small town in New England, right next to a huge pond surrounded by lush woods.

Many weird and frightening things happened in the 13 years I was there, and this is one of them.

When I was eleven, I was standing in the driveway of my family's home.

I was waiting for them to come out so that we could go to church.

It was a bitter, cold Sunday morning, slightly overcast, and there was ice and snow everywhere due to a storm a couple of days prior.

It was so quiet outside, no breeze, no birds, just stillness.

But then, suddenly, in the distance from the pond, I heard a man scream, loudly, Help!

I immediately held my breath and kept listening, but it went quiet once again.

When my family came out to the car, I told them what I had heard, and I was pretty much dismissed by everyone.

My stepfather, my mother, and my sister all ignored me when I told them what I had heard.

We went to church and after service ended, we went to our regular diner for breakfast.

When we were there, my stepfather mentioned to two policemen that I had heard someone screaming for help.

I stayed quiet while they talked and only nodded at the few questions that they asked me.

After that I went home and didn't discuss it any further.

A few days later my stepfather came home from work and while we were eating dinner he told me that the police had found a body.

It was of a man.

They found it at the base of the dam which was southeast of the pond.

He was in boxer shorts, he had been shot in the head and one of his hands was missing.

He had been dead for a few days when he was found and his body was completely frozen.

I was absolutely horrified to hear this news.

We hypothesized what happened, but I never got the full story.

It was clearly a murder, but why?

One of his hands was missing, which made me wonder if it was some sort of mob hit.

And why was he only wearing his underwear?

The police did talk to my stepfather once more after that, and they told him that what I heard was most likely the screams of the person who found the body.

We moved away just a couple of years later, but this event terrified me for years to come, and I'll never know who was responsible for that murder.

But let's not meet.

about five minutes away by car, and from there there's a more populated town about ten minutes away.

There's really only one main street in and out of the village, and if you cross that street and keep walking for about ten minutes, you'll reach the forest.

One Christmas day, in the late afternoon, my partner and I decided to go for a little digestive walk as we were feeling a bit stuffed from all of the food.

It was 5 p.m., so it was already dark when we left for our walk.

But we had a big and bright LED

We decided to walk on a little country road towards the forest and then turn right to follow a small graveled cycling track close to the border of the forest.

The cycling track also connects our village and the next, and it's about a 15 to 20 minute walk between villages.

In the middle part of the track, you have to walk through a bit of forest.

It's rather dark, and the trees are very high and quite dense.

When we entered this area, I saw our flashlight reflecting on something that I eventually realized was a car parked on the side of the track, close to the trees.

This struck me as odd.

Vehicles are not allowed to drive there, and the path is very narrow and hidden.

So I became cautious.

My partner then shined the light inside the car, which appeared empty.

I also noticed that the windows were frozen, indicating that the car must have been parked there for a while.

Slightly ahead of the car, I spotted a tree with an intriguing structure, so I asked my partner to point the flashlight towards it, so that I could have a better focus on it, to photograph it with the flash.

After I took a few images, my partner said Um

someone is standing behind us in the middle of the road, and they're just looking looking at us.

There hadn't been anyone following us the whole way, and I knew this because I kept looking around and behind us.

And I mostly did this because it was evening time, and boars have been seen around the border of the forest.

It was also their mating season around this time, so that meant they were going to be more aggressive than usual.

So I was looking out for them.

I then turned, and I saw that my partner was correct.

There was indeed a man standing behind us, seemingly staying out of the flashlight's reach.

He wasn't saying anything.

He was just standing there, watching us.

At first, I thought that he might have been startled as we were near that car and assumed it could be his.

I figured he was weary of us, as it was probably weird for him to see us taking photos around his car.

Never mind that it wasn't legal for a car to be driven on that path in the first place.

I decided to speak up and confront him from a distance, so I called out to him and explained that I was just taking photos of a tree.

He didn't react at all and continued to stand there.

I then went on to ask him if he needed some light, and he replied that it wouldn't be necessary.

It was an odd interaction, but I stayed calm, as I felt confident that there had to be a normal explanation for his behavior.

Nevertheless, my partner and I decided that it would be best to just get out of there, and we followed the path leading to the next village, which was going to take us another five to seven minutes until we reached it.

I remembered the letters on his license plate, but not the numbers, unfortunately.

In my country, the letters on the license plates have regional significance, so I googled it and it turns out the vehicle was from a city six hours away from our village.

This was especially odd as the country I live in was was on a very strict lockdown at the time and traveling was only to occur for very urgent reasons.

After we reached the first lantern of the village we looked back and observed the car heading a bit out of the forest, only for it to turn around and then go even deeper.

I was able to see that he parked again then turned the lights off, but I never saw him emerge from the forest.

My partner and I then went home, taking a much longer route than initially intended, as I didn't want to go back there for obvious reasons.

Our flashlight battery died along the way and my phone battery was low, so I didn't want to call the police until after we arrived home.

When I called the police, I gave them all of the details that I had.

I was remorseful about not memorizing the whole license plate, and I was surprised that I seriously didn't think about trying to memorize it until it was too late.

I think I was very lucky to have my partner, the camera, and the bright light with me, especially since the man seemed to have been following us intentionally, and he kept trying to stay out of range of our flashlight.

It was even stranger that he didn't have a light of his own, and he was unresponsive to us when we finally said something.

I don't want to imagine what could have happened if I was alone.

So, to the creepy guy who drove from six hours away to sneak around my local forest, let's not meet.

I'm a 29-year-old male from the Philippines.

Even though this incident occurred back in 2013, over a decade ago, I still find myself haunted by it every time I return to my hometown.

At the time, I was just 18 years old in college.

It was the night of our department's socialization party, which had wrapped up at around midnight.

As the only one among my friends with the car, I had always taken on the role of the designated driver.

After dropping my friends off at their homes, I parked in my usual spot just a few houses away from my own, and this was due to the limited parking in our area.

As I was about to get out of my car, I noticed a girl standing near the entrance of the alleyway leading to my house, as well as several others.

She was wearing a shirt with our department's logo, so I assumed she had just walked back from the party.

In front of her there was a man in his late twenties.

He was clad in a hoodie, standing ominously, seemingly blocking her path.

The girl locked eyes with me and I immediately recognized her expression.

It was a silent plea for help.

Instinct kicked in right away, so I grabbed my bag and stepped out of the car.

The man, noticing my presence, began to walk into the alleyway.

When I reached the girl, he vanished from our sight entirely.

It felt as though whatever threatening situation had occurred moments before was over,

and I was just tempted to walk away.

But then I caught sight of the strange man again.

He was leaning against the wall of a nearby house with his gaze fixed on me.

A chill ran down my spine, and just then the girl called out from behind me.

Her voice trembled with fear as she approached me, visibly shaken.

Can you walk with me to my apartment at the end of the alleyway?

she asked, explaining that the man had been silently blocking her way.

We then began to walk, and our breath shallowed as we passed him.

After putting some distance between us, I glanced back, and he was following us.

Now we had already passed by my house at that point, but I couldn't leave this girl to face him alone.

As the fear coursed through my veins, she suddenly broke into a full sprint, leaving me no choice but to keep pace with her.

We reached the gate of her apartment, and she hastily swung it open and slammed it shut behind us.

We then dashed into the building, through a smaller gate that was designated to keep pets from escaping.

She opened it and we slipped through just as the sound of the man approaching the first gate reached our ears.

We then bolted up the stairs, making our way to the third floor.

Breathless, the girl knocked urgently but softly on her apartment door.

After what felt like an eternity it swung open, revealing her friends, a guy and a girl both around our age.

They looked bewildered, but quickly locked the door behind us and led us inside.

They turned off the lights, and we went into a bedroom where we barricaded ourselves and sat silently, with with our hearts bounding.

Then the girl broke down in tears.

She recounted the terrifying events to her friends.

She revealed that the man had been following her for 15 minutes, and she expressed relief at having seen me pull up in a car.

Unsure of what to do next, I called my aunt, who was staying at my house that night.

Thankfully, she answered right away, and I urged her to call the police.

At this point, the man had broken into the apartment.

We could hear him pacing around, seemingly looking for us.

He was mumbling something, but we couldn't hear very well from the other side of the door.

A few minutes later, my phone rang with an unknown number.

It was my uncle, a policeman, reassuring us that help was on the way.

As the minutes, which felt like hours, dragged on, eventually the police arrived.

My uncle instructed me via the phone to come downstairs and recount the whole ordeal to the officers.

They informed us that the man had left the apartment and began wandering around the gate and the far end of the alleyway.

Once the police had finished their inquiries, I was able to go home.

When I got there, I recounted this entire story to my aunt, who urged me to get some rest.

Despite my exhaustion, sleep eluded me as my mind raced with thoughts of the strange man.

What if he had caught up with us?

Was he armed with a knife or some kind of weapon?

I fought to dispel the terrifying images racing through my mind, but I couldn't shake the feeling that he might still be out there in the dark watching me with a knife glinting menacingly in his hand.

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This happened when I was 12.

I grew up in a nice neighborhood in an old two-story Victorian house.

My family and I lived in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains on a corner of a quiet street.

It was a cool area to grow up in with a lot of nature to explore, and very few fences to stop kids and their dogs from exploring.

I'm the oldest of four, but at this time my parents didn't think that I was old enough to stay at home and take care of my three younger siblings by myself for a night, so they hired a babysitter to watch us.

I had a huge crush on her.

She was seventeen and gorgeous, so I was okay with their decision.

It was just a normal, warm summer night with a big bright moon.

It was late, probably around 11 p.m., so my brother and sisters had gone to bed.

I was still up reading, and the babysitter was downstairs watching TV.

My little brother and I shared a big room on the second floor that overlooked the front yard.

As I was reading in my bed, my brother suddenly called out my name in a sharp, frightened tone.

I thought that he was dreaming, but then he bolted upright in bed and stared out the window.

This really freaked me out, so I ran over to him right away.

My brother then pointed out what he was looking at and asked Who is that man?

I looked down in the front yard, and right there, about twenty yards away, there was this lanky, long haired man looking up into the sky.

His arms were outstretched, and he was slowly spinning.

Then he started to moan.

I began to panic.

I couldn't help but think that this was how horror movies started.

So I jumped up and ran out into the hallway, glad for once that my parents had not put me in charge.

Already waiting for me in the hallway were my sisters who had been woken up by the noise outside.

That's when the babysitter came tearing up the stairs wide-eyed, which made me even more scared.

Nobody knew what to do, and the sitter wasn't offering up any ideas, so I decided to call our neighbor across the street.

He was a true curmudgeon, but at least he knew us.

I guess I figured he wouldn't be scared.

So I walked over to the landline and grabbed the phone.

There were no cell phones or even cordless phones back then.

He answered after a few rings, and then I asked him if he could see anyone out front.

From where we were, we saw him on his front lawn where he had a clear view of our front lawn.

He was visibly annoyed, but he did go look.

A few minutes later he returned to the phone and told me that he didn't see anything or anyone.

He also sternly told me that I needed to go back to bed, and with a click, that was it.

However, we were in no state to do that, so I quickly returned to the window in my brother's room and looked again.

The big bright summer moon had the front yard bathed in light, but there was no man.

We also tried to listen for the moaning, but there was nothing.

All we could hear was a symphony of crickets.

The sitter was still thoroughly scared, and refused to go back down stairs by herself.

Nobody else was going to sleep any time soon, either, so we all agreed to go downstairs together and make sure that all the doors and windows were locked.

We crept down stairs and broke into two groups to check out all the doors.

I was with the sitter to check the front, while my three siblings were checking the back of the house.

All went well.

The locks were secured, and we confirmed that there were no weirdos that had barged into the house.

But the sitter wanted me to go look outside one more time.

Even though it seemed like the coast was clear, I was still scared.

I just kept conjuring up way too many movie scenes in my head from Friday the 13th and Halloween that my friends and I had covertly watched on cable during sleepovers.

But I didn't want to show my fear in front of the woman of my dreams, so I figured just one more look and maybe, just maybe, I'd get to experience something like the end of that Revenge of the Nerds movie, another movie I had seen but wasn't supposed to.

So I quietly moved to the front window which faced the front steps of our front door.

I craned my neck to look towards the driveway and back towards the lawn where we had seen him before.

And there was nothing.

Then, suddenly, he reappeared, running full speed toward the window.

Half his face was gone.

It was a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh.

He had blood dripping down his shirt and onto his shorts.

The sitter screamed and I dropped to the floor in the most unmanly way possible.

My siblings were crying in the hallway.

The man outside then went to the door and started pounding on it, yelling incoherently.

I remember him saying, Let me in, please, at some point.

This was something very polite for someone that could very well be a mass murderer to say, but there was no way I was going to honor that request.

Not that I even could, because I was frozen in fear on the floor.

The most I could muster was a squeaky, Sir, we can't help you.

Please go away.

This didn't necessarily feel effective, but at least I did something.

Meanwhile, our protector, the seventeen-year-old sitter, had disappeared.

The bloody man pounded on the door and gave a disappointed and helpless final yelp before staggering off into the night.

After that my siblings ran upstairs and huddled together, and I continued to lie there for a while.

Soon after, maybe about twenty minutes or so later, we saw lights and heard sirens.

It turns out that the sitter had done something sane in her flight into the bowels of our home.

She did the thing that had never occurred to the rest of us.

She called 911.

They arrived and found the bloodied man wandering around the streets, so our nightmare was finally over.

This man turned out to be a cyclist who went for a moonlit ride on this beautiful, warm summer night.

But he didn't see the storm ditch on our corner when he took a tight turn at high speed, so he went flying and slid on his face for twenty feet.

When he eventually came to, he was in shock and so delirious from his injuries that he was off his rocker.

He had been wandering around for quite a while before any of us realized he was out there.

We found bloody trails criss-crossing all over the front of our property the next morning.

I feel bad for being too scared and suspicious of him to help him, but this whole situation was terrifying, especially for a kid.

My parents didn't go out by themselves without us for a while after that, and for years I was traumatized to be at home at night.

Sadly, nothing ever came of my infatuation with the sitter.

Needless to say, she never babysat for us again.

Thanks for listening and stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you'd like 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 extended versions of all of our episodes with bonus content you won't hear anywhere else every single week, as well as ad-free versions of all of our episodes.

Again, that's patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet podcast.

This week you have heard, I was once dragged into a violent bloody robbery by Fierce Stiletto 21.

I decided to take a night drive in the mountains by McCave.

The time a stranger followed me for hours and wouldn't let me escape by Mr.

Satan Super Cyan.

Man Hiding in My Porch by Core Mega Flow.

Driving A Road Less Traveled by Brown Magic Woman.

Body at the Dam by Mark.

Creepy Christmas Encounter in the Forest by Z4160.

I'll Follow You Into the Dark by Cowboy Like Me.

And finally, Bloody Man at the Door by Immediate Algae 7975.

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.

Make sure you send your stories in to let's not meetstories at gmail.com if you want to hear them on the show.

And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, My True Paranormal Podcast, The Old Time Radio Cast, and Cryptic Encounters at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'll see you all next week.

Everyone, stay safe.

I'm a female and I'm currently in my 20s.

But this story took place when I was 16.

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