14x02: Don't Take Candy From a Kidnapper

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For context, I'm a twenty six-year-old male, and I live in a large city in the Midwest.

I drove for a lift while putting myself through trade school.

I drove for similar companies as well, but that's beside the point.

I have many horror stories about the other companies that I've driven for as well, but I'll leave those for another time.

This happened on Christmas Eve in 2020.

I was out driving for a lift for a few hours before heading to my mom's with my new baby and my wife.

There wasn't anything out of the ordinary going on that night.

Everything seemed like business as usual.

I then received a ride request for a pickup from this lower income apartment complex.

I didn't see this as a big deal and I accepted the ride to pick this person person up.

When I arrived, I found my passenger, and he had what seemed to be all of his belongings with him.

He had several boxes of stuff.

Now, my car is a 2006 Chevy Impala, so even though it's not too big, we managed to get all of the stuff loaded up, albeit barely, and we were on our way.

During the ride, he was crying.

and saying that his girlfriend was cheating on him and that he had even walked in on them earlier that night.

He couldn't ask her to leave since her name was on the lease, so he just had to get out of there.

The destination address for his ride was a motel that happened to be on a pretty notorious street.

In my city, this particular street is well known to anyone with vices, as the street has the works, lots of sex workers, drugs, gangs, weapons, and shady motels.

We got to the motel, and he asked me to wait for him to check in and get his key.

No problem, man, I said.

Now I have to confess, I break the rules a little bit when it comes to Lyft.

I keep a gun hidden in a concealed holster secured to the underside of my driver's seat.

It's for protection.

The reason I have that is that while I've driven for Lyft and other contract apps, I've had knives and guns pulled on me.

I've even had passengers who have straight up tried to fight or rob me.

I've seen and dealt with all kinds of other things, but, like I said, I'll get into that another time.

As I said, this motel was on that notorious street that I mentioned before.

I saw that there were people out and about everywhere, but there was this dude in the far corner of the motel lot who just stood out to me.

He was passed out against the building and still had a needle in his arm.

I'm not a big fan of true crime or horror media, so I was immediately on edge.

Once my passenger got his key, I helped him and drove him to his door.

After we pulled up to his room, I started to help him unload his stuff.

While on my second trip to get his stuff, I saw a guy come out of a room that was south of my car, followed by two ladies.

They approached the door to the room that I was next to, not my passenger's room, and one of the ladies pounded on the door before it was opened.

That's when I saw the guy raise a shotgun from under his long coat, and he and the two women stormed into the room.

He went in first, and then the women followed him, slamming the door behind them.

Afterward, I heard yelling and shouting.

I was just waiting for shots to ring out.

Then out of nowhere, my passenger came up behind me and said, I can take that last box, man.

Go ahead and take off.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Meanwhile, I was frozen.

I didn't even notice that he took his last box out of my hands, nor did I notice that he slid a $5 bill into my pocket.

I don't know what might have been going down in that room, but I knew that I had to leave, or at least get to where I could get my gun.

I knew the guy, and both of the women saw me, and I know they knew that I saw the shotgun.

So I had to get out of there because, you know, I'm sure they wanted no witnesses.

So I got to my car and sped away quickly.

When I was about a block or so away, I called the cops and gave them every detail.

The motel address, the room numbers, everything.

After I got off the phone with the police, I stopped accepting rides and signed out of the lift app.

I hadn't made much money that evening, but I was done.

I got a call later that night after the cops investigated.

They never found the gunmen or the women, and they never answered the door to the room that I initially saw them come out of.

And the occupants of that room that they went into said nothing happened.

They also said that I was full of shit, but I know what I saw.

So, to the gunman, who I most certainly saw brandishing a shotgun, I'm not sure if you were trying to settle a debt or what, but let's not meet again.

I live in London, and this happened four years ago when I was in a tier 4 lockdown for COVID-19.

During this time, we were told to stay in our homes, only to go out for shopping trips that were quick, or exercise, and mixing and mingling with people from other households was ill advised.

With the mutating strain of COVID nineteen rampaging throughout London, hospital beds were nearly at capacity, and the death toll was rising, so it made sense to stay indoors as much as possible.

But every human being has a breaking point, and mine occurred after eight days of wandering around my one bedroom apartment.

I felt that I had already talked with friends and family in excess over Zoom, and I had completely run out of conversations.

At 10 p.m.

on that New Year's Eve, I decided to get some air, which was something allowed within the rules in place for Tier 4 lockdown.

I planned to go for a quick walk around the perimeter of the local park, and then down all of the main roads, which was going to take about 40 minutes.

I also planned to stop at a local grocery store and pick up a bottle of red wine on the way back.

So with this plan in place, I stepped out, with mask firmly affixed, and started walking.

One thing I was not prepared for was the eerily empty and almost silent streets.

As it was just below freezing, I decided to hustle and cut through some side streets first.

I thought nothing of this, but, in hindsight, this ended up being a big mistake.

As I navigated myself through very quiet side streets, I saw a van just as I came near the park.

I couldn't see what the vehicle was specifically, but it was a van about the size of a Mercedes sprinter.

It made a turn and rapidly approached my direction.

When I reached the road of the park, I came to a halt and decided to let them pass.

As I stood there, the van began to slow as it approached me.

I could see that the cab was occupied by two men who appeared to be in their thirties or forties.

The van stopped next to me and rolled the window down.

One of the men leaned out and said, Hey friend, we're lost.

Can you tell us how to get to the train station?

His accent was not from the UK, and he was inquiring about a specific station.

However, I don't want to share that for privacy reasons and I don't want to get into stereotypes.

When this happened, alarm bells rang out for me immediately.

What was a van doing out at this time, and why did they need directions to the local train station in the middle of a tier four lockdown?

Public transportation was limited.

As I stood there, I realized that the van stopped with the side door facing me, so instinctively I stepped back a few paces and gave very quick directions.

I didn't understand what you said at all, the man said.

I think it would be best if you just showed us.

And with that, he opened his door, and the side door to the van opened, revealing another two men sitting in the back.

I turned and ran.

I ran down the side street that I had just emerged from.

Shit, turn the van around, the man said.

Follow him.

Knowing that these guys were both fitter and younger than myself, a foot race to my apartment building seemed out of the question.

The only advantage I had was a head start and local knowledge of the streets.

The side street that I ran back onto leads to a larger street with homes that have large hedges.

I ran past a few homes before entering the front garden of a house that had the most imposing and opaque hedge.

It was unlit, so I ducked down and felt thankful that the house didn't have any motion sensor lights, as those are very common.

Within seconds, I heard footsteps that went past me and then stopped.

I peeked through the vegetation of the hedge, and even though my view was limited, I could see the man who had just asked me for directions.

He was a few houses down from me on the opposite side of the street and was looking around.

Then I heard the sound of the vehicle.

At first I thought, no, the van, but luckily for me, it was a car.

The man looked at his phone as he continued looking around, and I could tell he was casually pretending that he was checking on something, and then walked away, leaving the residential street as quickly as possible.

The car that had pulled onto the street also continued on its way.

I decided to wait for another ten minutes, and I kept sitting behind the hedge in the front garden, practising an explanation in the event that the house lights came on.

But the house stayed unlit, and after my allotted time I got up and quickly walked back to my apartment building, keeping to the shadows and reacting to every sound.

When I made it back to my apartment I bolted the front door.

It was only when I sat down that I understood what I had just avoided.

All of this just for some air and a bottle of red.

I then poured myself a cup of black coffee, as I debated calling the police, but I questioned myself.

Had anything happened that they could act on?

The possibility of being kidnapped or the implication of danger hardly seems like sufficient evidence, plus, being a male, this would hardly be considered a priority for them, especially on a night when law enforcement is overstretched to begin with.

So I just rang in the new year feeling thankful about my lucky escape, and I made a resolution to stock up on red wine at a more appropriate time.

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I'm a history reenactor.

This is kind of an important aspect to the story, so I figured I'd start by mentioning that.

I'm also a nurse, an ex-soldier, and a bunch of other normal things.

Still, I do have this one slightly off-center hobby, where I dress in clothes that are about 600 years out of fashion whilst sometimes trying to battle people.

Someone ought to write a psychological thesis on the subject because for some reason people dressed in historical clothes somehow become exempt from the usual social norms.

For example, if someone is dressed as an armored Viking and wandering the streets of central Sydney, women will let you pick them up and carry them away from their friends without a word of protest.

If that same person were to try that while wearing everyday clothing, well, they'd be tasered within seconds, right?

It works the same with women in armor, too.

It's like once someone is in costume, they start interacting in bizarre ways that are utterly outside the normal range of everyday human interaction.

I'm not sure how to further explain this, but it's so common that it seems to be the way that people are wired.

So I was at a particularly prominent and large medieval festival.

The atmosphere was very immersive, and members of the public were encouraged to dress the part.

At the same time, the four hundred or so reenactors performed a range of ye old activities around the grounds and spent the rest of the time wandering about, lending an element of medieval flair to the proceedings.

When I'm armored, I look pretty cool, if I do say so myself, and my fifteenth century civilian clothing is to die for.

So I was wandering around the event one evening, being dashing and medieval while trying to interact with the general public, as us reenactors are encouraged to do, and, yeah, I'll admit it, I was being a little flirty, which naturally seems to take place with some women when they're talking to a guy dressed a bit like Colin Firth in Shakespeare and Love.

Now here comes the disaster bit.

After having fought and given two lectures, I was getting a bit weary by the evening as I sat down for dinner at one of the many stalls selling food.

Once I was there, I noticed a group of young ladies nearby who were also playing the part, so I engaged with them in character, and we sat around talking, laughing, and mildly flirting for about an hour.

Moments after they left, one of them came racing back and whispered, My friend really likes you.

Here's her email address.

Then she thrusted a folded piece of paper into my hand before returning to her friends.

Well, so far so good, right?

Nothing boosts the ego like having somebody give you contact information unsolicited.

So I was quite pleased.

But when I got home, I checked my email, and there was already an email from this young lady waiting for me.

She explained that she had been on the festival's webpage and found my details there.

I still managed to feel flattered, plus, her email was incredibly nice and a little apologetic at taking such a big step unsolicited.

She was cute and seemed bright and funny when we chatted at the festival, so I replied, and we sent a few emails back and forth.

Our communication was still mildly flirty, so when the first nude photos of her showed up in my inbox, several alarm bells went off in the back of my mind.

But being a male, I ignored my gut feeling completely.

At first.

Instead, I remember thinking, wow, how much of a stud are you that some woman you barely know is sending you naked photos of herself?

I was essentially giving myself a big congratulatory grin and several pats on the back.

With the voices of caution firmly ignored, I grew a bit more flirty, and in response, she went into overdrive.

The nude photos, which had started as flirty and artistic, became progressively more explicit until they were soon the sort of thing that I think may even be illegal in Amsterdam.

Still flattered, but finding the voice of caution getting louder, I decided to discuss with her exactly what she thought she was doing.

It was around this time that terms like love at first sight, soulmate, and marriage were uttered.

Listen, I don't lead people on with the intention of not following through, and I certainly do not relate to the philosophy of find them, have sex with them, and forget them, or anything similar to that.

So, attempting to be as diplomatic as possible, I politely declined any further conversation, and I was very much thinking that this whole situation was just going to become a funny little anecdote.

But when she hacked into my email account and assassinated my character on several online forums and associations that I was a member of, it stopped being funny.

She also found my my mother's number and then called her out of the blue and told her that I had led her on and made love to her.

We never even kissed.

She elaborated upon this by telling my mother about an engagement that never happened, and it was all just a huge mess.

It was the explosive phone call to my mother that upset me the most, especially since I had no idea that any of this was coming.

I was blindsided.

She also sent letters outlining a similar story to my employer, the organizers of the festival where we met, and even to the trashy current affairs TV shows.

Fortunately, most of the people she contacted questioned this story since she and I lived approximately 800 kilometers apart.

Between that and my easily traceable movements, it was easy to confirm that she and I had only met that one time.

I'm into LARPing, and for those who don't know what LARPing is, it means live-action roleplay.

Basically, a bunch of people get together and spend the weekend in the woods dressed as medieval or fantasy characters and interact with each other in character.

I go to these events with my friend and my partner, and we'll usually meet some more friends when we're there.

There are all types of people at these events, and 99.9% of them are great.

This story happened when I had yet to meet the 0.1%,

and after this I wish I hadn't.

Before the event started, a guy who we'll call Greg swung by my tent while I was setting up.

My partner and friend were setting up the secondary tent slightly behind the path, so they couldn't see me.

There were five other people to my right, though.

I had never met this Greg guy before, but as soon as he said hi, I just got a bad feeling.

He was around 5'10 and very large.

When Greg initially approached me, he asked if I was there alone.

I said no, and clarified that I was there with people, but didn't mention either of their relation to me directly.

He asked me if I was also a gamer, and I said yes.

From then on, he rambled about Ark survival, which is a game I personally have over 3,000 hours on.

He was telling me blatantly wrong information, such as misnaming the dinos, and he told me all this stuff that's impossible to do in-game, even with mods.

Every time I corrected him, though, I saw his expression grow more and more annoyed.

I ended the conversation saying that I had to get back to setting up the tent, and he left.

Fast forward to around 10 or 11 p.m.

and the event officially started, which means any mention of the real world, such as cars, TV technology, pop culture, well, it's all forbidden by a rule called decorum.

I was playing a campfire game with my friends and my partner, and Greg came by to sit with us.

He sat next to me, so I moved over.

Then he scooted closer, so I moved again.

And he scooted again.

I then got up, and I moved to sit next to my friend.

As we continued to play the game, he kept referring to the real world and video games, so we told him to either leave or at least make an effort to speak properly.

So he left.

The next day I went up the trail for fake hunting, which is known as gathering resources.

As I came back down towards the village, I saw that he was waiting for me on the trail.

He then asked me if I would like to go get coffee or something sometime, to which I answered, No, thanks.

As we went down the trail, I told him I needed to collect plants from my potions and excused myself to go back to the village to put my bow away and collect my basket.

As I was making a speedy getaway, he followed me, grabbed my arm, and said, I could come with you.

Looking for plants alone with you in the woods, it sounds like the perfect scenario.

I freaked out.

I didn't say anything in response, I just walked as fast as I could back down the trail to the village.

My neighbors saw me and they looked very concerned.

They asked if I needed help and I told them that Greg was being creepy and following me.

I made sure to tell them about this in an honesty, which is code for asking to be taken seriously when something is going on that isn't part of the game.

They then drew their weapons, foam weapons, and told him to fuck off before they carve him a new asshole.

I stayed with them for a few minutes before getting back to chilling with my friends.

Eventually night came, and we were having fun.

Then, at around midnight, I decided to go to the bathroom.

By this point, I hadn't seen Greg around since 7 p.m.

But as I was returning from the bathroom in complete darkness, he jumped out from a bush and pinned me against a tree.

He told me that I had been leading him on, and he didn't understand why I would hold another guy's hand and hug three other guys but not him.

I told him it was my fiancé's hand that I was holding.

I explained that I do hug my friends, but he is neither.

I also told him, in all honesty, to stop his bullshit, to which he said, but what if, in all honesty, I just want a little kiss, just a little kiss and you can go.

I yelled, no,

and then I tried to hit him to get away.

My friends who were right on the other side of the bridge separating us heard me yelling.

So they took their weapons and called upon my neighbors, and around ten people came careening over the bridge to help.

As Greg turned to my rescuers, he let me go and said that he was just interrogating me for information concerning our foes.

My friends, who have seen him be an asshole before, told him not to move and said that they were going to get the organizer of the LARP event to deal with him.

Greg tried to dissuade them from doing that, but my neighbors told him to sit down or he'd be visiting Death's Altar before he could make another move.

I was taken away by my fiancée, who was very concerned about what happened.

Then the organizer came, and I explained what happened.

He took Greg aside from the event to discuss.

From what I heard, he was kindly asked not to return to future events.

So to Greg, my medieval stalker, let's not meet again.

This happened about five years ago on Christmas Eve, after I was off from work.

I work second shift, which is the late shift that goes from 5 p.m.

to 1 a.m., or until we're done.

While the warehouse I was working in was in a nicer area, just a couple of blocks down, it gets pretty sketchy, especially at night.

On this Christmas Eve, we got done at around 2 a.m.

One of my friends and I were the first ones out to the parking lot.

We stood and talked for a little bit as we were warming up our cars.

We were talking for about five to ten minutes, and during that time I saw this small sedan drive by slowly.

I didn't think anything of it because it was a little icy out and figured whoever was driving was just being cautious.

But then I saw it slowly coming back down the road from the opposite direction and then re-enter the parking lot just across from us.

I thought that this was strange because the sedan had pulled into the parking lot for the welding shop.

Nobody is ever there past 10 p.m.

except for the police who occasionally park there to do speed traps.

At that point, I pointed the sedan out to my friend, and he said that he noticed it as well, and thought that it was weird.

Then, suddenly, this big guy got out of the car and walked across the way over to where my friend and I were standing.

The car that he got out of then drove off.

He asked my friend for a smoke, and as he did that I walked over to my car to start scraping the ice and snow off of the windows.

I opened my car door and leaned in to retrieve my wallet so that I could use one of my cards to scrape the windows.

As soon as I got out of my car, this strange man called over to me.

Even though something felt incredibly off about the situation, I didn't want to be rude.

I just internally said fuck it, since there were cameras all over our parking lot watching us.

The rest of my co-workers were due to be out within ten minutes, so I figured I'd be fine.

Plus, I'm 6 feet tall and 180 pounds soaking wet, but this guy was a good bit bigger than me.

I'm guessing he was about 6'3 and maybe 250.

Maybe more.

He was trying to make small talk with me, asking about what we did in the warehouse and how it sucked that we had to work on Christmas Eve, and random bullshit like that.

This gave me the feeling that he was sizing me up.

Even though I have extreme social anxiety and can usually barely make eye contact with people that I know, I remembered that my grandpa always told me that if I was ever in a sketchy situation, I needed to stand tall, stick my chest out a bit, and maintain direct eye contact the entire time.

So essentially, I needed to do whatever I needed to do to make it look like I wasn't scared or nervous.

My goal was to look like I was more trouble than I was worth.

I noticed that he kept looking down towards my wallet, so I took a small step back to make sure that I was in the view of the cameras.

The man then said, So, hey man, do you think you could give me a ride to my house?

It's right down the road.

I ran out of gas at the store, and I need to get back to my house to get some money.

The grocery store that he said his car ran out of gas at was about a mile down the road to the east, yet the car that he was in before came from the west.

Also, if he needed a ride to his house, why wouldn't that car have just dropped him off?

As all of this was running through my head, I remembered reading online that around the holidays people can get desperate and they'll do whatever they can to try and convince someone to give them a ride.

Once someone agrees, they'll force the Good Samaritan to take them back to their house and rob them.

So I was standing there thinking, fuck this.

This guy's just trying to rob me.

I stepped backward towards my car, since I have a giant utility knife under the seat.

I told the guy that I couldn't give him a ride and told him that he needed to get off our company property.

Then I got into the car and started reaching under the seat just in case.

As he saw me reaching for something, he turned and walked away, then disappeared into the alley, a block away.

I then went to go over to my friend's car to tell him what happened, and he said that the dude said that he would pay him for some cigarettes, but he needed to be driven to an ATM.

My friend declined.

Two days later, on the day after Christmas, a picture of that same guy was posted on our local police department's Facebook page asking for information on him.

It turns out he was wanted since he was linked to a string of armed robberies that happened during Christmas week.

This happened in mid-November of 2021, so it was nearing Christmas time.

I'm a female and at the time I was 16.

I tried to get my shopping done early since a lot of my gifts were handmade.

There are a lot of shops, small grocery stores, and the local uptown area all within walking distance of my house.

I was uptown when this occurred.

One of my brothers, Anthony, was really into music and learning how to play different instruments, so I decided to go to this specific store uptown that sold music supplies and accessories.

Due to my schedule, I wasn't able to get there until well after 4 p.m., which was when the sun was starting to set.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have tried to go, but I was desperate to finish my gift shopping before the first week of December.

As I was walking around Uptown, I stopped at the local dollar general to get some paint that I ran out of.

I then went across the street to the music store to get the stuff for Anthony.

While crossing the street, I saw a large brown truck stopped at the intersection.

I don't think I had seen a truck that color, so it was pretty noticeable for me.

I also noticed that it was turning into the parking lot to go the same way I was.

One thing I should mention about Uptown is that the majority of it is bars and restaurants, so there were quite a lot of people milling about and mingling around some of those bars.

Seeing this large brown truck still made me a bit nervous, but the music store was close, so I just decided I was going to tough it out.

As I entered the store, the brown truck slowly crept by me.

I was kind of scared, but figured whoever was driving was just trying to be careful around people.

The store didn't end up having what I needed, so I placed a special order to come back and pick up the following week.

By the time I left the music shop, it was well into dusk.

As soon as I walked back outside, I saw the truck parked right outside of the store.

I brushed it off and assumed that they were just in the next door over, and went to leave.

As soon as I turned my back, I saw the lights of the truck illuminate and the engine roared to life.

I basically peed myself right then and there.

I turned to look at who was in the car, but the windows were heavily tented.

I couldn't see a thing, so I don't know how they were able to see anything either.

When the truck pulled out of its parking space and slowly crept toward me, I was paralyzed.

I figured I was about to be kidnapped and murdered, but I finally found my nerve to run when the truck was only six feet away and I booked it down the sidewalk.

The truck started to go much faster and match my pace.

I was crying since I didn't know what to do.

That's when I saw my saving grace.

I saw two women that appeared to be slightly younger than my mom.

They were employees of a coffee shop that had just closed.

They spotted me and they seemed concerned.

So I took my chance and I approached them to tell them about the situation.

One of the women was in a hurry to get going, but she gave the key to the other woman who offered to go back into the cafe with me and let me stay inside until my mom could pick me up.

The brown truck drove past a few times, but then gave up and left the same way it came in.

My mom showed up minutes later, and before I ran out to her, I thanked the woman for her help.

I still go to this coffee shop regularly, and I'm very appreciative to the woman who stayed and waited with me since she probably saved my life.

Whoever was in that brown truck, please let's never meet again.

When I was a child, my Friday nights were spent at a program called Celebrate Recovery, or CR for short.

This program was for recovering addicts and child care was provided.

My mom was the ringleader of the group while my dad attended as an alcoholic and drug user.

This being said,

I've been surrounded by people who have questionable pasts my whole life.

I've always been taught to love every single one of them though.

This is great, but this one time it bit me in the butt.

I was six or seven and I knew everyone at CR and everyone knew me.

An hour before the program started, people would show up early, bring food, and we would eat together like some sort of messed up family.

When a new person came, I would always introduce myself and make sure that they knew their presence was wanted there.

I was very young and naive, so I didn't know that people could misconstrue general kindness and take it too far.

So one night, when a new person arrived, I approached them and immediately introduced myself.

This guy told me that his name was Bob, and thus began a very suspicious friendship.

From that week on, Bob would bring stuffed animals for me and the other kids, but he'd always make sure that I got the biggest and best one.

He would always bring candies for us, which I found out years later, were dipped in gasoline.

This cycle of gift-giving went on for weeks, so Bob gained my total trust.

My parents were suspicious of Bob, so they cautioned little six-year-old me to be careful around my new best friend.

One Friday night, Bob came to see our, telling me that he had a surprise for me in the back seat of his car, and he asked me to follow him.

I followed him, and once we reached his car, Bob told me to get my surprise out of the back seat since he had a bad back, or so he said.

I was curious about my surprise, so I was more than ready to climb right into his car and get it.

Right as I was about to slide into his car, my mom, aka my hero, came walking out of her office.

She saw the interaction that was unfolding and screamed, Stitch, get your butt over here now.

My fear of getting into even more trouble outweighed my curiosity about the surprise, so I ran over to my mom.

After that incident, my mom found out that Bob would go to the large CR gatherings, but he never attended the breakout sessions.

Instead, he would just hang around childcare, and the employees never thought this was a red flag.

When my mom discovered this, she went to the church and hired security.

The security guards that were hired told Bob he was no longer allowed to come to CR, and the guards were always posted outside of childcare.

Sadly, this did not completely deter Bob.

He would come to the Saturday night service at our church, where he continued to give the kids the gasoline-soaked candy and stuffed animals.

He also attempted to come back to visit childcare multiple times.

One night, my friends and I were playing, and when I looked up, Bob was there, staring directly at me.

I had been told by my mom that if he was to show up, I needed to go to the childcare worker, Miss Jamie, and let her know.

I did exactly that, and even went as far as hiding in a corner until I was told that he was gone.

Thirteen years later, I'm still thanking my mom for being vigilant and stopping me from being kidnapped.

I want to share one of the scariest things that I have experienced.

This happened about two years ago.

I'm a female, and at the time I was twenty four.

I was living in a women's shelter, and I made some really good friends there.

On several nights we would sit at this park across the street from a temple to drink and smoke.

We would hang out out there for hours listening to music and having fun while talking about our lives.

Everyone in this little group was really young, early twenties.

I should mention that we were all staying at the women's shelter together due to experiencing a fair amount of trauma in our lives.

We connected through that a lot.

One night my friends and I went to a party in the city where we had been drinking for hours.

Even though it had been a long evening, I wasn't tired when the party was over.

So after we returned to the shelter, my closest friend there, who was a 22-year-old female, and I decided to go and sit in the park, drink a little more, and watch the sunrise.

She and I were there for a little while when we suddenly heard some rap or RB music coming from the temple across the street.

For context, we're both mixed black women, and we were very tipsy.

So once we heard the music we thought that it would be a fun and strange little adventure to go over there and see who was playing our favorite songs so loud this early in the morning.

And with that we headed toward the beautiful temple assuming that we were potentially about to meet a friend or maybe finally learn a bit about that place.

We approached the gates but they were locked.

We were disappointed, but a man came out to greet us and said that we could come in and see the temple.

He said that it was his music that we were hearing, and he loved the fact that we liked the same music.

We went inside and he showed us around the temple.

The bottom floor was beautiful, but as we headed further into the temple, we noticed that there were a lot of rooms with beds.

He told us that if we ever wanted to rent a room there, we could do so for an unbelievably low price.

As someone who has started to think about post-shelter accommodations, this piqued my interest.

At first I was feeling nothing but positive vibes, which only got better when he brought us over to his computer that was playing the music.

He asked what songs we wanted to hear.

This made me feel even more comfortable with the guy.

I thought that he was funny, and we all got along pretty well.

Then we started talking about recreational activities, and smoking pot pot came up.

My friend and I actually had some on us and we offered it to him since he seemed very chill and cool.

All throughout our interaction, he was constantly complimenting me specifically.

He kept talking about my hair and the color of my complexion.

These comments became progressively forward, and they got to the point where I was feeling uncomfortable.

I can't remember where he was from exactly, but he was of Eastern Asian descent, which I guess is why he asked if I liked Asian men.

He asked me if I had ever slept with one, and asked other questions about my sexual preferences.

Then he offered me and my friend a stronger drug than what we had.

I won't say what, but it's a drug that no one should ever do.

As if this wasn't uncomfortable enough, he then said that he had seen us around and he sometimes looks out his window and watches us as we sit at the park.

Once the first red flag went up, they just kept piling up.

As the guy continued talking to us, my friend and I started smoking our stuff.

While we were smoking, the guy asked if we had another friend who would be interested in joining us in his room.

He said that he was trying to have a good time since he was moving soon.

That was when the weird feeling that I was developing got stronger.

I asked him why he was moving, if the rent was so cheap.

He refused to answer, and just dodged the question entirely, so my intuition was telling me something was wrong.

So then I asked if I could get some water.

He told me to go ahead and get one out of the fridge.

As I opened the fridge, I saw another guy there.

He was nice, and offered to get me water, but I just grabbed a glass and got some water from the tap.

The guy who brought us into the temple then ran out of his room and said, No, I wanted you to drink from the water in the fridge.

I'm fine with this, thanks, I replied.

He then walked me back to the room, where I sat down next to my friend.

I'm moving because I always hear people having orgies, screaming at night and banging on my door.

It sounds like people are being tortured and it disturbs me in my sleep, he finally explained after much evasion.

What?

I replied.

It's almost like there was nothing that I could do to prevent that from slipping out of my mouth.

I couldn't believe what he had just said.

I almost thought that it was a joke.

My friend and I were in disbelief and I asked him why on earth he didn't tell us this earlier.

I then noticed that he had closed his bedroom door when we came back in after I got some water.

That's when I started to think that we needed to get out of there.

Just when I was about to say we needed to get going, he said,

You have to listen to this song, you'll love it.

He then put on this weird Viking type song with a really terrifying chant.

He was playing it loud, too loud.

My friend and I were yelling for him to turn it off, but he didn't listen and just kept chanting along with the song.

We were scared, so we continued begging him to turn it off, and then he turned to face us and screamed maniacally, baring his teeth.

His tongue was out and his eyes were wide.

It was so unsettling.

It was the most distorted face I had ever seen in real life.

He didn't even look human.

I don't have a fight or flight response.

I just tend to freeze, and that's exactly what I did.

I sat there frozen in fear, trying my best to just laugh it off.

Meanwhile, my friend was in fight mode.

She threatened to beat his ass if he didn't let us leave right away.

I then impulsively ran to the door, but he ran after me, so I froze again.

Then he unlocked the door and opened it.

My friend and I ran out of the temple while this guy kept speed walking behind us.

We bolted the rest of the way out of there, burst through the front door, and got out.

If my friend wasn't there, and in fight mode, I genuinely don't know what would have happened.

It's unsettling how this guy changed so quickly.

It's like once our guard was down, his movements and mannerisms changed entirely, and I'll never forget the way that his face just didn't look human as it contorted during that really weird chanting song that he played for us.

Looking back, I now realize how naive my friend and I were to go in there in the first place.

My friend and I were shocked to have this type of encounter in such an innocent-looking temple.

It also scares me to think about the fact that he knew we were vulnerable girls staying at the shelter at this time.

Honestly, I think it's entirely possible that he may have intentionally lured us to the temple by playing the music that he hears us play while we're at the park.

Thanks for listening.

Stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended ad-free version of this week's episode.

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You'll get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bitrate for the best listening experience and weekly bonus content with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

This week you have heard Christmas Eve Lift Ride Nightmare by GES613,

New Year's Eve Close Call by Nevermind the Carrots, Rin Groupies Are Scary by Shinko Wolf, Creepy Guy at LARP by Terrible Kraken,

Some Dude Tried to Rob Me on Christmas Eve by Trippy Hippie DMT.

Followed by A Brown Truck While Holiday Shopping by Morgan.

Don't Take Candy from a Kidnapper by Stitch.

And finally, Terrifying Temple Experience by Tai Aisha.

All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors.

Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.

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

Finally, make sure to check out the new episodes of all my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, Cryptic Encounters, and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com.

Everybody, I'll see you all next week.

Stay safe.

This happened when I was fifteen years old, but the memory of it still becomes the sharpest.