15x12: One Night Stand

What happens when Delta Airlines sends four creators around the world to find out what is the true power of travel?

I love that both trips had very similar mental and social perks.

Very much so.

On both trips, their emotional well-being and social well-being went through the roof.

Find out more about how travel can support well-being on this special episode of The Psychology of Your Twenties, presented by Delta.

Fly and live better.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Phoenix, Arizona, I'll be at Rebel Lounge on November 17th.

St.

Paul, Minnesota at Turf Club on November 19th, and Chicago, Illinois at Beat Kitchen on November 20th.

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

I'll see you there.

This podcast contains adult language and content.

Listener discretion is advised.

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

Enjoy the show.

I wrote a book of personal essays and included this story, and one of my readers mentioned that this was a great place to share.

I lived in China from 2011 to 2016, and this happened mid-2012.

My friend and I decided to visit the coastal city of Qingdao for the weekend.

It was only a three-hour train ride away, and my friend, who was very rich, but also a mess, was personally friends with the owner of the observatory turned hostel that we liked to stay at when we visited as groups.

But this time, it was just the two of us.

After a lovely day, we decided that we wanted to hit the bars, but we wanted to stay away from downtown.

I can speak pretty good Chinese, but my friend can't.

So, when we got into the cab, I told the driver that we wanted to go to the closest bar.

I even said that I didn't care if the closest bar wasn't popular, we just wanted to be taken there.

As a side note, while we were on the way to who knows where, our driver spotted this awesome fruit market, so he paused near the meter while we all stopped to buy some sunfruits.

He then took us to some random bar, which was definitely trying to be a club, but the club wasn't quite clubbing.

We went in, and about a quarter of the tables were occupied, but the bar was completely open.

Instead of having an open dancing space, there are a lot of tables at Chinese clubs, and people just dance in the space between them.

We then took a seat at the bar and ordered a round of beer, and my friend pulled out a pack of pills.

You see, she was an addict.

She was taking literally twelve Lunesta pills a day, and she always took six pills before she started drinking.

Back then, there was a generic over-the-counter version of Lunesta, available in China.

Part of the reason my friend asked me to go to the bar with her was because I always refused to leave her whenever she got to a state where she couldn't function.

And, well, she was partying for the whole trip, and I was both eager to please and eager to party with her.

When she took her pills out, my 20-year-old brain naively decided that I wanted to know what it was like to get high on Lunesta, so I asked her for one.

She refused at first, saying that I couldn't handle it, but I kept pestering her until she gave me half a pill, and then down the hatch it went.

The next thing I knew, the club was suddenly booming, and there was this big guy in my face talking to me like we were in the middle of a conversation.

The bartender then slid two shot glasses over to us.

The guy then gestured to cheers, so I met his glass with mine and cheersed him, and then I drank.

It was tequila, and I felt myself fade to black after that.

Cut from black, and there was then nobody in the club except for me, the big guy I had tequila shots with, the staff, and a couple of stragglers.

I was pretty lucid at that point.

The big guy said that he didn't know where my friend was, but he knew how to get me back to the observatory, and said that he could give me a ride.

I accepted and got in the front seat of his van.

We drove for a while, and then I realized, as we kept driving and driving and driving,

the drive was taking longer than our taxi driver from earlier.

So I said as much,

and he just casually said Oh, no, we're going back to my place.

I've got some friends who really want to meet you.

I immediately started to quietly find a way to escape.

I noticed that the door was unlocked, which was good, but we were driving too fast for me to jump out.

Even if I did that, it wasn't like anyone would see me flying out of his car and step in to help.

That just doesn't happen there.

So I sat there, taking stock of everything that I had on me.

And then it all came together.

I felt my cigarettes, just as I saw a four hour convenience store, at the upcoming intersection.

The light was yellow, but it happened to turn red at the perfect time.

As soon as we were slowed enough, I screamed, I have to buy cigarettes and then I flung the door open and ran to the Uni Mart.

I begged the cashiers to call the police, but they refused and yelled at me to get out of their store.

The big guy then walked in, saw me, and speed walked towards me.

I screamed at them to call the police again, but they just kept yelling, get out, get out.

I was now running through the store while this big guy was chasing me, and I was knocking over displays between us.

Then suddenly, the police arrived.

I sprinted over to them, got behind them, and pointed at the big guy saying, he's trying to take me.

The police were so confused at first, but the big guy had no explanation.

So they put us in separate police cars and took us both to the station.

They sat me in the detective's cubicle while they took the big guy into a room in the back.

The detective asked to see my passport and asked for my side of the story.

He also asked who I was, why I was in that city, why I was in China, etcetera.

I asked if I could go outside to have a cigarette, but he said no.

Then he left, and I waited and waited.

While waiting, I started going through my belongings again.

I had zero cash and my phone was dead.

I was glad to see that I still had my SLR camera.

A couple of hours went by, and the detective eventually came back and told me I was free to go.

I asked him, what about the big guy?

He said that the big guy gave them a fake ID and that they found out he's actually from Hong Kong.

He refused to say why he was in town town when he was supposed to be in another city, and he refused to say where he was staying, so they were holding him for further questioning.

I told the police that my phone was dead and I didn't have any money for a taxi, but they just told me, oh well.

I was eventually able to find a taxi driver who sympathized with my story and traded me a ride to the hostel for a cigarette.

When I got to our room, it was locked, but I didn't have a key.

My friend had the only one.

Luckily she was there, but it took ten minutes of banging on the door for my friend to wake up and let me in.

But I was just glad to see that she was safe.

So, to both the big guy and Lunesta, let's not meet again.

I'm an alcoholic, and I've been sober for nine years.

This is without a doubt my proudest accomplishment.

I started getting help during my sophomore year of high school.

Looking back, I'm so grateful for the timing.

If I had hit rock bottom later, things would only have been worse.

My parents transferred me to a different school so that I could start fresh and meet new people.

By the time I turned 18, a few months before graduation, I had already been sober for over two years.

That was around the time that I started aging out of most teen recovery programs, and a lot of counselors I worked with only focused on youth cases.

So I had to start finding adult support groups.

I grew up in Los Angeles, but not the touristy part.

My neighborhood had liquor stores every few blocks and corner shops with thick plexiglass windows.

Alcoholism was really common and normalized in my area.

So once the teen programs ended for me, I started going to early morning AA meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

They were held in a small church near my school.

I didn't have first period on those days, so the scheduling of these meetings worked out perfectly.

After the meetings I would usually stay for a couple of extra minutes to write in my journal or just enjoy the quiet.

One morning there was a guy who stayed behind after the meeting.

He asked me what I was writing and I told him I was journaling.

He said he liked the idea and wanted to try it out himself.

After that, he started sitting next to me at every meeting.

We would talk for a bit, and he seemed pretty normal.

He was was also just about my age.

He knew I was about to graduate and asked if I planned to keep coming to that group during the summer.

I told him I wasn't sure yet, since I had just gotten a job across town.

I let him know that I was looking into meetings closer to where I would be working.

I could tell that he didn't love that answer, though.

I talked in a lot of those meetings.

I found it productive, and I didn't like to go and just sit in silence.

I made made an effort to bring energy into the room, and I like to think that I did help some people feel a little better.

I think that this guy felt that too, and that's probably why he seemed disappointed when I said that I would be going elsewhere for meetings.

He asked me when I would be switching to a different group, and I said I didn't know yet, and I told him that I planned to keep coming to our meetings through the end of the school year.

I don't remember if I ever told him the name name of my school, but I always wore royal blue and gold.

These were the school colors.

He also knew my school was nearby, so even if I never specified, it wouldn't have been hard for him to figure it out.

During my last two weeks of senior year, everything got wild.

We had senior ditch day, and there were several late-night hangouts, sleepovers, goodbye parties, etc.

I missed a few AA meetings at the the church, and then switched AA groups altogether.

At graduation everything was great, but then that guy from AA showed up.

I wasn't expecting to see him, so I felt off.

He didn't know me like that, and I never invited him since we weren't close.

Yet there he was, in the back, smiling at me like it was completely normal for him to be there.

He approached me afterward, and said that he bought me a gift.

It was a box of chocolates with a note about how much he was going to miss me.

He said that I should drop by the meetings at the church again sometime.

I was uncomfortable, so I'm not sure what I said, but I think I probably just said thank you.

I never went back to the church for the meetings after that.

The whole situation just felt too weird for me, and I didn't want to see him again.

And then he showed up at my new job.

I was working the cosmetics counter at a big department store.

The first time he walked by I noticed him right away.

Then he came back the next day, and then the day after that.

He never spoke or asked for help.

He just wandered around near my station, lingered awkwardly, and then looked over at me like it was no big deal that he was there.

Eventually I told my co-worker, and she's the type of woman who does not play around.

When I pointed him out to her, she walked right up to him and asked him what he thought he was doing.

She called him out in front of everybody.

She said she knew exactly why he was there, and she told him that he was being creepy.

His face reddened.

A few shoppers turned around to see what was going on, so he walked away without saying a word.

We told our manager afterward.

Our manager was receptive to us speaking up about this situation and told us to let her know about him right away next time he's in the store.

But there was no next time because he never came back.

I haven't seen him since and hopefully he's moved on.

In every true crime story, there's that one detail, a receipt, a location ping, a pattern someone couldn't break, a habit that gave them away.

So here's the question: What's your habit saying about you?

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Years ago when I was in my early twenties, I took a job in the suburbs more than twenty miles away from my downtown apartment.

It was a really cool place and a great neighborhood, so it was worth the commute.

One night on my way home from work, I decided to stop at a used record store in a strip mall near where I worked.

I had a crush on my hipster neighbor who collected old jazz on vinyl and thought that maybe I could find something there that would give me a cool excuse to flirt with him.

While I was in the store browsing, I noticed a gray-haired man in the next aisle looking at me.

When our eyes met, he smiled, and I politely smiled back.

I usually don't notice much about other random people who smile at me, but there was this intensity in his eyes that got my attention.

He also had one of those smiles that looked insincere.

It looked rather forced.

I proceeded to browse a few other sections, and every time I looked up, I noticed the same man staring right at me.

I tried not to think anything of it since sometimes people zone out and stare without realizing it, but I kept noticing that he would position himself across from me in nearly every aisle.

It was clear that he was trying to flirt, but I wasn't interested.

For starters he was at least twice my age and not my type.

I just decided to pretend that I didn't notice him even though he was repeatedly moving into my direct line of sight.

I asked the staff for help with the jazz section and eventually made my selection.

As I was waiting to be rung up, I quickly glanced around the store to make sure that the guy wasn't still lurking.

Thankfully, he seemed to have left.

After I was done with the record store, I walked out to the parking lot and got into my car.

The strip mall was along a busy thoroughfare, so I had to wait until traffic cleared to turn out of the parking lot onto the boulevard.

While I waited for an opening, I just happened to glance in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the car leaving the parking lot behind me had a burnt-out headlight.

There wasn't anything weird about that, but I just happened to notice it.

So, like I said, the drive home was a long one, but it was mostly a straight shot along this busy thoroughfare.

I emerged into the left lane and started heading towards home.

A few miles into the drive, I once again noticed a car behind me with a single headlight.

I wondered, is that the same car?

If so, it struck me as unusual that they hadn't passed me, changed lanes, or turned off by then.

I was listening to music and thinking about what to make for dinner.

It was getting late, so I decided to stop for some fast food instead.

I remembered that there was an Arby's just a couple of miles from my house, so I decided, Arby's it is.

As I continued driving, I became preoccupied with planning which outfit to wear when I brought the LP to my neighbor's place.

But I kept getting this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that compelled me to watch my rearview mirror.

I glanced up a couple more times to see the one headlight car.

It was still behind me, trailing by at least half a city block.

This was now easily twelve to thirteen miles away from where I first saw it.

I was definitely feeling aware, but I still wasn't overly concerned.

We were both on a main thoroughfare, after all, and it ran from one end of a big city to another.

As I neared the turn off for Arby's, I merged into the right lane and slowed down.

Once again, my eyes were drawn to the rearview mirror.

Sure enough, the car with one headlight changed lanes, slowed, and took the same turn off behind me.

This was when I suspected that I was being followed.

So then, I continued driving and waited until the very last moment to switch to the right lane to pull into Arby's.

As I made my turn, I was on the lookout for the car with one headlight.

I didn't want to cause an accident, so I only managed to catch a brief glimpse of the car as it passed by down the street.

It was a golden sedan, but I couldn't make out any other details, and I couldn't see who was driving.

I was just relieved that it didn't seem to be following me after all.

So I relaxed and proceeded to the drive-through to order my dinner, and after I got my food, I navigated my way out of the parking lot.

The way the retail parking lots were designed, I had to exit through a supermarket strip mall lot until it led out onto the side street so that I could double back toward the main thoroughfare and continue home.

It was a long left turn, but it had its own turn lane, so I blasted my radio and nibbled on a few curly fries while I waited for the arrow to turn green.

As I waited, I saw a flash of light reflecting in my rearview mirror.

When I glanced up, I saw a car pull up in the lane behind me.

It had only one headlight.

My heart jumped into my throat.

I frantically locked all my doors and turned off the radio.

After the light turned, I pulled away as fast as I could, speeding back toward the boulevard, and the single headlight car followed behind.

At that point, I was entirely certain that I was being followed.

In my gut, I knew who it was.

At the time, my state didn't require front plates, so I couldn't see a license plate number.

This was also before most of us had cell phones, so I couldn't call for help either.

As I pulled back onto the main thoroughfare, I desperately tried to recall where the closest police station was, but I couldn't remember, and the single headlight car was still behind me.

I was definitely not about to lead him to where I lived, so luckily I remembered there was a fire station a few blocks from me, so I decided to head there.

Even after being back on the streets and taking a few turns, sure enough, that car was still right behind me.

It was hanging way back on the side street, but it was there.

When I started to approach the fire station, it wasn't as well lit as I had hoped, and the doors were closed.

I drove past slowly, and then decided to scrap that idea and head back out to the main road, where there was a lot of traffic.

Just before I reached the main boulevard, as the one headlight car slowly approached from behind, I yanked my wheel and swerved all the way from the right lane to the left turn lane.

The car just stopped in the middle of the road, so I knew that the driver then knew that I was aware that I was being followed.

This was when the driver finally decided to pull up beside me.

It was then that I finally saw that grey-haired man from the record store.

I couldn't believe he followed me all this way.

When I looked at him, he had this big, creepy smile stretched across his face.

I gave him a look of horror and disgust in response, and he just shrugged as if to say, All right, you caught me.

And then he motioned for me to roll down my window, but I slowly shook my head.

Then he yelled out of his window

Look, I thought we had a connection back there at the record store.

Can I buy you a cup of coffee?

I mouthed no at him, and turned left.

Then I doubled back through several side streets to get back to the fire station.

I pulled up to their front door and laid on my horn until someone came out.

I think that the guy gave up following me after he was discovered, but I sure as hell didn't take any chances by going straight home after that.

A couple of firefighters came out and called the police for me, who arrived and escorted me home.

To this day, I always wonder what would have happened if that guy's headlight hadn't burnt out.

I would never have noticed him following me, and I would have driven driven all the way home.

This happened when I was seven.

When I was younger, I used to live in the Dominican Republic with my grandparents on my father's side and his brother.

My dad lived in the U.S.

at the time.

My uncle and I shared a bedroom.

However, to clarify, I was a seven-year-old girl and my uncle was nine.

To get to our room, you had to go through my grandma and grandpa's room first.

Our room had another door that led to the backyard.

As a lot of you might know, the Dominican Republic can be dangerous, especially at night.

Since the country can't afford to always keep the electricity running, we have blackouts multiple times a day, every day, which mostly occur during the night when most people are asleep.

So, nighttime there is particularly dark.

The door to my bedroom that opened to the backyard always scared me because I could hear everything happening outside.

It always felt like someone could just burst through the door and abduct me.

The door was made of long planks of wood laid vertically next to each other.

This was made from a type of wood that always looked like it was rotting.

I always slept in my bed, facing this door so that I could easily see if anyone was trying to come through it.

I fell asleep every night, just staring at that door out of boredom.

My grandpa sympathized with me, so he eventually put a huge vintage wooden dresser in front of the door to make it more secure.

He bought the dresser off the back of some guy's truck.

The dresser was so thick and so heavy that it instantly made me feel safer.

On the first night in which I had this dresser, I fell asleep facing in that direction staring at it.

It was weird to look in that direction since the dresser filled out the area, and it was now pitch black in that corner.

I could no longer see the little beams of moonlight between the cracks on the slats of the door.

I also couldn't hear the sounds of the wild animals in the yard or any of the late-night traffic on the street.

I remember it was nearing the season for tropical hurricanes, so some nights I could hear the faint sounds of the trees swishing and the door creaking.

The door was louder some nights, like it was finally breaking down from the pressure of the winds.

My grandparents didn't see anything wrong with the door in the morning when I told them I was concerned that it might be falling apart, and we never thought anything of it after that.

A few weeks later, there was a huge storm.

While I was trying to sleep, I could hear banging, cracking, and creaking.

I also heard these loud whooshing sounds, splashes, and thumps.

Naturally, I just thought it was the storm, and so did my uncle.

But then, after the storm, we kept hearing similar sounds late at night, and it would always wake us up.

We knew that it wasn't the storm causing these noises, but we tried to remain logical and realistic as to what it could be.

So, finally we decided that it was probably the old dresser.

We also figured that the door was probably off its hinges.

Another theory we had was that it was a stray cat scratching at the door since the wood was nice and soft.

Basically my uncle and I kept trying to scare each other, and it was working.

We kept coming up with new excuses for the noises every night, and then we would blame each other when we got scared.

All that was kept inside the dresser were blankets, towels, curtains, and various linens.

The dresser was tall, and there was a divider in the middle.

The left side had shelves, where my grandma would keep the folded towels, and the right side had a hanging rack, where you would hang curtains and sheets.

Sometimes my grandma would complain that the blankets had dirt on them.

She would blame my uncle, and then blame me, thinking we were wiping our hands on everything whenever we were too lazy to go wash them.

One night there was a louder thump than usual.

It was coming from the direction of the dresser.

I woke up in a sudden panic, and my uncle was already wide awake.

I immediately thought that he was playing games with me, so I started yelling at him.

My grandpa woke up and came to see what was going on, so I told him that my uncle woke me up and was trying to scare me.

My uncle denied it and said that he was woken up by all of the noise outside.

My grandpa didn't hear anything, so he told us to stop playing around and go back to sleep.

As he started to walk back to his room, there was another loud thump.

My grandpa finally heard it, and we were freaked out because it sounded like it was coming from inside the dresser.

So he went to the bathroom, got the oil lamp that we kept in there, turned it on, and opened the dresser to look.

We saw the hanging blankets and curtains moving slightly.

My grandpa quickly stuck his hand in, and when he moved the linen to the side, he saw that there was a woman in the dresser.

She was very small and skinny.

There was a little hole in the right side of the cardboard backing of the dresser.

From what he could tell, it didn't lead to the outside.

The door was still behind it, but we instantly knew how she got in from the position she was in when my grandpa opened the dresser.

She was standing up with her knees slightly bent, facing towards the hole.

Her hand was up and behind the hole, reaching up towards the frame of the door.

I could see her whole body, and I still remember what she was wearing.

A long, flowing, sun-colored skirt and a dark green shirt that was too small for her.

She was also holding a plastic bag with a few small things inside of it.

When my grandpa had moved the blankets out of the way, she panicked, and we heard that she dropped something.

It was a couple of nails and screws, the ones that were holding the door planks together.

The plank became loose, so she started to push it with her hands, and that was the creaking that we heard.

After a few seconds of struggling, she finally pushed the plank down and started finangling her body through the crack in the door.

Her head didn't fit right away, so my grandpa reached toward her and grabbed her arm.

She was panicking, and she bit him.

She bit him so hard that she almost ripped his skin off.

He was bleeding, and she didn't let go until he let go of her first.

She then rammed her head through the door, and we could see how much it hurt her to force her head through it because it made a very distinct scraping sound.

She tripped over her skirt when she reached the other side of the door, but she was able to run.

We had an outdoor sink, and she got on top of it.

Then she climbed the wall that separated our backyard from the backyard of the next-door neighbors.

The wall was made of cinder blocks, and it was so old and weathered that it had a bunch of holes and deformities in it.

She used these blemishes on the wall to scale it and climb over.

While she was climbing, my grandpa ran out of our room, past his bedroom, the living room, and the dining room, to open the door to the back yard.

We followed him as he ran by, and my grandma woke up.

By the time he got the back door open the woman was more than halfway up the wall.

My grandpa then grabbed a machete that he kept behind the broken washing machine that we had in the yard right next to the door, and he ran towards her.

He swung it, but he missed her.

At that exact moment the electricity came back on, so all of the street lights flickered and turned on.

We were able to see her clearly as she reached the top of the wall and jumped to the other side.

My grandma had followed us to the yard, but didn't get to see what was happening.

She asked what was going on, and my grandpa started swearing and yelling at the woman.

We don't have free emergency services in the Dominican Republic, so there wasn't much that we could do since we didn't have any money.

And lucky for us, no one was hurt in the end.

We went to examine the door and the dresser to try and figure out exactly how she got in there almost every night.

This woman had removed the screws and the nails on one of the planks on the door.

Then she cut out a hole in the dresser, so she would be able to stay in it.

That woman was in our room almost every night for two months, sleeping just a few feet away from us.

We have no idea if she ever even stepped out of the dresser to walk around the rest of our home.

We didn't go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

Before the sun was fully risen, my grandpa was nailing down the door from both sides.

He bought a sack of cement and covered the door with it from the outside.

He also replaced another door on the side of the house that led to the outside.

It was in the same condition as the bedroom door.

We never came in contact with that woman again.

I'm not as as young as I once was.

None of us are.

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In 2011, I was able to convince my grandparents to sign a waiver for me to enter the Navy at the age of 17.

Basic training went as well as it could have, but I was an overweight kid, and I couldn't pass the run, so I was sent back to do more training for four weeks until the physical test came up again.

This detail is important due to the butterfly effect.

When I finally finished and had my orders of traveling to my A school, I ended up in Meridian, Mississippi, where I was assigned to my class, and I was taught a more specific guideline for my rate.

There were around 15 to 20 people in my class.

It wasn't a huge class, but it was large enough that people formed groups of three to five and rotated to mingle with the other groups, getting to know one another.

The kid I was when I started A school was very different.

I was super shy, so when I would bounce from group to group, I was more of a listener than someone who engaged in conversation unless I was specifically asked something.

It was in that first week that I would be meeting Katie.

I introduced myself with a hello, and she did the same.

I didn't have any idea that that would be enough to jump-start her obsession.

My base had a rec center.

Inside, there was a PS4 gaming room, a movie room, an air hockey room, and a music music room.

Since I didn't have a car at the time, and getting to whichever little town nearby cost like thirty bucks each way, I spent most of my free time in that rec center or at the bowling alley, which was also close on base.

Katie would always find me at one of those places and talk to me endlessly about things in her life.

Perhaps it was because I was never rude, and I never shut her down, but she felt so comfortable telling me things about her family and how her life was as she was growing up.

She always had an interesting tone, though.

It was as if she were speaking more so to be heard rather than have a conversation.

I think in the six weeks I was there, I said about twenty words to her, and most of the time it was a simple affirmation like yeah, or I understand.

I was already pretty uncomfortable, as it seemed like every time I wasn't in my room, Katie was out there trying to find me.

Even as I started to get out of my bubble and began to make friends, Katie would be there to try and take over conversations other people were having with me so that she could talk to me.

I went to my chief to express my concerns, and she assured me that they would get to the bottom of it.

My chief was and still is heavily involved in the suburban abuse rehabilitation program in the Navy, so she has experience with all kinds of mental health issues.

While my chief respected Katie's privacy and didn't disclose what we had talked about, she did ask me if I was possibly leading Katie on.

I explained that I never expressed interest and let her know that I also never told Katie to fuck off or anything like that, since I wasn't raised that way.

I don't know what kind of magic my chief pulled, but she was able to get in contact with the person who was to assign Katie's next duty station along with mine.

Katie and I had similar rates, and most of the other people that we were around at the time were set to go to Japan.

Katie ended up getting orders to Norfolk, Virginia, while I got orders to Camp Pendleton, California.

Our classes had already ended by this point, so we had only been waiting for these orders an additional week or

As everyone talked about their different duty stations, the select few who weren't going to Japan stood out.

There was Katie and I, a girl who was assigned to Italy, and another one who was being sent to Japan, but to a completely different base than the rest.

So, Katie found out that she wouldn't get to talk to me anymore.

She tried so hard to get my number before we parted ways and said that she wanted me to take her virginity before we left.

Having that said to me was enough for me to finally let her know that I was not interested.

I also added that I was glad to be getting away from her.

It was probably among the meanest things I had ever said to someone, but it felt entirely necessary after weeks of this obsession.

Katie didn't want to accept it, though.

After she had been sent away to her next station, she called the A school every single day trying to get a hold of both me and my chief.

I'm I'm not sure what Katie was saying to my chief, but my chief eventually asked to look through my phone to make sure that I wasn't telling her one thing while Katie was saying another.

Our leading petty officer got in contact with Katie's LPO to get her to stop calling, and eventually I was off to California after a short stop at home beforehand.

At Camp Pendleton, especially around the Naval Hospital, it's easy to stick out like a newbie.

And because of this, Katie went as far as to call my new command to ask if I had made it there yet under the guise of being a concerned family member.

She also knew that I was there since being a teenager, I made the mistake of letting the world know what I was up to via Facebook.

So I changed my location and shared information without thinking about my account being public.

I now know much better.

I have a pretty unique last name, so Katie was able to find my profile.

She also contacted my family members and tried to tell them that she was a secret girlfriend of mine who was trying to find out more information about me.

I'm not particularly close with my family, but they knew that if I had someone special in my life I would introduce them.

They also saw that I had added many new friends I made at A School on Facebook.

Since Katie wasn't someone I had added, their skepticism stopped them from divulging additional information about me.

After this I had to send out an alert to my extended family to inform them about her.

I told them that she was a stalker and she needed to be blocked.

Apparently I wasn't the only one Katie was stalking.

She had also started going after the chief who helped me break away from her, and this is what led me to keep in contact with that chief during my whole tenure in the military.

After months of this, I had finally been able to move past Katie, and there wasn't anyone around her to contact to get to me.

I found out years later through my chief that in one last bold move, Katie made a false sexual assault claim to try and leave her command in the hopes of being reassigned to mine.

What ended up happening was that she was booted out of the Navy altogether.

To think that all of this probably wouldn't have happened to its degree had I finished boot camp when I was originally supposed to always gets under my skin, especially since it all started with a simple hello.

I haven't heard from Katie in years and I'm hoping that that trend continues.

Katie, let's not ever meet again.

This happened in the spring of 2015.

I'm a male, living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

I joined a fairly popular BDSM website in mid-January and was instantly drawn into the community.

For those of you who don't know, BDSM is a variety of erotic practices involving bondage, dominance, submission, and masochism.

Think fifty shades of gray if that helps.

The community welcomes all kinks and fetishes, and everyone I've ever met from that site has been very welcoming and friendly, except for one.

It all started when I came across her profile.

She was a gorgeous woman.

She was very fit with long legs.

She was an older woman, but I was into that.

I started browsing her collection of photos, and most of the images were fairly vanilla, with her sitting at a dining room table drinking wine and smiling at the camera.

Her photos were classy, which only intrigued me more.

I went ahead and messaged her by engaging with the usual greetings and offering to chat so that we could get to know each other.

She replied almost instantly.

She greeted me as sir, given the role that I take.

We continued to message back and forth for a week or two.

She explained to me that she wanted me to be her master since her last master died in a car accident.

This struck me as odd, but I figured unfortunate accidents can happen to anyone.

So she continued giving me details of what she wanted me to do to her, and I very much obliged.

We kept trying to meet up for coffee over the next few days, but unfortunately she had to cancel last minute each time.

Meanwhile, I was getting very eager, as all of the kinky discussion had gotten me worked up.

Late one night, she messaged me inviting me over to her place.

She told me that she didn't have work in the morning, and she said that we could be up all night having fun.

I was so worked up that I was lacking the necessary blood flow to my brain to make an educated decision.

So I agreed and asked for her address.

She messaged me her address along with a phone number that she said was her home line, and with that, I got ready to head out.

I got into my car and put the address into my GPS.

This was when I noticed that she lived in Hamilton.

This is 45 minutes away from Toronto.

It was 1 a.m., but this didn't bother me, as I drove to Hamilton quite often, and considering I'd be spending the night, I knew I wouldn't have to drive back the next morning.

About 45 minutes into the drive, I found myself passing Hamilton.

According to my GPS, I had a little further to go, which was no big deal to me.

But then I reached a stretch of highway, devoid of any street lights.

I began to get concerned, as I only had my own headlights lighting my way.

Then, suddenly, my GPS chimed in, with the female voice indicating it was time to take my exit.

It was coming up on the right, and I feared driving into the darkness off of the mild comfort of the highway.

The exit took me into a long, dark stretch of country road, where I passed silhouettes of farmhouses and forestry.

There was a good distance between each of them.

My GPS chimed in again, indicating that my destination was coming up on the left, but as I approached the location, it wasn't even close to what I expected.

It was a small church house, with one yellow street light illuminating the dirt lot in front of it.

I pulled into the lot and angled my vehicle's lights towards the building.

I wanted to get a better look.

The windows and the doors were boarded up, and I could tell that it had been boarded up for a while.

The wooden planks were weather worn.

My blood began to run cold as I made sure that the doors were locked and the windows were rolled up.

I was very thankful for a full tank of gas, as it gave me some kind of comfort in this situation.

I figured she possibly made an error in typing out her address, so I called the number that she gave me.

When I called her, I got the standard: The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service.

I was ready to turn and leave until I noticed that I had an email.

It was a message from her.

Her message said,

Hey, I see you here.

I'm not at the church.

My place is the small house behind it.

Right then, all of the horror movies I had seen throughout my life replayed in my head.

I couldn't believe I was possibly living one out in real life.

I probably just should have left, but a small jolt of curiosity persuaded me to proceed, even if the journey ended after just taking a look at this house.

There was a small path behind the church, so I slowly pulled up into it.

As I crept forward in my car, a small farmhouse appeared among the trees at the top of the hill.

At this point I was certain I was not going in there.

I made this concrete decision in my head and decided that my survival took precedence over my need for sex.

I was about to reverse out of there until I saw the upstairs balcony door open.

A hooded figure stepped out.

I couldn't see their face, but I could tell by their posture and shape that it was a man.

Despite the fact that he was shrouded in darkness, I could feel that he was looking directly at me.

He stood there for just about 30 seconds before he motioned his head in a way I recognized as the universal signal for

look behind you.

Just then, I felt the metal handle on the outside of my driver's side door being tugged at.

I quickly turned my head in that direction to see the woman from the profile photos hunched over, pressing her face against the window.

My heart leaped out of my chest as I stared at her horrifying smile.

The best way I can describe her expression would be any creepy cartoon image of the Joker that you ever seen.

It was undoubtedly the woman from the photos behind that insane grin.

However, she was much older.

Through my driver's side window, she whispered, Open the door, baby.

I was frozen in my seat, unsure of how to respond or what to do next.

I just sat there, continuing to stare at her like an idiot.

Her face then quickly fell into an angry and malicious expression as she continued to violently jiggle the door handle.

She then demanded at the top of her lungs, Open the door now

This knocked me into panic mode, so I pressed my foot onto the gas and began to pull out of the pathway backwards as my car was in reverse.

The woman tried holding onto the door handle, but she let go shortly after I dragged her off her feet.

I then flew down the dark road, back towards the highway.

I was driving at almost triple the speed limit, just in case they had a car and decided to chase me.

I then called a friend of mine whom I met on the same website.

She lived in Hamilton, and insisted that I come stay the night at her place.

When I got there, she poured me a cold glass of Coke Zero as I explained what happened.

She told me that she read an article in the local newspaper over a week ago regarding an older couple who had been luring men into their farm.

I stopped her before she could finish, as I didn't want to be freaked out even more than I already was.

So to the crazy and potentially murderous woman, Let's Never Meet

If you're tired of ads and you want bonus content every single week, you should sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

You'll get ad-free versions of all of the episodes at a higher bit rate for the best listening experience.

Plus, you'll get bonus extensions at the end of each episode with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

And that's every single week.

If you're a patron already, just stick around after the music for your bonus extension.

And again, if you want to sign up, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

Don't miss any of my live shows.

I'll be in Phoenix, Arizona on November 17th, St.

Paul, Minnesota on November 19th, and Chicago, Illinois on November 20th.

You can get tickets at let's not meetpodcast.com slash tour or follow the links in the show notes.

And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, my true paranormal podcast, Cryptic Encounters, the Old Time Radio Cast, and Degrad's The Degrassy Rewatch podcast with Shane Kipple and Mike LaBelle.

You can find them all at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not MeetStories at gmail.com.

This week you have heard Almost Kidnapped in China by Here Be Dragons.

This guy from AA Started Stalking Me by Sparkly Heels 22.

Long Drive Home by Michelle.

The Noises at the Back Bedroom Door by Nim.

It started with Hello by Oh, what a maneuver.

And finally, One Night Stand by Mike Devine.

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.

Again, if you have a story to share, send it to Let's Not MeetStories at gmail.com.

We'll see you all next week.

Everybody, stay safe.

In this week's Patreon episode, we have three stories by a listener named

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Kevin and Rachel and Peanut M ⁇ Ms and an eight-hour road trip and Rachel's new favorite audiobook, The Cerulean Empress, Scoundrel's Inferno.

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And his pecs glistened in the moonlight.

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