15x13: To The Men Who Hurt My Mother

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

Phoenix, Arizona.

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

St.

Paul, Minnesota at Turf Club on November 19th.

And Chicago, Illinois at Beat Kitchen on November 20th.

Get your tickets at let's not meetpodcast.com/slash 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'm a 41-year-old female and I live in Montana.

A few years ago, I was forced to relocate after my landlord decided to rent the property that I was renting to her son.

The community I had lived in for 11 and a half years had become incredibly expensive, with $787,000 being the median home price.

So unfortunately, I was forced to relocate to another city.

Because of the unexpected move and the associated costs, I moved in with a roommate, and then my roommate left to pursue better job prospects about three months after I moved in.

Our unit was part of a triplex, so two gentlemen inhabited the other units.

I was never added to the lease as the property manager required a full deposit, and I wasn't in a financially healthy spot at the time, so I remained in the unit for a year and a half on my own, paying rent and utilities.

I became very good friends with the man in the unit closest to mine.

He was 52, and we'll call him Devin.

Devin was a disabled veteran who was in recovery.

I'm also a veteran, so he held a soft spot in my heart.

We shared meals, hung out, discussed all of life's mysteries, and looked out for one another.

Our friendship developed over the course of a year and a half.

As such, Devin had gone away for treatment for six weeks, and I watched his cat for him while he was gone.

Devin had expressed romantic interest.

However, right from the beginning, I clearly informed Devin that I did not share those feelings, and we couldn't be anything more than friends.

Devin seemed to be lonely, which made sense.

However, I'm a person who requires alone time to recharge my batteries, so I had to set strict boundaries for Devin, as he wanted to hang out all of the time.

I would catch him walking through the front yard multiple times a day to quote-unquote get the mail, which I believe was his way to see if I was outside so that he could stop and chat.

When I would leave in the morning to go to work, Devin was always outside to tell me that I looked nice and to have a good day.

I told him that it made me feel uncomfortable, and he should send me a text letting me know if he wanted to see me and wait for a response.

There were a couple of times that I yelled at him for overstepping his boundaries.

The first time this happened was after I had just gotten home and pulled into my garage.

I was on on a phone call and had stayed in the car while Devin looked through the garage window to see if I was home.

I was annoyed and I let him know, but ultimately, I really didn't think much of it.

The second time, I was getting dressed in my room.

It was summertime, so I had the window cracked open slightly.

I felt that this was safe as the window wasn't in a place where anyone should be walking by, as it faced the patio along the back side of the triplex.

When I caught Devin peeking through the window at me, I lost it.

I was much firmer than the first time that I yelled at him, and I let him know that his behavior was inappropriate.

I told him that if he couldn't respect my boundaries, we would no longer be friends.

Last year, while I was living there, I had asked Devin to watch my dog for a couple of days so that I could go to a family event out of state.

Devin was happy to help, and I was very appreciative.

Not long after I returned, I started to notice strange things in my home.

But I truly thought it was just me.

For instance, I would be fairly certain I had locked my door in the morning when I left for work, but when I returned, it would be unlocked.

Or I would be sure that I shut off the lights and when I got home they would be on.

I didn't think anything of this.

I genuinely just thought it was my own absent-mindedness.

Fast forward a couple of months, and my mom had been diagnosed with cancer.

My sister watched my dog while I went to tend to my mom.

While I was away, my sister reached out to me and asked if anyone else had a key to my apartment.

I let her know that she had the only spare key, but asked her why.

Similarly, she had experienced the same issues with the lights and the locks.

I hadn't shared my experiences with my sister prior to her communicating hers with me, as I really just doubted my own sanity.

While I was out of town, I received text messages from Devin asking if I had a potato that he could borrow.

I let him know that I was out of state with my mom, who was sick.

Devin didn't reply, which was out of character.

Then I noticed a change in Devin as a result.

He was more reserved and less friendly towards me.

I thought it probably had to do with my firm adherence to my boundaries, which was okay, because he didn't have to like them.

He just had to respect them.

When I got back to town, I stayed over at my sister's house one night after helping her move.

As I mentioned before, I was struggling financially, so I would carefully budget and plan my weekly meals.

The morning before my sister's move, I had placed three pieces of bacon into a Ziploc bag to be used used later for a sandwich.

When I returned the following morning, much to my disbelief, there were only two pieces of bacon.

As I held the bag in my hands, knowing that there definitely had been three pieces, I decided to no longer doubt myself.

I called my sister and I let her know that somebody had been getting into my house.

Since I always kept the place locked, the only logical thing that I could think of was that it was Devin.

He must have made a copy of my key when he watched my dog for me.

My sister reminded me about the text that he sent me about the potato, and then I saw that the potato I had in the basket on the counter was gone.

After that, I had enough information to be certain that my neighbor had violated my trust.

I knew he was no friend.

However, I wasn't afraid of him.

As I mentioned, he is a disabled vet, so he was somewhat feeble and and sickly.

On top of that, I've never been scared of confrontation.

As a reminder, I wasn't on the lease, and I didn't want to be homeless, so I couldn't turn to the property management for help, and Devin knew it, so I was on my own.

I immediately went to the hardware store and purchased a camera that streams to your phone once the motion detector has been activated.

I then placed it facing the side door where Devin would enter.

It also had two-way audio capability, so I planned that when Devin decided to enter my home again, I would see it, get on the mic, and say something to the effect of, put the key you copied on the counter and get out of my house and never speak with me again, or I'll contact law enforcement.

Also, in the evenings, I started placing a jug of cat litter and a kitchen chair in front of the door that I knew Devin was accessing my unit from.

But I never expected that he would attempt to come in while I was at home.

But one night, while I was lying on the couch watching T V,

I thought I had heard something sliding on the floor in the laundry room where the door was.

Initially I brushed it off, since I was sure there was no way that he would come into my home while I was there.

My cat was running around playing, so I decided what I heard was probably just her, and I figured I was being paranoid because of everything that has happened.

The next morning, while I was doing some laundry, I noticed that the chair with the jug of litter on it had been pushed about three to four inches to the side.

I checked the camera's sensitivity and found that I could prevent it from recording by slowly opening the door.

But since there was so much movement, I knew it was Devin trying to come in.

But he was making this attempt while I was at home.

That morning, I took bear spray into the shower with me while my knees knocked.

I was terrified.

I felt vulnerable and violated.

I also felt like Devin knew that I knew what he was up to, since he must have felt that barrier in front of the door when he tried to open it.

After that, he was never outside in the mornings, nor did he walk through the yard to get his mail.

I also obtained a firearm for protection and made a police report.

The police officer was annoyed with me, as I didn't want him to approach Devin since I didn't want Devin to report me to the property management, and I would end up homeless.

I'm grateful that whatever he was up to was apparently thwarted.

The fact that he tried to come in while he knew I was home really scares me.

I wonder if he went through my underwear, watched me while I slept, or did anything else like that?

Since then my situation has greatly improved.

I ended up moving out to take care of my mom, and I recently got my own place.

I'll never put my trust in another neighbor for pet sitting or house sitting ever again.

It still blows my mind that I had some douchebags stealing from me and stalking me.

This story just solidifies the fact that everyone should trust their gut.

There were so many times that a red flag was waving right in front of my face, but I dismissed it.

I just thought I was being crazy.

At first, I wasn't going to share this since I find it hard to believe myself.

I'm a twenty-five-year-old woman, and this occurred recently.

I live in a big house with my dad.

Our house is at the end of a driveway, and three homes share this driveway.

I should mention that the neighbor who lives in front of my house is a drug dealer.

I've lived here my entire life, and he's been dealing drugs for as long as I can remember.

One Thursday evening, At around 8.30, I was in my bedroom, which is located close to the front door of my house.

I suddenly saw lights in my window, so I looked out the curtains and saw an old blue and green pickup truck slowly driving up my driveway until it stopped near my window.

I thought that it could have been a late delivery person, but if that were the case, it was strange that they were in an old truck and making deliveries at night.

I had the TV on loud, as I was getting dressed to go see if there was a delivery, when I heard a man's voice inside my home.

I couldn't make out what he was saying.

I was in my room with the door closed while he was in the next room.

It was my living room.

Now I didn't freak out because I thought it was my dad coming to tell me that someone was here.

So I started yelling over the TV, Dad, is that you?

After I turned the TV down, I could finally hear him clearly.

I heard this man say, Can I come in?

The guy was right outside my door.

I was now scared because I knew it wasn't my dad.

I didn't even answer him, but this person literally started turning the doorknob to my bedroom door as I was running to get my pepper spray.

He never opened the door, but I held the pepper spray at what I thought would be his eye level.

I then opened the door, ready to blast him, but there was nobody there.

But then I heard the front door shut.

I ran to the other end of the house to wake my dad up, who slept through this whole commotion.

After I got my dad, he went into the living room and we looked out the window as a truck slowly backed into my neighbor's driveway.

He sat there for a minute, with the lights on, and my dad and I just watched.

It was dark, so there was no way to see his license plate.

After a minute or so, he left very slowly.

It was so strange that he even stayed.

I didn't call the police because I was told by people around me that it was pointless.

After all, there wouldn't be anything that they could do about it.

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Let me just say that I was young and naive when I met him.

I'm currently 18 years old, and I was 16 at the time.

I was never in a relationship before him.

I was a bigger girl, and I always found it challenging to connect with guys.

I met this guy on Snapchat, and I didn't realize it then, but he was love-bombing the hell out of me.

I was so lost in the feeling of being wanted that I ignored all of the red flags.

After only a week of talking, he convinced me to meet him at his house to hook up, even though he lived almost an hour away from me, and I was a new driver.

He was quick to show me extreme signs of narcissism, and he also admitted that he believed himself to be a psychopath.

He was also possessive of me and manipulated me into thinking that he was the only one there for me.

He made me cut off my friends and even made me distance myself from my family.

He cheated on me so many times.

I caught him three of those times.

At that point, we had been together for 18 months.

He told me that out of those 18 months, he was faithful to me for only three of them.

This was bullshit, though.

I know that he cheated on me the entire time.

I had proof of it.

But in the end, he kept lying to save his ass.

I have extreme abandonment issues due to my father, and these issues aren't only about the fear of being abandoned, but I also have a deep fear of being the abandoner.

I never want to abandon anyone who needs someone.

As such, I thought that he needed me.

He was going into the Marines.

His ship date was late June of 2024.

A few days before he shipped off, I proposed to him.

I know I shouldn't have, but if you've ever been emotionally abused, then you understand that you simply can't think about yourself or your safety.

You think about what is best for your abuser so that they're happy.

We made it through boot camp and we sent letters to each other during the whole 13 weeks.

It felt so magical to know that somebody loved me enough to stay true to our relationship through something as difficult as being in the military.

He was still quiet and reserved.

He always was.

I never saw a problem with it though, since he was his true self, and he was with me.

I loved him so much that I saved money to drive down to California to see him graduate.

It was amazing.

I genuinely considered those days to be some of the best days of my life at that point.

When he came home from California, he lived with me.

He had a bad relationship with his parents, and he gave me the impression that he had nowhere else to go.

This was my mistake because once he moved in, I was truly trapped.

He then did RA from late August until late October last year, and then he was shipped back off to California for his schooling, so we were long distance again.

Okay, now fast forward to March of this year.

One day I woke up and checked my phone, and I was poking around on Instagram.

It felt like I was looking for something, but I wasn't sure what.

If you have ever been cheated on and stayed, you just become paranoid.

So I was kind of attributing my feelings to that.

But then I noticed that he had two Instagram accounts, one of which he blocked me on.

I created another Instagram account just so I could watch his followers and his posts, and then he started following more and more women.

That same day, he had posted a story on his main account that was hidden from me.

He posted a joke about cheating on your dumb girlfriend.

As far as I'm concerned, You can't joke about something like cheating when it's something you've already done.

So I sent him a message explaining just how unfunny it was and how he knows how much his cheating traumatized me.

After that I was done, so I started messaging the girls that he was following on his other account and learned that he was on dating apps as well.

After that, it was officially the end of us.

We talked for a few days after that, and then on April 2nd, I took his belongings to his parents' house, blocked him, and told him to never contact me again.

Everything was silent for a few weeks, and I was healing.

But then, one night in late April, I got a text from an unsaved number that just said, package arrived.

I was confused and responded with a question mark.

The number then told me there was something on my porch.

When I opened my door, there was a notebook sitting there.

Mind you, it was 11 p.m., so I was freaked out.

The entire notebook, front to back, was filled with letters from my ex, but I refused to read them.

Turns out, he had gotten out of the Marines on an other than honorable discharge, and he moved to the city next to mine.

He hated my town and how desolate it was, but he moved twenty minutes away just so he could be close.

He could have moved anywhere, but he just had to be close to me.

Also, he doesn't have a car, so he rode his bike 13 miles just to drop this notebook off on my porch.

I gave the notebook to my parents and replied to the unsaved number and said to never contact me again.

I also said to never come near my house again, or else I'd be calling the authorities.

Then I blocked the number.

At 1.30 a.m.

I got another message on my phone from a different number than before, which said, Can you honestly tell me you've enjoyed this past month?

It took this psycho only three hours to change his number and start texting me again.

I then sent him a very long, nasty message describing how great my life was without him, and again told him not to contact me.

I then changed my number, my garage code, and my front door code.

A few weeks later, I got three letters in the mail from him, all of which had a very possessive tone.

In one of the notes, he went into detail detail about how he was going to kill himself.

He said he would be gone by the time I received the letters, so I called in for a welfare check on him, and he was alive.

He told the officer that he was just upset when he sent the letter.

I told the officer to tell him directly that if he contacted me again in any way, I'd be filing a stalking and harassment report.

And lo and behold, a week or so later, I got a message on Facebook from a very fake account.

All of its posts and information were clear indicators that it was him.

The message was urging me to read the notebook that he had left for me, so unfortunately I had to read it.

And holy shit, when I say he's crazy, I mean he is crazy.

In the notebook, he admitted to his lies, and he also admitted that he had done a lot of illegal activity.

He also said he's cheated on every single girl he's ever been with.

The whole notebook only traumatized me more, so I went to the police station and I filed a report.

Two days after I filed the report, I got more letters in the mail from him.

In one of the letters he admitted that he had been watching me from a hill outside my house, and the other letter was him trying to return our engagement rings to me, which I included with his belongings.

He told me that it was smart to change my phone number, but he was going to keep sending me letters until he won me over, since I couldn't change my address.

I noticed these two letters were sent from a different state, which meant that he had moved away.

I was happy to know that there was some more distance between us, but every week I kept getting more and more letters.

I never want to see this guy again.

I'm terrified of him.

I still look over my shoulder thinking that he'll be there, even though he's moved.

Every time I get a call or a text from a random number, I think that it's him and begin to panic.

I even have nightmares about him.

I hope he stops sending me letters or ends up in jail because he surely will do the same thing to another girl if he isn't stopped.

I'm a nineteen year old female and this happened recently when I was with a friend of mine, who is also nineteen.

We were biking home at around three a.m.

on a dimly lit street very close to where we live.

One side of the street was lined with houses while the other side was a dense forest that was pitch black beyond the tree line.

Off in the distance we spotted a red car with one broken headlight parked ahead.

As soon as we got closer the car started moving.

It passed us very slowly.

Then it made a U turn and drove right past us again.

Even in the dark it was obvious that we were two girls alone at night.

So we were very alert as we put some space between us and this car.

As soon as we got to the sidewalk we noticed a girl standing partially hidden behind a white truck.

She was watching the same red car and it was creeping towards her.

Then she ran off.

She ran up the sidewalk and turned onto a bike path that cut through the forest.

Two men then immediately got out of the red car and followed her onto the bike path.

My friend and I didn't feel right about this, so we decided to follow and try to help that girl.

We were so concerned about her that we put our survival instincts on the back burner.

We reached the path entrance and saw the red car just waiting there with the driver inside.

The driver was a guy who was wearing a white bucket hat.

He looked straight at us and then sped away further down the street.

The bike path was pitch black when we walked in.

There was a fence on one side and the dense forest on the other.

This was when I started to hear slow, deliberate footsteps keeping pace with us.

I knew this was definitely not an animal, as the footfalls were heavy enough to be a person.

We kept walking on until my friend spotted a girl ahead of us.

My friend shone her flashlight at her and called out, Hey, are you okay?

The girl just looked over her shoulder and stared at us for a moment with this unreadable, creepy expression.

She never responded to us, and she just ended up taking off and running deeper into the darkness.

At that point our survival instincts finally kicked in, so we turned around and sprinted back out of the bike path the way that we came, screaming.

We called the police as soon as we got back onto the street.

Within minutes, three police cars arrived.

They asked questions, and one of the ghost cars drove down the forest path.

About five minutes later they returned and showed us a photo of the girl.

The cop said that they found her with a man, and it made no sense to us since less than ten minutes earlier we had seen her running away completely alone.

They also said neither of them would identify themselves or explain why they were there.

It was all very strange, but they ultimately just brushed us off and said that we were free to go home.

As we walked away, we saw three people being put into a police car.

This was even stranger because the cops had claimed that they had only seen the girl, and she was with some guy.

I can't help but think that the girl and the guys were somehow working together.

My gut is telling me that this was a setup of some kind, and I think the only reason they didn't go after me and my friend was because we were screaming.

I have no idea what was going on, but I can't stop replaying it in my head.

Making a reservation and getting to the airport early?

They're both good calls.

Just like getting ATT's best deal on the all-new iPhone 17 Pro, designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet.

Learn how new and existing customers can get the all-new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible iPhone trade-in.

Any condition.

Most expensive plan, not required.

ATT, connecting changes everything.

Requires trade-in of iPhone 13 or higher, excluding iPhone 13 mini.

Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change.

Visit ATT.com/slash iPhone for details.

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I was on a road trip with my best friend.

We were traveling through some of the northwestern states in the US.

My friend liked having a plan, and while we did, she also learned how fun it was to just do things my way, which is more spontaneous.

She's always preferred itineraries, while I like keeping my eyes out for signs that seem interesting and following them to see what happens.

We were at the end of our trip and trying to get home by the following afternoon so that she could have a birthday dinner with her family.

I was doing most of the driving during the trip, and that evening I decided to get a nap in and then drive through the night while she slept.

I did exactly that and had no problems, but I stopped off for another nap midway and got coffee at a coffee stand.

I found it in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.

It was somehow open at 3 a.m.

A few hours later, at around 5 a.m., I saw a sign on the side of the highway that said, Historic Covered Bridge Next Exit.

I thought, that sounds awesome.

Plus, the timing was perfect since I felt like I could have used a break and some fresh air.

So I got off at the next exit and followed this little road to find the bridge.

The bridge was only wide enough for one car at a time.

I drove through it and realized I'd have to turn around at some point, so I just flipped a U-turn down the road, drove back through it, and pulled into a gravel lot a little way up the road.

My friend was still sleeping, so I just turned off the car, rolled my window down, and left the keys in the ignition.

I walked over to the bridge and noticed that there was a sign with some information, so I was reading it, and it said something about the early settlers, and it also explained that the creek was called Grave Creek, since a girl from the party of settlers had either died or been buried there.

I can't remember the details exactly, but the creek was named for her.

As I was reading the sign and looking at the bridge, it was really quiet.

It was that early part of the morning where the sun was starting to rise, but everything felt like it was still at a whisper in night time mode.

Just think of what it's like when you're camping and wake up really early.

It was like that.

It was just peaceful and quiet, and I was enjoying the fresh air while getting a bit of a history lesson.

I had a rock in my shoe, so I leaned against a little white fence that separated me from the bridge and took my shoe off.

While I was tending to my foot, I happened to look up, and I saw that this woman was quite literally crawling out from under the bridge.

And I'm not kidding, it felt like my whole body instantly was full of adrenaline, and everything in me was screaming at me to get out of there.

Now for some context, I'm a tall, very strong woman.

I've always been that way.

People don't usually try to do anything to me because it's evident that I can hold my own.

As a result, I hardly ever get intimidated by strangers, and I definitely don't get intimidated by other women, but this was terrifying.

I was looking at her, and she was oddly, immaculately clean for having just crawled out from under a bridge.

She was bald, wearing a strapless sundress, and had the biggest eyes I had ever seen in my life.

Also, she would not stop smiling.

She had this big, perpetual grin, like the Cheshire Cat.

I never saw this grin leave her face.

The next thing I knew, she was standing about two meters away from me.

I was having a full-blown panic attack.

I kept thinking about how I wanted to run and scream, but I tried to play it cool cool even though I was very anxious, since she pretty much snuck up on me.

I knew my friend was still asleep, and the car was a good way down the road, so I kept my panic to myself.

I still had my shoe off, though.

I wanted to hide my unease from her, so I decided to take the other one off, so she wouldn't think that anything was up, and I didn't want her to think that I felt threatened by her.

So I started removing non-existent rocks from the other shoe as she approached me and started telling me her life story.

All I really remember her saying was that she and her mom used to come out here to the covered bridge all the time, but her mom had passed away.

I told her I was on the road with my friend and let her know that our trip was winding down and we were due home that day.

Then, as I put my shoe back on, I said, It was nice talking to you, I should get going.

I need to get back to my friend.

I then calmly and casually started making a break for it.

I felt like I was in the clear because she said goodbye as she headed to the other side of the road.

I was at a safe distance from her, so I turned my back and quickened my pace to get back to the car.

Then I heard her voice from behind me ask if I had a cigarette.

I turned around and answered her and realized in the 10 to 15 seconds that I had my back to her, she began walking towards me again.

She was much closer than before.

I panicked a bit more, but I kept it all internal, since I was still trying to keep my cool.

I told her that I didn't have a cigarette, and explained that neither my friend nor I smoked cigarettes.

Oh, that's good, she said.

It's bad for your health anyway.

She then turned back to the other side of the road.

I then got into my car, and I never in my life started, locked the doors, rolled up the windows, and whipped it into gear as fast as I did right then.

My friend who had been sleeping, woke up as I was getting back into the car.

I didn't tell her what was going on, I just started driving.

As I was getting out of there, this woman was just standing in the middle of the road, mindlessly grinning at me.

It was the most scared I had ever been in my life.

Everything about her was just so unnerving and wrong.

My friend dozed back off, and I proceeded to spend the next two hours driving, even though my whole body was trembling for some reason.

When my friend woke up at 7 a.m., she offered to take over, so we swapped.

I told her what happened at the covered bridge while she was asleep, and she was shocked.

Turns out, she had woken up for a bit while she was alone in the car.

She said she peeked out the window and saw me, but didn't realize I was talking to someone.

She knows that I don't get rattled easily, so she was very surprised when she realized how shaken up I was, even hours after the fact.

It took about four hours to calm down from the interaction, and honestly, I spent the following year paranoid that that woman from under the bridge would somehow show up again somewhere else.

I'm a 22-year-old guy, but this happened last year.

I was active in the fan community for a band that I love, and I had seen them live multiple times.

I often posted about them online and recognized a lot of their fans just from their usernames and comments, even though I didn't know them personally.

One of those people was a girl who we'll call Nadia.

I think that I had seen her name in a comment section before, but I had never spoken to or interacted with her directly.

One day, she followed me on Instagram, and I didn't think too much of it at first.

A few days later, she DM'd me in response to a story that I posted that featured a song by the band.

At first, it seemed like a normal chat between fans.

She said she liked the song and then started asking things like where I had seen them live, how many times and where I was from.

All of this made sense in context, so I didn't think anything of it.

She mentioned that she was from another country, and she said that she had never seen them live.

But then it started to get weird.

She began asking me more personal questions, like my age and if I had siblings.

She also asked other things that felt out of place.

I gave her simple answers, and when I asked her anything in return, she either ignored it or dodged the question.

Something was off, so I started pulling back and stopped answering her.

That was when the long messages started.

She began sending me these long messages that had at least ten paragraphs.

These messages were huge blocks of text about how men had treated her badly, how no one appreciated her, and how she's always smiled through all of it.

I had only just met her, and we never really had any real conversation, so it felt like she was trauma dumping on a stranger who had never invited her for that kind of interaction.

Then a mutual acquaintance from the fandom, whom I did know a little of, saw me at a fan meetup for the band.

She lived near me.

We'll call her Leia.

Leia said, Hey, Nadia said you've been ignoring her.

It's hurting her feelings.

I was shocked.

I told Leia that I had only started talking to Nadia the day before.

I explained that I barely knew her and expressed that this was really freaking me out.

Leia then told me Nadia had claimed that we had been talking for a week.

Again, it had been one day.

She also mentioned that Nadia was 16 and had a habit for falling in love with every guy she ever talked to.

Leia even showed me a screenshot of a message Nadia had sent her, where she said she wanted to hold me and kiss me until I fell asleep.

I was honestly disgusted.

Nadia also had sent me a photo of herself that wasn't exactly not safe for work, but it was pushing the boundary of what I'd consider appropriate, especially considering her age.

I should have blocked Nadia right then and there, but instead, I replied and told her I wasn't comfortable with what what she was sending or the direction things were going.

She replied with another giant message.

This time she explained how she found my profile through the band's posts and had been watching my account for about a month and a half.

She also said that she was in love with me.

Again, we never met.

We hadn't even had a full conversation.

All we did was exchange a few DMs.

I didn't reply, but a few days later, she sent me an image of a bride and groom kissing with the caption: One day this will be us.

That was when I finally blocked her.

I haven't heard from her since, but it still creeps me out when I think about how long she had been watching me before we briefly spoke.

The parasocial boundary crossing, the obsessive messages, and the love confessions after just one conversation were all deeply unsettling.

Nadia, let's not meet online or otherwise.

This happened a few years ago when my boyfriend of four years had just dumped me.

I was using this website called Meet Me.

I used it to meet people in my area while I was in college.

My profile clearly stated that I was not looking for anyone to explicitly date.

I just wanted to meet new people.

Being recently dumped, I was really trying to put myself out there, which was challenging as I'm not the type of person who enjoys going out.

In my area there is a popular dance-a-thon that the university I attend did every year to raise money for a children's hospital.

Someone messaged me on Meet Me and asked if I had heard of it.

I told him that I did know about it since my dance team usually performed at it every year.

He told me he was actually one of the children who had received support from the event when he was younger.

I thought that this was really cool, so I asked him a little bit about his experience with that and genuinely thought that it was interesting.

After a while that conversation kind of went dead, and I didn't really have much else to say.

I also just wanted to go to sleep, so I let him know that it was getting late.

About ten minutes after I laid down and tried to get to sleep, I got another notification.

I glanced at it quickly and noticed that this guy had sent me a novel.

He started his message with, Look, I'm going to be honest, I really want to keep talking to you.

In fact, I'd really like to take you on a date sometime.

You seem like a really nice girl, and you seem very sweet and interesting.

I think that we could get along extremely well.

As his message continued, he expressed that he felt alone in this world, and his explanation was very long-winded.

He sent this brick of text with zero punctuation, so it took me a while to decipher.

He was about seven years older than me, and I was only twenty at the time.

I responded and told him that I wasn't interested and tried to say good night again.

Then he responded with another novel, and he said something to the effect of, I don't think you understand.

You You're perfect for me.

You were made for me.

I'm sure of it.

God speaks to me, you know.

God wants us to be together, and we will be.

One day you'll be mine.

Now I was trying to be polite, since he was nice when the conversation started, but I've now realized that I was just being naive.

As such, I kept responding and trying my best to let him down easy.

But he continued, Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but God has already decided about this.

Some day in the future we will end up together, and you will realize it soon.

Who are we to deny him of his plan?

He also said that we were going to have three children, we were going to have two boys and one girl.

God spoke their names to him and wrote them down when he was seven years old.

And he still has them on paper.

He then asked, Do you know how I know you're going to be my wife?

It's because you told me your name, too, and I wrote your name down as well.

You will be my wife.

Don't make a mistake.

God is talking to me now, and he's saying your name to me.

I can't let you leave.

At that point, I blocked and reported him, then deactivated my account, and went to bed, very creeped out.

By the next morning, he found me on Facebook and started messaging me there.

He was going on and on, and his messages came pouring in all night.

I was freaked out, so I was pretty aggressive when I told him to leave me alone.

And then I blocked him on Facebook as well.

I removed all of the social media apps from my phone for the next few days.

After all of this, I asked my roommates to stay at home with me.

They agreed and I told them what happened.

I was genuinely afraid that this guy was going to come and find me.

I mean, he was local, and when our conversation started, I told him my major in some of the clubs that I was in, so I felt like he could have shown up anywhere.

Thankfully, he didn't, and that was the end of it.

But to the creepy dude from Meet Me, Let's Not Meet.

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Our final story contains some strong depictions of violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

Before my dad went to prison, he used to deal drugs.

Due to this, I remember having to move all across the Dallas Metroplex from one hot house to the next.

Eventually, his life of crime caught up with him, and he was sentenced to 20 years behind bars, just a month shy of my fifth birthday and the first days of school.

From my understanding, about eight months prior to his incarceration, the following event transpired.

Before any further, I should mention that my dad was rather braggadocious with his behavior.

He had a small group of loud-mouthed cronies who leeched off of him.

He was never shy about flaunting his money.

In hindsight, he should have realized the target that he was putting on his back, but in the moment, he was living too large to care.

The night that this happened is something that I remember vividly, and in detail, even though I was so young.

It was a cold night, and the heater inside wasn't doing a good job of quelling my shivers.

As such, I was bundled up in a coat while I snuggled beside my mother on the sofa in the living room.

Our couch was situated against the wall, adjacent to our front door.

My younger brother, who was nearly two at the time, was on the carpet in front of us, playing with his toys, and our dad was on the end of the other couch, counting what appeared to be a large stack of hundred-dollar bills.

My mother was telling me a fairy tale that she was making up as she went along, and I was rubbing her belly as she was pregnant with who was going to become my youngest brother.

Then, all of a sudden, we heard three loud noises.

The front door, which was to my right, was kicked in from its hinges, and three men wearing ski masks burst through its empty frame.

With their guns drawn, they immediately began shouting orders Get on the ground Get on the ground

Everything began to spin, and time seemed to slow as my young mind tried to grasp what was happening.

One man stood with his pistol pointing towards us, while the other two men ransacked the house, looking for my dad's stash.

Frustrated from a fruitless search, they trounced back into the living room, grabbed my pregnant mother by the arm, and pulled her into the hall.

They were screaming at her to tell them where the goods were, and through sobs she informed them that there was a safe in the bathroom.

They then made her lead them to where the keys to the safe were and then back to the safe.

They held her at gunpoint the entire time and demanded that she open the safe for them.

Unfortunately, she was so scared that her hands were trembling, and as a result, she wound up dropping the key and it fell into the air vent below.

Infuriated, the man with the mask behind her bashed the top of her head with the butt of his pistol, which caused her to faint upon impact.

This injury has had lasting effects on her, as she has seizures, and the left side of her face is permanently paralyzed.

The next thing I saw was the man violently dragging my mom by her hair from the bathroom and into our playroom at the end of the hall.

Then the other two men corralled my father, brother, and me from the living room floor and attempted to lead us into the same place where my now unconscious mother had been dragged.

However, my brother was screaming.

He was terrified and didn't understand what was happening.

The man who had dragged our mom stomped up up to him and once again took a fist full of hair and proceeded to roughly yank him into the room with us.

They had us all lie face down on the hard wood, and then left the room as they turned their attention to the safe, occasionally stepping back in to ensure that we were obeying their commands.

They also kept harshly reminding us not to move.

As I was lying there, I remember not being scared anymore.

I saw my power wheels truck beside me and thought that maybe I could run the men over with it.

This was mainly because I didn't realize the gravity of everything, I was unaware of my mortality, and the very real possibility that they could kill us.

It was in the throes of these ignorantly blissful thoughts that my father, who had guns planted all over the house, jumped up and ran into the hallway.

I then heard three pops.

There was gunfire being exchanged, and it quickly moved to the other end of the hall, and then out into the front yard.

Then there was silence.

I didn't move, other than shake my mom, who was beginning to come too.

It was at this point that the fear finally hit me.

Mom, wake up.

I think dad was shot.

I think he got killed, I cried.

A moment later, though, after what seemed to be hours, my dad emerged from the playroom doorway, unharmed, and told us that it was safe to get up.

The police came soon after, as there were reports filed by neighbors who heard the gunfire.

My dad was arrested for the small amount of narcotics that the now open safe still contained.

The police found one of the robbers badly injured a couple of streets over on somebody's front lawn.

He died that night in the hospital, and when his identity was revealed, it came as a shock.

He was the brother of one of my dad's best friends.

Word from my dad's circle then reported that one of the other men who broke into our home that night was the best friend, and he was going to avenge his brother.

After my dad was released from jail for his own possession charge, he was looking for his best friend who was also still looking for him.

Luckily, though, they never found each other, and my dad was eventually arrested again shortly thereafter.

I never knew what happened to my dad's best friend or the other man who broke in and held us up that night, and God willing, I hope I never will.

So, to the three men who cowardly robbed us and caused permanent injury to my mother, for my sake and yours, Let's Not Meet.

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 ad-free versions of every episode at a higher bitrate, plus bonus content in these extensions every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

Be sure to get tickets for the live shows at Phoenix, Arizona November 17th, St.

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

You can get tickets at let'snotmeetpodcast.com slash tour or follow the links in the show notes.

And finally, be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, My True Paranormal Podcast, Cryptic Encounters, and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com, or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv/slash cryptic county.

This week you have heard Creepy Neighbor by Stunning Vanilla7916, Fake Delivery Man by Helpful Cat Ears,

My Ex Has Been Stalking Me by Dino Stores, Help at 3 a.m.

by Majestic Band 6913, The Old Bridge by Curiosity Doors,

We're in Love by Intelligent Test 476.

God Said You're My Wife by Critsch 1123.

And finally, To the Men Who Hurt My Mother by Nick Rochelle.

Send your stories into let'snotmeatstories at gmail.com to hear them on the show.

All of the stories you 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.

We'll see you all next week for a brand new episode of Let's Not Meet.

Stay safe.

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the floor store.

Leaves are falling and so are our prices.

Welcome to the Floor Stores Fall Sale.

Now through October 14th, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years interest-free financing and we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Fall Sale.

Cooler days, hotter deals, and better floors.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The floor store, your area flooring authority.

Your global campaign just launched.

But wait, the logo's cropped.

The colors are off.

And did Legal clear that image?

When teams create without guardrails, mistakes slip through.

But not with Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content.

Brand kits and lock templates make following design guidelines a no-brainer for HR sales and marketing teams.

And commercially safe AI, powered by Firefly, lets them create confidently so your brand always shows up polished, protected, and consistent everywhere.

Learn more at adobe.com/slash go/slash express.