15x16: Hunted By Grandmas

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When I was sixteen, I worked at a grocery store as a stalker.

The store closed at midnight, and we would often work later than that, since it was easier to stalk the aisles without shoppers in the way.

It was around Christmas time and unfortunately I had to work on Christmas Eve.

My family typically spent Christmas down at my grandparents' place in rural East Texas, about an hour and a half away.

Since I had to work, I told my parents to go ahead without me, and I let them know I'd head their way once I got off of work.

My grandparents lived in a gated community called Steamboat Shores.

It was lined with mobile homes, mostly filled with older people.

I had gotten my driver's license just about a month and a half prior to this, so this was going to be the first time I made a somewhat long drive by myself at night.

I felt confident in the drive, though.

It was only an hour and a half.

I had been along those roads many times as a passenger, so I figured this was no biggie.

My mom told me to call her once I got off.

Management cut us loose around midnight, so I gave her a call.

Hey, mom, I said.

They just let us go, so I should be getting there at around 1.30, maybe 1.45, depending on whether I need to stop or not.

All right, honey, she replied.

I'll wait up for you.

See you in a little bit.

Love you.

I told her I loved her too, and just like that I was off.

The first forty-five minutes of the drive were fairly monotonous, a series of small podunk Texas towns that no one likes the name of.

It was cold and windy that night, at least by Texas standards.

As I cruised through the empty streets, the wind howled against my truck while I watched each town's lone stoplight sway back and forth in the wind.

I remember thinking these little towns were creepier than I remembered at night.

I felt like a lost pack animal looking for its herd while I drove through each one.

The last forty five minutes of the drive became increasingly dark and rural.

There wasn't much out there, aside from the cows grazing in the fields and the occasional ramshackle house.

Now this was before smartphones were everywhere, so I had the directions written down on a piece of paper.

But since I had been along this road so many times before, I generally knew the landmarks for where I should turn.

When I was roughly seven or eight minutes away, I would take a left at a grocery store called Brookshires, then another left about five miles later at the Lake Fork Bank.

After that, I'd find myself at the front gate of my grandparents' gated community.

The thing is, it's very easy to lose track of time when you're on these roads.

Everything kind of looks the same.

Plus, it was late, and my mind was wandering.

I thought to myself, I feel like I should be getting close to Brookshires, as no.

I didn't pass it already, did I?

I haven't been on this road that long.

Maybe I'll go another ten minutes to see if I see it.

If not, I'll drive until the next intersection, see what the crossroads are, and call my mom to ask if I missed it.

As I pulled out my phone, I noticed I had zero bars, so I thought maybe I'd just pull up to the next house that I saw and ask them.

It was late, but I figured that was better than nothing.

Also, I knew that my mom mom would start to worry soon.

After what seemed like maybe half an hour, but was probably closer to ten, I saw a poorly maintained house just a short distance to my left.

I started easing off of the gas so that I could pull into their driveway.

I wasn't a fan of the situation, but I figured I had to be fine.

As I got closer, I saw what appeared to be a police car parked next to the house.

I was relieved, so I figured I'd just ask the officer.

I didn't understand why he was sitting next to this random house, but that really didn't matter to me.

So I swerved back onto the road and pulled up next to the police car, which was parked about thirty feet from the house.

Hi, officer, I said.

Uh, yeah, I was curious if I was close to Brookshires.

I think I'm a little lost, and I was supposed to take a turn at it.

Brookshires?

he replied.

Yeah, that's about seven miles back the other way.

It'll be on your right-hand side, and you shouldn't miss it.

All right, thanks a lot for the help, officer, I said.

Wait, he continued.

Hold on a second, son.

I saw you swerve a bit before you pulled over here.

Have you been drinking?

What?

I nervously responded.

No, not at all.

I just got off of work, and I'm heading to my grandparents' house for Christmas.

All right, son, the officer said.

These parts are known for young idiots driving around drunker than three sheets to the wind, especially around the holidays.

So I'd prefer to go ahead and run your driver's license and check your registration.

Uh, that's fine.

I understand,

I replied.

Then I got out of my truck and I handed him my information.

He quickly typed in my driver's license number and said All right, you're good to go.

Sorry about that.

Better safe than sorry.

Yes, sir.

Thanks for the help, I said.

Merry Christmas.

I pulled out of the house's front yard and headed back the way that I came.

When I was maybe two or three hundred feet away from the house, I looked in my rearview mirror, and I saw a pair of headlights pull out from the driveway toward me.

However, it wasn't the police car.

I noticed it, but I didn't think too much of it.

I figured whoever it was had somewhere to go.

Less than a minute later, the headlights were right behind me.

Now, as a new driver, I thought maybe I was going too slow and they wanted to pass, so I drifted my truck slightly to the right.

But they didn't pass.

Then they blasted their high beams, flooding my truck with light.

After about two minutes of this, they turned their headlights off completely and the vehicle vanished into the night.

I was fucked, or at least I felt that way.

After three or four minutes, they turned their headlights back on and steadily rode my bumper.

What do I do?

I wondered.

Why is this vehicle following me so close?

And of course, I still didn't have a shred of phone signal.

Eventually I saw the bright neon sign for Brookshires.

It was shining like a goddamn beacon.

As it came into view, I planned that once I got closer, I was going to fishtail around the turn and then put the pedal to the floor, all the way to the front gate of my grandparents' community.

As I approached the turn, I did just that.

I fishtailed around so hard that I sprayed the vehicle behind me with rocks as I took off as fast as I could.

But they kept up the whole way.

As I passed all my other landmarks, they were still on my tail.

Then I turned left, crossed the bridge, and saw their entry gate.

I mashed the button on the gate opener tucked into the visor above my head.

As it started opening, I was in a rush to pull in and get away from this psycho behind me, and thankfully, I made it.

I watched the gate slowly close behind me as the vehicle pulled up.

It was so satisfying to hear the sound of the gate locking, with them stuck on the other side.

Now, this was when I was truly an idiot.

In fact, what I did next is why I know for a fact I'd be the first one to die in a horror movie.

Since I was too curious, I couldn't help myself.

I needed to know who was in that jeep.

I wanted to know why they were following me like that, and what they were going to do next.

I tossed my truck into park, got out, and walked towards the closed gate.

As I did, the window of the jeep that had been behind me started rolling down, and I caught a glimpse of pure white hair.

I was being pursued by two grandmas in a jeep with a shotgun between them.

Hey there, said the grandma in the driver's seat.

What's your problem?

I replied.

You could have caused an accident.

No,

she said.

We weren't meaning to do that.

We just thought you might be a snitch, and we wanted to see who you were.

A snitch?

I asked.

Yeah, she responded.

One of our in-laws just got out of jail, and we thought you might be after him.

They never said why this relative was arrested, and I didn't press for that information.

But that explained why there was a police car next to their house.

I asked them why they turned their headlights off.

They told me they had night vision goggles, and they were trying to see if I was a man or a woman.

I eventually made it to my grandparents' place, where my mother was still wide awake waiting for me.

She asked why I was so late.

I told her, I was being hunted by grandmas,

but they couldn't catch me.

Needless to say, she wasn't a fan of the story, and she was particularly upset that I approached their car after I was safe inside the gate.

I'm sorry, Mom.

I'm just too damn curious.

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I'm a 20-year-old female, and I experienced something recently that really hasn't left my mind.

I can't tell if I'm overreacting or if something was actually happening.

For some background, I own a horse and often walk to the barn, which is about an hour away.

I enjoy the forest path that leads there.

It's around a 30-minute walk to the nearest main road from the barn.

The forest itself isn't very large.

You could explore the whole thing at about an hour and a half, but I usually stick to the main road since it has very little traffic and it's more comfortable to walk.

One afternoon, with sunset just around the corner, I walked to the barn as always.

The area around it is fairly open, with maybe two or three houses in the area.

I spotted a man near one of the houses, standing between the bushes, holding a rifle.

I should mention that I'm from Central Europe, where guns are uncommon and require a license.

So that sight wasn't strange for me, in and of itself.

But before this, I had only seen a gun maybe once or twice in my life.

I tried to brush it off because it looked like a hunting rifle, but still something felt off about him.

The second thing that bothered me was his clothes.

He wasn't wearing camo or anything that suggested he was hunting.

Instead, he was wearing a bright blue hoodie, a cap, and some shorts.

Even if he had been hunting, it would have been been strange since hunting wasn't something that really happened in that area.

I had been going to that barn for five years, and the only wildlife I had ever seen were maybe a few hares.

I'm not even sure hunting was allowed there since the forest was mostly used by riders, their horses, and people going on walks.

This man was also pacing right in front of a house.

It made no sense if he was trying to be subtle with potential prey.

The third detail was that he had some kind of stand for the rifle.

He was pacing the fence back and forth like he was trying to find a place to set it up.

The fence was tall, so I knew he wasn't visible from the other side, which made me nervous for whoever was back there.

I stared too long while trying to figure out what he was doing, and he eventually noticed me and looked me in the eyes.

When he shifted his focus to me, I quickly looked down to the ground, trying to act uninterested, but I could feel him staring at me.

I eventually found myself roughly three meters away from him, and as I was about to pass him, I saw from the corner of my eye that he pointed the rifle at me.

I froze instantly.

Now, I have the survival skills of a vegetable, but I told myself to keep walking and prayed that he wouldn't do anything.

I also stayed calm and didn't run because I was afraid that he would react and shoot.

My body wanted to collapse, but I forced myself to keep going.

Now, I don't know how long he kept the gun aimed at my back since I was too scared to look behind me.

But then I heard the gun cock.

My heart dropped, and I picked up my pace until I turned the corner.

It was only then that I finally decided to run.

Thankfully, he didn't follow me.

I ended up sitting in my horse's stall for what felt like hours, and by then it was completely dark.

I hadn't seen a single person at the barn or on the way there.

I felt completely alone.

I was paranoid that he might be waiting somewhere since I might have seen something I wasn't supposed to.

Eventually, I calmed down enough to leave and decided to take the forest path home, just in case he was waiting for me along the road.

I've never felt so terrified in my life.

My fear of the dark was nothing compared to my fear of being shot on the way home.

Every little sound made me jump, but I was too scared to use a flashlight, so I made my way through the forest by memory and faint moonlight.

The problem was that the forest path eventually led back the same way that I came from, on that same road.

My only other option was to walk the long way through the wide open field, which seemed even riskier.

I only had a couple hundred meters left of the forest before it ended near the main road where I could take a bus.

I took a few steps and then I saw a thin red light in the bushes.

I assumed it was a laser.

It flickered around, not aimed directly at me, but two or three meters to my right.

After I saw that my gut screamed that if I took another step I would die.

I had never run faster in my life.

What was usually a 30-minute walk felt like both seconds and hours.

I ran back to the barn, locked myself in the dressing room, and called a close friend of mine to pick me up.

There was no way I was going out there again.

I still don't fully know what was going on, but every instinct I had was screaming danger.

I still get shivers when I think about it.

For anyone who knows anything about guns, would someone actually use the laser in this kind of situation?

What I saw was definitely not a sniper rifle, and I don't even know if using any kind of laser sight makes sense since it's so visible in the dark.

I was just connecting unrelated dots, I guess.

Or did I really outrun something life-threatening?

After sharing this story in different capacities for months, I reached out to the police to ask what could realistically be done.

They said that because this happened months ago and there were no witnesses, footage, or physical evidence, it would be almost impossible to investigate.

They explained that they could make a report, but without something concrete, there really wasn't much anyone could do.

They asked a few questions about the location, date, time, details, witnesses, and the guy himself, but unfortunately, since I waited so long to reach out, I didn't have anything concrete that could help identify the suspect.

They later updated me and said nothing similar had been reported in the area, so it seems like this guy was just a weirdo who was out there scaring people.

When they followed up, they told me to immediately report anything suspicious and to be safe and try not to walk alone after sunset.

And that was the end of it.

I warned the woman who owned the barn about the odd man,

but from what I can tell, nobody had seen or heard anything similar before or after the incident.

Luckily I was able to get my driver's license, so I don't have to walk near the forest anymore, though I do miss those walks, but this experience has continued to mess with my head every time I hear something weird in the forest.

First, let me say that my mama was a mama bear.

She was probably a bit over-protective, but as we were entering the Adam Walsh era, who could blame her?

She kept a close eye on me and my sister.

She was so protective that I found myself shrinking whenever there was a moment that I should have used my voice.

My mama was my voice, and this will come into play later.

On this particular Sunday, I was about eight years old.

Come to think of it, this was before Adam Walsh, probably around 1978.

We were driving to pick up my grandma, who we called Nanny, to take her to lunch.

We only lived about an hour away, and usually did this just once a month.

Our routine included lunch at the mall, and then we would walk around and go shopping.

My favorite store was the Hallmark store.

Not Not for cards, ironically, I just loved the trinkets, the journals, and the ornaments.

My mom knew this, so she always allowed my sister and me to go in and look around.

She and my nanny would sit on a bench right outside the store where she could keep an eye on us through the glass.

I had just walked in and was admiring the ornaments halfway back in the store when I heard someone say, Excuse me, behind me.

I turned to see a boy, maybe around 10 to twelve years old, standing there.

Hi, may I ask you a question?

he said.

I remember thinking, even at my young age, that the boy was very well spoken, almost like a salesman.

His accent wasn't from the south, though.

It sounded more Midwestern, maybe northern.

The boy, in general, would not have struck me as strange, but then I looked at his face.

He had a black eye and some lacerations on his cheek, which were covered with a bandage.

It was evident that this boy had been beaten up severely.

He must have seen the shocked expression on my face, because he immediately said, Oh yeah, sorry about my face.

I was in an accident.

Then he quickly carried on as if I could help him find a card for someone else's birthday or something like that.

Right then, I remember turning around and looking outside at the bench towards my mom.

mom.

She was in a conversation with my nanny.

My sister had already left Hallmark and was sitting beside Nanny outside.

I tried to will my mom to make eye contact and come be my voice, but she was focused on her conversation.

I turned back around and meekly said, I don't know.

He must have noticed my hesitation, and that I kept looking in the direction of my mother, because he said, It's okay, you're safe.

My mom is right back there.

He then pointed to a woman who had her back toward us.

She was looking at cards, pacing a bit.

The cards I'm looking at are right back there with her, the boy continued.

Come on, it's okay, let's go.

I didn't notice it then, but in retrospect, I can hear the desperation in his voice.

I took two steps toward him, and when I did, I noticed that the woman was standing right next to a door.

It made me nervous right away, as I had a gut fear about almost everything back then.

My stomach was in my mouth, and I wondered, where did that door lead?

And every hair on my body stood on end.

The boy kept taking a step back and saying, Come on, it's okay, really, it's okay.

It was almost like I was a puppy that he was trying to wrangle, since I was only eight years old.

But at this point, there seemed to be more than desperation in his voice.

There was fear.

Something wasn't right.

After taking a few steps with him, we were about eight steps away from his quote-unquote mom.

When I noticed how close we were, I immediately turned toward the mall exit and said, I've got to go check with my mom.

By the time I was saying, with my mom, I was already out in the mall heading toward her.

I then quickly quickly made my way over and was in her lap in ten seconds.

She asked if I was okay, and I just said, Yeah, that boy was trying to talk to me.

We both turned to look, and the boy was looking out through the glass right at us.

As soon as he noticed my mom looking, he pretended to turn and look at the cards.

My mom comforted me and said, it's okay, you're okay,

and turned back to Nanny to continue their conversation.

I then saw the boy go back and talk to the woman that he said was his mom.

She didn't look happy, and I could see fear coming off of him from the way that she reacted.

She then sent him back out into the store and turned toward the cards again.

She remained by the door in the back of the store.

Now, in my adult brain, I realize now that something was most certainly off.

I also remember watching her look at cards and thinking that it looked like she was pretending she was occasionally glancing back at the boy, and I saw him approach a few more people, but I can't remember if they were kids or not.

Everything in my gut tells me that no matter who that woman was, she was using the boy as bait to attempt to abduct other kids.

I genuinely feel that if I had gone back there with him, they would have tried to usher me out through that door and into a waiting car.

I never told my mom about the incident.

I knew her, and she would have said, Honey, you should have said something to him, or you should have come and gotten me.

I was already ashamed of chickening out from speaking up in moments like that.

I often wonder what happened to that boy.

I can still see his face, those dark eyes, the olive skin, and his dark hair.

I remember keeping an eye on the news to see if there were any abductions reported, and I also remember his accent.

It definitely wasn't from our area in Texas or Louisiana.

This boy could have been taken from anywhere.

So, to the little boy in Hallmark, I remember you, and I wish I had used my voice to possibly save you.

I'm sorry, I was too scared.

I hope you're safe.

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In 2008, I worked at a retail clothing store with my girlfriend Chelsea.

We were both 18, and we tried to work as many shifts together as possible to maximize our time together since she was still in school.

My grandfather had recently purchased a Dodge Sprinter van for his business, and my car was being serviced overnight, so I got to drive his van.

Chelsea and I loved the nights when we got to take the van because it usually had the back seats installed, and it had tinted windows.

This gave us some much sought after privacy, as we were teens who still lived at home.

Well, that night, we only had one row of seats in the back, and it was just the row behind the driver and passenger.

Chelsea and I parked near each other like we always did, and worked our evening shift closing the store with a few of our co-workers.

We all left together, and I helped the manager lock up because the glass doors needed to be aligned very specifically for the lock to engage.

It was early March in Pennsylvania, so it was still very cold outside.

Chelsea went to start her car and warm it up, and then we were going to sit in the van for a while while it warmed up.

When I was done helping our manager lock up, I walked over to our vehicles and I noticed that her car was idling, and she was already in the van.

Now I was so used to our routine that I didn't even realize that I still had the keys, and I never unlocked the doors.

After I got into the van, we chatted for a while until she sat on my lap.

We kissed in the front seats for a while and then decided that it was too late and too cold to have a little fun in the back.

Typically after we separated after work, we'd talk on the phone while we drove home.

She would usually get home first, but I'd stay on the line while she walked up her long driveway in the dark.

For some reason that night I made it home first, and I had a lot of stuff to carry with me.

As I was getting closer to home, I told her that I'd call her back in a little bit.

She asked me to stay on the line because she was almost home, and she didn't like walking past the dark bushes next to her driveway.

So I stayed on the phone with her as I fumbled with all of the things that I was trying to carry out of the van.

I know that I locked the van, and I activated the alarm as I was using the key fob.

I dropped a few things while struggling to keep the phone to my ear.

The motion sensor lights then picked up on my movement and illuminated the whole area, and I was able to see everything that I dropped.

We both made it inside our homes safely shortly after that, and we ended our call, since I had school in the morning.

I then began to doze off almost immediately in my bedroom.

I was living with my grandparents who built a house to accommodate my grandfather's aging parents, my grandparents, who were suffering from Alzheimer's.

They wanted to take care of them so that they wouldn't have to go into a home.

The driveway runs parallel to the basement, which, beyond the entrance door, has French doors that lead into my bedroom.

I was falling asleep as all of the motion lights from outside turned off, and my room was completely dark.

Then, about twenty minutes later, I was jerked awake by the sound of the alarm on the van.

All of the motion lights outside were on again, and the flashing lights of the van alarm were filling my room.

I had left the key fob upstairs in the main part of the house, so I ran upstairs to silence the alarm.

In the kitchen, as I grabbed the key fob, I saw my grandfather in his boxers and my great-grandmother in her gown.

We were all in the dark, and my grandfather grunted as he saw me grab the fob.

And then

what my great-granny said next sent shivers down my spine.

She asked, What in the Sam Hill are you doing running around outside at this time of night?

However, I wasn't outside.

I explained that I had been sleeping, but she insisted that I was outside making the van alarm go off.

My great-grandparents' bedroom sits above the garage, where it looks down over the driveway and the van.

I assumed she was confused, but since she said that she saw someone who she thought was me out there, I grabbed the knife from the butcher block on the counter, and my grandfather followed me outside with a baseball bat.

We both walked outside warily.

We were in our boxers and the cold, but we were highly illuminated by the security lights even though it was the dead of night.

The van was still going crazy, the interior lights were flashing, and we silenced the alarm and started looking around.

My grandfather said that he thought a deer might have run out of the woods in the dark and hit the van.

I wasn't so sure, so I didn't say anything as we continued to investigate.

When I reached the back of the van, I noticed the back door was wide open.

This explained the alarm.

As I closed the door, I realized the interior lights were on in the van, and then I locked it and activated the alarm again.

As I was doing so, my blood ran cold because I realized that the door had been opened from the inside.

Then I looked in the space behind the first row of seats and saw that there were watted up napkins and a chip bag.

This wasn't mine or my girlfriend's, so somebody was in the van with us the entire time.

I must have left the van unlocked by accident when I went into work, and that explains how Chelsea was able to get in there without the keys at the end of the night.

Was it a person escaping the cold or someone with more sinister intent?

I get chills every time I think about this.

We didn't call the police because my grandfather was skeptical of my conclusion, but my gut tells me that I didn't drive home alone that night.

To the person who was in the back of my grandfather's van that night, let's not meet.

In 2023, I was in Marmaris with my best friend.

On our first night in Turkey, at around 11 p.m., we ended up at the fun fair by the beach.

At first, it was exciting and harmless.

We had just turned 18 and left college.

We were just two girls on holiday.

But something happened that still sits in my chest to this day.

I don't know if I was overreacting or if we narrowly avoided something very serious.

While we were on one of the rides, I noticed a man was staring at us.

He was standing near the ride, just watching, specifically, only watching us, with this intense focus.

During the ride, my sunglasses fell off my head.

When it ended, that same man came up to me and gave them back.

I thanked him and walked off with my friend.

We moved on to the next ride and he followed us.

He got on the same ride.

He sat in front of us and kept making eye contact with me the entire time.

I started to feel pretty nervous, and I could tell that my friend did as well.

When that ride finished, the man stepped off, and then he stood in the queue for the ride, watching us.

My friend and I decided to stay on the ride because we were genuinely getting scared.

We had one token left, so we decided to use it while we figured out what to do.

During the the whole ride, my friend and I were watching the man as he kept staring at us, literally at the entrance of the ride.

When the ride ended, I decided to pull my phone out and take a picture of him for safety reasons.

Then, when we left the ride, he kept following us around the funfair.

The longer it went on, the worse my gut felt.

I wanted to get out of this situation, so I looked at my friend and I told her that when I got to the count of three, we needed to take off our shoes and and run as fast as we could.

Now we did exactly that, but he literally chased us through the streets.

We ran for at least ten minutes, but he kept following.

Eventually we ran into a restaurant and hid.

We lucked out on doing this since he didn't even see us, and we confirmed it when he ran straight past the restaurant.

We stayed hidden until we were sure he was gone.

What scares me even more is that he had a young boy with him, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old.

The kid was with him the entire time.

He always stayed near the man, trailing behind him closely.

Later that week, near the hotel, we saw the man again.

This time he was on the beach watching a British woman who was just sitting by herself.

My friend and I rushed over to warn her about him, and she was grateful.

What could he have possibly wanted?

Has anything like this happened to anyone else in Marmoris or Turkey in general?

What do you think was going on?

In any case, I've never been able to shake the feeling that if we hadn't acted when we did, something terrible could have happened to me and my friend.

Years ago, before iPhones and Ubers were a common thing, I almost got abducted.

Back then, I was 21, living in Austin, Texas.

I had just graduated and had no real clue what I was going to do with my life.

I didn't want a corporate job like my classmates.

I wanted to live and make art for a while.

I had visited South by Southwest while at university in New York and fell in love with the wildness of Texas.

It felt like the opposite of the life I had been living in New York City, so I moved to Austin to take a break and recharge.

I didn't have a car, but I still wanted to explore, so I walked and took the bus everywhere that I went.

Now I barely knew anyone when I moved there, maybe a handful of people at most.

One day I was heading home after exploring the city, and it started pouring.

Not just rain, but full-on Texas downpour.

I figured that it would stop, and home wasn't so far, so I kept walking, but it got worse.

I slipped and stepped into a hole and twisted my ankle.

Then, when I reached for my phone, I realized it was dead.

So there I was, soaked, limping and crying in the rain with no way to call anyone.

I made it to a gas station, stood there for a while, unsure of what to do.

I hadn't memorized anyone's number, and I didn't feel close enough to anyone to call them anyway.

Just then a beat-up-looking truck pulled up.

The passenger door opened, and I couldn't see who was inside.

All I heard was a deep male voice.

Come inside, he said.

I'll take you home.

I froze.

I had always been told to never get into a car with a stranger, but I was desperate.

So I nodded and started climbing into the pick-up truck, still crying.

I promise you'll be safe, he assured.

His face was completely engulfed by shadows, and I could hear his breath quicken.

It was some kind of excitement.

It was palpable, as I was nearly fully in his truck.

Then suddenly I heard a young woman shouting from the road.

She was leaning out of the window of a small compact car.

Hey, are you okay?

Come here now, she shouted.

The urgency in her voice snapped me out of it, so I stepped back out of the truck and wobbled toward her.

She pulled up right next to me and told me to get in.

Now, unlike him, I could see her face and I trusted her immediately.

She was kind and asked where I lived.

I told her and she drove me home.

Before I got out, she warned me to be careful.

She said that there were people out there who would love to take advantage of a girl like me.

This made me feel so naive,

since it never even occurred to me that this man could have taken off with me.

I never saw her again, but I do think about her sometimes.

I hope she's thriving.

But to the man in the pickup truck, let's not meet.

This is actually a story my stepmom and her best friend have shared with my older sister and me.

My stepmom actually didn't like us that much, but she told us about this experience when we were growing up to scare us so that we would not be naive.

As such, this story became my family's official stranger danger story.

My stepmom, who we'll call Macy, grew up as a privileged teen in the 70s.

Her mom had moved their family over to the States from England when she was about nine years old.

She went to a pretty nice school in a really nice town.

When Macy was in high school, she made friends with a girl named Lily.

Lily didn't exactly run with Macy's type of crowd.

Macy was very stereotypical, a popular teenager.

But she and Lily still hit it off.

Lily would take Macy out to do all the things she was interested in.

They went hiking, fishing, and sailing.

I've even seen this hilarious set of pictures of them camping.

My stepmom, being the high-maintenance teenager that she was, had raccoon eyes and looked like she hated everything that was going on.

Anyway, any outdoorsy activity that they did was due to Lily's influence, and the two of them would do stuff like that a fair amount of the time.

One Sunday they decided to go hiking in some hills about an hour away.

Macy put on what I'm sure were extremely upscale and expensive hiking shoes, and the two of them drove off to the hiking trails.

Lily parked in this big clearing with makeshift parking spots, but there were no other cars there.

This was only important in hindsight.

They then started hiking up the hill, off the path, because Lily fancied herself as somewhat of a badass.

By the time they reached the top of the the hill, my stepmom was done.

Her polished and pampered side was coming out and she was groaning about how sticky and buggy the hike was until Lily begrudgingly agreed to stop for a rest before slowly walking back down to the car.

After their rest, they headed back down the hill, and about ten minutes into their descent, Macy started bitching again.

Lily conceded by offering to walk down the side of the road instead of on the rough terrain of the hiking trail.

So there they were, probably looking like a couple of tools, geared up for hiking and walking down a crappy road.

And not even five minutes into their walk along the road, a truck pulled up beside them.

The truck was red and rusty, and generally looked like a clunker.

The guy driving the truck rolled down the window, and Lily and Macy looked at him through the passenger side.

He had a big beard, a baseball cap, pulled down, and long brown hair.

He greeted them and even smiled through his beard, asking if they needed a ride.

Macy described him as charming and even cute, but Lily said that the moment he greeted them her hackles went up.

Against her better judgment, though, my stepmom convinced her to accept the offer and get into the truck.

It should have been a ten-minute drive down the road to the car, Topps.

So the girls opened the passenger door to this rusty thing, and the guy gestured towards the back seat and told them to get back there.

Once they were settled in, the truck started rumbling forward.

Lily always said that it was at this point she realized what a big mistake they had made.

The back seat was clean enough, but there was a rope on the floor behind the driver's seat and four boxes of plastic wrap hanging out from under the passenger seat.

It seemed creepy and weird, but Lily didn't want to freak Macy out, so she kept her mouth shut.

About ten minutes later, when they were expecting to be back to their car, they noticed that the woods weren't looking any clearer, and they hadn't seen any other car the entire time.

Lily asked how much longer it would be.

He said he was taking a different route down the hill and had to stop somewhere to get something first.

Lily didn't want to press him, but she was scared.

She thought this was it for them.

Sitting behind him, she looked a bit closer.

He seemed like a woodsea guy, but his hair was really tangled and dirty.

She noticed crusted mud on his collar and tried to find something identifiable about him, but she just got more scared, the more she noticed.

He was young and strong looking, and easily a foot taller than both of them.

They didn't ask any more questions, and he didn't offer any information.

So they continued to drive on.

Several minutes later, they reached a tiny shack, sitting in a clearing of trees.

There was an old stump where someone had been chopping wood, and a huge axe was sticking out of the log.

Lily was definitely on high alert now.

The guy then turned off the truck, slipped out of it, and said, I'll be right back.

Don't get out.

Then he disappeared into the shack.

Lily tried to talk to Macy about how uncomfortable she was, but Macy mostly dismissed it.

Lily started begging, and since she was getting increasingly freaked out, she finally put her foot down and demanded that Macy exit the truck with her.

So they got out and walked around the front of the vehicle.

The house was about fifty yards from them, and they wandered around, looking at it hesitantly.

They figured if this guy really was decent and just trying to give them a ride, it would be very rude to just run off.

My stepmom had a very strict upbringing when it came to manners and maintaining a certain public persona, so she had an issue with coming off as rude.

So she actually headed back to the truck and opened the front door to climb in back behind the driver's seat.

Lily was pissed off about this and started to follow her.

Then they saw it.

On the driver's side floor, half hidden under the seat, there was a big hatchet.

It had dried red and brown stains covering the blade, and it was stuck to the floor underneath it.

Lily understandably lost her shit when she saw it, and my stepmom became hysterical.

They decided that leaving was by far their best option at this point, and they booked it off to the side of the property and into the trees.

They bumbled around for a while until Lily was fairly confident that they were on their way back down the hill.

My stepmom cried the whole way down.

Lily felt bad, but was also completely freaked out herself.

She was worried that the man would hear them, so she kept trying to calm Macy down.

When they finally got back down to the bottom, they saw the old wooden fence that surrounded the original parking area and they were relieved.

But as they got closer they saw it.

The truck.

It was parked on the other side of the gravelly makeshift lot, just sitting there, facing the other way innocently.

They couldn't see if anyone was in it, and of course my stepmom wanted to make a run for it and get to the car, but Lily was hesitant.

She managed to calm my stepmother down, saying that she wanted to wait before running out into the open.

And remember, this was the seventies.

There weren't cell phones, ranger stations.

There was nobody around.

The parking lot was big, empty, and open, and who knows what would have happened if they had decided to stroll across it.

Thankfully, Lily convinced my stepmom to chill, and the two of them hunkered down against a big tree, hidden by bushes and other trees, and they waited it out for what seemed like hours.

They hid for so long that darkness started to fall.

All the animals started coming out and making noises.

This made my stepmom start to get antsy.

Her nervousness started bothering Lily.

She was tired after all they had been through, and she was just moments away from giving in.

She was planning on giving the go-ahead to dash to the car when suddenly they heard a clunk.

Across the twilight-lit lot, they watched as one of the back doors of the car swung open.

The bearded guy slid his way out of the back seat.

He got out, shut the door, looked around at the surrounding woods for several moments, and then walked back to his truck.

The truck then drove past their car and proceeded to drive until it was out of sight.

Several minutes after watching him drive away, they sprinted to their car as fast as they could, jumped in, and peeled out before they even shut the doors.

If this guy is still alive, he's very old at this point.

But just in case, let's not meet.

If you're bored and looking for something to do in the evenings, feel free to join us for VHS Movie Nights at twitch.tv slash cryptic county.

And be sure to check out the new episode of my other podcast, Odd Trails, My True Paranormal Podcast, and the old-time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you're a patron, stick around after the music for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you want to get access, go to patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

To sign up and support the show today, you'll get access to aft-free versions of all of the episodes at a higher bitrate, plus bonus content in those extensions every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

else.

Again, that's patreon.com forward slash let's not meet podcast.

And finally, Phoenix, St.

Paul, and Chicago.

Be sure to click the links in the show notes to get your tickets for the live shows next month.

I'm excited to see you all there.

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

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.

This week you have heard Hunted by Grandmas by Bearded Millennial.

I can't tell if I was being hunted or if I'm just paranoid by Hollow Neon, The Boy in the Hallmark store by Mama Council, I Wasn't Alone by Tommy, I really need answers by Total Position 6855, I almost got abducted by Old Surround 8610, and finally, In the Hills, No One Can Hear You Cry by Schmidt Face.

We'll see you next week, everybody.

Stay safe.

This happened to me right before my eighteenth birthday.

I'll start from the beginning.