17x09: Watcher on the Ridge

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02] In the next Rare Well Done, the Thrive Team helps two people with CIDP tackle the tricky issue of friendship. Hello! They say the quiet part out loud. In the event my CIDP worsens, my friends might decide it's too much. Get nudged outside their comfort zone. I don't know if I want to. To forge stronger connections. The best thing that's ever happened to me, our friendship.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00] To Rory!

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_02] Watch Rory and Michelle take on the Friendship Factor on the next episode of Rare Well Done.

[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_03] Cha-ching! That's the sound of Lowe's Labor Day Savings. Get up to 45% off select major appliances, and save up to an additional $100 on select laundry pairs. Plus, get three bags of Miracle-Gro .75 cubic foot garden soil for just $10. Labor Day deals are on now at Lowe's. In store and online. Valid through 9-9. While supplies last. Selection varies by location. See Lowes.com for more details. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_01] This podcast contains adult language and content. The stories shared on this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_01] When I was 16, I attended English classes that were open to people of all ages. I was used to have classmates who ranged in age, including some of who which were older than me. I was also the typical nice girl. I always felt like I had to be polite and friendly to everyone, even when someone gave me a bad feeling. I was only really close to one girl my age, Jasmine.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_01] She was much more outgoing and popular than I was, so she was constantly introducing me to new people. One day I noticed a new guy hanging around her group. He was 32, exactly twice my age, and extremely talkative. He was always smiling, and for some reason he made me uncomfortable, almost immediately. I think it was the way that he stared at me.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_01] Whenever we were all talking as a group, his attention seemed to be focused specifically on me. He would look directly at me when he spoke, even if he was talking to somebody else. At first I tried not to think much of it. Then he started waiting outside my classroom before class and striking up conversations with me. He asked about my friendship with Jasmine, my high school, my family, and other details about my life.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_01] I thought that it was strange that a 32-year-old man was so interested in the life of a 16-year-old girl. My own brother was around his age, and I couldn't imagine him taking that kind of interest in one of my teenage friends. Still, I felt guilty for being uncomfortable. So I convinced myself that he was just being nice, and that I was being mean for thinking that there was something weird about him.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_01] I should have listened to my instincts. I challenged myself to answer his questions and make small talk. He also told me how close he was with Jasmine, which made me feel a bit safer. But when I asked Jasmine about him, she told me that she didn't actually know him very well. She just thought that he seemed nice enough. Then, one day, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_01] When I answered, it was him. He told me he had gotten my number from Jasmine. I immediately confronted her, and she admitted that he had repeatedly asked for it, and eventually she had given in to him. After that, he started calling me constantly. He wanted to know how my day was going. Sometimes he'd say that he missed me and wanted to talk.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_01] He started telling me extremely personal things about his life because, according to him, he felt like he could talk to me because I was so mature for my age. I hated it. I started ignoring his calls. If I did answer, I'd make up an excuse to get off the phone as quickly as possible. But then the messages started.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_01] Sometimes they were strangely juvenile, filled with emojis and wishes for me to have a lovely day. He'd tell me he was thinking about me. Other times they'd simply say things like, you're so pretty, too pretty, without any other context. He then started telling me how glad he was that I didn't have a boyfriend. He said that I should never get one because then he'd be mad.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_01] I never responded to those messages. Instead, I showed them to Jasmine and I told her I didn't want to see or speak to him anymore. She agreed to help me avoid him. I started arriving late to class so I wouldn't run into him in the hallways. And the second the class ended, I'd leave. But I still saw him watching me. It felt like he knew exactly what I was doing. And even worse, it felt like he enjoyed it.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_01] It felt like he enjoyed making me uncomfortable. And it had become some kind of game for him. Eventually, he stopped talking to Jasmine and everyone else in our group entirely. But he kept messaging me things like, I miss you. And why are you so busy? So finally I blocked his number. And for a while, I thought that was the end of it. But then one day, I was outside school talking to another girl when he suddenly appeared.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01] He walked up with a huge smile and was acting as if nothing had happened. He greeted me casually, told me that it had been too long since he had seen me, and asked why I wasn't answering his messages. Then he pretended to be concerned about me, saying I must be studying too much, and proceeded to invite me to have coffee with him at his house. So I told him no and immediately went back into school.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01] I hid in the library and pretended to study until I thought he was gone. He stayed outside doing absolutely nothing for more than an hour. And that was when I became genuinely scared of him. After that, his behavior became even more aggressive. Whenever we would pass each other in the hallway, he would mock me. He would sarcastically ask, Oh, are you still busy? Or harshly say,

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01] I'm in no hurry. Then he found my social media accounts. The messages became increasingly explicit. He commented on my pictures, calling me sexy, and saying that he knew what I was doing. According to him, I was deliberately teasing him. I blocked every account belonging to him that I could. Eventually, he stopped trying to speak to me in person, but still kept staring.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_01] Then one day after class, I was walking home alone when I noticed a car slowly driving beside me. When I looked over, I realized it was him. He rolled down the window and started talking to me. Then he told me to get in and said that he'd give me a ride home. We were on a residential street with very few people around. I said no and kept walking, but he continued driving beside me.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01] He kept insisting that I get into the car. Then he said something that made my stomach drop. He said, I know where you live. I could just drop you off there. I didn't say anything. I just started walking faster. All I could think about was getting to the main road where there would be more people around. That was when his demeanor changed entirely. Get in, he snarled.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_01] His voice sounded so different that I almost didn't even recognize it. I looked at him. His ordinarily perpetual smile was gone. His entire face had changed. There was this dark look in his eyes that I had never seen before, and for the first time, I didn't just think he was creepy. I thought he might actually hurt me. So I ran. I sprinted into the first business I saw, a small market,

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_01] and I stayed inside until I saw his car leave. Then I hurried home. After that, I didn't want to go back to our English class at all, and I asked my mom if I could switch to another class. I never told her why, though. Looking back, I don't understand why I kept it from her. I think part of me was ashamed. Somehow, despite being 16 years old and having a 32-year-old man pursue me relentlessly,

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_01] I felt like I had done something to cause it. I switched classes and finished the semester without any other incident. Eventually, I stopped seeing him, so I thought it was finally over. Two years passed. By then, I was starting university and barely thought about him anymore. But then a message appeared on Facebook. It was him. He had created a new account.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_01] He told me he was hurt, that I had cut him out of my life. He said he only wanted to be my friend. I never responded, I just blocked him. He promptly made another account, but I blocked that one as well. Then one day, I saw him on my university campus. He was standing across the street watching me. My university wasn't extremely far from home, but there was no reason for him to be there.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_01] I couldn't convince myself it was just a coincidence. I hurried onto the bus before he could approach me. The following week, I wasn't so lucky. I was sitting in the cafeteria, eating a snack with a group of friends when he suddenly appeared. He walked right up to our table and introduced himself to everyone, as though the two of us were old friends. I could barely breathe. My friends immediately noticed

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01] something was wrong with me, and he seemed to enjoy that. He seemed amused by their confusion and by how frightened I was. Eventually, I pulled him aside and asked him what he was doing there. I told him to leave me alone, but he said that he wouldn't. Then I saw that expression again, the same one I had seen in the car two years earlier. That was always one of the most frightening things about him.

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_01] Around other people, he could smile and act friendly and harmless, but when he looked at me like that, it was as though I were looking at a completely different person. I told him I was going to tell everyone what he had been doing, but he didn't care. Instead, he told me that he knew I wanted him. He called me a dirty little tease. Then he told me that eventually, he would get me. My entire body seemed to shut down,

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_01] so I then ran back to my friends and started crying. I finally told them everything, and by the time I had finished, he was gone. Strangely enough, that was the last time I ever saw him. I'm 28 now, and it's been years, and realistically, I don't think he'll ever contact me again, but I still think about him sometimes. I don't have Facebook anymore, and I rarely post pictures of myself on Instagram,

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_01] but there's still a small part of me that worries he'll find them. And every once in a while, I wonder if he's really as far away as I hope he is.

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[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_01] This happened in December 2025 in rural Tennessee. My ex, Tiara, and I had just broken up. She was moving back home the following week. The breakup had been brutal. Neither of us had slept much in days and after a heated argument at around midnight, she decided she wanted to get a hotel room for the night so we could both cool off. We found what looked like a quiet hotel tucked away among trees

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_01] and empty country roads. It wasn't a complete dump but it definitely looked forgotten. Since it was only for one night and I would be picking her up in the morning, we figured it would do. The clerk greeted us from behind the counter. He looked to be in his early 20s. He was tall, lanky, wearing glasses, and almost had this unnervingly monotone voice. He barely spoke,

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_01] never smiled, and didn't show much expression. Tiara and I exchanged glances, both thinking he seemed a bit odd. But neither of us thought much more of it. After checking in, I asked Tiara to wait in the lobby while I parked the car and grabbed her luggage. She told me to just leave after dropping her off, but I wasn't comfortable with that. I didn't want anyone knowing that she was

[00:17:14] [SPEAKER_01] staying there alone, so I planned to walk to her room, make sure everything was okay, and then head home. Looking back, I wish we had never walked down that hallway. The room was on the first floor, just around the corner from the desk. I already didn't love the location, but I swiped the key card to her room. A little light flashed red. I tried again, red again. The door wouldn't open.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_01] Something immediately felt off. Before trying again, I pressed my ear to the door, and I thought I heard movement. Tiara looked inside, and I looked back at her. We checked the room number on the key card to make sure that we had gone to the right room. The clerk had even written the number on it himself, I swiped the car one last time, and this time it unlocked. By then, it was already one in the morning.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_01] I cracked the door open just a few inches. The room was dark, but I saw an empty beer bottle sat on the floor, and a faint light spilled in from the bathroom. Then I saw the toe of a large, dirty boot. It was a men's work boot sticking out from behind the bathroom door. I immediately shut the door. Someone's in there, I whispered. We're leaving. Tiara tried staying calm and said,

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_01] let's just ask for another room. No, I said, we're going home. We hurried to the front desk, and I asked the clerk if he had given us the correct room. Without hesitation, he told us there weren't any guests staying on that floor and that every room was empty. I told him there was absolutely somebody inside that room. He didn't even apologize or look surprised. He just half-heartedly offered us another room.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_01] I shook my head and insisted, no, we'd like a refund. We're leaving. He quietly said he needed to step back into the office for a moment and then disappeared through the door. As it swung shut behind him, Tiara whispered that she was almost certain she had seen someone else standing back there. That didn't make sense. When we had checked in, the clerk had specifically told us that he was the only employee working that night. At that point,

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_01] I didn't even care about the money anymore. Every instinct I had was screaming that this was not worth it. A minute later, the clerk returned and began quietly processing the refund. And then, the power went out. And I mean everything. The lights, the computer, the humming of the building, all gone. The lobby fell completely silent. Moonlight filtered through the front windows, barely illuminating the room. I could just make out the silhouette of a clerk

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01] standing behind the counter. He wasn't doing anything. He wasn't looking around. He wasn't reacting to the outage. He was just standing there. Tiara grabbed my arm. I'm scared, she whispered. What the hell is happening? I was trying not to panic myself, so I finally asked, does this happen often? Without moving or changing his expression or tone, the clerk answered with one word. No.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_01] The silence that followed felt unbearable. My mind immediately went back to the man in our hotel room. Who was he? Who had Tiara seen in the back office? Was any of this connected? Or were we letting fear get the better of us? I didn't know when, and I still don't know, but all I knew in that moment was that every instinct in my body was telling me to leave,

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_01] so I leaned over to Tiara and I said, run. She took off toward the exit while I grabbed her suitcase, another bag, and the security bar that we had brought with us. The lobby was nearly pitch black, but we could see faint moonlight through the glass doors. She slammed into the exit, pushing with everything she had. The door wouldn't open, so she shoved it again. Still nothing.

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_01] I looked back toward the front desk. The clerk was standing where we had left him. After several long seconds, he slowly turned and walked into the back room without saying a word. I stayed behind Tiara because I figured if someone came after us, at least they'd reach me first. Finally, the door gave way and we burst outside. At that exact moment, every exterior light shut off and the parking lot disappeared

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_01] into darkness. We couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us. Trees surrounded the hotel on every side. Tiara was yelling that she couldn't see. I couldn't either. She didn't know where I had parked because she had stayed in the lobby while I unloaded her bags. We stumbled blindly through the parking lot, crashing into concrete parking barriers and losing sight of each other. Where are you? She yelled. Follow my voice!

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_01] I guided. Then I dug my phone out of my pocket and switched on the flashlight, hoping that that tiny beam of light would be just enough and thankfully it was. I spotted my car, unlocked it, threw the bags inside, grabbed Tiara's purse that she had dropped while running and we got out of there as fast as we could. Only once we were driving did I realize how badly I was shaking. My hands were slick with sweat. My heart was pounding

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_01] so hard I could hear it in my ears. I had slammed into so many parking barriers that I was still bruised all over and I think I even hit my head at one point. Tiara was crying. I told her to call the police. Whether we stumbled into something dangerous or it had all been an unbelievable series of coincidences, I wanted someone to check. To this day I still don't know what

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_01] happened that night. Maybe someone had accidentally been in our room, maybe the power outage was just terrible timing and maybe we overreacted or maybe we didn't. What I do know is if I had listened to her and accepted another room, I would have left there alone and that thought still makes me sick. My dad always taught me to trust my instincts when something feels wrong, especially when someone you care about is depending on you. It's possible

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_01] nothing sinister was happening that night, but I'd rather spend the rest of my life wondering if we overreacted than finding out that we were right. So to the people working that lonely hotel in rural Tennessee, let's never meet again.

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_01] When I was a child, my mother owned a campsite property in the jungles of Belize that traveling backpackers would frequent to visit the caves and jungles of the area. It was a beautiful remote spot in a valley surrounded only by a small mountain Mennonite community and some local villagers a few miles away. There weren't many roads, most of which were dirt, and it was hard to traverse through the thick mountainous

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_01] wilderness if you weren't taking the main road in and out of the valley. all of this to say it was extremely remote and hard to reach, so random strangers passing through were not the norm, unless they were explicitly there to visit the campsite. There were around six other homes in the valley that were reachable by foot. Five of them were inhabited by the peaceful local Mennonite community. But one was

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_01] owned by an American woman who had a reputation for being cruel. There was even a rumor that she had lived in Belize because she was wanted by the FBI for murder in America. There were also rumors that she hired local men to steal and vandalize others' properties for her. We'll call her Carrie. One example I remember of her behavior was an interaction I had

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_01] with her when I was around ten. My brothers and I were friends with the property owner's kids, so we would all float down the creek in tubes and walk back up the road to the property. We felt safe doing this, as there were usually at least four of us together at a time. Carrie would often run down to her fence line when she heard us coming and scream at us the entire time we walked past, no matter how quiet or loud we were being.

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_01] She threatened to let out three large dogs to attack us, and one time she chased us down the street with a gun. That was the last time we were allowed to walk back up the street without an adult. One afternoon, a female friend and I were playing in the swimming area of the creek in front of the main building of my mother's property. We were around fourteen at the time. There was a huge rock that

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_01] jutted up out of the water on the far side of the creek, and above that, the mountainside rose up at a sheer ninety-degree angle bulging out in some areas. It formed a sort of rounded cliff that was impossible to climb up or down from, making the swimming hole and main campsite building feel closed off and peaceful. As we stood there, on the side of the creek bank, splashing the water, I

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_01] looked up and caught a glimpse of movement atop the rocky cliff. There, crouched in some bushes with a black bandana tied around his face, was a man in dark clothing watching us play in the water. I still remember the feeling of ice-cold dread as my heart plunged into my stomach. He was holding a machete, and he had this hateful look in his eyes, a look I had never seen. In my young mind, I immediately knew

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_01] he was up to something bad. It wouldn't have been easy to get to the spot he was crouching in without being seen if he came from our side, so he likely hiked from the other side of the hilltop. If that were the case, he must have been surprised to have found the cliff there with no way down. For several long moments, the man and I stared at each other until my friend grabbed my wrist. We sprinted

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_01] together back up the stairs into the building where our parents were. My mother and my friend's parents immediately came out yelling bloody murder at the man, shouting at him to leave and never return, or he would regret it. But by the time we actually got back to the creek side, the man was gone. Later that week, some of the adults managed to find a way to get up to the spot where he had been seen. They found a discarded water

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_01] bottle, which suggested he had been there for some time. From then on, we were extra careful when we went out anywhere alone in Belize. years later, after my mother had sold the property and we stopped visiting, we heard news from the area that someone had been found deceased in the Orange Grove on my mother's old property. The death was tied back to Carrie, but she was never arrested

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_01] due to local police corruption. It all happened remotely, and the fact that she seemed to hire someone and didn't do it herself meant that nothing could be done. My mother is convinced to this day that Carrie had hired that man that we had seen in the bushes. To what end, we don't know, but judging by the way he was staring at me and my friend, made my brain go to dark places. And we

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_01] wouldn't have been the only little girls to have gone missing in that valley. So to Carrie and any other associates, let's not meet.

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[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_10] This is Danielle Robay from Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. Nothing compares to the anticipation of something new. A new start, a new year, a new home, or a new car. When it's time to get a new car, where do you start? Car shopping can honestly be a little overwhelming, but it should be fun. Buying your next car should be exciting and it can be if you remember one thing. Cars.com. Cars.com has the tools and expert advice to help you figure out what vehicle is right for you.

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[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_01] This happened 10 years ago when I was 18, but I still think about it all the time and I feel like this is the place to finally share my encounter. I was a cashier at my local grocery store in southern Illinois. It was a small town of less than 2,000 people. Our delivery driver arrived with our truck about 30 minutes before closing time. I don't know his name, but I can

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_01] describe him as a 55 or 60 year old man with a pot belly. I was bringing in some store merchandise that was outside when the driver approached me and asked me to look at his leg. He said it was injured and was making noises to substantiate said injury. I honestly don't know how to describe it. He was pretty much clenching his teeth together and inhaling rapidly.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01] He simultaneously pulled up his pant leg and said, see that? Can you see that? Get closer. Come look at it. I stayed where I was and said, uh, yeah, that sucks. Even though I could see there was nothing there. But it was night time. I then tried to return to my closing tasks, but he seemed to grow agitated. Then, with more

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_01] urgency in his voice, he demanded, come look at my leg. By then, I had realized I was actually standing close enough to the store's awning, which has lights, and I noticed that I was in a pretty well-lit spot. He, however, was conveniently right at the cutoff where the light was not hitting, so it was dark where he was standing. I said to him, I'm going to school for art. I don't know anything about medical stuff.

[00:34:56] [SPEAKER_01] Then, once again, I tried going back to my task. He was persistent and stopped me again and said, just come over here and look at it. At this point, he was pretty fit up with me. His persistence really irked me as well, so I said, I can call an ambulance for you. His tone changed immediately and he said, no, no, no, no, I don't need that. I just need you to look at it.

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_01] I ignored him and I resumed my task since I was starting to fall behind on closing duties due to this conversation. Once I was inside, this woman walked up to me and said, that man is faking an injury. I laughed and said, I thought so too, but I didn't want to be rude. She then looked me in the eyes and again said, he is absolutely faking that injury.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_01] Her seriousness made me more uncomfortable about the whole situation. It made me feel like I might have been in danger. I still had more things to bring inside, so I had to go back out there. He was still there, and he started up again, so I said, I'm not allowed to be off camera. This wasn't true. I was actually off camera when I said this, but he didn't need to know that.

[00:36:26] [SPEAKER_01] I saw his eyes widen, and he started looking up into the left and right, clearly looking for a camera, then asked, there are cameras out here. Then he took two unnaturally huge steps back. Those huge steps made my stomach turn. After taking these steps back, he was still wanting me to come look at his leg. I told him he was in the dark

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_01] and let him know that I couldn't see even if I went over there. I told him to come inside the store if he wanted me to look, since there was plenty of light in there. I also said this because the store had one of those TV cameras where you can see yourself walking into the store positioned at the entrance. If he came inside, I would have him on camera, which I really felt like I needed at the time. I was also still testing him to see if he would go on camera

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_01] after his reaction about me saying there were cameras outside. He hesitated, and then I watched his eyes look at the entrance TV camera before he asked if it records. It does, so I said, yeah, we have a lot of theft. He said, that's a smart idea to have then. Then I told him that we sold Tylenol if he was still feeling the pain, but

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_01] he didn't want to go inside. It was closing time by then, so I went back inside, locked the door behind me, and thankfully never saw him again. This happened a couple of years ago. I wanted to go to the local wildlife trail to walk in the woods. I had gone there several times to

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_01] hike and jog. I normally went with my boyfriend at the time, but he was working when I wanted to go, so I decided to go myself. I felt pretty comfortable going. I parked at the far end of the parking lot, just in case anyone else showed up. The trail continues straight from the parking lot for about a mile until it curves up a large hill. I wanted to continue on this trail until I reached the abandoned parking

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_01] lot with the lake. 100 yards before it inclines. The incline section is made up of loose gravel, and it's quite noisy when you're walking up it. This section lasts for about 100 yards. Now, I felt pretty at ease when going along the trail before I turned left. When I hit the

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01] incline, I began to feel uneasy. I brushed it off and figured I was being overly paranoid, so I continued. As I was about halfway up the incline, I began to hear crunching and snapping noises in the woods to my right. It sounded like it was about 100 yards off to the right. It was just far enough in the woods that I couldn't see what was actually making the noise. I froze in my tracks, and the

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_01] hair on the back of my neck stood up. I stood still as I heard the crunching stop. Naively, I brushed it off as a deer or a bobcat, as the crunching was too loud to be a raccoon or squirrel. Then I continued up the path until I hit the end of the incline. That was when I heard the thing in the woods begin to run at me. I froze in place again. My heart was beating a million

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_01] miles an hour, and every hair on my body stood on end. While I was rooted in place, I finally saw him. This man was running straight at me while holding something in his right hand. I was able to unfreeze myself and began running the incline back to the main trail. I was slipping and sliding down the loose gravel. I looked behind me as I was making my way down, and he was at the top of the incline.

[00:40:52] [SPEAKER_01] He had this evil look in his eyes. From there, I was able to see the item in his hand. It was a knife. I almost slipped since I looked back at the man, but I kept going. He called out to me, Hey, get back here! But his tone was malicious. I sprinted out of there as fast as I could and took a hard ride back onto the main path. When I hit the parking lot, I didn't look back. I unlocked my car and started it as

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_01] quickly as I could. Right as I was backing up, he emerged from the trail entrance. He just stood there, partially covered in the shade of the trees. As I tore through the parking lot and onto the highway, he just kept staring at me. Then he slowly waved at me as the creepiest smile spread across his face. I never went back to that trail again after that. That encounter has scarred me for life when it comes to

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_01] hiking in the woods.

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[00:45:43] [SPEAKER_01] When I was younger, my brother had a friend who started living with us. His parents had done some pretty despicable things, and he was essentially left on his own while he was still a minor and attending school. I can't remember whether he had been emancipated or was technically supposed to be under someone else's care. I just knew that he needed somewhere to stay, and my family took him in. I was seven years younger than

[00:46:12] [SPEAKER_01] him, and very much the annoying little sister at the time. But I remember him telling my brother once, I don't mind her, she reminds me of my sister. For most of my life, I thought there were only two significant memories I had of this guy. It wasn't until about a month ago that I started wondering if there might have been a lot more. The first incident happened one night when I came downstairs for a glass of

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_01] water. There was absolutely no chance he didn't hear me coming. I had opened my heavy bedroom door, walked down our creaky hallway, and then down the stairs without making any attempt to be quiet. When I reached the bottom, I saw him sitting at the computer. He looked at me, and I looked at him. He was watching an old news report about the arrest of his parents. I immediately felt horrible. It seemed like I had

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_01] accidentally walked in on this incredibly private moment where he was emotional and vulnerable. I didn't know what to say, so I just sort of froze. While I was standing there awkwardly in my own head, he closed the tab and opened something else. I then heard moaning. He just stared at me. I remember thinking, is this actually happening?

[00:47:41] [SPEAKER_01] I was trying to rationalize it. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he clicked the wrong thing. Except, he had opened it after seeing me standing there. And unless I'm remembering how computers worked back then completely wrong, he would have had to press play. Eventually, I got enough sense to turn around and go back upstairs. I don't remember if I told anyone about what happened, though. I think that's because I remember

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_01] mostly convincing myself that it had been an accident. The second incident couldn't be explained away so easily. I came home from school one afternoon and realized that my old CRT TV was missing from my bedroom. My brother took it all the time, either as some self-appointed punishment or simply because he wanted to use it. So naturally, I stormed into his

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_01] room and demanded that he give it back. The cable connection on that TV was already going bad, and every time he got moved, I had to fight with the stupid thing to get it working again. So I was pissed. My brother told me that he didn't have it, and couldn't care less where it was. That only left me with one other possibility. His friend had it. So I knocked on his friend's bedroom door and asked if he had

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_01] taken my TV. He sounded irritated but admitted that he had. Already aggravated, I opened the door, and there was my TV sitting on the floor, not even being used. Why did you take my TV? I asked, angrily. Before I really understood what was happening, he rushed me. He slammed me against the wall, grabbed me by the throat, and lifted me up against the wall.

[00:49:36] [SPEAKER_01] I started screaming and fighting him. My mom then came running upstairs and screaming at him to let me go. My brother came out of his room looking completely bewildered, basically asking his friend what the hell was going on. My mom told him to get the fuck out, and he left. As far as I can remember, he never lived with us again after that. However, he didn't disappear from our lives. Eventually, my brother moved into

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_01] another house in the same neighborhood. Over the years, he would periodically let his friends stay with him. My brother felt sorry for him. He believed that he had been dealt an unfair hand in life and genuinely wanted to help him. It was before or around this time that something else began happening to me. This man, dressed entirely in black, began showing up outside my house. It started on Halloween when I was in the fifth grade.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_01] For years, I think my mind did a pretty good job of downplaying, dismissing, and eventually burying a lot of what happened. But recently, therapy has forced me to actually confront it and recognize just how much it shaped the person I became. So I'll try to give the condensed version. It started with a knock on the door while I was home alone. It was the middle of the night.

[00:51:05] [SPEAKER_01] I grew up watching forensic files, law and order SVU, and basically everything else that should have taught me not to open the door under those circumstances. I remember standing there thinking, I really don't want to open the door. But then, like every other naive character who dies within the first minutes of a horror movie, I opened it. I had hesitated before answering, so I stepped onto the porch, thinking maybe whoever knocked had

[00:51:34] [SPEAKER_01] started walking away. But I still didn't see anyone. I didn't think much of it. Honestly, I thought it was just one of my brother's friends messing with me. Sometime later, I was sitting on the couch when I saw something dark flash past the kitchen window. It happened quickly enough that I started rationalizing that as well. I figured it was probably my brother or one of his friends. I even thought it was nothing.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_01] Even though I was rationalizing it, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched. Eventually, I looked toward the window. Standing outside, barely illuminated by the glow from the backyard, was the silhouette of a man dressed entirely in black. I froze. He lifted his hand, then he slightly tapped on the glass and gave me this small, closed-fingered wave. The kind of little wave an adult

[00:52:34] [SPEAKER_01] might give to a child. Then he disappeared. When my family came home, I told them what happened. It wasn't my brother. They were convinced it had probably been some kind of prank. Except, it didn't stop. Over the years, whenever I was home alone, or sometimes late at night, this man seemed to just appear. He was always dressed completely in black, head to toe. Because of that,

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_01] I've never been able to confidently say how old this person was, or what they looked like, or really anything about them. At some point, the phone calls started. I would answer and hear silence. Sometimes there would be a breath. Then the caller would just hang up. The strangest part was that despite living in a house full of people, all of this seemed specifically directed at me. My mom occasionally answered the silent calls,

[00:53:33] [SPEAKER_01] but whoever was calling would either hang up immediately, or she would assume it was nothing. Years went by like this. Then came the night when I thought whatever this person had been doing was finally going to escalate. See, I was home alone again. It was a Friday. I remember because my friends were at a school football game and I hadn't been able to get a ride to it. Things had actually been relatively quiet with the man in black around that time.

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_01] He wasn't appearing in the backyard, staring at the house nearly as often. And I had started letting my guard down. I was sitting there watching house when I saw something dark flash out of the corner of my vision. My stomach dropped, so I muted the television and there was just silence. I sat completely still. Whoever I had just seen wasn't making a sound. It felt like some horrible game

[00:54:32] [SPEAKER_01] of who's going to blink first. Seconds stretched into what felt like minutes. Then I heard the doorknob. It was jiggling. For once, my stress response picked flight instead of freeze. I grabbed my phone and I ran. I didn't take anything else. I went straight out the door and didn't stop until I made it to the other side of town. I remember eventually collapsing underneath a streetlight and trying to catch my breath.

[00:55:01] [SPEAKER_01] By then, I had spent years feeling like nobody really believed me. I had started sleeping with a knife under my pillow. Well, sitting under that streetlight, I remember thinking, this is it. This is what everything has been building toward. Either he just tried to get in my house or he isn't finished yet. Once I gathered myself enough to think, I called my mom. She was at the bar with her boyfriend, so they came and picked me up.

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_01] We drove back to the house and her boyfriend made us stay in the car while he went inside. Almost everything was exactly how I'd left it, except that the back door was wide open. This wasn't a normal door. It was an old, complicated antique door that could be difficult to open even when it wasn't locked. My mom and her boyfriend somehow decided the cat must have opened it. But there was something else that bothered me even more.

[00:56:01] [SPEAKER_01] Nothing had been stolen. My mom and her boyfriend flipped houses at the time, and our basement was filled with expensive tools and equipment. I had been gone for around 30 minutes. If someone had broken into our house looking for things to steal, they had plenty of time and plenty of options. But not one thing was missing. Sometime after that, something finally happened that proved I wasn't the only person seeing the man in black

[00:56:30] [SPEAKER_01] around our neighborhood. My neighbor was sitting outside with his girlfriend when a man dressed entirely in black approached them from the yard of an abandoned house. My neighbor told him to stop, but he kept approaching. My neighbor then pulled out a gun and again told him to stop, but he wouldn't. Finally, he fired into the ground. That seemed to be enough, and the man turned and ran, tripping over a branch

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_01] as he disappeared. Around that time, the man in black stopped coming around. Eventually, life moved on, or at least I thought it did. For years, I wondered who that person had been and what he wanted from me. Was he trying to kidnap me or kill me? Something worse? I never got an answer. As I said, therapy has challenged me to revisit everything that happened back then, and for the first time, I started thinking about those events

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_01] alongside something else that happened later. Something involving my brother's friend. After the man in black stopped appearing, my brother's friend was apparently sleeping in my brother's car. At some point, he started spending his time along a nearby levee. He brought a notebook with them. He would sit there and watch people as they passed by, recording information about them. He would note their hair color, clothing, demographics, how long they stayed there,

[00:57:58] [SPEAKER_01] how often they came, whether they were with someone or whether they were alone. He watched them go about their lives and documented their routines. And then one day, he brought a knife. He grabbed the woman and pulled her off the levee toward a wooded area. She fought back though, and thankfully she got away. Although not unscathed, he had slashed her arm during the struggle. I can't imagine what she went through in those moments. I'm not sure exactly

[00:58:27] [SPEAKER_01] how police found him afterward or how they learned about the notebook, but what I do remember is that the only addresses they apparently had connected to him were my brother's house and ours. Then one day, law enforcement descended on our homes. They were local and state, and I believe some kind of federal law enforcement as well. I remember thinking it was an unusually large response, although, after all these years,

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_01] I can't confidently say which agency it was. They started pounding on the door. When I opened it, an officer shoved me back against the door with his forearm and ordered me to stay back. I had no idea what was happening. I then looked outside. My brother's friend was being walked out of my brother's house in handcuffs. They sat him on the stairs only feet away from the police canines, and I could hear officers demanding to know where his backpack was.

[00:59:27] [SPEAKER_01] One of them told him that if he didn't tell them, they were going to search both houses. For all the things he did, I do think he genuinely cared about my brother. My brother certainly cared for him. Maybe that's why he finally told them where the backpack was. It was underneath my brother's dining room table. Police went inside, retrieved it, and eventually left. I don't know what happened after that. And I want to be very clear about something.

[00:59:56] [SPEAKER_01] I don't know that my brother's friend was the man in black. I don't have proof. Maybe these really were two completely separate terrifying things that happened during the same period of my life. But years later, I can't stop thinking about that notebook. This was someone who had lived in my house, someone who knew my family, who continued staying with my brother and lived in the same neighborhood. Someone who had already been violent toward me. And years later,

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_01] I learned that he was capable of sitting somewhere and quietly studying strangers. He diligently learned their routines, wrote down where they came from, where they went, and noted whether they were with someone or alone. And for years, one question about the man in black bothered me more than almost anything else. How did he always seem to know when I was home alone? I can't stop wondering if the answer is sitting in a notebook somewhere. And whether

[01:00:54] [SPEAKER_01] there was ever a page in it about me. If you want to get bonus stories every week and you're tired of ads, head over to patreon.com forward slash letsnotmeetpodcast to sign up and support the show today. You'll get ad-free versions of all of the episodes

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_01] at a higher bit rate with bonus stories in our extensions every single week. Stories you won't hear anywhere else. If you're a patron already, make sure you stick around after the music for your extended version of this week's episode. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radio Cast and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash crypticcounty. This week you have heard he found me again two years later by Anonymous,

[01:01:52] [SPEAKER_01] a very strange hotel in rural Tennessee by Giona, watcher on the ridge by MX Mothman Esquire, truck driver with the fake injury by Icy Sandwich 5397, a man with a knife in the woods by Anonymous, and finally, Could It Have Been Him by Psych Theory. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Let's Not Meet,

[01:02:22] [SPEAKER_01] 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 letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. We'll see you next week. Stay safe.