Armchair Anonymous: Stalking III

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman, who's currently trying to look up a fact to disprove me on something. It's an opinion, really. But I'll carry right on. Today is, this is a big trigger warning episode in that it's stalking part three. So you know, stalking is going to have all the stuff you might expect in stalking. It's really tough. It's really tough, but it was really good too. Yeah, incredible. I recommend listening to this one. Please enjoy stalking part three. We get support from Quince. You know what I think about a lot? The stuff in my closet, I actually wear. Like not the trendy pieces, the sweater that goes with everything or the pants that fit perfectly, the tee you kind of just throw on without even thinking. That's what Quince does. They make those pieces. That's right. They have 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at $60. Organic cotton, merino wool. Quality you'd expect from a luxury. Luxury without the luxury price tag. We love that. They skip the middlemen, go direct to ethical factories and pass those savings to you. We're talking 50 to 80% less than similar brands. I'm so excited for fall simply because I love my cashmere sweaters from Quince. And I also got to add that right before I left Nashville, I was assigned the task of putting all the bedding back on my children's bed. And I got to fold first the Quince sheets and comforter, then unfolded them and put them in the entire time I was spreading it all out. I was like. My God, they really are so soft. It's crazy. They are. I also have a pair of sheets from Quince that are really, really good. And honestly, what sets Quince apart is that everything feels intentional. These are timeless, versatile pieces designed to be the dependable stuff you reach for day after day. You're not buying something just for right now. You're buying something that's going to be in your rotation for years. They've also got hotel quality bedding and bath, kitchen essentials, even furniture. So if you're doing any kind of refresh at home too, same quality, same prices across the board. Quince just gets it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash DAX. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash DAX. We get support from hers. If you're on a weight loss journey, you know the appointment is the smallest part. The real work happens between visits. The side effects at 9 p.m. The dosing question on a Sunday. The food that isn't sitting right. That's where most care just stops. The new hers care experience is built for those moments. Your provider, AI informed by doctors who've guided women like you and your care team all in one conversation, all working toward your goal. No repeating yourself. No waiting on an appointment for a quick answer. Weight loss by hers gives you access to FDA approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen. With a care experience built around you, right at your fingertips in the app. Everything happens online. Connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, medication is delivered right to your door. Ready to see what weight loss care can actually look like? Visit forhers.com slash armchair to meet the new hers app. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash armchair. Forhers.com slash armchair. Weight loss by hers is not available in all 50 states. Prescription required. AI responses in the hers app are AI generated and do not constitute a medical diagnosis. AI can make mistakes. A licensed provider is always available to answer questions or discuss next steps. AI support is a new feature that is rolling out to eligible customers over time. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. HIMS Inc. is not affiliated with or endorsed by Novo Nordisk AS. For important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit forhers.com. All times, come and go. Good times, take them slow. My life, I had them both. But one thing, you gotta know. I'ma keep on shining. Oh, I got your shirt! Oh! Iron Cherry. That looks so cute on you. Yeah, it does. Stop. I can't take in a compliment from you right now. It's fantastic. Thank you so much. What time zone are you in? Central. Central. Wow. That feels special. I'm already so sad you got stalked. Oh, sure. But I also get it because you're so cute. I had a sex dream about Brad Pitt last night. You did? Yeah. Can we pause, Kelly, to hear Monica's sex dream about Brad Pitt? I would love to. Yeah, yeah. I don't really remember the details. We were just having sex. It just cut to you having sex? Or you were on a date? Yeah, we were hanging out and flirty. Okay. There was a lot of really good kissing. Oh, there was a lot of kissing. He's so hot, you guys. Especially in my dream. I agree. But he didn't stalk you, unfortunately. No, no. Sadly, this was maybe the opposite of Brad Pitt. Oh, no. We'll get there. Okay, okay. So, Kelly, you're in the central time zone. You have a really adorable leopard and or hyena print curtain behind you. Thank you for noticing. They are blankets from my girls' rooms. And there's a frozen one that you can't see. I almost put it behind me, but that felt, like, too aggressive. No, we're not afraid. We're not afraid of affection. Okay, so please set the scene for us. What happened? What year? So, to set the scene, this happened in my hometown where I still live, in Springfield, Illinois. So, we're three hours south of Rob's hometown of Chicago. We're in the land of Lincoln. Okay, great, great, great. This took place in 2002 when I was 16 years old. That's too young for a seducker. I already don't like it. Bad news. So, one thing about me, I'm a lifelong scaredy cat. So, I was that friend at the haunted houses that would wait in the car because even to wait in the parking lot just felt too risky. That's the level of scaredy cat that we're dealing with. And my friends knew this about me, and they loved messing with me, especially one friend in particular. And it was that friend who was sleeping over at my house on the night that this all began. So, as we were falling asleep in my room, she asked if I noticed someone outside. And I know that that sounds alarming to you, but she would jump scare me all the time and just was constantly keeping me on my toes. So, I really didn't think anything of it. I brushed her off. I told her to knock it off and just go to bed. And for whatever reason, she just like went along with it. And I don't know if she convinced herself she didn't see anything or she was just that tired. Either way, we went to bed. That was that. So, a few days later, my mom came into the house after mowing our grass. And she asked me, "Can you tell me if I've been sneaking people in through my window?" I said, "No." And I asked her why. Well, when she was mowing the side yard, she found an empty case of beer right outside of my window. Oh, my gosh. This person just fucking haphazardly left the evidence? It's important to note here that we had those retro like vertical slat hanging blinds. I don't know if you remember those. Venetian. Yes. So, to close those blinds, they would be flushed like side by side and they would be flushed against the window. Well, mine were broken. And so, when I would try to close them all the way, they would get tangled up. So, I would just set them to almost closed so they were stacked kind of by each other but they were at an angle. That's important to note because the person outside of the window could just stand at an angle and see into the room very clearly. So, my mom found this case of beer and all of the bottles were still inside, but they were all empty. So, presumably, he stood outside of the window. I don't know how long enough to kill an entire case while he watched my friend and I sleep. Oh! And it was summertime, so it's not like he had a couple left, came back another night, unless he really enjoyed a hot beer. So, needless to say, I was very freaked out. I did not sleep in my room for a good long while. I did tack a dark sheet up over my window. I don't know why I went with a sheet instead of a thick blanket, but I was 16 and my brain was doing the best that it could. They were just questionable. They were questionable choices being made. Maybe a month or so passed without incident and things kind of went back to business as usual. And then I was in my room doing homework at my desk after school one day. Still not sleeping in there, but during waking hours, I was still spending some time in there. So, my back was to the window and I was sitting at my desk doing homework when all of a sudden, I heard a slow tap. No! Tap on my window. Oh! My God! And what time are we talking? Like 5:00 or 6:00 or like night? No. It's daytime. This time. So, I jumped up. I ran out of the room, screamed for my mom. My mom ran outside, but by then the person was gone. He probably saw me through that flimsy sheet or he heard me scream. Can I ask how densely populated your neighborhood was? Were you like 20 feet from the next house? Were you a half acre? We were on the corner, but we did have really close next-door neighbors, but we were surrounded by a lot of elderly neighbors and so there wasn't a lot of people outside and nobody saw him. And we also didn't have that kind of relationship. It's not like everybody was chatting and comparing notes, so to our knowledge, nobody saw this person. So over the course of the next few weeks, this happened a few more times before finally my mom and I came up with a plan, but the plan should have been contact the police obviously and maybe like install security cameras. I'm thinking Ponji Pit. Do you know what those are? I don't. It's like a trap you make in the jungle for a jaguar. Yeah. Runs over a hole you've dug. And then at the bottom is bamboo spikes. bike. So when it falls in, they're impaled. I would have installed a pongee pit in front of the window. The plan that we came up with was harebrained, but maybe somewhat similar to your train of thought of handling it on our own. So my mom's bedroom butted up to my wall that had the desk against it. And she also had a sliding glass door in her room that opened up into our yard. So her idea was, if you hear it again, when you're at the desk doing homework, kick underneath the desk. Kick against the wall. I'll hear it. We had a big black lab named Buddy. I know best boys are only humans, but Buddy was the best boy dog. She said, I'll let Buddy out and he'll catch the perp. So sure enough, like a week later, I'm at my desk. This time, Monica, it was evening. And I'm sitting there when I hear that terrifying slow tap. I heard the tapping. I held it together enough to kick under the desk. I heard the tapping. I heard the tapping. I heard the tapping. I my mom heard the signal. She sent Buddy outside and he tore off after the person. So my mom and I went out onto the back porch and we were up at the top of a hill. And like I said, it was nighttime. So we could see all of the neighbor's motion sensors going off as Buddy chased this person. So unfortunately, Buddy did not catch the perp, but he did effectively scare the person off or so we thought. Oh, okay. Fast forward about six months, maybe. I was walking out to my car to go to school in the morning and I parked out in front of our house on the street. Dax, I don't know anything about cars, but I can tell you that I drove an early nineties Pontiac Sunbird convertible. No, well, yeah. Two liter, four cylinder. Sure. I believe you. We have no choice but to believe it. I mean, it's all we can do. So as I'm walking out to my car, I noticed that there is a sizable hole that's cut out of the soft top of my convertible. What? Oh boy. So I go around to the driver's side of the car and I opened the door to assess the situation. And I quickly realized two things. Number one, there is a substance all over my steering wheel and up onto my windshield. And number two, there's a Polaroid picture that's underneath my driver's side windshield wiper facing into my car. Oh, oh my God. I wish that I still had the photo just so I could have submitted it to Emma to show you guys, but it was confiscated as evidence. So I'll have to describe it to you. So it was a man from the neck down, a selfie. He was shirtless, rocking some acid wash jeans. The top button of his jeans was still fastened, but his zipper was completely down and he had pulled his genitals through the open zipper. Thanks for referring to it as genitals. We are in a criminal case now. Keeping it above board. And it's that creative choice of keeping that top button fastened that really still sticks with me to this day. Oh my God. It's so unnatural. Was he in the car in the picture? No, he was not in my car in the picture. He was standing upright. Were you able to ascertain or take a stab at what age this abdomen looked like? I would say thirties to forties. It's not a classmate and it's not one of your geezer neighbors. It's not a granddad. No, there were some apartments that were a little bit sketchy that were a few blocks from our house. And the night that we saw the motion lights going off, he appeared to be running in that direction. So I think it was somebody who was maybe 30 to 40 age range that was possibly living over in that complex. I don't know for sure, but the police did get involved after that finally. And they did patrol our house for quite a while after that and would come by at night and shine their light on my window that I was no longer like anywhere near a long, long time. But they never caught the guy. Oh, my God. I have a necessary but terrible question, which is, did they take the semen sample so that they would have like DNA if necessary to match? It was. Well, it had to be. That was the substance. I was going to say that's my peeping Tom slash stalker slashed what I would like to call an unauthorized ejaculation. Oh, wow. You got a lot of it. An unauthorized ejaculation. Oh, man. I guess. Can you ever get comfortable in your house? It took a really long time for me to be able to sleep in my room again. And even now, to this day, my daughter's bedrooms face are straight. And every night when I put them to bed, I pull the blinds all the way, make sure that curtains are around and it just stays with you. Absolutely. Did you ever get an eerie sense that you were being watched before you actually knew you were? I don't know. Like I said, I was such a chicken that I kind of always felt impending doom at all times. But since then, definitely. Man, it's hard to guess what happened because obviously this person's behavior was escalating. They were fearless if they sat there and drank a 12 pack. They're out on the street cutting a hole in your car. They're jerking off in your car. I they're not afraid of this. So why did they disappear? A person doing this also could have gotten arrested for any number. Things if they're like impulse control is got to wonder why it stopped. I don't know if it was because the police were driving by at night that they just were like, well, I'll find a new person then to start this up with or what. But regardless, it did stop. That is so upsetting. It's a hum dinger. But I'm so excited, you guys, because it got me here. It's like my only good story. And I you had said something about make sure that you're checking the prompts. I was walking the dog. I was like, oh, I'm going to check it out. I submitted and here we are. Well, we're happy to meet you, but I do wish that didn't happen to you. Same, same. Is it OK if I shout out? Absolutely. My husband, Henry, and then our three kids, Charlie, Willow and Lola. Willow and Lola are not allowed to listen to this episode for many years, but I would love to be able to fast forward through to the end so that they can hear it. And I'm so excited to be able to hear it. I'm so excited to be able to hear it. And I'm so excited to be able to fast forward through to the end so that they can hear their names. They did also make me promise that I would ask you to tell Kristen hello for them, Dax. Consider it done. The princess Anna says hello. Yeah. Yes. So cool. And then I wanted to just quickly thank both of you for being so candid about addiction from the perspective of an addict and also Monica as a loved one. Even though my mom is not in my life and that's incredibly difficult, you guys have offered me a chance to talk to you. And I'm so excited to be able to talk to you. Thank you, Kelly. We appreciate that so much. Yeah. Thank you guys so much. This was a dream come true. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Tell us where you're at. I am in Alberta, Canada. What kind of temps do we have up in Alberta? Has it gotten nice yet? Had a really rough spring. It's been like raining nonstop flooding and it's been kind of shitty, but today's not too bad. Okay. So please set the scene for us. What year was this? What happened? My story starts a couple of years ago back in 2022. And my best friend and I, we were out for my birthday. We were at a Taylor Swift dance party. Oh, hell yeah. Perfect birthday. Yeah. It was fantastic. We were having lots to drink. We were, we were at the bar getting another round of shots. And I got a text message from a random number. It said, happy birthday. Are you interested in making some money? I would love some photos. So we were both pretty drunk. We were like, this is probably just some like bot or some scam. Didn't really think that much of it, but because we had been drinking a lot, we thought it was hilarious. And we were like, yeah, we'll send you some videos of us belting out Taylor Swift. Throw in a little extra. We'll even show you our feet. Okay. We didn't really think too much about the fact that whoever this person was knew it was my birthday. Yeah. Weird for a bot. Yeah. We didn't think of it at the time. And so the person responded back, Oh, I have something a little sexier in mind. And at that point we were like, okay, weird delete block. And so flash forward a couple months, I was out with another friend for drinks for this friend's birthday. We weren't doing anything too crazy, but I started getting texts from another random number. Saying, I see that you're out tonight. Have you given any thought to those photos I asked for? Oh, we get support from YouTube premium. Okay. I got to tell you something. I just got YouTube premium this year and it's completely enhanced how I use YouTube. I already liked YouTube for reasons. I'm watching all my car stuff on there. Everything's on there and thought, how could YouTube get any better? Well, premium has awesome features like offline downloads. Just use it on a plane ride. So I can download my favorite automotive shows and videos to watch when I'm on the go. And that means I don't have to wait when I don't have wifi, which is especially great when I'm traveling and don't have guaranteed wifi on airplanes. Speaking of not waiting. And this is my favorite part. YouTube premium is ad free. So I can watch uninterrupted whenever, wherever, whenever. And I can watch it on my phone. And I can watch it on my phone forever. Background play also comes in clutch because I can lock my screen and keep the audio going. This comes in handy. when I go out for a walk or when I'm in the middle of a great podcast. Plus, it has a ton of other features I didn't even know about. Like, did you know, Premium automatically downloads videos from channels you subscribe to? So even when I forget, my content is still right there for me. So if you're like me and you already like YouTube, you're going to love YouTube Premium. Try it now for two months free. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. This episode is brought to you by Peacock with a new season of The Paper, the documentary team that immortalized Dunder Mifflin has found a new subject, a Midwestern newspaper and the ragtag team trying to revive it. What they lack in journalistic experience, they make up for in heart, but the issues just keep unfolding. The Paper is streaming now only on Peacock. We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers? Which is a fair question. Yeah. So Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sleep mode is genius. Right. And here's the thing. For anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age appropriate experiences for teens. I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. The flexibility. Start online, finish at the dealer or the other way around. Your info stays with you so you're not starting the process from scratch. Plus, you're working with local dealer listings, so you've got real people helping behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick up your car or have it delivered. Really. Buy your car online on AutoTrader. Really. So that turns on a dime. Now it's terrifying. Yeah. Again, we had a little bit to drink, so I responded like, sorry, I don't send random pictures to strangers. There's a website called OnlyFans. I think that might be what you're looking for. The person was like, oh, I'm not a stranger. And I was like, okay, now I'm really creeped out. Block, delete. And so every once in a while, I would be waking up in the morning to texts from random numbers, just being like $500 question, mark. Have you thought about me at all? Just weird things like that. And I never responded. Block, delete. Then flash forward a couple months again, and I'm at a concert with my mom and another friend. And it's a country concert. I start getting messages that are like, I love a country girl. What the fuck? I'd love to see you with nothing but that cowboy hat on. And then I'm like, okay, now you know where I am. You know what I'm wearing. There was also references to who I was with. So I started to get like a little worried at this point. I hadn't really told anybody that much yet. I hadn't told my husband. I hadn't told my parents. But at this point, I was like, okay, this is what's going on. If something happens to me, like look at this, because somebody is clearly paying attention to where I am and what I'm doing. At this point, I didn't respond. But I was getting messages that were like, I've lusted after you for so long, you wouldn't believe it. Just weird things. And I'm like, okay, who is this? And they also kept using two things that were really weird. A lot of emojis in their text messages. And then also, they kept calling me dear. That seems like an old man term. Yeah, totally. And just to be clear, I heard you were married at the time. Yeah, again, flash forward, probably one or two months. And I'm out again with a couple friends. Well, we're not out yet. We're getting ready to go out. And these are my high school friends. And I started getting the messages again. And they're like, seriously, I'm willing to pay more than 500. Like, just consider these photos. I really, really, really have some things in mind. And they start going into like pretty explicit details about what they want. And then they start saying, I want pictures of you and the one in the middle. So then I start looking and I realized that my friend had posted some stories of us getting ready on Instagram. Okay. Yeah, because I'm like, is the dude an Uber driver? Like, how's he? Does he know every time she goes out? Is he a local driver? Is he a neighbor? That night, we go out, I didn't respond or anything. But my friend who is the one in the middle, she then gets a text from the same random number. All it says is $500 question mark. This is somebody who has access to my number and her number. And somebody who I think is following us on social media. And all throughout this year, randomly, I'm waking up to messages from random numbers every time I'm blocking it. Every time. And then one night, this is almost a full year after the original text message. And I was having dinner at my mom and dad's house. And I get a text message. And it's like, I see you're out having some fun tonight. Maybe you finally are willing to send me those photos. And I thought, look at my sweatpants of my mom and dad's like, I am not out tonight. What are you talking about? And so I go and I look at my best friend's Instagram. And she had posted a story of us from a couple months ago, but didn't get it. And I was like, okay, I'm going to post it. I'm going to post it. And she didn't tag that it was from a couple months ago. I texted my friend instantly. I'm like, who has seen your Instagram story right now? Because whoever has seen your story, somebody on that list is who is harassing me and my online stalker, essentially. And so she was scrolling through. And out of everybody who had seen her stories, there was two that kind of stood out to us. So one of them was a person that I used to date. And then the other was our friend's husband. I didn't think it was the person that I used to date because he wouldn't have had my high school friend's phone number to text her. Alarm bells kind of start going off for us where I'm like, oh, gosh, this is even more upsetting than we even thought. So we devised a plan where I said, okay, what you're going to do is you're going to post another story. And we're going to have something very specific in writing. And then we're going to post another story. And we're going to have this photo. And I'm going to respond to him. And I'm going to like make him think that I'm actually starting to consider this like, oh, you've worn me down. I just need to know that you are who I think you are. Because I'm not comfortable sending this to stranger. Yeah, yeah. And then we decide that she's going to post the story. And she's literally going to only allow him to be the one with access to that story. We're going to change the settings. And then I'm going to try to bait him essentially. into referencing they need you at Quantico where they train the FBI agents. Yeah, I'd be willing post a picture of us like cheersing an espresso martini. So I start responding and I'm like, well, I could use the money. I just I'm really not comfortable sending pictures to strangers. And keep in mind, I'm sitting at the dinner table with my mom and dad. Yeah, this is wild. A little uncomfortable, but I'm going to figure this out. So then I am like, I think I might have figured out who you are. And I'm fine with that. I just need to know that you're going to keep this secret. So then he goes, those espresso martinis should really loosen you up for these photos I have in mind. And I'm like, bam, got you. Yeah. Really good. You set a trap and now he's in it. I immediately send him back a text. And I'm like, I've got you motherfucker. You did? I did. Yeah. I know exactly who you are. And I'm like, I'm going to keep this secret. And then he goes, those espresso martinis could ruin your entire life. If you ever contact me again, I will not hesitate to do it. And his only response was, okay. Oh, boy. How good of friends were you? Exactly. So this is where things get a little bit dicey. We were really close. The person who was stalking me, I have known since I was a kid. And he actually married at the time. She was one of my best friends. They already, obviously the whole situation was dicey. But at that point, things got a little hard because I wanted to tell her friend. My other friend didn't want to tell her. Oh, this is so hard. This is not a clear cut decision. No, I don't know what the answer is really. Yeah. And so to this day, actually, she still doesn't know. Oh, until now. Until now, maybe. Yeah. Oh, God. We're letting the universe decide. It ended up causing some rift between me and my best friend because she was like, well, if you're gonna tell her, you can't involve me in the story which is like the whole way we figured it out i'm like we can't really say anything if i can't say that's how we figured it out because then i'm just accusing somebody for no reason the other side note that was also kind of creepy is that the friend who he had texted my high school friend is actually his sister-in-law the one in the middle what oh no he's only shopping in his immediate circle he's like okay my sister-in-law's hot my wife's best friend is hot more than i wonder if the wife of this person's gonna hear this i more wonder if five other girls are gonna go oh yeah he did that to me like i wonder how many people he was doing this to that's what i was wondering too because i had thought i don't want him doing this to other people but yeah we ended up deciding we were going to tell her and then the day that somebody was arranged to like meet with her and tell her she announced that she was having another baby oh did you tell your husband oh i did he was really angry my husband is like a very gentle loving person like he's never been in a fight i had blocked this person on all social media phone number everything and then my husband had ended up posting a picture of me on his social media because my husband forgot to block him on all his stuff so then this person went and was liking photos of me and my husband sent him a message and she's like leave us the fuck alone like if you ever go near her i will kick your ass essentially so wait so did you have to see him again in person i've been able to avoid him i feel a little guilty because i haven't really seen my friend since then because i didn't know how to look her in the face after this so we text and luckily like everyone's busy with kids and life so we had already kind of grown apart a little bit but there is like weird things like i don't know how to look her in the face i don't know how to look her in the face i don't she had given us some stuff for my son when he was born she had her husband drop the stuff off on our porch so i was in the house and then our doorbell camera went off and he's just standing on my porch dropping off a bin of things and i'm like creepy leave me alone like you know where i live it was just a really crazy scenario so that's the story of my friend's husband was my stalker wow wow that's wild yeah that was really good they say it's generally people you know right all abuse really is generally people you know fuck thank you for telling us yeah big time thank you for having me so nice meeting you have a great day bye hi how are you i'm good i'm so excited to talk to you guys is this christina yes and do you have a nickname we pretty much answer to any version christine christy chris okay great and where are you at i am right outside one of your favorite cities austin texas in new brumfels close georgetown how long have you been there actually we just moved down here from the place that my story actually takes place in dallas in dallas okay my story takes place in dallas back in 2000 i had recently moved out there with my college roommate to start our careers and her name is sarah so we had a two-bedroom apartment there and our apartment was in the back of the complex so all the buildings along the back of the complex backed up to a highway so there was a probably i'd say 40 foot cement wall not too far from our back patio of our apartment pretty secluded which was nice because we did like to go on our back patio for smoke breaks back then of course we were starting our careers we'd work come home like dinner watch tv together so one random i think it was a tuesday evening we were watching tv together in our living room and we had two couches that were parallel to each other so she would usually lay on one couch i'd lay on the other we'd watch tv and kind of talk back and forth and i look over to sarah to tell her something and when i look over i see a man standing on our back patio with his face pressed up against our sliding door okay i know so his hands are kind of cupped over his eyes he has a hat on that he has pushed up so he can really get in there and look i guess i'm sure you guys are familiar with the sliding glass doors but there's those vertical blinds right that hang down so i can see him but he can't necessarily see me the way that the blinds are so kind of sit back and i look at sarah and she can see the look on my face and i just say do not move there is a guy staring into our apartment right now standing on the back she's just kind of frozen by the time i look at her to say that and look back up he's gone so then i start freaking out oh my gosh he's not there she flips over the back of the couch goes locks the patio door which wasn't locked because we went out there for our smoke breaks all the time so we easy access to get out there so she locks the door we close the blinds we don't see him anywhere out there we call the police good girls i like that yeah yeah a lot of these stories most of them the cops entered the story way later than you'd want yeah once things have well don't give me too much credit yet i do have a misstep later on but for this part we do end up calling the police and they come out there's not a whole lot of information i can give them i had a brief glance couldn't really see his face because his hands were kind of covering him i could tell it was a white male look like maybe a slender build but didn't know hair color eye color he had the hat on they checked the area searched all over the complex didn't see any signs of him so they just took the report told us the usual things stay cautious keep your doors locked give us a call if you see anything suspicious i do want to just make one good favor i want to make one good favor which is it's also possible that the dude's visiting friends he stepped out their patio he's smoking a cigarette he's walking around he's trying to get back to the right apartment and he looked in to see if it's his friend i mean there is a conceivable non-threatening version of this you might be able to talk yourself into we did go through that thought process maybe he was walking his dog we did kind of have that moment of you know maybe this is a benign situation and he's lost we were like worst case maybe it is kind of a weird peeping tom and isolated incident and didn't see much and he went about his day so we decide just to be safe instead of taking our smoke breaks on that back patio that's kind of secluded we were going to go in the front to take our smoke breaks the front of our apartment faced the parking lot so more traffic pedestrian and vehicles driving by so we felt that was the better scenario that we were going to be able to there so we did that um you know i would go out there by myself sometimes sometimes we would go out there together that was probably the big change that we made but otherwise we kind of just went back to our lives really nothing suspicious a week goes by nothing we're excited because actually my roommate has a first date with somebody later that week so that kind of takes over and we're really excited about that so yeah the day of her first date comes up it's i think maybe a thursday so it's been maybe eight nine days since the original incident and her date comes to pick her up i meet him we all chat i send them on their way and lock the door behind them and i just kind of settle in for the night i go make myself dinner watch tv and as usual it's about that time for my smoke break so i grab my stuff head to the front door like i had that whole week prior i go to my room and i'm like oh my god i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i'm so excited i go to turn the dead bolt and i've almost completely turned it and unlocked it and this overwhelming urge comes over me to look through the peephole oh wow it's just this voice that's telling me nope this time you need to check the peephole so i do that and as i'm turning the dead bolt i check the peephole and on the other side of the door is a guy reaching out to grab your handle this episode is brought to you by sofi the everything app for smarter money award-winning banking investing borrowing and more all in one app no more juggling five apps or losing track of your money because money that's just sitting there isn't getting you anywhere start with sofi checking and savings earn a competitive apy pay no account fees no minimum deposit to open and get a direct deposit bonus terms apply sofi bank na member fdic when you're ready to invest or finally deal with debt it's all right there sofi members can talk to actual sofi wealth's world-class financial planners which is useful when you have no idea what the next move is one app every dollar working get started today sofi.com slash armchair sofi get your money right this is a paid advertisement by sofi technologies and is not intended to be financial advice a dark night a quiet house but inside danger was lurking oh we have xfinity shield it's built-in wi-fi feature detects movement without cameras what she didn't know is that online, they're lurked in even bigger. Xfinity CyberSecure protects us from digital threats, too. I should have stuck to rom-coms. What if protecting your home and devices could be drama-free? Introducing Xfinity Shield. Visit Xfinity.com slash shield to learn more. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply, not available in all areas. Xfinity Internet and compatible equipment required. Living your best life means being extra where it counts and skipping the extra where you don't need it. Like in your cleaning products. That's where 7th Generation comes in. Their bio-based cleaning power delivers a powerful clean with nothing extra in the bottle. Need a dish soap that cuts through the tough grease? A detergent that tackles the worst stains and odors? 7th Generation handles it all without any dyes or artificial fragrances. Real clean doesn't have to come with a long list of add-ons. Upgrade to a powerful clean without anything extra. Look for 7th Generation dish soap and laundry detergent wherever. You shop for your cleaning products. So I immediately reverse the deadbolt and take off and go run to my bedroom. Back in those days, there's no cell phone, or at least for me. I had a corded landline. This is the part I am embarrassed to admit, especially as the mother of two girls. I. I. I start to hesitate whether I should call the police. Am I overreacting? To your point, Dax, maybe this is just a neighbor coming by to say hi randomly. You don't want to be a bother. You also don't want it to be that. You don't want it to be something really bad is happening. Yeah, I think that is a lot of it, too. And I'm an eldest daughter, right? We're programmed not to inconvenience. So it's really like, do I really need to bother the police about this? All these things are going through my mind. So what I decide to do is call my boyfriend, who is in New York City, working at the time. He'll be very helpful. Pretty quickly into that conversation, he tells me I need to hang up and call the police. Okay, good, good, good. Yeah, yeah. So I hang up with him. And when I do that, I hear the front door handle jiggling. Oh, boy. So now there's a big sense of urgency. I need to, one, get the police out here, and two, I need to hide. And I'm attached to this landline. So I'm trying to. Hide behind a door with this landline. So I jump behind my bathroom door. It's an en suite bathroom. I get back there, and then all of a sudden, I hear the front door bust open. No! However, my roommate starts screaming my name when that happens. So I hear her screaming, Christina, where are you? Where are you? And I just felt such a sense of relief. I run out there. We're running towards each other. We hug each other. We're both screaming. I'm screaming at her. Oh, my gosh. I think that guy came back. I think he tried to break in. And I stopped long enough to hear her screaming. We pulled up, and the headlights shined, and there was a guy hiding in the bushes just outside the front door. And my date started chasing after him. There we go. Welcome to Texas. Let's go, date. So we're just hysterical together, hugging each other. Had you already connected with the police department at that point? I had not. So we do. We do that very quickly. We call the police, and they send somebody out pretty quickly. I'd say it was probably less than five minutes. We tell him what happened, and they take off trying to find, now, this guy and her date that's chasing after him, see if they can catch him. So while they're doing that, another police car shows up. And there's two officers in this car, and they seem to be maybe a little higher ranking. They have some notebooks that the other officers didn't have. We're talking to them. In the meantime, her date and the other officers return. They could not catch him. No second date for him. He tried, though. Yeah, no, he failed. That was the test. They decide to take our statements. This time, I have a better description, because I saw him pretty close with the people. So I start to tell them he had a shaved head. He had, sorry, Dax, tattoos along his one arm. It was you. I just want to smoke a cigarette together. Jeez. I just wanted to see if you had a lighter. I will say he was not very imposing in stature, maybe 5'8", 5'9". The police officers that I'm telling the description to give each other a look. And it's one of those, they look briefly at each other and keep writing. They know it's Kyle. They know it's somebody. So I look at them, and I go, no, no, no, no. I need to know, what was that? And they proceed to tell us that the description we're giving matches the description of a guy they've been looking for that has sexually assaulted two women in the area. Oh. Oh, my God. Okay, okay. They proceed to tell us that, from what they know from those two instances, he watches his victims for several days, learns their schedules, learns when they're by themselves, and the most vulnerable. And he typically waits for them to either be entering or exiting the apartments and forces his way in. Oh, my God. You look through the peephole. Of course, we're officially disturbed at this point. We give the statement. Of course, they leave their card and let us know to reach out to them. The next day, we call the apartment complex, tell them they need to move us to a second-floor apartment immediately with more visibility. My roommate's dad, who, they're about 30 minutes away. He drove in that night and slept on our couch with a shotgun. Unfortunately, we don't know if they ever caught him or not. We did see a sketch of him on the police department website, wanted for violent sexual assault, and it just really made me realize how close I came to a very scary situation. Oh, my God. Wow, wow, wow. Can I ask a personal question? Question? Well, I'll ask it, and you can decide whether or not to answer it. Okay. Was one of your parents real mercurial? Not necessarily. Like I said, I'm the eldest daughter, so there's a lot of things that I'm intuitive about. I was going to say, you're like hypervigilant. You're dialed into your spidey senses. You are afraid to bother anyone, even though that's their given role. They're there to be bothered. It is hard programmed, for sure. I'm not even saying what your situation is, but it is weird when these things that you wouldn't have chosen end up saving your life down the road, or they end up benefiting you in these weird situations. It's hard to know what programming is beneficial long-term. I don't know. That's where my head goes. No, I've had those same thoughts, for sure. Also, what if the date dropped off your friend, and then your friend was walking up? He would have attacked her. Well, what's also interesting is. He parked in a place we would normally park, but because he's not familiar with it, it just so happened he pulled in in a spot where his headlights just happened to shine on those bushes. I mean, just so many pieces to this that the timing of everything is very fortunate for me. But also terrifying. Did it scar you for life or no? Maybe there's a little bit that's like, okay, I survived that. I trust my instincts. They're pretty spot on. So maybe a little more the other way. I would say your odds of an event like this happening again are exceedingly low. They're already low, and then happen to you. Exactly. I'm going to knock on wood with you. Everyone's knocking on wood. Everyone in your car, knock on wood. Find some wood. It can be plastic wood. That's a thought that counts. Well, thank you for telling us that. Absolutely. So real quick, can I give one shout out? I would be remiss if I didn't to my roommate, Sarah, in this situation. We're still very dear friends. And she is an amazing single mother of two very active twin teenagers. And I'm just endlessly impressed by her as a mother, as a career woman, all those things. So I just want to give her a shout out. Absolutely. Love that. All right. Take care. Have a good day. Bye, guys. Hello. Hello. Where are you? I'm in the Okanagan in Vernon, B.C. Is that like a state? Is that like a state parky area or what is that? It's like our wine country. We call it Napa of the North. It's beautiful here. Wonderful. OK, so does your stalking story take place up there or elsewhere? I am from southwestern Ontario. And the stalking story actually happened in Windsor. In Windsor. Ding, ding, ding. Monica, that's directly on the other side of the Ambassador Bridge. Oh. That's what borders Detroit, Windsor. Oh. You can drink at 19. There's a ton of strip clubs and there's casinos. So Americans go over there and get too drunk and are. A problem for the fine folks of Windsor. OK. One of those strip clubs is actually part of the story. Oh, my God. Wonderful. OK, let us have it. My stalker was actually my ex-boyfriend. But to set the scene, I kind of have to give a little bit of backstory about how that happened. So the story started in 1997. I was 16 years old and he was so charismatic. Everybody loved this guy. He was so funny. He could make a rock cry laughing. He was the life of the party. And everybody wanted his attention, but he choked. shows me. So I was like, oh, hello. Although I was young, it was my second kind of like serious-ish relationship. And I was definitely very much into boys. And so went hard. And then the control started to happen. You know, like he would clock my mileage. He would call everywhere I was supposed to be. If I was at work, he would call to make sure I was there. If I was at a friend's house, he would call to make sure that I was there. This is the most unattractive behavior. I didn't know what gaslighting was in the 90s. And so I just was like, no, no, like you can trust me. I'm not lying. And so I just really played into it. It got bad pretty quickly, but I was fully in. And so the alienation started from friends and family. And then by 98. Was he older than you? Just a year. So I moved to Windsor, Ontario with him, which is about an hour-ish away from my hometown. We moved in with some of his relatives. And I have like a moderately high ACE score, but substance abuse in my home was not one of them. And these adults were actual 90s rock smoking crackheads. You might have met Aaron Weakley in that scenario. I could have. By the time we moved to Windsor, the abuse really ramped up. And at this point, like I was away from all of my friends. I was away from all of my family. There were always signs that he was beating the crap out of me. And so I didn't want to be around my family. And I was always in like a car accident. I was not a bad driver. I just need to put that out there. But I felt so isolated and so alone and so full of shame, which is ridiculous because I didn't do anything wrong. Was he an addict? Was he partaking? Oh, yeah. He took things to an extreme. He took everything to an extreme. And by the fall of 99, I got pregnant. And obviously I take responsibility for that too. But like, I think there might have been some sabotage happening because I definitely was trying not to be pregnant. And by New Year's Eve of 99, we got in a huge fight and we broke up and he left and he went back to our hometown. And I was alone for two weeks. I mean, I still lived with his relatives, but things were starting to like, okay, I'm going to be okay. At this point, I started looking into like adoption options because I just thought I can't be tied to this person for the rest of my life. Is it fair to guess that your own perspective starts returning in his absence? Like when you're with someone that controlling and gaslighting, you have a very warped, reality of what's real. And then in his absence, reality returns. Yeah. Like you can start to breathe and things started to feel good. I was looking for an apartment. I was going to get a new job because I worked with one of these relatives. Everything was just so controlled. And so I was finally going to do stuff on my own. And then he came home mid-January one day and everything was great. We were having great conversation. He seemed really positive, almost looking back a bit manicky, but we're making dinner and we bring it into my room and I'm sitting down on my floor bed. The next thing I know, I woke up in an ambulance being told that I was losing the baby and that I was pretty banged up and I was going to have surgery, but that I was safe and that everything was going to be okay. And so I was in the hospital for a week. And the worst part of it was that my parents then found out because obviously they got called. Well, worst part and best part, probably. Yes. But just the look of my dad's face when he walked in the hospital. It breaks my heart. I know all of us kids feel this shame with our parents, but now that I'm a parent, the notion that there would be anything you should be ashamed of. I know, but it's just like, it's impossible to understand that. But I just know there's no version of any state I could find my children in and think they deserve to feel shame. I am also a parent now and there's nothing. I can't imagine my kids hiding it from me, first of all, but just to find out that this has been going on for so long. A lot to catch up on. Yeah. So I was released from the hospital after about a week, but I went back to my mom's for another about two weeks just to like heal and sort things out because I knew I couldn't go back to that relative's house other than to grab the rest of my stuff. Was he arrested? No, because I refused to press charges. He should have just been arrested anyway. Like the cops should have just kind of taken over. There was a few ER visits in there where like a social worker would come in and do you know how you look right now? And there were some Polaroids taken and like, oh no, it was just a car accident. Okay. I'm just going to get out of here. They knew. Exactly what was going on, but I refused to even admit it. So I got some papers before I went back to my mom's place and I found myself an apartment and it was a shitty little basement apartment and it was perfect because it was all mine. So I went to go get all my stuff and I may have shredded all of his important documentation on the way out the door, but you know, I think it was well-deserved. So I'm in this apartment and I got a new job at a strip club around the corner from my house and I was serving. And at the time it was like $1.60 Canadian for $1 American. I was making money. I was almost 19 years old. I was hot. I was single. I had a newfound, no fucks given attitude. And I was making up for a lot of lost time. It was pretty fantastic. But this apartment was pretty shitty. Like the windows were these little like ship windows. If there was a fire, get out your roasting sticks. Like we're going up, but I didn't even care. So I get to making up for lost time. And very quickly he starts coming into the bar and he's trying to kind of like assert a little bit of dominance. Like he owns me. And so I put a stop to that right away. And the bouncers were very kind. Also, I didn't want to let anybody know what had just happened. I didn't want anybody to see me as that person. And so it was like, oh, we dated. And like, he's just bothering me. They got rid of him. He wasn't allowed to come in anymore, but then he's waiting outside when I'm done work. And just very quickly, everywhere I am, he's there. I walked everywhere at the time. I didn't have a car. I would be walking down the street and I would get that feeling like, the air just gets lost for a second. And I would look around and he's like dipping into a vestibule or he's jumping into a bush or he's trying to hide. Like he knows that I see him, but it didn't feel scary yet. I would get on the bus and he would get on the bus at the next stop and just be on the other side of the bus. His energy really felt as if he was just going to be around and close by until I came to my senses and took him back. This was early 2000. I didn't have a cell phone. I had a pager and a home phone. He couldn't have just checked my location. Like how did this man know where I was at all times? But one night after the bar, we were at Tim Hortons, very Canadian. He cornered me in a bathroom and he decided that he was going to get what was rightfully his. It was the first time I ever actually fought back. And I got myself out of the bathroom and I made it very clear that he was never going to get this again. And that is when the energy really shifted and it felt like he was showing up even more, but I saw him less. It took a turn to feeling a bit more dark and unstable. Well, let's just state it. It maybe feels like if he can't have you now, he's going to kill you. Yeah. At my apartment, there's like these tiny little windows at the top of the ceiling. And so you can kind of see when feet walk by. The only reason anyone would be walking by was to go into my apartment and I got a motion sensor light installed and I would come home and the bulb would be unscrewed. And at the same time, I really wasn't taking great care of myself. I was drinking a ton, whatever drugs were on offer. And so there was a good week, maybe 10 days where I was just feeling really not great, but pushing through. And then I woke up one day and it went from bad to worse. I was so sick. I thought I had the flu. And at the time it was like, I'd rather die in a ditch than ask somebody for help. So there's about three days of feeling like I'm actually going to die. And I was laying on my futon in the living room and I'm like, I need some water. And I go to get up and then I remember opening my eyes and dude is above me, upside down, holding my face and like slapping my cheeks. And he has scared me before, but like the level of terror that I felt in that moment, I didn't know what happened. I was confused. I was delirious. Like, did he do this? And is he going to kill me? And he calls a cab. He picks me up. He brings me outside to a cab. I don't remember him telling me where he was taking me. I was so weak. I probably couldn't have even asked anyway. And then we pull up to the hospital, the same fucking hospital that he had put me in not even five months earlier. A lot of it is a little bit blurry. I wasn't going to ask for confirmation, but immediate action was taken at the hospital. And then a little while later, the doctor tells me that my kidneys were actively shutting down. He said, if I hadn't gotten it for 12 hours, that I likely would have been on dialysis for the rest of my life. Oh my God. So he was peering in my fucking window and saw me passed out, came into my apartment and got me to the hospital. Dude, your attacker saved you. This is so complicated. And we were still pretty fresh out from all of it. You know, like we were together for two and a half years. And for most of that two and a half years, he beat the shit out of me. But when it was good, it was great. I now understand you can't really get those like really high highs without some of the really low lows. And it was so confusing. So I was in the hospital for 18 hours and then they let me go home and get home health care to come in a few times a day at my mom's house to get like the IV antibiotics to get better from the kidney infections. So he stayed with me for the entire 18 hours. He was so loving. He didn't sleep. He barely ate. He took such good care of me. He advocated for me with the doctors, it was so good. And it felt really comforting. Like I felt so taken care of by him. And it was so confusing because he practically took my life not five months ago. And we are getting ready to leave and I'm getting ready to go back to my mom's to like heal and get the rest of these antibiotics. And he really thought that we were going to leave the hospital and ride off in the sunset together. And we were just going to pick up right where we left off. And I had to have like a come to Jesus moment with him and explain, thank you. I genuinely appreciate what you just did for me. And I forgive you for everything that you did in the past. But I can never forget it. And so I told him for that reason and that reason alone, we will never be together again. And he finally listened. It is the very last day that I looked that man in the eyes. I have never seen him in person again. Wow. Well, good. Maybe he locked into something different. Yeah, that's that's wild. Yeah. But the story does have a happy ending because life is really good. And shortly after that, I met my best friend, Erin Weekly. She's the reason that we moved to VC here. And I met my husband two weeks later. We've been together for 23 years. Oh, wow. Wonderful. Oh, well, Chloe, it's been so nice meeting you. Have a great summer. You as well. Bye. Stocking's bad. It is. The hardest part is like trying to determine both for the victim and the police that get called. Like, is it a peeping Tom? That's terrible. But that's one thing. Yeah. Is it something much darker? There's levels of severity and it's slippery. Yeah, it's hard to know. Oh, gosh. Well, guys, don't get stocked and don't stock. Yes, don't stock. All right. Love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? I want to have a theme song. Oh, okay. Great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the flyer, I'm dish. Enjoy.