Dear Daisy, I Was Almost Abducted From My Hotel!
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. And this is Daisy. She's sitting on my lap if you're listening. And she is with us because today we are doing our Dear Daisy for July. These are listener submitted episodes.

Sound like you're on The Price is Right. A new car! Exactly. Scared me a little bit, not gonna lie. Well, they won. They won with Dear Daisies. Oh, okay. Just a reminder, you can submit your Dear Daisy on any of the links that we have below because we were always needing more Dear Daisies. Okay, I'm starting with the first one from Sophie and it's titled The Van in the Park.

Off to a good start. It was 2012 and I had just turned 10. My cousins had recently moved from Utah to our small town in Idaho. We lived in a super safe area about 20 minutes outside of Idaho Falls. While my family lived in the middle of the potato fields outside of city limits, my cousins had moved into a suburban house that was within walking distance to the town pool and park.

This meant most summer days we spent at their house so we could have the freedom to walk around the town and find things to do. It was very normal for us to be on our own and walk back and forth to the house, pool, or park throughout the day. It was another hot day, and me and my younger two cousins, Emery that was age 10 and Zoe that was age 9, had run out of activities at their house, so we decided we wanted to walk to the park that was two blocks away to spend the rest of the afternoon.

My mom always told me to be aware of my surroundings and stranger danger. Literally everywhere we went and still to this day, she warns me of creepy people and trusting your gut when you have a bad feeling. She loves true crime and is a huge fan, by the way. The topic of getting kidnapped came up and how we would escape. I had just learned about the Elizabeth Smart case and that was all we talked about. We talked about how we needed to avoid white vans that didn't have windows in the back.

We even decided to grab a rock and write a message on it just in case we did get kidnapped, we could leave behind a message for our families. I don't know why we were so focused on getting kidnapped. Nothing had ever happened to make us feel like this was a real worry.

After gathering our backpacks, the rock, and our scooters that we would need at the park, we sent my youngest cousin Zoe inside to ask my aunt if we could leave. Then we left down the street on our scooters. We get to the completely empty park, still talking about getting kidnapped, and decided to fill our pockets with gravel and pine cones to use as weapons. We climbed this log house that was part of the playground. Okay, this is actually just hilarious. Like, the fact that their whole afternoon walking to the park is all about getting kidnapped and...

rocks and filling their pockets with pine cones so that they'd have weapons in case they get kidnapped.

Like it's so something I would have done. Especially it's like, what's a pine cone going to do if someone has a gun? Right. That's great. She says, we climbed this log house that was part of the playground equipment, deciding this was the best vantage point to look out for creepy men. Obviously. Not even 10 minutes after we got to the park, to our horror, a white van with no windows in the back pulled into the empty parking lot. We tried to keep calm and decided that it must be some more people who wanted to play at the park.

We watched cautiously, but after a few minutes, no one had gotten out. All three of us had a horrible sinking feeling that whoever was in the van was watching us. Together, we decided to climb down, find our scooters, and ride home as quickly as possible. As we started to scoot away, I looked back over my shoulder and saw the van slowly pulled out and followed us down the block. We tried to stay calm and not freak out. This could all be a coincidence. The scooters were... Sorry. What? What?

This is so like, I know it's not funny because now they're actually getting followed. But just the fact that they were like planning a whole play day about getting kidnapped and then this van pulls in and they are actually now like possibly getting kidnapped. What's up with vans? Like you think they would have changed up a little bit? You know, people who are creepy and have these creepy vans. Like let's start going with nice vans just to really throw people off. They did. Semi-trucks.

Okay, well, I mean, even those aren't that nice. I'm saying like, let's start getting like luxury vans. You really start throwing people off. You want to throw up in like a Honda van? Yeah, exactly. Like a minivan, like brand new 2023. Yeah. Like roll up in the Odyssey. We're tired of the old white van with no windows. Actually, maybe don't do that because now I feel like I'm encouraging like. Yeah. So nevermind. Keep going to the creepy vans.

The scooters were slowing us down, so we ditched them under someone's porch and started to walk-run back to the park, still trying not to panic.

We then watched as the van slowed and turned around back to the park still following us. Now we were fully panicking. This was not a coincidence anymore. The van was catching up to us. At this point we were all in tears and had switched directions again running away from the park and trying to outrun the van. Again the van did the same. It felt like cat and mouse and we were certain we were about to be abducted. The van caught up then parked in front of us and the doors opened.

Fully sprinting down the block back to the park and away from the two men getting out, we suddenly heard the unmistakable squeaking of my aunt's red van coming down the road. She pulled against the curb, absolutely pissed that we had left. Apparently, when my cousin asked for permission to leave, my aunt had been on the phone and didn't hear her ask. My cousin mistook my aunt saying yes on the phone as her saying yes, we could go to the park.

But when she saw our faces and our tears, she immediately knew something was wrong. We pointed to the white van parked against the curb and explained how it had followed us back and forth from the park.

She put us in the car and marched up to the steps of the house that the van had been parked next to. This is what she told us happened when she knocked on the door. A small girl, maybe seven, answered the door. She seemed very quiet and very reserved. My aunt described a very sick gut feeling as soon as the door opened. My aunt asked for an adult and the girl offered to get one of her uncles. A man came to the door and my aunt chewed him out, demanding why he had been following her girls from the park.

The man denied everything and shooed her away pretty quickly. But she had gotten a good look at the man and the other man who had come to the door. As soon as we got home, we opened a computer and pulled up the city's sex offender registry. Both men were on the website. Unfortunately, they hadn't committed a crime by just driving creepily in their car, so nothing could be done. I'm surprised. Like, you're not supposed to be around little children, though, correct? And there was a seven-year-old there.

yeah but i don't know if it's family as well okay but it was a very scary experience and shook us all up for several weeks i think it's so crazy that for whatever reason that day we were convinced we were going to get kidnapped and just so happened that we almost did very grateful we were aware of our surrounding trusted our gut when we felt uncomfortable and that my aunt was on the phone when we asked to go and didn't know we left if she gave us permission to leave she wouldn't have driven to get us and possibly saved us from a terrifying situation we

We never found our scooters again. And I still have the rock we wrote our kidnapped message on. My mom's sisters and I love the show and always discuss the cases that come out. Thank you so much for sharing these stories and honoring the people involved. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. We'll put this on Instagram if you follow on Instagram. And we'll throw this on YouTube if you listen on YouTube. But if you're not going to check, it says it's the literal rock and on it in Sharpie marker. It says we have been kidnapped. Help signed by their names.

Signed or like... Let me see. Like written their names. Like written their names. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I thought you meant they did a signature. I'm like, how is someone going to read that? That's hilarious. That's actually really scary. But I just...

I couldn't help but laugh as I was hearing because the amount of times I've done that exact thing as a kid, like the amount they basically described half of the time I played outside, I would just look around and go, am I going to get kidnapped? Where would I run? What would I do? I've never done that. Maybe it's because I'm a male. Maybe.

But even like when Columbine shooting happened every day at school, I'd just sit and go, how would I get to my sister? How would we then get home? What would be my plan? No, I've done that. I've for sure done that before with like, uh, public shootings. But as a kid, uh,

Probably high school. Me and you are not the same. You were like seven doing it? Yeah. I would also do it at night, which is probably why I have so much anxiety at night because it started as a little kid. I would sit and go, if I heard someone break in right now, where would I hide? How would I get out? Like, would they be able to find me? It's probably why our house is like a...

Fort Knox. Would be like breaking into a bank. There's like little red lasers everywhere that someone would have to dodge. It literally. I think we need to stop saying that or someone's going to take it as a challenge. They will take it as a challenge. Okay. Our next one is sent in by Ashley and it's titled Peyton's going to tell Garrett about us one day. Dear Daisy. My

My kids think I'm overly cautious. They tell me all of the time that I listen to too many podcasts to which I respond. At least now we all know to stay alert and what kind of evils are out there. Like you always say, it's always the ones who say it could never happen to me.

Oh.

Beyond that, we never would have thought that on our way home we could tack on a last-minute overnight canoe trip in Missouri camping on a random riverbank. I worried about him being able to handle the trip, but he was not going to allow his back to prevent us from doing anything.

It was truly a magical day navigating the crystal clear waters of the Black River, swimming and exploring the beautiful area. We decided to pitch camp early to give our damp items time to dry in the sun. It was so peaceful and relaxing with not a single soul in sight. We were all alone on the riverbank, myself, my husband, and our two kids, 13 and 15 years old. We

We started to nod off before dark, completely exhausted from canoeing and swimming in the hot sun all day. I had downloaded a few podcasts to listen to and fell asleep with voices streaming through my Bluetooth hearing aids. I woke with a jolt to voices I assumed were from my podcast and turned it off. I just nodded back off when boom, I felt something hit the tent and my husband instantly screamed, hey.

I could hear male voices from what seemed like right above our heads. There was lots of splashing from the river and loud, incoherent conversation. I was still in a daze, barely awake, when my husband yelled, no. My heart was pounding faster than ever before when I asked my husband where his knife was. He waved me off and I wasn't sure that he was even conscious or aware of what was happening as he is a very hard sleeper, many times not even recalling full conversations we've held at night.

Jeez. I'm confused. What's happening?

I was alone in my thoughts, all of the worst of the worst possibilities running through my head. I couldn't call anyone. There's no service here. Where did they go? Were they lying in wait? Were they going to pounce any second? Oh my gosh, one day Peyton is going to tell Garrett about us.

Speaking of my husband, did he even have a clue what was going on? After about 10 minutes, my son, who slept through the whole ordeal, whispered,

You good, mom? I very quietly said, yeah, I am good, trying to appear fine when I was anything but fine. My husband awoke and asked me again if I was okay, and I nodded, trying to convince not only him but myself as well. Finally, about 45 minutes later, I gently woke him up and whispered, I don't want to tell you this in front of the kids, and I am trying so hard to be strong, but I am scared. Can we please talk about what just happened? Being hard of hearing, I needed the facts, and I needed to talk this out so I could have a better understanding and hopefully calm down.

After comparing what each of us had heard, the group was kayaking the river in the pitch black dark and pulled onto the riverbank, commenting on our tent, asking was anyone in it. My daughter said she sat there physically shaking, wondering if her dad or I had heard it and waiting for one of us to answer them. She was not going to let them know a kid was in there by answering. She could hear them walking on the rocks near our camp when they got no response after multiple attempts to find out if the tent was occupied. One of them threw a freaking rock at our tent. This

This is what I had felt and what caused my husband to scream, hey. Somewhere in all of the yelling and incoherent talking that I had heard, they had asked if we had any cigarettes, which was when my husband yelled no. My husband said that...

based on the voices he thinks it was a family lost on the river eventually they did go down the river and we were able to sleep albeit not soundly i must have woke up every five to ten minutes to every real and imagined sound i have never been so happy to see the sun while this didn't have any of the traumatic endings i imagined in that pitch black dark of night it really was probably the most scared i've ever been and i am fairly certain this was our last camping trip

for a while, if not for our entire lives. Wow. P.S., Murder With My Husband is our family's favorite podcast. We love y'all, love your show, and appreciate how genuine you both are. Be safe, and remember, don't throw rocks at tents. That's...

It's so hard because she is hard of hearing. Yeah. And so she wakes up and she's questioning everything, but also being frozen in silence. Like, do you, do you respond? Do you get up? Do you try to like, that is just such a tough call. It's also hard because I think people don't realize like how scary that is sometimes. Like to the other people, they were like,

We're not going to hurt anybody. We're just messing around. But other people don't know that. You just woke a family up in the middle of the night, pitch black in a tent. There's crazy people out there. How do I know you're not a crazy person? I would have been traumatized. Yeah. If that had been me. Also, that is why Peyton and I don't camp. Yep. Too scary. It's not the reason we don't camp. Peyton just doesn't like camping very much. I feel like if that had happened to us while camping. I would have called the cops. Yeah, you probably would have called the cops. Mm-hmm.

But there was no service. Yeah, there was no service, so I don't know. I would have been shaking in my boots. Yeah. The next one is from Tanya, and it's titled Spring Break Nightmare. Dear Daisy, like others, I am here to share an abduction story with you. It still gives me chills today thinking about that night. I fully believe that if my boyfriend at the time had not been on this trip, my roommate and I would not have come home.

Spring break 2015. My college roommate, my boyfriend, and myself headed off on a road trip from Oklahoma down to South Texas and looped back around through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Before we keep going, I feel like, obviously I believe, I believe every one of these stories. I'm just curious, like, how many people almost get kidnapped? Probably a ton.

Like how many kidnappers are out there? You know what I'm saying? I don't know. It's hard because like I... I guess what I'm trying to say is obviously I believe every one of these stories, but sure there's stories out there that... Or like I almost got kidnapped and it was a misunderstanding. Obviously didn't. I'm not saying this is them. I'm just saying in general. Like how many... I think you're a hater and I'm going to move on. I'm not. I'm not a hater. I'm just like...

There's a lot of kidnappers out there. You know what I'm saying? It's better safe than sorry. I know. I agree. I agree. I think it's hard to look. I'm coming from a male perspective and it's never happened to me. Yeah. And I am fully aware of that. Watch me go to the store today and almost get kidnapped. I know. But it still does happen for females. I think it's just way more common. And boys get kidnapped. I mean, same thing with essay, right?

Like, it's just, it's more common for females. It's not, it's not nearly as common for males. And so I think that's why sometimes it's hard for males to sympathize and like understand like, oh, you didn't almost get kidnapped. But no, I mean.

It happens. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. She says, my story, however, took place in Houston. We got up super early that morning and hit the road. We took turns driving the 10 and a half hours to reach Houston that evening. When we got there, we decided to be super cheap on a hotel. Never do this. So we looked for one close to a few dancing places we wanted to try. We found a little...

What do you mean never do this? She wrote that. Oh, okay. I thought you were- You thought I just added my little peanut gallery in there? Yeah, I thought you said never do this. I'm like, well, some people can't afford. She wrote that. Okay, okay. Maybe I should have said parentheses. That's funny. We found a little one that was very reasonable. My roommate and I went to check in and my boyfriend went to park the car. The

The front desk man gave off a very strange vibe, but didn't feel threatening in any way. Just gave off a weird presence, but we knew we were not staying at a Hilton. We got the keys to the room and headed to meet my boyfriend. When we opened the door to our room, we were a little creeped out. There were bright red walls, mirrors on the walls and the ceiling. Insert red flags here.

The room was clean enough for some cheap traveling college students and there weren't stains on everything. The bathroom didn't appear as if anyone had been slaughtered in it, but there was only one large towel and a couple hand towels. Obviously not enough for all three of us. So my roommate and I decided to go ask for more while my boyfriend unloaded the car. You know, this makes me realize everybody that listens is like Peyton. Yeah.

It's just a bunch of patents. I mean, besides the mail. You just thought I was alone in my besides the mail that listen. But yeah, because you would have said the same thing. You would have the same thing. And like, oh, F no. Get us out of here right now. Yeah. Someone had been killed in the bathroom. I'd be freaking up there with my flashlight on my phone, just looking at the cracks, just going, do you think that's blood? There's cameras in here.

So we went back to the office and the same gentleman was still there. We asked him if we could get some more towels. Awkwardly, he said he could only give us one more. Puzzled, we told him we needed three.

He informed us that only two were allowed in a room and turned and walked away after handing us the only towel he would give us apparently. My roommate and I were a bit confused and very annoyed but decided we were only here for one night and we would just figure it out. After this we all got ready, went out to dinner and hit up a couple bars and danced. We got back to our room around 10 30 p.m. We wanted to get on the road at a decent hour so we didn't want to party all night. Now

Now keep in mind, at this time the front desk man had only seen me and my roommate. He never saw that we had my boyfriend with us at the hotel.

Also, just going to throw this out there. I grew up in Nebraska, right along Interstate 80, which is a very high trafficking interstate. My mother always told my sisters and I about being careful when we went to the mall with friends because someone could grab you and ship you to Mexico and we'd never see you again. Oh, dang. I always thought she was just being a little crazy and overprotective. Her words stick with me more now than they ever did back in those high school days. Anyway, so back to the story. We went to bed around 11 p.m. that night and all was quiet around us. But then...

2 a.m. strikes. Fire alarms begin to blare in our room. Lights flashing, screaming alarms. I am startled awake, disoriented, and not knowing what is going on. All three of us jump out of bed trying to get our bearings. None of us smell smoke or see flames. My roommate looks out the window to see what's going on, and everything is quiet in the parking lot, and no one else is coming out of their rooms. No fire trucks, no flashing lights outside, no smoke, no flames. She looks at us and says,

There's nothing out there. At that moment, a boom, boom, boom, boom hits our door and a voice says, open up. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. She peered out the curtain again and saw a large man standing there looking around the parking lot and the front desk man standing a few doors down.

He hits the door again several times and yells, open the door. My roommate looks at us and is like, I'm not opening that door. Hey, where's the boyfriend? Still there. Okay. We all look at each other, the alarms blaring in our ears and lights flashing in our eyes. My boyfriend says he will open it and see what's going on. So my roommate and I go to the other side of the room and wait. He goes to the door, cracks it just a little and says, can I help you?

What the F? What the F?

I didn't sleep at all the rest of the night. Not another sound was heard, but an eerie silence hung in the air. The next morning, we got moving early and got the hell out of there as fast as we could. As we were loading our car, I saw a couple families loading up as well. They didn't appear as if they heard the commotion the night before. Had we just imagined the whole thing? I didn't want to be a crazy girl that went up to strangers and asked if they had alarms and lights going off in their room too.

After this experience, we paid a lot more for hotels the rest of the trip and didn't think twice about it. That's so weird. I fully believe that had my boyfriend not been with us on this trip, we would have had a very different outcome. I don't know what this man wanted, but I know that it wasn't good. Had the front desk man seen my boyfriend, would this have even happened to us? Or because there appeared to only be two girls in this room, were we targets?

These are questions I still ask myself today, and now having a daughter of my own, I ponder how to prepare her and make her aware of these situations. I think about my own mother's warnings and how silly they seemed to me at the time. I hope this story enlightens everyone to be vigilant at all times and maybe pay a little extra on a hotel sometimes. Thank you for hearing my story. Your podcast is one of my favorites, and I found you through your Mile Higher episode. Love your take on these stories and the respect you give the victims. Tanya.

That's crazy. What happened? I'm going to say she's right on the money. You think so? Yeah, they were going to take them. It was a shanty hotel. Is that the word? I don't know. It sounded good to me. That's insane. Yeah. What is wrong with the world? Money. Apparently.

That's so crazy. All right, you guys. Well, that was our last story for this month's Dear Daisies. And remember to write your stories and they can be about anything. They can be about creepy things that have happened in your town, creepy things that have happened in your house, ghost encounters, true crime experiences, whatever. And we will see you next time. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.