2023 Recap - Part 2

[00:00:04] Welcome to part 2 of my 2023 recap. I've got a lot of experiences to get to, so let's begin.

[00:00:45] Thank you for joining me and welcome. I'm your host, Nick Ryan.

[00:00:51] Let's begin with our first experience of the night, which comes to us from Rochelle.

[00:00:57] And Rochelle's story is called, The Night My Dad Died.

[00:01:01] Rochelle says,

[00:01:31] This might be why I've had things happen in my life that I couldn't fully explain away.

[00:01:38] My story takes place back in November of 2019.

[00:01:42] My dad had been ill and in declining health for some time.

[00:01:46] As a result of new developments in his failing health, we were forced to put him into palliative

[00:01:51] care in the hospital for the last few days of his life. At that time, my dad was starting to lose

[00:01:57] cognition and didn't know where he was or who we were, so we had no other choice.

[00:02:03] We all knew that he didn't have much time.

[00:02:07] On his second night in the hospital, I was visiting, along with my mom and my sister.

[00:02:12] He was heavily medicated which was causing him to waver from moments of paranoia and delusions

[00:02:18] to being fast asleep. It was really hard to watch and we decided that we would leave him to rest

[00:02:24] and then come back the next morning. As we were leaving the room, I stopped and it was like someone

[00:02:30] or something had told me to go back in and make sure that I said a proper goodbye. So I went back

[00:02:36] and kissed his forehead and whispered into his ear that I loved him and that I would be back tomorrow.

[00:02:43] We left and then each of us went back to our respective homes for the night.

[00:02:48] That evening I felt very heavy. It's hard to describe other than saying it's the feeling

[00:02:53] you have when you know that something is going to happen. Of course, I didn't think much of it

[00:02:58] considering that we all knew my dad wouldn't be with us much longer. I spent the next few hours

[00:03:04] talking to my husband and then called some friends and family members to update them on my dad's

[00:03:09] condition. I went to bed around 11 and after more than two hours of tossing and turning, I started

[00:03:15] drifting off into a very restless sleep. I was just falling asleep and in that stage where you

[00:03:21] are somewhere between awake and asleep. And that's when I heard a voice. To me it sounded like

[00:03:27] my mom's voice as loud and clear as if she were standing right next to me. And it said,

[00:03:33] Rochelle, it's done. I bolted up in bed and looked around, bleary-eyed expecting to see my mom in my

[00:03:40] bedroom. I immediately thought, when did my mom get here? And why is she in my room? I then turned

[00:03:46] the bedside light on and nobody was there except my husband who was sleeping deeply next to me.

[00:03:53] After looking around for a moment, I grabbed my phone and checked for texts or calls,

[00:03:57] but there were none. At this point it was 1.33 in the morning. I quickly sent a text to my mom

[00:04:04] asking if she was awake and when she didn't reply, I assumed that she was asleep at her house

[00:04:09] and I laid back down, turning off the light. Well, needless to say that my heart was pounding at this

[00:04:16] point and sleep wasn't on the agenda. So I turned on my Kindle and tried to read a bit, hoping that

[00:04:22] it would help me to fall asleep. The room was completely dark except for the soft glow of my

[00:04:28] Kindle. After a couple of minutes of reading, I caught a glimpse of something moving in my

[00:04:33] peripheral vision. I looked over the Kindle and saw nothing but darkness and no movement.

[00:04:39] So I continued reading. A few seconds later though, I saw it again. It was like something

[00:04:45] darting from left to right in front of me. I quickly turned my Kindle around so I could use

[00:04:50] the faint light to see if anything was there and at first I saw nothing, but after a few moments

[00:04:57] I realized that there was something flying around the room. I clicked on my light and sure enough

[00:05:02] there it was. A bat. A freaking bat in my bedroom. So I did the only self-respecting thing that a

[00:05:09] person would do and I shrieked like a banshee, pulling the covers over my head. My husband

[00:05:15] immediately woke up thinking that we were under some kind of attack and asking what was wrong.

[00:05:19] From under the covers I yelled that there was a bat in the room which he quickly spotted as it

[00:05:24] fluttered around looking for a dark place to land and hide. My husband quickly grabbed a towel and

[00:05:30] captured the critter releasing it outside and into the night. We then looked around to see where it

[00:05:36] might have entered and the only place that we can think of was that it came in through our fireplace

[00:05:40] chimney. It's a gas fireplace insert and we have never had anything get in through there before,

[00:05:46] but to be safe we covered it up tightly and hoped that there weren't any more night critters on

[00:05:51] their way. By the time that we had calmed down from this ordeal it was about an hour later

[00:05:57] and I started to tell my husband about the voice that I had heard earlier. Two such strange events

[00:06:03] in one night was really perplexing and he was a bit freaked out. Just as I finished telling him

[00:06:09] about it, my phone rang. It was my sister calling to tell me that my mom was on her way to the hospital

[00:06:15] as my dad had passed away. It wasn't until the next morning that I found out that he had passed away

[00:06:21] around 1 45 am. However, the sitter who was supposed to be monitoring him had left the room

[00:06:27] and they didn't realize that he was gone until about an hour and a half later. That means that

[00:06:33] he would have passed or been in transition of passing away just when I had heard the voice

[00:06:39] of my mother. After the funeral, my mom, sister, and I were sitting and talking about that night.

[00:06:46] I told them what had happened and my mom told me that her sister, my aunt who had passed about a

[00:06:51] year earlier, had a voice that sounded very similar to hers and people often confuse them

[00:06:56] on the phone. This gave me chills. Could it have been my aunt telling me that he was passing away

[00:07:02] alone? This made me feel incredibly sad. I then googled the meaning of seeing a bat in your home

[00:07:10] and found out that apparently it's an omen of death. Supposedly, if you find a bat in your

[00:07:14] home and you kill it, you will prevent the death. However, if you release it, as my husband did,

[00:07:20] then a death will follow. I've never had a bat in my room before or after that night.

[00:07:28] As I look back on the events of that evening and night, I can clearly see all the signs that were

[00:07:33] given to me, although I did not immediately recognize them. In hindsight, I've had a lot

[00:07:39] of other messages and signs from spirits in the past, but it's only now that I'm in my mid-40s

[00:07:45] that I've started to acknowledge and accept them for what they are. I hope my story may

[00:07:51] help others to recognize that the signs and messages they may usually ignore just might be

[00:07:57] something more. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Nick. I wish you and the listeners

[00:08:04] all the best in the new year. Our next experience of the night comes to us from Danny,

[00:08:14] and Danny's story is called 40 Years of Varied Experiences. Danny says,

[00:08:22] Hello Nick. Like many others, I want to thank you for creating this platform.

[00:08:27] I have always been drawn to the paranormal and have been fascinated by time slips and ghosts,

[00:08:32] but I am learning about so many phenomena I never knew existed before, like black-eyed kids,

[00:08:38] dogmen, and men in black. I am grateful to be able to listen to all of these experiences

[00:08:45] and widen my perspective. I want to share with you and the listeners what I have experienced

[00:08:50] throughout my life. I have four key experiences to share, with the first one being quite mild.

[00:08:57] I was about 7 or 8 and in my lounge room near Sydney, Australia. I looked out my window and

[00:09:03] there was someone flying through the sky, except they weren't positioned like they were flying,

[00:09:08] they were in a sitting position just moving through the sky at about a running pace. It was

[00:09:13] a male, maybe 20 to 30 years old. He was dressed in everyday clothes with nothing out of the

[00:09:19] ordinary, except that he was flying through the sky. Then he turned and saw me and kept staring

[00:09:25] for a couple of seconds in complete shock that I could see him. He then flew out of view,

[00:09:31] and that was it. My next experience was in my teenage years. For context, the movie The Craft

[00:09:38] was out when my friends and I were teenagers in the mid-90s. For those of you that haven't heard

[00:09:43] of it, it's a movie about teenage girls practicing witchcraft and spells, so it wasn't out of the

[00:09:49] ordinary for teenage girls to be influenced by this and play with Ouija boards during this era.

[00:09:55] We were ignorant teenagers who didn't do research on how to properly conduct a seance.

[00:09:59] We would simply create our own Ouija board with pen and paper, grab a candle and glass,

[00:10:05] and start. I look back and shake my head at our stupidity. We would ask to speak to spirits,

[00:10:12] and regularly got a spirit calling itself Satan or the Devil, and we would get annoyed and taunt it

[00:10:18] and swear at it. This went on for a year or so. One day it was just her and I. We were the two

[00:10:25] drawn to the paranormal. One weekend we did a seance as usual, but this particular day we got

[00:10:31] impatient and annoyed at the responses that we were getting, so we left the house and were talking

[00:10:36] about the spirits and taunting them, even though we had left the board back at the house. We had

[00:10:42] walked down to the beach and we were walking on the sand, yelling at the spirit to prove to us

[00:10:47] that it was real. We were really yelling and being a little dramatic when out of nowhere there was a

[00:10:53] booming NO that came from the sky. It was like its patience had run out and it knew this would

[00:11:00] get us to stop. Well, it was right. We both stopped and looked at each other and screamed,

[00:11:07] and then ran back to the house a few minutes away without stopping or even looking back.

[00:11:12] This response had echoed through the sky and you could feel it in your chest like being in front of

[00:11:17] a speaker at a big concert. We tried to be logical once we were back in the safety of the house.

[00:11:22] We were on a quiet beach with small waves and nothing could create this big boom noise. There

[00:11:28] were no roads or flight paths nearby, or mines or anything that would create such a noise. There were

[00:11:34] no clouds in the sky, let alone a storm nearby where thunder could account for the noise. Even if

[00:11:40] a nearby house, of which there weren't many, had been working with power tools or something like

[00:11:44] that, the sound couldn't have come from that angle. It came from right above us and it was booming down.

[00:11:52] We stopped doing seances after that. I'm confident that we let a few nasty things out during our time

[00:11:59] doing seances, and I regret that, and I wish that we didn't play around with things that we didn't

[00:12:04] appreciate or understand. I think my next experience is a direct result of not opening

[00:12:10] and closing seances properly. During the rest of my teenage years and my twenties,

[00:12:17] I would have horrible dreams. I would consistently wake up between 3 and 4 a.m., most of the time at

[00:12:24] exactly 3.16 a.m. Only recently I found out the meaning of it, and it is a bit daunting, but it

[00:12:31] also helps me to understand what happened to me. It happened so often I stopped using a bedside

[00:12:37] clock so I couldn't know what time it was and be scared. I would wake up and there would be a very

[00:12:43] negative entity in the room. I could never see it, but I always knew it was there. Sometimes it would

[00:12:48] just be near me, and other times while I was asleep it tried to take over my body. I don't know if

[00:12:54] possess is the right word, but I would feel a misty shadow figure try and enter my body. Sometimes I

[00:13:01] would wake up terrified, but just in time, and sometimes I would wake up almost fighting off

[00:13:07] the spirit. This happened in many houses in three different states, several thousand kilometers apart,

[00:13:14] so I can only deduce that I am the common denominator. I would lay there and manifest a

[00:13:20] bright white light in the center of my body, and expand it so I had a protective bubble around me.

[00:13:26] I would usually expand it out to the property boundary, and I would ensure that it was secure

[00:13:31] and say in my head that negative entities weren't welcome, and could not pass through it. I could feel

[00:13:37] the negative entities staring at me from the surface of the bubble that I had created. Sometimes

[00:13:43] I could only get the bubble big enough for one reason or another, and could only do the room I

[00:13:48] was in, and the entity would be at the doorway staring at me, even though there was nothing

[00:13:53] visually there. I look back at it now, and wonder how I ever slept. I went for years without having

[00:14:01] any bad dreams or events, but in my late 30s, in the middle of the night, I had a terrible dream about

[00:14:07] a negative entity, and woke up while sitting up in bed, and making the most inhuman guttural growl

[00:14:13] noise I didn't think possible with my voice box. It's like it had been successful in taking over

[00:14:19] my body. However, I did the protective bubble again, and I told a friend that I was so spooked,

[00:14:25] which is something I hadn't done before. I was not religious at all, but I did put an open bible

[00:14:31] and a gifted cross necklace in my bedside drawer for protection, and I was relieved and somewhat

[00:14:36] impressed that it stopped this entity. I still have them in my drawer. My third experience is

[00:14:44] when I lost my mom in 2015. Within 12 months of being diagnosed with cancer, she had developed

[00:14:51] other forms of cancer and passed away in a way that she never wanted to go. About a month before

[00:14:57] she passed, she was really sick, and I flew down to be with her. I was there for a fortnight, and in

[00:15:04] that time she had picked right back up to a point where it looked like she was going to be on the

[00:15:08] mend, so much so that I flew back home. Another week and a half went by when I got a call in the

[00:15:15] morning saying that she had deteriorated suddenly and that I should make my way back down there.

[00:15:21] Where I was living at the time was fairly remote, and there were only a couple of flights a day that

[00:15:26] left at about midnight, so I had to wait until later at night to start traveling. I was asleep

[00:15:32] on the red-eye flight curled over with my head on the tray table when out of nowhere I woke up

[00:15:38] in an instant. I sat straight up like a shot and looked straight outside to the night sky and the

[00:15:44] stars. I looked out for a minute, and I felt different. I don't know how else to explain it,

[00:15:49] but eventually I went back to sleep. When I got to my train station at about 7 30 a.m.,

[00:15:56] some family members were there, and they all had a look on their faces, and I knew that she was gone.

[00:16:03] They told me that she had passed away at about 4 a.m. This would have been right when I was on the

[00:16:09] flight. I kick myself to this day for not checking to see what time it was when I suddenly woke up,

[00:16:14] but it obviously wasn't something I was meant to know. However, I believe that it was the moment

[00:16:21] that she passed away. A week and a half later, I was back home after the funeral, and I had a dream

[00:16:27] that certainly didn't feel like a dream. I was sitting with my mom on the edge of the bed,

[00:16:32] and we were having a great chat about random things. When I was younger, we would sit in her

[00:16:37] bedroom in the mornings and do the crossword together and talk and enjoy the morning sun,

[00:16:42] so this dream was a continuation of that tradition. She looked healthy and happy,

[00:16:48] and nothing like the pained, sick person that she had been for the previous year.

[00:16:53] Then at some point, I realized that she had passed away, and this catch-up was pretty special. My

[00:16:59] mom's partner had not coped with her death well at all, so I said to my mom,

[00:17:04] I should get a photo of you so I can send it to Mark. He would really appreciate that.

[00:17:09] But my mom said very quickly, no, I'm not allowed to do that, and she then stopped me from reaching

[00:17:16] across her to get my phone. I found that a bit shocking as my mom was a rule-breaker her entire

[00:17:22] life. Nothing nasty, just cheeky and defiant in little harmless ways. So her reaction was

[00:17:28] confounding because she would have been the first person to tout the rules for a laugh.

[00:17:33] That's when I realized that this was her final goodbye, and there was a higher being that set

[00:17:38] the rules on how spirits were to behave. I haven't had a dream like that about her since.

[00:17:46] My last experience is related to a potential past life. My grandmother passed away when my mom was

[00:17:53] six from heart complications, so I obviously never met her. I am the eldest granddaughter,

[00:17:59] and my middle name is after hers. I don't know how to describe it properly, but I feel like

[00:18:05] I am her, reincarnated. There have been a few moments where I have made life decisions,

[00:18:10] and I wonder if it's in response to what she wasn't able to do in her life, either due to

[00:18:15] the traditions such as marriage and children and limited education, or due to her life being cut

[00:18:22] short. It's like she can now live the life she wanted through me, slash her. I was at a family

[00:18:30] reunion in my early twenties. We had them annually. My grandfather had three brothers. They were the

[00:18:36] four heads of the entire family now, as all great-grandparents had passed away. At this

[00:18:42] particular reunion, all three of my great-aunts were in the kitchen walk-in pantry, and I walked

[00:18:48] in and I had my mouth open to say something, and at the last nanosecond, I realized that they would

[00:18:53] freak out and never look at me the same way again. So I closed my mouth. What I was going to say to

[00:18:59] them was, oh look, all four of us back together again. Now obviously, that's not normal, but the

[00:19:07] feeling I got when I walked into that pantry and saw them there was such a full-body feeling of

[00:19:12] warmth and reminiscing and love and fun. It was like I belonged there with them. Me, a 22-year-old,

[00:19:19] feeling a decades-old bond with three women in their sixties. Another experience related to my

[00:19:26] grandmother was in late 2020, when I got a call saying that my grandfather was in palliative care

[00:19:32] and I needed to get there to see him. He had been sick for a few months and had gone downhill in the

[00:19:38] previous few weeks. Thankfully, there was a break between COVID lockdowns and my partner and I drove

[00:19:44] the 11 hours to get to him. We got there at about 1 30 a.m. and stayed with him for a couple of hours,

[00:19:51] but due to COVID rules, only two people were allowed in at a time, so we had to share our time

[00:19:57] with other family. So my partner and I went to get some sleep and wait for our next turn to see him.

[00:20:05] We went back at about 4 p.m. that day. My partner left after a short while so that my aunt and I

[00:20:10] could sit with him. He had only been conscious maybe two minutes the whole time I had been there,

[00:20:15] which in total was about four hours. My aunt left to go and get a sandwich, and as I sat with him,

[00:20:21] I got upset for a few minutes. But then something came over me, and I stopped and collected myself.

[00:20:28] I held his hand, and out of nowhere I said,

[00:20:32] Hello Barry, it's me, Margaret. It's time. I am here for you. It's time to go.

[00:20:40] Then he squeezed my hand. Not long after that, my aunt came back, and I left so that she could have

[00:20:47] some alone time with him, as she wasn't coping well. About an hour after I left, my aunt called,

[00:20:53] saying that he had passed away. I still wonder if I had channeled my grandmother to guide my

[00:21:00] grandfather. I've never called him Barry, and I never refer to myself as Margaret,

[00:21:06] so I don't have another explanation. I have been told by a healer that I have a gift in relation

[00:21:13] to spirits, and I will interact with them. It is due to start in the coming years, so I hope to

[00:21:19] share more experiences with you. Although, writing all of this down for the very first time makes me

[00:21:24] realize that I have been exposed to a fair bit already, in different forms. Thank you for reading

[00:21:32] this, and I wish you well. Danny

[00:21:39] Cases involving unexplained disappearances, or those that have almost gone missing and returned

[00:21:44] to tell their story, are some of my favorites. So when I find reports that focus on a similar topic,

[00:21:50] my first response is to share them with you. Tonight, I'll be sharing part of an article that

[00:21:56] I found on Mysterious Universe, and I recommend following the link in the show notes and reading

[00:22:01] the full article in order to give both the author, Brent Swansor, and Mysterious Universe,

[00:22:07] the credit that they deserve. The article contains multiple eyewitness accounts,

[00:22:12] and while some of them in my opinion are easily explained, there are others that seem to be much

[00:22:17] more difficult to rationalize. One of which comes directly from author Brent Swansor himself.

[00:22:23] However, I'll let him tell you about his experience, in his own words. Here is the article.

[00:22:32] There are plenty of cases of mysterious disappearances which I have covered here on

[00:22:36] many occasions. Yet, while these all seem to be people who seem to have been lost or have wandered

[00:22:42] off, there are some cases that are altogether stranger. These are those instances when people

[00:22:48] have just seemed to have spontaneously been wiped from existence at a moment's notice. And I don't

[00:22:53] mean that they have just vanished, but they seem to have just evaporated on the spot. It is something

[00:22:59] that I have delved into ever since I had my own experience with what I call deleted people.

[00:23:06] My first introduction into this phenomenon came to me by chance. This happened around over a decade

[00:23:12] ago, in the early summer. I was out at a wilderness area not far from Tokyo, at a place which draws

[00:23:18] quite a few people to come out for a variety of outdoor activities. So this is not a remote area

[00:23:24] in the middle of nowhere, and it's actually quite crowded in the spring and summer months. Although

[00:23:31] there is camping there, for me this was just a day trip, picnicking and hiking. I was with some

[00:23:37] other people having a picnic in a large open meadow area with picnic tables and barbecue facilities,

[00:23:43] where many other families were out enjoying the sunny, warm day. There were people everywhere,

[00:23:48] in fact, and we were even commenting on how crowded it was. Near this picnic area, there was a creek

[00:23:55] that meandered by and pushed against a rather steep drop, and I remember thinking that this was

[00:24:00] sort of dangerous considering how many people were milling about not too far away, and how many kids

[00:24:05] were running around the general area. We were sitting quite near this drop-off, practically

[00:24:11] right next to it, and I couldn't really even enjoy my lunch because sometimes a kid would run past,

[00:24:16] and I was worried that eventually someone was going to go over. I was even telling my friends

[00:24:21] that we should mention it to the officials who ran the area. It was nerve-wracking.

[00:24:27] After a while, we were going to actually pack up and be on our way, and I was sort of walking along

[00:24:32] that ridge checking it out, and thinking how they needed a railing or something there.

[00:24:37] At this point, I was walking back to our spot to help pack up, when a young girl of around

[00:24:42] 8 years of age goes running by, laughing, and heading right for that creek area.

[00:24:48] I wasn't totally alarmed at this point, and there were kids everywhere. However,

[00:24:53] I kind of kept an eye on her, and was wondering what her parents thought of this.

[00:24:58] As she was running at full speed in that direction, I sort of went over in that direction

[00:25:02] as well, and as she got closer to this danger zone, I yelled out in Japanese,

[00:25:08] you better be careful. At around that moment, I went around a boulder, and the girl ran by it

[00:25:14] on the other side, and as this was practically right on the cusp of the drop-off, I was now

[00:25:19] quite concerned. Yet, when I rounded the boulder, she was gone. Considering her path, speed,

[00:25:27] and position, as well as the fact that she was out of sight for not even a second,

[00:25:31] she should have been right there on the other side, but she was nowhere to be seen.

[00:25:37] She had simply vanished. Thinking that she may have fallen down the ridge,

[00:25:42] I looked down, and there was nothing. No sign of her. And even if she had fallen,

[00:25:46] the creek was not fast-flowing enough for her to have been totally swept away in such a short span

[00:25:51] of time. Looking back toward the meadow also showed me that she was nowhere, even though if

[00:25:57] she had somehow changed course and returned, she had only been out of sight for a split second,

[00:26:02] and I should have been able to see her doing so. I was baffled, and I walked about looking around,

[00:26:08] but that girl was nowhere to be found. I wondered who her parents were, or where they

[00:26:14] were, but I didn't know. I was pretty puzzled by it all, but in the end I suppose I just wrote it

[00:26:20] off as having some explanation, but not really believing it myself. I just sort of assumed that

[00:26:27] the girl had somehow escaped my attention and gone off back to her family in that fraction

[00:26:32] of a second that it took me to turn around that boulder, even though part of me knew that this

[00:26:37] was impossible. We stayed at that area for a little while longer, and I did not see anyone

[00:26:43] in a panic or looking for someone, and then we left, and I sort of put it out of my mind.

[00:26:50] That evening, my mind returned back to that mysterious girl that I had seen,

[00:26:55] and I became more and more convinced that what I had witnessed was very strange indeed.

[00:27:00] I became sort of obsessed with it, and I actually checked out the news every day,

[00:27:05] looking for anything about a missing girl in that area, and thinking that if something came up,

[00:27:10] I would notify authorities. But nothing ever did. To this day, I have no idea what I saw.

[00:27:17] All I know is there is no way that that little girl could have run behind that boulder

[00:27:21] and escaped my attention. She was out of sight for a fraction of a second,

[00:27:26] and then absolutely nothing. Just there one moment, and gone the next.

[00:27:32] I often wonder what I actually saw, and if there is some family out there wondering

[00:27:37] whatever happened to their daughter. I just don't know. Was this someone vanishing? Was it a ghost?

[00:27:44] Or was it just my mind playing tricks on me? I have no idea, but I do believe it is at this point

[00:27:50] that I developed a keen interest in mysterious disappearances.

[00:27:55] I was so confused by this particular experience that I went about looking up other similar

[00:28:00] accounts, and I was surprised to find that there were plenty to be had. All of which describe

[00:28:05] people who just seem to have flashed out of reality. And it drew me deeper into this weird world.

[00:28:13] One report of someone just seeming to blink out of existence was given by Reddit user

[00:28:19] MzzSanchezX3, who says that this happened when she had gone out to have a meal with her fiancé

[00:28:25] at a Wendy's fast food joint. At some point during their meal, she claims that a woman basically

[00:28:31] appeared and then disappeared out of nowhere, and that both her and her fiancé clearly saw it.

[00:28:38] The eyewitness explains what happened.

[00:28:42] This is where it gets important. I was sitting with my back facing the side the register was on,

[00:28:48] meaning that the entrance of the Wendy's was on my right side. I can see anyone who comes in and

[00:28:54] out by simply turning my head or point of view slightly to the right. The entrance consists of

[00:29:00] the door which leads to a small, quote-unquote, manhole. And to go out to the parking lot,

[00:29:05] you need to make a quick left turn when you immediately reach the door. You cannot go

[00:29:10] straight in the manhole because right in front of the door you just walked out from is a ceiling

[00:29:14] to floor window looking out of the parking lot. When you step outside the door to the parking lot,

[00:29:20] immediately there's a fence on the right side, meaning that you need to continue walking

[00:29:25] straight and around the fence if you're trying to reach the right side of the parking lot.

[00:29:29] Also, if anyone walks out of the restaurant door to the parking lot and walks straight,

[00:29:34] I would be able to see them through the windows along the side of the building

[00:29:38] after the entranceway. There are no other entries or exits.

[00:29:43] Okay, now that we have those details, we were eating and enjoying our meal, when all of a sudden

[00:29:48] we see a lady who we knew didn't make any orders because we had been people-watching the line,

[00:29:54] and she was never in the line, and she was not with anyone else. This woman was wearing a pastel

[00:30:00] blue button-down shirt, white capris, and tennis shoes. She walks from the middle of the restaurant

[00:30:06] where they keep the sauces and napkins to the bathroom, which is behind the tables we're

[00:30:11] sitting at, and then comes out about two to three minutes later, but this time with a Wendy's drink

[00:30:16] in her hand. She then makes her way around the current line at the register, and right before

[00:30:21] she reaches the exit, she turns slightly back and looks at us. She opens the first door and continues

[00:30:28] walking straight. Then, she was gone. My fiancé and I looked at each other at that exact moment

[00:30:35] and then looked back at the door and started questioning out loud if we had both seen the

[00:30:39] same thing. He said that he saw it too. He immediately got up from our table and ran to

[00:30:45] the exit door and then out to the parking lot, and he said that she was absolutely nowhere to be found.

[00:30:52] We didn't see where she went when she walked into the window. We didn't see her on the other side of

[00:30:58] the window walking through the parking lot. We didn't see her opening the second door to the

[00:31:03] parking lot and walking straight. We literally saw her walk into the window. We continued discussing

[00:31:10] it and both made the point about the window being there and how it's not possible for her to walk

[00:31:15] through it and then exit. We also discussed how she literally appeared out of nowhere in the

[00:31:20] middle of the restaurant. We discussed how she literally glanced over at us before she left the

[00:31:26] restaurant, and to this day we don't know what happened to her, how she appeared in the restaurant,

[00:31:31] or even how she left the restaurant at all. We sort of joked that she was a time traveler,

[00:31:37] but I really have no idea what to make of that situation.

[00:31:42] Who was this woman? Where did she come from? And where did she go? Or were they both just imagining

[00:31:48] things? Another weird case appears on the same thread with a witness who claims that an elderly

[00:31:54] man with a cane disappeared, reappeared, and then vanished again within moments. He says this

[00:32:01] happened when he was on vacation with his family, and he describes what happened. We stopped in a

[00:32:10] rest area somewhere in Alabama to let our dogs out and to head to the bathrooms ourselves,

[00:32:15] and I was left in charge of the dogs while someone else went in. So when my turn came around,

[00:32:20] I walked and ran in pretty fast. This is when I first spotted this disappearing man. He was an

[00:32:27] older guy with a cane, and the only reason I noticed him was because of a bright green jacket

[00:32:32] that he had on. Well, I walked past him while he was on a bench, and I had turned around because

[00:32:38] the green caught my eye, but he was gone. Sure, he could have gotten up fast. Maybe he was just a

[00:32:45] fast old dude. I don't know. So I headed in and used the bathroom. So when I finish in the bathroom,

[00:32:53] I walk out, and I see the same guy walking in front of me out the doors. I then look down at my phone,

[00:32:59] and when I looked up, the guy was gone. I sped up and looked out the doors left and right to see if

[00:33:05] I could spot him, but he was completely gone out of nowhere. It's one of the weirdest experiences

[00:33:11] I've had, although it may not seem like much, but it was quite odd. Such cases can leave someone

[00:33:20] baffled, frantically looking around trying to figure out where the person has gone, or what

[00:33:25] could possibly be going on and coming up empty. As someone who has experienced this myself,

[00:33:31] it can be extremely disorienting and puzzling. In another case, Reddit user AshSene explains how a

[00:33:38] man vanished right in front of him, and he is at a loss for how to explain it. He says,

[00:33:45] So late one night I was walking down the sidewalk minding my own business and listening to some tunes

[00:33:51] in my headphones. It had rained a bit that day, so there was a lot of puddles. Walking in front of me

[00:33:57] was a man. Nothing unusual, just a man. I remember how he was dressed, straight jeans, slightly wet

[00:34:04] near the heels, a short puffed down jacket and a backpack, specifically Columbia. I was kind of in

[00:34:12] my own headspace, walking and staring at the Columbia tag on the backpack. After a few minutes

[00:34:18] of walking, I had to step over a puddle, so I looked down at it and then overstepped it, looked back up,

[00:34:25] and the man had vanished. Yes, I know what you're thinking about. He could have turned, but the same

[00:34:31] thing crossed my mind at the same time that I didn't find him in front of me. This is why everything

[00:34:37] that explains it doesn't work. To our left is a small field with a couple of benches, no trees,

[00:34:43] and lots of lights. To our right is a four-lane road, also with lots of lights. It was late, so me

[00:34:51] and the man were the only ones walking, and he had nowhere to hide. And why would he want to

[00:34:56] hide in the first place? And if he ran across the road, I would have seen him do that.

[00:35:03] Another Redditor called MTVChallengeFan claims that he is quite a skeptical person

[00:35:08] and has never really believed in strange phenomena or the paranormal, but that he did have one

[00:35:14] inexplicable experience involving a woman who seems to have just stepped off the face of the earth.

[00:35:20] This is his experience. I've lived in the same city my entire life in the USA,

[00:35:27] and there was this Circle K convenience store very close to where I lived. At the time,

[00:35:31] I knew the same four or five employees at the store. The store only has one entrance, which

[00:35:37] also serves as the exit, and the parking lot in the front of the store is the only parking lot.

[00:35:43] The store also only has one bathroom, which is designed for one person at a time.

[00:35:49] Back in March of 2011, I drove to this Circle K, and right about the same time, this white car next

[00:35:56] to me pulled up. I'm not sure what kind of car it was, but it was quite a beater, to say the least.

[00:36:02] Right when I was getting out of the car, the woman driving the white car had gotten out of it,

[00:36:06] and she walked into the Circle K. I took some time to empty out my trash from my car,

[00:36:12] and I entered the store about a minute later. Keep in mind, this woman hadn't left the store

[00:36:16] yet, and there was only one entrance, which also served as the exit.

[00:36:21] Aside from the woman who worked there, I was the only one in the main part of the store,

[00:36:26] so I just assumed the woman I saw walking from the car was in the bathroom.

[00:36:30] So I got my snacks, and I went up to the counter. I already knew the clerk well,

[00:36:35] and we would open up to each other about many things, and I just had to ask if a woman walked

[00:36:41] in and was possibly in the bathroom. I just thought that it was odd that this woman was

[00:36:45] using the restroom for close to 10 minutes at this time. Anyway, I described what the woman

[00:36:51] looked like to the clerk. She was very pale, had black hair, brown eyes, and she was medium height,

[00:36:59] and as soon as I mentioned her very low waist-to-hip ratio, the clerk gasped. She told me

[00:37:05] she knew exactly who I was talking about, and she also told me she was a regular customer.

[00:37:10] But what she said to me gives me chills to this day. She told me that this woman had not entered

[00:37:15] the store on this day. I told her that I saw her walk in right before I did, and the clerk told me

[00:37:21] that she was at the counter and never saw her walk in. We were both baffled. I obviously wasn't just

[00:37:29] seeing things, because the clerk told me that I described a regular customer, and this was someone

[00:37:34] that I had never seen before. When I walked out of the Circle K, her car was still there, so I just

[00:37:41] sat in my car for 5 minutes, but then left because I didn't want to seem creepy, and I never found

[00:37:47] out if she came back for that car. The only thing I can think of is the woman from the car walked

[00:37:53] in the store, was doing something shady in the bathroom, and was in cahoots with the clerk,

[00:37:59] and the clerk was just playing dumb with me. Even though I knew the clerk, this doesn't mean that

[00:38:04] she didn't have any secrets that she wouldn't tell me. Other than that, I don't know. She just

[00:38:10] disappeared into thin air. Another type of report that I've found while looking into the phenomenon

[00:38:18] of these deleted people seems to be related, and it involves people just sort of fading from

[00:38:24] existence retroactively, or without being directly observed to do so. A fairly creepy case of this

[00:38:31] was related by Reddit user Bita Zamorai, who says that one day a person who she knew in college

[00:38:37] just seems to have faded away without anyone realizing how, or even why. This is her story.

[00:38:46] Back in college, my friends and I would always all go to the cafeteria across campus together

[00:38:51] for lunch. There were about eight to ten of us on any given day, so normally you had three to four

[00:38:57] of us in a huddle, followed by the other three or four. I was in the back group, and we passed between

[00:39:03] these two bushes, and this is when the weirdest feeling just washed over me. Something felt

[00:39:10] changed, and I was a bit disoriented. We all kind of stopped and looked at each other while the first

[00:39:16] group just kept going. Someone was missing. We all just kind of knew it. However, to this day, I have

[00:39:23] no idea who it was. Everyone was accounted for, but we couldn't shake the feeling that someone was

[00:39:29] just gone. It was always a weird spot near those bushes in general, and we always avoided it after

[00:39:35] that. I remember another time we all seemed to notice a light post there at the same time,

[00:39:41] and none of us could remember if it had always been there or not, even though we walked that path

[00:39:46] at least twice a day. You could probably just chalk it up to busy college students not paying attention,

[00:39:53] but it's weird that it's the same spot that we lost someone a few weeks later. A similar case

[00:40:01] comes from Reddit user Daydreamer373, who says that a person he knew in college seems to have

[00:40:08] just been wiped from existence, and he goes on to explain.

[00:40:38] I have been tripping on this. Along with Nelson Mandela not dying in the 80s, this kid just disappears, and it's like my brain physically hurts when I try to recall the full memory of our last hangout as well.

[00:41:07] I asked two of his friends what happened to him, and they both said that they never knew a guy

[00:41:12] with the name that I gave them. I then asked if that family had a son, but they said no,

[00:41:19] only the girl from school. I've never been so confused.

[00:41:25] Along the same lines is the rather odd report from Redditor Thunder54, who was baffled by a

[00:41:32] class that he took in which several people seem to have just flickered out of existence,

[00:41:37] without explanation. This is his report.

[00:41:42] I was in my biology recitation class yesterday, and I had just read this Lifehacker article about

[00:41:48] being more observant before class. One of the things it talks about is counting the number

[00:41:52] of people in a room, as well as marking exits in a room. So I thought that it would be fun to do this

[00:41:58] silently to myself as class started. I counted 22 people, including the TA and myself,

[00:42:05] so there were 21 students, including me. This is a small classroom.

[00:42:10] The TA took informal role by counting by twos out loud. We do have a sign-in sheet,

[00:42:16] but he just wanted to know about how many people were missing, so there were no names needed.

[00:42:21] He got to the number 21, the same as me. He marked it on the sheet, and then began talking about what

[00:42:27] we would do in class. He was going to take questions about the test, however, due to the

[00:42:32] way the professor, not the TA, structured the test schedule, it was possible that some people

[00:42:38] had taken the test, and others had not. He took a quick poll asking who had already taken the test.

[00:42:44] I had already taken the test, so I raised my hand, and he counted and said,

[00:42:49] Alright, so this many of you have taken it out of 19?

[00:42:54] I was confused because I had just counted 21 students, and I heard him count 21 as well.

[00:43:00] He was also noticeably confused and recounted. However, he got 19 students again, and asked,

[00:43:08] Did a couple of you wander out while I wasn't paying attention? But no one answered,

[00:43:13] and I knew that no one had, because I was sitting next to the door on this day.

[00:43:18] It was weird. It was even weirder because I would not have cared at all about this TA's

[00:43:23] counting mistake if I hadn't been observant and counted the people in the class myself.

[00:43:28] I've tried to think of an explanation, but I just can't. We both counted 21,

[00:43:34] and then suddenly there were 19. Yes, I counted too, in disbelief.

[00:43:42] It is hard to know what to make of such cases, but there seem to be a lot of theories going around.

[00:43:47] One is that these are glitches in the matrix, so to speak. Which is to say that perhaps we

[00:43:52] are living in a computer simulation, and these are just examples of some sort of problem,

[00:43:58] glitch, or just lazy programming. There is also the idea that in the case of people just vanishing

[00:44:04] in seconds, that these could be examples of interdimensional walk-ins, in a sense,

[00:44:09] meaning that they have somehow wandered or bled over from another parallel dimension,

[00:44:14] only to spirit away back to where they came from.

[00:44:17] In the case where people have retroactively faded away, one reddit poster called Mrs. Jojox

[00:44:24] gives an interesting theory. They say,

[00:44:28] Okay, so I just finished reading a book called The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth

[00:44:34] by Dolores Cannon. In this book it talks a lot about how people are starting to vibrate on a

[00:44:39] higher frequency, and that one by one people will sort of change dimension from this to a higher

[00:44:45] one as they raise their vibration. In the beginning it will be people here and there,

[00:44:51] and it mentioned that these people who go will be a distant memory, and you sort of drift apart

[00:44:56] for no reason, and you won't find them. I wonder if this is really the case,

[00:45:02] and that's what has happened. Other ideas have included that these are time travelers,

[00:45:08] portals, or even some mysterious force messing and tinkering with reality as we know it.

[00:45:14] There is no way to really know for sure, and such bizarre accounts remain firmly lodged

[00:45:19] within the world of the strange. What is really going on here, and what are we to make of this?

[00:45:26] Are these explainable, or are they perhaps revealing cracks in our reality? We may never know

[00:45:34] for sure. This is where the article ends, and it leaves me with more questions than answers.

[00:45:41] Is it possible that some of these eyewitnesses are mistaken? Absolutely. After all, people in

[00:45:46] general are typically not very aware of their surroundings, especially since smartphones have

[00:45:51] become an apparent necessity. But what do we make of the other experiences that are not so easily

[00:45:57] explained? Perhaps if we paid more attention to the world around us, and less time staring at

[00:46:03] screens, we'd realize that our reality is far stranger than we care to admit. As always though,

[00:46:11] I'll leave it up to you to come to your own conclusions. Many people dismiss sleep paralysis

[00:46:20] as being nothing more than a natural occurrence where the mind wakes up before the body,

[00:46:25] leaving the experiencer immobilized. However, there are countless experiences that are so strange

[00:46:31] and so unsettling that we can't help but wonder if there is something far more malevolent taking

[00:46:36] place during these episodes. Many of these reports also involve the subject sensing or even seeing

[00:46:43] some type of entity during the paralysis, and tonight my first listener experience involves

[00:46:48] a similar phenomenon, but with a bit of a twist. Tonight's first experience comes to us from Ivy,

[00:46:56] and Ivy's experience is called sleep paralysis, or something else. Ivy says,

[00:47:05] I was introduced to your podcast through a friend of mine, and now I've been binge listening for a

[00:47:09] few days. I've never wanted to share my experience before because it affected me so badly that I've

[00:47:15] had to alter the way I sleep. Also, I've never talked about it because when I've tried to talk

[00:47:20] about it out loud, it just sounded too bizarre. I don't know exactly how to start this, but I'll try

[00:47:26] to make it as simple as possible. This happened about four or five years ago when my now husband

[00:47:32] and I moved in together. I was in bed asleep. It was about four in the morning, and I woke up to

[00:47:38] the feeling of being watched. When I sat up, I saw what I thought was my husband standing at the end

[00:47:44] of the bed holding a cup. My husband often got up in the middle of the night to get water, so it

[00:47:49] wasn't uncommon for me to wake up to this. I looked at this full figure at the end of the bed.

[00:47:55] I remember smiling at it because, like I said, it looked exactly like my husband. Just as I was

[00:48:01] about to say something, I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom next to our room. A few seconds

[00:48:06] later, my actual husband walked into our room right past this thing and laid back down in bed

[00:48:12] next to me. I watched my husband walk right past this full body man like he wasn't even there.

[00:48:19] When I looked back at it, it was still there, only its cheeks had become sunken in,

[00:48:24] and its eyes had become hollow. It had grown well over six feet at least, and had started to

[00:48:30] hunch over towards me. I grabbed my blanket and pulled it up over my head and turned my body toward

[00:48:36] my husband's back and buried my face into him. I laid there awake frozen until the sun came up.

[00:48:43] The next morning, I tried to tell my husband what had happened, but he didn't believe me.

[00:48:48] It didn't get brought up again. It's been quite some time since this has happened,

[00:48:53] and now I have to sleep with a sleeping mask on to completely cover my eyes.

[00:48:57] After I had a daughter a little over two years ago, I decided to keep a night light on in my

[00:49:02] room so I can see my surroundings when I have to wake up for her. It's made it a lot easier,

[00:49:07] but there are still times when I get anxious about waking up in the middle of the night.

[00:49:12] Nothing happened before or after this incident, and we no longer live in that house,

[00:49:17] and quite frankly, I'm glad that we don't. After that night, I hated living there and sleeping in

[00:49:23] that room. I have no explanation for this man or whatever you want to call it that was standing

[00:49:28] at the end of my bed. Part of me still believes it didn't happen, but I also know I was fully awake

[00:49:34] and aware when it did. That's why I don't know whether to call it sleep paralysis or not.

[00:49:41] If you read this on your podcast, then I want to thank you in advance. The whole thing still

[00:49:46] makes me feel a little crazy at times, but after listening to the stories of others including your

[00:49:51] own, I don't feel so crazy anymore. Keep up the good work, and I plan on listening as much as I can.

[00:50:00] Ivy. I came across this next bizarre report on Reddit, and while it's hard to verify the details

[00:50:08] of this alleged experience, it does share some unsettling similarities to other encounters that

[00:50:14] I've heard. Perhaps someone listening has witnessed something similar. This report comes from a user

[00:50:20] by the name of Janella Jones, who says this took place after she moved into an area in Essex. She

[00:50:27] describes the surrounding area as not totally in the middle of nowhere, but lots of forest and dark

[00:50:32] country roads with no streetlights in the area. On this particular night, she was driving home down a

[00:50:38] dark country road with her boyfriend, Dan. Eventually they found themselves on a pitch black

[00:50:43] road only narrow enough for one car, and it was here that they had a terrifying experience.

[00:50:50] Janella Jones explains what happened next.

[00:50:54] Stupidly, I sped up, wanting to find my way out of the dark roads quickly. It became apparent that I

[00:51:00] was driving too fast for the bumpy roads, so initially I had to slow down, and once I did,

[00:51:05] I felt a deep thud on the roof of my car, like something had landed on it. I slammed on my brakes,

[00:51:11] and my boyfriend and I looked at each other, but all we heard was silence. Then we heard two loud

[00:51:18] thumps on the roof of the car, almost like someone was pounding a fist on it. I looked at my boyfriend

[00:51:23] and he looked at me, all pale and wide-eyed, so I slammed the car into gear and took off down the

[00:51:29] road, seriously panicking now. I couldn't see anything in the mirrors, and up ahead was a small

[00:51:35] bridge that went over a tiny river. I sped up over the bridge, and the road veered sharply to the

[00:51:41] right. As I took this corner, the entire road was illuminated by my headlights, and it was covered

[00:51:47] in blood. Literally so much blood, it looked like a very big animal had been slaughtered there.

[00:51:53] There weren't any animal remains, but the amount of blood was ridiculous.

[00:51:58] I screamed, what the hell is that, and looked at my boyfriend who was already looking out of his

[00:52:03] window. I looked at where he was looking, and we could both see a faint figure of a man

[00:52:08] running alongside the car. Safe to say, I took off at a very high speed. Luckily, we were only about

[00:52:15] five to ten minutes from the main road, and miraculously managed to find our way back.

[00:52:20] As soon as we got back to my house, I literally ran in and locked the door,

[00:52:24] and swore to myself I would never drive that way again. It was the scariest moment of my life,

[00:52:30] and to this day, I don't know what it all was. I describe the vision of the guy running as faint,

[00:52:37] because it wasn't just a regular person. I don't really know how to describe it, because although

[00:52:42] it was pitch black outside the car, the person running also looked like it was black, but we

[00:52:47] could still make out the shape. The face had no features, it was almost a bit shimmery at the

[00:52:52] edges, but it was definitely a human form. Even if it wasn't human. Whatever it was also managed

[00:53:00] to keep up with my car, which was quite a feat considering I was driving it like a monster truck,

[00:53:05] because I was so scared. There were no trees or anything around for a mile or two,

[00:53:09] so when we could see the guy running, he would have just been running on grass.

[00:53:13] But there was something not quite right about it. The vibe that I got was that it wasn't a person,

[00:53:18] but an entity, and it was all connected, like the thing we saw running was the same

[00:53:23] thing that made the noise on the roof of my car, and also created the blood.

[00:53:28] Just thinking about it now sends a shiver down my spine. I didn't sleep properly for

[00:53:33] weeks after that, and even now, I hate driving down country roads alone.

[00:53:41] My next experience comes to us from a listener by the name of Dez,

[00:53:45] and Dez's story is called The Garage. Dez says,

[00:53:51] Hi Nick, first and foremost I'd like to thank you for providing a safe space for us to share

[00:53:56] these stories. I don't share my experiences often, as I'm afraid of what people might think of me

[00:54:01] if they heard some of the many stories I have from growing up in a childhood house

[00:54:05] where paranormal happenings were common. I have a whole bunch of things I'd like to share with

[00:54:10] you and the audience, but today I think I'll share two of the most profound and memorable ones that

[00:54:16] really solidified that some of the weird stuff we saw in our house was in fact paranormal.

[00:54:23] The first story I have was the first paranormal experience I ever had,

[00:54:27] and is still, over two decades later, fresh in my mind, as if I'm there all over again.

[00:54:33] I was in kindergarten, so I must've been about five or six years old,

[00:54:37] and like most younger siblings, I idolized my older sister, and I wanted to imitate everything

[00:54:42] she did. At the time, she loved playing ping pong with my older cousin, and as many older siblings do,

[00:54:49] she often excluded me from playing. As a matter of fact, because the ping pong set had been gifted

[00:54:54] to her from my aunt for her birthday, I was told to not play with it without asking first,

[00:55:00] which of course, I defied as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

[00:55:05] One day while she was at school and my mother was busy in the kitchen making lunch,

[00:55:09] I snuck into her room and I positioned myself between her bed and the wall, and I tried to play

[00:55:14] ping pong by myself, which I quickly realized was absolutely no fun without someone to hold the

[00:55:20] other paddle. Not wanting to get in trouble, and knowing how closely my sister memorized the

[00:55:25] positioning of her stuff, I made sure to put the paddle and the small plastic ball back in the

[00:55:30] position in which I found it. I snuck back out of the room, convinced that I had just committed

[00:55:36] the perfect crime. To my surprise, once we had picked her up from school a few hours later,

[00:55:42] she came home and noticed that both paddles were where she left them, but the ball was missing.

[00:55:48] She searched her room to no avail, and then she went straight to my mom to tell her that

[00:55:52] I had lost an essential part of the set that I had been specifically asked not to touch.

[00:55:58] I admitted that I had played with it, but I pleaded with them both to believe that I'd put

[00:56:02] both the paddle and the ball right back where I had found them. Of course, no one believed me,

[00:56:07] and not only did it result in a stern chastising from my mom about the importance of asking before

[00:56:12] touching her stuff, but it also resulted in a two-day long silent treatment from my older sister,

[00:56:18] which was probably the most painful part of it all for me. That weekend, my mom was preparing

[00:56:24] us both for church when I experienced what still scares me to think about, to this day.

[00:56:30] I laid on the carpet in our hallway, staring straight into the dark garage. The only light

[00:56:35] in there was a slither of daylight coming from the windows on the garage door that were made

[00:56:40] of what I assume was plexiglass. My mom had my sister seated on the closed toilet and was braiding

[00:56:46] her long hair in preparation for Sunday service, and I could hear them talking from about six feet

[00:56:52] down the hallway. It was my turn next, which I was dreading since my mom always had a bad habit

[00:56:57] of pulling my ponytails way too tight, and I generally did not like getting dressed up like

[00:57:03] a little doll. I laid on the carpet, huffing at the thought, when I saw something move in

[00:57:09] the darkness. I watched carefully, for some reason completely unafraid, as the ping pong ball slowly

[00:57:15] rolled from the far back of the garage into the light cast from the windows above. What was strange

[00:57:21] was how slowly it rolled and how straight of a line it rolled in. It came straight toward my line

[00:57:27] of vision, and then abruptly stopped about 15 feet from where I was laying, in the hallway.

[00:57:33] I don't know why, but for some reason I wasn't scared by the knowledge that there was no one

[00:57:38] in the garage, or that there was no airflow or ventilation that could have pushed it toward me

[00:57:43] from the darkness. At this point, I excitedly ran into the garage, took the ping pong ball,

[00:57:48] and came back to my mom and sister, shouting about what had just happened. Of course, neither of them

[00:57:54] believed me, but the event was so vivid and so strange that I spent years replaying that moment

[00:57:59] in my head, becoming more and more concerned by what I had seen as the years went on.

[00:58:06] After years of repeating the story, and thankfully lots of other paranormal experiences that my

[00:58:11] sister and mom both experienced, either by themselves or as a family, they eventually did

[00:58:16] believe me. The strange happenings did, however, get scarier as I got older, and for four to six

[00:58:22] years of our lives it almost felt unbearable. I named our temperamental door-slamming ghost

[00:58:28] Lloyd, and he became a running joke in our house over the years because we couldn't do much else

[00:58:34] but try and make light of living with a literal invisible roommate. The second story is the last

[00:58:40] paranormal experience I ever had in that home, and it happened when I was 19 years old. The day my dad

[00:58:48] passed away of having a massive heart attack, I was, to put it lightly, incredibly devastated. While

[00:58:54] me and my sister definitely had our issues with our often in-and-out-of-the-house father, I was

[00:58:59] very close to him, and his death impacted me so deeply I barely remember anything from the two

[00:59:05] weeks after his passing. One memory, however, is still burned into my mind, and it took place hours

[00:59:12] after I had finally managed to cry myself to sleep. At 3 a.m., I awoke to a glaring light

[00:59:19] and the distressed sound of my mother's voice asking, did you hear it too? I came to, standing

[00:59:26] in the doorway of my room, confused as ever, and wondering if I had sleepwalked there. My mother

[00:59:32] stood in the doorway of her room straight across the hallway, her eyes widened and her skin pale

[00:59:37] as I had ever seen it before. There's someone in the garage, she said. Before I even had time to

[00:59:44] respond, we heard the sound of someone rustling through my father's tool bench. I vividly registered

[00:59:49] the metallic clangs as the same noises I heard when my dad was looking for various screws or

[00:59:55] wrenches, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Without hesitation, she threw open the door

[01:00:01] separating the hallway and the garage and flipped on the switch, which then drowned the dark garage

[01:00:06] in yellow light. There was no one. My mom and I stared into the empty garage at my dead father's

[01:00:13] tool chest and tried to process what had just happened. Without saying a word, we decided we

[01:00:19] weren't equipped to deal with what we had just experienced, and we both went straight back to bed.

[01:00:25] After 20 years of voices in the hallway, slamming doors, and black shadowy figures passing through

[01:00:31] the hall, Lloyd never came back. All strange happenings in that house stopped completely

[01:00:37] from that night forward. Although my mother is now gone as well, I often think back to that night,

[01:00:44] and I wonder who it was that was rustling through my dad's beloved tool bench.

[01:00:48] While I'm sure the answer might be a lot more sinister than I'd like to know,

[01:00:52] I try and tell myself that my dad finally evicted Lloyd from our garage,

[01:00:57] and I think it's kind of poetic that it all began and ended in the darkness of my garage.

[01:01:03] I love my dad, I miss him dearly, and I hope that whoever owns my childhood house isn't kept up late

[01:01:10] too often by the sound of nuts and bolts shifting around the garage at night. If he's still there,

[01:01:16] I hope they're kind to him, and I hope they allow him space in the house that he helped to fix and

[01:01:20] maintain in life, and still protects in death. Thanks Nick, I'm sending love and light to all

[01:01:29] of my fellow spooky friends. This next account comes from Coast to Coast AM, where on July 15th

[01:01:39] of 2016, a man named Nate called in to report a creepy encounter that he had while driving his

[01:01:45] big rig on Interstate 80, where he was heading toward Illinois. As he was heading down a dark

[01:01:50] and desolate stretch of the highway, he noticed something strange on the side of the road,

[01:01:55] and this is what Nate had to report. It was about dusk and the sun was just about to set,

[01:02:02] and I was driving when I saw a figure just ahead of me on I-80, and it was right on the side of

[01:02:08] the road. Now when I say right on the side of the road, I don't mean in the grass. Its toes were

[01:02:13] right on the white line. I slowed down a little bit to kind of see what was going on there,

[01:02:19] and maybe to avoid it. When I got about 50 yards from it, I got down to about 50 miles per hour,

[01:02:25] and I could see it clear. I had my brights on and everything. It was a man. Well, it looked like a

[01:02:31] man, maybe about 5'9 or 5'10. It couldn't have been more than 100 pounds soaking wet.

[01:02:38] When I got up to him, he looked at me. He had no eyes, no mouth, and no nostrils.

[01:02:44] There was no orifice on his face. He was pale white, no hair, no features whatsoever. It looked

[01:02:52] like a skeleton with bleached white skin. He was just kind of standing there and looking right at

[01:02:58] me. I slowed down, and as soon as I saw his face, he looked up at me. I flipped the hammer down from

[01:03:04] Illinois all the way to Chicago, and I never looked back. My blood ran cold, and my hair stood up.

[01:03:12] It was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in my life.

[01:03:19] This next listener experience comes to us from Mary, and Mary's report is called

[01:03:25] Haunted Cemetery. Mary says,

[01:03:29] This story happened just outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, July 3rd and 4th of 2006. At this time,

[01:03:36] I was living in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I was planning a trip to Elizabethtown, Kentucky to

[01:03:41] visit family, and while talking to my brothers Jimmy and Jack about my trip down there, they

[01:03:46] told me about this old cemetery called Hell's Gate. The people that told them about the cemetery were

[01:03:52] a couple of co-workers. They said they heard about this cemetery that was very old and haunted,

[01:03:58] and that it had been used to hold satanic worship and sacrifices. One other thing that they were told

[01:04:04] is that it was rumored that there were two large dogs that guarded this cemetery. However, when

[01:04:09] my brothers asked where this cemetery was located, they wouldn't tell them. They just said that they

[01:04:14] were better off not knowing. My whole family liked going to haunted sites, so we were all anxious to

[01:04:20] find this cemetery. So I did some research and found some general directions. I arrived in

[01:04:25] Elizabethtown on July 2nd, and on July 4th, after we set off fireworks, we were all planning on

[01:04:31] going out to find Hell's Gate Cemetery. On July 3rd, my brother Jack and I decided to go out by

[01:04:38] ourselves to see if we could find the cemetery. We left our father's house around midnight, and

[01:04:43] after following my vague directions, we finally found the road that would take us to the cemetery.

[01:04:49] The road was a two-lane road that was really just big enough for one car. It was so dark as there

[01:04:55] was no moon, and it was very cloudy. We had been on this road for about 20 minutes, when just up ahead

[01:05:01] of us, and on the left side of the road, this mist appeared. It was so bright at first that we thought

[01:05:07] it was a fire, but it wasn't. The mist was about five feet tall and about three feet wide and kind

[01:05:13] of wavy. It stayed about 15 feet in front of us for the next five miles or so. Just as the road came

[01:05:20] to a dead end right in front of Hell's Gate Cemetery, the mist just disappeared. My brother

[01:05:27] and I were just sitting there trying to figure out what we had just seen, when all of a sudden,

[01:05:31] all the warning lights and alarms in his car came on. He wanted to leave right then, but I asked him

[01:05:37] to wait for just a few minutes as I wanted to step out of the car and take a quick video of the

[01:05:42] cemetery. I only took a couple minutes of video, as it was so scary just being there. My brother then

[01:05:50] turned the car around, and we got maybe a block or two away from the cemetery when all the lights and

[01:05:55] alarms went off in his car, and it was back to normal. When we got back to our father's house,

[01:06:00] I looked at the video I had taken at the cemetery, and right there in front of the car were two large

[01:06:06] dogs that were not visible when we were sitting there in the car with the headlights shining out

[01:06:11] into the cemetery. So, the next night after we set off the fireworks and after hearing my brother

[01:06:17] and I tell our story, our whole family went back out to Hell's Gate, but the mist did not appear.

[01:06:24] There were about four cars, so when we pulled up in front of the cemetery, we could see the old

[01:06:29] cemetery pretty well. Some of the headstones were so old they had just fallen over. There was what

[01:06:35] looked like a little path that led out into the cemetery, so with flashlights in hand, about eight

[01:06:40] of us headed out into the cemetery. While walking around, we heard all kinds of noises, but when we

[01:06:47] turned our lights toward the sound, we couldn't see anything. After about an hour, we all headed back

[01:06:52] toward the cars. As we walked down the same path we had all just walked down, right there in the

[01:06:58] middle of the path was what looked like an arm bone. When I tried to take a picture of it, my camera

[01:07:04] died. When we got back to our father's house, we all looked at the video and pictures I had taken,

[01:07:10] and there were orbs everywhere. It was an experience that I will never forget, but I would never go

[01:07:16] back out to Hell's Gate Cemetery. Our next experience of the night comes to us from Jim,

[01:07:26] and Jim's experience is called Hat Man. I have encountered various shadow people,

[01:07:33] including the Hat Man. I'm in my 20s. I started seeing a shadow-like person after late nights at

[01:07:38] the bar. I would see a shadow person standing next to a light pole, behind a tree, and in a

[01:07:44] store window. All of these were at night. Time passed, and eventually I saw the Hat Man. He

[01:07:51] looked as I've heard dozens of encounters describe him, a tall black being with a wide-brimmed hat

[01:07:57] and a trench coat. Saying it looked a certain way is hard to explain, but it was more of an

[01:08:02] impression on my vision. One night there was a discussion with co-workers about strange encounters,

[01:08:08] and a girl began telling everyone about a shadow person that she saw on the street. She felt like

[01:08:14] it was stalking her. She described no face, no features, just a long black coat and wide hat.

[01:08:22] Years later I got into the same type of discussion with my sister. My niece was in the room and

[01:08:27] overheard me talking about the Hat Man, which I began calling the Puppet Master. My niece's face

[01:08:34] turned white, and she told us about the same vision she would see walking down the hall

[01:08:39] when she was around eight years old. Time passed, and another discussion of the Hat Man was brought

[01:08:45] up with my sister and niece, but this time my sister's mother-in-law was present. She gasped,

[01:08:51] turned white, and also said that she used to see the same being when she was younger. I believe the

[01:08:58] Hat Man attaches itself to a family or people that open themselves to the paranormal. Our next

[01:09:07] experience comes to us from Michaela, and Michaela's experience is called Mimicking Spirits.

[01:09:15] Michaela says, Hi Nick, I just finished listening to episode 331 about spirits mimicking a loved

[01:09:22] one's voice. A few years ago my mother and her husband went on a cruise, and at the time I was

[01:09:28] living with them. Together they have a daughter, my baby sister, who is a year and a half older than my

[01:09:34] daughter. So while my mom and her husband were on vacation, I had both girls. We got home from work

[01:09:41] and school, and the girls were downstairs eating in the dining room while I was upstairs in the

[01:09:45] laundry room putting clothes in the dryer. All of a sudden I hear my baby sister say my name,

[01:09:51] so I stepped out into the hall to see what she needed, but no one was there. I could hear both

[01:09:57] girls downstairs in the dining room giggling as little girls do. My mother has a big house, so if

[01:10:03] they were playing a trick on me, I would have heard them run down the hallway, down the steps,

[01:10:08] past the living room and kitchen, and then into the dining room. They couldn't possibly run that fast.

[01:10:16] My next story is an experience that my mother encountered, and with her permission I will share

[01:10:21] it. My mother was sitting in her bedroom with the TV off reading her book when she heard my other

[01:10:27] sister, who was in her early 20s, say, mommy I'm here. So my mom waited for her to come up the stairs

[01:10:34] and into her room, thinking that she was just stopping by for a quick visit. A couple minutes

[01:10:40] pass and my mom realizes that no one is in her house. She then calls my sister on her cell phone

[01:10:45] and asked, why did you leave? But my sister, having no clue what she was talking about, says,

[01:10:51] I was never there, and I'm on the other side of town. In this same house, as I was preparing to

[01:10:58] move out, my mother and I came to the conclusion that she indeed has a spirit lingering around.

[01:11:04] She jokingly, or not jokingly, calls out to the spirit and says,

[01:11:08] you do not have permission to follow my daughter to her new home. We then laughed because we clearly

[01:11:14] have watched too many ghost adventure episodes, but my laugh quickly stopped when I heard a loud

[01:11:19] growl in my right ear. My mother noticed my facial expression and asked me what was wrong.

[01:11:25] However, I never told her what I heard because I didn't want to freak her out,

[01:11:29] so I kept it to myself until she moved into her new home. When I did start to tell her,

[01:11:35] she finished my sentence for me and said, you heard a growl, didn't you? Apparently,

[01:11:41] she has heard this growl before. Thank you again for reading and sharing my story.

[01:11:47] I still have more and will share again on a different day. Thank you Nick for all that you do

[01:11:53] for us believers. Be well.

[01:11:59] There is something in the wilderness. It uses the forests, mountains, and wild places to disguise

[01:12:06] its mysterious intent. What is it? No one truly knows. It presents itself in different forms to

[01:12:13] different people, with some claiming to encounter strange creatures that shouldn't exist, while

[01:12:18] others experience disorientation and a feeling as though they're being hunted or even led into a

[01:12:25] trap. In some cases, the victims seem to vanish into thin air, only to be found days, months,

[01:12:32] or even years later under extremely bizarre circumstances. I've covered similar topics in

[01:12:39] many of my other episodes, and while some people dismiss the phenomena as nothing more than

[01:12:44] hallucinations or people simply becoming lost in the woods, those that have come face to face with

[01:12:50] this nameless threat will tell you that what they encountered was very real and anything but innocent.

[01:12:59] Now perhaps in some of these cases it is nothing more than people misidentifying a particular

[01:13:03] animal they're not familiar with, or just letting their imagination get the best of them. But for

[01:13:09] the hundreds of other eyewitnesses that have had firsthand encounters, I believe that we owe it to

[01:13:14] them and ourselves to investigate these reports with an open mind. Because for all we know,

[01:13:20] the wilderness could be hiding something far more sinister than we could possibly imagine.

[01:13:27] Today's topic is one of my favorites because it encompasses so many different types of experiences,

[01:13:33] yet they all have one thing in common. They all took place in the great outdoors.

[01:13:39] So today I've put together various reports of high strangeness that involve many different

[01:13:43] oddities, all of which seem to led credibility to the belief that the wilderness holds many bizarre

[01:13:49] and mysterious forces. As I relay each article and experience, I'll be mentioning the source

[01:13:56] from which it came. But please be sure to also visit the show notes where I have referenced

[01:14:01] these reports, and I urge you to visit the links that I've provided in order to give them the

[01:14:06] credit that they deserve. I'll begin tonight with a sighting of a strange creature. This report was

[01:14:13] posted on Mysterious Universe and originates from a website called Your Ghost Stories, and it's an

[01:14:20] account from a woman who had a bizarre experience as she was hiking in the summertime with her

[01:14:24] boyfriend in the mountains of Italy. On one of these peaceful hikes, she reached the end of a

[01:14:30] trail before her boyfriend, so she decided to wait there and enjoy the tranquil scene while

[01:14:35] she waited for him to arrive. As she waited, she saw something unnerving. It appeared to be a

[01:14:43] creature that resembled what's known as a chamois or mountain goat, which are native to the European

[01:14:48] mountains. However, there was something abnormal about this particular animal, as the witness would

[01:14:55] go on to explain. I was sitting there on a rock and I don't know how, but I felt like something

[01:15:01] was in the woods behind me. Behind me there was a precipice that was not very deep though, and the

[01:15:07] forest would cover the end of it and all around. I stood up and tried to see if there was something

[01:15:13] down there, and that's when I saw it. I still get shivers when I think about it. Deep down there,

[01:15:20] there was a chamois, a beautiful one with long horns. I got excited because I rarely see one.

[01:15:26] I was looking at him from behind. His fur was light brown and he had a black line that went

[01:15:31] from the neck to the tail, but something was very wrong with it, and that's when I froze.

[01:15:38] His front legs looked like they didn't end in a normal cloven hoof, but he had three fingers at

[01:15:43] the end of his front legs, similar to a bird claw, but not that sharp. The back legs seemed normal,

[01:15:50] which I could see because he was walking very slowly and calmly through the vegetation.

[01:15:55] Then I noticed with great horror that his face seemed flat, with no muzzle. I couldn't look at

[01:16:01] him directly in the face, and I couldn't see his forehead and nose. But what should have been there?

[01:16:07] Just wasn't. Thinking about it now, I really wish that I had seen his face, just to see how the eyes

[01:16:13] and mouth were organized. He disappeared in the pine's shadow, and I was still there shocked when

[01:16:19] my boyfriend finally arrived. I told him what I saw, but he didn't believe me, and he just laughed.

[01:16:26] I know it's not scary, and it can even be funny if you think about it. A chamois with eagle legs

[01:16:32] and a flat face. I thought about it all the time that we were descending. It was so weird,

[01:16:37] and at the end I told myself that I must have dreamt it, even if I would love to know that

[01:16:42] I wasn't the only one to see that thing. I'd like to think that it was a deity that took the form

[01:16:48] of a chamois. There wasn't any village at the mountain's foot, so I couldn't ask if someone

[01:16:54] else had seen it too, or if someone knew anything about a weird animal that was living in the forest.

[01:17:04] An even odder tale comes from a Reddit poster who claims that at the time he had been in the

[01:17:08] wilds outside of Houston, Texas, in what he describes as an isolated patch of forest by a creek.

[01:17:16] He had set up a hammock that evening and was relaxing and listening to the sounds of the night

[01:17:21] when something strange came for him. He describes what happened.

[01:17:27] This night it was dark, like extra dark. I think the moon was covered up, but there was still enough

[01:17:32] city light to create a dim, atmospheric glow. I heard some movement, definitely coming my way

[01:17:39] where I was on the creek. It didn't seem as cautious as most of the other animals,

[01:17:44] which startled me. Whatever was coming my way was ballsy. I don't think I had my knife at the time,

[01:17:51] so I think I grabbed a stick and listened quietly as the sound got closer. It kept walking in my

[01:17:57] direction, but I could barely see a thing. But eventually it got pretty close, and I could faintly

[01:18:03] see a silhouette. This wasn't an animal I had seen before. It was white with long legs, too tall to be

[01:18:11] a hog, and definitely not a deer. It just stood there staring at me, as if it was pissed that I

[01:18:17] was in its spot or something. I don't think I made any sudden movements or anything, but I just sat

[01:18:22] there looking, trying to figure out what it was. Eventually it went back into the forest, and

[01:18:28] honestly, even with how much I go through those same patches of woods, I've never seen it again.

[01:18:34] I was thinking that it was a wolf or a coyote, but this thing was white, like white enough to see him

[01:18:40] in almost pitch black darkness. And he had long legs, and a real dignified demeanor. He just stared

[01:18:48] at me, not scared at all, before he calmly disappeared. I ain't seen nothing like that before,

[01:18:55] and I ain't seen it since, nor have I seen any footprints or anything that really seems indicative

[01:19:01] of what it was. It just had long legs, white fur, and a really calm, dignified demeanor.

[01:19:11] After his encounter, the witness also described feeling a sense of power

[01:19:15] and menace coming from the entity. The next couple of reports I'd like to share with you

[01:19:23] don't involve strange creatures necessarily, but have more to do with bizarre forces that seem to

[01:19:28] cause confusion or disorientation, resulting in the eyewitness becoming lost or even turning up

[01:19:35] missing, with no explanation as to why. Some people believe that this phenomena could be related

[01:19:40] to fey folk and other unexplained energies, but as always, I'll let you be the judge.

[01:19:47] This particular report involves a woman who worked as a housekeeper at a sprawling estate in the

[01:19:52] Irish countryside. One evening, she decided to take a walk back to her own village to visit her family,

[01:19:58] a walk that took her through an area with a hill called Lysard Fort, which was known to locals as

[01:20:04] a place where fairies dwelled. The woman passed through without incident and headed down the hill,

[01:20:11] yet she suddenly blinked and found herself walking the opposite way back up the hill. She couldn't

[01:20:17] understand how this could have happened, and she turned back around and reached a ditch at the

[01:20:22] bottom of the hill. All she had to do was step over this ditch, and she would be on the road

[01:20:26] to her village. But every time she tried, she once again found herself going the opposite direction,

[01:20:32] as if some barrier was preventing her from passing over. For hours, she was stuck there like this,

[01:20:39] so it was with relief that she saw a search party approaching to look for her. But when she

[01:20:44] shouted to them and waved her hands, they couldn't see her. She would go on for another hour before

[01:20:50] whatever spell had been cast was lifted, and she was finally able to continue on her way.

[01:20:59] A similar case is that of a man who attended a party at an estate and left to walk home,

[01:21:04] with his path taking him across a field. As he walked, he noticed that not only did the field

[01:21:10] seem to never end, but that it had changed somehow to become quite unfamiliar to him,

[01:21:15] despite the fact that he had gone through that field countless times before. In this case,

[01:21:21] the man apparently was quick to suspect that this was due to the stray sod, so he quickly turned all

[01:21:26] his clothes inside out. But this did not seem to work. He would walk around the field for hours

[01:21:33] without any sign of a way out, before he finally found an exit and ended up at the house that he

[01:21:39] had left, where it seemed that only several minutes had actually passed, despite the fact that to him

[01:21:45] he had been wandering for hours. There are numerous other reports of this phenomena happening outside

[01:21:54] of Ireland as well, and there are other versions of what appears to be the same phenomenon in the

[01:21:59] lore of other areas. For instance, in Finnish folklore there is what is called metsenpieto,

[01:22:06] meaning forest cover, which, like stray sod, is a magical force produced by forest spirits that

[01:22:12] causes people to not only become lost, but to also become invisible to other people looking for them.

[01:22:19] Also like the stray sod, one way to negate the effects is to either put on one's clothes inside

[01:22:25] out, or put their shoes on the opposite feet. Japan also has its own similar phenomenon called

[01:22:32] kamikakushi, or spirited away, in which people are lured away by spirits to be abducted and brought

[01:22:41] to another realm. Whatever one calls the phenomenon, it is almost always the same sort of thing, with

[01:22:47] people getting lost, unable to find an exit, and very often unable to call out for help, even when

[01:22:54] someone else is nearby, often also describing the sense of being in a sort of parallel realm, with

[01:23:00] the scenery changed or twisted somehow. There are other equally strange and difficult to categorize

[01:23:09] cases as well. As in August of 1897, a six-year-old girl named Lillian Kearney went missing in the U.S.

[01:23:17] state of Maine, as she was out with her parents picking blueberries. According to the parents,

[01:23:22] she had vanished right from underneath their noses. A preliminary search of the area would quickly

[01:23:27] expand to over 200 searchers scouring the area and calling the girl's name, all to no avail.

[01:23:35] After an extensive search, Lillian was found in the woods in a dazed and trance-like state. When

[01:23:41] asked what had happened to her, the dazed girl replied that she had been in a place in the forest

[01:23:46] where the sun had shone the entire time she had been there. This was rather odd, considering that

[01:23:53] the weather at the time of her disappearance had been partly cloudy. She had been enveloped by a

[01:23:58] thick canopy of trees far from any town, and she had been missing overnight for around 46 hours.

[01:24:09] These next reports follow a similar phenomenon, where the witnesses seem to experience some type

[01:24:15] of confusion, or the feeling that they're becoming lost, but also involve some type

[01:24:20] of malevolent creature or entity that they believe is stalking them. This first experience was

[01:24:27] reported by a poster named Hanny242, who was at Big Bend National Park in southern Texas.

[01:24:35] She had gone out camping in the area with a friend and her husband, and describes the landscape as

[01:24:40] flat, desolate, and remote, and they thought that it would be fun to take a night hike out to the

[01:24:45] nearest trail. Since it was a bright, moonlight evening through that flat terrain, they thought

[01:24:51] that it would be easy, but the witness says that as a precaution she had set out some rock piles

[01:24:56] early on to help them find their way. After dinner, they headed out around 10 p.m., but they

[01:25:02] were all in for a terrifying experience. This is her story. The first 10 minutes were pretty

[01:25:10] uneventful, and we were all in good spirits. Suddenly though, we hear a scuttling noise from

[01:25:15] about 50 feet behind us. Having been used to animal noises at night, we wrote it off as a

[01:25:21] critter. A few minutes later though, we heard the same noise a bit closer, and sounding like a bigger

[01:25:27] animal. There are black bears here, but we weren't in that area they're normally sighted. Like I said,

[01:25:32] the landscape was wide open, and we didn't see anything with our flashlights. We were a bit uneasy,

[01:25:38] but willing to go on. The rock piles had been doing a good job of leading us in the right direction.

[01:25:46] All at once, I stopped, feeling absolute terror. It's an indescribable feeling that I see many

[01:25:52] others in the subreddit reference. I knew we were in danger, I just didn't know why. I looked to my

[01:25:58] friend and my husband who both looked as terrified as I felt. There was no sound, no wind. Then,

[01:26:06] in an instant, the most inhuman scream erupted, seemingly from all around us. We all froze for

[01:26:13] what felt like minutes, but I'm sure it was just seconds. I don't remember making the decision to

[01:26:19] run back, but the next thing I remember, we were all running. We made it pretty far out, even though

[01:26:24] I thought that I was running in the right direction of our camp. I remember scanning for the rock piles

[01:26:29] I had made, but not being able to find any of them, and almost turning back thinking that we

[01:26:34] were heading in the wrong direction. But I had the instinct not to. We made it to a rather large rock

[01:26:41] that I knew was on the route back to the campsite. I also remembered putting a rock pile beside the

[01:26:46] rock, so I went to check if it was still there to make sure that we were headed back to our campsite.

[01:26:52] The rocks were still there, but they had been knocked over. This set off all the alarms, and I

[01:26:58] told my friend and my husband that we had to get back to the camp as soon as possible. We made it

[01:27:04] back a few minutes later, and by the time we got back, I was entirely freaked out, and I didn't want

[01:27:09] to stay. I think my husband was as well, but my friend convinced us that it was just wildlife,

[01:27:15] so we stayed in the tent that night. I don't know if it was connected, but there was scuttling

[01:27:21] and footsteps around the tent all night. Either way, I didn't sleep. We didn't do any more primitive

[01:27:28] hiking that trip, and opted instead to stay at a campsite in one of the community camps. I've never

[01:27:34] felt that feeling before or since, and I've been in the woods at night plenty of times. The next day,

[01:27:41] I went out to check if all the rock piles had been knocked down, and they had. I don't think an

[01:27:46] animal would deliberately go around knocking over the markers, and that's really what makes me think

[01:27:51] that it was sentient. I don't know what it was, but I don't want to know, and I'm glad that we made it

[01:27:59] out. In the next report, the origin of the strange sounds and inexplicable fear is actually seen.

[01:28:09] This report comes from Reddit user throwaway84648, and it was posted on the Humanoid Encounters

[01:28:16] forum. The reporter says that on this evening, he headed out to a wooded area in Wisconsin to

[01:28:22] go to a party that some friends were having. Along the way, they got a little lost, but were able to

[01:28:28] get directions by cell phone, and they continued making their way through the dark trees, finding

[01:28:33] their way by the beam of their flashlight. They still seemed lost, inexplicably going around in

[01:28:40] circles and passing the same clearing several times, and the witness claims that some very

[01:28:45] strange things would start to occur. This is what he had to say. I joked that she better not get me

[01:28:54] killed, and as we nervously laugh, we hear a nyah, nyah, nyah sound coming from behind us,

[01:29:01] followed by what sounded like a cross between an old train whistle and somebody blowing. We turn

[01:29:07] around thinking, what the heck was that? And we shine our flashlights on a deer, standing up on

[01:29:13] its hind legs with one arm against a tree, looking at us. I know this sounds stupid, but just the way

[01:29:20] that it was watching us and standing there was the most unsettling thing I've seen in my life.

[01:29:26] My friend then takes off running, and I'm still just standing there, looking at it, trying to make

[01:29:31] heads or tails of it before I start running after Gina, trying not to be left alone with this thing.

[01:29:37] Luckily for me, Gina runs into a tree, and I catch up with her and start yelling at her about leaving

[01:29:42] me alone. And this is when we hear another whistling sound to the left of us, and we turn our

[01:29:48] flashlights to see another deer looking at us. However, this one is walking towards us on its

[01:29:53] hind legs, but not like a person. It was like a dog. It gets close, but walks behind a tree with

[01:30:01] only its head and neck poking out, watching us. I have never been so scared in my life, and I

[01:30:07] started to cry, and started yelling at Gina and telling her to call the cops. At this point, I

[01:30:13] honestly thought that I was going to die. I was just so scared. And then we heard another whistle

[01:30:18] somewhere else in the woods, behind us. We heard a rustling sound in the woods, and we were sure

[01:30:23] that this was it, and we were going to die. But instead, out walked a giant black dog. The dog

[01:30:30] then walked right up to us, looked at us, and then looked at the deer behind the tree, which

[01:30:35] then started making a nyah-nyah sound like we had heard earlier. However, the dog just stood there

[01:30:42] looking at it, not growling or barking or anything. Just staring. The deer then started to make a

[01:30:49] coughing sound, but the dog just stared at it without making a noise, before turning around

[01:30:54] and just ignoring it, and then walking over to us, and barking and baying. A minute later, a

[01:31:00] professor who I'd taken a class with sophomore year burst through the brush and started yelling at

[01:31:06] Baron, his dog who had apparently run away into the woods. He was really confused to see us, but saw

[01:31:12] that we were crying, and offered to take us back to his house, and drive us back to campus. I haven't

[01:31:19] slept since that night, and have been all over the internet trying to make sense of what I saw.

[01:31:24] I fully intend to spoil Baron Rotten for saving my life. Just as bizarre and terrifying is a report

[01:31:35] from a poster called Kaijikai, who was out camping at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky with her husband

[01:31:41] and a friend at the time. They had been there many times before, and on this evening they did something

[01:31:46] they often enjoyed while there, which was making their way to the top of a high trail to go stargazing.

[01:31:52] They had been up this trail countless times before, and knew it very well, but this evening was to be

[01:31:58] a bit more unusual. They made it to the top and laid down to do their stargazing, but almost

[01:32:04] immediately they began hearing strange noises all around them, and the witness would describe

[01:32:10] the following events. We laid down and tried to stargaze, but the clouds were even thicker now.

[01:32:17] It was miserably hot. We could hear voices at times, and my husband kept checking for people

[01:32:22] that we heard. However, he never saw anyone. We saw flashes of light, but never saw anyone attached to it.

[01:32:30] Then we heard a bird call, but it wasn't like a real bird noise at all. It sounded like a person

[01:32:36] making bird calls. It was rhythmic, and not really natural. I was convinced we weren't alone, and hadn't

[01:32:43] been alone, but also I am the most easily spooked. I asked to leave as soon as they were ready to,

[01:32:49] and they were ready right then and there. It scared me that they were just as afraid as me at this point.

[01:32:56] We began going down the way that we came, and it felt like it was taking so long.

[01:33:01] We were going steady and quick, and it was downhill, but we weren't making any ground it seemed.

[01:33:06] It's hard to explain, but it was so weird that at one point I even said out loud,

[01:33:11] this feels much longer, and they both agreed with me. I kept looking behind me with a flashlight,

[01:33:17] my husband kept looking out to the sides, and my friend kept hers mostly forward.

[01:33:23] Now as they made their way down the trail, they could hear all sorts of undefinable noises coming

[01:33:28] from the dark, and the husband would say that he kept catching what looked like eyes in the beam

[01:33:32] of the flashlight. There were also what sounded like footsteps in the dark, and they were sure

[01:33:37] that they were being followed by someone or something. Then things got even scarier,

[01:33:44] and the witness explains what happened next. My husband just stops walking altogether and says,

[01:33:51] what's that? But the question is more of like an alert, and I move my hand lamp in that direction,

[01:33:58] and I don't see anything at first. Then both of his lights catch a shape, and then my headlamp

[01:34:04] catches it. I move my hand lamp to the center and catch it while my friend simultaneously finds

[01:34:10] it in her lights as well. All six of our lights shine onto and kind of reflect off of a light

[01:34:16] gray creature. It's bent into a crouching position, kneeling on its right leg, and it starts turning

[01:34:23] towards us. It starts to slowly stand, and my mind is racing still. It looks human, but it is too big.

[01:34:32] People often mistake human shapes for what's actually bears in the woods, but this is skinny.

[01:34:37] It's thin and big, and almost white it's so light gray, and its skin resembles dolphin skin.

[01:34:44] There's a shine to it, and our lights get reflected a little when they're on it. It gradually comes to

[01:34:50] a full standing position in front of us. Its head is long, and its eyes are in a human position

[01:34:57] on the face in front, and not on the side like in animals, but I couldn't see any other facial

[01:35:02] features. Just big, almost empty holes or pits where the eyes were. It looked directly at us and our

[01:35:10] lights. The way it stood was intimidating, almost like when snakes raise up and flex their necks

[01:35:16] all crazy to show the prey that they're stronger and smarter. It was kind of like it was stepping

[01:35:22] up to a fight. From crouching, then turning, and then standing front on in front of us, the arms

[01:35:29] hung down low, and the hands seemed long as well. Its hands had to be by its knees. I'd guess it

[01:35:36] stood nine feet or so, and not that far in front of us. It had no hair at all, and its head was large

[01:35:43] as well. I couldn't process what I saw, and I was frozen. Then I feel my husband hitting me on the

[01:35:50] back and yelling, run, run, run. I start to understand that we have to get away from this thing,

[01:35:56] and then it pivots and runs to the right, going backwards on the trail so it could get around the

[01:36:02] barrier and onto the trail behind us. We take off running the rest of the way down the trail,

[01:36:07] knowing that this thing just took off much faster than us, and that after it crossed from behind

[01:36:12] the barrier, it would be gaining on us quick. We didn't talk at all, because when we tried to,

[01:36:17] it felt like we would get caught. We keep running as we can, but some areas are so steep. It never

[01:36:24] felt like we were out of sight from this creature, and as we made it to the trail beginning with the

[01:36:28] gravel, we could hear something to the side, crashing down through the forest. We ran until

[01:36:34] we got to the car, and then we drove as fast as we could, and as soon as we got to the main road,

[01:36:40] it cleared up, and the stars were out. When that thing looked at us, I knew it was smarter and

[01:36:46] faster than us. I knew that if we hadn't seen it, that it could have easily taken one of us and then

[01:36:52] gotten away. I think that the only reason it hesitated was because so many of us saw it at once,

[01:36:58] and we stayed together. Let's begin with our first experience of the night, which comes to us

[01:37:08] from Savannah, and Savannah's experience is called Meaningful Dream. Savannah says,

[01:37:17] Hey Nick, I've been listening to your podcast for a while now and absolutely love it. I'm not sure if

[01:37:23] this is exactly something that is paranormal, but I do believe it is something otherworldly.

[01:37:28] It's been almost three years since my dad passed away, and I felt that I should share my dream

[01:37:33] that I had the day before he passed away. Here's a little bit of background of myself.

[01:37:40] I was 15 when my dad passed away, and I have always believed in the spiritual world,

[01:37:46] and still do. I've experienced several small paranormal things, good and bad. I've also

[01:37:53] always had pretty realistic dreams, more so nightmares. For a little background on my dad,

[01:38:00] my dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness when he was in his early 20s, but it never really

[01:38:06] affected him until he reached his late 30s. My dad became severely ill in the last week of September

[01:38:12] and had to be hospitalized. The first two nights of him being in the hospital, he was still fully

[01:38:18] aware, but the morning of the third day is when he became extremely disoriented and was constantly in

[01:38:25] and out of consciousness. Our whole family was in and out of the hospital, coming as soon as visiting

[01:38:31] hours started and staying until visiting hours were over. During the time that he was in the

[01:38:37] hospital, I had developed severe anxiety, causing me to never be able to sleep. On the fourth day

[01:38:43] of him being in the hospital, he was put on a ventilator. When I got home later that night,

[01:38:49] I was able to finally go to sleep. I started dreaming that I was in my high school running

[01:38:54] late for my Spanish class. As I'm walking to my Spanish class, I was stopped by the sight of my dad

[01:39:01] in the middle of the hallway. As I'm looking at him, I see my grandma, his mom, walk up next to him.

[01:39:08] I'm not sure why, but my grandma was in the form of her younger years. She had bright red hair and

[01:39:14] her face was free of wrinkles. As she appeared, a bunch of balloons appeared as well. I should also

[01:39:22] add that my grandma is still alive with gray hair and her face heavy with wrinkles. I have always

[01:39:29] been confused why so many balloons had appeared and why the younger version of my grandma was in

[01:39:35] this particular dream. After watching my grandma walk up next to my dad, I stood there staring at

[01:39:41] the two of them. My dad then opened his arms wide, beckoning me to come and give him a hug.

[01:39:47] I then ran into his arms and was soon encased in a bear hug. As soon as his arms wrapped around me,

[01:39:54] I was consumed with relief. I was still aware what was happening outside of my dream.

[01:40:01] I knew that he should not be in my school, but in the hospital bed on a ventilator.

[01:40:06] I questioned him and wondered why he was here and how he got better so fast. His only response was

[01:40:13] to squeeze me tighter and then said, it'll be okay. I woke up from my dream with tears streaming down

[01:40:20] my face, but I still felt the relief that I got whenever my dad hugged me. 20 minutes after I woke

[01:40:27] up, my mom told me that it was time to go. When we got to the hospital, I found out that my family

[01:40:33] decided to take my dad off the ventilator, meaning that he was going to pass sometime that day.

[01:40:40] I bawled my eyes out, devastated that my dad was officially going to be gone, but I still felt

[01:40:46] that relief. Only a couple of months ago, I talked to my sister about the dream that I had,

[01:40:52] and to both of our shocks, she had the exact same dream and feelings, except they were in a dollar

[01:40:59] general store. Even our grandma was young in her dream. I still get chills whenever I think of it.

[01:41:07] I believe that dream was him saying goodbye to us and to give us strength because he knew the next

[01:41:13] day was going to be his last day. Sometimes that relief I felt in my dream washes over,

[01:41:20] typically on days that his passing hits me hardest. I'm sorry if this explanation is all

[01:41:26] over the place. I still get rather emotional whenever talking about his dream, and it causes

[01:41:32] my mind to work in overdrive. I'd like to thank you for offering an outlet to people who feel

[01:41:37] like they can't talk to anyone about their experiences. Stay well. Savannah

[01:41:47] Our next experience comes to us from Goulet, and Goulet says, Hi Nick, thank you for being a great

[01:41:55] host and being a safe place to share our experiences. You've shared two of mine,

[01:42:00] one about a green man, and I can't remember what the other one was about. Maybe a duende.

[01:42:06] Well, I've been talking to a co-worker more recently about the paranormal because we found

[01:42:11] out that we have the same interest in the paranormal, and she told me that she has

[01:42:15] a shadow man that lives with her. After telling me about her experiences, about a week later I

[01:42:21] got home after work, and as usual I went to our guest room on the first floor to change,

[01:42:27] and as I was pulling down my bedtime shirt, the door to the room was cracked so that I could see

[01:42:32] outside the room, but nobody can see inside. I can see through the crack a tall man, almost

[01:42:38] shadow-like, and he looks similar to my fiancé. Same height, weight, walk, and speed. I asked,

[01:42:47] Babe, what are you doing? as the direction he was walking was as if he was going to walk out

[01:42:52] to the front door, but the door never opened. Assuming that he was looking out the window

[01:42:58] beside the front door, I opened the bedroom door and before looking up I asked, Is there someone

[01:43:03] here? What are you doing? only to find out that nobody was there. I then turned the other way

[01:43:10] and walked toward the kitchen to find my fiancé by the fridge. I asked him if he was near the room

[01:43:15] or by the front door, to which he said, No, and that he was in the kitchen the whole time.

[01:43:21] I then told him what happened and laughed and joked that my co-worker's shadow man

[01:43:26] followed me home. During the last week of August, a few days after the shadow man experience,

[01:43:32] I went to the bathroom in the downstairs guest room and as I was closing the door,

[01:43:37] I noticed that it would not shut. This door has no trouble closing and no trouble opening. It's

[01:43:43] not heavy and I do not need to use force as the house shifted barely enough to make you have to

[01:43:48] lift the door to shut it entirely. Well, when I noticed the door wasn't closing, it was not even

[01:43:54] touching the door frame. It was as if someone's hand was between the frame and the door, trying

[01:44:00] to make sure that it didn't close. I had to use the bathroom so bad that I pushed harder and used

[01:44:05] the force of my body, but it still didn't budge. So I gave up and did my business, but after

[01:44:12] washing my hands, I double-checked the door. It was still light and didn't need any force to open

[01:44:18] or close. I then closed it all the way with no force at all, given the fact that it didn't shut

[01:44:24] because of the shifted house. But nevertheless, it closed all the way, still with nothing blocking

[01:44:30] it from touching the frame. I did an inspection to see if anything around it might have blocked it,

[01:44:37] but I found nothing. Later that night, as I was walking up the stairs to go to bed,

[01:44:42] we have to pass up a hallway that leads to the washroom. Then the other side of the stairs is

[01:44:47] the guest bedroom, both of which you can see without trying. I noticed at first before

[01:44:53] walking up the stairs that the laundry room light appeared to be on. They weren't, but it was all

[01:44:59] lit as if someone had a spotlight shining into that room. I shrugged it off as if my mind was

[01:45:05] playing tricks on me and I made my way up a few more stairs until I turned to the right because

[01:45:10] now the guest bedroom appeared the same way. This was at a time that everyone was in their own rooms

[01:45:16] and could not have played tricks on me. So I shrugged it off, continued upstairs,

[01:45:22] and called my fiancé to tell him what had happened. I laughed and said,

[01:45:27] Sherry needs to come and get her shadow man back. The next day, I texted my co-worker saying that

[01:45:33] she needed to get them, and I added a laughing emoji, only for her to say that she actually

[01:45:39] hasn't seen them for a few days, which is unusual because she sees them at least once every day,

[01:45:45] and it's gotten to the point where her husband and son have seen them too,

[01:45:49] until they appeared at my house. This is my next story.

[01:45:56] My dog of sixteen years passed in February. She was a little old lady, and we each took turns

[01:46:02] carrying her and giving her kisses and scratches, and making sure she knew that she was loved,

[01:46:08] until she crossed her rainbow bridge. Well, two nights ago my sister and I were in the kitchen,

[01:46:14] and we both heard a bark that sounded exactly like Coco's, our late dog. It was so real sounding

[01:46:20] that we continued what we were doing, until we realized that she had been gone for months now,

[01:46:25] and there was no way that we could have heard her. The other dogs around us are big dogs,

[01:46:31] and they don't sound like her, nor are they as close as her bark sounded.

[01:46:35] Another thing is that we both heard it, and we both thought the same thing. We both, without a

[01:46:41] doubt, know that this bark sounded like it was her, letting us know she wanted to come back inside.

[01:46:49] Without a doubt I know it was her. I still get so heartbroken knowing she isn't here with us,

[01:46:54] and I still cry about it. But hearing that bark gave me the biggest smile and boost in happiness.

[01:47:01] Now I need to find a way to include her in my wedding. Thank you again Nick for all that you do.

[01:47:09] Goo-lay.

[01:47:10] Our next experience comes to us from Roy, and Roy's experience is called

[01:47:19] Hot Night in Tasmanian Winter.

[01:47:23] Roy says,

[01:47:24] Good day Nick. I've only just found your podcast, although I listen to many similar ones.

[01:47:30] The first story I listened to was from Tasmania, and it intrigued me because of the location,

[01:47:35] so I thought that I would write to you and relate my little tale.

[01:47:40] In 2002, my wife and I spent three weeks traveling around Tasmania. We drove our

[01:47:46] four-wheel drive from Bow Boeing near Campbelltown in New South Wales down to Victoria, and we caught

[01:47:52] the ferry, The Spirit of Tasmania, across to Devonport. Arriving in Devonport at 10.30pm,

[01:47:59] we stayed overnight in a caravan park, and the next day we set off on our trip.

[01:48:04] We didn't have a plan as to where we would end up day to day, and just winged it,

[01:48:09] only looking for accommodation around 4pm each day, unless we were staying in the same location

[01:48:15] for more than one day. We covered most of Tasmania and drove highways, dirt roads, beaches, etc.

[01:48:23] Tasmania is a fantastic place to visit, and we were there exactly six years after the Port Arthur

[01:48:29] Massacre, and we spent three consecutive days walking through Port Arthur and taking ghost

[01:48:35] tours in a ferry ride to the Isle of the Dead, where only the landed gentry had marked graves,

[01:48:41] and the convicts were buried all around the rest of the small island in unmarked grave sites.

[01:48:46] You were literally walking over them without knowing if you were or not.

[01:48:52] We had a couple of minor strange events happen during our time at Port Arthur.

[01:48:56] Photos not turning out, batteries of our video camera missing, and then turning up unexpectedly,

[01:49:02] but nothing spookier than that, although I wished we had.

[01:49:07] There are many beautiful little towns in Tasmania, and we were having a great time,

[01:49:11] except, ironically, in a town called Campbelltown. My wife and I at that stage had been happily

[01:49:18] married for 27 years, and were married happily for another 15, but in Campbelltown we had an

[01:49:25] unexpected argument. We were standing on an old bridge where a murder had apparently taken place,

[01:49:31] and we found that we could not agree on anything, or where to go next. It finally turned out that

[01:49:37] we decided to walk to a nearby church and take a look inside. There was very little conversation

[01:49:42] between the bridge and the church, but as soon as we stepped into the vestibule of the church,

[01:49:47] the air seemed clear, and we were happy again. The rest of the day was terrific,

[01:49:53] and in the afternoon we decided to find a place to stay for the night. We found a place easily,

[01:49:59] and the owner said that we could stay in a house that was available, or a converted stable that was

[01:50:04] out the back of the house. The house looked a little spooky, and far too big for what we needed,

[01:50:09] so we opted for the stable. The stable was very quaint, and had a small lounge area and kitchen,

[01:50:16] an open fireplace, and a bedroom and en suite upstairs. Now, Tasmania in early May is pretty

[01:50:23] cold, so I thought that I would light the fire and warm the place up a bit. Kindling and firewood

[01:50:28] was supplied, so I thought that it would be no problem. We had an open fireplace in our home

[01:50:33] back in NSW, and it was never a problem to get it going. But not so in this place. Try as I might

[01:50:41] to get the fire going, it kept going out. I'd light kindling, newspaper, different stack methods.

[01:50:48] It just would not go. The plan was, get the fire going, let it get established, and then go to the

[01:50:54] pub for dinner, and the place would be cozy and warm for when we returned. However, finally,

[01:50:59] after spending almost an hour with the fire, I gave up, and we went to the pub for dinner.

[01:51:05] We walked home satisfied with our visit to the pub and our meal, and we went upstairs to bed.

[01:51:12] My wife fell asleep easily, but not me. I just could not get comfortable, and I found the place

[01:51:18] to be too warm. All this in the midst of a Tasmanian winter, where I couldn't even get a fire going.

[01:51:26] After a while, my wife woke up and asked if I was okay. I told her that I couldn't get comfortable

[01:51:32] in this place, and that I was sweating all over. She turned on the light and saw that I was a mess,

[01:51:37] and could not explain why I was in the state that I was in. And she was under the covers.

[01:51:43] I told her not to worry and to go back to sleep, and I would try to do the same.

[01:51:48] But it never happened. I just kept sweating and could not rest. So, after spending a few more

[01:51:54] hours awake and wondering what was going to happen next, I just resigned myself to wait for the sun

[01:52:00] to come up. Around five o'clock, I went downstairs and made a cup of tea, not interested in getting

[01:52:06] the fire going for myself, but I thought that I would try to light it for my wife's benefit.

[01:52:11] And it lit easily. I was baffled. It was the same wood as last night, and with little effort,

[01:52:18] the fire was going strong. With the fire now going, I started to cool down. My wife then

[01:52:25] came down and we made breakfast, showered, and said goodbye to the stable. I can't explain what

[01:52:33] happened to us in Campbelltown, Tasmania, but there was something about that town that didn't

[01:52:38] completely agree with us. I believe there was something in that stable that just didn't want

[01:52:43] us there, especially me. Tasmania is a fantastic place, but I believe because of its convict

[01:52:49] history, there are many uneasy souls there. I think that it would have been easier for me if

[01:52:55] I had seen an apparition in the stable or heard some voice saying, get out. But I'm left guessing.

[01:53:03] Anyway, I'm glad I found your podcast, Nick, and I will continue to listen.

[01:53:09] I am very pleased to hear stories from Australia. All the best. Roy.

[01:53:18] Our next report comes to us from Jay, and Jay's story is called Time Traveler or Doppelganger?

[01:53:27] Jay says, Hi Nick, I just wanted to say I've been listening to your podcast for about nine

[01:53:32] months now, and I'm hooked. Listening to people's experiences has been enthralling and has brought

[01:53:38] up memories of my own. Today I'd like to share a story that happened to me sometime in 2008.

[01:53:45] I had gone to a doctor's appointment, and when I got there, the receptionist looked up at me and

[01:53:50] said, wow, that was fast. How did you have time to change your clothes? I looked at her confused

[01:53:56] and asked her what she was talking about. And she said to me, well, you were just here. You came up

[01:54:01] to the desk, started talking and then mentioned that you had an appointment in a few minutes.

[01:54:06] Still confused, I told her, ma'am, this is the first time I've been here today. She seemed surprised.

[01:54:14] She told me, I swear you were here. You came up, talked about five minutes, looked at your watch,

[01:54:20] and then said you had to go. I paused for a moment and asked her if I had an appointment

[01:54:26] here and I told you that it was in a few minutes, why would I suddenly decide to leave?

[01:54:31] She then said, I don't know. It did seem odd, but I didn't think to ask about it.

[01:54:37] The thing that baffles me to this day is that I asked her what I was wearing when I came in the

[01:54:42] first time and she described an outfit that I had at home almost exactly the way it was.

[01:54:48] I know people may ask if I have a brother, and I do. He's five years older than me, lives in a

[01:54:54] different county about an hour away, have different moms, and we look nothing alike.

[01:55:01] People say that we all have twins somewhere in the world, but what are the odds that mine just

[01:55:05] happens to be in the same place that I'm going to be a few moments later? Or is it possible that in

[01:55:11] the future we have figured out how to time travel? I'll let you be the judge. Our next experience

[01:55:22] comes to us from Carol, and Carol's story is called Ouija Board. Carol says, Hi Nick,

[01:55:31] it seems that every time I hear a new episode, it reminds me of a similar experience I've had

[01:55:36] and want to share. When I was young, I was gifted a Ouija board. We're talking early 1970s. At the

[01:55:44] same time, I also became interested in and checked out occult books from the library.

[01:55:50] My mom and I lived with my maternal grandparents, as she was divorced from my dad. She was a woman

[01:55:56] ahead of her time, very strong and independent, yet she could also be very quiet and intimidating.

[01:56:03] My family attended church every week, and my grandmother was extremely religious

[01:56:08] and always prayed. If she knew the significance of the board,

[01:56:12] she never would have allowed it into her home. The same goes for the books.

[01:56:18] The occult books and Ouija board were located in a bedroom I was sharing with my mom,

[01:56:22] and she knew about them. Of course, being young, I played with the Ouija board and didn't know what

[01:56:28] I was doing, and was completely unaware that there were certain rules to follow.

[01:56:33] This naturally meant that I didn't do anything correctly, and it quickly led to chaos.

[01:56:40] It began one night with minor, unidentifiable noises. I thought that I was only imagining it

[01:56:46] and had just scared myself from reading the books, but it seemed to build more and more each night.

[01:56:53] On one final cataclysmic night, what started out as strange, non-placeable noises throughout the

[01:56:59] house soon evolved into full disembodied whispers. There was a tangible oppressive energy seeping

[01:57:06] into our bedroom walls, and the sharp scratching sounds that followed betrayed its intention to

[01:57:11] infiltrate not just my room, but my own body and mind. Then the movement in my room began.

[01:57:21] I was terrified and helpless, and my mom thankfully felt and heard it all too.

[01:57:26] At least I wasn't alone. She was, needless to say, furious, and she warned me to remove

[01:57:32] the books from our house and return them without delay. I never saw the Ouija board again after

[01:57:38] that night, and things eventually died down in the house after that. Thank God.

[01:57:44] It's the one thing I've always implored to my son not to do. Play with a Ouija board. However,

[01:57:51] I know that the more you prohibit someone from doing something, the more likely they are to do

[01:57:55] what you forbid, and that tendency has haunted me throughout my parenthood. My son is 26,

[01:58:02] and I believe him when he says that he's never messed with one and doesn't ever intend to,

[01:58:07] but I hate that the potential for negative energies to infiltrate his life as it had mine

[01:58:12] is still out there. That these seemingly innocuous traps are in the world, just waiting to be found.

[01:58:19] I truly feel that if my son hadn't already experienced considerable paranormal activity

[01:58:25] in our current home while he grew up, he would have already been tempted to experiment with one.

[01:58:31] Thanks again, Nick, for the safe sharing space. I genuinely enjoy listening to everyone's stories,

[01:58:37] and I love how much they validate your listeners' experiences. It really lights a fire in me to

[01:58:43] share and connect with the other listeners. May you, your family, and your listeners find peace of

[01:58:49] mind, body, and spirit. Your loyal fan and patron, Carol. Our next experience comes to us from Marcia,

[01:59:03] and Marcia's experience is called My Year in a Haunted House. Marcia says,

[01:59:10] I never believed in ghosts until I was in my early 30s and moved to the eastern shore of Maryland.

[01:59:17] On December 1st, 2005, our family moved into a rental house just outside Salisbury.

[01:59:23] Everything was fine and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Shortly after moving in,

[01:59:29] I got my two school-aged children off to school, and my husband left for work, so I climbed back

[01:59:34] into bed where my 18-month-old was still sleeping. She was just waking up when I heard a little girl

[01:59:41] talking in the living room down the hall. I held my breath and listened more carefully,

[01:59:46] and just as I was convincing myself that it was my imagination, my daughter sat up and said,

[01:59:52] Sissy's here, and this is when I knew that she heard it too. I told her that her sister was at

[01:59:58] school and that no one was here, but she had to go and look for herself. I brushed off the incident.

[02:00:06] Not long after that, my 10-year-old daughter told me that one Saturday morning that before I woke up

[02:00:11] she was sitting on the couch watching cartoons. From one end of the couch, you could see up the

[02:00:16] hall to the bedrooms. As she was watching cartoons, she was distracted by two white mist-like little

[02:00:23] girls that came out of our bathroom, skipped down the hall, and then went into my bedroom,

[02:00:29] where my husband and I were still sleeping. I asked why she didn't come and get me,

[02:00:35] and she said that she didn't want to go where the little girls went. When I asked her what she did

[02:00:40] do, she said, I moved to the other end of the couch so I couldn't see down the hall.

[02:00:47] Not long after that, I saw one of these little mist-girls cross the hall in front of me, as well.

[02:00:54] One morning, I woke up and was checking the TV for a school delay for fog,

[02:00:58] which I had never experienced anywhere else I'd ever lived. And as I watched the delays scroll

[02:01:03] across the screen, I heard a child crying. I immediately went and checked all three of my

[02:01:09] kids who were still sound asleep. I then went back to the TV and continued to watch,

[02:01:15] and I then heard laughing. It made me smile, knowing that I made the child laugh.

[02:01:22] This little girl or girls never made me feel afraid, but my husband didn't believe me until

[02:01:27] one day he bought the kids one of those big marbled purple and white balls that make that

[02:01:32] sound when it bounces that you recognize from your childhood. That night, we went to bed,

[02:01:38] and my husband heard it bouncing and bouncing in the living room. He got out of bed and went

[02:01:43] to check it out, and it was just sitting in the middle of the living room between the couch and

[02:01:47] the television. The next day, he asked if I had heard it and told me his story. I was up before

[02:01:54] everyone that morning and found the ball in the kitchen, about thirty feet and around the corner

[02:01:59] from where he saw it, at two a.m. We had many other small things happen in this home, often hearing

[02:02:07] footsteps walking down the hall. I asked our landlord if anyone had ever mentioned a ghost

[02:02:12] in the home, and he said that no one had ever complained. Even after we were moving out,

[02:02:18] he came to give us our deposit back, and I asked him again,

[02:02:21] since we are moving out of state, you can tell me the truth, but he swears that no one has ever

[02:02:26] said anything. So I told him, well, the next time someone asks, you can tell them, yes.

[02:02:34] I do have another incident that happened in this house that was not so sweet as the little

[02:02:39] mist girls, but I will save that for another time. Thanks for taking the time to listen,

[02:02:46] and giving me a place to share. I hope you enjoyed part two, and if you'd like to submit

[02:02:55] your experience or learn more about supporting what I do, you can find all of my contact and

[02:03:00] support information at paranormalmysteriespodcast.com, and of course in the show notes.

[02:03:07] Until next time, I hope you have a safe and fun New Year's Eve, and please remember,

[02:03:12] don't wait for the unknown to come to you, get out there and find it.