Saved by a Ghost! – Ep. 224

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Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast.

If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com.

Enjoy the show.

A ghost by Seren Gacy, 22.

This is a story that nobody in my family believes except for my mom, and she probably

only believes it because she was there for the backlash.

This happened when I was 11.

That was 40 years ago, so the fact that I remember it so clearly should tell you just

how deeply it affected me.

My family has a lot of mildly sensitive people in it.

For most of us, it's just when we're kids, and by the time we hit double digits, it's

long gone.

That was not the case for me.

I was definitely much more sensitive as a child than I am now, but I still seem to pick

up on a lot of things that other people do not.

Anyway, back then, I was still fairly sensitive, and that does have relevance to the story.

Now, my mother had played musical chairs my entire childhood, and when I turned 10, she

landed on the chair for the Mormon religion, and this was a religious version of musical

chairs.

Nice people for the most part, but I'm not a religious person.

Somewhat spiritual, yes, but I don't follow any particular religion, and never have.

But my mother decided to sign me up for a church summer camp.

She was going as a counselor, so she was there as well.

In the classic vein of every summer camp story, there was a story told about a ghost in

the woods.

The story basically said that the woods were haunted by the ghost of a young man who

had drowned after falling off of a dock out in the water, just a little ways into the

woods.

In the fit of the usual preteen idiocy, my cabin mates and I decided that we were going

to sneak out on the last night and look for the ghost in the woods.

Of course none of us ever expected to find anything, but it was something creepy and fun

to do.

So at about 10.30 that night, lights out was at 9.

The ten of us slipped out the back window out of the cabin, with one flashlight and absolutely

no idea which way we were headed.

Needless to say, we got hopelessly lost.

It was just a bunch of 11 and 12-year-old girls fumbling around in the woods at night, trying

to scare each other.

It was nearly a full moon when we left the cabin, but not too long after we got out into

the woods, the moon disappeared, and suddenly it was very, very dark.

We didn't have any more flashlights than the one.

As we all started to kind of realize just how screwed we were, and that this very fun

idea had not actually been very smart, things began to get creepy.

With the lack of light, we decided to walk in a single line so that nobody would get

lost.

Each of us put our hands on the shoulders of the girl in front of us.

I was actually the first one in line because I was the one who actually remembered to bring

the flashlight.

Anyway, we started walking in a single line, and what we thought was the direction we came

from, trying to just get back to camp, when I started getting a really strong feeling

that we were going the wrong way.

I literally heard someone say, as if they were right next to me, that way isn't safe,

go right.

But it was a male's voice, and as I mentioned, there were ten of us out there.

We were all young girls.

This was not the voice of anybody in our group.

Anyway, following my sensitive cut feeling, I listened to the voice.

I just had this feeling that it could be trusted.

At first I didn't say anything to the rest of the group about hearing the voice.

I certainly didn't tell them that I was following its directions until the third time I heard

it.

Of course, we all dissolved into a group of terrified, screaming children for about twenty

minutes or so.

But then we realized that no matter what else was going on, we really needed to get back

to camp.

So we lined back up with our hands on each other's shoulders and proceeded to walk again.

I continued to get feelings and whispered directions, but the other girls started experiencing

things as well.

One of them heard a voice, but what they did experience was the sensation of a hand

on one shoulder or the other, gently pushing them left or right.

And it was never just one of them.

It would literally be the entire line of us that would gently be pushed one after the

other.

It wasn't a shove.

It was a gentle push to move us off to the side.

This happened to all of us at least two dozen times over the course of the next several

hours as we walked through the woods trying to find our way back to camp.

We were located somewhere around 4 a.m. in a scorted back to camp, at which point we were

all babbling hysterically, and one of the counselors had to set us all down to get us calm

before they could even get a straight story from us.

Now that alone is pretty creepy, but it's something that seems fairly subjective and

would be easily dismissed and forgotten.

But what really brings it all home was what happened the next day.

We weren't slated to depart until 4 p.m. the following day.

So we had basically the whole day at camp before going home.

All of us girls had been sent to sleep, and we weren't woken up until lunchtime because

we hadn't slept during the night, and we were all physically and mentally exhausted.

But we were all very surprised to be rounded up and told that we would be going on a walk

in the woods, because the camp counselors had some serious questions for us about the

previous night.

So we were all let out into the woods and walked the exact same path that we had walked

the night before.

At first our path was very random as we literally just tried to find our way through the woods,

but it turned out that we had been heading toward a cliff that overlooked the river.

There was about a 40 foot drop that we had been heading straight towards, and you could

tell that we had stopped and taken a sharp turn to the right just about 10 feet before

we would have fallen right off of that cliff.

We then walked parallel to the cliff for almost half a mile on a downward slope until we

got close to the river.

We could hear the river, so we realized we were close to it, but we never saw it.

What really had everyone scratching their heads was the fact that we came down along the

edge of the cliff and then walked out onto an old rotting loading wharf.

It wasn't a small dock like we had all pictured in our minds as we were hearing this ghost

story.

This thing was massive, that was the size of a football field cut in half lengthwise,

and it was full of rotted spots.

We had all walked across it in a weaving pattern that literally traced the only safe path

across the dock, and we never even knew we were on it.

But that is when we had felt the hands.

We had been walking fairly level, and when we turned to the right after I heard the voice

tell me, that way isn't safe go right, we started going downhill.

Very noticeably downhill, and it was when it leveled out again that we felt the hands

and that would have been when we were on the dock.

Those hands kept us alive and got us across that dock safely.

We walked across 150 feet of rotting wood and not a single one of us so much as stumbled.

But in daylight you could clearly see the scuffed path along the dock that we had walked.

It was nothing like a straight line.

Anyway most of the counselors didn't believe that we had encountered a ghost, much less

that it had guided us and saved our lives.

I think my mom was the only one who kind of believed us.

They all said that we were incredibly lucky, and they were going to let our parents decide

our punishments as they would be informing all of them about our little midnight escapade.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.

I never went back, and I never heard from any of the other girls again because none of

us went to the same church.

It's not my only ghost story, of course, but it's definitely one of the strangest things

that has ever happened to me.

Gerald's Thermostat by Alex.

So I've been wanting to write this down for a while now because it still bothers me

and I feel like maybe someone else has had something similar happen.

This happened in the springtime in 2022.

I was living alone in a rental house out in Murphreesboro, Tennessee.

I'd been there for about eight months.

There wasn't anything special about the place.

I also work from home, so I'm in the house basically all day.

My routine was pretty boring.

Coffee, sit at my desk, meetings, lunch, more desk time.

That's all just to say.

I knew every sound that the house made.

The furnace clicking on, the ice maker dropping cubes, the way the back door would rattle

when trucks went down the road.

I'm seeing this because I want to be clear.

I wasn't someone who was spooked easily or misread normal house sounds.

It started with the thermostat.

I had one of those older dial thermostats, not a smart one, just one of those circular

kinds with the little needle.

I kept it at 68.

One morning I walked past it on my way to the kitchen and I noticed it was set to 79.

I figured I'd bumped it somehow, turned it back and forgot about it.

But it happened again a few days later.

Then again, always 79, never any other number.

I actually started taking pictures of it after I'd set it, just to confirm I wasn't losing

my mind.

The pictures were always 68.

And then one morning, the thermostat was 79 again.

I told my friend about it and she said maybe the dial was slipping, like mechanically drifting

on its own.

That made sense to me.

I mentioned it to my landlord and he said that he'd replace it, but he never got around

to it.

So I just started checking it every morning.

Here's where it gets weird to me.

I was on a video call one afternoon, door to my office open, facing the wall.

And I heard the distinct sound of footsteps in the hallway, not outside, inside.

That particular floor had this very specific creek right outside the bathroom door.

And I heard it, clear as anything.

I muted myself and sat completely still, nothing else.

I figured it was the house settling unevenly, maybe thermal expansion or something.

My office was on the warm side because of the afternoon sun.

I didn't think much more about it, until I was going through some boxes a few weeks later.

I had never fully unpacked a storage closet near the laundry room.

Mostly just put boxes in there and shut the door.

When I finally got around to it, I found a shoe box tucked behind my own boxes that

wasn't mine.

Inside was a bunch of old photos, a folded piece of paper with a woman's name and a phone

number written on it, a few old coins, and a man's watch that had stopped running.

I called my landlord to ask about it, and he was quiet for a second, and then he said

that the previous tenant had died in the house.

Nothing dramatic.

He was an older man, apparently he had a heart attack, and he wasn't found for a few days.

I noticed that my landlord seemed a little uncomfortable talking about it, and he changed

the subject pretty fast.

I looked up the address on one of those people finder websites, out of morbid curiosity

I guess.

The man who had lived there before me was named Gerald.

He had been in his late 70s.

I don't know what 79 means, maybe nothing.

Maybe he kept the house warm because he was old and always cold.

I've heard older people do that.

I can't tell you the footsteps were him.

Overall I really don't know what I believe about any of this, but here's the thing I keep

coming back to.

About a month before I eventually moved out, I was on the phone with my mom late at night,

staying in the living room with just a lamp on, and very suddenly I felt like I wasn't

alone in the room.

Not scared exactly, just aware.

The way you feel when someone's standing close behind you.

I turned around and obviously no one was there, but that feeling lasted for a solid minute

before it faded.

I told myself it was fatigue or just my imagination.

I still mostly believe that.

I moved out a few months later, but not because of any of this.

I still think about Gerald sometimes.

I hope whatever it is, if it was anything at all, he was just going about his routines,

the same as me.

I'm really picky about what kind of material touches my skin.

For the longest time, I could never find socks that made me forget I was actually wearing

them.

You know what I mean?

Too much moisture build up, too hot, too cold.

It's just annoying, especially out here in the winter.

My feet freeze up the second I step outside, then I come back inside and they're all warm

and clammy, just gross, uncomfortable.

So I've been trying all these different kinds of materials, cotton wool, you name it,

none of them really did it for me, could never lock down that temperature, trying all these

different brands until I realized it wasn't necessarily the brand, but the material.

Regular socks just don't handle temperature and moisture that well.

Your feet are always too hot or too cold and somehow never comfortable, but then recently

I found out about hollow socks.

Their socks are made from alpaca fiber and alpaca is kind of the secret weapon here.

It's naturally thermoregulating, so when it's cold out, your feet stay warm, but when

things heat up, they're still breathable and your feet don't overheat.

The fiber also manages moisture really well, so instead of that sweaty, swampy sock feeling,

your feet actually stay dry throughout the day, and they're so comfortable, super soft,

not itchy, and the knitting is super durable.

I wear them inside boots all the time, they're not just these lightweight desk socks, but

you can wear them at the desk too, that's totally fine.

Also they don't really get stinky either, alpaca fibers naturally resist the sort of bacterial

growth you get with most socks.

Give hollow socks a try.

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Weird Encounters in Big Bend by exploring the world.

I was in Big Bend over the weekend and had a couple of weird encounters that I just can't

shake.

On the first evening we were driving back from dinner and I wanted to take some photos

of the stars, so I pulled over into a little pull-out on the side of the road.

I get out, grab my camera equipment, and start to set up when I hear what sounds like

a step behind me.

It was a very slow step that didn't sound like anything an animal would have made.

I yelled, hello, turned around and looked, and my girlfriend freaked out and told me to

get into the car.

So I rushed back in, equipment in hand, and drove off.

I didn't see anything looking around, but I did get a really uneasy feeling in the

pit of my stomach.

I was going to potentially stop somewhere else a few miles down, but I couldn't shake

that feeling, and I just wanted to get back to the hotel.

Then the next night, as we were driving to dinner, something unusual happened to us.

We had been watching some sunset views in the park, and then drove to a pizza place

for dinner, so it was dark by the time we were heading over.

On the drive-over, I noticed something on the side of the road that looked like a pure

black figure, but I wasn't really sure what it was.

My mind had been playing tricks on me that night, thinking plants were humans or animals,

so I just kind of figured it was that again, until my girlfriend said, I think that's

a person.

I never even mentioned seeing a figure, but knowing that she noticed it as well made

me question if it was really just another plant-mind trick.

I asked her about it, and she felt very confident that it was a person.

She was in the passenger seat on the side closer to it, so she definitely got a better look

than I, and was convinced it was a person.

I wasn't so sure, so we decided to drive past our hotel and check the spot on the way

back to see if it was still there.

Well, we drove back, and there was nothing there to be seen.

It was either an animal, a human, or something else that moved on, weird stuff.

Footsteps in the hall by Renata.

I just want to start by saying I'm not someone who looks for this stuff.

I don't watch ghost hunting shows, I don't read into things.

I only listen to this show to fall asleep if I'm being honest.

My husband would tell you I'm probably the most skeptical person he knows.

Anyway, we moved into our house in Flagstaff in 2021.

It's a 1970s rancher that backs up to the forest.

We bought it from an estate.

The previous owner had passed.

It was an older woman named Dolores.

Her kids were out of state and they just wandered it gone.

So the first few months were fine.

We were busy with work, getting the place settled.

My daughter Mary was eight and she had the back bedroom.

Then around August, she started coming into our bedroom at night.

She had never done that before, not even as a little kid.

She said she was scared because she kept hearing someone walk up and down the hallway.

We figured it was the house settling, or one of us getting up to use the bathroom when she was

half awake.

We told her that, and for a while, that seemed to satisfy her.

But then in September, I heard it too.

I'm a teacher and I was up late, grading papers.

Everyone else was asleep.

At around 1 a.m., I heard what I can only describe as footsteps,

going down toward the hall toward the kitchen.

Slow and slightly uneven sounding.

I assumed it was my husband.

I got up to check and he was in bed.

I walked through the whole house, nothing.

I didn't say anything about it because I didn't want to make it a big deal.

But it kept happening, not every night, maybe once a week.

Always between midnight and 2 a.m., always the same slow walk down the hall.

A few times I'd get up and check, and I'd find a cabinet in the kitchen slightly open,

the one above the coffee maker.

But honestly, we're pretty disorganized people.

I can't say with certainty that it was connected.

In November, a neighbor named Pat came over for the first time.

She'd lived on the street since the 80s.

At some point, she mentioned Dolores, and I said something like,

oh yeah, she lived here a long time.

And Pat said, yes, over 40 years.

And that she used to be up at all hours because of her arthritis.

She couldn't sleep, so she would wander around the house at night.

They apparently used to be friends.

I felt something go cold in my chest.

I don't know how else to describe it.

I asked Pat if Dolores had any mobility issues, and she kind of laughed and said,

oh god, yes, her hip was horrible for years.

She walked with this little shuffle.

I didn't tell Pat why I was asking.

After that, I started paying more attention to when it happened.

I kept notes in my phone.

And I noticed it seemed to happen more often when the weather changed.

Big temperature drops, which in Flagstaff happens constantly in fall and winter.

I have no idea if that means anything though.

My husband heard it clearly for the first time in January of 2022.

He came to find me in the living room where I was still awake,

and he asked if I had just been in the hall.

I hadn't been.

He stood there for a second, and then said, okay,

and went back to bed.

And we didn't talk about it until the next morning.

He's an engineer.

He spent about two weeks trying to figure out if it was the heating system,

the pipes, or even an animal in the walls.

He couldn't find anything that fit.

The sound isn't coming from inside the walls.

It's coming from the floor of the hallway, and it moves.

It starts near Mary's room, and ends near the kitchen every single time.

We still live here.

It happens less now, maybe once a month, sometimes less.

Mary doesn't come to our room anymore.

She says that she's used to it.

Honestly, that might be the part that bothers me the most,

that my kid has just accepted it.

I'm not going to say I know what it is.

My husband thinks there's an explanation we haven't found yet.

Maybe.

But I think about Dolores being up at night because she couldn't sleep.

Doing that for 40 years in this house.

And I don't know what to do with that, other than just let her do it, I guess.

Weird object in the sky by other Flamingo 5303.

First of all, I'm in the Appalachian Mountains,

so I'm skeptical about everything that I see.

Me and two friends were coyote hunting at night in a pasture at the top of a mountain.

To put it into perspective, there's a shallow valley with an open ridge on one side,

where we were set up, and about 300 yards away on the other side,

was a ridge that was open for about 30 feet, then turned into a thick tree line.

Most of the night there was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing going on really at all.

The first thing that happened was a pack of coyotes emerging from the tree line on the far

right of the ridge, jumping around and howling for a while before going back into the tree line.

I'm not sure if that was unusual or not, but none of us thought it was.

After they left, we walked to our left a good ways to a tree on a fence line,

and just stood there looking out over the valley for a bit, and that's when the weird stuff began.

At first there was a dog behind the fence barking at us, but the dog stopped barking and went

down the hill to his house, I assume. Right as we noticed, a trail camera constantly flashing in

the tree line, slightly above to our left. We had night vision and thermal scopes,

so we looked over there, and we didn't see anything around it except for a single coyote about 75 yards

down the hill from the tree line, just frozen, looking in the direction of the flashing cameras.

We watched it for probably five to ten minutes, but it never moved.

We got bored of watching the coyotes, so we put our gear down and just stood at the edge of the

ridge looking out over the valley. About 15 seconds later, a basket-ball-sized object that was

bright green with the slightly darker fire going around it rose straight up from the tree line,

then moved in a diagonal downward path across the sky away from us while spinning forward.

It was moving fast but slow enough that I could watch it rotate and track the path that it

traveled pretty well. I don't have much else after that other than the three of us collectively

deciding that running away was the best option without saying a word to each other. I've done

some research and Google says something about it being a plasmoid, but I just wanted the opinions

of actual people. Thanks.

Something was in the field by Jim. My family and I live about 40 minutes outside of Pueblo, Colorado.

Our neighborhood several acres of scrub and dry field, and for the past eight years,

he's let me walk it during hunting season. We just own a small patch bordering his property,

but he lets my kids rum it freely. For hunting, I just give him some of the meat in exchange,

since he can't legally own a gun, but that's a different story. I've taken deer and pronghorn out

there many times, and nothing weird ever happened until October 2022. It was around 6am on a clear

morning, a little under 30 degrees, no wind. I wasn't hunting on that day, but I still wanted to

walk the land beforehand, something I usually do. Most people don't do this with big game, but

I like to bring my dog Oscar with me when I'm just walking it. He's a good boy.

We got maybe 300 yards out when Oscar just locked up, full point, which he does for birds,

but there weren't any birds. He was pointing at nothing, just open field.

I looked where he was focused and I didn't see anything, so I kept walking,

but Oscar wouldn't follow me, wouldn't even budge. He actually slowly started backing up,

which I've never seen him do before, or since. I looked out into the field, and that's when I saw

maybe 70 yards out, a tall figure just standing there. It was noticeably tall, just standing

completely still. My first thought was a person, but the proportions were often a way I can't fully

explain. The arms were too big or the torso was too short. Something wasn't right. It also wasn't

wearing orange, so it wasn't another hunter. It was just dark like a silhouette, except it was

fully light out by then. I stood there probably 15 seconds trying to make sense of what I was

saying. Oscar was now pressing up against my leg, and he was making a sound I'd never heard from him,

not a bark and not a wine, lower than that, and continuously. Then the figure turned,

not walked, not moved its feet. It just sort of rotated to face us. I whistled and waived my hand at

it, but it didn't respond. I grabbed Oscar's collar and walked him back toward the house, fast.

When we got back, I told my wife what I saw. Her eyes got wide. She told me that a couple of years

ago, when I had already left for work one morning, our daughter came running downstairs, and she said

that she saw a very tall man from her bedroom window standing out in the east field.

This is where Oscar and I had been walking. My wife didn't think much of it at the time,

since it would have been on our neighbor's property anyway, and no real reason to be alarmed.

I didn't bring it up to my daughter, since she's only 10. I didn't want to freak her out.

But about 30 minutes later, I walked out to the field again, this time with my rifle,

and I left Oscar at home. Nothing was there. I walked right up to where I saw the figure

standing, and there also weren't any prints in the frost. Nothing at all. I have no idea what

Oscar and I saw. Looking back though, it definitely felt like whatever was in that field,

knew we were there too.

Jumping right into some listener feedback, LaRetta, referencing episode 223, says,

As far as the click tale, I think a piano would have fallen on the person's head if they had

gone right or an anvil. I like that. That's always those two things. Yeah. I've been reading

the Roger Rabbit book. It's not called Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I forget what it's called,

but the book that Roger Rabbit was based on. It kind of reminds me of Anvil's falling on

cartoon characters' heads. Where did that idea even come from? It's stepping on a rake.

Such a random thing. Where does an anvil come from?

Yeah. Who uses an anvil anymore besides, I guess, Blacksmiths?

Actually, I don't think I even knew what an anvil properly was until much later in life,

not it grown up, but as an older kid. I didn't even know what it was.

The shape is interesting too. Why is it shaped like that? Sheffs, pants, and baseball,

pants, soccer pants. Everybody has their own little thing. Sheff hat.

Exactly. Sheff hat. Why not just a regular school cap?

Why is it gotta be so tall? Yeah. Somebody will write in and let us know for next week's episode.

What anvil's are shaped like that for? I think what Andy said makes sense that it may be a

fighter flight response. The urban exploration definitely sounded like something evil was present

and maybe even tried to possess her, but she expelled it via projectile vomit.

Only evil be gone, devil. So I'm gathering that she was referencing

different stories in one comment. Okay. Making sure I'm following.

Jordan Holiday says, Bojangles has sports. It's a restaurant chain in the southeast.

I'm in North Carolina. Good biscuits. I love me. Good biscuit.

Yeah. I've heard the word in the name Bojangles so many times and I don't know why or how,

but I never knew it was a restaurant. I never knew what it was referencing.

That's a new thing for me actually. That's new for me too. I've heard the name many times,

never tied it together with a restaurant. So now we know. Gotta get us some biscuits.

So is there anything in California that's native to California or regional as far as

Chainsco that you don't have in Utah that you really miss? Not that I can think of. We have

in and out out here. That's the one. I can't think of any. Yeah. I can't think of any strictly

Californian. What's that California pizza kitchen? Is that actually Californian or is that just by name?

I don't know, but I've never had it. Yeah. Just get the frozen pizza. They're actually decent.

The restaurant. Yeah. It's for the birds. I've always wanted to try the East Coast version

of Carl's Jr. I think it's called Hardies. Yeah. Yeah. I've never had it, but same. Yeah.

Home run in, by the way, for frozen pizza. That's my recommendation. So good. Yeah. In a

screaming Sicilian, that's a good one. Love screaming Sicilian. Yeah. Man, we're going to

bore the hell out of people with this talk. Yep. Jada. I'm not sure if I recall if you two

have ever talked about watching anime. So I'm not sure if you'd be interested, but when Brando

was talking about psychic powers and the curse that would come with reading minds, it reminded

me of the disastrous life of psyche K. I feel like you guys would appreciate the humor.

Have you heard of the disastrous life of psyche K? Looking at psyche K, written out like that,

I swear I've seen that before, but I have not seen the anime, but I think I really will add that

to the list. I've been going through Attack on Titan again because I got up to the last season

and stopped for whatever reason. So I'm starting all over as I tend to do. But once I'm done

going through Attack on Titan, I think I'll check it out. I will take the recommendation

I'm that way with books. There's a book that I didn't quite finish and I want to go back to it

and it's been a while. I'll just read the whole book again. You got to. I need all of the references.

I need all the substance, everything. You know, I don't really like comedy anime all that much.

That's not my thing. I did look it up and it does say that it's a comedy show, but I will give it

a chance because I would love to find an anime that's comedy that I do enjoy. Well, I would recommend

Detroit Metal City. The episodes are super short and the comedy is pretty good. It's about

like this death metal band and I don't want to spoil anything. There's not really anything to

spoil, but just yeah, Detroit Metal City. Check it out and if nothing else, you're out 12 minutes

of your day by watching an episode. But I think it's pretty funny. It's only one season if I recall

correctly. Really, really good and funny. Cool. Well, I like Metalocalypse. So it looks like it's

kind of of the same in the same alley. I think you like it. Shailin says talking about trauma

triggering supernatural experiences. There's a book series that I love where the main character

solves crimes with supernatural abilities and a running theme throughout the series is trauma

triggering their abilities. The series is by K Hooper. It's called special crimes unit.

And Holly is our Hollis is your favorite character. I'll definitely check that out. I've

been looking for a new series to jump into because I'm making my way through the vampire chronicles

right now. Have you heard of this series yet? No, I'm kind of intrigued though. Trauma triggering

the abilities. That sounds a little torturous. Like if you have to solve a crime, you have to

put yourself back in some traumatic event that you've lived through. That's

unless I'm misunderstanding, but that sounds like a cool premise. A little bit sad. No, you're right.

Like methadacting. Yeah, exactly. You know, there was a series called Angel that was a spinoff

of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one of the characters Cordelia ends up on the show Angel. And

she develops this power where she relives people's deaths like she experiences it. I think it's

specific to deaths. It could be just kind of like a psychic ability to see through people's eyes.

But it starts with her experiencing somebody's death. And it's a guy that grabs a knife and like

jams it into his eye. Like it's very violent and traumatic. And it stuck with me for a really

long time. And I thought like, man, that's got to be just the worst superpower to have ever.

Yeah, I mean, getting stabbed in the eye, I can't think of things that would be much worse than that.

Here drowning is really, really bad. I mean, obviously, but worse than we can really expect it to be.

I don't even want to think about it. I hate, I hate even being underwater. I just, I hate it.

I don't know. I remember I used to jump off the diving board and then

expel all of my air so I could lay flat on my back and then try to test myself to the last minute

and then jump back up. I had so many close calls. I was such a stupid kid. I'd be out in the

pool by myself. I was like nine or 10 doing this. It's a miracle. I'm really here to be honest.

That doesn't surprise me because I can recall the time we went to your sister's house and your brother

who's with us. And you guys had a contest to see who could try to water the longest.

I remember sitting there. I don't know how long it was, but I told you guys, like, guys,

can we just wrap this up? I don't care who wins who could try to water the longest. I'm poor.

You know, you should have jumped in if you can't swim with them. I guess don't swim with us then.

It's fine. I don't know who won actually. Yeah, I don't quite remember. I think it was,

I think it was a draw. I think we just wrapped it up. We allowed you to draw it for us. Yeah,

I just went and got some ice cream. Boy, I hope you get to visit again this summer. We'll see.

Benjamin Clark says,

Scarby and B. First time I heard that was on a children's show called Vampirina or Vampirina.

But there's a site with a similar vibe to that called scarbyandb.rentals. This is an interesting

site because it's not really a service. Somebody made, looks like they made a site where they have

some links to some actual haunted places where you can go and stay. But I don't think it's like a

certain or anything. I think it's kind of like a little just a project or something somebody made.

It's a very weird website. It's cool though. You should check it out. That's not a trap. It is

actually kind of cool. It's not going to be some weird porn. Yeah, Vampirina, do you know what that

is? I've seen it like passing through Netflix. I never watched an episode, but I know what they're

talking about. It's one of those mass-produced 3D things that you see all the time now. Yeah,

it's a kid's thing. Okay, I see. Gotcha. Let's see. We'll wrap this up as quickly as possible.

Megan says, I used to go out of my way to book haunted hotels and air me and bees until I realized

I was just paying more for old and often dirty rooms. Dusty and creaky does not equal haunted.

I thought about this too because I can recall probably my first of the mini tours that I did for

Let's Not Me. When I did a show in Portland, I booked at a historic hotel that was vintage,

hip-story. Everyone said, you got to stay here. I was like, oh, the building looks great. This

is really old. This is nice. And then I got into the room and I was like, this is garbage.

The bed is uncomfortable. It's the oldest sink and shower I've ever seen in my life. The AC

unit sucks. It's musty in here. It was disgusting, but it was so expensive because it was considered,

you know, vintage or, you know, historic. And I kind of agree. I don't think I would want to

stay at a place like that because it probably just be kind of gross. It's good marketing, nothing

beyond that. Unless there really is some meaningful history behind it, I don't really think it's worth

seeking those things out. And plus there's no room on the sink. I wonder how people even live,

how sinks used to be. There's nothing where you have a mirror that doesn't even open. Exactly. Where

did you put everything? Milk crates. There you go. Last two, I promise. Loretta, the mirror story.

Maybe it's someone trying to get out to our side of the looking glass. The handprints can't be wiped

off because they're on the inside. It's kind of like the colds coming from inside the house.

Creepy. Yeah. All right, Loretta, check you out. That's pretty good. That is pretty good and

pretty creepy. And it's a good explanation. Yep. It's like talking to somebody in prison, put

your hands against the glass where you're talking on the phone. They just, they really went out

of that prison. I remember visiting a friend in jail. He was a goofy friend and he had a good

humor about it. And yeah, I remember us doing that, like putting our hands on the glass to freak

everyone out. Like the other dudes that were there to take calls because, you know, you're like

in a lineup. And there's people on the phones next to you talking to their friends and family

that are inmates. And I remember us, like, us, like putting our hands up on the glass and like

pretending, like, like a Jim Carrey type moment or something. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm a little distracted.

Why did he go to jail? You speak highly of this person. You seem to care about him a great deal.

Can you share what he did to end up there? It was a fight or did not do even. It was just a fight.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Did he start it? Did he win? I don't even know. I don't know the details.

No clue. Also, I don't want to put him on blast. Oh, okay. Fair enough. That's a previous life.

We were kids. We were very young teenagers. Let's call them Freddy. Sure. On Discord, the last

thing here, a bog laser. All right. I want to say, I want to say it's bog laser because that's kind

of funny. Yeah. Yeah. Asked about the Robert Monroe book I was referencing. Yeah. If you go back

early episodes, I referenced it a bunch. I haven't talked about it too much lately just because I

kind of felt like I've exhausted that topic, but the book's called Journeys Out of Body,

or Journeys Out of the Body. It's a series of three books by Robert Monroe. Highly recommended.

I read through all of them. I'll probably read through all of them again, and again, and again,

good stuff. And then also, I would highly recommend. It was the first book that actually led me to be

able to lose a dream pretty frequently. And that is exploring the world of lucid dreaming by Stephen

LeBurg and Howard Reingold. Dude. It's really cheap. You can get it for like 10 bucks or less.

Dude. It's really good. Welcome to the fold. Stephen LeBurg, one of my favorites, man. I've

been reading it forever. Yeah. He's good. He's good. I got that. I'm looking at it on my Amazon

purchase history because I saw that comment when it bring it up. Purchased July 1st, 2012.

So even before we started this podcast, yeah, then on the road. So we were both fans before we even

started talking about this stuff. Yeah. I think the first book I read from him was just called

Lucid Dreaming. It's a great book. Yeah. He writes good stuff. Do you want to take a story to start with?

Well, all that feedback talk. I don't know how much time we're going to have for these stories,

but that's how it goes. Let's take a quick whack at it. Yeah. That's how it goes. So Renata's story.

I felt it was kind of similar to the thermostat story just because of Gerald's situation.

Both of them feel like somebody never stopped going through their routine. You know what I mean?

Like there's remnants of these former tenants or former people used to be there. And you have

the footsteps and all that. Although with Gerald and the thermostat, that's a bit more on the nose.

But either way, really good stories. I liked how her daughter was just okay. She just accepted

that as normal. Like the house always had somebody walking through the hallway at night.

There's always the trope and haunting movies where and it happens to and a lot of like more

like kids shows and kids movies or team shows where the haunted story is the somebody's trapped

in their house or doing something over and over again. And they need to be set free by solving a

mystery or something. You got to figure out what the mystery is. You got to do the thing to release

them because they're stuck in that loop, man. Yeah, it's like solving a puzzle without seeing what

the puzzle is going to be. You have all the pieces, but you don't have the picture to know what exactly

you're solving. Everything is so cryptic. I don't get it. It's like do you want to be rescued or not?

Yeah, that is a scary thought to getting stuck in a routine, like a loop of doing something

and haunting your like your spirits just stuck somewhere until some Scooby Doo gang comes by and

solves your mystery and like set you free or something. And something so boring and routine to

like setting your thermostat and just walking up and down a hallway like that's your life forever

until you make it to the other side. And it also makes me wonder, I know we've talked about it before

of course, but why some people remain on this plan of existence and why some crossover,

why some people can hear it and experience it, why some can't, like what is the criteria,

what is the singular constant, where we know like these are the circumstances that allow for

somebody to remain here and for others to know that they're here. Yeah, I've got so many different

explanations to that question in my series, cryptic encounters to the point where I don't even

think about it or question it anymore because I realize we'll never know. We're never going to know

until it's our time because everyone's got theories and they've got, yeah, and they've got good

explanations. I wouldn't say evidence, but good explanations as to why their theory is the right

one. And what I did find is a lot of them kind of pointed to we decide to stay or leave. We decide

to reincarnate or not reincarnate. So I can rest assured that at least most of these people that

have dedicated their lives that I talk to to this topic, I'll kind of agree that when you die,

you have a choice of what you want to do, but you know, maybe it does just end. We're just in the

ground and that's it lights up. Maybe, or if we can choose what we're going to reincarnate as,

that'd be one thing. If you're telling me I can be a cat, a house cat, and a living home,

yeah, give me the cat all day. Yeah, and it makes me wonder if when you do reincarnate,

do you get to see what the timeline's going to be like? Yeah, you could select to be a cat,

but then what if you end up being a stray cat that gets, God forbid, ran over by a car or something,

you know? Right. Yeah, there's too many variables there to want to come back, I think. If you don't

know exactly what's going to happen, making the decision to come back is a hard one. It's a big old

monkey's paws, what it is. Yeah. The one story that I do want to talk about was those lights in the

sky in Appalachia. Sure. So what I found interesting about this is there, there are different

theories about what it could be scientifically the way to explain it, but there is a phenomena,

which I'll get to. I was thinking that it could have been some kind of meteor or something like

making its way out of space, you know, into an atmosphere, but the way they described it was,

it was moving slowly and at least slow enough that they could see it rotating. So it wasn't like

speeding to earth at extreme speeds. It was fast, but it wasn't too fast that they couldn't make

out what it was and see it rotating. And you know, that kind of throws out theory out the window.

I did see some people on Reddit comparing these lights or this light to something called the brown

mountain lights. Have you heard of this yet? No, I have not. So these are native to Appalachia,

as far as we know. There are these unexplained lights that people see in the wilderness that appear

to like drift and hover around horizontally. And they come in all kinds of different colors,

although green like the author saw isn't too common. You can pull up pictures of them on Google

right now. I'm doing it. People have captured them on camera and they're crazy looking. They're

very cool. Wow. And this is something that's been around for, you know, over a hundred years,

people have been recording sightings of this. And it's just wild that there isn't a solid explanation.

And I don't think I've ever heard of them prior to this. The author brought up that it could

be like a plasmoid, some kind of plasma ball, but I don't know enough about that ball lightning.

Don't touch that. Yeah. We're not going there. We're not going there. All of the animals going

silent just before the sighting though, that's a fairly paranormal thing. You know what I mean?

That's that's something that we've read about a million times. So yeah, don't know what this one

is, but I am going to be looking into the brown mountain lights a bit more. Yeah,

some of these look like they could be flashlights. People just going on a hike, but others.

There are some that like, yeah, they've got like trails and stuff. Right. Like they're moving around.

Cool stuff. Interesting. Yeah. I know we didn't get to talk about stories all that much,

but you and I had a lot to catch up on. We had a lot of comments. And hey, you stick around to

hear what's going on with us. We're going to deliver. But thanks everybody for listening. In any case,

make sure you send your stories into stories at oddtrails.com. It's kind of for a picture on

a patreon.com forward slash odd trails to get ad free versions of all of our episodes at a higher

bit rate. And check out the new episodes of my other podcasts. Let's not meet in the old time

radiocasts. We'll see you guys next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls distribute us.

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