Something Tried Luring Me into the Ruins – Ep. 226

0:00Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show. Get out of your life, it's just a dream, don't you? Staying in the tree line by the tech tutor.

1:02During a camping trip with my friends, years ago, we witnessed something that we can't explain. I'll keep the story short for now, but I'll go into more detail if people are interested. We were sitting around the fire, deep in the forest, off a logging road in British Columbia. We weren't drinking or smoking. It was a dry trip for a friend. I noticed my good friend go silent and perk up like he was listening for something. He told us to be quiet and listen. The forest had gone dead quiet, zero noise. Before that there had been frogs, birds, all the regular forest sounds. He said something like, guys, there could be a cougar or a bear around. The forest is silent. We might want to move the cars. Or anyone could react. At the far tree line, maybe 100 feet away, we saw something that put us all in shock. It was a small red orb, glowing like fire, producing its own light, moving between the

2:08trees. We watched it, flabbergasted. It was clearly passing behind and in front of the trees. It lasted maybe 20 seconds and then slowly faded. In seconds later, the forest sounds resumed. We all just sat there thinking, what was going on there? We took a quick look around and found no road or anything nearby. It couldn't have been cars or anything like that. It really freaked us out, so much so that we left and found a campsite with other people and stayed there for the night. It was crazy. We still bring it up whenever we get together. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I have no clue what it could be, and it's usually 50-50 whether people believe us or not when we tell it. Now there are a couple of things worth mentioning before I go any further. We're all experienced campers and have done these trips every year.

3:08We've heard weird sounds, seem bright flashes of light in the sky, and encountered some sketchy people out in the bush before. Nothing unexplained, just wild stuff, but we know how to keep our heads in these situations. The friend who first noticed the silence works in forestry and spends almost six months out of the year in the bush. He knows the woods better than anyone. He was terrified to go back to work for months after this. He never wanted to talk about it or bring it up. He said even thinking about it made his hair stand on end. So more about the light itself. When I say the forest was dead quiet, I mean completely silent. I could faintly hear the fire cracking, but that was it. It was like the air had been sucked out of the forest. I could hear my own heartbeat. Going from all that sound to nothing in an instant kicked my fighter flight into gear.

4:08It was primal, something in the back of my head was telling me this was a bad situation, and then the red light appeared. It flickered and shown like a glass ball about the size of a beach ball filled with fire. It was too far away to see clearly, but that's the best way I can describe it. It wasn't shining the light outward, but it produced its own light, casting just a faint glow onto the trees as it passed by. It was moving at roughly walking base through the trees. It was dense bush, so you would have heard a person walking through it. The moment my eyes locked onto it, my stomach dropped. I'll put it this way. I almost died a couple of years back, and that wasn't as frightening as the light. It was like my brain was desperately trying to make sense of what it was seeing and coming up completely blank. As it faded, the forest sounds came back and every instinct in my body screamed run.

5:12We barely said anything as we stood up, but we all confirmed what we saw. There were six of us. We decided to get a closer look, I think, out of the hope that there would be some kind of explanation, but there wasn't. We couldn't explain it, and that made it worse. We left and found a paid campsite about 20 to 30 minutes away. It was probably around 1 a.m. In the morning, the owner came by to check on us. People usually don't show up that late. We explained what happened, sort of jokingly, because the whole thing seemed so bizarre. Her face went stone-cold. She told us the forest we had been in is extremely old growth, which makes sense, as my province has some of the oldest forests still standing in the world. She said it's not uncommon to hear stories like that in the area. She asked a lot of questions, then said that it could be something aboriginal, spirits or something along those lines.

6:13I have no idea what it was or why it was there, but it happened, and whatever it was was real. We've talked about it many times since, and every time we do, I get nightmares, even just writing this out is giving me the creeps. The Mission by A.A. Vaco This takes place in the early 2000s. I was 18 at the time, and part of a religious group that held a summer camp at one of the churches in downtown Chicago. At this point in my upbringing, I was still immersed in religion. This was the second summer I spent a couple of weeks with a group of other teenage girls and young women to run a youth program for kids in the neighborhood.

7:15We conducted day trips, outdoor activities, and all the usual summer camp engagements for kids K through sixth grade. The kids enjoyed themselves, and we ended each scorching, humid summer day completely exhausted. We took up residence in part of the church for the time we were there. There was no AC and limited privacy. Despite this, the group of us loved the kids, and became quite bonded to one another by the end of the trip. Because this was my second trip, the mission trip as we'd refer to it, and I was one of the senior members of the group. I found myself typically in some type of leadership role. After the day camp wrapped up, we would spend the rest of the afternoons going door to door in the neighborhood, inviting people to come to the church, explore their faith, or whatever other creative plugs we could come up with, in hopes of recruiting more members. We went in groups of four or five people, which was probably the only safety feature of

8:18this event. The rest involved us teens knocking on random doors throughout the downtown. We were right off the main highway, and in areas with lots of back alleys, gas stations, and whatever else we should have avoided. I'm sure there was some type of instruction from the group leaders to avoid those areas, but they were hard to miss. Honestly, shy of wearing neon kidnap-me signs, we were obvious targets to anyone with harmful intent. But since this is odd trails, not, let's not meet, we dealt with the paranormal. Up until this point, I had my fair share of ongoing paranormal encounters. The home I grew up in happily gave me plenty of material to work with, which was graciously read on the show a couple of years ago, the house on Saddle Drive. But this event was the first time I physically saw something I couldn't explain, and it was not just me who witnessed it.

9:21It was one of the many 90-plus-degree afternoons, and the kids had returned home. Like all the other days, we split off into groups to invite anyone willing to talk to us. I was in a group of five this time, and with two of the other senior girls, Elise and Kelly, the additional two girls were new to this type of trip, Death and Insera, and I suspect we didn't do a great job of retaining them for the following year. Collectively after about an hour of wandering the neighborhood, and feeling the effects of the humidity, we opted to head back to the church. Elise begged us to keep going, something about saving souls and our mission to God. Whether it was inspiration or annoyance, we finally caved in, and agreed to do one more street before calling it quits. We get to this street, we had to cross the road, and walk toward the church. We were all waiting for traffic to clear, when we saw a man standing on the side opposite

10:23from us, staring, staring initially, but this quickly changed to yelling. His appearance alone put me on high alert. His hair was long, dark, and disheveled. I remember trying to make out his face, but had trouble distinguishing his features, as if they were blurred out. At the time I attributed this to how he kept contorting his face, as he yelled words at us. I say words, but I couldn't recognize the language. I thought it sounded like Latin, just based on words I knew from a religious context. But none of it made sense to me. Between the yelling and his erratic waving and pointing, I felt immediate panic. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I don't typically go from calm to terrified, especially if I'm in a leadership role, but this day was not one of those times.

11:24I remember screaming, run, and taking off. Elise and Kelly were yelling, too, combinations of run and go this way, with Sarah and Devon following. When we finally made it back to the church, we used a different entrance and told one of our leaders what happened. She was confused by watching our hysterics, versus what she was hearing, and I get it, because our level of tear did not match the story. We eventually managed to calm down, but it took a while. I was laying on my sleeping bag later that night, wide awake, replaying what happened earlier, trying to rationalize the intense fear I experienced in this encounter. It didn't add up. I sighed and tried closing my eyes. This attempt was abruptly interrupted by a shriek. I propped myself up to see Elise and Kelly running toward me.

12:24They plopped down on my sleeping bag, and Elise was out of breath. She was the one that screamed. Between gasps, she declared, we saw Satan. I frowned. What do you mean, that guy earlier? Yes, of course. Listen, what did you see right before we started running away? The same thing we all saw, a wild-looking guy screaming and waving at us, I replied. Right, right, and that's what Kelly saw, too. Kelly nodded to confirm this statement. I shook my head, still not understanding what either of them were getting at. She continued, Devon and Sarah didn't see that. What do you mean they didn't see that, I asked? They just saw a man, nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary. He was put together, well groomed, and here's the craziest part.

13:28They said he never uttered a word. They were so confused when we took off running. Realizing how insane the three of us must have looked from their perspective would have been a lot more amusing if I wasn't even more unsettled to hear about this new plot twist. I disagreed with Elise's conclusion, but was disturbed that what shook me to my core was not unanimously experienced. It was as if only the three of us were meant to see something, or were able to see something, beyond this reality. I wish I had more of an explanation to conclude with. I have several thoughts, of course, but I'm far more interested to hear others' opinions, theories and explanations. Thanks for listening, and you all stay safe.

14:37Something tried luring me into the ruins by James A. Draiden. When I was a kid I grew up back and forth between England and Ireland due to having family in both countries. No matter which country I was living in at the time, one thing that never changed was being taken on some family trip to see a castle. In fact, I've seen so many castles during my childhood that I can't even count them all. Most of the castles I saw in England were with my grandparents. But by the time I was once again living in Ireland, those castle trips with them were substituted for castle hunting with my dad, as he liked to call it. I didn't really like these castle hunting trips with my dad, mostly because the castles we went to were very small and unimpressive compared to the grand and well-preserved ones that I'd seen in England. In fact, the castles we went to in Ireland weren't even castles they were more like fortified

15:39houses from the 16th century. There are some terrific castles in Ireland, but the only problem with Irish castles like that is that they're privately owned or completely swarmed with tourists, so my dad pretty much preferred to find the lesser-known ones around the country. Searching the web for one of these lesser-known castles, my dad found one that was near the border between the provinces of Lienster and Munster, and yes, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing both of those names. Although I can't remember which county or even which province the castle was in, if I had to guess, it may have been somewhere in tipperary. After an hour of driving around trying to find it, we came upon a small cow or sheep field in the middle of nowhere. The reason we stopped outside of the field was because the castle that we were looking for just happened to be inside of it. Unlike the other castles that we had already seen, this one was definitely not a fortified

16:42house. The ruins were fairly tall, with two out of four round towers still remaining. Clearly no effort had been made to preserve it as it was entirely covered in vegetation, but for a castle in Ireland it was very much worth the trip. Entering the field to explore the castle, one of the first things I noticed was an entrance into a very dark room, or perhaps a chamber. Although I was curious about what was inside, the entrance was extremely dark, so dark that all I could see was black. I've always been afraid of going into very dark places, but for some reason, despite how terrifying the thought of entering that room was, I also felt a strong, unfamiliar urge to go through the darkness, as though something was trying to lure me in. As curious as I was to enter that pitch black entrance, I was equally afraid. It was as though my curiosity and my fear of the dark had become perfectly matched in

17:46that moment, whereas in the past my fear of the dark had always been much stronger. Torn between my curiosity and my fear, I eventually moved on to explore the rest of the castle, where I came upon another entrance. Unlike the first, this one wasn't dark, and I could see that it was in fact a tunnel of sorts. Just like before, I again felt this strange urge to go inside. Swallowing my fear, which was a rare occurrence for me, I worked up the courage to enter the tunnel, without my phone or flashlight. I made my way to where the light ended, and the darkness began. With the darkness of the tunnel right in front of me, I again felt that incredibly strong urge, and again it felt as though something was trying to lure me in. But as powerful as that pool was, and as strong as my own curiosity, my fear of dark places

18:47thankfully won out, so I exited the tunnel to go find my dad outside. When I told my dad about the tunnel, he headed in with his flashlight to have a look around. From outside I could see the beam of his flashlight sweeping through the darkness, rather than pressing further down the tunnel as I expected, he came back out fairly quickly. When I asked why he hadn't gone further, he told me that right where the darkness begins, there was this deep hole with jagged rocks and bricks at the bottom. That was quite jarring to hear, because when I had been in that tunnel only minutes before, I was not only incredibly close to where that hole was, but I had nearly let that lure carry me into the darkness, where I almost certainly would have fallen in. After exploring the ruins for a few more minutes, we headed back to the car to drive home. From the way I asked my dad whether he explored the first entrance or not, the dark room

19:49I had nearly walked into. I should mention that my dad is ex-military. I've never really known him to be scared of anything, so when I asked him about the dark room, I was genuinely surprised when he said he was too afraid to go in there, even with a flashlight. This is the same man who free-climes our roof just to paint the chimney. As I've said, I've explored many castles across the UK and Ireland, and despite many of them having dark eerie rooms, this particular castle drew me in and unsettled me in a way that no other castle had. I genuinely felt as though something was trying to lure me into those dark entrances. And if that's the case, was it intentionally trying to make me fall down that hole? That's a question I've asked myself many times, then again, maybe it was absolutely nothing. Before I wrap up, there's something I want to mention. For the purposes of this story, I tried to track down the name and location of the castle.

20:52I searched various websites for lesser-known castles in Ireland, but none of the ones I found matched in appearance. I even tried chat GBT, and none of its suggestions matched it either. I recently asked my dad if he remembered the name or location, but it was some years ago, and unfortunately he couldn't recall. He thinks he may have taken photos at the time, and when he gets the chance, he's going to look through his computer files to see if he could find them. So what do you think? Did something really try to lure me into those ruins? And if so, was it with the intention of making me fall down that jagged hole? Or is this all just a silly superstition on my part? That's easily what it could have been. Then anyone has any creepy castle stories? Please share, and if anyone thinks they know which castle in Ireland this was, I'd love to hear it.

22:02The Cat Skills by V I used to do this trip into the woods every winter for a week at a time. I'd rent out a cabin and meditate, read mind-blowing books, and completely disconnect. No phone, no communication. I had done this in Appalachia, the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire, and even gone to El Salvador. But it wasn't until the Cat Skills that I had an experience that stopped my trips altogether. I booked a small cabin deep in the hills and had all my gear. I hiked during the day, always booking places within walking distance of trails. Then at night I'd make a fire, read and meditate. I'd done this for years, so I knew what I was doing. The first day went great. I saw beautiful waterfalls, talked to birds, the whole nine. I got back to my cabin, did some reading, and looked out the huge window into the woods.

23:08Usually I'm not scared, but something fell off this time. I started a fire, and this was where I made my first mistake. The fire was way too hot. I knew I had a tendency to do this, so I tried not to get it too roaring. But as I climbed into the lofted bed, I realized my mistake. I pushed the blankets to the side and closed my eyes. I began to drift off, then noticed these bright orbs floating in front of me. I could see them through my eyelids. They were so bright. I opened my eyes, and there they were, just floating around. My first thought was that I was getting carpet monoxide poisoning, but for some reason I was absolutely terrified of opening the window to let in fresh air. I ignored the orbs and laid back down, but it was too much.

24:09I sat up and cranked the window open. I looked out into the pitch black darkness. I breathed in the cold night air. It was fine. Everything was fine. I laid back down. I began to drift off again when I was jolted awake by a chorus of blood-curdling screams. I almost peed myself. It sounded like there was a group of women performing a cult ritual, and it was so close. I was terrified. I covered myself with the blanket and closed my eyes hard. It could be foxes or mountain lions or whatever, but it did not sound pretty, and it primed me wonderfully for what would come next. I was no longer tired at all, so I just lay there shaking, not daring to look out the window. I kid you not. The next thing I heard was an extremely loud, wishing sound, like when an airplane touches

25:14down, except it was right outside the cabin, which, mind you, was completely surrounded by trees. At this point, there were tears in my eyes. I felt deep in my bones that it could be nothing other than an alien ship. That's when I heard a clear voice ring out in my head. Do not look out the window. I was not looking out that window. I don't know how, but I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke in a nightmare. I dreamed that I was in that bed, sitting up, and I looked out the window. There was a family circling the cabin, and the sun was out. A little boy stopped walking, looked at me and said, don't come outside, okay? I agreed I would not be leaving that cabin. I immediately fell into another dream, where the daylight switched off into the black

26:14of the night again, and there I was, still in the cabin, still in the bed. The family was gone, but I wasn't alone. I watched a tall, dark, shadow man walk very slowly past the window, and around the door, which I had both locked and deadbolted. I watched in horror as the deadbolt turned, and the door creaked open. Then the chair at the foot of the bed rolled across the floor up to where I was, and I awoke screaming. I can't remember if I got any sleep after that. Long story short, I cut a four day trip in half. I stayed one more night, somehow powering through, and having a peaceful enough second night. Except for when I stayed in the cat skills again, with my partner, now wax. I guess I hadn't learned my lesson. I thought if I wasn't alone, I'd be fine.

27:17Nope. I went out to this cabin that had zero cell service, and I'd arrived before my partner, so I explored the land. It was cute. There was a garden, a hammock, trees, and lots of little gnome statues. One of them left a weird taste to my mouth, though. I remember looking at it and thinking, oh hell no. Then I waited and waited for my partner to get there. He did some fun hiking, then went off to bed, and in the middle of the night, I woke up sweating buckets. At the time I thought it was food poisoning, or something that was making me feel hot and nauseous, but in hindsight I was having a panic attack, because of the last time I'd stayed in the cat skills. The most logical thing I could think to do in my nervous and ill state was go outside for some fresh air. I went into the yard and looked at the stars.

28:18I was out there for a while, trying to pull myself together, and ended up sort of crouching in the woods, just staring up at the sky. That was when I heard it. Footsteps. I held my breath, trying to identify what it could be. Not a turkey, not a human. They were too small. They were bipedal, and before I knew it, they were sprinting at me at full speed. I jumped to my feet so fast, and ran in place for a minute like Scooby Doo. I booked it back to the cabin at the speed of sound. I slammed the door and stood against it, gasping for breath. My partner woke up and was like, what happened? I just got chased out of the woods by a gnome.

29:35My second life by a scared ad 5-11. A few days ago I visited Naito's, an ancient city in Turkey. This was the first time I had ever been there in my life. That same night, I had one of the most intense and emotional dreams I've ever experienced, and I can't shake it. In the dream, I lived for years, not dream time years, but actually feeling every season, every event, every relationship. I had a home, a loving wife, and two kids. I knew the streets, the sunsets, the little routines, and it felt real in a way no other dream ever has. Then, there was some kind of disaster, something massive, threatening the whole city. I tried to escape, and in the moment in which I jumped the way to save myself, I woke up in my real bed. Now I can't explain the sense of loss or disorientation.

30:36I woke up at dawn, but I couldn't pull myself together until noon. I really felt like my actual life had been ripped away from me. I've read about, lived in other life dreams, but this was very different. It wasn't random or surreal, it was very consistent, coherent, and tied so closely to a real place I had visited in waking life. Does anyone else experience this? Why does this happen? Can it happen again? And how do I even process it? I'd love to hear your stories or theories. I feel like I've been walking around with the ghost of a whole other life in my head. I just realized I called it feedback. I thought you were trying to be funny.

31:36No. We're calling this segment feedback now because I misspelled or accidentally wrote feedback instead of feedback. So opening the feedback bag, SHHHHHHH is referencing episode 182 and they say, asking the dream people what time and month it is is exactly what you are not supposed to say. Apparently they get very angry and you don't want your dream people to be angry at you. I don't know about this. I've heard the exact opposite that dream people don't, like they can't hurt you. They're not going to get mad at you, I don't think. I've only ever experienced them just trying to convince me I am dreaming or they just go blank. Like they turn into like a robot basically. I've never had some like a dream character get angry at me when I've tried talking to them in a lucid dream. Yeah. They can get mad at you for anything so I wouldn't be too worried about dream people or kind of like people that experiment with psychedelics, DMT in particular.

32:38There's been stories about people who are informed by the machine elves like you're not welcome here. Go away and they're completely shut off and they try to trip and ascend into that dimension again and they're completely closed off and stuck behind the I guess metaphorical door and they can't make it through that door again. There might be some relation there, man, I find that so interesting how people are encountering the same things, the machine elves, like it's such a common thing and people that have never even heard of it tell the story about these machine elves. Yeah, there's a little bit that kind of relates to that and one of my stories we'll get to if I'm remembering correctly, everything kind of blends together so this could be the last time you hear about them on this episode. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if the mimic story was just a starling sitting in the trees. They are fantastic at reproducing sounds. I've not thought of that one time about people hearing voices or things like that in the

33:41woods. It could totally be birds that are good at mimicking the voices and sounds of humans or other things. Somebody's parrot could have escaped, yeah. Have you seen that guy who walks around and like gas stations and just messes with people by saying like, sir, I need help. And they freak out and think there's, I'm in the cooler. He's really good at making it so people can't tell. He's only five or six feet away from them and tie echolocation technology or whatever he can do. So he's got it throwing his voice. Yes, yes, that's what I was trying to say. Thank you. That's such a cool skill. I would love to learn more about that. Same. What do we got here? Tina from episode 225 says, speaking of inherited memory, just the other week I watched a YouTube video about a Japanese boy researching butterflies retained memories from their larval stage. Yeah. He then found that the retained memory appeared to persist into the next generation of butterflies.

34:41I mean, if butterflies can inherit memories, why not us humans? Good point. Good thought. I don't want to put it past butterflies or any insect or anything. There's a lot of advanced creature stuff going on with like things you wouldn't expect like lobsters, how they share so much in common with us. You wouldn't expect it. But here we are. Yeah. I do remember the butterfly room at Marine World Africa, USA, which is now six flags discovery kingdom. Yeah, way back in the day on a field trip. That was cool. I think they might still have it. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they still have it. It was awesome. I really like butterflies. A lot of them. Benjamin Clark says, referencing episode 225, as far as burgers go, this is what I want to talk about. I have never found one as good as a homemade Pimento cheeseburger. But I just thought about a local haunt in Kentucky, not sure if there are any websites or anything. I'll add it once I get my story rode up.

35:42Love you guys. Keep up the good work. How many acts was such a great show? And the short lived reboot was fantastic as well. Let's start from the top of this one. Pimento cheeseburger. I would assume this is just a cheeseburger, but with Pimento cheese, right? That's what I'm gathering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I've never tried Pimento cheese on a burger or on anything. I think I've had a bite of it at the deli. I remember trying it, but I've never bought it or used it. I'll give that a shot. I think the cheese makes the burger in a lot of cases. It does. I really appreciate cheese for the longest time. But speaking of the reboot, surprisingly, I did not hate the reboot of Powerpuff Girls. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't anything like the original, but it was surprisingly pretty watchable. Interesting. I have to check that out. I did like the original Powerpuff Girls a lot. That drum and bass soundtrack, man, influenced my music taste as an adult, didn't know that it would as a kid. I will say about the Animaniacs reboot. I was actually not a huge fan of it because it was very Animaniacs focused because the

36:44original Animaniacs had this large cast of all these extra characters that had all these different shorts. That's what made up Animaniacs. It was a variety show like that. The modern Animaniacs was mostly Animaniacs. It was mostly the Warner Brothers and their sister, Dot, having adventures. I think there might have been some pinky and the brain stuff in there if I remember correctly. But it just felt lacking because it didn't. It didn't have any of the other extra characters in there, which was weird. I don't know why they didn't do that. I got to watch Pinky and the Brain again. I've only revisited that once in my adulthood. It's been really good. At least a decade. I got to go back, though. That show was really good. Brie 98 says on episode 225, love the show, guys. Just a bit of housekeeping. Uh-oh. It's Ronnie, oh, Sullivan. Not Roger. I could have sworn I said Ronnie, that's crazy. I probably didn't. Maybe you did, you know, also it's pronounced snooker.

37:47Your banter at the end is really the cherry on top of each episode. I think the snooker versus snooker thing, that's probably more. I'm going to give myself some regional dialect credit there with my heavy California in accent. Kind of like how it's technically Appalachia, but even people in that region end up calling it Appalachia, whether it's technically or politically correct, it's not, but, you know, it becomes a thing. Um, oh, you know what, I'm looking at the transcript on my phone now and Apple podcasts says that I said Rodney and not Rodney, so I was wrong. That's so weird because I meant to say Rodney. My voice just didn't say it right. That was weird. That's so weird. But you didn't say Roger. Wow, that we're all over the place on this, in this odd trails world, uh, snooker. That's, that sounds, it feels and sounds wrong to me. I feel like I've always heard it referred to as snooker too. We even had a pool hall in our hometown called snookers. I've never actually heard it pronounced snooker and there were a lot of people in the discord

38:51also saying this that it was pronounced snooker, not snooker, I keep seeing people talking about this now. I think it's because we see the double lows and we, we think it's like booker. So it's just natural for us to say it that way and I don't know. Every American I've ran across is called it snooker. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Uh, speaking of discord, final comment here, Haley says, if you listen to an episode, can you work out who edited it? Because I told them that we take turns editing each week. Besides the fact that you actually know, uh, so just to kind of give everybody a little bit of behind the scenes, Brandon and I both record, record and edit our own stories. When it comes to our dialogue at the ends of these episodes, we take turns editing the final dialogue and take turns uploading the episodes and all that jazz. But no, we can't. I don't think I can, I could ever work out who edited it because you and I edit so similarly. Like we know you and I basically cut out and change and do things exactly the way that each other would. Yeah.

39:51Yeah. I think my issue was I end up in this cycle of perfection paralysis where all like the smallest little things like a smut like a slight little stammer like what I did just now. Normally I would edit that out before I even send you my audio, but I'll leave it in. And I try to take out some ums or verbal fillers just to make things a little bit tighter and more polished. And that's not to say that you don't, but something that I probably spend way too much time nitpicking about, I probably couldn't tell though. Well, there we go. We found out a difference. I can guess which episodes I just left in there because I leave in a lot of us, ums and stuff like that because I think it sounds kind of natural. If it's excessive, I do cut them out for sure. And sometimes I get a pretty excessive with my eyes. It's something that I need to work on, but I never will. I like to space out some thoughts too. Sometimes things can run on and sound like a really long run on sentence. So I'll give them some room to breathe, but you can start listening now and following the patterns.

40:52Yeah. There you go. Yeah. As far as editing goes for us, we are basically just kind of trimming some of the fat because we like to go off on tangents. A lot of this, what we've talked about so far is probably going to get trimmed up. And we also just like to make it sound better for you guys. So we'll cut out some ums and us and things like that. But for the most part, you're hearing everything just as it was recorded, it's not a huge task to edit these. But let's jump into some stories. I want to talk about that tree line story about the orb. And specifically because I know what you're going to say about this one. Ball lightning. Yes. Yes. That's what I was expecting. However I did. I did some were digging. The author did state later on. They did not think it was ball lightning. They said it was too uniform. They also said that they had been to the forest during storms, some with lightning. And the air always has a particular feel to it like chewing on 10 foil is how they described it. You can feel a charge in the air. And what I gather, these people were very experienced with the wilderness and with the

41:53weather. And they are not convinced that it was ball lightning. Yeah. I suppose similarly the cat skill story that I featured by V. She mentioned those floating orbs, which I don't really think seemed like ball lightning, but also very similar in the sense they're balls of light floating around her. But from what I can remember, most ball lightning stories feature just one ball unless I'm mistaken, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I've ever heard of a story of multiple ball lightning even then. I don't think there's a solid concrete explanation of what and how ball lightning is or works. I still think it's a bit of a mystery, right? We don't have like solid science on it. Yeah. It would require a lot of moving parts working out so perfectly where it would be like. Yeah. Quite the anomaly. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm sure in fact, it has happened, but so few, few and far between to actually happen naturally in nature, but it could be beyond the natural world that we know.

42:56I just feel like it wouldn't be a floating orb, especially like in my story where it was just floating in between the trees slowly like at the rate of somebody walking. And again, they described it as the light was inside of it, like it wasn't projecting light out of it. It had a bit of a glow to it, but it had its own light source inside of it. Like, it just doesn't add up to ball lightning, but this story was interesting. And one thing I found interesting was I had no idea whether this is cat skills or cat kills. What is this name? I've never heard of this place. I do believe that Mike Tyson was born in cat skill, New York. So I think it is cat skill, cat skill, not cats kill. I'm just what I want to know the compound words and how they connect and what they mean. Yeah, no, that's a tricky one. Yeah. So anybody from cat skill or anybody that's familiar with it, send me a background story because I ain't Google in it. You know, the rules. Oh, actually, correction Mike Tyson just trained out of cat skill, whatever doesn't really

43:59matter. Same difference. Yeah. She mentioned that she thought it could have been carbon dioxide poison from the fire, but I don't really think that could be a thing. You know what I mean? Like just making a fire, I don't think that's very likely that would have to be extremely smoky, not just hot, hot, hot. But I guess it's possible, but I don't think underneath these circumstances that would necessarily be the explanation, which makes the balls of light, the floating orbs, as she called them, more interesting at least or more peculiar, who knows what they could have actually been. The internal voice though that she heard, I don't know if that could have been instinct or fear or something actually communicating with her directly. There's just a whole lot of things that we hear of don't look, don't look, and how it helps us survive in a lot of stories, whether it's a feeling or in this case, an actual voice, and then having that dream of the boy telling her not to come outside, maybe it was all just a test to see if she would listen. Yeah.

45:00You know what's wild is you and I do not coordinate picking stories together. We just pick our stories and we show up to record together and we show each other our stories. We go over them. I come up with some notes to talk about them and both, like four of our stories now are all connecting because this whole, you know, internal voice telling you not to look out the window, like there's some kind of force that's manipulating you. It's very much like the ruined story by James, whereas there was this manipulating, not a voice, but like something trying to lure James into danger, like into this dark area of the castle that had this pit with jagged rocks and stuff where they could have been killed or hurt badly. And I did not expect your story to have the same type of thing where it's like this inner voice or this atmosphere trying to manipulate the person or it warned them or, you know,

46:00lure them into trouble. Yeah, we're just in sync. Yeah, we're just in sync. Like the band. Yeah. So good. So have you heard of stone tape theory? I want to say I have, but I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what it means. Okay. That's fine. But I just hear that they, those sort of objects, even like brick or wood can absorb human energy of some sort. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. And I think that might be what's going on here, especially with this ruined story at the very least. It's basically the idea that like minerals or building materials, like certain types of stones or bricks, can record high emotion or traumatic events, kind of like magnetic tape. That's where they get the stone tape. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a super fringe theory, but I also think it's a fun one. It's an interesting way to try and explain something away. I guess it's used to try and explain why certain locations make you feel a certain way or they can manipulate you, give you a warning or lure you into danger. That would make sense. So when people visit like old battlegrounds or even just your basic haunted house type

47:03of thing, the walls could absorb the energy, you know? Yeah. If these walls could talk. I don't know if that's where it comes from. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So like the minerals in the stones record and kind of play back the recording. I don't think there's any real evidence for this. I just think it's an interesting idea and a nice way to try and explain away hauntings. Yeah. And it's definitely, definitely interesting. Yeah. Let's move on to the mission story by AAVACO. That one was, I think you're going to have a lot to say about this one in particular. Just wow. Five girls, three of them see one thing, two see another. And this isn't just something you can write off as a shared hallucination. If it were two people, one person, saw one, the other saw the other, you know? That's still pretty remarkable, I guess, but when you have something like this, I think this might be a first having three people see one thing and two see another. That's a, I don't know what to make of that. We have had some stories where two people saw an experienced events differently and they

48:07didn't line up later on. But it's rare. It's not something that we see often and you're right. I do have some stuff to say about this one, I think you know why. I think this feeds into the theory that I've brought up in the past that religious backgrounds can influence a person, you know, in such a way that they see or experience phenomena that's related to their specific beliefs, like possession or exorcism stories, you know what I mean? Yeah, and maybe that's why the author and their friends or at least some of their friends believe that they heard the man speaking Latin because with Latin being so closely related to exorcisms, demonology and just the church in general, specific to the Catholic church. But you know, it permeates. I wouldn't roll out religious suggestion here, but it doesn't make it let scary and it, not really a solid explanation of what's going on here. It's just something I wanted to point out because like you said, three of them saw something. Two of them did it. They had completely different stories. This is something that's rare but has happened in the past in stories on odd trails.

49:12I find it way more interesting than everybody seeing the same thing. They all saw him speaking Latin and being weird. And you could have just been, okay, this person clearly has some mental issues. You know, that's what I thought of when I first kind of glance through the story until I got to the part where I realized, oh no, wait, some of them saw something completely and heard something completely different. That makes us far more interesting. Yeah, and if it were three different variations of this man or even four or all five saw something different, then yeah, whatever. But the fact there were five people who only saw one of two outcomes, that's what really does it for me. Yep, definitely. I said, I want to touch on the second life story real quickly before we check out here. I know we're going a bit long. So that whole second life dream thing is really cool and here's the thing I've been thinking about with this. I wonder if these dreams where people have lived an entire second life might be related to some kind of recent grief or trauma because I know that when I'm having a really hard

50:14time with something in life, I always get these very vivid, extra long dreams. And while I don't think I've had like a full second life dream as far as time length goes, I've definitely woken up from some very intense dreams that went very long where it took a few minutes for me to kind of shake off the belief that it wasn't real. And you know, except that it was a dream, you wake up kind of feeling like you're still in that world. And I really hate that feeling. For example, right now I'm dealing with some seriously heavy stuff in my life. And I cannot sleep without having a long vivid dream, taking over my whole nervous system and just waking up, sweating and exhausted. So I'm wondering if the author might have been going through something heavy during this time period. Hmm. Could be. Are dreams related to this specific thing or is it more just a general sense of anxiety and dread that you kind of feel similarly when you're awake? What's wild is I had some premonition dreams leading up to this event happening in my life

51:16which I can't go into details about. It's a personal issue, but I had premonition dreams about it days before it happened. And that, that was wild, but it's unfortunately I just can't go into any details just for the protection of some people. Yeah. Although that neurologically dreams don't happen in real time, but I've learned that certain emotional markers too. So if the brain triggers the feeling of seasons changing, like experiencing seasons or the feeling of a child growing up, the subconscious basically accepts it as a lived decade. So you're not really, it's like it's a memory or an idea being planted into your brain and your brain just believes it. So therefore it feels like you experienced it. It's like a memory getting implanted. And even if the REM cycle only lasted 20 minutes, this can happen. So this could very well explain this whole second life lived dream theory. And we could very well start manufacturing those sort of experiences the way neural link

52:17is looking. That's true. That's so scary. That's true. Yeah. I also heard that it could potentially cure things like blindness. With some people are saying, but I'm not going to say it's impossible. That would be interesting. I'd be so hesitant to put a chip in my brain, I never would, but maybe for some people that could be all the difference being able to live a life that they would prefer to live. And there could also just one note before we take off. I did think about the stone tape theory again while I was reading through this story. You know, it being an event that took place in an ancient city, this could be the result of something like stone tape theory, but I think I'm just stretching to try and draw conclusions and make connections because for some reason, all of our stories are connected this way. Yeah. Well, anyways, thanks everybody so much for listening. Make sure you send your stories into stories at oddtrails.com and sign up for a Patreon at patreon.com forward slash on trails to get at free versions of all of our episodes. And check out the new episodes of My The Podcasts that let's not meet in the old time radio cast.

53:17See you next week. Stay safe. Peace out.