High Strange – "Here's a highly strange one..."

Podcast: High Strange
Host: Tenderfoot TV & iHeartPodcasts
Episode Air Date: July 4, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of High Strange serves as a bridge between seasons, offering listeners a chilling firsthand account of an unexplained and deeply unsettling event. The storytelling explores themes of lost time, possible abduction, and inexplicable phenomena that challenge rational explanations—all delivered with the show’s signature mix of curiosity and skepticism. The episode aims to highlight the unnerving similarities in experiences recounted by credible witnesses and to probe why rational explanations so often fail to stick.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction and Connective Tissue Between Shows ([01:57]–[02:32])

• The High Strange host addresses the gap since the first season, reassuring listeners that more content is coming.
• Listeners seeking more inexplicable stories are encouraged to check out Radio Rental, the podcast from which this episode’s central story is drawn.
• Emphasis is placed on challenging official narratives and pursuing stories to their truly strange ends.

2. The Story: Lost Time and the Walk Back to Nowhere ([02:32]–[13:33])

Background and Setting

• The storyteller grew up in a very small town (pop. ~900), with little excitement and a deep familiarity with its geography.
• On the evening of the incident, the narrator (aged 16–17) and a friend choose a well-worn shortcut (taken "101 times") through a golf course and some woods to reach another friend’s house.

Leading Up to the Unexplained

• The route is filled with landmarks: "There's the sand trap on hole 15. A couple minutes later there's just like a utility shed..."
• The timing seems off: “We started at 5:30 or 6...sun setting around 6:30... but the more we walked... we still hadn't [reached the road].”
• They reach a thicket of trees, expecting their destination is just beyond.

The Encounter ([04:45]–[08:00])

• They spot multiple red, blinking lights: “like lightning bugs... fluorescent, like a Christmas tree bulb... coming almost like through the trees.”
• The lights increase in number; an eerie siren or alarm sounds:

  “This siren was so unlike anything I had ever heard before... a shriek, high pitched and so loud. Almost like a frequency like when you have tinnitus, like a ringing in your ears, but coming from someplace outside of you. It was all around us. It was consuming.”
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [06:50]

• Both are gripped by panic, overwhelmed by the lights and sound: "Fight or flight or freeze and we flew."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [07:20]

Disorientation and the Impossible Return ([08:00]–[10:45])

• As they flee, still seeing the unnatural red lights above, they expect to burst onto the road by their friend’s house—but instead find themselves inexplicably back at their starting point:

  “We were standing looking at that small chain linked fence that we started walking on... At no point did we ever make a U-turn and start walking back. Even more significantly, we never crossed any other path.”

• Loss of time is discovered: "We noticed that it was nine o'clock at night. We had effectively lost three hours. Really was a walk that was from point A to point B. A straight line that really should have only taken 15, 20 minutes at tops."
• The journey was a familiar, simple walk—yet somehow, "we were back where we started. Like we had walked entirely around the circumference of the world."

Aftermath: Doubt and Repetition ([10:45]–[13:33])

• Both retrace their steps repeatedly in the following weeks—at all times of day—never able to replicate the experience, or find the lights/alarm again.
• The experience is validated by the fact it was shared:

  "It would be one thing if I was by myself and this happened. I experienced it with somebody else, which was just confirmation that something strange had happened."

• No rational explanation is found: “The thing that me and my friend both keep coming back to is that we were abducted.”
  • The elements—lights, siren, loss of time—match other abduction accounts.

  "Maybe these things abducted us and got confused about the location where they got us and they picked us up and dropped us off at the wrong place. That's like the thing that makes the most sense to both of us."

• The storyteller reflects on the uncanny similarities to other UFO/abduction cases and the uneasiness of this awareness:

  "I wish it weren't true. I wish it didn't make sense. But that's what I keep coming back to. That's the thing that makes the most sense in my mind. I truly believe that that night we were abducted and put back in the wrong place."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [13:18]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Unmatched Strangeness:

  "This siren was so unlike anything I had ever heard before... a shriek, high pitched and so loud. Almost like a frequency like when you have tinnitus, like a ringing in your ears, but coming from someplace outside of you."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [06:50]

• On Lost Time:

  "We noticed that it was nine o'clock at night. We had effectively lost three hours."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [09:35]

• The Impossible Journey:

  "We were back where we started. Like we had walked entirely around the circumference of the world."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [10:25]

• On the Search for Sense:

  "The more we talked, the more things didn't make sense, the more things didn't add up."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [10:55]

• Most Rational Explanation:

  "Maybe these things abducted us and got confused about the location where they got us and they picked us up and dropped us off at the wrong place."
  – Radio Rental Storyteller [12:34]

Important Segment Timestamps

• Episode Introduction & Cross-Promotion: [01:57]–[02:32]
• Start of Story / Setting the Scene: [02:32]–[04:45]
• Lights and Siren Encounter: [04:45]–[08:00]
• Panic and the Return: [08:00]–[10:45]
• Processing and Aftermath: [10:45]–[13:33]

Tone & Style

Throughout, the tone is conversational, incredulous, and unnerved—reflecting the confusion and shock of encountering the truly unexplained. The storyteller’s delivery is earnest, relatable, and skeptical, mirroring the show’s commitment to curiosity and not accepting easy answers.

Conclusion

This special episode of High Strange revives the show's core questions: What happens when reality glitches and the official stories break down? By sharing a firsthand tale that echoes classic abduction narratives yet remains deeply personal and unresolved, the podcast amplifies its core message—most things, it seems, are not weather balloons.