Zach (2:55)

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Jack Wagner (3:27)

Welcome to other World. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This one comes from a guy named Zach, and it took place shortly after moving back home with his family in rural Washington state after he dropped out of college. I think everyone has experienced times that are sort of transition periods, a section between two major eras in your life story. Sometimes you don't even know that you're in one of these transition periods until much later on. But sometimes you do know, and you could almost feel a sort of energy in the air during these periods. I think Zach was in one of those during this time. And sometimes I think that maybe people are a little more prone to experiencing strange things than during these periods of transition where everything just seems a little bit thinner, if that makes sense. What happened to Zach and what he saw, I'm not sure I know what to call it, and I don't think he does either. But I will let him explain that for himself. This is episode 117. The title is the Clearing and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello, is this Bobby?

Zach (4:51)

Yes, it is.

Jack Wagner (4:51)

At its core, the science you can't argue with.

Zach (4:55)

All of a sudden, up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm literally, I'm gonna die.

Jack Wagner (5:01)

Its limbs were just like, wrong.

Zach (5:04)

Everybody moves back into the light, even.

Eilish Poe (5:05)

If it takes them a.

Zach (5:29)

My name's Zach. I'm a cannabis farmer in Olympia, Washington. I grew up here in Olympia, and I spent a lot of my time outdoors. I was a Boy Scout. I did a lot of hiking and backpacking, things like that, a lot of outdoorsy stuff. My job, I clock in and out. I've got a regular weekday schedule. A lot of people have, I've learned, have very different wild views of what my work looks like. Some people ask me like, am I walking around a, a cannabis orchard picking off the ripe fruits from the trees or, you know, some like Garden of Eden idyllic style of growing? It's not quite like that because we harvest the whole plants. So sometimes it does take the form of almost like a factory setting, an assembly line setting where there's a strict schedule and every 10 days a new room has to come down and then get repopulated. So it's a lot more work than people would think. There's a lot of steps and a lot of diligence. A lot of the job is frankly some annoying paperwork and like just double triple checking that you've done everything correctly. You haven't left anything on or done anything outside of the norm because they're very particular plants. I grew up third generation Mormon, so all of my grandparents were Mormon and they had kids that were Mormon. And I would go to church probably two or three times a week every week. Growing up like kindergarten through high school, I grew up here in Olympia. I would consider myself a Washingtonian, but I did move here when I was five. I was born in Provo, Utah, which is like, man, that is like the, that's the spawn point of Mormons right there. It's a very demanding religion, I would say. There's a lot of rules. I wasn't allowed to go play out with my friends on Sundays unless we were doing something rather spiritual, which no kid in the summer wants to do. But I definitely had a different view of a lot of things that I have now. You know, like cannabis, for instance, is an obvious one. Where I grew up being told that it was something really bad or negative. It could only be a negative, that it's ultimately just harmful to you. Or even worse, it could be the influence of the devil, or it could be some sort of very evil thing that controls your mind. I mean, people range the gambit there, but you hear lots of things. My views started to change when I left home. 18 years old. I started to have doubts in high school. Things that I was being told at church or home didn't necessarily align with what I felt or what I observed outside of those areas. And getting away from home at 18, ironically going back to Utah where I went to school, so seems a little bit backwards. But then once I was there, I felt like a lot of the things that I grew up assuming or just taking for granted, I felt maybe I could be kinder on myself and consider alternatives to what I had felt. And that's when I really started peeling apart a lot of core foundational beliefs that I had coming from the Mormon church and getting rid of them. So I had gotten to a point in college where I either needed to go into a lot of debt or find something else to do. And I cut my losses and I moved back to my folks, ended up living with them just because I came back to Washington and, you know, needed a place to stay. I had found my first job growing cannabis, and I was just staying with them for a little bit while I found an apartment. I eventually did later that year. They probably reacted better than a lot of people would think. When I told a lot of my currently Mormon or also formerly Mormon friends, a lot of them threw their eyebrows up pretty high. A little worried about what my parents might do or think, but my parents were pretty good about it. They respected the fact that I was getting a regular, decent paycheck from something that I enjoyed doing. So I think they had a pretty good perspective about it. My folks live in Olympia, Washington. It's a rural spot, like outside of town. I think it's technically outside of the city limits. And it used to be actually a sheep ranch. So it was wide, big open areas. But like a lot of places in western Washington, the perimeter is like a wall of massive evergreen trees Inside, kind of the middle of the property is more grassy fields around their house and things like that. But then the perimeter is enormous, enormous trees. My uncle and my mom's brother, who lives pretty close, but not within eyesight, so they kind of are secluded. They have two separate kind of walls of trees that keep their area hidden from the other neighbors. So it's pretty secluded, but not, not totally in the middle of nowhere, not, not someplace that it'd be tough to find someone. It was definitely weird being at home with my folks. Just a. A clash of lifestyles, you could say. Of course I understood being in somebody else's home, being a guest, even if it's my parents. I wanted to be respectful and not. Not intrude too much. But my uncle was nice enough and a little bit understanding. He. He said, I've got a barn out here, you know, if you ever need to get away from the folks, just, just to get out of the house, you can, you can go in there and crack open a beer or whatever, you know, just go have some space to yourself. So sometimes I made it a nice little nighttime habit. I would go out of my folks place, take the dog out with me, we'd walk around. So then I'd go out into this barn and, you know, it Was a nice little, little bit of space. They have a horse ranch, my uncle, so there's several horse stalls. There aren't any horses in it at this time. It's mostly things like their feed or spare saddles, spare horseshoes, things like that. And the upper level is like literally just so. One night I decided to do my night walk. I take my dog out and we go over to the barn. Her name's Olive. I'm walking pretty slowly, pretty relaxed, but the barn entrance is open. It's a really big sliding barn door that's been left open and I can hear these rustling up top. It immediately strikes me as odd because no one really ever goes up there. It's frankly so inconvenient to get to. It's been left alone. And I'm listening to this thing and clearly my dog can hear it because she's barking kind of warning growls and warning little puffs of breath. So she's clearly spooked. The noises that I was hearing sounded like a step, step slide. Almost like somebody was dragging something or like a creature that had a injured leg. It didn't sound like it was coming from a small light creature. The sounds were from something that weighed at least 60, 70 pounds. You know, I'm standing relatively close to whatever the source of the noise is and my dog can hear it. She's spooked. It could be some large animal. My next thought after that was if it's a creature, I don't really think I want to go face to face with that. Especially in a compromised position like climbing up a ladder. My sense of, I guess self preservation outweighed my curiosity and decided that none of those things were worth investigating. And I turned right back around. I went off into some other part of the woods on the other end of my folks property away from my uncle's and just finished out my evening there. I asked my uncle the next day about these noises because I was very curious. I wanted to be respectful. I mean it was still his space that I was using. I asked him were you in the barn last night or do you know if somebody was in the barn last night? And he said no, I don't even think anyone was working on the ranch that day. He said there's no reason anyone or anything should have been up there. And he was a little concerned and confused. He just thought that's really weird and you should tell me if anything happens again. After asking my uncle about what had happened, everything was pretty quiet on the ranch for a while after that didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Everything was normal until a couple of months later. This was a pretty ordinary day. I'd gone through the evening. Nothing much had happened. I was beginning my ordinary nightly routine. And I was completely sober at the time, you know, brushing my teeth. And I was going to take my dog outside to go to the bathroom. Normally I'd take her out the back door where there was just one little area of light. But outside of their house it would just. It opens up into this big field surrounded by trees. There's a nice big large window in the back door, so I can see out there and I don't see anything. Sometimes I'll check for animals before I let the dog out, you know, and I open the door. She steps out pretty calmly, just like we always do. I think I stayed inside to watch her go outside. And she steps out the patio. I could kind of see in her body language she was ready to bolt. She's an adventurous dog. She likes to sniff things and check things out. So it wasn't a surprise to me that she would run away. And she's a black dog, so she. She quickly disappears. I found some shoes, quickly threw those on, ran out the back door myself. And I start calmly at first. I start walking down this path, the same one that she went down. And I'm keeping my head on a swivel. I'm trying to see if I can just barely spot her in the dark or maybe I can hear her footsteps, but no dice. I can't really see anything while I'm first going out there. The light from the house didn't go very far. You know, I wasn't super far from the house, but the light. By now I can't really see what I'm stepping on. Super well. I'm going off of my familiarity of the area, just following the path. I'm looking around, but I can't see much at all. I'm really trying to. To listen closely to see if I can hear something. But going farther and farther from the house always made me more nervous because I knew the farther that she got, the more likely she was to get into something. I remember walking and looking down to make sure I wasn't going to trip on something in the dark. And when I look up, I see something. It's what looked like the shape of a canine at first. But I remember it was odd that it didn't seem to pop out of somewhere. It didn't come from behind a tree. I saw it just standing there in a small pile of bush. It felt like it hadn't been there like two seconds ago. It's sitting in the same posture that a dog would have if you told it to sit, but it's facing me directly. Pretty still at this point, I'm still because I'm a little dumbfounded at what I'm seeing. It doesn't immediately strike me as so odd because it's in a familiar shape, like a canine. But the more I look at it, the weirder it looks. I immediately knew it wasn't my dog because my dog is a miniature black lab and this dog is very white. Like the color is almost like somebody had drowned it in paint, in white paint. But additionally, the. The light scattered around it in a really strange way. It was like it was getting a light source that nothing else was. Like it was reflecting light that only it was receiving. It wasn't shining on anything else. I struggle to describe this because I haven't seen anything like it before or since, but it was as if it was putting out light that it shouldn't have. If you've ever seen a bad photoshop where the lighting on somebody's face is clearly much too bright for everyone else in the photo, but they just photoshopped it in. It looked almost something like that. Looking at the thing, it was almost like it was a reverse creature that looks like it's made out of a shadow. Like this thing was made out of light. But it had distinct features. It wasn't super amorphous. It had a distinct shape and it had furniture. It looked in the shape of like a husky if it were all white. Had the very wolf like features with the long snout and the pointy ears. The bizarre effect of the light meant that I couldn't see detailed features very well. You know, that was definitely enough to see the shoulders. I could see the head, I could see which direction it was looking. I couldn't see its eyes very well. I could not see a tail. That could have just been the way that it was sitting. It was totally still. I didn't see it move at all.

Jack Wagner (20:46)

Alright, we have to take a break, but we'll be right back with the rest of the story.

Eilish Poe (21:01)

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Zach (22:10)

Down at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks? The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death? These stories and more are told in the new podcast Hollywoodland, where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award winning music and true crime podcast Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.

Jack Wagner (22:48)

If you don't know about flyer deals on Instacart, this message is for you. Flyer deals are like strolling through your favorite store looking for deals, but you're scrolling your phone and maybe you're in bed. Because getting delivery doesn't mean you have to miss deals like you get at the store. Like the one creamer that doesn't make your stomach hurt. Or the pasta sauce you can't not buy when it's on sale. So download the Instacart app, shop flyers and never miss a deal on one of your favorites. Plus, get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes.

Zach (23:16)

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Eilish Poe (23:53)

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Zach (23:57)

Lickable Spoon Cat Treats. The best time to feed lickable cat treats to your cat is anytime. Feed by hand for a playful moment, in a bowl, for a creamy treat, or as a topper to make mealtime fun. Visit temptationstreats.com to learn more. It threw me off. I was on a bit of a march, trying to get this unruly dog, and almost like it had interrupted, you know, I stood there and stared at it, and I was trying to figure out, is this some sort of. Is this some coyote that I haven't seen before? You know, is this a wildlife that I haven't run into yet? That doesn't seem super likely. But then my second thought was, I still haven't seen or heard anything from my dog. It's. It's actually quite quiet outside. I'm kind of protective of her, and I didn't want her to get hurt. She also has a bit of a habit of going after any wildlife she sees, so I was definitely worried that she might run after this thing. I kind of snap out of my stun and just in a bit of blind drive to protect my dog, I actually start approaching the thing. I start walking towards it because it's still in the area where my dog ran off to. It's still, like, kind of the last direction I saw her run away to. So I keep going towards it, and I get a little bit louder and a little bit more of a frustrated tone. I'm calling out to my dog, you know, get. Get back inside. I don't know where you are. Kind of pulling out all the stops to try and get her to come back to me. She knows the word inside, so I was saying that a lot. I'm moving. I'm still just walking. I didn't want to run, but I have a good march moving towards this thing, and I'm calling out to Olive, and I got. Maybe I probably moved another. Yeah, like 30ft, maybe 10. Yeah. 10 yards closer to it, while being louder and a little bit more noticeable than I was before. But I'm still keeping one eye on this thing. It's so strange, and I'm so kind of confused. I don't want to leave the line of sight, especially since it's been facing me the entire time. It's looking right at me. So I'm looking right at the thing. I almost never break eye contact with it, really, despite all my yelling and marching. And that's about when the canine figure stood up, but not as a canine. It's almost like from the. From the light, the figure of light that it was it then stands up into the shape of a man and it's weird. It's almost like the shape of the man was already inside of the dog. And then it stood out of it like a bug coming out of a cocoon. But it didn't leave much left over. I didn't see anything left behind. I also didn't really see. I didn't see limbs or features halfway through transition because it was so fast. It was very, very smooth. He was standing straight up, is about 6ft tall, maybe, maybe taller. Medium build, maybe 190 pounds. Pretty thin, but like, I'm a thin guy. He wasn't as thin as I am, but like, not a lot of fat. It was lean. When it stood up into the shape of a man, it was still looking at me head on. It didn't change its orientation and it had its arms at its side, very calm, very still, just looking at me. It continued to have that weird glow, that weird iridescent aura, if you want to call it that, that, that shimmering almost look to it. But it no longer had fur. It had a smoother looking texture to it. Whereas before with the dog, the fur texture of it almost helped give it some definition. When it was a man, it was like totally smooth. The. The face was totally void of any features. I couldn't see a. A bridge of the nose, I couldn't see a brow. I couldn't even really see where the chin separated from the neck. You know, the kind of jawline. I couldn't really see that very easily. It was. It was almost like a. A white silhouette. I couldn't see hair on top of its head, so it almost looked like it was bald. I couldn't see its body in too good of detail. So it might have had some sort of clothing on that was slim fitting or maybe it was just a naked, naked man. When it changed shape, I immediately knew that I was dealing with something of a category that I'd never dealt with before. Like, I had never experienced any sort of cryptid or creature that came into my life, or I hadn't even really heard of anything like that in Western Washington. So I was a little bit scared. I think I felt also a bit of excitement, if I'm being honest. I was. It was a little exciting to be like, what is this fantastic thing that's happening? But also that tucked back into frustration with like, why is this happening while I'm trying to find my dog, you know, I felt almost like this would be a lot cooler if I could stick around and look at this thing, maybe try and get a photo or who knows, maybe even try and interact with it somehow. But I was so focused on getting my dog away from it and in my eyesight, I didn't want to. Want to mess with it too much. I have another moment of probably stunned awe as I. As I watch this thing in the shape of a man. But the same cycle continues. I guess I get even more worried and I start walking again towards it. I probably moved another, yeah, like 30ft, maybe 10 yards closer to it while being louder and a little bit more noticeable than I was before. I start turning a little bit to the right just because I think I had heard something by that point that I had. I thought maybe my dog was off into the right. So. But I only make it maybe three more steps towards this thing and towards the woods. When it rotated itself slowly to what was my right. It rotates, just turning slowly and that's when it took off into the woods. It just, it just ran away. But the way that it ran was so strange. It didn't look like it disturbed any vegetation. It was completely silent and it was super fast, clearly faster than any human speed that I've ever seen. And it was weird that it didn't seem impeded by the terrain. The woods out there, the ground is filled with sticks and potholes and, you know, little animal dugouts, all those sorts of things that happen in big fields. This thing was just like gliding above all that as it ran away. It didn't make any noise. I didn't hear any branches snapping or even like low hanging branches from the, from the trees. It didn't seem to hit or interact with anything as it ran. The frame of the man was moving at a comfortable pace, like a steady jog. But it zipped out of my field of view going at least 50, 60 miles per hour. Somewhere in there. It looked like it was moving faster than it could carry itself with its arms and legs. It was like a poorly animated video game where the character was moving faster than it had been animated for. So it ran out of my field of vision to the right towards a property that my uncle owns. And it's a more heavily wooded area. So it looked like it was kind of running back into the woods or the forest, you know, but kind of got swallowed up by the trees and the foliage as it, as it just went off. My immediate reaction after that was a bit of relief, but a little bit more fear because it was so unassuming beforehand. I didn't really get any, even though I Was afraid before. I wasn't really feeling any immediate danger because it had been so unassuming, you know, just. Just watching me, staring at me. But when it, when it ran away like that, I got a sense of like, almost respect, like, oh, this, this thing is. Is obviously very, very capable of things that I don't understand. I'd never seen anything move like that. I don't know. Just. Yeah. Unexplainable. I don't. What, what do you do in a moment like that? I was just standing there in my pajamas, just watching it run away, wondering where it was going. I wondered if it had maybe like dipped out of being visible or if it had gone somewhere else. So that was. That was a bit of a frightful moment. But it was, it was pretty short lived because my dog came back almost immediately afterwards. My dog came back to me surprisingly relaxed. She's a bit of an anxious dog sometimes, so I thought that she would have seen it. I thought that she would have come back, you know, with her with her ears forward and her eyes ready to find something. But she came back with her. With her tongue hanging out and her tail was up and. But relaxed and she just seemed ready to go inside after that. She was slightly off to the right of me. So she was. She was much closer to the thing than she was to me actually. Almost like she had been hiding in the bushes right there, waiting for it to be over. I was very relieved to see her come back to me. I, you know, gave her a bunch of love and pets and stuff and I just decided like, we ought to go inside right now. It sounds silly, but I've heard, you know, I've heard ghost stories and things like that before. And as long as you go inside quickly, it seems to work out. So I was determined to get her back inside. Yeah. Then I was just kind of trying to digest what had just happened. As I was walking back, I was feeling a little electric. Like suddenly all of the nerves that I should have been experiencing up until that point finally came into my body and I was. I was feeling real loose in the legs, Real anxious to get back inside. Like, okay, that moment's over. I can think about it now, but let's get inside. Came inside. I think I left the lights on because I was curious, but I think I went straight to bed. The roller coaster of being terribly anxious about my dog and then the relief of getting her back to me and knowing that she was safe. Climbing into bed with the dog that night felt pretty good. She and I went to Bed pretty soundly after that. The next day it was, I think it was bizarrely lonely if I had to put a word to it. I knew that when you have something like this happen to you, it's people aren't too quick to rush to believe you or people aren't usually that immediately accepting of telling them a story like this. I almost had trouble accepting that it happened to me, but of course I had seen it with my own eyes and I couldn't deny it. So I don't think I told my parents immediately. In fact, I don't think I told anybody that this had happened to me for several weeks. I don't think I was terrified of what they would say, but I just, I didn't really know how to bring it up. I didn't know what to say. Obviously I was curious about what I had seen. So the first place to go would be someone else who's maybe seen that before in that area. I go to my uncle and I'm a little bit timid, I'm a little not sure what to say. But I just come out and ask him like, hey, have you seen a weird white dog or man shape shifter in the woods? And he stared at me for a couple seconds before answering and just thought, no, have you? And I said, yeah, I don't know what it was, but I saw it out here and ran off like into your neck of the woods. He said, no, never seen anything like that. I was confused, I guess, I mean, about the same place where I was before. I wasn't expecting him to tell me that he had seen anything. But yeah, still looking for answers. When I finally got around to bringing this up with my parents, I think we were having dinner or something and I had just brought up, did I ever tell you my, you know, my spooky story about what I saw in your backyard? And they said no. So I gave them the rundown and their immediate reaction was to ask me if I had been smoking weed that night. To ask me if I had been sober during it. They thought that maybe I saw an owl, you know, like a, like a big white barn owl that flew away. Or maybe I saw a really white coyote that stood up on its hind legs or something, you know, And I thought, well, it's nice of you to speculate. It was certainly, certainly much stranger than that. Thankfully, you know, I've known them a long time and this wasn't the first time that they had said something silly about weed. So I didn't really let it get to me too much. But I guess I was a little bummed that they didn't seem to take it too seriously. I thought, this is a really interesting thing that happened in your backyard. If this happened in mine, I'd be pretty curious to know about it. I genuinely hadn't smoked that night. I remember distinctly because I came back inside. I mean, not that I've ever experienced anything like that as a result of smoking, but I was not high that night. By the way, if you don't know, there's no amount of weed or type of weed that you could smoke that would make you see something like this. I've never heard a story of anyone experiencing anything like this with marijuana. So I left my parents with that, figured I'd let them stew with that. But the way it's affected me since then, it's made me much more, I think, open to listening to people's stories, considering other perspectives or ways of how the world works. I've dissected this story several different ways to try and understand what may have happened to me. Was I visited by an extraterrestrial? Was this a cryptid, like a. Like a skinwalker? Or was this some, like, even religious entity? You know, was this a spirit? Was this an angel or a demon? What was this thing? So nowadays, when I hear stories or fantastic things that happen to people, I'm much more likely to. To consider the possibility that it's something otherworldly like that. It's. It's something not of this place. People have said some interesting things that I haven't connected. Like, a lot of people react to the fact that it probably saw my dog before me. And its first shape, it appears as a canine, and then when I get closer to it, it changes into a man. It sounds strange, but I don't think that it was malevolent. It didn't really seem intimidating or like it was out to harm me. And also the fact that it was so bright, I don't know, I think that made me inclined to think, like, maybe this thing's a good thing, but. But of course, that's. That could be skin deep. You know, it could just be the way that it looks. I have kind of avoided trying to put a label on it because I. I feel like if I. If I try and think of it in too narrow of a margin, that I'm going to forget details or I'm going to maybe, like, try and convince myself of something too specific. I don't want to put it in a box, but I think it was some sentient entity that's not from where we are. I visit my folks regularly these days and I bring my dogs, I have two now, and they go out and they run around the same area that they were before. It definitely comes back into my mind when it's at night and I let them out. I have a bit of a closer eye on them when I let them out at night. But it's. It's given me a bit of a sense of wonder. Almost like for. For the woods. The spot that I'm in now is actually almost more secluded and you hear lots of noises. I've seen lots of wildlife and it. And it just gives me a sense of like feeling small. Like there's a lot of things out there that we don't know about. And I think that's really cool.

Jack Wagner (43:15)

Okay. Thank you Zach, for sharing the story. What struck me most about this one was the way he described this thing's movement. He said that its legs moved as if it was jogging maybe 5 miles per hour, but it was actually going across this field at like 60 miles per hour, maybe even faster. I don't think I've ever heard anything like that before. I thought it was really strange and specific. Also the way it emitted light. I actually talked to him for quite some time about this, trying to understand what he meant. I thought this part was so fascinating too. The idea of it being the opposite of a shadow, like a light shadow in my head. It kind of reminds me of how those glow in the dark stars, the ones that kids put up on their bedroom ceilings. The way those glow that. But a lot brighter. I genuinely have no idea what Zach saw out there in the clearing with his dog that night. But I feel like maybe it's out there moving around that specific area between his uncle's house and his parents house. I don't know what it is, but maybe that night he just got really lucky and caught a glimpse of it. This was episode 117. The title is the Clearing and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice, Jackal and North Americans. This episode was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaeffer. Our artwork is by Cul de Sac Studios. Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer. Production help by Hayley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five star review and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron@patreon.com Otherworld Our social media is Otherworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odysee. JD Crowley, Jenna Weiss Berman, Leah Rhys, Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis and Hilary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odysee app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural or unexplained, you could send us your story at stories@otherworldpod.com.