Loading summary
Transcript33 lines
- [00:01]
Home Depot Advertiser
This Memorial Day, turn up the heat with the Home Depot. Find the perfect grill and patio set to keep the cookouts coming all season long. Grill up a feast with the next grill four burner gas grill only $229 and complete your space with the stylish Glen Ridge Falls 7 piece dining set now on special buy for just $499 with free delivery. Take your Memorial Day cookout to the next level all summer long with the Home Depot. See homedepot.com delivery for more details.
- [00:40]
Jack Wagner
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode features two stories from three different people. I loved both of these interviews, but they ended up being a little too short to be their own episode. So we decided to put them together in terms of the paranormal. These stories really don't have much to do with each other. The incidents themselves aren't that similar, but there are some small similarities between the two stories and we thought for that reason they would fit nicely together. Both of the stories involve two people walking on a hiking trail in the woods and seeing something that they can't explain. And in both of them, the person we spoke to is out walking with somebody they used to date. The first one comes from a guy named Sean and he had an experience while he was out on a hike with his ex girlfriend. The second comes from a girl named Delaney who also had an experience while on a hike with her ex boyfriend. Like I said, I really loved both of these and and I think you will too. This is episode 124. The title is Off Trail and you're listening to Otherworld.
- [02:03]
Sean
Hello, is this Bobby?
- [02:05]
Delaney
Yes.
- [02:05]
Jack Wagner
It is at its core, the science.
- [02:07]
Home Depot Advertiser
You can't argue with.
- [02:08]
Jack Wagner
I'm worried about.
- [02:09]
Sean
All of a sudden it is up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening.
- [02:13]
Home Depot Advertiser
I'm literally, I'm gonna die. Its limbs were just like wrong.
- [02:18]
Sean
Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a.
- [02:44]
Home Depot Advertiser
My name is Sean. I'm from Long Island, New York, 26 years old and I'm currently living in Studio City, California. Mostly trying to get into the film industry, but you know, it's ended up being mostly working at bars, worked as a mover, office administrator. It's. I've had maybe like seven or eight jobs in the three years that I've been here, all overlapping. So when this happened, it was kind of between the tail end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. It was on Long island, specifically Manorville, where I grew up. I feel like it kind of has a reputation for being a weird enough place. Maybe I'm biased, but particularly Manorville. It's known as like the gateway to the Hamptons, but it's really just in the middle of the pine barrens. It's essentially like a semi rural area of cookie cutter developments separated by huge swaths of woods. So growing up, I spent a lot of time hanging around in trails because most of my friends, you know, we were all in the same developments and the best way to get to them was through trails. I mean, one of the best things we even had to do was take like an hour and a half walk to get to 7:11. If that kind of illustrates how really little there was around there. I do think it was a great place to grow up for that reason. Like, it did feel like, you know, kids kind of ran the trails. You would run into people, and growing up, that was really cool. I mean, I was really never afraid in the woods at all. The thing is, as I got older, I started recognizing that some of it was a lot eerier. It didn't help that the Long island serial killer that like got caught maybe two years ago. Four of those bodies were found in Manorville in some of the same trails that I was going through all the time as a kid. There was always this feeling that like, you could go down the wrong path and, you know, something could potentially be there. I mean, it's kind of like a Stephen King town in Manorville. Like, there's something that feels kind of off. So really where this story starts is getting home for Thanksgiving, that last semester of College. Flash forward 2019. I'm a senior in college and my girlfriend at the time and I had just recently broken up. We had been pretty much together since 10th grade onward. So it was a, you know, it was a fairly heavy situation and she was in New York City, I was in Boston. In hindsight, it was definitely bound to happen. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that we had been together that long. And, you know, we were living really different lives at the time. We met up the day after Thanksgiving and she wanted to catch up or, you know, just kind of have closure, get coffee or something. We agreed to meet up pretty late that night, maybe around 9 or 10. I think it's worth noting that we also, we lived in the same development. So there's maybe a three block walk between us. But I decided to just pick her up in my brother's car instead. We drove back to in front of my place and for a while debated going inside to talk about it. But to be honest, it felt like it should have been maybe an hour conversation at most. So we just kind of stayed in the car, which is actually where a lot of this started. Like you can imagine it was a very loaded conversation. But at the same time, like we brought beers. At the time, I was smoking, she was smoking. So we were going through cigs in my brother's car, which really wasn't the most courteous thing to do. But either way, an hour turned into two, hours turned into three, and by the end, I would say we were actually having a really good time. It really felt like a relief in being so worried about this conversation. And we both kind of went back to that, you know, best friend who used to date level. So it gets really late and the conversation's been going on this long. We end up going back into my house and I got out of the car, went into the house, and I remember being like, oh shit, I forgot to lock it. So I went back to the car to lock it. And we go inside, she spends the night. So 5:30 the next morning we get up to leave and we get in the car. And you know, when you spend that long in a car, it always gets all condensationy, regardless of whether or not you're smoking and talking in it. So we get in the car, I unlock the car, and again, it's only like a two minute drive to her place and we're kind of quiet, but I look up in the rear view and on the back, in condensation was the word help. It was strange enough to make us take another lap around the neighborhood, just talking about, what is that? And to be fair, we were kind of laughing about it. I think I even made the joke, like, I don't. I don't know what Steve is doing in his car. Like, what the fuck is that? So that's pretty much where we left it. Just as a weird, strange thing. I dropped her off, I even a couple days later, I ended up driving her to the train to get back into the city. So it wasn't something that was at the forefront of our mind whatsoever. A couple months go by and the semester's over. It was actually my last semester in Boston because my school had this thing where you could transfer to LA for a semester to work an internship and, you know, try to get some footing. So my buddy and I, who I moved out here with, were planning on taking a big road trip after the Christmas break. He lived in Texas, so we had all these stops Planned on the way. And I knew it was going to be my last time on Long island for a little bit. I ended up going over to her place New Year's Day, another attempt at like clearing the air. Another half assed closure attempt. I don't know. The next day we woke up, it was a cloudy day. It was already like, it was lightly raining. Something felt off and I kind of marked that up to the situation. And the rest of the morning went on pretty much as usual. We were just hanging out, having coffee for a couple hours and trying to figure out what to do do for the rest of the day. Anytime she would come back to Maneville, she liked going on walks by herself now and going into different trails, going into new trails that she hadn't been to before. We were letting the afternoon drag on a bit. By the time noon one o' clock rolls around, she's like, okay, so we going on a hike or not? We're going on a walk or not. And I had this distinct, you know, I'm, I can definitely be lazy, especially in the mornings, but I had this very distinct foot dragging feeling about the whole thing. And this I now remember. She said, regardless of whether or not you go, I'm going alone. And almost immediately I felt like that's, it didn't feel right. I was like, okay, yeah, fine, I'll go. And she wanted to go to this place she'd only been to once before. It was actually a town over in Shirley, the Wertheim Nature Preserve. It was kind of a cloudy day. It wasn't really much of a day to go out and enjoy the outdoors. But it cleared up and by about 3 o' clock we drove over. We get there and it's, you know, it's, it's a nice trail. There were maybe only two or three other cars in the parking lot. And it was one of those trails where you, you know, you enter at the exit. It's basically just a big loop you could take different paths in. So on our way in we saw multiple parties coming out. So we pretty much figured we were the only people in the jail. And what I thought was so weird was we both were kind of immediately creeped out. A lot of me now wonders if some of this weird feeling that had been there since the beginning of the day, in hindsight, we kind of both marked it up to something along the lines of feeling watched. But we, you know, we kept going. And the thing is, at this point, we got to the trail late and it's winter in the northeast it's already fairly dark by the time we hit the, you know, kind of the destination point of the trail, which is a little, like, rinky dink dock. I was already pretty eager to go and, you know, all else aside, I just don't want to be out when it gets cold and dark. So we wrap around, then take the loop back. I don't know whether it was just the time of day or the fact that the woods were still crackling because it had rained recently. Something about the air felt distinctly thin. The air felt, like, rarefied. It felt almost vibrational. And at this point, we were getting into the early stages of twilight. So we're wrapping back and, you know, again, still joking about how weird this whole thing feels. She's walking maybe a couple feet ahead of me to my left, and the rest of the trail is kind of covered to me by woods. Like, I'm at a bend, my view is a little obscured. And the first thing she says is, oh, there's a person. And that was followed up by her saying, wait, Sean, what is that? And then what is that? Louder and more severe. I go around the bend, and I see this long, skinny, like, luminescent, almost didn't have a form at first. It was in the center and looked more or less like something bipedal. I would guess it was something around 7 to 8ft tall. That was my gauge when I saw it most plainly. It just looked like a long, skinny streak of light on two legs, no arms. It was stark white, which has that almost moonlighty reflective quality. It came to a point at the top when I first saw it, and it seemed relatively like, stable or more physical at that point. And then as soon as it moved, it didn't look exactly the same in any two moments. It just darted into the woods without making any remote sound. And it almost looked like it was zigzagging between trees to where for a half second, it would be closer, and then it would take an angle and then suddenly look 5, 10ft further away than it was a second before. This is all maybe from 30ft away, 40ft away. For a split second, it would look like it was nine feet tall. Another, it would look four, maybe, but the depth kept changing until it just completely faded into, like, behind bushes in the distance. Especially by the time we got to the point in the trail where it would have been when we first saw it. Trying to put it into perspective with the trees around it, it was hard to gauge zigzagging in a way that really doesn't make sense. And we both froze. And we were just watching it, trying to track it for a second. Especially towards the end when it was getting further away. It almost looked like an enormous cattail in the way they kind of bob and made no noise. It was after it rained, so the woods are crackling, but we. We heard absolutely nothing while it's ripping through these bushes maybe 30ft away from us. It wasn't translucent. Like that's. That's actually one of the things that always strikes me about it. Thinking about it now, like, it was almost too solid. It was very physical, especially in being twilight. It was just very stark against everything, if this makes any sense. It almost looked like something that was overlaid over everything else, to be honest. Now a lot of how stark white it was is the thing that really sets it aside because of the fact that it was a dark day and it. This thing looked like it had no bearing on the environment around it. Branches it was running into. And like the bramble it was going through it. It didn't move. And I've replayed this in my head more than anything in my life at this point. If this was something I was looking away from at the wrong time, it would have been so easy to miss. But we both locked onto it and just kind of watched it recede into the distance in five or six seconds. Both of us were pretty freaked out. It took us almost an hour to get to that point in the trail. So my first thought is, okay, well, whatever that was, we have to just keep walking in the other direction. This, you know, kind of unlike the. The help thing at first, this we really weren't laughing about, especially based on feeling pretty isolated and the fact that the weird feeling that it kind of hung over the day just felt like it was validated. And the other thing that's making the whole thing worse is the fact that it is rapidly getting darker, like hitting now the middle to tail end of twilight. So we keep going on and eventually turn on our phone flashlights. It gets to that point. I didn't realize this at the time, but, you know, we were now holding hands, which we were not. I didn't realize I was grabbing pretty tight. I think I was trying to put on a face of not being as freaked out as I was. So we. We walk on for maybe five, ten more minutes. I'm looking at the woods the entire time she's looking ahead. We have our flashlights on, and she gives the biggest, like, gasp I've heard out of someone. It's. It sounded like the Wind got knocked out of her. And I look over to where her flashlight is in front of us. And in the ground, maybe four feet across, is the word HELP etched in very scratchy, almost threatening letters. At this point, she froze like mouth to hand. I have never felt my stomach drop harder. My main thought was, we need to leave right now. My creeping thought that kept coming in was not only that, I can't believe this is really happening, it was almost the thought that, like, if this is happening, then literally anything could happen by the time we get out of this trail. If we get out of this trail. We now started really walking hard, not running. I think I was stupid enough to even at the time say, don't run, mainly because I don't. We were still far enough. I don't think we even would have had the energy to make it out as we were going. Eventually she's able to kind of snap out of it a bit. And they were both walking extremely fast. And I told her, you look ahead and I'm gonna look behind. I mean, it probably looked pretty ridiculous from afar, but I was speed walking backwards, just looking at the woods and flashing a light around. To be honest, it was probably only something like 20 minutes. I could hear my heartbeat the entire time. She asked, should we run? And we pretty much just start booking it from there. I was wearing Timbs at the time, and I almost immediately tripped, which again, when you see it in movies like everybody else, I always thought it was ridiculous when people trip at the worst possible time. Having experienced it, it now makes a lot of sense. It's almost like I forgot how to run. You know, honestly, we made good time. I mean, she was an athlete, I am not. So we. We got to the end of the trail, so fucking relieved we're catching our breath. I even just looked back at the mouth of it for a while and went back to the car. We were the only car there, as we thought, got in, caught our breath, went to drive out. And we didn't really talk about it much on the the ride back in specific, but I remember trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the night or where to even go from there. And both of us wanted to be in a loud public space. So we got friends and we went to a bar nearby us. We told them the story, but kind of like we both told like an abridged version of it because we were clinging to a certain amount of rationalization about it. And even the rationalization was horrifying. I got home and I again gave Like a very abridged version of it to my parents. I remember even taking a shower that night and just replaying that. That same six seconds of seeing this thing over and over again. I actually ended up, you know, taking legal pads and trying to, like, draw it and be like, no, that wasn't quite that. It's not quite this. The next day I went over to her place and that was when we first started talking about what we think it actually was. We both immediately threw out the desperate sort of rationalizations we had to get through the moment and admitted that we have no idea, but it was nothing normal. While we were talking, she went, wait, fuck, look. And there was a candle lit by us. I was like. When she said that, I was like, oh, God, it's back. And it wasn't. She was just staring at the candle and she was like, that's what it looked like. That's how it moved. And it suddenly clicked to me that it was like, oh, wait, this. It did kind of seem like a impossibly white, skinny candle flicker. At this point, I was really just trying to put it all out of my head. And I was leaving for this road trip in two days, so I left. I went on a road trip with my friend. We. I told him the story. He was blown away by it. I ended up having a panic attack on the trip while I was thinking about it too much. We were in New Orleans and he was like, oh, you should get like a. Get a reading. Like, I. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. My ex and I really. She barely will talk about it. She's thoroughly of the belief that this was something that doesn't want to be discussed. And she's very superstitious about evoking it or potentially bringing it back. She's made her peace with it by putting it away. I find myself coming back to it maybe too often. One of the things that I've made peace with is the fact that whatever this is, and I can't remotely claim to know what it is, other than that it was something supernatural, is probably the only thing I can give. But it has opened me up in kind of a positive way to look at the world with a lot more openness and a lot more curiosity, because if something like that is possible, then, you know, who am I to. Who am I to shut down any other belief? When it came time to. To move out to la, I did very eagerly, just because, you know, since then I haven't been fully comfortable at home, you know, even going back for holidays If I'm out at night and I'm around quiet woods or just in the Pine Barrens, I mean, I haven't been in a trail since.
- [28:14]
Jack Wagner
All right, we'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by Pretty Litter. I do everything I can to keep my cat healthy. The best treats, the best food, the best toys, and of course, using Pretty Litter. It's the best litter and a total game changer. Pretty Litter helps monitor your cat's health, detecting abnormalities in your cat's urine by testing acidity and alkalinity levels and showing the visible presence of blood. Very gnarly. But if something's wrong with your cat, you want to know. And these are very mysterious creatures that are very good at hiding it when something's not going right with them. So it's super important to know this stuff. Pretty Litter ships for free right to my door. It's non toxic, pet safe and household friendly. Plus it's low dust, controls odor and lasts for up to one month. Right now, save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy at prettylitter.com otherworld that's prettylitter.com otherworld to save 20% on your first order AND get a free cat toy. Prettylitter.com otherworld Pretty litter cannot detect every feline health issue or prevent or diagnose diseases. A diagnosis can only come from a licensed veterinarian. Terms and conditions applies site for details.
- [29:45]
Sean
Hey, it's Morgan Absher and I'm Kayla Moore and we're the host of the Crime House original podcast Clues. Every Wednesday, we sneak past the crime.
- [29:53]
Delaney
Scene tape and open a new case file for some of the most gripping true crime cases.
- [29:57]
Sean
While Kin pieces together the timelines and breaks down the hard facts of these cases, I'll be diving into the theories and pulling at the threads that may or may not add up.
- [30:07]
Delaney
From serial killers to shocking murders, Clues dives into all the forensic details and brilliant sleuthing that went into the world's most infamous cases.
- [30:15]
Sean
These clues shine a light on stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard. So join us as we open a.
- [30:23]
Home Depot Advertiser
Case and uncover the breakthroughs, the heartbreak.
- [30:25]
Sean
And the relentless pursuit of answers behind these unforgettable investigations. Follow and listen to Clues, an Odyssey podcast in partnership with Crime House. Available now on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts, put.
- [30:39]
Home Depot Advertiser
Us in a box. Go ahead.
- [30:43]
Delaney
That just gives us something to break out of because the next generation 2025.
- [30:49]
Home Depot Advertiser
GMC terrain elevation is raising the standard of what comes standard. As far as expectations go, why meet them when you can shatter them? What we choose to challenge, we challenge completely. We are professional grade.
- [31:05]
Delaney
Visit gmc.com to learn more.
- [31:08]
Sean
In case you haven't heard, it's officially an Abercrombie Summer. The A and F Vacation Shop has everything on your packing mood board. I desperately need their new one piece.
- [31:17]
Jack Wagner
The A and F Marina.
- [31:19]
Sean
It's strapless, so flattering and paired with denim shorts will be my go to beach outfit this summer.
- [31:24]
Jack Wagner
Finally, your suitcase isn't complete without finding that dress.
- [31:28]
Sean
You know, the one for the photo shoot. Abercrombie's boho dresses have that perfect beachy romantic look. Make it an Abercrombie summer Shot their newest arrivals in store, online and in the app.
- [31:54]
Jack Wagner
Alright, so after talking to him, I asked Shawn if I could speak to his ex girlfriend about what she saw. He said that he could try reaching out, but that he did not think she'd be very pleased to be hearing from him. And for that reason I did not have very high hopes about that. But I actually did end up speaking to her. She did not want to appear on the podcast. She confirmed Shawn's versions of events with this orb that they saw. She told me that she essentially hopes to put all of this behind her and that she hopes that Sean does as well. Thank you to both of them for speaking to me, especially to Sean's ex girlfriend. I'm sure that's a very unexpected call to receive. This next story comes from a person named Delaney. Like I said before, this story also takes place while she's out in the woods walking with her ex and she encounters something that she can't explain out there in the forest. The forest on the outside of Oklahoma City that has striking similarities to our first story. I'm going to let Delaney take it from here.
- [33:22]
Sean
My name is Delaney, I'm 24 years old and I'm from Oklahoma City. I would say I've always been a very open person, but I would also describe myself as like a healthy skeptic. I never fully write things off, but I also if there's something else that can like explain something, I will definitely go to that first. This story takes place in 2020. It was actually August 21, 2020. It was a Friday. At the time I was dating this guy. He had gotten me into hiking and he was an Eagle Scout, so he was pretty well versed in the outdoors and pretty comfortable. And at the time I was working at a museum that closed at 6 and we had planned, after I got off work, I would drive out to his place, which was about 30 minutes away. And then we were going to go on a hike at night. So we were going to an area called Lake Thunderbird, and some of the locals call it Dirty Bird because it's just kind of gross. Like, it's not very pretty or picturesque. It's just there. There's not a lot of great hiking near Oklahoma City. A lot of it. If you want the nicer trails, you have to drive out. So this was just convenient for us. There's. So there's like the lake. It's not too big, but you can boat on it and you can fish. And the area around it, there's several marked trails that are, in the summertime, pretty dense, I would say. And the particular trail that we went on was very dense. And he had hiked this trail before by himself at night and gotten a little bit disoriented, a little bit lost. And he was kind of a thrill seeker, so he wanted to do that again. And that was sort of what we planned on doing. So I was a little nervous leading up to us going. And we arrived at the park area, the trailhead, around, I would say, like 7:30, 7:45. The sun had just gone down. It was still kind of light outside. And there was nobody else there, no parked cars in the lot. I think the last car that was there, we saw the people, like, get in their car and leave. So it was winding down. There were still some people over by the lake, but not on the trail. So we get out of the car and we start on the trail. And I felt really calm for some reason, which was weird. And I noted it as weird because I am sort of a jumpy person. But for some reason, I just felt very calm and at ease. And I was. I think I even said it to him. I was just like, I feel pretty good about this. We started off on the trail and it was sort of that blue hour where everything is still visible, but you can't make out, like, the bark on the trees anymore. The trail itself was pretty dense, and the trees kind of canopied over. So you see the trail in front of you, but other than that around you, you just see forest. So we were walking down the trail. We were walking for about 15 minutes. And I did notice that it was sort of quiet. It wasn't dead quiet, but it was still. So we're walking, and I'm looking at him as I'm speaking to him. I'm kind of just chatting as we're walking. And I'm looking at him, he's to my right. He abruptly just stops in the middle of the trail. And he sort of put his arm on my arm to like stop me as well. And I'm looking at him and the color has just drained from his face. I had seen him be startled before or like shocked, but I had never seen him have this like, look. He just froze. And I felt confused. I think I thought he was maybe messing with me. Since I had mentioned that I was calm. I thought maybe he was sort of pulling a prank on me. But he just sort of said under his breath, like, what is that? And I'm like, what? And I look ahead of us and I see this thing in the trail, like about 30 yards ahead of us, just standing there. It was this humanoid figure that was probably between like 6 foot 3 and 6 foot 5. It was taller than my boyfriend at the time who was 6 1, but it wasn't towering. It was just like very tall, slender, and it seemed like fleshy, but it wasn't. It was like drained of color almost. So it was sort of like grayish brown. And its proportions were just completely off. It was standing straight. It wasn't hunched over, but standing straight. Its arms were nearly to its knees or where its knees would have been. There was no hair anywhere on it. It was just sort of like if you like, made a stick figure with long arms into CGI and put flesh on. Felt more like a masculine figure. But it didn't have much distinguishable male or female features. I couldn't really make out any facial features. I. I don't want to say it didn't have a face that I feel like did get kind of lost in the distance because of the time of day. But I didn't see shadows of facial features, But I could tell that it was facing us. Its head was relatively small compared to its body. Not tiny, but it just kind of looked like a normal sized head. On a larger body, I would say its torso was a little bit longer than that of a tall man. Its shoulders were sort of narrow and it seemed like its arms sort of protruded out from it more like it had a longer elbow to fingertip ratio. It was slender, but not like bony or like skinny. I don't know. It was hard to make out, like the joints on it, even the way it moved. It just kind of swayed. It was very elastic looking, I guess almost when I first laid eyes on it. It was like almost indescribable. The feelings and the way it felt to see that thing standing there. First of all, my state of calmness fully dissipates and I'm washed over with this fear that feels more intense than anything I've ever felt. It was primal. I've been creeped out before. I've had adrenaline rushes. I've had scary encounters with other people, but nothing has ever made me feel this much intense dread. I felt like I was no longer the top of the food chain. It felt like I was being hunted nearly. It was just like, I'm prey now. That's what went through my head is just, I'm prey. Aside from the proportions of it being wrong and it just looking completely out of place against the surroundings, the energy that I felt, like the shift in the air was so unnatural. It was like nothing I've ever felt before. And I think that's sort of what also solidified to me that this was not just a deformed person on the trail. It almost felt like it was like in my head now. This is why I felt calm leading up. Like it did that. Like it had this presence that sort of lured something towards it. And then once you actually are within its area, like the prey drive kicks in. And that's what it felt like. It felt like I was being hunted. At this point, it was probably approaching 8, but it's the middle of summer, so it's still. Everything is still visible. I can see all the trees. I can see the trail. I can distinguish, you know, where the trail ends and the tree line begins. I just can't see, like texture. I can still see colors and like shapes. So I got a good look at this, at this thing. Pretty unmistakable. It wasn't too dark that I couldn't make out what was going on around me. But it was very eerie time of day to see something like that because it's like I knew that by the time I turn around and start walking back, it's going to get dark. And I don't know if it was something that was protecting the forest because I also feel like, you know, if it wanted to have gotten me, it could have and would have. I. I do feel like, just based off of its movements and like, the speed, I wouldn't say it like flashed like it wasn't so fast that I didn't see it move, but it was extremely swift. It sort of looked like when it noticed us, it moved its body, like its whole body. And then in one stride, it like took its leg and like took one big step. Into the treeline. At that point, it sort of just became one with the forest, But I could still see it. It was just very camouflaged. As soon as it stepped into it, after it took the stride into the tree line, I wanted to book it out of there as fast as possible. I turned and I started to sort of run, and my ex grabbed my arm and, like, kind of pulled me back. And he's like, we need to just stay calm and walk. And I was pissed at him because I wanted to get out of there. It was. I felt so scared and, like, I just. I don't know. I was angry with him for trying to slow us down, but he said, basically, if you run from an animal, you're going to get chased. Not that this was an animal, but, you know, with him having more wilderness experience than I did, I think his instincts kicked in and he just wanted to try not to provoke whatever this was to gain any traction on us. So I'm like, okay, let's just speed walk then. And I asked him, I was like, can we just walk fast? And he's like, yeah, let's just hurry. And he seemed like he was fully in shock at this point. He wasn't, you know, making any jokes or trying to lighten the mood about this. Like, it was. It was very serious, very, like, solemn moment for us because he wasn't the type that was always super serious. He was pretty much a jokester. But in this moment, he had his head on very straight, and he was like, we need to get out of here. So I pull out my phone and I'm trying to open my camera because I want to get a picture of what is behind us. I knew it was still sort of in the tree line, and I kept looking over my shoulder to see if I could see it, and I could see it, but I couldn't. It wasn't invisible. It was there. I couldn't really see it moving much more, except maybe, like, I still sort of saw the swaying. And that's the only reason I could still see it. I couldn't make out much more about it other than, like, the movement. I really didn't get another good, solid look at it, but I knew it was there, and I knew it was keeping pace with us. It didn't really close in on any of the distance between us. From what I could tell, it seemed like it was just sort of stalking us out. And as we were walking back, it was getting darker and darker, and I was getting more and more scared for my life. I didn't know if I was going to be able to make it off that trail. I really thought that something bad was going to happen because I was just filled with this guttural dread. I felt sick. Like, I felt like when we got off the trail, I felt like I was going to throw up. And he saw it two more times. He got a good look at it, and he said to me that it was keeping pace with us, but it wasn't getting much closer than it initially was. When I asked him how he saw it moving, because I didn't get, you know, very good looks at it over my shoulder as we were leaving. But he said that for every, like, two steps we took, it took one step. So it was just graceful and, like, the lighting nearly. He was sort of, like, dodging between trees in the dense forest, but looking like it was just effortlessly keeping up. And finally we reached the end of the trail. We were only about 15 to 20 minutes into the trail. It took us less time to get out because of our pace, but it felt like forever. Like, it felt like we were on that trail for 30 more minutes. But in reality, it probably took us about 10 minutes to get off the trail. And we parked pretty close to the entrance to the trail, so we just ran to the car and got in and locked the doors, and we just sat there. We didn't say anything. We didn't turn any music on. We just both sat in silence staring at the opening to the trail for about, like, five minutes. And I break the silence, and I just say, what the hell was that? And he just doesn't even look at me. He's just still looking at the trail. And he just says, I don't know, and shakes his head. And I asked him if he'd ever seen anything like that, and he said no. And I said, well, will you tell me what you saw? And he said, it looked like person, like, but it wasn't a person, and its limbs were long. And I was like, that's. That's what I saw, too. And it was fast. And we both were sort of stuck on that, too. It's like it was just. It was too fast to be mistaken for something else for, like, a person or an animal. And it was on two legs, so there's really no animal that it could have been. So we left after that, and we just went back to his apartment, and I barely slept. And when I did sleep, I had nightmares about it, about. About being, like, chased through the woods by this thing. And the next day, I tried to bring it up with him. And even though in the moment, he agreed, like, we both saw something non human on this trail, after sleeping on it, he just began to sort of deny that it ever happened. And I tried to pull it out of him. I wanted to talk about it because I felt, like, this lingering anxiety and like, impending doom feeling for quite some time after, I would say, like, I mean, at least a week, if not longer. I thought about it a lot. If I, you know, stopped thinking about it, it would pop back into my head. And I tried to bring it up with him. I thought that if I put a name to would help me get past all of that baggage that came along with the experience. But his coping mechanism was just sort of to deny it. And he suggested that we just both hallucinated the same thing. But we. I was 20 at the time. Like, I didn't drink, we didn't do any drugs or anything like that. So there was really no reason that we would have hallucinated something, let alone the same thing. But he just kept insisting that, you know, it was in our heads and that I need to stop bringing it up because I sound crazy. We broke up, you know, because he was a jerk. But I happened to be moving. I think it was, like, just a week later. And I had been living with my grandparents. I was in college, and I was taking some time off to work. So I was just working two jobs, and I was ready to, you know, move out and get an apartment. And my dad is helping me move my things, and we're in his truck together. My dad is a very skeptical person. He does not believe in anything paranormal. And I sort of thought that I would get some closure by him telling me that I sounded crazy because, you know, like, my ex. It was one thing. He was there. So, like, even if he tells me I'm crazy, I'm like, well, you were there, so you can't really. I don't. You know, I know you're just denying it, but I felt like if my dad told me, it would just comfort me. So I said, hey, you're gonna think I'm crazy, and you're not gonna believe me, but I saw something last Friday at Lake Thunderbird, and he cut me off immediately. And he was just like, you're messing with me. Like, And I was confused. I was like, what do you mean? And he was just like. Like, who did you talk to? Like, why? What is making you bring this up? Like, why are you. Are you messing with me? And I was just like, no, what are you talking about. And then he goes in to tell me his own story. Before I tell him anything about what I saw, he starts telling me, hey, I was at Lake Thunderbird last Friday and I saw something weird.
- [54:31]
Delaney
My name is Michael Wilder. I'm from Oklahoma. Born and raised mainly in southern Oklahoma, out in the country, more rural areas, and moved to Oklahoma City around 2000. I've been here ever since. I am a musician and I own a contracting company. So I'm a sundry soul. I do it all. I adopted Delaney on her adoption came through on her birthday. We were at the lake house. But I knew Delaney well ever since she was an infant, and I knew her mother and her grandparents and. And later on in life, her mom and I got married. So after we got married, we moved to the adoption process. I was raised a Christian, and I've actually been employed by the United Methodist Church for 28 years now. So, yeah, church is a big part of my life. And of course, my spirituality is expressed through music, which is my profession. Growing up, I was outside all the time. You know, most summers I slept out in the pasture in a tent and spent. I spent most of my youth running tractors and fields at night and, you know, alone. And so I didn't watch tv. We didn't have podcasts back then, so I was never really exposed to paranormal or ghosts. The only thing I knew was what was reality in front of me was when I'm out at night or what I hear at night. You know, it's just uncommon for me to ever say anything about. I don't know how to describe it, just an anomalous event that, you know, was out of the ordinary. So when we were at the family event, Delaney shared with me her story. And then we got together and said, well, this was the same evening that I had my experience at the same lake I had. I went to the lake that evening, the lake house, to. I think it was a birthday party or some kind of dinner event. And I remember it was a good celebration. Everyone was out on the deck, you know, looking at the lake, and I needed to leave a little bit before everyone else. And I walked out of the back door of the house. My truck was kind of parked down by the edge of the woods where there was a trail cut through the woods, nothing out of the ordinary. I walked to the pickup and I just recall as I turned open the driver's side door, I felt like something was watching me. And that's just a very rare occurrence for me. So I turned around to see maybe someone was behind me. And when I looked down the trail, I saw something. I don't know how to describe it. I, I describe it as a dark figure that was moving so rapidly across the trail. And at that point, I mean, just chill bumps came over my entire body and I got really cold. I felt like I had. I was being stalked, kind of like a wolf would stalk its prey. You know, like I was being watched. It was about 30 to 40 yards away from my vehicle. You know, animals move and humans typically move in a straight line. And it just seemed like it went from one tree to kind of a diagonal tree in an unanimalistic way. There was no way a human would move in that direction. And I, you know, I will say that it was more girthy than a human, so it was wider. You know, whether I was looking at a side profile or a front profile, I don't know. But it was, it wasn't, you know, the typical two foot, you know, a human is about two foot wide. It wasn't that way or about a foot from the profile. It wasn't any of those dimensions. It's odd because, you know, I'd been out there a lot. I'm very familiar with the area and I've got, you know, I've turned around to get my vehicle hundreds of times and never felt the need to look over my shoulder that something was there. And I didn't hear any noise. Like if something was walking on the ground, I would have heard the leaves or the, you know, because this is, you know, in a wilderness area. When something's walking, you hear the, the sticks under their feet or, you know, because the leaves in a, in a wilderness area aren't cleaned up. You hear them like a deer or an animal walking through the woods. You can hear that. I didn't hear any of those sounds. The normal sounds that I would associate with an animal that would be stalking. The only other thing that I can describe it is when, for example, when the church building is secured and I have to go in, if there's an alarm going off that says, you know, there's movement in the building. And I know if there's movement in extreme areas of the building that someone really is in there. Well, when you enter the building alone and you think someone might be in there, that is the feeling that came over me that night. It just, it's, you know, even though I'm not scared to go in there, it's just the unknown about what is going to, what am I going to encounter if I explore this more that evening at the lake. Maybe there are some people, maybe even Delaney herself would. If you saw that, you would, like, run after it and chase it. But my first reaction was to get out of there as soon as possible and just get in the truck and go. I got out of there, but I got about a mile down the road and I started texting the people who were at the event. And I told them, you know, be careful, because something strange just happened to me. So I don't know. I think, you know, when you deal with a tacit dimension, you know, something that, you know is kind of unexplainable, we revert psychologically back to what we knew. What's the foundation of what we grew up with. And, of course, I wasn't exposed to a lot of media growing up, but, you know, we talk about our campouts and boy Scout trips, you know, about Bigfoot. And so the first thing, when something strange happens to you, you revert back to those things that you kind of are familiar with. And I said, well, maybe it was. I remember texting my friend. I said, I don't know what it was. You know, it didn't seem human to me. Maybe it was Bigfoot. I have no idea. You know, it still affects me to this day because when I'm out in the woods, I. I recollect on this experience about how, you know, something may be watching me or there may be something out there that I've never seen before that's unexplainable. I don't know that it has changed any of my quotidian behaviors as far as going into the woods or, you know, being alone in spaces or anything like that. But I definitely am a little bit more aware of keeping an eye out for things that may be out of the ordinary that I can't explain. I am extremely pragmatic. You know, where does the rubber meet the road? This doesn't make logical sense. And I think that's probably why I was so overwhelmed by the experience at the moment. And this just does not make sense in my life experience to see what I saw that night. I will say that the duality of the situation, the way that we had the dual experiences, really has, I guess, made me more of a believer that there might be things, you know, for things that we can't explain. And, you know, how do we get a handle on it and how do we explain paranormal events? But when you have, you know, human experience from a father, daughter, that kind of correlates with each other, uh, does kind of make you pause and think that there may be something that is keeping an eye on us or that we do need to be aware of.
- [62:29]
Sean
I just didn't know what to say. I was just so in shock. I was just like, I can't believe that. Why did I even bring it up? You know, it just made me feel worse. I was like, wow, I really did see something. The main discrepancy between our description of it was that he described it as being dark. And I didn't necessarily think that it was like dark. It sort of blended in with the environment around it. It was sort of like mid toned, I guess. But I also saw it at a different time of day. I believe it was the same thing. I don't know if it just look darker because of the time of night. Maybe like camouflages. I don't think he got as good of a look at it as I did because I think that his was sort of just like a dash, whereas I sort of saw it like stall in the trail and then move into the tree line. When he was telling his story and he said, I think I saw a Bigfoot or something, like, we both sort of laughed. But I could also tell that he was very serious because this is like a topic of conversation, a territory we had never gotten into before. And so the fact that he was telling me about this unexplainable thing that he experienced that he doesn't think is like a worldly creature, it just sort of like brought about this seriousness and tenseness. And he seemed a little like nervous telling me. And I think that scared me more because him telling me that he was scared, I was just like, oh, that's really scary because I've never seen him scared in my life. Both of us kind of thought we were crazy and then when we talked to each other about it, it was sort of like validating that maybe there is, you know, something out there.
- [64:46]
Jack Wagner
Thank you to Delaney and Michael for sharing those experiences. That story is completely terrifying. I love the atmosphere of both of these and I especially like it when stories like this have multiple witnesses to an event. Particularly when the people are seeing something that's so hard to believe. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you once again to Sean, his ex girlfriend, Delaney and Michael for speaking to me. This has been episode 124. The title is Off Trail 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 produced by Nikki Kate Delgado and Haley Pearson. This episode was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaeffer. Our artwork is by Cul de Sac Studios. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a patron@patreon.com Otherworld Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five star review, and telling your friends about the show. Our social media is theworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odysee. Leah Rhys Dennis, Rob Mirandi, Eric Donnelly, Maura Curran, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor, Michael lavey, Josephina Francis, and Hilary Shuff. 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 can send us your story@storiesotherworldpod.com sa.