Otherworld Episode 140: "Ross Bay Cemetery"

Host: Jack Wagner
Guest: Sierra (storyteller)
Air Date: October 20, 2025

Episode Overview

The episode centers on Sierra, a young artist from Vancouver Island, as she recounts a deeply personal and chilling paranormal encounter in Victoria’s Ross Bay Cemetery. Against the background of her mother’s terminal illness and emotional upheaval, Sierra describes how her vulnerability seemed to open the door to extraordinary — and unexplainable — experiences, culminating in a terrifying supernatural encounter.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sierra’s Background & Emotional Context

• Sierra introduces herself as an artist who grew up in Victoria, BC, after moving from San Clemente, California. She describes Victoria as a “charged” place, rich in natural beauty but with an undercurrent of mystery and gloom.
  • “Victoria is like a pretty small town… way smaller than Vancouver… known as being a historical town… But it is like, it does have such a colonial look and vibe to it, which I think people think is quaint, but it’s very at odds with the landscape...” (04:50)
• The story is set during a hard time: after leaving for California, she returned home because her mother's cancer had worsened.
• Sierra talks about the strange, hyper-real feeling of living so close to death, and how emotional vulnerability can sometimes make people more open to strange or paranormal events.
  • “Life just feels very different when you’re that close to death. Everything is just like a bit more odd and uncanny things happen…” (13:45)

2. Precursor 'Weirdness': The Woman from the Cafe

• Sierra recalls repeated bizarre interactions with an elderly woman who would linger around her workplace and eventually began showing up at her home.
• In an unsettling but surprisingly gentle exchange, she invites the woman in for tea, learns she’s homeless, and discovers the woman was drawn because Sierra resembles her deceased daughter.
  • “Turns out that I guess I looked a lot like her daughter who had passed away. Something about me like she really, like, glommed onto for that reason. And then after we had that conversation and tea… I just never saw her again.” (14:45)
• Sierra feels these sorts of odd occurrences increased in frequency during this “charged” period.

3. The Night in Ross Bay Cemetery

• On a quiet, beautiful night, Sierra and her friend Marnie decide to walk from their house to the beach and then, on a whim, continue to Ross Bay Cemetery—a familiar, peaceful spot for them, never previously associated with fear or the supernatural.
• As they talk, Sierra is distracted by untraceable rustling noises and finds herself growing irrationally irritated as she searches for the source.
  • “It increasingly was starting to really piss me off. And I don’t know why. Like, usually I wouldn’t be, like, irritated by that type of thing…” (20:54)

4. The Encounter (23:41)

• In a moment that shifts from mild annoyance to pure terror, Sierra spots an inhuman, gray, emaciated creature with exaggerated limbs moving toward her from behind a grave, on all fours.
  • “It was a creature that was the size of a human, but it's not a human being. It wasn't an animal. It was like something else that I couldn't tell you what it is, but it wasn't. It was inhuman. It was completely emaciated, gray, all gray skin pulled, like, tightly over its bones and hunched over…” (23:45)
• Frozen by shock, she can’t discern its face; the details blur as if not meant for human perception.
  • “It’s, like, totally disturbing and freakish and horrifying. So I was kind of just, like, briefly just frozen in shock, being like, I can’t believe what I’m seeing right now.” (24:23)
• When instinct takes over, she grabs her friend and flees, but describes a sensation akin to being pulled into quicksand, overwhelmed by despair and darkness as she tries to escape.
  • “It felt like running in, like, quicksand. Energetically, I was being, like, dragged down, being sucked back as I'm trying to, like, run forward. Like, this deep thing. Horrible despair, hopelessness, like, the worst feelings ever were, like, just, like, latched onto me…” (25:12)

5. The Aftermath: Lost Time and Perception

• After finally reaching the street and feeling the horrifying sensation dissipate, Sierra and Marnie realize several hours have vanished—their short walk inexplicably lasted into the early morning.
  • “I look at my phone and it’s almost 4 in the morning… I was like, what the fuck? And Marnie was like, what the fuck? We were not in there for that long.” (28:50)
• Marnie saw a different version of the apparition—just a dark mass, suggesting perception could vary person to person.
  • “She had seen it too, but she had just seen, like, a dark, like, black shadow mass moving in the same way…” (28:06)

6. Lingering Effects & Return to the Cemetery

• Deeply shaken, Sierra avoids Ross Bay Cemetery for 6–8 months, warning friends about a persistent evil presence.
• Eventually, she returns in daylight, seeking closure. She encounters a deer and tries to photograph it, but her phone glitches, producing surreal and unexplainable image anomalies—colors shifting, multiple exposures, gravestones flipped “upside down into the sky.”
  • “My phone just starts totally glitching out. The colors of everything were like changing to like bright blue and yellow… it was flipping the gravestones into the upside down into the sky…” (36:35)
• The glitch ceases as soon as she steps outside the cemetery. The photos remain bizarre, resembling equally strange photos later posted in a local Facebook hauntings group.
  • “Later on during COVID there was… a Facebook group for haunted Victoria… this lady posted these pictures… and her pictures looked quite similar to, like, the flipping and the color that I had in my photos.” (38:47)
• Sierra notes the incident has permanently altered her relationship to the supernatural; she’s now far more careful and respectful.

7. Reflections on Supernatural Experience

• Sierra shares her experience online, receives mixed responses, and opens up about how the episode reshaped her worldview and respect for the paranormal.
  • “I really want to take it very seriously and have, like, a lot of respect for it and to treat it like it is completely real. Because, I mean, to me, it is.” (44:41)

8. Host Commentary (45:44)

• Jack Wagner underscores how unexplainable the phone glitch is (even for someone experienced in photography), especially that it affected only Sierra’s phone, only at the cemetery, and matched other visitors’ reported anomalies.
  • “With Sierra’s photos, though, I genuinely have never seen a photo glitch out in this way… Even if there is an explanation, which maybe there is. I don’t know everything. It’s very weird that it only happened to her phone in the cemetery and then never happened again as soon as she left.” (45:53)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On emotional vulnerability & the ‘thin veil’:
  • “When you’re so open to weirdness and the veil is thin, then that type of stuff just happens more often.” — Sierra (15:08)
• First sighting of the creature:
  • "It was a creature that was the size of a human, but it's not a human being... Completely emaciated, gray…" — Sierra (23:45)
• The feeling of fleeing:
  • “It felt like running in, like, quicksand. Energetically, I was being, like, dragged down, being sucked back as I'm trying to, like, run forward. Like, this deep thing. Horrible despair, hopelessness, like, the worst feelings ever were, like, just, like, latched onto me.” — Sierra (25:12)
• On supernatural respect:
  • “I really want to take it very seriously and have… a lot of respect for it and to treat it like it is completely real. Because, I mean, to me, it is.” — Sierra (44:41)
• On the photo anomalies:
  • “With Sierra’s photos, though, I genuinely have never seen a photo glitch out in this way. It’s kind of hard to describe. There’s a lot going on in them, and I’m not really sure how it could have happened.” — Jack Wagner (45:53)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sierra’s background, family, and setting: 03:12 – 13:45
• Strange encounters before the main event: 13:45 – 17:45
• The night at Ross Bay Cemetery: 15:33 – 23:41
• Creature encounter & attempted escape: 23:41 – 28:50
• Aftermath, time loss, and immediate effects: 28:50 – 34:20
• Return to cemetery, photo anomalies: 36:35 – 41:10
• Reflections and impact on beliefs: 41:10 – 44:41
• Host’s analysis of the photo evidence: 45:44 – 47:40

Summary

This episode blends emotional storytelling with classic paranormal mystery, exploring how personal crisis can both foreground uncanny phenomena and alter one’s openness to supernatural experiences. Sierra’s candid narration, marked by vivid imagery and introspective honesty, roots the ghostly episode in lived reality: facing grief, weirdness, fear, and awe all at once. The glitch-ridden photos, time loss, and corroborated anomalies add a suspenseful, documentary air, leaving the listener wondering just what might be waiting in the thin veil between worlds — or in the shadows of a Pacific Northwest cemetery.