Transcript
Sponsor/Ad Voice (0:00)
Foreign.
Jack Wagner (0:12)
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. What you're about to hear is one of my personal favorite episodes that we've made so far. It involves family history, war, immigration, premonitions, and a lot more that I should probably not mention because I don't want to spoil anything. It takes place in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Yes, that Sleepy Hollow. And it takes place on Friday the 13th, which is a wild coincidence given the nature of this show. But honestly, it's a little misleading when it comes to the actual theme of this episode because the story is not very frightening at all. In fact, I'd say it's quite inspiring. It comes from a man named Chris who works in the wine industry and was actually introduced to me by a friend of mine named Anna who reached out, out of nowhere, saying that she met this Palestinian American guy who has an incredible story. She thinks it would be great for Otherworld. She actually reached out right after meeting him, and I'm very glad that she did because it really is an excellent story. There are so many layers to this one, and I think it kind of speaks for itself. So I'll let Chris take it from here. This episode is called the Overpass, and you're listening to Otherworld.
Chris Nas (1:53)
Hello, is this Bobby?
Jack Wagner (1:55)
Yes, it is at its core, the.
Chris Nas (1:56)
Science you can't argue with. I'm so worried about all of a sudden up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm literally. I'm gonna die. Its limbs were just like, wrong.
Podcast Guests/Promoters (2:08)
Everybody moves back into the light, even.
Jack Wagner (2:09)
If it takes them a.
Chris Nas (2:36)
My name is Chris Nas. I'm 35 years old. I'm from Sleepy Hollow, New York. I've been in the software industry as head of sales and account management for 10 years, as well as importing my own wines from Europe. My father's Palestinian. My mother's from Greece. Both immigrants. They met in New York working as chemical engineers. Kind of classic New York American story. My dad came here in 1972, four years after the Six Day War. He was a Palestinian refugee. We're from Bethlehem. And the occupation pushed him and his sister out of our ancestral homeland. He not only couldn't see a future there, he applied for asylum to America and was able to enter the country by being accepted by Columbia University. At the time, the Jordanian military was in control of the west bank territory, and 10 minutes away is 1948 line Israel. So the fighting spilled out all across our. Our. Our little border. He was caught in crossfire a handful of times. He'd be walking from our home in Bethlehem to our farmland, which now we no longer have access to. He'd be going there to harvest our apricots, our olives. And one of the times specifically, there was a battle between Israeli and Jordanian tanks and he was caught in the crossfire. His memory is ducking for cover and hearing the loudest noises for about a half hour until the Jordanian tanks retreated. He describes just not even knowing where he was after that. It took him like two hours to get home when. When our house was like a half hour walk away. Even before the Six Day War, my dad, from the age of seven, had honestly, he'd grown up putting his friends body parts in burlap sacks and bringing them back to their parents after the Six Day War. He was 18 at the time, and he could actually leave. Not that it was easy. He could only actually leave through getting accepted to a university here. He knew there was no future for them and he didn't want to leave. But after all of the death and, you know, lack of freedom, he. It was really the only option. So he left. So in 1972, he came to New York. He initially lived in Yonkers, and he'd commute from there to Harlem and he, you know, he finished his entire engineering degree through there. He ended up getting a job for Kraft Foods working on the Kool Aid bottle and Capri Sun Pouch. And their old New York headquarters was in Tarrytown. Sleepy Hollow, New York. That's where he met my mom. And that's where I ended up, you know, growing up right on the banks of the Hudson river in one of the biggest Halloween towns besides Salem. I'd say I just remember summer ending and always looking forward to fall because of Halloween coming in and all of the festivities and, like, spooky stuff that was about to come our way. Growing up, we'd have. There's an old. It's called Phillipsburg Manor, and it was a Dutch plantation. They would use that plantation, they still do to this day, as a, like a Halloween festivity area. And what they would do was recreate the late 16 to early 1700s. They'd have the headless horsemen riding around. They'd have a storyteller who'd speak in Old English and tell you the legend of Sleepy Hollow. So I almost was too close to the spookiness, that it was, like, familiar. I think that it urged me on the side of me wanting to believe and kind of just knowing that there's more to life than what we see and have evidence of so concretely growing up. I just remember my first nightmare. I'm lying face down on the side of the road and there's this overpass off in the distance. It's nighttime because there's this car that's coming at me or what seemed to be a car. It's a very bright light approaching me. And I feel like this happens a lot in dreams. But I couldn't move. And despite like my best effort to kind of try and get out of the road, I can't move. And the light keeps coming closer and closer. And right before it comes over me, I woke up sweating. And honestly, I was so young. I was like five. Five, maybe at most seven. The thing is, it. This dream was recurring. It kept happening. I. I can't say how many times, but it's. It's almost like I don't remember my early dreams, but I remember this early nightmare and, you know, I forgot it. I forgot it for a very long time. It wasn't until at the age of 14, I moved to the current house that my family lives in. And also still in Sleepy Hollow on old Sleepy Hollow Road. Anyone who's been here would know that these roads weave through New York like the Rockefeller State Park. And so there's no street lights. And they're these windy roads that you could almost imagine, like the Headless horseman riding, chasing Ichabod Crane down. They're just at night. You. You did. They're almost silent, completely dark. And it was. It was when I moved here at 14 that I went down to get my mail. And that nightmare came flooding back into my memory and that sensation of terror because when I went to get the mail and looked down the street, I saw that overpass. And seeing that overpass just made it all click, like a eureka moment that this road, that was the road from that nightmare. And you know, I remember from the age of 14 until I graduated college, even though I moved away for college, I wouldn't let anyone drop me off at the bottom of my driveway out of fear that, like, somehow I would fall and not be able to get up and that like, this dream would play out. So flash forward 20 years. It's 2024. I'm living in Brooklyn with two friends. I'm working in software, sales and account management for a startup out of Toronto. And I've started my own wine importing business with five labels of my own, coming from Europe, mostly Greece, family vineyards and then France. So it's actually Friday the 13th of September of 2024. I go from Brooklyn back to Sleepy Hollow. And I work an event, just essentially serving and selling my wine. After that, since I'm in my hometown, I meet up with a few hometown friends at a pizzeria and we chill for like two hours from 10 to midnight. And I remember promptly at midnight, which was kind of uncharacteristic for me, I decided to leave. And it's because I'm having a huge party in Brooklyn, a bunch of friends coming over, and I had to be back there in the morning. So though my friends wanted me to stay, I left promptly at midnight, the pizzeria being only eight minutes away from my house. You know, I had my event the next day, so I hadn't been drinking that night. I do drink, obviously, considering I'm a wine vendor. But that night I was being more responsible than I generally am. So upon saying goodbye to my friends, one friend actually decided to leave at the same time. We walked to our cars together in the nearby school parking lot. It's actually where I went to school second and third grade. And we talk for an hour. Most of everything that I know, like, I remember, but also I have timestamps because of my friends. So I actually end up talking from midnight to like, one with my buddy Saeed. And I get in my car at 1 o', clock, and I should have been home by like 1:10. After getting in the car and starting my drive, my memory escapes me. But what I do remember is a bright light in my face as I'm taking a turn about 0.3 miles from my house. I'm on Old Sleepy Hollow Road. I'm on a straightaway, actually, and I'm about to start turning, and then I see this bright light. And once the bright light dissipates, there's a tree right in front of me that I cannot avoid. I end up hitting this tree. And I remember the moments after hitting the tree. I don't know what damage has occurred to my body, nor really the car, but I did know that I was trapped and that I was pinned. Not only could I not open my door, get out of the car, I couldn't even move out of my the driver's seat to get my phone. I think it might have just been in the passenger seat or maybe flung to the back. What actually did occur was that my driver's side tire had been pushed into my cabin and ran over both of my legs. My dashboard collapsed onto the tire and effectively tourniqueted my leg. My right leg in particular, because that tire went over my left foot broke my tibia and fibia, went straight into my right femur and severed my femoral artery. And the amount of trauma that occurred sent so much blood up upwards that I had acute kidney failure and a pulmonary embolism and a traumatic brain injury. All of this happened at that juncture. I don't remember being in pain. I just remember being stuck. And there was a moment, there was a realization moment it was that somebody was going to come find me, or they weren't, and I was going to make it out of that car or I wasn't. And that's where things took a turn and got really weird. I don't know if it's from blood leaving my body or the beyond, but the bottom line is my car's temperature changed, like, 10 degrees. And although it was dark on the road, it got darker. The thing is, that sounds like it would be scary, but it was actually one of the most calm Zen moments of my life. It's really kind of inexplicable. But what else also, like, occurred at that moment was the milestones in my life went through my head. My travels, my relationships, my accomplishments. And I really kind of came to peace with, like, how I'd lived. And I was. I was sitting there, pinned, ready to embrace death, like, not scared at all, just almost what will be, would. Will be. Just that year, I had hiked Machu Picchu, gone to the pyramids in Giza, and I'd also done a walk from Bethlehem to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem with 5,000 other Christian Palestinians. And those events specifically ran through my head. And it was like, little Chris always wanted to, like, go to those places and do those things. And it was like, dude, you did it. That, and then just my closest relationships. So I saw my roommates, I saw my, you know, best friends in Brooklyn, my brothers, this girl that I was dating at the time. And I was like, dude, you gotta go pick her up. Maybe that was the only sense that I had of, like, something undone, as silly as that might sound, but it partially is what kind of kept me tethered and, like, not wanting to just leave yet, because from my, like, life standpoint of, like, you know, doing those things that I'd done and starting my business, there was a sense of accomplishment and, like, willingness to kind of let go. But from that responsibility sake of, like, the people that I need to be here for, I was kept. I was on death's door for sure. Little did. Did I know. I. I didn't know what bodily damage had occurred But I'd broken a dozen bones, severed my femoral artery, my lung, left lung had popped open, acute kidney, you know, injury and a traumatic brain injury to boot. But with all of the memories that kind of came to me, and considering I was like trapped in the dark alone, it really was one of the most peaceful, calm times of my life. As the memories fade and the coldness and darkness sets in, I'm still in this state of calm and this black hole appears over my head. And smoke starts to rise out of my head into it and kind of just trails almost like as if you. When you light an incense, the smoke was just weaving into the hole. And what was happening was that my life was leaving my body. I was allowing it. I wasn't fighting it. There was a feeling of I could resist. And I don't know what that would have done, but I didn't. And as this smoke trails into the black hole, eventually I enter this black space. I, like, leave my car into this never ending blackness. It was like a place that was empty and black and like completely dark. There was no existence. I wasn't even myself anymore. There was no sense of individuality. It was almost like existence was this blackness and emptiness. It was at that moment that an image of my mom entered this blackness. Shortly after, my dad joined her and then my three younger brothers. And the image of my family went from essentially like a photo to a video. And the video itself was the individual life of each member. I could see them living out their lives without me in it. You know, my mom's sick with cancer, and thankfully my, you know, my dad's healthy, my brothers are healthy. They're all leading their own careers in New York City and Westchester County. What I could see going from that image of them together into this video was how their lives would be in my absence. Things quickly took a turn for the worse and my mom's health deteriorated and she ended up passing. My dad was a broken man, having lost his eldest son and the love of his life. I saw my brothers kind of try to carry and soldier on, but it was as if they had this huge chip on their shoulders. That's the entirety of what I saw. And it was at that moment that I was propelled back into my body. And I kept my eyes open. I just kept my eyes open. I had this feeling that if I closed my eyes, that was it. I was gonna go to the dark place and wherever it took me after that. So after being shot back into my body and just making this decision to just keep my Eyes open because I knew if I closed them, I would I perish. It's almost as if time didn't exist. But the next thing I kind of remember is being outside of the car looking down at it. And it was almost like it was through like a fisheye lens. I see my Mercedes with a tree wedged between the hood. And I see like this dark road is now lit up and it's all lit up with emergency medical responders, fire truck, two ambulance, a police car. And it's really, it's the red, white and blue lights that are just flashing and there's all these people trying to get me out of the car. The thing is, although I'm looking down at the car, I am very much inside the car. I see paramedics, firefighters, and like two cops off to the side. They're all like around my passenger and driver's side door and they're trying to get me out of the car. I could feel all of their attention focused and fixated on my vehicle, on me in the car and working in unison to like, get me out of there. One of the most bizarre elements of.