Grayson (3:46)

So I had a.

Mike (3:47)

You know, I went to. I was an altar boy when I was a kid, and I went to, you know, catechism and vacation Bible school and made crafts in the summertime, did all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it was always kind of a part of our life growing up. And then as we got older, you know, I was a musician. We were playing on Saturday nights till late. So I wasn't getting up early and going to church much. And then with my kids, my wife was. I mean, I would say agnostic, but she would say atheist, which I think is, you know, that's really going all the way with my kids. With Nina and Nate, we didn't really push that. And I thought, well, they'll figure that out if they want to later. Well, I was about 25, I just gotten married to Claudia, and we lived in Dallas. And after we got married, we moved into a tiny wood frame house in Farmer's Branch, Texas, which is in Dallas, really. It's right off of i35. It was really just a nothing, 50s kind of house. Two bedroom, wood floor, chain link fence. That house had some strange things that went on in it. So we had just moved in. We weren't in there that long. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I was facing the wall. You know, I was in bed kind of facing the wall. It was maybe three feet away. And I saw a little, kind of like a home movie projector being projected onto the wall. A home movie of a little dog running around in our backyard back there. It was a projection of a home movie. So it was the whole rectangle, you know, or square, I guess it was. Rectangle. I can't remember exactly, but we used to watch a lot of home movies when we were growing up. People took home movies and you'd watch them on a projector or a slide projector. And so I was used to seeing that. So this was just like seeing a projected home movie on the wall. And it was the full. You know, the full picture of the little dog in the backyard. He saw the whole thing, and the dog was just running around the backyard. It was a little. Kind of like a white and brown, kind of like a cocker spaniel maybe type dog. And it was just running around the backyard. And that's all it was. Wasn't anything particularly spooky or it was just definitely unusual for waking up and seeing it on the wall. There was no projector in the room or anything. And there was no, you know, there was no way for anything to have made that image on the wall. Because I can even see it now in my mind of the little dog running around. And you could see the chain link fence and the. In the movie, it looked like a pastime from like the 60s. And this was, you know, 90, 91. I didn't know the dog. We didn't have a dog. You know, at the time I thought, well, this must be from someone that lived be here at the house before us. So I woke Claudia up and of course by the time she woke up or even knew what I was talking about, it was gone. I was a musician back then like I am now. And so your shows would get done at maybe 1:30 or 2 in the morning. And my wife worked a day job. So when I got home at night, it would just be me. And maybe I would. She would be asleep and I might sit in the living room for a little bit. And I used to see these little orbs of light in the hallway. I mean, this was a very small house. When I say hallway, I mean basically just a meeting place where the two bedrooms and the bathroom door met. And it was probably, you know, 4ft by 4ft or something. So I would see. I would be sitting on the couch maybe, and I would see these little orbs of light, like maybe the size of a pool ball or something, these little glowing orbs. And I would kind of see them floating, various sizes. But I used to see them. They seemed like maybe a little what you would think of in the movie. You see a little fairy or something. It kind of glows. It's kind of translucent. It's almost like a bubble. It was a little goldish color almost. And it was. You could see through it. It was almost like a ray of light, you know, but it was round. And I didn't know what to make of them. I didn't think a lot of them, but I thought they were strange. And I tried to explain them because I'm not one to kind of just jump to ghosts and haunted houses right off the bat and spirits and things like that. I'm pretty pragmatic, but I did see him quite a bit. And nothing really happened with that. It was just something that I noticed that was in the, you know, had happened in the house occasionally. Later on in the story, my mom saw those as well. And then the next thing that happened was we got up one morning and there was just the hallway Was carpeted, but it was a small piece of carpet, Kind of the light beige, you know, renter's carpet that you would get in the 90s. And there was an X in the carpet, you know, drawn in the carpet. And it was probably 12 inches each way, and it was just an X in the carpet. This big X was all of a sudden in the carpet, and it wasn't there before. And so me and Claudia noticed this X. We were wondering, what is this X in the carpet? And I remember trying to get the X out or clean it out, but it just wouldn't come out. But it was there. It looked like stain. No, it was a stain. It was. The fibers of the carpet were a dark brown against it, like, you know, a beige kind of carpet. So it was pretty visible. So, yeah, it didn't feel like anything had imprinted in it, or it was a different kind of texture, or it felt like it. A grit or a stickiness or anything. This was a different color than the rest of the carpet, but it was an X. Again, it was one of those things. It makes you wonder what it is, but you don't think too much about it. It's odd, but I guess we had lives to lead, and we were newly married, and we weren't thinking about X's in the carpet, really. The next thing that happened was we woke up and we went into the kitchen, a real small kitchen that had plywood flooring with some linoleum on top. The whole floor had lifted up. It was in waves. The plywood, not the linoleum. It's not like the linoleum lifted up. The whole floor lifted up and was wavy and had lifted up maybe 12 inches. I mean, it was massively warped. The whole floor had come up and was massively warped and destroyed. And it had happened overnight because when we went to bed, the floor was fine. There was no. We hadn't had any problems with the floor. There was nothing leaking on the floor previously. It was just. All of a sudden, the floor was raised up. It's hard to describe. It looked like water almost. It was wavy. Of course, we didn't know what to make of it. And we called the landlord. They sent someone over to look at it. And the guy came over and we told him what had happened. He said, well, that's impossible. What are you talking about? It happened overnight. It was just there. And then it wasn't like that. And then in the morning, you say it's like this. I said, yeah. He said, well, that's impossible because this Looks like it's had flood damage, like major flood damage, and it's warped up and then it dried. But the floor was not wet. I mean, it was dry. He said, there's no way that could happen overnight. I mean, this thing would have had to dried out for a long time if it had been flooded, severely flooded. I said, well, I don't know what to make of it, but that's what happened. I don't think he believed us, you know, but they had to rip up the whole floor and replace all the floor in the kitchen at this point. Also kind of, I think about the time the flooring came up. I was a working musician in Dallas, but there was a band from California that had a record out on Warner Brothers that came through, and their guitar player quit in Dallas. And so they picked me up. So I went out on tour for about eight months. Right about then, I was gone. So it was just Claudia at home. And nothing happened the whole time I was gone. You know, I came back and I would say, did you see anything, Anything happening at the house? Nothing at all. But then when I did get back, I woke up one night and Claudia was having a seizure. She had. She had never had a seizure before. You know, I woke up in the middle of the night, and she was in the middle of a seizure, and she had blood coming out of her mouth and she had bitten her tongue. And I didn't know what was going on because it had never happened before, but took her to the hospital or an ambulance came. I can't remember which now, but we went to the hospital and we were there pretty much the rest of the night. I remember my. My mom came to the hospital and she was basically fine. They had to run tests and stuff, but they weren't sure why she had had a seizure. So we went back to the house, our little house, and they had given her a prescription to be filled. I took out the Dallas phone book, yellow pages, which back in 1991, you know, I mean, that was eight inches thick, huge. I don't know, thousands of pages. A couple thousand pages, probably to look up the pharmacy, which was just down the street. So I had the phone book out on the coffee table, looked up pharmacy, which is P. You know, it's about middle of the phone book. And the three of us went down to the pharmacy to get the prescription. It only took us maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And there was nobody else in the house. It was just the three of us. And we all left. And when we came back, that phone book all the pages had been folded in half like a machine. Thousands of pages. And I looked at Claudia and my mom, I said, that was not like that before, right? And they were like, no. And it was when you looked at that phone book and each page was. It was like a machine had done it. It was so precise. It wasn't like a human had sat there and kind of done it. And it was a little flawed every few pages. It was like a machine had done this. When that happened, I thought, okay, that wasn't like that before. And now I have two people here that know it wasn't like that. And now it is like that. So it definitely confirmed, like, something was going on in that house. I think we were just all kind of in shock because when something like that happens, you're going, well, was the phone book folded like that? And we just didn't, you know, we didn't notice it. But no, it wasn't. And I had opened up. I had looked for the phone number for the pharmacy. So I had had that thing cracked open. And I knew. I knew what it was like, and they saw it too. But I mean, when something like that happens to you, of course you doubt it because it doesn't make any sense. You have no explanation for it. And at least now you had two other people that confirmed that. So I had to go back on tour, conveniently for me, after that happened. And so I left again. And Claudia had to go through some tests for that seizure. So one of the tests was you had to stay up all night. My mom was kind of a night owl, so she came over the house and stayed with Claudia to keep her up at night. And that's when my mom said she saw the little orbs of light, too, in the hall. I never felt anything dreadful in that house. I didn't feel like there was like a malevolent something going on. I. I wondered later because that house was on pier and beam. It didn't have a solid concrete foundation like a lot of houses do now. It had a space, but, you know, between the bottom of the flooring and the ground that was, you know, 2 or 3ft. I don't know what it is. Pyrene beam. And that's the way it was built. And so it's dirt. It's dirt underneath the house. And, you know, the thing I always wondered, because of the X in the floor and because the flooring came up, always wondered if there was something buried underneath the house, right? Because there was an X in the floor and the flooring Bubbled up and the floor all had to be replaced. So you had to kind of get down, probably stand in the crawl space, you know, while you're putting the flooring in. Like, I always wondered about that. Well, I guess the next period would be. Of course we were married, we had kids, and we ended up splitting up in Austin around 2010. So Nina was 12 or 13. We lived over here in the Westlake area, Boston. It's hard to find housing over in this area. And I managed to run into a friend of mine who lived in this house in Rollingwood, which is a really nice little area. It's kind of an old area. And he was moving out. And I said, wow, well, who's moving in? And I got that house, which is the house I'm in now. I'm still in that house. So that was probably about 2012. I was elated to get this house because it was such a cool little house. It was designed and built by an Austin legendary architect named A.D. stenger, who was, you know, a postmodern architect. He was also like an adventurer. And he had been to polar bear hunts, I don't know, all sorts of stuff. He was a real character. And it was just a neat house. And I was really happy to have it. Two bedroom house, one bathroom. And it had an office. So it had a room for Nate and a room for Nina. And I slept in the office. And it was all designed such a way. So that office had like a built in desk, you know, wood paneling, very 50s, 60s, and it's still that way. And so was excited to get the house. And so when I moved in, things started happening, little things just by themselves. Maybe you wouldn't think anything of it. The first thing I noticed, I had a black onyx ring that I always wore. And I don't really wear jewelry, but I had this onyx ring that I really liked. And when I moved in, the ring just disappeared. I could not find that ring anywhere. And I thought, well, did I leave it at the old house? I mean, I'm moving a lot of things, so it's probably here somewhere. I put it somewhere. I mean, I've been in this house 13 years, I've never found that ring. But I didn't think anything of it. Certainly didn't think it had anything to do with the house. And then I would. Clothes started disappearing out of the washer. Like I would put clothes in the washer. And we've all had this happen. You're like, okay, there goes the sock. Where'd the sock go. But consistently, things I would put in the washer, I would think, okay, that's in the washer. I would put it in the dryer, and it'd be missing. Like, where'd that shirt go? It would never reappear. I would never, like, find it under a bed like you do sometimes, or like any of those clothes that went missing never showed up anywhere. Of course, you don't think that much about it. That kind of happens to everybody in a way. And then also in the washing machine area, I mean, my dishwasher. I had a dishwasher in the kitchen, but it never worked. It was broken. I had to do the dishes by hand, and I always did. After about. I don't know, it was in the first year, I was doing the dishes by hand, and I was frustrated because I was tired of doing dishes by hand. And I said aloud, I said, ugh, I wish the dishwasher would work. And all of a sudden, it came on. It came on right then. And it had never come on the whole year I had been here or whatever. And I thought, well, did I hit a switch with my hand? What happened? But it came on as soon as I said, boy, I wish the dishwasher would work. And it came on, Started working right then. When that happened, I thought, okay, that's weird, right? Like, that's really weird. Out of all the seconds of the day I've been in this house, and the time that I said that, and then it came on. But of course, it's just an isolated thing. When you're in the living room, the kitchen has some frosted glass windows that separate the living room from the kitchen. And if you were in the living room, you would see shadows of someone walking through the kitchen. If the light was on in the kitchen, sometimes you would see a shadow of someone moving through the kitchen. And that happened quite frequently. Also about that time, Nina came over with her dog in the office where I sleep. She wouldn't go in there. She said, that room is creepy. She goes, I'm not going in there. And the dog wouldn't go in there. Couldn't get the dog to go in that room either. Which was strange, you know, But Nina always remembers that, and I remember that too. The things that started happening started happening, I guess, right away in that room. You know, I mean, the first thing I noticed when I went to sleep in that room, and we all know the sounds of, like, when a house settles or an old house, the walls will creak or you'll hear sounds of Course I was used to all that. But I would hear these sounds in the walls, not little knocks in the walls. I just didn't think anything of it. But I thought, well, this is just the house. But then after a while I noticed, because I would sleep on my side and I noticed the knocks are only coming from the wall behind me. And then I started thinking about it. I thought, well, what if I flip over real quick? And I would flip over real quick and it would change and it would always be behind me. Then the knocking would start the wall behind me. And I did that little test for, I don't know, months, you know, I would flip and just see if the knocking would flip to the other wall. And it always did. And sometimes the knocking was fairly loud. What it also liked to do is right when you were falling asleep, it would knock really loud and wake you up. So like, right when you were about to totally drift off into sleep, it would really hit hard and wake you up. Which I always thought was kind of funny in a way, you know, I thought was kind of like a little trickster or something, like fooling with you. And sometimes it would get disturbingly loud. I mean, there were a few times where I thought, okay, I'm sleeping with the lights on. This is getting weird and I don't have time to mess with this. I need to go to sleep. And this is a little weird. So I would turn the light on to go to sleep. And so since it was always to my back, not all the time, but occasionally I would feel like someone was standing behind me, next to the bed, to my back. I. I sensed it. I just felt it. The house I lived in before, kind of right before I left to move to this house, I started seeing in my mind's eye this guy. He looked like a maybe a businessman from the 50s who had just gotten home from work. He had his wife beater on and his slacks and his suspenders. And he was kind of dark, balding hair. I remember just in my mind's eye seeing this person, you know, in my bedroom of my. At the house before I moved here. Then when I moved here, I would start seeing this man sitting at the desk. Because I had a built in desk in my bedroom there in the office. And then I would see this woman standing there with kind of a stern look on her face and her hair would be pulled back in a bun and she had this dark dress on. And what was interesting to me, he seemed oblivious to where he was, but she seemed annoyed he was there. But just putting up with him. Of course. This was just in my mind's eye. I never saw a ghost or anything like that. This was just this feeling I had. No, I had never experienced it before and. But I saw it all the time. You know, I saw in my mind the lady standing there and she seemed not happy that I was here either. Right. I think I told people about the knocking, but I never really told anybody about anything else because what would you say, I see people in my mind's eye, in my room, this old lady and so forth. My whole job is to imagine things in life. I mean, when you talk about being a musician or other visual things, like, you know, what is your imagination? That's what I use to make a living really is my imagination. So you want your imagination to work and be well oiled. But it wasn't something I'd ever experienced before in my life where I had these kind of reoccurring images of these two figures in the house. And it was consistent.

Jack Wagner (26:43)

All right, we'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sometimes it can feel like everybody else has their relationships perfectly figured out. But that's rarely true whether you're married, dating, single, or somewhere in between. Between we're all still learning as we go. Therapy can be a really helpful way to remind yourself that you're not behind and that progress doesn't have to be perfect. Therapy helps you explore what's weighing your relationships down and find ways to lighten that load on your own or with a partner. BetterHelp makes it simple to start by matching you with a fully licensed therapist based on your needs. And if you want to switch therapists, you can do so at any time. BetterHelp is is the world's largest online therapy platform with over 30,000 therapists and an average of 4.9 out of 5 rating from millions of sessions. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com Otherworld that's betterhelp.com Otherworld hi, I'm Katie Ring.

Nina (28:00)

And welcome to Crime House 24. 7. Throughout the day, we bring you up to the minute crime coverage as stories break with daytime episodes hosted by Vanessa Richardson, keeping you informed on the cases unfolding right now. And at night, I take you deeper with night Watch episodes, examining the facts, the evidence, the people at the center of today's biggest cases. New episodes of Crime House 24. 7 drop every weekday. Listen to and follow Crime House 24. 7 available now wherever you get your podcasts, why choose a Sleep number Smart bed. Can I make my sight softer?

Mike (28:32)

Can I make my site firmer? Can we sleep cooler?

Nina (28:36)

Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now during our president's day sale, take 50% off our limited edition bed shop now for a limited time only at a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com. Okay. Hi, I'm Nina. Pretty normal corporate job, not raised super religious. I don't know, I don't have like a crazy backstory or anything, but just I've had such a normal childhood. Nothing crazy stands out. It's just me, my mom, my dad, my brother. Yeah, my parents were married till I think I was like 11 or 12, and then they got divorced. But we're like, it's very amicable, nice. They're still good friends. We spent like all the holidays together and stuff. So growing up, I lived in this one house since I was really young. And then when my parents got divorced, my mom stayed in that house and my dad moved into a different house that was like five minutes away, which is the house that this story kind of revolves around. So a lot of times when I hear people telling like paranormal stories, I'm like, okay, this person's just obsessed with, you know, ghosts and is like a ghost hunter or like, whatever. I would not say me or my dad are like overly invested in this kind of stuff. So I think that's important to note. I think I was like 12 or 13 when he moved into this house. Something was a little off putting about it, but again, I kind of just chalked it up to it being old and me being like young and associating that with being creepy. The first thing that was a little weird that I experienced is my mom had a dog. I brought it over to my dad's house for some reason, and this dog would not enter this one room. And also growing up, I was always terrified of this room for some reason. Like, over the years, I probably have been in this room less than five times. And my dad always growing up was like, this house is not haunted. Like, there's nothing wrong with that room. There's nothing wrong with this house. You're being dramatic. Whatever. So I bring my dog over. The dog will not go in this room. And love her, but she is like a stupid dog. So it's not like the fact that even she wouldn't go in this room is weird because there's no Thoughts behind this dog's eyes she's so dumb. So I'm the youngest. So my brother went to college, and then I went to college two years later. And when I went to college my freshman year, my mom sold our childhood house and moved into, like, a high rise downtown. So I would stay with her when I went back. But since it was like, a high rise downtown, it was, you know, close quarters. And me and my mom love her, but I don't know. At that age, I feel like a lot of, like, mother. It just. We got on each other's nerves. Like, a lot of times when I would come back to visit, I would be staying at my mom's, but I would, like, hang out at my dad's because my dad was on tour a lot, so he was never home. So that house was just empty. And I, like, wanted personal space. So I would just go, like, hang out at my dad's, watch tv, whatever, and then go back to my mom's to sleep, because I wasn't gonna sleep at my dad's alone, because that place is fucking scary. So I'm back from college for a weekend. I think I was, like, 19 or 20, probably. Like I said, my dad was on tour. His house was empty. So I was like, all right, I'm just gonna go sit there and watch TV or do whatever I was gonna do. So I went over there during the day, and it started to become, like, evening. I think this is around, like, sun going down. I'm sitting on the couch watching TV and, like, also on my laptop, like, really just not paying attention. And I look up and just, like, glance into the kitchen, and I see this woman standing there in the kitchen, just staring at me. Couldn't have been more than, like, a couple seconds because it was one of those things where I looked and I was like, what the fuck? And then I looked away and looked back, and she was gone. It looked as real as, like, just a person standing there. And she wasn't scary. Like, I don't remember being, like, scared of her, but she was just, like, there. Because I was creeped out at this house. Every light was always on. Like, this was. I did not keep it dim in here ever. So kitchen lights were fully on. Living room lights were on. Any lamp is like, this. It was bright. It was not like, oh, am I seeing something? It was like, oh, yeah. Like, I can see this person in full detail. She was kind of an age where it was like, she could have been 30. She could have been 45. I don't know like just like a maybe slightly younger middle aged woman, white, with brown hair. And she was wearing a dress. Not like a modern dress, but not super. Well, I don't know how to describe it. Sorry. I know she was wearing a dress. I know she had brown hair and like a low bun. I know she was middle aged looking. There was nothing that like really stood out. Like she looked very average. Like not what you would think a ghost would look like if. Or a ghost or whatever. Whatever. I don't even know what to call it. But you know, like I said, not scary like someone you would see on the street. But very like serious looking. Not smiling. She didn't look sad or mad. She just looked like straight faced, unassuming, brown hair, low bun is like the most memorable part of her. We were like eye contact, like heavy eye contact, which sounds crazy again, but for maybe a few seconds. And then I looked away because I was like, what? I can't be saying this right? So I looked away and then I looked back and she was gone. It wasn't like she like disappeared in front of me. It also was kind of like I get the feeling that she wanted to like make her presence known almost is like the vibe I got. It wasn't like she was like, get out of my house. Or you know, again, not scary, but she just, it felt as if she wanted me to know she was there. Is like the only kind of vibe she was giving. I think I sat there for a second and then I was like, what the. Like, no, no, I am not like gonna start seeing in this house. And so I just like immediately packed up my stuff. And I remember it was one of those things where I was like, you're scared, you're just making stuff up. I didn't think that I actually saw anything. I Even in the moment, I remember being like, no, you're just scaring yourself. Like you need to relax. But I remember like trying to pack up my laptop and stuff. My hands were like, like I was like actually scared. But I convinced I was just, you know, freaking myself out. So I immediately pack up and leave and go back to my mom's. And I definitely did not go back there. Fast forward maybe five years later. I live in la. At this point, I am dating my ex. I think at this point we had been together for like a year. You know, it's kind of that point where like you start introducing them to your family and your extended family and stuff. We get to Austin and again, because my mom lives in like this two bedroom Apartment. We are staying with my dad just because there's more room. And like, three people is way too many people to be staying with my mom. We fly in and we get there. We're walking into the house. My dad and Alex are just meeting, you know, like, this is also the first boyfriend I'd ever brought home. I'm kind of nervous and, like, just trying to, like, you know, make everyone laugh because I'm uncomfortable. So we're walking into the house, and I'm like, oh, Alex, careful. This house is super haunted. Like, as we're walking and joking, and my dad turns around and is like, oh, yeah, well, not anymore. Used to be. And I'm like, I'm sorry, excuse me. What the fuck? Like, you've told me my entire life, this house is not haunted. It's not haunted. And now you're like, oh, it used to be. And I'm like, what? My dad's like, oh, yeah. Like, I just didn't want to scare you. This place used to be super fucking haunted. Don't worry, it's not anymore. And I'm like, okay, like, explain yourself. You gaslit me my entire life to think this house is not haunted. And now you're saying it is. Like, I need to. We need to talk about this. And he's like, all right, like, let's go outside and, like, have a smoke and talk about it. We go outside. And I'm like, all right, so what happened? He's like, well, you tell me what happened to you first, and then I'll, you know, fill in details with everything that happened to me. And Alex had never heard any of these stories, by the way. Like, it had never come up. Like, I hadn't told him about my parents haunted house. I never told anybody about the girl I saw in the kitchen because I kind of forgot about it at that point. Like, I chalked it off to not being real. So I'm like, well, I mean, besides this house being fucking creepy, like, there's this one thing that happened, but I don't think it, like, was really anything. I think I was just scaring myself, you know, kind of playing it down. My dad was like, just tell me, like, what happened? And I was like, well, one time I was here alone at night when I was in college, and like, I thought I saw something in the kitchen. I don't know. And he was like, the woman? And I was like, yeah. And I'm like, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, describe her and I'll tell you. He's like, I'm pretty sure we described it at the exact same time. Like, we're like, okay, 1, 2, 3. Like, describe the woman. And we both were like, describe the same woman. And Alex was like, what the. Like, what is going on? We both were like, the woman with the brown hair and the low bun wearing the Dr. Like, we said it at the exact same time. And I was like, oh, my God. He was like, yep, she's in the kitchen. She. That's where she goes. And I'm pretty sure this was her house, is my theory. I see her from time to time. And he was like, and there's also a man that's in the room, like, the one that I was always too scared to go in, that sits at the desk. And I'm like, okay, you need to tell me everything that happened to you, because I cannot believe we just described the same exact woman. So now I actually am like, okay, so I'm not crazy. I did see her. Because my dad's sitting here telling me that there is a woman who hangs out in this fucking kitchen and is describing the exact woman I saw to me.

Jack Wagner (39:13)

So after hearing Mike's story and Nina's separately, I thought it would be a good idea to get these two together in an interview to just go over the entire thing and talk about it, because it seems like they're experiencing a lot of stuff separately and keeping it from each other. So this is my conversation with. With Mike and Nina together. Who was the one who first brought it up? When did you guys finally figure all of this out?

Mike (39:43)

Okay, Nina might go first on that one, because I can't remember exactly when that came up. It was fairly recently in my mind.

Nina (39:52)

Yeah, I do remember. So it was when me and Alex came to stay with you before Nate's wedding, remember? And, like, Alex hadn't been to your house. And so when we were walking in, I was like, oh, like, this house is haunted. And you were like, oh, no, it's not anymore, but it used to be. And I was like, are you serious? You literally. I always said it was kind of haunted, and you always denied it and said it wasn't. Probably because you didn't want me to be scared to come over.

Mike (40:19)

That's exactly why.

Nina (40:20)

Is that why you never said anything?

Mike (40:22)

Well, yeah, because, you know, I found this house, and it was such a good deal in such a great part of town. It's really hard to find something like that. And it was close to Yalls school, and, I mean, everything was perfect about it. And I wasn't gonna let any. Anybody run me off from this world or another world. And. But anyway, yeah, I never said anything because I thought, well, you guys will never. Especially you. You would never come over. You would just say, oh, Dad's house is haunted. I'm too afraid to be over there. And then that would be the end of it. But I just figured if anything happened, you would just tell me. And you never said anything until.

Nina (41:05)

That's not always told you that I was creepy?

Mike (41:10)

Well, you said it was creepy and stuff.

Nina (41:11)

Well, yeah. Nothing had, like, ever happened, I guess.

Mike (41:15)

Yeah, I mean, I was just waiting for something. If something happened, then I would have, you know, figure it out at that.

Nina (41:20)

Point, but into thinking it wasn't haunted. So I thought I was crazy.

Mike (41:24)

Well, I don't know if I just said, no, it's fine.

Nina (41:27)

I mean, seeing ghosts in the kitchen and everything.

Mike (41:31)

Well. But nothing really happened to you that I knew. I mean, I figured you would just say something if something really creepy happened.

Nina (41:40)

Well, I'd never said anything because I thought I was crazy. Because you told me for 10 years that it wasn't haunted.

Mike (41:46)

But, yes, it's lie. And that was surprising to me because. Well, number one, it confirmed really, it was, you know, the only person that had confirmed what had happened. Really. And then when you said you saw the lady, you know, that I had kind of seen just really in my mind's eye, I'd never seen a ghost. But you had said you saw, like.

Nina (42:09)

What does that mean? You saw her in your mind's eye? I don't even get that.

Mike (42:14)

Yeah, I don't either. It's just what happened. I would see her not physically see a ghost. I would just see her in my mind's eye, you know, but I saw her all the time. I would walk by a place, and in my mind I would see her sitting there. I mean, standing there is when I saw her. So it's nothing I could really explain. But when you described her exactly as I saw her. Yeah, that was then really creepy that I knew, well, something's going on here. Well, she would stand right by, you know, in my bedroom, the office. She would stand right by that door, that doorway. She would stand in that doorway, which is kind of by the kitchen. There was something that was going on. But of course, then the big thing that happened, this went on for years. I've lived here 12 or 13 years. Maybe about three years ago, I realized everything had stopped. Like the knocking in the walls, which was fairly loud. I mean, I was so Used to it over years. I went to bed. Nothing. There was no sound at all. It's completely quiet because I live in a quiet part of town. Anyway, nothing happened in the house. Nothing unusual. And the house felt different. Right? That was the other thing. The house just felt different. And nothing was happening in the house. And it really was noticeable to me. I wondered, why did everything stop? And I'll just tell you what occurred. You could make up your own mind. Whether it had anything to do with it or it just randomly stopped. I don't know. I couldn't tell you. But at the time it stopped, I had been to, you know, just a little vintage antiques store here in Austin. And they had a lighted up kind of like bake light from the 50s or 60s. It was about, you know, 12 inches tall, 10 inches tall of a. A cross. And you plugged it in and it lit up. And I just thought it was cool looking. And so I bought it and I put it on my nightstand. And when everything stopped, I thought, what's changed? What's different? Why would everything stop? And the only thing that was different in the house was I had bought that cross and put it on my nightstand.

Nina (44:43)

I feel like once I graduated high school, I wasn't there enough to like, really, like, notice a difference. But like, when I came home with Alex, like, it wasn't creepy like I did. I just kind of assumed it was like, me getting older and like being less scared. But, like, in the more recent years, it hasn't felt as creepy. I've thought.

Mike (45:04)

Yeah, I can't remember exactly when I got. It's been several years back, three years, something like that, four years. I have a hard time keeping track of the years at this point. But yeah, it was a few years ago and I definitely felt that the energy of the house was different. It was just. I don't know how else to explain it. It just felt normal. It felt like a normal house. Did it have anything to do with it? I don't know. I tend to think it does now because there were some scary things that went on. And definitely when you're trying to go to sleep and there are knocks coming on the walls, or someone feels like they're standing behind you, or somebody feels like they're touching your face or whatever, it wasn't a good thing, let me put it that way. And I don't have crosses in my house before that. But it did definitely have an effect on me because I thought, you know, you see that in movies and you see it and maybe there's something to it. I think as you go through life, you definitely have a sense of good and bad, you know, And I think there is such a thing as evil in this world. I definitely believe that there's a force in this world, right, that you see do good all the time, doors open up for you, coincidences. And I've seen other people that kind of had this effect. Like they were really good at kind of. If you're a surfer reading the waves and catching the wave and things, if you keep an eye out for the good things, they are happening, There seems to be something that's wanting good things to happen to you in life. And I think if there's. That there's maybe something that maybe doesn't want good things to happen for you. You know, if there's light, there's dark. Like you say, there's no atheists in a foxhole. I had a friend of mine that just went to Antarctica months ago. He was making a documentary. I thought he was going on a huge boat. They were going on a sailboat, like a 12 man sailboat. And they had hit rough seas to the point where it turned the sailboat sideways. He was said, if it had just gone slightly more, they would all die. There was no way they would have survived. He goes, I'm not even religious. He goes, I started praying to God. He goes, it changed me. He told me that, you know, and he's LA filmmaker, you know, he was not thinking about this sort of thing at all. But it made him think, like, wow, when the chips were down and you're out in the middle of the ocean and you're about to tip over and that's going to be it. Well, you have to wonder about it. And so I think, I think it made me wonder too. Why did everything stop?

Nina (47:47)

If anyone would see ghosts out of our family, it is us and not mom. And sure, we attract crazies in real life, and I think we're, for some reason we're more receptive to like weird shit happening to us. I feel like in real life too, not even ghost things.

Mike (48:08)

Well, that's probably true.

Jack Wagner (48:12)

Thank you to Mike and Nina for both talking to me. I'm very glad to hear that your house seems to be rid of whatever was going on. Mike, a funny thought I had when he mentioned the cross. If there really was the ghost of an old Texan lady living in his home, maybe putting up that cross just made her happy because she liked it. I'd have to guess just based on what I know about Old ladies. There's a good chance there might have been a few of those hanging up in her house whenever she lived there, if she did live there. But who knows? Maybe it had nothing to do with that at all. The second story is an older one that the ending of Mike and Nina kind of reminded me of. It's about a guy named Grayson who didn't know his dad well at all while he was growing up. And once Grayson was an adult, he finally reconnected with his dad. And when he did that, he was told the incredible story that you're about to hear.

Grayson (49:22)

My name is Grayson, and I guess when I was four years old, my dad moved away and he was kind of like, not in the picture a lot traveling. And he and my mom didn't get along super well, but it kind of culminated in him going to jail. And then he got out of jail when I was 4 and just kind of lived on the streets. Rough life. And the only contact I have is occasionally he would write my grandparents letters, and they would kind of tell me about it. But it wasn't until I was 21, I think, that I was living abroad in France. And it sort of occurred to me to, like, look him up. And so I went over there and arrived at the train, and there was just this big guy that sort of looked like me waiting at the train station. And I stayed with him for two weeks. And we basically would just stay up in the evenings and, you know, he'd tell me these crazy stories. So he told me this story years later when I met him. And he grew up sailing all his life with his dad and stuff. And he knew a guy down in San Francisco who had a boat. And so he went down there one night and they kind of like shared this slip and used this boat interchangeably. And I guess he had this plan to take it. So one night he, like, broke into the docks and took this boat, packed it with all his stuff, and just started going south down the California coast. And not sure how long he went, but he passed Mexico through the Panama Canal and eventually ended up in the Caribbean on this island called Curacao. And he stopped there for like five years or so. And he got involved, I'm not sure with some local dude somehow, but they basically ran like, this rum smuggling business where they would go down to Venezuela and these guys would make rum in bathtubs, and they had these fake Captain Morgan labels, and they'd put them on the bottles and they. They'd sell these fake Captain Morgan bottles. And so he did that for, I don't know, four or five years or something. Eventually one night he decided that he was sick of that place and in like the middle of the night took his boat and left kind of without packing up anything or without preparing really. And he started this trip across the Atlantic and he had decided to go to England. For some reason he would spend the next month plus just going through the Atlantic Ocean by himself on this 38 foot sailboat, I think it was, and didn't have any plans to stop anywhere, didn't have anyone with him. And at some point during that whole trip he, he was going along and his rudder broke, which was, you know, used to steer the boat. And so I think that was kind of the breaking point when, you know, the whole, his whole life kind of came crashing down around him. And he realized that through all his crazy choices he'd found himself in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you know, weeks away from either coast and sort of careening aimlessly with this sail full of wind and no way to steer it. It's the way he told it was, you know, he let down his sail and he spent most of the time on his boat naked because the waves would make everything soaking wet. And so all his clothes were heavy and wet. And he realized he was, you know, getting out of food, out of water. And so he would spend his days just trying to like pass out and sleep as much as possible, wake up and was like, you know, depressed to be awake because he didn't want to deal with his life, I guess, and would, you know, eat what beans he had or whatever and try to divide up his water so he could have enough and then go back to sleep and wake up in this soaking wet bed. And I don't know, I just. What made me so interested in that certain aspect is just imagining like a probably, you know, a 35 year old guy just like dealing with his own mind in a way that one rarely gets to deal with it. And whatever, like feelings or thoughts you have late at night, whatever anxieties you have about, you know, who you are and what you're doing with your life, I just imagined that that was so magnified for him and he was like up against that wall that we just imagined, but he was up against that, that wall that was like, this is the end of my life. This is where my choices have brought me. And so one morning he wakes up, I guess, pretty much just assuming he's going to die out there. And he hears a voice on deck and so he goes up there. And at the back of the boat, right over his broken rudder, he sees this apparition, like a spirit or a ghost or something. He said it was green and sort of small, but he said it was sort of looked like a pan kind of creature, like a ghost goat kind of thing. And so that. But he hears his voice, and it's coming from this goat, and it's talking about whatever this and that. And he sort of, like, starts to commune with it over the next couple days, and they talk and communicate, and it's like his only source of contact with another thing. And so one morning, he's lying on the deck, and he starts to really tune into what it's saying. And in kind of this mocking tone, it's going like, you know, you idiot. If only you would think you could, you know, take part of your boat, one of these metal rods, and you could rig it up and you could fix this rudder and you could get out of here and you could live. And so the next thing he knows, he's flying across the ocean with a fixed rudder with no memory of actually fixing it. And later, what he tells me, when he's telling me the story, is that when, over the course of the next week or two, that it takes him to get there, he examines this rudder, and it's like he has no idea how he even went about fixing it or, like, the process it would have taken. And, like, not only does he not remember it, he doesn't even realize how he would have done it. Eventually he made it to England, and when he got there, he was, you know, hadn't eaten properly or had enough water, and so. And his boat was, like, in such disarray. He landed on these docks. Long story short, this woman up on the hill was. Was, like a rich older woman was watching him down the dock. She could see from her window. And she eventually sent somebody down, and she kind of helped him to get better and healed him and let him live with her for quite a while. And so over the next 20 years, he kind of settles into this little town. It's like hearing it as a story. You'd go, oh, that's crazy. You know, wow, interesting. But I think living it for him, because it was so real, it was like. It's the kind of thing that would make you go, like, crazy if you didn't have, like, some kind of explanation to it. And so eventually he finds out that this is actually a phenomenon called the third man syndrome. And it was made really famous by this explorer, Ernest Shackleton. There's been a bunch of studies about it. And it's like, it's basically that part of your brain is trying to override, like, the panic, desperation part of your brain. And so it goes back to this really, like, you know, primeval part of your brain that's saying, like, that's, that's trying to bring reason and, like, positivity to a situation that, that, you know, is desperate. And so I think it's like, to the extreme of when you're, like when you're, you know, when you're depressed or you're under pressure and you say to yourself, you know what? No, like, we can do this. It's like that brought to, like, the nth degree where you actually have, like, these, you know, manifestations in real life. And you're seeing, like, you know, in the case of my dad, an apparition that his brain projected in order to guide him through this strange thing.

Nina (58:44)

I know what I'm thinking. If it isn't you.

Jack Wagner (58:59)

All right, thank you so much to Mike, Nina, and Grayson for speaking to us. I, of course, asked Grayson if we could talk to his dad, but he said that would be pretty difficult. I thought that story was so incredible. Whether it's completely paranormal or completely, as he mentioned, an instance of third man syndrome, I find it completely fascinating. Thank you so much once again to Mike, Nina, and Grayson. Thank you for listening. This episode was called Fatherhood, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaeffer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans. The song you're listening to right now is all in BET by Jana Horne. Our artwork is by Cul de Sac Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a patron@patreon.com our social media is otherworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odysee. Leah Rhys Dennis, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor 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 can send us your stories@storiesotherworldpod.com.

Grayson (61:09)

With a friend.

Nina (61:10)

I am not.