Patrick McDugno (0:00)

Foreign.

Jack Wagner (0:11)

Welcome to Other World. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode features two stories, sort of a double feature. And both stories involve a person seeing an unexplainable creature while they're out on the road. The first one comes from Phoebe in Salt Lake City, and the second one is from a guy named Pat in Kent, Ohio. Like I said, both of these people witnessed unidentifiable creatures while they're out driving. And I'd say that the things that these people saw seem to be completely different from each other. But what they do have in common is that both of these people described these creatures having a lot of similarities to deer. The first story comes from Phoebe, who is a hairdresser. And her story takes place when she was out one night driving all by herself in an industrial area of Salt Lake City, trying to clear her mind. It was during this drive that she turned a corner and her headlights hit a group of of what she initially thought were teenagers hanging out. But as she kept staring and got closer, she realized that they had certain features and moved in a certain way that made it clear these things, whatever they were, were definitely not teenagers. This is such a weird story. I'm gonna let Phoebe explain it for herself. This episode is called Deer in the Headlights, and you're listening to Otherworld.

Patrick McDugno (1:52)

Hello, is this Bobby?

Jack Wagner (1:54)

Yes, it is, at its core, the.

Patrick McDugno (1:55)

Science you can't argue with.

Phoebe (1:57)

I'm sorry about all of a sudden.

Patrick McDugno (1:59)

Up in the sky.

Jack Wagner (2:00)

It's almost frustrating that it's happening.

Patrick McDugno (2:02)

I'm literally.

Phoebe (2:02)

I'm gonna die.

Patrick McDugno (2:04)

Its limbs were just, like, wrong.

Phoebe (2:07)

Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a. I'm Phoebe. I grew up in Salt Lake City. Now I live in. In the city in Salt Lake, kind of in this little neighborhood that's off to the side in the West. It's the cutest neighborhood of all time. I love it. And I'm a hairstylist. I've been doing that for 13 years or something, and I love it. Salt Lake City, I would say it's not a big city. I've been to, say, Chicago and that walking around this feels like a big city. But Salt Lake City, I think, is kind of. It's maybe a medium city, I would call it. It's definitely not small. Like, I don't know, little spots in Wyoming and stuff like that. Like, we definitely have a metropolitan vibe going on, and we have bigger companies out here. And when you're walking around downtown, it's bustling at times where this experience happened to me. I would call it South Salt Lake. This area is kind of half suburban, half like almost industrial, and it's more up and coming. They're putting in these cute little shops and like 1 million low quality apartment buildings. So where I lived, it was like kind of this mini neighborhood right off of a busier road. I had neighbors, I lived in, like a small home and I knew some of my neighbors, so it had a little bit of that suburban feel. But then if you walked like less than a block, you're on this busy road that's kind of a major road in that area. And there's like some little shops and restaurants and stuff, but then there's like a U haul down the road and like kind of these more like industrial feeling buildings and things like that. So it's kind of an in between. The most nature you're gonna get is trees that they've planted to look cute as part of the city. I think there's one park down the street that's pretty small. There's like a couple little things for kids to play on and a small dog park area, but it's pretty industrial. There's these big, like, truck parking areas and just a lot of roads and sidewalks. The nature iest part of it would be people's front yards, things like that. It's definitely when you want to get to nature, you would drive maybe 20 minutes any direction, and you'll hit mountains, and that's really where the nature is. But down in the city, it's. There's not any huge parks or anything. Our biggest park is more central Salt Lake, and it's still pretty urban as far as parks go. So it was April of 2021. It's still kind of COVID time. I'm back at work at this point. I couldn't work during the lockdown because I'm a hairstylist, so touching people for a living really wasn't the best idea. So we're starting to come out of COVID or lockdown, I should say. And it's still feeling weird. It's still not feeling quite right to spend time with other people. And I'm definitely still feeling, I think, the depression and the isolation of that time. It also. Early 2021 was also just a tough time for me. I was going through a lot of things in my own personal life and was just really emotional all the time. I was getting ready to not live with my roommates anymore or I think we were all starting to get on each other's nerves, having been locked all in the house together for so long that we just wanted to kind of get away from each other. And something I was doing a lot at this time that I've kind of always done is when I'm feeling too emotional or anxious, I can't sleep. I've always struggled with sleep. And so what I will do is get in my car and just drive aimlessly around and just put on music, and usually sad music, so I can cry. Because sometimes to get these emotions out, Instead of just laying in bed and trying to pretend that everything's okay, I can just go in the comfort of my own car, put on my sad music, and cry. This night, I'm laying in bed, and I'm just keep thinking about all of these things that I have going on with me and my family and all these personal things. I'm feeling really anxious about facing the day tomorrow. I just feel like I don't want to. I just have this anxiety in my heart, and I can't sleep once again. And I keep laying there, trying to. And finally I realize I'm not gonna be able to sleep. So to get all of this energy out, I'm gonna get in my car, I'm gonna put on my sad music, and I'm gonna just drive around in the neighborhood. This was probably around midnight. I usually would wait until I knew that everybody else in the house was asleep, or at least hope everyone else in the house was asleep so I wouldn't wake them up, or I wouldn't bother them by leaving and shutting the door. My dog at the time was really mellow, so I would leave her behind and she would just sleep in my bed. But I wanted to make sure there weren't other people wandering around the house. So she would poke her head up and try to get out of my bedroom. So it was probably around midnight. I get into my car and I put on my sad girl playlist, Driving around aimlessly. I know these neighborhoods really well. I've lived in this house for three years at that point, so I'm super familiar with these neighborhoods. Also, my dog at the time, I would take her on walks all the time. Long walks, especially. Again, during that COVID lockdown. We were going on a lot of walks, so I got to know this neighborhood really well. So I'm just kind of swinging my car around, driving slowly, turning into whatever neighborhood feels good, no aim in sight, Just trying to get my feelings out, Trying to cry to some sad music. It's warming up. It's not quite warm in Salt Lake yet, But I Have my windows down a little for a breeze. Just trying to calm myself so that I can try to get some sleep that night. And when I am in insomnia mode, I'm wide awake, so I'm pretty alert on these drives. When I go on these drives and I listen to my sad music, I'm really just trying to clear my head enough so these racing thoughts aren't keeping me up anymore. Trying to break myself out of the thought loop cycle. But I'm very aware of and I'm very awake. I definitely wouldn't get behind the wheel if I was really, really tired. I turn into this neighborhood. I'm envisioning myself there right now. I start to turn into this neighborhood, and my headlights, before they hit the road I'm about to turn to, I see this group of what I thought at first glance was a bunch of teenagers. And I was thinking to myself, like, oh, it's a bunch of teens out late together, kind of messing around. I think there was probably about six of them. Thoughts as I'm turning in is just like, okay, you know, as you're turning down this road, be careful, make sure that they're crossing the street, not running in front of your car, whatever. I turn and my headlights hit them, and they all freeze and stare at me like deer in headlights, quite literally. And then it's at this point that I realized that they actually kind of look like deer. I felt my heart drop and, like, the blood came out of my face. That cold fear feeling where your heart just stops and you almost can't catch your breath and you feel cold for a second. They were all really tall, long limbs. They definitely had human, like, faces. It wasn't long and stretched out like a deer. It was like a human being. But they had skin. But the way they were standing looked like if a deer is standing on its hind legs. They were holding their arms. Kind of weird, the way they. The way they acted. They acted like deer. They froze when my headlights turned and they stared into my headlights for about a second. The way they moved was like if deer were moving on their hind legs. Their eyes kind of glowed in the headlights for a second like a deer. So it was like a human being had almost been stretched over a deer body. And they was acting like a deer, but it looked like a human except for really, really long limbs. It was when my headlights hit them and they paused and we had that second interaction where we were sort of looking at each other, where I realized, oh, my God, these things are maybe seven feet tall. And their limbs are so long. And this is not a human being. And there's about six of them. Some or at least one of them had their arms as if it's a deer standing on its hind legs. They were wearing clothing because I remember as I was about to turn onto this neighborhood road, I thought they were a pack of. A pack of teenagers. A pack of teenagers and they were wearing clothing and it was just normal. That's why at first glance I didn't really think anything about looked like your normal average 20, 21 teenager wearing what they might be wearing during the spring. I don't remember a ton of details about the clothes because then when I saw their freakish lamps that all went out the window, I knew when I saw them and when they, they interacted in my headlights that it wasn't deer. But my brain, I think, was trying to tell me this is some sort of weird deer. Because what the actual fuck is this? After our eyes connect, we both realize that we've seen each other. They scatter. This entire group, I think it was about six. They all scatter. And the way they go is they bound away. I've seen deer my whole life growing up in Utah. There's deer everywhere. I mean, there's just deer everywhere. They're unavoidable. And so the way these creatures, cryptids moved was like deer but on their hind legs. So if you've seen deer run off, they do this hopping thing where they sort of hop on both sets of their legs and they'll hop, hop, hop and go away into the meadow or whatever. So it's like they were doing that but just on a pair of hind legs. There's some type of gazelle or something that I've seen video of where I think it's either trying to like get some leaves or fight something and it's hopping on its hind legs. But the way the hind legs move and the I guess what would be the knee part bends is like kind of freaky looking. I mean, they're just weird shaped creatures. And this is what this felt like is they're doing this high hop off of these hind legs, bounding away, but keeping their top part up, not using all fours. They hop away, all of them, and they all kind of scatter different directions. But the ones I was watching hop away on these back legs, bound away, jump up into the air, probably about six feet into the air, and then they jump and disappear down behind these hedges. The hedges are maybe 4ft tall and they're in front of this Company building that's in this neighborhood that I'm driving down. They're like for decoration or something. They're not overgrown. They're actually perfectly manicured little square hedges. And they jump up, land down behind the bushes and I can't see them at all anymore. For them to completely disappear, they would have had to be lying flat on their stomach area and army crawling through these bushes, which, based on the shape of them, I wouldn't think they could really do. And I sat there for a couple of seconds after this entire thing happened, trying to process what on earth has just happened to me, what I have just witnessed, which felt really like I probably shouldn't have seen this. And I didn't see them at all anymore. They were completely gone. And I just was thinking, oh God, what have I seen? What has happened to me? Because I just was trying to have a night to get my feelings out, go home and feel better. And now I've seen something I can never explain. I feel the blood come out of my face. I feel that cold fear feeling. And before I had turned, I thought they were a group of kids. I thought it was a group of teenagers. And I even kind of thought to myself in my sad brain, oh, that's nice that these kids have friends and they're having a nice night with their friends. I. Even if they were dear, I think I would have been a little shocked for a moment because as there is deer that wander down, I mean, you don't see them every day. So it would have been maybe startling for a second. But then I think, aw, cute, a deer. And I move on with my life. But when I realize that it's neither of those things and it's some fucked up combination of both, I have to try to catch my breath for a moment and I feel like I can't. And I feel like my palms are getting sweaty. And I'm just trying to process this because the whole interaction took less than 30 seconds. Certainly it was very fast as I'm turning onto the road before my headlights hit them. But I turn my face and I see this group, that's maybe four seconds. I turn and my headlights hit them. That's maybe one second. They look at me, that's probably two seconds. And then they scatter away. That was like a handful of seconds. This whole thing happened in 15 seconds, maybe a little more than that. So my whole world has changed within 15 seconds because I have never seen anything like this before. I've never seen anything paranormal ever in my life. I'm Trying to gather myself, because I'm telling myself it's really time to go home now, because I'm either fully losing my mind or I've really, truly just seen a creature that does not exist in my world. And I did not sleep well at all after this. This drive did not work. To clear my head, to try to get to sleep. I get home, I'm really freaked out. I get into bed with my dog and I hold her, and she's. She was. She's passed now. She was this huge greyhound who. Who was so comforting to me. And so I just held her and I tried to get some sleep. I maybe slept for two hours that night, and then I had to work the next day. I was pretty freaked out, still in the morning. But I also think I was trying to just convince myself that I saw something that I didn't. And it wasn't really this. I hadn't told anyone about this. And maybe two years later, I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see people posting about, like, spooky stories that had happened to them or unexplainable things. And it made me think, oh, I should. I should tell my story on here and see if anybody else in SLC has seen something like this. And so I type in my Twitter and I say, does anyone want to hear about the time I saw Cryptids in slc? And my friend is like, yes, definitely. So I type out my story pretty short. And I remember my friend actually replying to me and saying, either you're a great creative writer, or this is the craziest story I've ever seen. And I told her, no, this is very much real. Nobody else responded saying they had seen something like this. And then after that, because this was the first time that I had ever talked about it publicly, I had never told any of my friends. I started thinking about it again and really remembering the night. And so I started looking up Salt Lake City urban myths, Salt Lake City cryptids, Salt Lake City urban legends, things like that, trying to find anything similar to what I had seen. And I couldn't find anything. I found that there's supposed to be some sort of Loch Ness monster in Bear Lake. I found that people had reported other kinds of creatures, but nothing like what I had seen. The only thing that I saw, the only story I found that was similar or felt close to what I had seen was people talking about. And I almost don't even want to say the word because you're kind of not supposed to talking about skinwalkers. I don't know that I believe in skinwalkers, but I don't know that I don't. I think I kind of am open to believing in anything, especially after this experience. I feel like the world is much more complicated and crazier than I thought. I also kind of am just open to believing in anything because I don't know. I do know that skinwalkers are a big thing in Utah. A lot of people believe in them. Especially like the indigenous people here have talked about them. And there is a place out here called Skinwalker Ranch where people have talked about weird experiences. I don't know a ton about them. I know that people have said that they're shape shifters, and from the couple of things I had read online, people had said that they're long and tall and skinny. I. I don't know if that's what I saw. I really hope that's not what I saw. I think that if it had been what people call skinwalkers, I hadn't seen any reports about multiple. Usually it's just one. And I had seen this as a pack, which is why I kept associating it with deer. Because when you're driving around, when you get up into where you've reached the base of the mountain in Utah, you see deer everywhere. Like I said earlier, you see them in the city here and there, but you see them all over once you sort of get at the base of the mountain. And they always move in packs. There's always a few of them altogether. And that's what this felt like. It felt like at first, a little group of teenagers, and then the way they moved, the way they behaved, it felt like it was a group of deer. The way that they were packed together, the way that they scattered when the car headlights hit them, it seemed like deer. And from what I had researched online with the skinwalker thing, people hadn't reported multiple all together at once. These creatures, I felt like, were of this earth. It didn't seem like they were an apparition or ghostly or anything like that. It seemed like they were something that lives here on this earth. Just maybe they choose to hide behind the hedges all the time. It's like nothing bad happened. Even that night when I saw the Dear Teenage People Cryptids, I just was freaked out, went home, didn't sleep very well, and then went about my life as if it was normal. Like nothing scary or dangerous or bad happened to me outside of, like, seeing these weird things. When they locked eyes with me, it seemed like they were scared and startled by me. And my car, and they bounded away because they were scared. It didn't seem like they were out to get me. It didn't seem like they wanted anything to do with me. They wanted to get away from me as fast as possible. Again, kind of like a pack of deer. I just keep bringing it back to that because the way they interacted is exactly how a pack of deer would interact if you hit them with your headlights. I had always been open to belief systems, I guess, as far as, like, collective idea of collective consciousness or dreams being deeper than they seem. I believed that probably ghosts are real, but I had never physically interacted with something in front of my eyes. But I felt like I wasn't the type of person who would ever physically see something until now.