Freddy [Patreon Preview]

Summary

Podcast Summary: Otherworld – Episode: “Freddy” [Patreon Preview]

Episode Overview This Otherworld bonus episode features a uniquely whimsical account of a haunting centered on a “ghost named Freddy” that inhabited a modest construction office in Tampa, Florida. Host Jack Wagner introduces and discusses this favorite story with guest Frank Magn, whose personal and family experiences with the paranormal backdrop the tale. The episode blends light-hearted family anecdotes with eerie supernatural events, capturing both the everyday mundanity and extraordinary strangeness of unexplained phenomena.

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Main Theme

• Examining a playful, memorable haunting at a Tampa construction office, with materializing coins and mischievous energy.
• Exploring the normalization of the paranormal in everyday family life, as told through Frank Magn’s recollections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jack’s Introduction & Episode Context (01:30–04:10)

• Jack Wagner reveals he’s waited almost two years to release this story due to a missing videotape, originally intended as episode “spice.”
• He describes the haunting as “one of my favorite stories…so whimsical. I think you’re really going to like it” (03:52, Jack Wagner).

Meet the Guest: Frank Magn (04:11–06:30)

• Frank jokes about sharing his name with the child actor Frankie Muniz and recounts receiving misdirected fan mail.
• Shares insights into growing up in Tampa, college at UCF, and his career (TV production, internships at Nickelodeon and The Colbert Report).
• “Growing up in Tampa was really cool…my dad was born in my bedroom that I grew up in.” (05:16, Frank Magn)
• Establishes the family’s deep roots and subtle relationship with the paranormal.

Family’s Attitude to the Paranormal (06:30–09:49)

• Frank describes his family as “strange about ghosts…they’re not like, that stuff’s not real. They’re kind of like, it is real, but they can’t hurt you.”
• Relays family experiences:
  • Brother saw “fairy lights” as a child; father nonchalantly confirms seeing the same and calls them “your relatives visiting you” (08:22).
  • Mother’s recurring encounters with apparitions, including mistaking a deceased neighbor for alive.
  • Hints of trauma tied to their historic Ybor City house: “some guy hung himself in the kitchen way back before my family moved in.”

The Haunting at Ed’s Construction Office (09:50–14:28)

• The backstory: Frank’s dad’s business partner, Ed, experiences coins materializing and falling in the office.
• Family’s first visit to the office: Frank, his dad, and younger brother (age 14 and 11 at the time)
• Intent: “We wanted to capture some evidence of some spooky stuff” (07:44, Frank Magn). Frank brings his video camera, hoping to record an incident.
• Vivid setting: A “modular office” in an industrial Tampa area, lit with “weird bright fluorescent light.”
• Ed (and his wife, and an employee) hosts them, treating Freddy’s antics almost as a novelty: “These no nonsense Florida construction guys…showing it off, like a pet alligator” (12:21).
• The most memorable phenomenon: Coins thrown across the room by unseen forces—a quarter hits the wall, bounces to the floor. The coins are kept in a jar, accompanied by warnings: “Don’t take any of these with you.” Frank’s dad warns, “do not bring any of the coins home…you don’t want to risk it coming home with us or us getting it upset or something” (13:40).
• Suggestion that activity spread to neighboring businesses—a tire shop with its own poltergeist-style disruptions.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “He was happy to just have us there and see his new friend that he named Freddy. They named it Freddy, which is a scary name for something like this.” (12:01, Frank Magn)
• “There were these like hearty construction guys, these no nonsense Florida construction guys who have a ghost in their office and they’re like showing it off, like a pet alligator or something.” (12:21, Frank Magn)
• “The coin thing happened. It threw a quarter or something up against the wall. It bounced across the floor…” (13:02, Frank Magn)
• “Don’t take any of these with you…you don’t want to risk it coming home with us or us getting it upset or something.” (13:38, Frank recounting his dad’s warning)
• “He’s so calm about it…those are your relatives visiting you.” (08:20, Frank on his dad’s attitude toward seeing lights)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:30] – Jack introduces the episode, discusses the missing tape, and his excitement for this story.
• [04:11] – Frank introduces himself, background, and early career experiences.
• [06:30] – Frank explores his family’s casual attitude towards paranormal phenomena and shares family stories.
• [09:50] – Introduction to the “Freddy” haunting, the first visit to the haunted office, and the first encounters.
• [12:00] – Description of the office, Ed, and the general mood among the construction workers.
• [13:00] – The coin phenomenon in action and the family’s reaction/warnings.
• [14:29] – End of preview; Patreon plug.

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Tone & Atmosphere

• The tone is conversational, light, and accessible, blending humor with curiosity and a little unease.
• Frank’s stories balance the mundane with the mysterious, illustrating how some families coexist with the unexplained as a fact of life.

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For the full story, including more of the “Freddy” haunting and additional accounts, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to Otherworld’s Patreon.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real fact 1517 in New York, it is illegal to sell a haunted house without telling the buyer. Snapple real fact 855. Oregon has more ghost towns than any other US state.snapple real fact 964. It is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple real fact number 1477. France used the guillotine as recently as 1977. So grab a Snapple, take a second and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple, make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to the show. Welcome to the Otherworld Patreon. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This is just a preview of a full bonus episode. If you want to hear the entire thing, it's available [e-mail] Otherworld this week we have a bonus episode that is legitimately one of my favorite stories. There's just something about this one that has always piqued my interest, and for that reason, I've been holding onto it for over a year. In fact, I'm actually looking right now and realizing that I recorded this almost two years ago, which is shocking and a little embarrassing. I can't believe I've been holding onto this for so long. But part of the reason I've been holding it is because as you'll hear, there is mention of a videotape being recorded during part of this story. Now, nothing of significance really got captured on this tape, but I thought it would be so fun to include some of that old analog tape in the episode. But as of now, the tape in question is still missing. But not for lack of trying, I assure you. That being said, this story is still so great without the tape. In fact, it's one that I think is very unique and it comes with from a guy named Frank. When Frank was about 14, his dad was in the construction business and started talking about some guys he worked with that had a ghost named Freddy haunting their small construction office. And when I say small construction office, I basically mean one of those sheet metal garage type buildings that you see on the outskirts of town without a sign, without much of anything, really. Just one of those basically industrial strip malls with a series of garage doors. They used this to store drywall and park trailers. It was basically this simple one story building. They noticed that something was going on in this building when coins began materializing from thin air and dropping onto the floor. Eventually, Frank's dad brought him and his brother to see the office and meet Freddy for themselves. And they ended up having some very bizarre experiences. Like I said, there's just something about this story that really grabbed me. It's so whimsical. I think you're really going to like it. If you want to hear the full thing, it's out now on Patreon. That's patreon.com otherworld this episode is called Freddie and you're listening to Otherworld.

[B]

My name is Frank Magn. Not Frankie Muniz from Malcolm in the Middle. It happens a lot. He got famous when I was actually around the same time this event happened. I was like going into high school around that time. Or middle school. High school. And it was very surreal to have like a really famous kid actor with the same name as you. I've gotten fan mail from like people who thought like, looked up the address online or whatever and sent fan mail and stuff. I'm happy he's not.

[A]

Hey, you know what? Jack Wagner is also the name of a famous actor.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

General hospital in the 80s. But I just want you to know that I understand.

[B]

Okay, good. It's like a Michael Bolton kind of situation. I grew up in Tampa, Florida, on the Gulf coast. And I stayed there throughout my college years. I went to school in Orlando. I majored in TV production, a ucf. And I moved out to Los Angeles. After I graduated, I got to do some cool internships. Like when I was in college, I went. I interned at Nickelodeon, interned at the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert Show. And it was fun. I got to be like the audience coordinator for the Colbert Rapport. So like Wednesdays and Mondays I'd get to like help load the audience in and like watch a live taping. It was really fun. It was like the year he had a bunch of musical guests. So you had Rush and he had Crosby, Stills and Nash. He had a bunch of cool people there. And it was a really fun summer. Growing up in Tampa was really cool. My parents had lived there their whole lives and in fact my. My dad was born in my bedroom that I grew up in, in the house that they're currently living in, this old house in Ybor City, which is this historical neighborhood in Tampa. It's a cool place. There was lots of wildlife and go kayaking on the river with my friends and really nice memories of Tampa, Florida. My dad has a kind of like, I guess like a business partner. My dad owns his own drywall company. That's what he does. So for like, construction on new houses and stuff. His company will go in and put up the walls in the house. So he's friends with a bunch of construction people. And one of his guys named Ed has an office, like a construction office in Tampa in this industrial part of town. Their entire store and all this stuff. And he was telling him some strange things are happening. Specifically, coins would fall from the ceiling, just like hit the floor, hit desks and bounce around. Cause all kinds of noise. And I remember my mom talking to Ed's wife on the phone as this was happening. So Ed's wife was in the office, My mom was talking to her. And you can hear over the phone the coins going bing, bing, bing, bing, all over, like, over the tile floor. It's like, oh, that's cool. So my. My dad was like, do you and your brother want to go check it out? And we're like, yeah, of course. It's that. It seemed like a. Like, it seemed like a fun thing. We were. I had. I was into making movies and stuff, so I brought my video camera. I wanted to kind of like, catch some evidence. So at this time, I was a freshman in high school. I was 14. And I had just started. So it was around October of that time. And my brother's three years younger than me, so he was around 11. And we were pretty close. We are still close. And we wanted to capture some evidence of some spooky stuff. I didn't really mention this before, but my family's kind of strange about ghosts. Like, they're not like, that stuff's not real. They're kind of like, it is real, but they can't hurt you type. Type family. So my. My mom's had a couple of spooky encounters. And my dad and my brother both have had some stuff happen. So when I was, I don't know, maybe seven or eight, during breakfast, my brother told my mom and dad that he saw these lights floating on the ceiling in his bedroom. And my dad was like, yes, I used to see those when I was a kid, too. My brother described them as fairy lights. He'd be like, there's fairy lights floating around. There's lights floating in front of you, darting around the ceiling. I had never in my life seen anything like this, and I still have not, but my dad has, and he occasionally still sees it. And the way he talks about it is so casual. He's like, yeah, you'll see the light come in the corner of the room and it'll start spinning. Shoom, shoom, shoom, shoom, shoom, phewm. And it'll disappear. And he's just like, those are your relatives visiting you. He's so calm about it. So this was all happening in this house in Ybor City that we grew up in, that he grew up in as well, my dad. So this is old house, supposedly haunted house. My mom would always see things out of the corner of her eye. I think they kept a lot of stuff that they have seen or things that have happened in the house, like from us to not freak us out. I found out later that some guy hung himself in the kitchen. Way back before my family moved in there, my mom had an encounter where she would. There was an old guy across the street. He was sick. He went to the hospital for a little bit. And a week later, my mom was outside and she saw him. He waved at her and he seemed happy. And she went back at him and she came and told us about it. She told our neighbor, hey, I saw the guy across the street. I guess he got out of the hospital, he's fine. And she's like, no, he died at the hospital. The guy died. And mom's. She kind of got freaked out. But it wasn't the first time that stuff's happened to her. She's like, walked into rooms and seen, like, a lady sitting in a chair that we couldn't really see. But she's always kind of like, kept that stuff to herself. I don't think she wanted to really freak us out. So we kind of had that background going into it. So we're going to Ed's office to see this ghost. And my mom didn't want to come, so it was just me, my dad and my brother. I think my mom thought this would be a little too much of an experience. This is the first time we go, if I'm not mistaken, we went about three times. The first time we brought the video camera, we wanted to catch something. We wanted to catch a coin flying through the air. As far as we knew, actually, that was all we knew that it did was that coins would just materialize. The office is really plain. I don't know if you've ever seen a construction office like this. It was kind of like a modular office building, sort of metal desks. There were probably three of them in an L shape. So you walk in immediately, have to Turn. There was a desk. This is 2001. So it wasn't like a lot of computers. It was just papers and stuff. And then there was a little alcove off to the side here. The building was a. A low concrete construction building in the industrial part of town in Tampa, kind of by the train tracks. There was a tire shop parallel to this place that they had some weird stuff happening too. I think Freddy would like knock over tires and rearrange tires. They'd go in and find their shop a mess. And they were like, did a homeless guy break in here? And I think they talked to Ed about it and he's like, there's this thing going around, moving stuff around in the. In the buildings. And there was a outdoor hangar type garage that had a bunch of drywall and lumber and a truck and a bunch of rafters. So it was like maybe two stories high and. And it went up and back. And they're just machinery and all kinds of like construction stuff outside on this outdoor garage. And this is where all the things were happening, indoors and outdoors. Wherever we were, stuff would happen. But the first time we were inside the office. Okay, so my dad parks his truck and we walk in. I remember it just being this weird bright fluorescent light. It was nighttime outside, but inside was this kind of clinical white place. And Ed was sitting there in the chair. He was older than my dad, maybe about 10 or 15 years older than him and this bigger guy. But he knew me and my brother. We'd met many times before and kind of like an uncle figure, I guess, sort of. And he. He was happy to just have us there and see his new friend that he named Freddy. They named it Freddy, which. Which is a scary name for something like this. Right? I don't know what they. Why they came upon it. I think they named it that because they thought it was kind of scary. But Ed was there. I believe his wife Emmy was there and an employee of his was there. And I don't remember this guy. These are all. I don't know, when you're 14, like, adults seem so much older than they might really be. There were these like hearty construction guys, these no nonsense Florida construction guys who have a ghost in their office and they're like showing it off, like a pet alligator or something. They don't really know too much about it, but they're like, look at the things that it can do. Look how we figured out about it. So we brought the camera. We turned it on immediately when we walked in, and we just recorded everything Ed talking about the incidents. And the first thing I remember happening was the coin thing. The coin thing happened. It like it threw a quarter or something up against the wall. It bounced across the floor, rolled under the thing, they rolled under the desk, they picked up the coin, they put it into like this jar that they were keeping all the coins and they're like, don't take any of these with you. My dad also made it a point before my brother and I got in there, he said, do not bring any of the coins home or anything that it throws home with you. So I think my parents are kind of like in the back of their minds, were like, if this is real or whatever, you don't want to risk it coming home with us or us getting it upset or something.

[A]

All right, that brings us to the end of the short preview. If you want to hear the full episode, it's out [e-mail] Otherworld when it's

[C]

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