A Collection of Favorites – Ep. 251

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[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_04] Terms and conditions apply. Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_08] Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. Just trust. Believe.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER_09] Thanks for tuning in to a special episode of Odd Trails, featuring stories that stand out as our personal favorites from over the years. In this collection, you'll hear about haunted homes, possible possession, encounters with strange creatures, loved ones who may not be completely gone, and a few experiences that seem to fall somewhere between the paranormal and a glitch

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_09] in the matrix. One of them involves tacos. Enjoy the show. A little backstory on me and the house I'm going to be talking about. I'm 46, and the house I lived in for the first 17 years of my life was haunted. I'm the youngest child of four, and my parents and siblings have filled me in on past

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_09] experiences that led to the one I'm about to tell you. Long story short, the attic door used to open by itself every day around the lunch hour. One day, after it opened, my mom commented, We ate early today, and the attic door slammed shut. The slamming was the final straw, and my dad proceeded to seal the door with plastic, foam, and duct tape.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_09] As long as I could remember, the door remained sealed. It obviously didn't open anymore, but strange things still happened. Dragging sounds from the hallway, and waking up to pictures on the walls flipped upside down. When I was 14, my parents divorced. Shortly after, my mom had to undergo a

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_09] procedure and spent some time in the hospital. During that time, my nephew Tim, who was 13 at the time, would come stay with me so I wouldn't be alone in the house. I know, I know. Who would leave a couple of 13 and 14-year-old boys alone? But hey, this was a different time. One day, we had a couple of other friends over, and the four of us decided it would be a good idea

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_09] to take the seal off the attic door and see what was inside. Disappointment followed when we found out it was nothing exciting. A couple of days later, Tim was coming back over again. I didn't hear him come in, but I figured he'd be there any minute. I was heading to the basement, where I had made my

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_09] bedroom. As I was heading down the hallway to my room, I could have sworn I saw Tim crouched down beside the buffet, probably getting ready to jump out and scare me. I jumped around the corner, turned toward him, and loudly asked, What are you doing? But he wasn't there. I could have sworn I saw him,

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_09] but no one was there. I laughed to myself, walked through the dining room, into the kitchen, and over to the basement stairs on the other side. These stairs were the old, wooden, slotted kind that led down to an unfinished basement. They never bothered me. I grew up with them. But this time,

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_09] I saw Tim again, hiding under the stairs. Probably so he could reach through and grab my ankle. Classic Tim move. So I sprinted down the first five or six steps, then jumped to the floor and spun around, yelling, What are you doing? But once again, Tim wasn't there. But I could feel something watching

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_09] me from under the stairs. From the opening in the blanket curtains, I could see both the window that looked out to the driveway and the stairs. I couldn't see anything, but I knew something was watching me. I also somehow knew that we had let out whatever had been sealed in the attic.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_09] After a few minutes, though it felt like forever, I saw my sister's car pull into the driveway. That meant she was dropping Tim off. I ran out of my bedroom so fast and up the stairs to meet him. That feeling of being watched from under the stairs stayed with me until I finally moved my bedroom back

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_09] upstairs. The weirdest part, Tim used to sleep downstairs on a mattress right outside the blanket curtains in plain view of the stairs. He felt nothing watching him, except if I wasn't there. If I was away for any reason, and he was sleeping down there alone, it watched him instead of me.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_04] I've only told a few people this story because nobody understands how I was raised. I too was raised in a Pentecostal family. I was the granddaughter of a minister, and he was the third generation Pentecostal minister. My grandfather, great-grandfather, and his father had all been ministers. That's just some of the history on how far back into the Pentecostal religion my family goes.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_04] We weren't the sneak-loving ones, but we were raised to wear no jewelry. We couldn't go to dances. Basically nothing fun. Here's the day that changed me forever, and I swear to you that what I'm going to say 100% happened, and I have absolutely no explanation for what I saw. My papa was preaching, and the boy

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_04] behind me at the time, only a year older than myself, started to growl. Not like a dog's growl, but this deep guttural growl. Then he started cussing and spitting and calling my papa names. The voice coming out of him was not human. All of the elders at the church ran and started laying hands with anointing oil on him and praying. The rest of the church all got on our knees and started

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_04] to pray. As we were all down praying, I hear a voice say, look up at him. I didn't want to, but the voice said it again. Look at this. So I slowly looked up. I looked up at Scott. It wasn't him anymore. His face had contorted into this weird, swollen, red face

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_04] with all these blisters welling up on him. He was screaming in this deep, demonic voice and started spewing this slimy stuff. This went on for probably a good 45 minutes to an hour. Then all at once, it stopped. Everything went quiet. The elders of the church had been on him with their

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_04] weight holding him down, and they all let go. It was over, and Scott's face was still red, but the swelling and the blisters were gone. The voice was gone, and all the shaking had stopped. There was no way he could have done that to his face himself or the voice that was coming out of him. I no longer attend church, and my grandfather has passed away. He was the last of our family to be a minister.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_04] I will never, ever in my life forget that day. I'm 56 now, and that happened when I was 13, and it is just as vivid to me today as it was the day that it happened. Scott didn't know any of what happened to him, but I do, and it has always been the most terrifying event in my life. There are people who say this stuff isn't real, but trust me, it is very real, and something that I

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_09] hope nobody ever has to experience. The Thing That Pretended to Be My Dad by Holly

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_09] I lost my father suddenly in 2023. Without getting into it too much, he was middle-aged and died of a sudden heart attack the same day his own father passed away. That, in itself, felt too weird to be a coincidence. I always said that my grandpa spent 12 hours in the afterlife, got bored, and decided to

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_09] take his son with him to have a ghost golfing buddy. But this story isn't about my grandpa, or much of my dad, really. To set the scene, I was 23 when my father passed, and as you'd expect, everyone in the family was in deep grief. I've always felt in tune with the spiritual world, not saying I see ghosts all

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_09] the time, or like I'm some sort of medium, but I believe I can sense energies. If something wants to be seen, I'm open-minded enough to see it. That being said, after my dad passed, I had some strange happenings going on. Things like listening to his music as I drove to my mom's, and I swear I could see him in the passenger seat out of the corner of my eye. Or sometimes my bedroom door, completely

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_09] closed, would crack open once I started playing video games. I felt like it was dad because we always game together. There was even a moment where my phone froze up while I was driving. It wouldn't let me skip the song or even exit the music app. The song it was stuck on? It was about losing a loved one. I literally had to pull over and cry to it. Once the song ended, my phone worked

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_09] fine again. I could skip songs like normal. Then I started seeing him in my dreams. I don't often have vivid dreams, but it felt like I was constantly having ones where it was just me and my dad hanging out. We'd be hiking or driving around. The dreams usually ended with him looking at me and saying, Miss you, kiddo. And I'd immediately wake up. It was comforting feeling his presence.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_09] And then it started to fade. It felt like he was around less and less, especially once I got close with my girlfriend and was spending a lot of time with her. Maybe he felt like he didn't need to worry about me anymore, but I missed him. So I tried to contact him through tarot cards. I looked up how to do it correctly, light a candle, invite only his spirit, and make it clear that all

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_09] other spirits must leave. To sum up that experience, three cards were pulled, and they were about loss, being protected, and a new chapter. It was freaky yet beautiful how they fit. But after that, I didn't feel him anymore. I guessed I had somehow closed the door completely so no spirit could

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_09] interact with me. After a while, though, things started happening again. I would see a figure out of the corner of my eye, outside the window by our front door. When I turned to look, nothing was there. My roommate, girlfriend, and I all heard shuffling around in the kitchen when no one was downstairs. There was even a time I walked upstairs and swore I saw someone poking their head around

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_09] the corner from downstairs, watching me. Then came a night I was downstairs fixing food for my girlfriend and me, and I heard my name whispered from the staircase. I called out, yeah, but got no response. So I went over and saw no one. I called for my girlfriend, and she came out of my room. I asked her why she called me, and she said she didn't. No one else was home.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_09] That moment spooked me. The voice wasn't my father's, and that had never happened before. I started to think whatever this was had attached itself to me after I did the tarot ritual. As I said, the voice didn't sound like my dad, and I believed he was now at my mom's house since she had started experiencing footsteps in her bedroom and other noises. Then I left for a weekend,

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_09] and my roommate and girlfriend got spooked. They both heard shuffling in the kitchen, and then a door upstairs opening closed on its own. They texted each other to see if it was the other, and they both responded that they were in bed. No one was walking around or opening the doors. When I got back and they told me, I kind of laughed it off. But a morning shortly after that,

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_09] I woke up and walked downstairs to find our front door wide open. I chalked it up to my roommate not locking the door properly, and lectured her to make sure the deadbolt was locked so the wind couldn't blow it open again. Even my roommate's cat was acting weird. The cat always sat on the windowsill by the front door, looking out, right where I could see the figure. One night, my roommate opened the door

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_09] to get food from the delivery driver, and the cat bolted outside, something she'd never done before. It felt like she was running toward or away from something. Then one night, my girlfriend and I were watching TV upstairs, and my roommate came home. I jokingly hollered at her to lock the door properly and watched as she did so. She grabbed some food

[00:16:53] [SPEAKER_09] and headed upstairs. About an hour later, the front door just opened all the way. My girlfriend and I froze, waiting for someone to step in. But the doorway was completely empty. I just said, that did not just happen. Then I sprang up and slammed the door shut.

[00:17:18] [SPEAKER_09] We debunked the idea that the wind could have done it. The deadbolt was locked, and even then, for the door to be open that far, someone would have had to push it hard. I was officially spooked. I called my roommate down, and we all freaked out. She grabbed her sage and started cleansing the apartment. My girlfriend and I grabbed crystals and placed

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_09] them in every window and by every door. I barricaded the front door with furniture, and we all slept in my room that night, since it was the only bedroom with a lock. Things stopped happening after that. But I'm convinced it was something that fed off my grief and stepped in the moment my dad decided it was okay to step away. I don't know if I did this story justice. I know I missed a few other haunting details,

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_09] but that's the gist of it. I haven't tried contacting my dad again. I miss his visits. But I don't want to risk letting in another trickster spirit. One that knows how to open my front door, and worse, likes to whisper my name.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_04] This story happened around 15 years ago, so the memory isn't as clear as it used to be, and my younger brother, who was with me at the time, has completely forgotten about it over the years. I don't know if this was some kind of glitch in the simulation thing, or a ghost,

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_04] or some kind of weird prank, but it still weirds me out to this day. When I was around nine, I was playing with my little brother, who's five years younger than me. We were in our garden. It was after school. There are a couple of things that you do need to know about certain parts of the layout of our house to understand why this has spooked me for so many years. As we look up at the house, the upstairs window that faces the garden is the bathroom window.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_04] It's covered by that blurry, translucent material that prevents people from the outside seeing inside. Directly behind the upstairs bathroom is the corridor of the second level of the house. Now, in that corridor, I have a recollection of my father doing some kind of loud DIY work. Memory steals the exact details from me, but it was loud. Loud enough to be heard from

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_04] outside of the house in the garden. He's always doing stuff like that. He even knocked down the walls and expanded half of the house in 2017. But anyway, the point is, his location in the house is outside of the bathroom and the narrow corridor performing an activity that's loud enough to be heard from the garden where I and my brother were. Every time we heard the sound of an electric saw or some kind of

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_04] power tool, we knew that he was there. My little brother and I had been outside for a while when the sun began to set and it started to get cold. I took my brother to the door and tried to open it. At the time, I thought that the door was locked and I began to panic because I thought that my father had locked it, forgetting that we were outside. Retrospectively, I realized that the door was just

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_04] stuck as it often was and my weak little nine-year-old arms just couldn't pull it open. I took my little brother back to the middle of the garden where we could see the bathroom window. and tried to yell to get my dad's attention. Every so often, the power tool would pause and I'd try to yell so he could hear me. I panicked more and more as I realized that we were going to be stuck in the dark until he remembered that we were out there. This is when the creepy shit started.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_04] The bathroom window opened and it was one of those separated windows so you still couldn't see the person but just whatever stuck out the window. Out of the window came a hand holding a blue and silver video camera. I'll never forget it. This is the memory that time could just never steal from me. It was one of those video cameras with a viewfinder on the side that flipped outwards.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_04] The camera was pointing towards me and my brother in the garden. They were filming us. I recognized the hand holding the camera immediately. It was my father's hand. The hand did this repeatedly. I distinctly remember seeing the hand come out of the window with the camera at least three times to film for a little under than one minute before retreating back into the window.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_04] Now here are some things that just don't make sense to me. The hand looked like my father's hand but whoever was filming us was not my father. I know this because I could still hear the power tools going on. My father was the only one in the house. Due to his location in the house being right outside of the bathroom, my father would have been able to see if somebody was in the bathroom or at least

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_04] know that somebody had walked in there. The next weird thing is the fact that my father owns one or two video cameras but they're all black. He does not own a blue and silver video camera. I know because I've got an obsessive personality and if he did own one, I sure as hell would have found it with the way that I tore the house apart looking for it when I eventually did get inside for the years to

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_04] come. If my dad had that camera, he wouldn't have disposed of it. I get my barely socially acceptable levels of hoarder personality from him. He doesn't just throw stuff away like that. The last thing that I remember is the hand. As I said, I recognized the hand immediately.

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_04] My father has very distinctive large thick hands. So, how was it that I was hearing him drilling and sawing away at something but I was also seeing his hands come out of the window? He couldn't possibly be in two places at once. All his siblings are spread around the globe. None of his brothers are in this country. So, it wasn't some rogue uncle with similar hands hiding in the bathroom. Even if you had argued

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_04] that perhaps he had moved locations and I was hearing the saw from another location in the house, it doesn't explain how I was hearing the tool and seeing the hand holding the camera simultaneously. I turned to ask my brother if he could see what I was seeing. I thought that I was going crazy. He confirmed that he could see it too and also seemed to share my fear. I didn't know what to do. I felt helpless. So, I ran back to the

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_04] door and tried to stay out of view of the camera. I was trying my hardest to open that door. Eventually, the sound of the power tool stopped and the door opened. It was my father, very annoyed that we had stayed out in the garden for as long as we did. He was also irritated that I was claiming that the door was locked. But the first words out of my mouth weren't about that. They were, was that you? Were you

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_04] filming us? My father looked at me incredulously, confused and irritated. He asked me what I was talking about and looked at me like I was insane. Because obviously, he had not moved from where he was working and saw nobody walk into that bathroom. My relationship with my parents has always been strained, starting from when I was incredibly young. They had a great sense of unearned distrust in me.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_04] They had this idea that I was always lying about something, which sort of ruined our relationship from the start and has given me really horrible trauma around the subjects of lies and liars. It has made it very hard for me to lie to anyone, even in normal situations where most people would genuinely expect you to, or rather, you did. I was a good kid. I didn't tell lies, sneak out,

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_04] talk back, or any of those typical naughty kid things. I was too scared anyway. It wasn't very odd or out of character that my dad didn't take me seriously and got annoyed with me instead. In his mind, I was making things up. Some might argue that, say, perhaps, it was some sort of prank, and it was my dad holding the camera. Maybe, for some odd reason, he had just left his power tool on.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_04] To the naysayer, I would let you know that my father is not the pranking type. I don't know what else to say there except that when I looked into my father's eyes and asked him if it was him, I knew right then that it was not. When my mother came home, I asked if she owned a blue and silver camera. She said no. Every couple of years, I remember this story, and I go on a hunt online looking for that specific type

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_04] of camera. I've never been able to find the exact model, as I couldn't make out the silver letters on the side of the camera from where I was standing. It's gotten harder as the years have gone by, and technology progresses. I watched my little brother's memory of that day slip away until finally, his only memory of it was of me asking him if he remembers. I get scared thinking about one day

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_04] accidentally stumbling upon that footage somewhere, seeing me as a little girl with her brother out in the garden looking up, crying. I don't know what I'd do if I ever saw it. This event has scared me for so long that if I ever found out that somehow it was just a bit some planned prank that my dad was in on, I think I would walk out the door and never come back. It's dramatic, I know,

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_04] but I have a thing about lies. I wonder where that came from. Anyway, to whoever or whatever that had my dad's hands, that was filming me and my brother 15 years ago, let's never meet.

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[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_09] I haven't listened to this podcast, but my wife asked me to email you guys about my experience. So here I am. I never believed in anything paranormal, mostly because I grew up in apartments where every noise had an explanation, like pipes, neighbors, or traffic. But that changed when I started working at a wildlife hatchery in 2014. It was run by the state we live in,

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_09] and sat at the edge of a reservoir miles from town. I worked the evening shift. There were technically two of us on nights, but we worked separate zones. The main building was concrete and steel, built in the 60s, with long hallways and flickering fluorescent lights. There was also an older structure down the hill, a wooden maintenance shed that existed before the hatchery itself.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_09] Everyone called it the boathouse, even though no boats had been stored there for decades. Part of closing was making sure the outbuildings near the reservoir were locked, including the old boathouse. My third week on the job, I started noticing the radio. I used an old handheld to check in with the night supervisor. Mine would start crackling on its own at around 9.15 every night. No voices,

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_09] just open channel static. Like someone pressing the transmit button but never saying anything. I mentioned it once, and my supervisor laughed. He said reception was terrible near the water. That explanation worked, until I realized it only happened when I was near the boathouse.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_09] One night, I decided to test it. I stayed up by the main building until 9.30. Nothing. No static, no interference. The following night, I walked down toward the reservoir at 9 o'clock, and I paced around for a bit. The radio started going off. I checked the time. It was 9.17. I stopped walking,

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_09] and the static stopped too. It didn't start back up again when I started walking though. I decided to check out the creepy boathouse. Maintenance sometimes went in there during the day, so it wasn't unusual for people to be there. The light was on, which was just a bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. I knew for a fact I hadn't turned it on the last time I was in there.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_09] I convinced myself someone must have forgotten to turn it off. But for the record, I asked my boss and the day shift workers if they had turned it on. But apparently, I was the last person to have gone in there before this visit. The last time I was there, I just shined my flashlight in as a routine security check. It was mostly empty, except for some rusty shelves and a dusty workbench.

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_09] There was also a corkboard that leaned up against a wall with a bunch of old papers pinned to it. They weren't schematics or schedules like I expected, just handwritten notes. I never bothered to read them before, but I decided to take a look. Most of it wasn't eligible, but I could make out some dates, times, and names. I noticed much of the recorded times were around

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_09] 9.15, give or take a few minutes. As I was standing there, my radio went off again, louder this time. It was probably around 9.20, I forgot to check. Through the static, I thought I heard breathing that sounded slow and deliberate. I lifted the radio and asked my boss

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_09] if anyone was on the channel. He didn't respond, and the breathing stopped immediately. Then I saw footprints I hadn't noticed when I first entered. They were wet and led from the reservoir straight into the boathouse. The footprint stopped in front of the corkboard. Toes pointed toward

[00:33:09] [SPEAKER_09] it, like whoever had made them had stood there reading the notes. I checked my shoes and they weren't wet either. I left. I didn't run, but I didn't walk either. Something in between, like my body was moving on instinct, and my mind hadn't caught up yet. I made my way back to my desk

[00:33:34] [SPEAKER_09] and just sat there, trying to think who the prints could have belonged to. My supervisor swore he didn't visit the boathouse that night. He wanted to check it out with me, but I politely declined. He dropped it without much of a reaction, and we wrapped up our shift shortly later. The next day, I asked one of the older employees about the boathouse before he went home. He went

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_09] quiet, in a way that makes me laugh now for seeming so dramatic. Then he told me that before the hatchery existed, a night watchman used to patrol the reservoir. Decades ago, he drowned during a routine check. They found his body near the boathouse at 9.17 p.m. I asked about the notes on the corkboard.

[00:34:28] [SPEAKER_09] He said he never saw any notes on it. I was puzzled, but not scared. I made a point to visit the boathouse again that night, at the beginning of my shift this time. And the corkboard was gone. Maybe somebody threw it away, but that seems too much of a coincidence. It looked like it had been

[00:34:53] [SPEAKER_09] there forever. I even checked the dumpster. There were a few bags of trash in there, but no corkboard. I ended up quitting a couple of weeks later, for unrelated reasons. I still don't believe in ghosts in the way society portrays them, but I don't think paranormal explanations are all that

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_04] impossible. I'm a 23-year-old male, and now that I'm grown up, I'm starting to feel the gravity of

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_04] many things that happen, and have happened around me. Being a curious person, I like to investigate things. I like to make my own theories around them. Well, yesterday morning, I started having this conversation with my mom about theories on what dreams actually are and what science says about them. In the midst of that conversation, I suddenly recalled an incident that happened with her many

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_04] years ago. And my mom is not at all a person who likes to make things up. She's always very skeptical of superstitions, and I, and only I, know that if she claims watching something with her own eyes, which freaked her out and froze her to death, she is speaking the truth. It happened around 12 years ago. My family was going through a financial crisis, and we used to live in my maternal grandmother's

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_04] house back then. Now, recently, a thief had also been sighted in the house, who ran away in a panic because of the fear of being caught. Many scary things were happening, and we were very serious about them, as they were causing our family a lot of stress. I didn't get to know exactly when and how, but one evening, my mom told my grandma that she saw this hairy demon in the bathroom.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_04] As I was a stupid 11-year-old back then, I took it as a fun horror story, and I just let it be. When I recalled this incident yesterday, I decided to ask about the details from my mom, so I asked her to describe the appearance of this thing. She told me it was sitting on the floor of our bathroom. She said it looked like a, quote, early man. She told me it was so gigantic that when it

[00:37:33] [SPEAKER_04] stood up on its legs, it easily reached to the ceiling. She froze and started screaming for help from my dad. This creature took only a couple of very, very long strides and disappeared. She says that she doesn't recall too many details about how this thing actually disappeared, though. I asked her why she called that thing a demon. She said it's because that's what her first guess was.

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_04] I asked, so you mean to say that it looked like a caveman? She said no. It wasn't a man or a human in the first place. A beast? I asked. Yes, she said. She told me that it had very long hair all over its body and the hair had a soil-like color. Immediately, my brain said, Bigfoot. Then I googled Bigfoot and I

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_04] showed her some images. She said that it looked the same as those images. I was shocked to hear this. The thing is, I'm from India. Nobody has ever heard of any Bigfoot sightings in India, let alone in an urban environment and in one's bathroom. As weird and illogical as this incident sounds, it really happened. My mom rarely believes in things like these and is always very serious about life.

[00:38:56] [SPEAKER_04] She has never been attention-seeking or anything like that, and this incident never helped her in any way. So what do you guys think about this incident? How can one see a Bigfoot-like creature in one's home, which then disappears and is never seen again? Could it be something else?

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_09] So this story is a little funny, but also kind of eerie. This happened to my mom back in 2004, 2005-ish. We live in Southern California, and back then she had a job as a network engineer for a major telecommunications provider. This job entailed her working daily assignments at different job sites all around Southern California, and on rare occasions up in Central California. Sometimes

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_09] her assignments would only be for a day. Other times they would last multiple days. Her employer required all field-based engineers to commute back and forth daily with a different commute each day. Fortunately, they provided her with a company car. With this being the era before smartphones, my mom's boss would email her the next day's assignment every evening, along with the address and how many days of work were required on the site.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_09] She would then print out a MapQuest route and head out the door with it every morning. Due to this, and the fact that she grew up in the 80s, she was pretty skilled with directions and remembering routes in detail. One day she had an assignment in a lesser-known and sparsely populated area of San Diego County. She was driving back home after a particularly exhausting day at work, and wanted something to eat for her hours-long commute ahead.

[00:40:51] [SPEAKER_09] She exited the freeway into an area that was pretty desolate. She saw a gas station a little ways ahead and decided to pull into the parking lot. As she pulled up, she felt too tired to even get out of the car, and wasn't really feeling like eating a gas station snack. She told me that she remembers thinking, Tacos sound good right now. I wish there was a place nearby to drive through and get some. She drove around for a bit looking for a drive-thru,

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_09] but was disappointed by how empty this area was. As she made her way back towards the freeway, she saw a tiny building with a small sign and a darkened window that said Tacos in bold capital letters. As she got closer, she saw that the building also had a drive-thru. She couldn't believe her luck and eagerly drove up to place her order. Once she received her food, she quickly ate it,

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_09] surprised at how good everything was. To this day, she says those were some of the best Tacos she's ever had. Now, here's where it gets strange. The next day, she was working on the same assignment and wanted to get those Tacos on her way back home. She exited the freeway at the same place and drove down the exact route as the day before. She saw the gas station. But when she got to the spot where the taco shop should have been,

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_09] there was nothing but an empty field. It seemed like the restaurant had vanished into thin air. Bewildered but determined to find it, just out of sheer curiosity at this point, she proceeded to drive up and down the freeway, taking all the nearby exits and driving around looking for this little building. She wasn't able to find the taco shop, and the more she looked for it, the more uneasy she felt.

[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_09] Eventually, she gave up and headed home, confused, a little unnerved, and without Tacos. She still talks about her strange experience to this day and how she has no clue what happened.

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_04] This happened around 1995 or so in central Mexico. My dad was a 20-something year old who was very involved with the church at the time, as well as the community theater. He did things like put together shows and plays for the church, help each week with youth group, and put together social gatherings for the young members of the church. When this event happened, he and the other youth group leaders decided to go to a nearby town's church

[00:43:42] [SPEAKER_04] and do a retreat with some of the troubled teens to try and help them onto a better path and strengthen their faith. The church in that town was off of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the desert. There were a few neighboring ranches, but even those were a ways away from the church, which is one of the reasons why they chose this place for their retreat. They wanted it to be away from things that could be distracting. The church wasn't huge, and the building where mass was held

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_04] was independent of the bathroom and the kitchen. These were located about 30 feet from the main building, meaning whenever it was time to prepare meals, two of the group leaders had to step out and walk through a bit of brush and desert terrain to the kitchen building. This retreat would be the lock-in sort of thing where you would sleep and eat at the church in between group meetings and prayers for a few days. I'm not sure how long the retreat was supposed to last

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_04] or on which night this occurred, but here's how it went. My dad said that the kind of young adults and teens attending were troubled ones. Some were in and out of jail due to petty crimes, some were gang members, some were struggling with drugs, and some were made to attend by their parents because they were found practicing witchcraft and other occult things. It's safe to say that everyone in attendance was not there of their own choosing.

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_04] I think this is important to note. So the night that this happened, they were in the middle of a group meeting. They had set up chairs and a few pews in the middle of the room in a circle. This must have been one of the first few nights because although some attendees were expressing that they were ready for a better life and wanted to open their lives to God, there was still strong opposition from the others. Some were mocking and shouting obscenities and cursing God. Very quickly,

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_04] I just want to make it clear that I'm not bashing anyone nor do I think any type of person is above anyone else. I'm not even religious and I actually don't agree with forced interventions like this because I feel that for it to be successful, people need to be ready and want to have help from qualified people to give it. Anyway, you could say that the energies in this church were very, very mixed,

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_04] which is in my opinion why this happened. It was around 7pm and it was starting to get dark out. They were having group while the leaders in charge of the dinner duties slipped out to get started on the night's meal. About 20 minutes later, they came running into the church building completely scared and shaken, screaming for everyone to lock and barricade every door and window. Everyone was puzzled and shocked by this

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_04] and wanted to know why but instead were told to please hurry and barricade everything. Some people were getting freaked out by this so they did as they were asked while others remained in their seats and laughed at how scared the two leaders were and how everybody else was freaking out. Those who were helping locked everything as they were told and put some pews and tables in front of the doors. Everyone was confused as to what was happening when one of them yelled,

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_04] There's something out there. It's like this big dog. It has red eyes. It was snarling and circling us when it got on its hind legs and started walking, hunched over with its front paws curled in front of it. It started laughing at us. They said it was very tall, around 6 feet. Something was off about its back legs though but they didn't stick around long enough to make out why. My dad said that they were genuinely terrified

[00:47:29] [SPEAKER_04] but his first thought was that they might be playing a bad joke. Everyone became panicked, even the ones who were joking about the situation sat there quietly and with alarm growing on their faces. At this point, those who helped to barricade everything were still by the doors clearly confused and scared when they all heard this loud, low growl growl that stretched on into a cackle coming from behind the door. People started to cry.

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_04] Some even started to pray to themselves while they ran back to the center of the church away from where they heard the growling as fast as they could. One of the church leaders said that they should all join hands and pray together but as soon as he finished this sentence, all of the windows erupted with the sound of banging over and over that was very aggressive. The glass looked like it would break at any moment if it didn't stop soon. And at that same time, all of the chairs that were left in the circle

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_04] began to shuffle and jump up off of the ground as high as a foot or so. Everyone was terrified. There were no jokes or mocking coming from anyone anymore. Just terror and fear on every face in the room. More laughter and growls boomed from the door. My dad said that even though all the windows were old and dusty, more opaque than clear due to the age and location of the church in the desert, you could still look through them and make out what was outside.

[00:48:59] [SPEAKER_04] And although it was pitch black now, there were enough lights and candles illuminating the inside that if anyone were playing a prank, they'd easily be spotted. There was nothing. Still, this deep terrifying voice beckoned from outside of the front doors to be let in. The voice was so low and deep that my dad said it shook the ground. Then whatever it was started throwing itself against the door so hard that the doors looked like they might break.

[00:49:30] [SPEAKER_04] Everything was getting more intense by the second, so after some unsure glances around the room, everyone joined hands and began to pray for what felt like forever. One last angry roar was heard from behind the door and all at once, the banging stopped. The windows no longer shook and the chairs stopped jumping up off the ground. Everything became still. Everything was quiet now, but everyone was standing there unmoving,

[00:50:00] [SPEAKER_04] still with joined hands. They listened and waited, but nothing else happened. The heaviness in the air lifted. After this, nobody wanted to talk about what just happened, but I was told by my dad that they continued their meeting and quietly agreed to just skip dinner that night. just in case. In the end, everybody attending immersed themselves and helping themselves and the community,

[00:50:30] [SPEAKER_04] promising to make better choices. I asked my dad what he thought of all of this after all these years, and he responded that he's fully convinced it was the devil. The devil must have been so angry that we were helping some of those that he had started to sink his claws into and got them onto a better path. He said, He was angry. He wanted to frighten us into stopping our retreat so that he could continue to corrupt these people, the people we were trying to help.

[00:51:00] [SPEAKER_04] I'm sure he's still angry he failed to take them with him. Now, I believe there are things that we don't understand, good and evil, and although I don't believe in God or the devil, I think that when enough people believe this same thing, these energies that want to scare us and feed on our energy will manifest themselves in whatever form they've learned would take the biggest toll. Thanks for reading. If you ever see a black dog with red eyes,

[00:51:29] [SPEAKER_04] run as fast as you can.

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[00:52:18] [SPEAKER_09] Well, wasn't that a spooky trip down memory lane? This episode revisited the following stories. Ghost experience by Doug. A Pentecostal church experience by Tammy. The thing that pretended to be my dad by Holly. The blue video camera by Anonymous. Weird boathouse experience by Bill. Bigfoot in the bathroom by Abel Calligrapher74. The taco shop from an alternate dimension by Tara.

[00:52:48] [SPEAKER_09] And last but not least, Devil Dog at Youth Group Retreat by Maria. If any of these stories jogged your memory and made you think, you know what, I might actually have a story to send in. Don't be shy. Send it on over to stories at oddtrails.com. If you really don't like ads or you want to become a certified oddball by supporting the show for just $5 a month, head on over to our Patreon at patreon.com slash oddtrails.

[00:53:18] [SPEAKER_09] Check out more Cryptic County podcasts like Let's Not Me, a true horror podcast, and the old time radio cast, wherever you get your podcasts. We'll both be back next week with some brand new stories. Stay safe. Peace out.

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