Episode 138: Snitches Get Glitches

[00:00:00] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show. Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. Just trust. Believe.

[00:00:58] Lights in the French Countryside by Ocean This isn't the scariest story you'll ever hear, but it's a personal experience I hope you'll find interesting. I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to the supernatural, especially the spirit world.

[00:01:18] I don't have any spiritually supernatural stories though, and I hope it stays that way. It would probably terrify me. As for UFOs, I've always been a little skeptical and, quite frankly, uninterested. Also, where I live in France, UFOs aren't a very common topic of

[00:01:39] discussion. People just don't really seem to talk about them that much. But I'm dying to find an explanation for what I saw one night long ago. My memories are a bit blurred because it happened when I was around 12 years old.

[00:01:56] I'm now 28. I recently remembered this story and separately asked my brother and father, who also witnessed it, what they could recall of that night. Both of their stories were identical to mine. At the time I was visiting my grandparents, who live in the countryside. Their beautiful house

[00:02:20] stands on equally beautiful land, full of fruit trees and flowers, right next to a canal. It's very isolated, in a small village of 700 people. The nearest city is an hour away. When my family and I would be there, we would eat dinner every night with my grandparents

[00:02:42] and sleep in a small old house next to theirs, which we would call the little blue house, due to the blue framed windows. We would have to exit by the front door of the main house,

[00:02:54] turn right and walk down a small path that would lead us to the little blue house. I believe it was around 11pm. My mom led the way and was already inside the house, whereas my dad, brother and I stopped at a fork in the path.

[00:03:12] We were looking at the intensely beautiful sky, full of stars. City lights are so far from there, you can even make out the Milky Way. We would usually look for the Big Dipper,

[00:03:26] listen to the owls around us and breathe in the unique smells of damp soil and vegetation. In front of us, on the other side of the road, was a patch of tall, thick trees,

[00:03:40] thick trees, and the only source of light was the moonlight. I don't remember which one of us saw it first, but someone suddenly said, what is that? And pointed at the trees. Amongst them, maybe

[00:03:58] 20 meters above the ground, was a light. Upon closer look, there were two of them, close together and executing the same movements. I remember that as it reminded me of the flying

[00:04:12] car's headlights from Harry Potter. I think it was the only thing I could identify it to at the time. They were bright and of a white or yellow shade. The way they were moving was slow and very smooth,

[00:04:28] flying from left to right and up and down, with no specific pattern. They weren't blinding, but we also couldn't make out what they were attached to. The thing I remember the most is that it made absolutely no sound.

[00:04:47] I think my dad even mentioned that out loud, trying to comprehend what we were saying. The whole thing was quite eerie, knowing that we were in the middle of nowhere,

[00:04:58] in the dead of night, and all we could hear was the faint sound of the canal in the background. Then, after only 20 or 30 seconds, it disappeared between the trees, still in total silence. I remember us laughing, asking each other,

[00:05:18] what was that? Almost as if one of us had pulled a prank on the others. We got into the house and told my mom, still kind of laughing, and she didn't believe us. I still don't think she does. This event was rather quickly forgotten and not talked about

[00:05:39] forgotten and not talked about for some time, until I brought it up recently. I think about what happened periodically, but remembering how we laughed it off made it seem like a silly story. I would try to come up with logical explanations,

[00:05:58] I even thought about drones, but those weren't on the market for private use at the time. Far behind the trees where we saw the lights sits only one house, which is almost always vacant, and then it's just fields and hills.

[00:06:15] There are a few sparse houses around where my grandparents live, but it's all just a bunch of other old people. I have no idea what we saw that night, but the three of us saw and remembered the exact same thing.

[00:06:30] The sleepover that still haunts me to my core by wifey of pugs. This happened during a sleepover that my best friend and I were having. We were 7 and 8 at the time, and we're both 16 and 17 now.

[00:07:12] I haven't talked about this incident since it happened. I was living in Florida with my family about 15 minutes away from Tampa. The house that I lived in was relatively old and our landlord was

[00:07:24] terrible. He never came to fix anything, but always seemed to pipe up and be present when our rent was due. This was one of the many sleepovers that my best friend and I had. It started no different from the others. We played with barbies, watched movies,

[00:07:41] and read books until we couldn't take it anymore. We generally went to bed at around 9 or 10pm. When we were going to sleep, I turned off the lights and I climbed up to my top bunk,

[00:07:54] where both my best friend and I were going to sleep. As I lay down, something immediately doesn't feel right. Before getting in bed, I flipped the fan on and my mom turned the AC down,

[00:08:07] but as I was getting in bed, I realized that my fan had turned off. Since the AC was off, I assumed the power went out, so I didn't think too much of it.

[00:08:20] About 20 minutes went by and I just couldn't sleep. I felt like I was dying of heatstroke. I wasn't sure if my friend was awake, so I said her name quietly. She responded immediately and

[00:08:31] said, I'm awake, can't sleep, but it's not because it's too hot. I looked over and could barely see anything except for her silhouette. I looked back up at the ceiling inside. What is it

[00:08:46] then? She replied, it's the man in the corner. When I say that I got chills, I got chills. I slowly looked back over at her and then turned my head to look at the corner.

[00:09:02] I thought that she was lying or was just seeing things since I didn't see anything at first. I went to adjust my blanket and that is when I saw him. A tall man was in the corner,

[00:09:17] seemingly staring at both of us. I let out a breath that I didn't even know I was holding in and immediately gripped my friend's hand and shut my eyes tight. We have to get my mom, I whispered as I felt my friend nodding beside me.

[00:09:34] We both kept lying there, unable to move. Then suddenly I felt the weight and movement of someone slowly climbing up the ladder of the bunk bed. The blankets on the top bunk moved with

[00:09:45] the movement and I slowly opened my eyes to watch the man slowly creeping toward us. I was gasping for air and looked over to see my friend watching us just as intently.

[00:09:57] I looked back at the man but it was so dark that I could only see his outline. I couldn't see any of his features. I tightened my grip on my friend's hand and whispered,

[00:10:10] scream when I tap your finger. She nodded and as I watched the man reach for my face, I tapped her hand and we both screamed bloody murder. My mom came running in no more than 20 seconds later and turned on the light.

[00:10:27] My friend and I were holding each other and crying but there was no trace of the man. My mom checked all the doors and said that they were locked and weren't even touched.

[00:10:38] My friend and I both slept on the couch that night watching Barbie movies and holding onto each other. To this day, I don't know who or what that was but I'll always remember the eerie feeling of death being so close to my face.

[00:11:19] Possible Glitch in the Matrix by Anonymous I live in India and this story happened in 2019. I was studying for my medical exams at the time and was living with my friend, Devi, in a dorm managed by our university.

[00:11:38] There was a 10 o'clock curfew which was when a warden would come by and count the students. I remember it was a Saturday night. I just got back from shopping and had bought a pair of shoes

[00:11:49] for Devi as a birthday gift. I went straight to my room but also noticed that Devi's room was lit so I assumed she was home. I displayed the shoes on my bed and cleaned up a bit. Then I went out into the living room and called out,

[00:12:07] Hey Devi, I got you something for your birthday. It's in my room. I heard her so I sat on the sofa and scrolled through my phone until she came out. I heard her door open and felt her walk behind me as she walked into my room.

[00:12:31] She squealed happily and said she was going to post a picture of the shoes to Instagram. Shortly after hearing her put them on and walk around, I got a notification on my phone.

[00:12:43] I remember it was 9.55pm. She tagged me in the post but it was literally just an empty black square. I could see her caption though which read, Thanks to my lovely bitch. I shouted out to her, Hey something is wrong with your post, it's all black.

[00:13:08] But she didn't respond. That's when I noticed I couldn't hear any sound from my room anymore. Mind you, from the time I arrived until this minute, I never physically saw Devi. I definitely heard her and for sure felt her presence but never actually saw her.

[00:13:30] I got up to check my room to see what she was doing when suddenly I heard bangs from the front door. I jumped up and was terrified. I wasn't sure why but this is when I started to feel

[00:13:44] incredibly scared. I figured maybe it was a warden coming by to count the students before curfew. I checked my phone and it was 9.57pm so I opened the door to account for myself

[00:14:00] and Devi being home. But a warden wasn't at my door, it was Devi. I was frozen and dumbstruck. She pushed me aside and stormed into the dorm, shouting at me for not answering the door.

[00:14:16] I was so confused. She told me she had been banging on the door for 10 minutes. I instinctively ran into my room to check the shoes and there they were, exactly how I left them,

[00:14:31] unopened and untouched. I sat on the floor and started sobbing. Devi rushed in to check on me. I calmed down and explained to her everything that just happened. She thought I was joking. To prove it to her I took out my phone to show her the post,

[00:14:51] but it wasn't there. I saw the time, it was 9.55pm. It has been 4 years and still no one believes me when I tell this story. I have no history with drugs, alcohol or mental illness. Nothing else has happened to me after

[00:15:10] that incident, but I can't stop thinking about it. How come I never saw the imposter Devi in my dorm? How come I couldn't hear the real Devi loudly banging on the door until I saw the post? And then there's the 2 minute time skip. Was it her doppelganger?

[00:15:30] Or maybe it was some weird glitch in the matrix. What do you think? Wakeful Nightmare by Brooke From a really young age I can remember always being a bit sensitive to what I thought were scary thoughts.

[00:16:03] But as an adult now, I really question if it was an overactive fear or something more. I spent much of my childhood and adolescence having frequent nightmares and sleep paralysis. The only experience that I commonly remember, because it was so repetitive,

[00:16:22] was waking up out of my sleep and feeling stuck in my frozen body. I would look around my room and search for a presence there because I always felt like something was watching me, accompanied by the feeling of something sitting on my chest.

[00:16:38] I couldn't move for so long and it would take forever to fall back asleep. This has happened my whole life, even after I moved out of that house. I had a neighbor and a close friend who I would spend a lot of time with.

[00:16:54] And something about visiting her home always felt very energetically heavy to me. Every time that I would visit, I hated going into one of the hallways. It was literally impossible to avoid it because the bathroom was at the very end of this hallway.

[00:17:10] I remember always feeling like I could see darkness collecting in one specific spot at the end of the hallway. But I would write it off as maybe some kind of trick of dim lighting. I think I've always been sensitive to energies on some level,

[00:17:29] but this is one that would always be obvious and prominent. I had nightmares at her house sometimes, but I didn't usually wake up with sleep paralysis. When we were 16, things started to get a bit weird though.

[00:17:44] I remember feeling more and more aware of whatever was in the house. I didn't want to give it attention, but I did remember always feeling uncomfortable. One night I stayed over at her house and we dragged her mattress into the living room

[00:18:00] so that we could stay up and watch movies. I was sleeping on the couch and she was on her mattress, pretty far away from me. That night we went to sleep and I remember getting woken up by the feeling of the couch shaking.

[00:18:15] It felt like somebody was hitting the side of it really hard, right below where I was laying my head. I remember waking up barely and yelling at my friend to stop, thinking nothing else made sense other than her hitting the couch.

[00:18:32] Not that there's any reason at all that she would be doing that, I would wait a short while and then it would start up again, and each time I would get more and more frustrated because it would start up right when I was drifting back to sleep.

[00:18:46] It happened about three or four more times, and each time I yelled at her to stop, until finally I was so fed up that I yelled even louder at her. Then I heard my friend yell at me, from across the room. How can I be hitting the couch?

[00:19:03] How can I be hitting the couch when I'm all the way across the room? I was frozen in that spot, absolutely unable to speak. My eyes flew open, but there was nothing and no one there. My friend fell back asleep and just laid there,

[00:19:23] absolutely petrified while it continued to hit and shake the couch throughout the night. I never stayed the night again. After this experience, I was very nervous about visiting again. However, time went by, and during another visit, we had another conversation about ghosts and demonic entities came up.

[00:19:43] I was telling her a story that another friend had told me she had experienced, which really chilled me. I didn't want to go into details around it, but basically the friend was talking about a demon that they had seen in their childhood home and described it in detail.

[00:20:00] As I'm talking to her about this, we hear a very loud and distinct growl come from the center of her room. I've never heard a sound like it. It was an animal or human. We both just stared at each other in shock. The growling then happened again.

[00:20:20] It was like you could feel the fear and energy ramping up in the room. My friend started tearing up and her eyes began to get incredibly bloodshot. She began yelling, we pissed it off, we pissed it off.

[00:20:33] I remember staring into her eyes and feeling so unsure of if she was just scared or if something was happening to my friend. I was so freaked out. Because we were young and didn't know what else to do, we started yelling for her mom,

[00:20:50] we started yelling for her mom, who for context had always kind of a knowing sense to her that's very hard to explain. I truly couldn't describe her spirituality if I tried. She came into the room with rosary beads.

[00:21:07] The moment that she crossed the threshold of the door, the growling stopped. Now, I'm not a religious person. I've never really been. I'm very much someone who needs to see proof of things to believe it. But this experience truly shook me and I explored Christianity for a while.

[00:21:26] Anytime I had sleep paralysis or any particular situations that seemed to give that same malicious energy that I had felt before, I just prayed until it went away. I'd say it worked most of the time.

[00:21:39] When I went to university, I explored religion a bit further because I had a friend who regularly went to church that constantly invited me. The night that I told her I would go with her and give it a try,

[00:21:50] I had the most intense nightmare that I've ever had. In the dream, my deceased father was alive again, but he had been possessed by a demon and my mother's house was full of demons that had been let in.

[00:22:04] My friend, the one I'd agreed to go to church with, suggested having a priest come and cleanse the house. When the priest arrives, he asks to be invited in and I remember thinking to myself how strange that was, that he seems off.

[00:22:18] We're standing in my garage and I tilt my head to the side to examine him. Then I accuse him of what I know, that he is also possessed by a demon. He starts slowly grinning, the most chilling smile, and then reaches into his jacket.

[00:22:34] I leap at him as I see he's grabbing for a gun. I grab the gun but when I go to shoot him, I realize it's plastic. And then I'm taken from my first person perspective. I'm thrust into a third person perspective. I'm a watcher.

[00:22:51] I see myself looking at him from above, but instead of looking at my dream self, the preacher looks at me, the watcher, and smiles again and says, I will always come back for you.

[00:23:05] Then his brain slips out from his head, sprouts spider legs, and scuttles away into the forest around my house. Waking up, I felt like I had been hit by a train. I was covered in sweat, my body bent out of shape.

[00:23:22] I knew wholeheartedly I didn't control that dream. It was not mine and it was a warning or a taunt. I wasn't safe. I woke up and cried, feeling so raw and vulnerable and scared that something would single me

[00:23:38] out and try to hurt me with such important pieces of my life. I still went to a few youth group meetings and tried to give it a chance, but most of the values of the church went against my morals and beliefs. I just couldn't follow.

[00:23:55] During this time, I had a few encounters with things moving in my room, lights being turned off where I am, little encounters here and there where I would feel the energy shift. And when I would put distance between myself and religion, less things happened to me.

[00:24:13] Eventually, I learned how to protect myself, how not to give these things the energy and attention that they crave. I haven't had any particularly big encounters since I left university, but every now and

[00:24:26] then I have a nightmare that I know isn't mine alone, that it's influenced by something else outside of me. I feel that I've shut this door to the other, and in a way, I almost feel a sense of loss.

[00:24:41] I've cut myself off from these things to protect myself from these negative entities, but in some ways, I wish I could see or hear something positive or just spiritually interesting. I'm sorry this is so long.

[00:24:56] I've had a good bit of other experiences, but these were just the most impactful ones. It's comforting knowing that there are other people who've experienced things that you just can't really explain unless you've been through it. Short Rewind Story by DDA

[00:25:34] I'm sure there are multiple logical explanations to explain what happened, but this has been staying rent-free in my memory for over a decade now. I figure I might as well send this out to the void, either to perhaps get an explanation or offer some validation to others.

[00:25:54] When I was in 7th or 8th grade, my family had moved to a small village, so that meant going to school now involved having to wake up at 5am and sitting on a roughly 90-minute bus ride every morning.

[00:26:10] One day, I pulled an all-nighter to finish some homework, which I allowed to pile up over the week. I shuffled onto the bus like a zombie. I stared out the window for most of the ride while listening to music on my mp3 player.

[00:26:26] About two-thirds of the way to school, I remember drifting into a relaxed, half-asleep state. I'm sure I looked like I was out like a light, but I was awake and fully aware of my surroundings. My eyes were barely squinted shut while muffled conversations leaked through my headphones.

[00:26:47] I remember checking my mp3 player at some point and taking notice of the song's position. Number 141 out of 339. I had 339 songs on there for the longest time, so it wasn't difficult or strange for me to remember this.

[00:27:06] I let my eyes rest a little bit more, and after about 10 more songs played, I was vomiting violently jolted to attention by the unmistakable sound of shattering glass. After hearing this, I took my headphones off and looked around. Nobody else on the bus seemed to be bothered.

[00:27:31] I looked out the window and became incredibly confused when the bus passed the same distinct landmark it passed about 30 minutes ago. On the route to school, there's this pink doghouse-looking thing beneath a tree on somebody's property. It's unique and something all the kids used as a time reference.

[00:27:52] Passing it meant we would pull up to the school almost exactly 30 minutes later. I was really confused, but I just put my headphones back on and tried to shrug it off. Then, even stranger, I felt an incredible sense of déjà vu. I had just heard this song.

[00:28:12] I was positive. I checked my mp3 player, and sure enough, it was song number 141 out of 339. There was no way, right? I skipped the end of the song and checked the next sequence of songs. They were all in the same order I distinctly recall hearing before.

[00:28:37] The only way I can describe what happened is feeling like my life was playing out as a video and suddenly jumped back to a previous part before playing out again. It's worth noting that I would always leave my songs playing on shuffle, otherwise I'd

[00:28:54] have like six songs from the same artist in a row and I wanted to make sure I didn't get tired. I'd have to listen to the same song from the same artist in a row and I wanted to avoid artist fatigue.

[00:29:07] There's also no way all those songs could have looped back in that amount of time. If anybody can offer a completely logical explanation, I'd appreciate it. Or any explanation, for that matter. Any theories about the doppelganger in the dorm room?

[00:29:44] Or was it a glitch in the matrix or maybe something else? I'm thinking it was a glitch too. Mostly because of that lapse in time. The only thing I don't fully understand is how Devi said she was knocking on the door

[00:30:00] for 10 minutes, but the time skip only ends up being 2 minutes. I'm sure if glitches in the matrix actually happen, it's a lot more complicated than that. Okay, yeah, that's fair. I mean, yeah, there's no reason to assume time is some one-to-one ratio when we're

[00:30:19] dealing with things that defy what we already consider to be the laws of nature. Exactly. For all we know, one minute inside the regular time continuum that we're all familiar with could equal five minutes of glitched time.

[00:30:34] I have no idea how it could work, but I doubt there's some formula that's always true. After all, time is just a construct. Kind of like the concept of dog years, right? Yeah, I guess that analogy works. We all see and experience things in different ways.

[00:30:52] I would imagine time works that same kind of way. Like how time flies when you're having fun or how it feels as if it's moving faster as we get older, you know? But I like the dog analogy. Sure, yeah, let's go with it.

[00:31:09] Dogs don't actually have a shorter lifespan than us. Something just makes it seem like they age seven times faster than us. Our perception just gets misaligned, lost in translation or something. Also, you can take into consideration that animals with slower heart rates live longer

[00:31:26] than animals with higher heart rates. That's why some animals with heart rates in the thousands of beats per minute, and yes, those do exist, they'll live for like less than a year. So many ancient tortoises and turtles, they live forever. Yeah.

[00:31:42] Because their heart rates are probably so slow. Yeah, yeah, that's actually true. They beat like 10 beats per minute or something. And there are tortoises that breathe like just a few breaths per minute and sometimes less. Sounds convenient, actually. Kind of puts how important meditation is into perspective.

[00:32:00] It probably does wonders for longevity. Yeah, I hope we can crack that code sooner than later. I want my dogs to live forever. Yeah, you're telling me my sweet little Chewini is like 14 now. But anyway, think happy thoughts, happy thoughts.

[00:32:15] What kind of shoes do you think the author bought for Debbie? I don't know. Jean Paul Gaultier. Impressive. Very nice. I was hoping that Debbie wore Prada. Either way, pretty cool doppelganger glitch in the matrix hybrid story, I guess. Thanks for sending it in. Yeah, thanks for sharing.

[00:32:38] We actually got a couple of good missing time stories this episode. We did, even with the rewind story submitted by DDA. They wanted some logical explanations, but I think there was enough weird stuff at play to make it interesting enough to feature on the show.

[00:32:56] And we'll kind of get into the logical explanations a bit. But I thought it was a cool one either way. Yeah, if the only thing that happened was that they noticed the same pink doghouse twice, that could possibly be explained by sleep deprivation.

[00:33:11] Yeah, and I'm sure the days can blend together. That's a long commute for a kid to go to and from school every day. Right, right. And the repeating songs could just be electronics acting like how electronics sometimes do.

[00:33:27] Yeah, or at the very least, maybe it was all one really long and drawn out deja vu. Yeah, those can last for a while. It's so weird. It's almost like life's way of taunting us over the fact that this is all just one big Truman show.

[00:33:42] Yeah, just staring off into space with your mind blown, wondering when the deja vu sequence is going to stop. Yeah, I like that, sequences. Like there's some time wizard somewhere who call out initiating sequence every time they decide to trip us up with a deja vu. Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:01] Just like in the movies, people with cool abilities, they have to announce everything that they do. Right, right. There's got to be a written rule about that somewhere. But yeah, I know what you mean about the deja vus lasting a bizarrely long time.

[00:34:17] They're usually only a couple of seconds at most. But I've had some that went on for what at the time felt like 30 seconds. Damn, yeah. We're probably thinking the same thing. Yeah, we were just stuck in some sort of cycle of familiarity. Everything just seems way too familiar.

[00:34:36] Yeah, yeah, you're right. It feels like you're stuck in a loop or something and it just goes from being kind of cool to kind of unsettling after that initial second or so. So what about DDA's experience? Could that have been just a really elaborate deja vu?

[00:34:52] I think if we're strictly speaking logical explanations like they asked for, it's a fair guess. If it wasn't something more paranormal, that seems pretty likely. But between the sound of shattering glass, the songs looping back how they did, and where

[00:35:09] the bus physically was on the road, there was just too much happening at once for it all to amount to just some lapse in perception. Yeah, I'm on the fence about it all, but for the most part, I gotta fully agree with you.

[00:35:23] Just too many moving parts for a coincidence to happen in my opinion. But strictly for the sake of being hyperlogical, even at the expense of possibly being annoying, I have a not impossible theory. Okay, let's hear it.

[00:35:40] So they fell asleep on the bus without realizing it before their memory of checking the song number. The shattering glass was just a case of exploding head syndrome, which is an actual thing that I won't get into right now. Right, right.

[00:35:54] The glass woke them up, and they happened to be by the pink doghouse. Since that's something they saw every day and had an association with, it could have played a role in whatever delirium they could have been likely experiencing. I like that.

[00:36:11] And especially with not sleeping for 24 hours, being suddenly awoken in that type of way, it could lead to a lot. And I guess, I don't know, who's to say they weren't dreaming about being on the bus?

[00:36:25] Yeah, that just goes to show that even the most rational explanations can be just so out there just to make it work. And that's not suggesting that paranormal stuff always tries to make it work, but anything is possible. And it could, I don't know, whatever. Yeah, that's it.

[00:36:41] I love it. Okay. Let's talk about Brooke's story. Okay. Okay, all right. Okay, I do want to talk about Brooke. I want to give Brooke a quick note of encouragement. So, Brooke, look at me. Look at me in the eyes.

[00:36:58] I loved your story, and I can attest to being attacked by other entities in dreams. I had this really vivid lucid dream where I asked my spirit guide to take me to the healing light.

[00:37:11] Now, this is a light source that's talked about in a lot of lucid dream accounts and books that I've read. And it's supposed to be capable of like healing the dreamer, and it carries over into your real life. It worked for my friend Haley.

[00:37:24] She had chronic stomach pains and all these sicknesses, and it just went away when she went to this healing light. Anyway, when I asked for the favor, this giant shadow of a hand waved across the room, and I was then transported to this abandoned industrial type location.

[00:37:42] It was really grim. I just felt immediately this dark force all around me. It felt like death was all around me. And because I was lucid and aware of it being a dream, I knew that I had just been tricked right away.

[00:37:57] It was definitely some evil dark entity that was not my spirit guide messing with me. And I just ended up jumping up and flying out of there. Then I had a really great lucid dream until I woke myself up.

[00:38:09] I wonder what would have happened if you stayed there. Well, probably nothing of any real danger. I don't think anything that happens in dreams can like hurt you, you know, in the real world. I think it was just some like dark entity that was messing with me.

[00:38:27] Anyway, it is believed in Eastern traditions that when we're awake, we're actually asleep. And when we're asleep, we're actually awake. You know your life is just a dream, don't you? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You actually are referring to Buddhism though, yeah? Yeah, definitely. Okay, yeah.

[00:38:46] I know that the Buddha teaches that we live life as a kind of wakeful sleep and that mindfulness is a really helpful practice to improve just about everything. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it also helps with your dreams.

[00:39:01] So I want to recommend this book to Brooke called Dream Yoga by Andrew Holtrick. It's like this deep dive into Tibetan dream work. And I think you'll be able to benefit a lot from it if you're serious about being able

[00:39:16] to have a more positive spiritual experience in that realm like you talked about. And once we start thinking about our dreams as an important part of our spiritual being and becoming more wakeful to them, it also improves your life outside of sleep. So it's a win-win.

[00:39:35] Yeah, the wakeful sleep stuff is such an interesting concept that we're living in some sort of ignorance or delusion, not fully aware of the true nature of reality or what we think of reality or what we think reality is. Dreams are perfect for exploring this.

[00:39:51] In fact, we should do another dream episode. I know that's definitely not a point of contention among the listeners. Yeah, listen, I can understand how some listeners probably feel that way about the dream episodes.

[00:40:04] That is until you get serious about dreams and you just kind of explore that world. It's always just going to be a dream to you. You really got to get into it. It just feels like there's less at stake until you accept that dreams are where the

[00:40:17] real stuff happens and waking life is basically just like an intermission. That's a cool way of looking at it. I like that. Oh, thanks. It's good enough to leave on. Anyways, thank you guys so much for listening. Make sure you send your stories to stories at oddtrails.com.

[00:40:33] And if you want to get all of our episodes at a higher bit rate and ad free, you can go to patreon.com forward slash odd trails to sign up and support the show today. You'll get instant access.

[00:40:45] All the stories you heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Let's Not Meet and the old time radio cast. We just released a new episode this week.

[00:40:57] Check that all out at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Everybody stay safe. Peace out. Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you.