I Don't Play With Ouija Boards (Anymore) – Ep. 145

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_02]: at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. Trust. Believe.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Guardian Angel by Mark

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's important to note before starting that I'm not religious in any way,

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: shape or form. Total atheist. So for me, I'd say this experience was paranormal.

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_00]: The only religious person in my family is my grandmother.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: This happened in 2016 on the M8 motorway in Glasgow, Scotland. I had not long turned 21

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and I had just purchased my first brand new car. It had a 2-liter diesel engine.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like I was driving a Ferrari after my crappy old underpowered car.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Just after midnight, I was approaching a dead straight stretch of desolate motorway.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I decided to hit the gas and see how powerful and fast my new car was.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: No lecture required, I know how stupid speeding is now.

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_00]: As the speedometer climbs, the thrill builds.

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_00]: As I zoomed along the road, I noticed a flash of lights in my mirrors

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: as if a car had flashed its high beams behind me.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: When I looked though, there was nothing except total darkness and the faint red glow of my

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: tail lights. When I looked forward again, my eyes were immediately drawn to a white feather

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: stuck to my wiper blade, fluttering in the wind. I'm certain it wasn't there beforehand.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: My grandma always preaches, a white feather means your guardian angel has paid a visit.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I would roll my eyes at this but now I'm not so sure.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought about my grandmother's words and decided to call it quits on speeding.

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I slowed down and my adrenaline began to dwindle.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I kept cruising at around 50 miles per hour.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_00]: As I glided along, I noticed some dark shadows a short distance ahead.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I flick on the high beams, the shadows are getting closer, fast.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It dawns on me, it's a group of deer in the middle of the road.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I hit the brakes and hold down the horn.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I came to a dead stop, just feet from where they stood, before they pranced away into the night.

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_00]: What were those flashing lights? Where did that feather come from?

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever happened that night, it encouraged me to slow way down, well below the speed limit.

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: If I hadn't, I'd likely have plowed into a group of deer at extremely high speeds and could have

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_00]: ended up dead. I've never sped in a car since and now I believe in guardian angels.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Why I Don't Play With Ouija Boards Anymore By Anonymous

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_02]: There will be two stories here. I want to preface this by saying I grew up seeing ghosts

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_02]: so the whole topic of spirits isn't new to me. However, I was so scared by them that around the

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_02]: time I was about 7 or 8, I trained my brain not to see them anymore. I never talked about it with

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_02]: friends because my family never believed me, so I assumed they wouldn't either.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_02]: The first story takes place back in the 2000s. I was a little girl celebrating my friend's birthday.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_02]: She always had a Halloween party to celebrate because that's when her birthday happened to be.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_02]: She always talked about how her basement felt weird and she didn't like staying down there alone.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, having 10 10-year-old girls sleep over on Halloween night isn't exactly bedroom material,

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_02]: so her mom and grandma set us up in the basement. There, we played those weird games like light as

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_02]: feather, stiff as a board, and stuff like that. Fun fact, I was the only one we successfully

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_02]: levitated. I remember opening my eyes and I was damn near the ceiling. It was scary.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_02]: When some of us started to get tired, we brought out the Ouija board.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_02]: A few of our friends were scared, so they didn't want to participate. We asked innocent questions

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_02]: like kids usually do. Who is the birthday girl going to marry? How old are we going to be when

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02]: we have kids? And stuff like that. I remember I asked a question about myself and it replied,

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_02]: dead. Which was weird. Some of the girls got even more scared by that. Then, a girl screamed

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: and said that she saw something behind me in the mirror. We stopped after that. For a few hours,

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_02]: the three of us, including myself and the birthday girl, couldn't sleep. We weren't sure if the board

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_02]: was real or not, so we decided to try one more time while everyone else was asleep, thinking that

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_02]: since they didn't want to play, it would be better that way. It was close to 3am, and what we heard

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_02]: was the witching hour. Remember here that we are about 10 or 11 years old, very dumb, and have no

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_02]: idea what we're doing or who we're talking to. We asked the board if it could do something for us.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_02]: We said at 3.15am to have the girl who saw something in the mirror wake up and say something

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_02]: to us. It was over 15 years ago, so I don't remember what was asked. All I know is we asked

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_02]: her to look into the mirror and say it. 3.15am was about 20 or so minutes from when we asked the

[00:07:23] [SPEAKER_02]: question. I remember us saying goodbye to the board and putting it away. The three of us were talking

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_02]: about how impossible our ask was when 3.15am hit. We knew it was 3.15am because her basement had a

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_02]: big grandfather clock that didn't ring anymore, but the clock function still worked. We were waiting

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_02]: and waiting, and right before it changed to 3.16, it happened. The girl shot straight up out of her

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: blankets and looked right into the mirror with her eyes closed. She whispered what we asked her to say,

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_02]: then dropped to her pillow like nothing happened. We all looked at each other, frozen. None of the

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_02]: other girls who were sleeping stirred at all. None of them moved not even a centimeter.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_02]: We were so scared that we didn't sleep until the sun came up, and in October in the Midwest,

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_02]: that's pretty late. We got three hours of sleep tops that night. This was my first ever Ouija

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_02]: board experience, and it changed the way I view spirits forever. I still think about it and feel

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_02]: guilty that I basically asked for one of my friends to be possessed, needless to say, don't

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_02]: ever do that. The next event happened nearly a decade later. I was a senior in high school,

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_02]: and one of my cheermates invited the whole team over to celebrate her birthday. I didn't know it,

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_02]: but she had a Ouija board. She brought it out, and I said, no, it's not a good idea.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I guess her grandma had just passed away, and she was really torn up about it. I was very adamant

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_02]: that this wasn't a good idea, and that we didn't know if who we were talking to would be her

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_02]: grandma or not. She promised that she would just try it twice and then put it away. By this time,

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I knew a lot more than I did back during my first experience. I told her that she must say goodbye

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_02]: each time the girls rotated, and had them put salt around the board to keep whatever was talking

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_02]: inside the board so that no one would or could get possessed. They tried it at least four times

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_02]: with different girls every time, and the planchet just didn't move once. They all laughed at me for

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_02]: how scared I acted earlier, saying that the board is stupid and doesn't actually work.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I got annoyed because some of them knew about my experience. I shared it with a few who were

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_02]: already hesitant about the board when it was brought out. I said, you know what? I'll do it,

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_02]: and I'll prove to everyone that these boards are real. It was me, the birthday girl who was a class

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_02]: below me, and two other girls from my class who only joined the team for our senior year.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_02]: We put our fingers on the planchet and did three circles to begin. I asked who we were talking to

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_02]: when the planchet moved for the first time that night. The two girls in my class were huge skeptics.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_02]: They accused me of moving the planchet, but the information that came out was information I never

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_02]: knew until they connected the dots for me. The board first went to the letter J, then to the

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_02]: letter R. We were all confused because JR isn't a name or the name of anyone that we knew,

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_02]: or so we thought. We then asked why they were here in the board spelled out friend.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_02]: We asked again who this was, and the board spelled JR. We asked what J stood for, and the

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_02]: board spelled out J-O-N-A-T. One of the girls from my class screamed, no way. We all looked at her

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_02]: in confusion. She asked, is this Jonathan Ramon? The planchet immediately moved to yes. The two

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_02]: girls sat quietly, and we just waited. The birthday girl asked who JR was, and the girls

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_02]: began to explain. JR was a guy who was in a class above me. I knew of him, but nothing about him

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_02]: personally. I had been cheering at our school for four years, so I knew him from the football team.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_02]: That was about all I knew of him. He had passed away our sophomore year, his junior year, due to

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_02]: his car's exhaust. He didn't want to wake his parents after driving home from a party in the

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_02]: middle of the winter, so he slept in his car with the car on in the garage. His parents found him

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_02]: the next morning. I remember it totally ripped apart the class. His friends didn't show up to

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_02]: school for at least two weeks out of grief, and we had a big celebration on the football field

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_02]: in the spring. Back to the Ouija board situation. The two girls in my class were panicked. They

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_02]: looked at me weirdly, and I said, well, it must be him coming through. They said no, it's impossible

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_02]: because the board doesn't work, and that I'm making all of this up and moving the planchet.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_02]: They told me I was a horrible person for impersonating JR, and I said that I wasn't,

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_02]: because I truly wasn't. I said, let's keep going and see what else comes up.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_02]: I knew that they were friends of his and would be able to validate the information that came

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_02]: through. They reluctantly agreed and feverishly asked a few more questions.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_02]: They asked what his football number was. The planchet moved to two numbers,

[00:13:25] [SPEAKER_02]: and the two girls were in shock. I looked at them with a questioning expression because, again,

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know this about him. It had been two years since he passed, and I had no idea what

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_02]: his number was. I couldn't even remember the number of the assigned player I had a few months before.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Then, they asked what color car he had. The board answered red. This was true. I at least

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_02]: remembered the picture that they had for his celebration. It was him in his red car because

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_02]: he loved the car. They then asked who his best friend was, and I had absolutely no idea who it

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_02]: could be. Again, we had similar friends, and we were at the same places at the same time,

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_02]: only occasionally. But I never spoke to this guy, and our mutuals didn't really talk to me about

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_02]: him because we didn't have anything in common other than friends and the football-slash-cheerleader

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_02]: type of association. The board then spelled out his best friend's name. The guy was the only one

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_02]: in our school with that first name, and we asked for a last name just to see if it would spell it

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_02]: correctly, and it did. The girls didn't even say goodbye. They flung the board at me. They called

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_02]: me a liar, saying that I made everything up. They were sobbing and screaming at me. It made me so

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_02]: uncomfortable. I was nothing but the tuner, the instrument that opened the veil for them,

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_02]: and they thought that I was an awful person. The whole team fell silent, and I just left due to

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_02]: discomfort. Even though I had been captain of our team and had cheered with the majority of those

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_02]: girls for at least three years, most of them didn't talk to me, even at practice, for at least two

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_02]: weeks. So many of them thought that I was either crazy or disgusting. Only a few of them understood

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_02]: that I wouldn't have known that stuff based on who I was friends with at school and who I actually

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_02]: hung out with. JR and I never truly crossed paths for conversation until that night, if it was

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_02]: actually him, that is. I think it was, but I do know that spirits can pretend to be someone and read our

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_02]: thoughts and memories of them. I don't use Ouija boards anymore because you never know who you're

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_02]: going to get or who you're going to piss off even if it works. Now, I'm a practicing energy reader

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_02]: and medium, so all of this type of stuff in my life has taught me how to further connect, in a

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_00]: safe way, beyond the veil. Remember when vaping used to be all the rage? I know some people still

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[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Now back to the show.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: My Dad Hid A Family Secret By Angie

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_00]: My dad kind of revealed a family secret. His health is deteriorating before my eyes,

[00:18:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm seeing his once strong and wide physique shrink, and him becoming frail. It hurts to see.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_00]: He sat down in his chair and said he thought he was having a stroke.

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_00]: He kept talking to himself, talking about death, about how he wasn't afraid to die,

[00:18:59] [SPEAKER_00]: and he was practically dueling death before my eyes.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_00]: He said, You don't scare me you son of a bitch, to open air in front of us.

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And we were none the wiser about what was happening.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: He then said something I never thought he would say. He said that he felt euphoric.

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_00]: He started talking about altered states, and how sometimes when he was working as a doctor,

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: he would enter these states, and he was able to feel certain things beyond any rational explanation.

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_00]: He tried to tell my mom, she didn't understand. She was completely speechless. It was like she

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_00]: was too afraid to talk. All of this was terrifying to her, but I was right there with him the entire

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_00]: time. He asked my brother if he had any intellectual interests, and my brother replied that he liked

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00]: video games. My dad cursed under his breath, disappointed. Then my mom said, Ask her.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_00]: My father never really looks at me. We never talk. And he turned to look at me.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: I told him that I understood. Relief washed over his face. We talked about individuation,

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Jung vs Freud. We talked about quantum physics and the physical world versus the spirit world.

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It felt like he'd heard me for the first time in my entire life, and I heard him.

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Politically, though, we're very different. He was also an alcoholic when I was small,

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and that left me deeply traumatized. I thought he would kill us. I thought he would kill everyone.

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_00]: His hulking physique and alcohol were a lethal pairing. He even admitted to hiring someone to

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_00]: kill his ex-girlfriend when he was drunk. But thank God that plan fell through.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot between us. I feel like we had no understanding of each other whatsoever.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_00]: We lived on different planets, different universes even. Parallel but never truly touching.

[00:21:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Never once seen. This was probably the first proper conversation I've had with him in years.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00]: We go weeks without saying a word, or even looking up when one of us enters the room.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing. But knowing that I saw and truly understood him calmed him down from his delirium.

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_00]: He relaxed visibly, and was no longer fighting death. He settled down and ate some ice cream.

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But he told me something that shook me to my core.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_00]: He said that spiritual gifts run in the family. His grandmother said she saw heaven.

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Coincidentally, about a week prior, I was crying bittersweet tears because I saw heaven too.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Or something like it. I saw the afterlife. It was beautiful yet terrifying.

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I'd never been happier, and I'd never been sadder.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_00]: A major truth was revealed to me. That on this plane of existence, we can't experience

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_00]: the full capacity of love. The love I felt transcended everything I felt before.

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever I had thought love was, was just a speck compared to the light I felt.

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I knew I would never feel this amount of love or happiness again. So that hit me hard.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_00]: My entire life I thought I was the freak in the family. That I was alone. That no one could

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_00]: feel what I felt. Especially within my own family. They'd never understand me.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So that door was blown wide open. It was living under my nose the entire time.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_00]: The entire time there were two mystics under one roof. Yet we were too guarded or afraid.

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Too stubborn. Too stuck in old stories. I'm also incredibly sensitive.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like my dad is too in some ways. I've never seen him cry. He didn't even cry when his

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_00]: mother died. He says he'll never cry for anyone, but he blows up in anger so easily.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So of course he's sensitive like I am, just in a different way.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_00]: That day I shoved it all beneath me. My mother was terrified. She was looking to me for answers.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Is he crazy? She asked. No, I answered honestly.

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't crazy. Because if he was crazy, then I was crazy. But I know what I feel is real.

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_00]: She dismissed the whole thing and suggested that he might be schizophrenic. Which hurt.

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_00]: But I pushed it down anyway. The next day I woke up terrified.

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know why. I just felt so anxious. I tried breathing exercises, everything.

[00:24:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But the sense of dread was still there. I'd seen my father around all my life.

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Miserable, angry and getting sick. If that's what hiding your radiance and gifts does to you,

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_00]: then I don't want it. I don't want to die when I barely turn 60.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_00]: But it was like he was letting himself die. In fact, he said he wanted it to happen.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I saw a part of me, the part that was scared and felt judged, that hid, that felt like such

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_00]: a weirdo. Watching my dad made me realize that it would slowly kill me, like a slow-acting venom.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I was seeing it before my eyes. No one understood him for all these years,

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00]: not even inside his home. And look at what that had done.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_00]: He was a big angry man, hiding gifts and altered states. And possibly even God inside of him.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And so was I. We were both hiding. I couldn't live like that.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_00]: I went to the bathroom and cried by myself for a while, and no one knew.

[00:25:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know what to do with this information, and I still don't. But it's there. The story is there.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a bittersweet story. I don't know what I'm going to do with these gifts.

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I hope I can make us proud though. One day.

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Two years. My company would send us in for a few weeks to do preventative maintenance on valves

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_02]: and piping. I met a young man from Arizona during an outage in Nebraska whose fiance was Navajo.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_02]: He told me this story. Her family had been asked to take in an old black dog who was sick

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_02]: and was believed to be close to dying. The dog had been found somewhere in a rural part of the desert.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_02]: The dog just laid in one spot in the back bedroom and rarely got up.

[00:27:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Immediately after taking the dog in, the family began experiencing consistent bad luck. Their

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_02]: car batteries were dying every other day, they had a chicken coop, and every morning at least

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_02]: one chicken died during the night. Their cat ran away, never to be seen again. They also reported

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_02]: having bad dreams almost every night. After a few weeks, an elderly family member was told about

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_02]: these strange occurrences. That elder told the family that the dog was likely the cause of their

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_02]: problems and advised them to take the dog far away from their home and get rid of it. I don't

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_02]: know if that meant putting the dog down or dropping it off somewhere. And I want to be clear,

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I would never do this to any animal. This is just the account I was given.

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_02]: That evening, the father decided to follow the elder's advice. He walked back into the bedroom

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_02]: to carry the dog out to his truck. As he reached for the dog, its demeanor changed.

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Before, it didn't pay attention to the people petting it or checking in on it. But now it was

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_02]: growling, baring its teeth. He left the dog right where it lay and walked into the living room to

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_02]: discuss the situation with the family. As they sat there, the bedroom door opened, and the dog ran

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_02]: through the house and out the door, disappearing into the night. But it didn't run on all fours

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_02]: like a dog would. It ran on its hind legs like a human. They never saw the dog again, as far as we

[00:28:59] [SPEAKER_02]: know. The young man telling me this story said that he didn't see the dog run out of the house,

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_02]: but he had been present for many other strange happenings and he believed his fiancé when she

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_02]: told him the whole story. The person that told me the story seemed sincere, and I wish I was still

[00:29:20] [SPEAKER_00]: in contact with him. My Daughter's Story by Anonymous0212

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I was driving home during a rainstorm late one night, and came across a woman standing by the

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_00]: road next to her disabled car. This was before cell phones, so I stopped and picked her up.

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00]: When she told me her name, we'll call her Jamie, I felt the earth shake and clearly heard a voice

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_00]: in my head say, You will have a daughter, and her name will be Jamie.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_00]: The second part of the story also feels a bit paranormal, or at the very least, inexplicable.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It turned out that I had clinical infertility, and after three years of trying to get pregnant

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and having a bunch of tests, the fertility specialist gave me a prescription for a drug

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_00]: that triggers ovulation. I really felt like I shouldn't take it, that it wouldn't be a good

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_00]: idea to try to override my natural body if there was something wrong that was causing the problem.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_00]: When I left his office, I went to my local health food store and sat out front holding

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_00]: the prescription. I prayed for a clear sign of what I was supposed to do.

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_00]: About 15 minutes later, a friend of mine drove up. When he got out of his car, he saw me and said,

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you must be the reason I'm here. He was studying to become an osteopath, a kind of natural

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_00]: doctor, and he told me his professor for his last class had let everyone out early, which had never

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_00]: happened before. He said he just knew he was supposed to come to the health food store,

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: in the middle of the week, which he never normally did. Something in his gut told him to come here.

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_00]: When I told him what I was going through, a light bulb went off in his head.

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_00]: We went into the store and he grabbed a book about a health problem that could cause exactly

[00:31:49] [SPEAKER_00]: what my test results showed. He later called the doctor who had written the book and found

[00:31:55] [SPEAKER_00]: out what medication I needed. After three years of trying, and only four months after starting

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_00]: the medication, I got pregnant. Sure enough, it was a girl. And you better believe we named her

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Jamie. So I've spent a decent amount of time reading and learning about a lot of the phenomena

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_02]: that we cover on the show, but I still feel like I don't fully understand what a skinwalker is.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_00]: It's definitely one of the more mysterious cryptids that we get stories about.

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it seems to borrow from other legends and lore like shapeshifters, mimics, or werewolves,

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_02]: which is what I think that these folks might have been dealing with in Crimson's story.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Right, right. They could all be part of the same phenomenon, or it might depend on who witnesses

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_00]: it. Being that the fiancé was Navajo, there could be some cultural influence.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know what you mean. And, you know, if someone were to have a sighting like this in

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_02]: somewhere like England, they might refer to it as a werewolf based on

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_02]: certain popular culture and ideas. But they could all be the same thing.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe they just make themselves as familiar as possible to get our attention. Who knows?

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting though how animals often serve as some harbinger of, I don't know,

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_00]: misfortune. The dog in this story reminded me of the whole unlucky black cat thing.

[00:33:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, good point. And then you have crows and ravens which represent death,

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_02]: I think in Norse and Celtic folklore, right?

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I believe so, yeah. And then biblical serpents. Poor animals. What's next? Do seagulls cause

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_00]: diarrhea? I'll be honest,

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I've never been that close to a seagull in my life.

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to. I hate them.

[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I see videos of them like stealing people's food and stuff like that if I'm

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_02]: I've never actually been around one.

[00:34:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I used to equate them as being rats in the sky and then I had some pet rats and now I

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_00]: feel horrible for equating seagulls to rats. I love rats but seagulls, no, they're no good.

[00:34:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, aside from the smell, I love rats. The bits, they're great.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. Mentioning biblical serpents jogged my memory about something I wanted to bring up

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_00]: about the story involving the baby Jamie story.

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I think I know where you're going to go with that, but I'll just let you make the connection

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_00]: yourself. Well, if I caught it, you definitely did too. When the author says they felt the

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_00]: earth shake and heard a voice in her head say, you have a daughter and her name will be Jamie.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, that's the one.

[00:34:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Nice, nice. Yeah, that was like straight out of the Bible. You will become pregnant and give

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_00]: birth to a son and you will name him Jesus. When the angel Gabriel tells Mary what's about to go

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_00]: down, I probably butchered the verse though. Yeah, that sounds close enough, but yeah,

[00:35:13] [SPEAKER_02]: that's exactly where my mind went to. We don't know what the author's religious affiliation is,

[00:35:18] [SPEAKER_02]: but she did also mention praying for a sign later on in the story.

[00:35:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And since we're fair and open to all explanations and nobody really knows anything,

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I feel comfortable suggesting that maybe God or whatever even non-religious name you want to use

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_00]: spoke to her. Yeah, I'm with you there. Like how we talked about culturally

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_00]: relevant stuff manifesting in people's experiences, there have been so many near-death experiences,

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: even psychedelic trips where people experience ego death and have their religious beliefs

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_00]: validated. I'm sure we've talked about that before, but like with anything else,

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_02]: it's just interesting to me. Yeah, yeah, we probably talked about it when we discussed

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Robert Monroe at some point. He called those belief system territories. That's right, that's

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_02]: right. Yeah, in some cases you'll experience what you truly believed in your life on earth

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_02]: after you die. Not all the time, but it does happen. Yeah, or on a different side of the

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_00]: same coin people experience a sense of oneness and unity that sort of transcends any one religious

[00:36:20] [SPEAKER_00]: school of thought, but in a way that doesn't disprove anything but shows how they all

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_02]: ultimately lead to the same path. Yeah, yeah. In his later books, because he wrote three books,

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Robert Monroe in his later books, he talks about how he was actually helping people that had

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_02]: recently passed on to adapt to being dead and accepting death and the fact that they were a

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_02]: spirit or a soul. There would be these zones or areas that they would go to that were kind of

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_02]: familiar to their belief systems, whether that be heaven, purgatory, or just like a nice park

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_02]: that looks like it was on earth or something. He would go there and he would help them to

[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_02]: accept that they were moving on. It's almost like God or the all-powerful being or whatever

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_02]: waits for us when we die. It's like that force is trying to ease us into the idea that we're

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_02]: going back to our spirit form, you know what I mean, by appealing to us. That's very charitable

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_02]: of Robert. Yeah, yeah. Not to be a downer, but I really hope that it isn't just the Matrix giving

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_02]: us permission to write our own destiny. Like we're in some sandbox simulation,

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_00]: punching codes into the terminal, anything goes. Yeah, yeah. I'm just posing the question,

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_02]: exploring options. I don't personally think that's how it is, but it's definitely a fearful

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_00]: thought that I've thought about. Yeah, no, I agree. It's possible,

[00:37:48] [SPEAKER_00]: but not probable, which is a very good thing. Yeah. I also liked Mark's story with the white

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_00]: feather on his windshield. Like the baby Jamie story, it wasn't something way out there,

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_00]: but still makes you rub your chin and wonder how much of it is or isn't a coincidence.

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. All some or hopefully none of it. Yeah, neither of those stories sounded like

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_02]: 100% coincidence to me. No. For the Jamie one, it's too convenient to write off the

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_02]: voice that the author heard as some kind of auditory hallucination.

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's such a common thing. Like, oh, they must have been hallucinating or,

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_00]: oh, they must have mental illness. Oh, they must be on drugs. Like, no, no. Plus with her friend

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_00]: feeling so strongly inclined to go to that store where he literally ends up answering her prayers

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_00]: or at least acted as a vessel. Right, right. And with Mark's story, several things stuck out to me.

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The bright lights behind him appeared out of nowhere and were nowhere to be seen after. And

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_00]: the white feather appeared out of nowhere too. And the meaning is so specific to what his

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_00]: grandmother told him actually causing him to slow down. Yeah. And sure enough, there ended up being

[00:38:57] [SPEAKER_02]: a valid reason for him to slow down. It just all made too much sense just to be a coincidence.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. Just one thing after another. Oh yeah. I also wanted to touch on Angie's story about her

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00]: dad. Yeah, none of your stories this week were like super spooky, but that's not a bad thing.

[00:39:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. Our goal isn't to scare people. Sometimes it just happens.

[00:39:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I just thought it offered a lot to think about. Yeah. I mean, at this point in the podcast,

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_02]: we've been scared by so much. It's refreshing to have stories like this, but

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_02]: that one managed to be sad and wholesome. It sucks that it took so long for her and her

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_00]: dad to form some sort of connection. Yeah. And of all things to bond over, it's spiritual gifts.

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_00]: He sounded like your typical rough around the edges, humorless and no nonsense type of guy,

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_00]: which makes the sensitivity even more surprising and interesting to me.

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. I like how she mentioned he was a sensitive guy just in his own way.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Won't cry or show any empathy, but is basically quick to blow up in anger towards others.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. Basically the worst kind of person with all due respect.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, with all due respect. But no, I'm glad they were able to establish that sort of connection.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00]: She can at least have some closure and hopefully not harbor any resentment now that she understands

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_00]: him and feels like he was finally able to understand her. Right. I think the major takeaway

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_02]: is not to hold back. Be vulnerable. Get to know the people you're closest with or the people that

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_00]: at least you should be close to. Yeah. Yeah. Life is so short. It's so weird to

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_00]: really think about how every single person alive today and listening will be gone eventually. And

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_00]: poof, it's all in the past and we're just left for the history books. Well, that sounds like a

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_02]: perfect place to end things right there. Whomp, whomp, whomp. Yeah. Anyways, thanks everybody

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_02]: so much for listening. Make sure to send your stories to stories at odd trails.com if you want

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_02]: to hear them on the show and sign up for our Patreon for ad free versions of all of our episodes

[00:41:01] [SPEAKER_02]: at a higher bitrate at patreon.com forward slash odd trails. Finally, make sure to check out the

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_02]: new episodes of my other podcasts like let's not meet cryptic encounters and the old time radio

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_02]: cast at cryptic county podcasts.com wherever you get your podcasts. See y'all next week. Everybody

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_02]: stay safe. Y'all peace out real good. Okay. Ghosts and the ghouls to stay