Episode 172: The Flickering Candle

[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. You just trust. Believe.

[00:00:58] Wildest Experience in the Coromandel in New Zealand by Shakta Shaker. This happened nearly six years ago when my partner and I first got together. We decided to go camping by the beach in Koro. It's very remote, nothing for ages down the road. We were sitting on the rocky beach and he started telling me about a conversation he had with his mate. His mate was chatting about seeing some

[00:01:26] weird lights in the sky. And partway into the conversation, they both saw the lights in the sky above them. Not even five minutes later, it started. I know this sounds far-fetched, but we have spent almost six years trying to figure it out. We are both in scientific careers. We are evidence-based people. If we had not experienced it at the same time, we would not even have believed it.

[00:01:56] Two strikes of lightning, no thunder, and then lights in the sky slowly aiming towards us. What looked like a coast guard's searchlight started scanning across the forest around us. Then it stopped directly in front of us. This is a small bay, and there were no nearby boats before this started. When the lights turned off, we saw that there was no boat. No lighthouse, nothing that

[00:02:24] could have created it. It lit up the entire mountainside. It definitely wasn't some kind of torch. Then, particular strings of lights started weaving around the trees. And here's the thing. I saw them as off-white, but my friend saw multicolored lights, and he is completely colorblind. They were far too

[00:02:48] fluid to be drones, and the trees were very close together. Then, these weird beams that looked like flashlights but didn't quite look right started signaling all around us in the sky, waving over to us, then back to the sky. We were surrounded by dead branches, yet we heard footsteps. Each time we

[00:03:10] turned off the car lights and turned them back on, they came closer and closer. My friend then heard laughter right beside him, but still no footsteps and no visible people. So we drove out of there and found a site to set up our tent. We were sober and of sound mental health. To this day I have no idea what it was. I've scoured the internet, local libraries, etc., and have found nothing.

[00:04:01] Shadow Husband by Elizabeth. I've been listening to your podcast for a while and have always wanted to submit a story, but nothing spooky has ever happened to me. Boring, right? That is until a couple of weeks ago. I'm open to the idea of the paranormal, but I'm an engineer. I need

[00:04:25] logical proof if I'm going to believe in something. I love watching ghost hunting shows, but that's really the extent of my interest in the supernatural. My husband plays beer league hockey about three times a week, with games that can start as late as midnight. After being married for a little over a year, I've gotten used to him coming home anywhere between midnight and 2am. I'm a light sleeper,

[00:04:53] so he usually wakes me up when he gets in. This particular night, I heard him come inside, climb the stairs, and open our bedroom door. He went to shower, brush his teeth, the usual routine. I must have drifted into a light sleep because I didn't notice him slide into bed. Then I rolled over.

[00:05:17] I glanced toward the window and saw my husband standing next to our bed, staring at the curtains. It was odd. Maybe he was just trying to move quietly so he wouldn't wake me again. Lost in that thought, I suddenly felt my husband shift between the covers right beside me.

[00:05:38] My heart leapt out of my chest. Panic and adrenaline flooded my body all at once. I shot straight up in bed, blinking hard. My very real, very human husband was lying next to me, looking confused. I snapped my gaze back to the window. But the figure was gone. Vanished. I can't remember if I screamed

[00:06:06] or made some kind of noise, but my husband turned to me, concerned. What's wrong? He asked. I don't know why I said it, but I blurted out, Oh nothing, you just startled me. Maybe I didn't want to acknowledge what I had just seen. Maybe I was just too afraid to put it into words. My husband and I are both in that mindset of, if you don't think or talk about it, nothing will happen.

[00:06:36] I barely slept the rest of the night. If my husband had been in bed the whole time, who was standing next to our bed? Was it looking out the window, like I first assumed? Or was it looking at me? Was I just in a weird state of sleep, imagining the whole thing? The figure felt too real. I haven't had another experience like that since. But I can't shake

[00:07:05] the feeling that this won't be the last time I see that shadow figure again. Spring is in the air.

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[00:09:10] Working in a morgue in the 90s by Undersizzle. The following took place in 1990 in a Southern California medical school morgue. I'm going to relate things in detail, as I can clearly still remember them as if it were yesterday. All the names of the people in the story have been changed

[00:09:33] to protect their privacy, especially that of the descendant. The entrance to the main morgue office and the laboratory is housed behind a solid secure pair of double doors. These doors are often left open during work hours, but if nobody is in the office, they are secured. As soon as you step through the threshold, about a yard away, there is a big blue shower curtain that conceals the room behind it.

[00:10:01] To the right is the office area, which is somewhat cramped with three large desks and one huge filing cabinet. The basic files of each case are initially kept in the file drawers until the case has been used or moved on to the next location. To the left is a large storage area that houses freezers for bodies, as well as numerous shelves with specimens and supplies. As cliche as it may sound,

[00:10:30] the day of the sighting started out like any other. I was the only one working on three separate cases, all situated on their respective gurneys and in different stages of the embalming process. I had been working on the cases for approximately three hours without interruption from any of my co-workers. It's safe to say I was very absorbed in my work that day. It was getting close to lunchtime,

[00:10:57] so I decided to wash up and head to the office. As I passed by the door to the room that held the three large vertical refrigerators and the rows of already embalmed bodies, I looked to my right and clearly saw a full-sized apparition. I froze in my tracks like a character in a cartoon and looked further to see an old van standing in front of the closest vertical refrigerator.

[00:11:23] He was simply standing there. I could see through him, but at the same time I could clearly identify him as a human, or a person at least. As I stood there looking, for what felt like minutes but was probably only seconds, the apparition turned, looked at me, and then simply faded away, disappearing almost like cigarette smoke dissipating into the air. I continued staring in that direction, dumbfounded.

[00:11:53] It wasn't scary in the least. Almost comforting, as if it were a completely natural everyday occurrence. I walked into the office and saw my co-worker, William. I exclaimed, you won't believe what I just saw. He was completely unfazed, looked at me and said, he saw a ghost. I was more taken aback by his knowing what I had seen than by the experience itself.

[00:12:21] He went on to tell me that he had seen them quite often and enjoyed the interactions when they happened. When we told our co-worker, Joe, what I had seen, he was completely taken aback, scared and frantic. I tried to explain that the visit was more of a comforting interaction rather than something out of a typical Hollywood haunting, but that offered him little comfort. The rest of the day felt off-kilter.

[00:12:50] One of the other employees who worked for the morgue office in a paperwork capacity was Lola. She worked way down the hall, far from the actual work facilities. She was responsible for processing every piece of paperwork that needed to be handled through our office. She was a petite, insightful lady who strongly believed in spiritual events and interactions with the deceased.

[00:13:16] She often attended séance-like events with friends and claimed to have had successful contacts. She mentioned that she had plans to attend one of her spiritual meetings the next day and would bring up my experience to the group. We all thought that that was kind of neat, but we shrugged it off and didn't really think much of it. That was until three days later when she came back to speak to us about what she had learned.

[00:13:45] Apparently during their séance, the group leader reached out and inquired why the apparition had appeared before me. The group leader sensed that the apparition was just confused and didn't quite know where to go. This theme continued throughout the session with the overwhelming sense that the apparition was uncomfortable and lacking direction. The other extremely noteworthy impression that the group leader received was the letter W. It appeared repeatedly.

[00:14:14] It was as if the entire session revolved around confusion and the letter W. Everyone's curiosity was piqued by what Lola had to say, especially mine. We all then walked over to where I had seen the apparition and I explained exactly what happened. That's when things got eerie. I don't recall who noticed it, but on one of the refrigerators directly in front of where I saw the apparition was a name tag.

[00:14:44] The tag said William Wood. There is no doubt in my mind about what I saw that day. Looking back, I believe that my conscious level of thinking was low while my subconscious was heightened, as I had been so focused on my work all morning. Somehow, I think this allowed my subconscious or inner spirit to see something that I normally would not perceive.

[00:15:10] It was as if my mind had reached a heightened level of relaxation or openness, enabling me to witness something beyond the ordinary. My grandfather saved my life by Kayla.

[00:15:42] I was driving home one night and came to a stop at an intersection where a major highway turns into a residential road, and people coming from the highway are supposed to slow down. I was sitting at the red light waiting for my turn to go. I was going to be turning left towards the highway. But when the light turned green, I felt my whole body freeze up. And very loudly, right in my ear, I heard a man's voice.

[00:16:10] But it wasn't just any man's voice. It was the very distinct voice of my grandfather, who had passed away two years prior. I clearly heard him yell, No! I jumped. And being the only person at the light, I didn't go right away. I was so startled and needed some time to gather myself.

[00:16:34] As that happened, a car came barreling down the road from the left highway side and ran the red light. Had I gone when my light turned green, this person would have no doubt hit my car on the driver's side. I don't know that I would have made it out alive. To this day, I'm convinced it was my grandfather. And it's not the last time he has spoken to me.

[00:17:20] Things started happening. By disastrous pass 5629. At around 1 or 2 a.m., the power in our apartment went out. I just ignored it. Tonight is the second night since his passing. And again, just before 1 a.m., the power in the apartment went off and then came back on again soon after. This rebooted the printer right next to my bed and it startled me.

[00:17:50] This got me out of bed because I thought that it could have been him trying to communicate with me or let me know that he was still here. I'm not an expert or majorly interested in the paranormal. But I never rule anything out. I decided I would go to the living room where everything was still dark and silent to try and sense him. While I was walking to the living room, I got the strong smell of ammonia.

[00:18:18] This is important because, unfortunately, when somebody passes away from liver cancer, they begin to smell strongly of ammonia because it's no longer filtered like it would be in a normal person. All I could smell during those final days with my uncle was the smell of ammonia. I went into the living room and at one point, when I stood in the middle, I had goosebumps all over my body, especially towards the back of my head.

[00:18:45] When I walked away from that spot, the goosebumps gradually went away. I cried a bit and tried to say some words to him. I also asked him to send me another sign, that it was really him, so that my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. At this point, I was a bit of a mess and at a total loss as to what to do. So I lit a candle and I played one of his favorite songs. The light of the candle began to flicker vigorously,

[00:19:14] so much that it was almost like having a strobe light in the house. The other thing that happened was a bunch of dogs outside began barking. When mass barking like this happens, it can be a sign of paranormal activity. I don't know, what do you make of all of this? Do you think that my uncle is trying to communicate with me or do you think my mind was just playing tricks on me? If this happens again tomorrow, what things could I do to try and communicate with him,

[00:19:43] if it is indeed him? The Flickering Candle by Maria I have two stories I'd like to share with you today.

[00:20:11] I've been listening to both Let's Not Me and Odd Trails for a while, and I finally feel comfortable enough to tell you about my experiences. One of them happened when I was 12. What I initially thought was just a weird, vivid dream might have actually been something else entirely. A glimpse of a past life, maybe? The other is connected to my father's passing and some strange occurrences in his final days.

[00:20:40] The first experience happened when I was asleep in my childhood home. I suddenly woke up out of nowhere. But instead of just sitting up in bed, I found myself standing next to it. And when I looked down, I could see myself still sleeping. That alone was terrifying. Before I could even process what was happening, I felt like I was being pulled through the wall and window in front of me,

[00:21:08] like I was being sucked into something at incredible speed. Then, just as suddenly, I landed. I was on a deserted beach, facing an unnaturally still body of water. There weren't any waves, no sound, just silence. And for some reason, I started walking toward the water. It reached my waist when I noticed others beside me,

[00:21:37] moving forward at the same slow, deliberate pace. Deep inside, I knew we were walking to our deaths. We were all going to drown. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the scene changed. I was now floating, looking at the same beach from above. But everything was different. I was now surrounded by large buildings, roads, and civilization.

[00:22:07] A man and a woman stood on the shore. The man, dressed in a white gown, turned to the woman and said, Back then, thirteen hundred and nineteen people died here. Without a doubt, I had been one of them. I was filled with terror. I felt myself being pulled again. Everything blurring and moving impossibly fast. Until I was back in my room,

[00:22:37] hovering above my bed. I saw myself still lying there, asleep. Desperate to stop whatever was happening, I forced myself to lay back down into my body. The moment I did, a strange electricity-like sensation rushed through me. At the same time, I could still see everything, the room, my body, and myself settling back in.

[00:23:07] Then I woke up. That morning, I told my mom about the dream. She had been diving into the mystic world for a while and mentioned it to a friend, who told her it was likely a memory from a past life. I didn't think much of it until years later. An ex-boyfriend suggested I look into historical records. I did some digging and found an old history book from Argentina.

[00:23:36] It mentioned thirteen hundred and nineteen indigenous people who had died on the margins of a river during a battle. I saved that page, but years later, my computer broke, and I lost it. I still don't know what to make of that experience. Was it a dream? An astral projection? A glimpse of something real? I don't know.

[00:24:04] The second experience happened when I was twenty-seven. My father had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. There was nothing to be done, so they sent him home to spend his final days with us. The disease took him quickly, just a month and a half. In his last days, he stopped communicating with us, speaking only in whispers, often mumbling the names of his parents and siblings,

[00:24:33] all of whom had passed before him. Two days before he died, I decided to light a candle for La Viren de Lerdis, a saint he had prayed to from time to time. I found a used, thick candle and placed it beside his bed, thinking it would burn out by morning, but it didn't. By the next day, it was still burning. There was barely any wax left,

[00:25:03] yet the flame remained strong. I couldn't explain it, but something inside me whispered that once the candle went out, so would my father's life. That night, I sat beside him, watching him breathe, watching that flickering flame. At around five a.m., my mother woke me up, telling me something was wrong. His breathing had changed.

[00:25:33] I went to his side, held his hand, and told him it was okay to go. And then, he did. He took his last breath, his eyes softening as they closed. At that exact moment, the candle finally burnt out. You know what's even more strange? Almost immediately after, my neighbor's dogs began howling all at once. Loud,

[00:26:01] desperate cries that sent chills down my spine. The next day, my family and I talked, and all of us had felt it. My father's life and that candle were connected in some way. Crazy, right? But that wasn't the last strange thing. The night after he passed, I woke up to see a tall, slim figure standing at the foot of my bed. It wasn't human.

[00:26:31] It had no face, no eyes, no mouth. Its body was transparent, jelly-like. I could see tiny particles suspended in the mass. I had never seen anything like it before. We just stared at each other. Then, it handed me something. A balloon, shaped like a poodle, made of the same jelly-like substance as itself.

[00:27:00] I tried to reach out and grab it, but my hands passed through it. I tried again, and again. The third time, I woke up, sitting upright in bed, my arm outstretched. I still have no idea what that meant. I'm not a fan of poodles. I don't even like balloons. Was it a sign? A message? A mistake? I've tried searching for similar experiences,

[00:27:30] but I haven't found anything quite like it. Even now, I'm left wondering, what did I see?

[00:27:59] Spooky Deer Camp Encounter by Hot Dogger 2020 I once held a hunting lease in middle Georgia. It was an abandoned hunting camp that hadn't been used in several years. I'm not superstitious at all, but this place was legitimately spooky. It was miles down an overgrown dirt road and completely surrounded by woods. It's probably the most secluded place I've ever been.

[00:28:26] I used to hunt there by myself a lot, and there was always this weird sense that I wasn't really alone. One evening, I was hunting down in a small valley by a food plot we put in lining a creek that bordered the property. From the minute I sat down, I had a weird feeling, like I wasn't in a safe place, and even though I was holding a gun with ballistic-tipped rounds, I didn't feel like I was the top predator out there. I didn't see any deer

[00:28:55] while I was sitting in the stand, but the forest was abuzz with activity. Birds, squirrels, and other critters were singing their normal evening symphony, and then all of a sudden, silence. Everything stopped. It felt like everything in the woods was looking right at me. It was getting dark fast, and I was extremely creeped out, so I picked up my gear and started to walk back up to the cabin. About 100 yards away, I had this feeling

[00:29:25] that something was coming up behind me. I spun around and pointed my rifle back down the path toward the food plot, and that's when I saw it. There was something standing in the middle of the path. It wasn't human, but it didn't look like a deer or anything I had seen before. There was hardly any light to make out any features, but it almost looked like some kind of bipedal deer. It was just standing there,

[00:29:55] staring at me. I quickly made my way back to the cabin, packed my stuff up, and got out of there. I let the lease run out and never went back after that.

[00:30:31] So, the key part of that morgue story isn't that the morgue was haunted. That's just kind of expected, I guess. Yeah. What stands out is that this ghost was clear, full-bodied, and interactive, yet only one other person saw it, while another claimed to see spirits all the time. Yeah, and then like, a third never experienced anything at all. Yeah, I think this is something that's way more complex

[00:31:00] than just a haunting. The experience covers topics like perception and consciousness. Yeah, yeah. And then, I guess that's totally backed up by how it all happened. The author was really focused on work, you know, fully absorbed and all the repetitive tasks that they had to do for hours. That's something that's super common and experiences with all these altered states of consciousness. Yeah, even mundane tasks can sometimes induce paranormal experiences

[00:31:29] or something supernatural because I guess anything can be a form of meditation, really. Yeah, yeah. Like the whole flow state that you end up in. Yeah. When the brain is like, just relaxed enough, it can kind of tune into things that we normally filter out. And, you know, I know it sounds weird. It's not some woo-woo crap. It's, you know, something that's backed by good research in parapsychology. It's called

[00:31:59] hypnagogic receptivity. Ooh, I love it when you do your homework. I actually have a short history lesson for you later. Nice, yeah. I hated it as a kid, but I love it as an adult. Yeah, same. I'm always learning new things. It's actually fun now. Most of the homework from our childhood, I think, was just busy work, so, and plus we were forced to do it, so, you know. Yeah, sometimes I like busy work, but it's only when, you know, that busy work is something that I enjoy. Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:28] That kind of circles back to the whole flow state thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyways, I was looking into the connections with neuroscience and the paranormal after reading that story, and I found that there's something called inattentional blindness. I hope, I hope I'm saying it right, but it's where our brains basically filter out a massive amount of sensory data at any given time, and it basically just focuses on what's important in that moment. Okay,

[00:32:58] so I think, yeah, I have inattentional blindness. That makes sense. I like that. That's very validating. Yeah. Yeah, and ghosts or hauntings, I guess, could exist in that filtered out space. Yeah, exactly. Maybe this guy's extreme focus created a moment where that filter just kind of dropped, and then, I guess for a second, he saw what was always there. It's kind of revealed itself in some way, or his mind was able to tap into it. I don't know. Yeah, and that ties into

[00:33:27] another interesting part about the story, and that's the fact that he wasn't even scared. Yeah, that's relatable. We see that a lot, too. Like, we hear of people being scared and all that usual stuff, understandably so, but we still see some, I guess, neutral reactions is one way to put it, just kind of being at peace or not caring about whatever's going on, just kind of experiencing it. Yeah, yeah, and he described it as a calm experience, almost like it was something

[00:33:57] ordinary. Going to the post office. Yeah, exactly. I guess that could mean that the apparition was actually part of what all the fancy ghost hunters on TV call residual hauntings. Yeah, yeah, that's a classic one. I love those shows. Yeah, it's a weird thing that I'm able to bond with my ultra-religious dad about. For some reason, he gets a kick out of those shows. How does he feel about you having a paranormal podcast? Honestly, I can't say he's ever even listened

[00:34:26] to a single episode. Neither has my grandma. She's also very religious, and I just kind of told her not to or requested that she didn't. Yeah. Um, you know, just whatever. Don't want anybody to get like the wrong impression of like we're trying to like conjure up some weird demons in our lives or anything like that and you know, different generation, but maybe the people that don't listen to it that are close to us, it's probably like the proximity effect. They don't, they don't really feel comfortable consuming content like this, like made by people

[00:34:55] that they're close to. Yeah, yeah. It's not that they don't like it. It's just kind of weird. I mean, my wife has never even listened to a single episode of my podcasts. Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. It makes me uncomfortable when people I'm close to like, hey, I listened to your latest episode. I'm just like, no, can you, can you not? Let's just, let's just not do this. Right. Um, I appreciate the support though. Yeah. All the same. Um, yeah, I get it though because like the last thing she wants to hear

[00:35:25] is more of you talking, you live together and just, nah. Yeah, that makes two of us. Yeah, I can't listen back to my own voice. Yeah, it's a good thing that we do that for a job. It makes it easier for sure. I can listen back more objectively and it's not as bad as you may think. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, going back to the story, it was also crazy how the medium picked up on the letter W at the seance before they ever

[00:35:54] even saw the tag on the fridge back at the morgue. Yeah, and that just happened to be the first letter of both names on the fridge, William Wood. Yeah, I mean, that's the exact kind of thing that investigators look for in spirit communication, getting specific information before it's verified. Yeah, Wood and Willie, that was like a staircase whip anyway. I just wanted to say Wood and Willie. Sure. But yeah, that's, uh, that's usually where skeptics tend to split. Some say that

[00:36:24] kind of thing is confirmation bias, but I can see that being a possibility. And there's been plenty of documentation on psychic research where people could identify unknown information that was later verified and they would have no idea of coming across that information. So it's nothing new. It's just, it seems to be dismissed or forgotten in these kind of debates. I wonder if the author picked up on the name William Wood before seeing the ghost. Like, they saw the tag and their brain produced some sort of visual?

[00:36:54] Yeah. I don't know. I'm just spitballing at this point. Eh, whatever. It's a cool story. Yeah, yeah. It made me want to try that mortuary assistant game again. Oh, game. Okay. I thought maybe you wanted to be a mortuary assistant at some point, like, after the podcast dries up. That was very surprising. But, yeah, the game, that's still on my list. Yeah. Well, at first, you have to have time to play even one of the hundreds of games we already have and talk about playing. I actually canceled

[00:37:24] Xbox Game Pass the other day just because I just don't play anything anymore. Yeah. But I think adding to the Steam library is like its own dopamine boost to where we don't actually have to play the games. But, you know, whatever. Life has just been hectic. Maybe I'll get around to it. Yeah, it'll get better. Oh, thanks. Fingers crossed. So, Maria's story, the titular, is that the word? I got it wrong one time. You got it right. The titular, the titular title. Yeah.

[00:37:53] I don't know what's more unsettling about the second part of her story. The faceless figure standing at the foot of her bed or that balloon animal. I have no idea what to make of that. What do you think? Yeah, and why a poodle? Like, it's got to be the most random choice ever. Like, was it trying to be comforting? I don't know because if it were her dad, I imagine he would have tried giving her something that he knew she liked, some sort of sentimental, like, oh,

[00:38:23] that's definitely my dad, but, I don't know, some, like, jelly-textured balloon poodle. I don't know. Maybe there's some deeper meaning here, but I'm not seeing it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe there is some deeper meaning of poodles that we just don't understand. Yeah. Or maybe that thing just sort of copped out and figured, oh, humans like these, right? Just made a balloon animal and called her today. Yeah, like how she just knew that it was

[00:38:53] a poodle too. Yeah, that's, okay, yeah, I don't understand that, how she knew it was a poodle. Balloon animals aren't super detailed. I could see maybe if it were a wiener dog. Yeah, that extra long, girthy body. Like, when you see a balloon rabbit, like, you don't think to yourself, oh, that must be a southwestern sun bunny, you know what I mean? Yeah, you don't, Maria might.

[00:39:22] I'm sure she does. Yeah, I also thought that the specific number of people that she heard had died was worth noting. Yeah, it was like 1,300 or something, right? 1,319, yeah. Yeah. And before you ask, this is the history lesson I talked about. Okay. I actually did dive in a little bit and I think I found the battle that she may have read about in that history book. Nice, nice. Yeah, it at least sounds like it could be it. So there was

[00:39:51] a battle in Argentina called the Conquest of the Desert. The official title is in Spanish and yes, I could say it, but I don't want to risk butchering it. It happened in like 1880, sometime around there and more than a thousand indigenous people died. So I think that could be it and it happened right along a river via Rio Negro. Damn, yeah, that could definitely be it. That'd be cool if like Maria had some premonition and now we know the exact number

[00:40:21] for the first time. We can hope so. Yeah. So what was the battle over? I don't know, a conquest like any other, nothing fun. Yeah, those are never fun. No. It's fair. It's cool that you were able to I guess sort of confirm that if any history buffs have any ideas, please let us know. Yes, please. Yes, please. So I know that you had to have loved that candle part. Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:50] Like when the king passes away and the prince and the pauper, you know what I mean? Yeah, the Disney version. Yeah, of course, that's what we always talk about. Yeah, yeah. I haven't read the original book. I think I read maybe a wishbone version of it, like a really bastardized, updated version of it, but I don't think I've ever read the original. Yeah, yeah, I want to get around to that for sure. I think after reading Alice in Wonderland, that kind of opened my eyes to be like, wow, these things are actually worth going back

[00:41:20] to read the original. But anyway, yeah. Yeah. I think it was probably synchronized with her father's passing. I mean, that's such an obvious cliche, but it happened and I think it probably happened for a reason. There's something very telling about a candle going out at the time of death. That's like the tattoo I have of the skull with the melting candle on top of its head. People think it's some weird morbid thing, which I guess technically it would be, but yeah, it just symbolizes

[00:41:49] the inevitable time countdown of death or whatever it is I'm trying to say. Yeah, I think so too. And the dogs reacting right at that moment. Oh yeah, the dogs, the dogs, yeah. It's crazy to think about how there could just be more than one presence or force at play with this sort of thing, you know, like did whatever that caused the candle to go out have some sort of influence on the dogs? Or were they two separate things present at that moment?

[00:42:20] Ooh, yeah, exactly. The world may never know. Oh, bummer. Yeah, that's the moral of our podcast. Yeah, Tootsie Pops. Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks everybody so much for listening. Send your stories into stories at oddtrails.com to hear them on the show. And be sure to sign up for our Patreon. You're going to get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at patreon.com forward slash oddtrails. Come help support the show, keep us going. And be sure to check out the new episodes

[00:42:49] of my other podcasts like Let's Not Meet, Cryptic Encounters, and the Old Time Radio cast. I'll see you guys next week. Everybody, stay safe. Peace out.