Episode 176: My Mom's Ghostly Twin

[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] My Moms Ghostly Twin by Abolished Barbie 3. This story happened years ago, but if you know me personally, I've told this story at least once in our friendship, which means you likely know my little brother as well. He also knows this story that I'm about to share with you as he experienced it with me. He'd tell you the same exact story if you asked him. I'm sure he remembers it the way that

[00:01:27] I do, and it's a core memory that we cannot get rid of. At this time, we lived in a small two to three bedroom home. It was an upstairs downstairs home and consisted of me, my mom, my little brother, and my little sister. Now, my little sister and I shared a bedroom, and my little brother had his own. But my mom had her bedroom downstairs, so she didn't sleep on the same floor as us.

[00:01:55] Around this time, I remember being in my late elementary ages, probably seven or eight years old. My siblings were a year and two years younger than me, so you can imagine we'd easily get frightened by the dark and our imagination around bedtime. It's expected to have these irrational fears at this age, but it also didn't help that our house was a little off at night. My mom would joke,

[00:02:23] that it was her ghost boyfriend, Jerry. But I think that deep down inside, she said this because she was also scared, and she didn't want to give us any further reason to be scared ourselves. Our house was especially weird at night. Things would make noises on their own accord, such as heavy footsteps that belonged to nobody. Creeping around the house at night, making the

[00:02:50] floorboards creak, even stomping in certain rooms of the house on some nights, demanding to be acknowledged. Voices echoed in the halls that were not ours. They were at the same time clear and vague. Silent cries or weeps, sometimes calling out to somebody. Anyone listening to them. Things would disappear and reappear in the home. It was all weird, and I swear whatever else lived there

[00:03:19] had a thing for tormenting me and my siblings. I never really acknowledged it when we lived there, but when I revisit these memories, I get unsettled, as it definitely wasn't normal. This night was a regular night for me at bedtime. I had been lying down in my brother's room with him and my sister, as one had mentioned that they were feeling uneasy, so me and my sister decided to sleep

[00:03:47] over in my brother's room. This just helped us to get to bed easier. It especially helped that his bedroom window invited the light from the street into his room, making it slightly easier to see in the dark, rather than mine in my sister's room, which would be darker at this time. It didn't help that we also had a large closet in there as well. I laid the furthest and closest to the edge of the bed,

[00:04:17] waking up from the bed rocking from time to time as I slept. My brother's bed was a loft bunk. It was high enough, but also had enough space under it that you could completely sit up. The only thing under the bed were piles of dirty clothes, so there was no space to crawl or move around under there freely. My eyes wandered around the room. With me being half asleep, I followed the lights reflecting on

[00:04:44] the wall and into the hallway of my brother's doorway. That's when I saw the figure, the shadowy figure. It was a silhouette mimicking my mother. As you'd expect, my breath stiffened and my eyes widened, my attention heightened by this potential threat while I had a mini heart attack and the loud silence. Almost instinctively, I shook my brother.

[00:05:12] He was closest to me, and I didn't want to take my eyes off of whatever it was I was looking at so that I could tell if I was seeing this for real. I shook and shook, refusing to let him fall back to sleep after the first few shakes. When he was finally awake, I immediately felt relief. Something about him being awake told me that I wasn't dreaming now and no longer alone in experiencing this. A reason to be brave.

[00:05:43] I cleared my throat and was able to ask him when he sat up, Do you see that? I pointed it out to him. I described it as he tried to find what I was looking at. It was so dark that it was hard to tell if I was just imagining it or if it was real. The best way to describe it is that it was a shadowy figure, a literal silhouette.

[00:06:07] It had no face, no clothes, but a shadowy aura that made it hard to see its skin or its body clearly. The only thing that seemed really visible was its hair, which was an exact copy of our mother's. It was so curly and the same length, practically laid out in the same style my mom's hair would lay in.

[00:06:31] It continued to stare at us silently, standing there still, uncanny, and somehow feeding on our fears. It was so unnerving the way that it just stood there in the hall, hiding right before the doorway, peeking into the room at us. It blended into the dark. The only way for us to tell if it was really there was by the strands of its hair that stayed visibly clear.

[00:07:02] It stood there listening to our irrational conversation and weak attempts to scare it off, staying still and silent. My brother, now seeing it, had gotten the same idea I had and began calling out to it, believing that it was our mother. Mommy, we see you. We know that's you, mommy. Now that I think of it, it really frightens me that we even thought it was our mom to begin with.

[00:07:33] That's how similar it was to her. And with so few features to work with, we were still convinced, out of fear. The fact that it knew it looked like her and mimicked her is what really scares me. My reasoning to believe that this was my mom was maybe she wanted us to go to bed, so she scared us to do so. But it also didn't dawn on me that I had woken up to that originally.

[00:08:03] In the process of me and my brother trying to convince ourselves that it was her, we laid back down to show her that we were going to bed, in hopes that she would walk away, move, or say something to prove that it was her. Especially if we were assuming she was doing that one distinct mom glare that moms do to get their kids to behave. Looking away for a slight second, the figure finally moved.

[00:08:31] It was abrupt and quick. It ran at us and hid right underneath the bed. My brother and I looked at each other fully convinced that this was our mom now. We believed she might be playing an odd game with us. So we decided we were going to peek under the bed. So we did. After sitting up from the jump scare, we looked and didn't see anything but the laundry left there from before.

[00:09:02] It looked untouched. Also very still. We didn't see our mom, just those piles of clothes. This made my heart sink immediately and my mind went to, whatever it was is gone now, but it's also right under us. I know that my brother was scared as well because he began hiding under his blanket and scooting away from the edge of the bed. I did the same thing, ensuring that my siblings were safe

[00:09:30] as my sister slept through all of this right beside us. To this day I have no idea what I experienced, but this ghost or entity has taken up some space in my brain. I don't know how we slept after that, but we did. It was so scary, we never spoke of it until years later, and when we brought it up to our mom, after moving out of that house, she had a nervous laugh about it, as she had never heard of this happening.

[00:10:01] But she also confirmed she had never done something like this to us. It was a weird home, after all, and I have a few more stories of weird encounters that have happened there, but they were all quite a bit less traumatizing. Let me know if something similar has happened to you all, and if we know what to call this phenomenon.

[00:11:16] The Knock Came First, by GF67 bought our first home in a quiet, older neighborhood just outside of Dallas. The layout doesn't matter, but I know how much you guys like basements, so I'll just say that it had one. Overall, the house was old and outdated, but had the charm of being lived in. Nothing unsettling about it. For the first few months, things were normal. Occasionally, though, I'd find a door cracked open that I thought I'd closed,

[00:11:45] or hear a floor creak when no one else was walking around, but none of it really concerned me that much. One of the doors was especially strange to see open, though. The hallway linen closet. It catches on the frame, and you have to pull pretty hard to get it open. There have been times where I'd be home alone, and I'd find the door open, not long after I already passed it and saw it closed. I didn't see anything else weird, though, or hear anything, just the fact that it was open.

[00:12:15] But if anything, I suppose the fact I didn't hear it open is a little strange. I hate the sound it makes. Usually, I chalked everything up to drafts in the house settling. But in late September, things started happening in a way that I couldn't dismiss or rationalize. The first incident was a knocking sound, another one of your favorites. It was a Friday evening around 1130. My wife had gone to bed early,

[00:12:44] and I was out in the living room playing video games with the volume down pretty low. We didn't have a doorbell yet, just one of those simple brass knockers on the front door. I remember distinctly hearing it. Three knocks. Not loud, not soft, just deliberate. And unmistakable. I muted the TV and waited to hear something else. Nothing. So I got up and went to the door and looked through the peephole.

[00:13:14] I didn't see anybody. This was stupid, don't judge me, but I walked outside. I just wanted to see if there was any sort of movement or activity out there, but there wasn't. I figured maybe it was a prank. I even checked the ring camera footage the next morning, but there was nothing but me standing there, looking confused. I heard the knock again that following night. Same time,

[00:13:44] same rhythm. I rushed to the door faster this time, still no one, and the street was empty. I didn't mention it to my wife at first. I didn't want to freak her out, and honestly, I was still trying to come up with a rational explanation myself. Pipes, vibrations, maybe something loose in the frame of the door. But then, the following week, I was out with some friends when I got a text from her. Did you knock on the door?

[00:14:15] That was when I finally told her what I had experienced. She wasn't happy to hear it. Neither of us slept much that night. We started paying closer attention, setting alarms, staying up a little later, keeping an eye on the front of the house. Most nights were quiet, until they weren't. The knocking always came in threes, and always between 1125 and 1135, never earlier,

[00:14:44] never later. And then, it moved. Not time slots. One night, we both heard it coming from the back door in the kitchen. It was a different sound, hollower. There's no doubt what we heard. We didn't have any cameras back there, so I flipped on the floodlight and went to check, but once again, didn't see anything. It didn't help that around this time, both my wife and I started having bad dreams.

[00:15:14] Not nightmares, exactly, just dreams that left us both feeling unsettled, like it wasn't just the two of us in that house. One night, I dreamt I was lying in bed and heard footsteps in the hallway. When I turned my head, I saw the silhouette of a man standing in our bedroom doorway. I couldn't move or make a sound. The man just stood there. I don't remember waking up, but in the morning,

[00:15:44] my wife told me I had been talking in my sleep. She said I was mumbling the same short phrases over and over, but the only word she could make out was answer. We brought in some professionals. No, not any paranormal types or a priest. An electrician first, then an HVAC specialist. Nothing wrong with the boiler. No loose wires. No vibrations in the foundation.

[00:16:12] We even had the house checked for animal activity. No signs of raccoons or squirrels nesting near the doors. The knocking slowed down at least, but it was still there. Eventually, we started ignoring it. We figured if it was something trying to get our attention and we didn't give it the satisfaction, maybe it would stop entirely. It didn't. But something changed. One night, when we were sitting in the living room,

[00:16:42] we heard it. But rather than the usual three, this time, it was just one single knock. Something about it felt heavier. We didn't check the door. The next day, my wife got a call from her mom. Her grandfather had passed away around midnight the night before. He lived in another state, and she hadn't seen him in years, but he was important to her. It was one of those calls that hits harder than you expect.

[00:17:13] I don't know if it was connected, but I do know the knocking stopped after that. It's been six years, and we haven't heard it since. No knocks. No shadowy figures. No weird dreams. We still live here, and we still don't have a proper doorbell. Maybe it was all just a weird coincidence. I don't claim to know what it was. But I do feel that something was trying to be heard.

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[00:19:03] that's tryfume.com, and use code TRAILS to claim this limited time offer today. Stuffed animal dropped out of thin air by absolute grief. Last night, my wife and I were going to sleep a few minutes past midnight. We don't have any kids, we don't have any pets,

[00:19:32] we're the only people in the house. We had washed our bedsheets and duvet earlier in the evening, and had put the fresh bedding on right before bed. My wife has a stuffed animal, possum, from when she was younger. It's named Puddenpop. He is usually just plopped down at the end of the bed, and sometimes down on the floor when he rolls off of the bed. Occasionally, she'll cuddle up with it when we're going to sleep.

[00:20:01] While falling to sleep, we were lying there talking. I was spooning her with my arm. My head and my arm were the only parts of my body outside of the covers. As our conversation is trailing off, as we're getting sleepy, I say something like, where's Puddenpop? Did we put him back on the bed after making it? She just says that she isn't sure, and then we're quiet three minutes go by,

[00:20:30] and Puddenpop suddenly lands on my arm, which is slung over my wife as we're cuddled up. He's a stuffed animal with the same material that's inside Beanie Babies, and he makes a distinct plop sound, as if you were to drop a Beanie Baby down on a table. It's very audible. Our eyes both shoot open immediately. Did you just drop Puddenpop down on me somehow? No? How could I have?

[00:21:00] She responded. She was completely under the covers, other than her head. She's immediately freaked out. The stuffed animal came down on me hard enough for her to feel it through the covers and jolt us both up. We have no bedside table by the bed, nothing at all that he could have fallen off of. Our bed is essentially just up against a wall in the middle of the room. I have no explanation of where he came from,

[00:21:30] how he just dropped on top of us or anything. It's very bizarre, and I found it very hard to sleep for the next hour. Gate Kids by Charlie.

[00:21:59] Have you ever heard of the Gate program? Gifted and talented education. My district called it TAG, talented and gifted. It was a program run through schools for kids who hit early milestones or demonstrated advanced abilities. I was selected for the program when I started school. My mom thought it was just about keeping me ahead academically, but now I'm not so sure. Apparently, my blood type,

[00:22:29] O- was also a factor. The memories I do have of the program are strange. We were removed from our regular classes for TAG sessions, and each time we'd start with a fluoride test. They'd give us this chalky pink drink to swallow. We also had hearing tests and played games, designed games, or went on special field trips. But here's the thing. My memories of these sessions feel incomplete.

[00:23:00] I remember going into the sessions, but I don't ever remember leaving them. Outside of the program, my life started to change. I began fighting sleep every night, terrified of something. I surrounded myself with stuffed animals at night, building a fortress for protection. From what? I don't know. Maybe it was the voices murmuring in the dark, or the way light would shine across my room,

[00:23:29] like passing headlights. But there were no cars. The nightmares were relentless. I'd see myself in third person, like I was watching my own life unfold. They were so vivid, so unsettling, and they didn't stop until my twenties. And then there was the hat man. I first saw him during this time. I was awake, fully aware, and there he was,

[00:23:58] a shadowy figure wearing a tall hat, watching me. I still see him, every so often. My cousin has seen him too, throughout her life. When I asked if she had been in a program like this, she said yes. She's ten years older than me, and also O negative. I can't shake the feeling that these things are all connected. What's more unsettling is how this program seems to linger in my life.

[00:24:28] I hear the opening tones of the gateway tapes, and it's like I'm transported back to being that terrified little kid and tag. Even now, I'm connecting with others who were part of the program. We were piecing things together, comparing notes, but we were just kids. What did they make us do? What was the purpose of those games and tests? And then there's how my abilities changed. I became ambidextrous without even trying.

[00:24:59] I also developed this strange ability to know what was happening to my loved ones, no matter the distance. I even remember feeling like I could float down the stairs as a child. I know how this all sounds, but for the record, I'm sober, I'm sane, I just need to know. What was that program really about? And what did it do to us? One last thing. I've heard a wild theory

[00:25:28] about the Titan submarine from Ocean Gate. Some people think it may have found a portal in the ocean. Maybe it explains the name, or the mystery surrounding the search efforts. Thanks for all you do. Now I'm off to face my fears and finish these tapes.

[00:25:45] I experienced time distortion as a child by Arleto. This happened when I was about seven years old.

[00:26:15] I never really gave it another thought until recently, when my mother reminded me it happened, and how we were never able to explain it. I was in summer school, and during one recess, I was playing on the playground with this girl I had become close to. Usually when recess is over, a loud bell would ring to signal that it was time to go back to class. On this particular day, the girl and I were lost in our own little world of make-believe. We didn't hear the bell ring,

[00:26:45] and eventually, we noticed that we were alone on the playground. The weird thing is that there were yard duties on site, so an adult would corral the kids if they didn't immediately respond to the bell. But that day, there wasn't an adult to tell us to go back in. inside. There weren't any kids crawling around on the monkey bars with us. It was just empty. It really felt like the playground had only just vacated after a few minutes, so we figured

[00:27:14] we would be in huge trouble if we made our way back to the classroom. Upon entering the classroom, the teacher immediately yells out, Where have you girls been? We've been looking for you. It turns out two hours had passed from the time that the bell rang to when we reappeared. We were yelled at for disappearing, but as a child, I never really understood why I was in trouble. I never left the playground, so why was I getting yelled at? Looking back on it,

[00:27:44] I have to wonder, did we disappear? Does this sound like missing time? It really felt like we had taken our recess as normal, and nothing weird happened. The creepy thing is that both the girl I was playing with and I experienced the same thing, so there's no way that this was just some hallucination coming from my brain alone. I kind of just shook it off as one of those I guess we'll never know types of things, but now that I'm older,

[00:28:14] it really is one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced. I'm curious as to what may have happened. Did we get abducted by aliens, hence the missing time? Did we actually slip into a different dimension? Were the Fae trying to kidnap us? When we realized we were alone, it was totally the Oz effect. No noise, just eerie silence. Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm sharing this other than

[00:28:43] I just want to share something that might resonate with you all. I'm always curious to see if anything similar has happened to others. Potentially Haunted Gas Station

[00:29:12] by Benny I used to work the night shift at a small town gas station off a quiet highway in central Oregon. Most nights were slow. We had a few regulars, truckers passing through, sometimes a weird tourist heading toward the coast. This happened in early October, maybe five or six years ago. Somehow I remember that it was a Thursday night, just after 2 a.m. The store was empty

[00:29:41] and I was restocking the drink cooler. We had security cameras and I had the monitor up behind the counter facing the pumps. That way I could see if someone pulled in without having to walk to the front windows. So I'm in the cooler, stocking shelves, and I hear the door chime go off. Someone came inside. I finish what I'm doing, walk out front, and there's no one there. No cars at the pump either. I figured maybe someone

[00:30:10] stepped in and then left quickly. It happens sometimes, like if people think they left their wallet in the car or whatever. So I glance at the camera feed. I don't see anything. The last car had pulled away maybe 20 minutes earlier, but the door chime definitely went off. A few minutes later, I heard it again. Ding! Ding! This time I'm standing right by the counter, maybe 10 feet from the door.

[00:30:40] I whipped around, but there was still nobody there. I walk outside and the lot's empty. The highway's quiet. No headlights. Just the buzzing of the overhead lights and the distant sound of frogs out by the ditches. Now I'm a little weirded out, so I start double-checking the chime system. Sometimes bugs get in the sensor or it just glitches. But it seemed fine. I go back to the counter,

[00:31:09] and I'm staring at the monitor when I see it. One of the outer pumps, the farthest one from the building, just clicks on. No car, no movement. But the screen lights up like someone lifted the handle. Then, just as quickly, it shuts off again. I walked out there, half expecting to see a raccoon or some kid messing around, but there's nothing. I'm the only person in sight for a quarter mile

[00:31:38] in any direction. That pump stayed locked after that. I even went as far as to put an out-of-order sign on it, just in case. I told my manager about it the next day, and she laughed it off, saying it was probably just the wind. But there wasn't any wind that night. And I don't know, maybe it was just a glitch. Maybe even two. But that chime and the pump going off at the same time,

[00:32:08] with no one around, that's never happened before. And it hasn't happened since.

[00:32:39] That was definitely the scariest example of a mimic, or I guess shadow person. Yeah, that's a worthy contender, at least. Yeah, it wasn't just a shape, and it had her mom's hair. I'd say that's probably how it lured them in. Yeah, yeah, and it knew exactly what to copy to make them hesitate. The worst part is that it didn't move until they let their guard down, like, it was waiting for a cue or something to act. Whatever it was, it knew exactly

[00:33:08] what to do, I would say. Yeah, yeah, that kind of behavior definitely lines up with accounts of entities that I guess some people call mimics, like we do, or shadow familiars, or familiar shadows, whatever. Yeah, like, they don't just imitate, they interact, and most of the time they don't say anything. There's just enough resemblance to cause confusion or fear. Yeah, definitely. It wasn't a dream or any kind of hallucination either because,

[00:33:38] like we've heard in a lot of recent stories, there was a second witness. Yeah, the author and their brother both remember this years later. Definitely not some kind of sleep paralysis or your usual shadow person type of encounter. Yeah, yeah. So I've been reading up on Young a lot lately because you bring him up a lot in the show, and I was really creeped out by some of the theories that I read about shadows or shadow persons. I guess your shadow person or your shadow entity,

[00:34:08] whatever it's called. Yeah, yeah, it's just the shadow. He also talked about the act of imagination and trying to connect to the shadow rather than running from it so you can kind of disarm it by figuring out what it wants. I guess the idea is once you do, it stops working against you and actually helps you grow into this more balanced version of yourself. In this case, they just played along and talked to it like it really was their mom. Then the thing just ran under the bed

[00:34:37] and disappeared. Yeah, I love and hate stories with liminal spaces. Like, why are ghouls and ghosts always lurking in the hallways? They're voyeuristic perverts, not to say, all voyeurists are perverts, consensual voyeurists at least. Yeah, you're probably right. I don't know. I've seen too many modern horror movies to be doing this podcast to be honest. That scene played out in my head a lot

[00:35:06] like a Mike Flanagan movie. Yeah, I'd say that visual is probably one of the more scary stories that we've had in a while but at least we had that stuffed animal story to serve as some sort of palate cleanser if you will. Yeah, yeah, I was like, did a beanie baby just glitch into bed with them? Yeah, and they describe that sound so perfectly. If you grew up in the 90s like we did, you know what it sounds like when you drop one of those onto a table or your lap. It's soft but it's got some sort of weight

[00:35:36] to it. Yeah. A bean bag with an attitude, I guess. There's no mistaking it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why those things were such a big deal. I resisted the urge to collect them at first but then McDonald's started putting them in Happy Meals and I just got hooked. Yeah, they were so, they were so satisfying. Super cute. They were like a Tamagotchi that never died. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was our childhood's version of pop toys

[00:36:05] just not so weird looking. I have a co-worker who has three Funko Pops on his desk and they are LeBron James, Michael Scott, and Mandalorian. Like, nothing against either of those things but it's just very, I don't know, I'm just gonna leave it at that. You can infer what you want. It's so typical. Yeah, a little bit. Those three pop toys specifically, those three characters are people, like that's just so typical and funny

[00:36:34] to have together. It is, it's very, hey, I like things. Yeah. Like, I like all those things. I like watching LeBron play. I like Michael Scott. Yeah. And Mandalorian season one was great. Exactly. It's just funny to have a pop toy of each of those. My favorite color is blue. What's your New Year's resolution? Yes, exactly. So much unwarranted elitism and pretension. We're horrible.

[00:37:04] Yeah, seriously. Yeah. But also, it's a joke for the sake of a joke. And yeah, I'm not going to justify it any further than that. Pokemon cards, now there's a collectible for you. Especially if you played, too. I never saw anybody play the game how you were supposed to. Like what we used to do, we would just like pick our favorite card and then just do math. Like we'd flip a coin and say, okay, you go first and then I pick this attack minus from that other person's HP. And it was like so,

[00:37:34] it made no sense. Yeah. And I didn't find out until I was a lot older that it was more involved than just doing basic math. The game was actually really fun and pretty simple. I liked it a lot. I think I only really played it with my friend Ernie and my cousin growing up. Nobody else really played it. They just collected. Yeah, I'd be down to actually try it out again. Magic seems a little bit too advanced for me at this stage in my life to really commit to it but I think Pokemon could be fun. Yeah. Or maybe like even Yu-Gi-Oh! I guess is apparently

[00:38:04] pretty fun but I don't know enough about it to really say one way or another. We don't know enough about it or have enough time for it. Nope. Yeah, Pop Toys just didn't click with us but man, the Beanie Baby craze was wild. Oh yeah, and a lot of manufactured scarcity trying to drum up sales. Remember that picture like that couple getting a divorce splitting their Beanie Babies on the floor? Yep. Yep. Yeah. It totally worked though. I was just talking with my wife about them and she told me

[00:38:33] about how her aunt had nearly every single Beanie Baby ever made. Whoa. That's some commitment. Yeah, she was one of those obsessed people thinking that she was going to be a millionaire one day. Like the people who bought like thousands of fidget spinners from China hoping to resell them only for them to lose all value like in a week. Yeah. Yeah. But you can still make a pretty penny on those early holographic Pokemon cards the first editions especially. I think I may have

[00:39:03] told the story in this show but there were some neighbor kids who would steal they would shoplift from Walmart they would go like every week wearing these like ridiculous like puffer jackets in the summer totally not suspicious and they would just load up their coats with these Gen 1 the original packs and they had a full binder just completely like filled up with cards and I really hope that something happened to them and they didn't get to cash out on that later in life

[00:39:32] but not like to them but like to the cards should have reported them maybe probably not not my business plus the suburbs back in the 90s stitches occasionally got stitches they're currently in jail with a lot of neck tattoos one of them did get a DUI I did confirm that okay yeah yeah yeah but you have to find somebody willing to pay you what you want to get for it or what people say that it's worth or what it's listed on eBay as

[00:40:02] and you know I hate selling stuff that guy who sold Post Malone that million dollar magic card could have been us could have been us yeah definitely but unless it's some side gig or a job that you can really commit time to it's just so much extra work selling stuff online totally I hate it yeah so did her aunt ever sell them off the Beanie Babies nope she just threw them away at some point wow I guess that's a funny ending yeah

[00:40:31] yeah she even had the Princess Diana Beanie Baby which gets listed on eBay for like a stupid amount of money I don't know if it sells for that but it's quote unquote worth a lot is it actually Princess Diana or like some sort of innocent lamb with a crown or something to resemble Princess Diana I've never heard of that you know I can't remember I remember it being a Princess Diana one even Natalia remembers it that way this could be a Mandela effect um it was a princess bear for sure let me look it up right now I oh so it was a

[00:41:01] bear so it was an animal let's see this this Beanie Baby was designed to honor the late Princess Diana yeah it came out in 97 it was retired in 99 it's a royal purple bear and has a purple ribbon tied around its neck and its chest is adorned with an embroidered rose some of these can sell for a few thousand but there are some rare ones with errors that you can fetch a whopping sum from some collectors there's listed on eBay from 50,000

[00:41:30] to 325,000 but I can't imagine anybody's buying these yeah you just gotta meet the right person who is bored enough and rich enough it's still hard to wrap my head around the fact that they sold for so much and apparently some of them maybe still do I don't know yeah but a lot of them did have printing errors or special tags and stuff that made them super rare I do remember that like kids in class would scream at other kids for like taking off the tag they're like you're not

[00:42:00] supposed to do that and then the more rational kids depending how you look at it we're just like no I'm gonna play with it why would I want to keep a tag on my toy but I like that I like the kids that did that yeah definitely it is pretty funny though how much value we place on useless items or at least subjectively useless it just goes to show like the absurdity of just money in and of itself and what we determine to be worth spending that money on the whole thing is such a weird construct

[00:42:30] and then plus the whole absurdity with like FDR telling everybody to turn in their gold in exchange for the bank notes and then after they had all the gold they raised its value and now you have to spend more cash to get your precious beanie babies it's silly okay but I'm done I'm done I agree I hate it but I wouldn't pass up a copy of that Flintstones dino peak game if I saw it at a yard sale that's pretty valuable right like princess tomato or whatever on the NES yeah yeah yeah for the Flintstones one I've been looking for this for a

[00:43:00] while there was a rumor that it was only ever available to rent at like specific blockbuster stores and that's why it was so rare and I believed that for years but it turns out it was just rare because hardly anyone bought it I think it goes for like 10 grand or something now Nintendo 64 look at the label if it says not for resale keep that not for resale copy of Yoshi's story you got you're sitting on a pot of money yeah yeah a lot of

[00:43:29] those not for resale ones are pretty valuable unless it's the original Sonic the Hedgehog I think the majority if not all of them were not for resale oh yeah that got packaged into every Sega Genesis system yeah but like most NES games I guess with that Flintstones one I'm sure it's not all that great I don't even want to say most actually that's probably accurate I would say most if we're talking about a matter of percentages yeah I would say at least 51% of NES games didn't age all

[00:43:59] that well I'm a big fan of NES most of my favorite games are in the NES but I'll say it's more like 75% suck man yeah for sure they're terrible because we we hadn't really figured out 8-bit video games yet like they were figuring out how to make games work right and I don't think they figured it out until 16-bit that's when stuff got really good yeah do you know who figured it all out probably parents of children who were part of the gate program if they even had that in Japan which I'm whatever did your school have one of

[00:44:28] those not that I'm aware of my neighbors growing up definitely made it a point of letting my parents know that their kid was in gate but that's it yeah of course you know you got to show off your kid if my school had a program maybe they just kept it under wraps so the rest of us didn't feel stupid but then again I did only go to school for like a few grades the rest was all homeschool did you go to school yeah for a few grades

[00:44:57] yeah well I am a high school dropout so hey there you go I love that that's a success story if I've ever seen one I kind of wear it as a proud a proud badge yeah there was a was it Bill Gates or I don't know there was somebody else I mean all these anomalies it's kind of interesting because the people that do like go against the grain and just say no I'm not gonna go to school yeah of course the majority like may not end up you know in your position or be like a Bill Gates or whatever but there is something to be said

[00:45:27] about those who kind of think in that different way who have something else about them that can more than make up for non-traditional schooling you know that whole thing oh yeah yeah Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard so he did actually go to go to college he just dropped out after like I think a few semesters oh okay not as exciting oh well yeah yeah it was so weird in school when like the kids and gate would get summoned by this lady who I never saw any other time at the school it's

[00:45:56] like the only thing she did was just gather up the gate kids maybe she was like a school counselor or something I don't know but it was so funny because whenever she rounded up the other two kids in the class by asking for those two that she may as well have said anybody who isn't gifted and talented just stay where you are idiots yeah yeah especially as a kid it probably feels that way where are they now oh the kids and gate I have no idea

[00:46:25] probably working behind a figurative curtain somewhere yeah it sounds very weird and culty just going off the story yeah I don't actually know anything else about it I thought it was just some club for smart kids yeah thinking thinking back to when I was in the fifth grade it feels like some weird hybrid of Mensa free masonry and Scientology yeah recruiting fifth graders into skull and bones yes yeah that's a that explains a lot

[00:46:53] about GWB you know Charlie mentioned hearing tests I do remember my hearing checked a lot when I was in elementary school also in eighth grade but it seems like everybody did yeah those red and blue headphones such a throwback yeah yeah exactly I once got scolded for lifting up my hand and copying the person directly in front of me just I don't know why I felt like it was important to I don't know I don't know why I

[00:47:22] did it it wasn't like I had bad hearing but by doing that I had opposite answers than what I was supposed to have and then this the teacher whoever just like walked up to me and she's like you need to not do that and that was it that was my non-story about getting my hearing checked that's so funny I cheated so much in school man I was a bad student I not only did I drop out I cheated a lot I was I was just didn't care I didn't care about school and I didn't have anybody

[00:47:51] forcing me to care or pushing me to care so it just didn't matter but I cheated all the time I did for math I would say like once I got down the basics of you know yeah the basics up until early algebra beyond that it was just like oh no this is stupid but as an adult you know work my brain in other ways yeah I didn't get bad grades like I would hope not if you're cheating I just didn't care yeah that's weird and then what's funny is when I got out

[00:48:21] of school is when I started getting interested in learning stuff yeah and then like that yeah I just I was I learned in my own pace and in my own way with the internet thank you internet for making me a competent adult yeah exactly like with anything else it has to come from within like change or learning or tasks or anything I think something about being forced to go to school being forced to do these assignments and be around people you don't want to be it just takes out any sort

[00:48:50] of incentive to to truly care about it but yeah now as an adult like this sounds so whatever but like I've replaced entertaining myself with creating things and learning things and yeah exactly so much more fulfilling than yeah being forced to do whatever curriculum that the school determines is most important and they don't even they don't even teach you about things that really matter for life skills like there's no basic budgeting class there's no warning about interest rates and like

[00:49:20] predatory practices it's like man like I don't know whatever yeah yeah so maybe if they aren't recruiting kids to lead you know the new world order at the very least they could be like looking for the next X-Men yeah doing all those tests to discover their abilities before they realize that they have them exactly exactly maybe they have like a unique gene that somehow responds whenever they have that green drink

[00:49:48] oh it was a pink but yeah green would be cool too okay yeah the leprechaun soda or a melted shamrock shake yeah gross and you know we got to mention Robert Monroe's gateway tapes oh yeah yeah that was weird I really want to know if anyone else listening can vouch for that happening even if it just happened at Charlie's school that's just so crazy to think about hand

[00:50:17] selecting the smart kids and raising their states of consciousness I know they didn't mention any sort of meditation but maybe they looped some binaural waves into the hearing test and like unknowingly pulled some strings on their subconscious yeah definitely Charlie the author he did say though that his school called it tag rather than gate yeah and going back to Scientology you know my favorite thing Scientologists they would call that

[00:50:47] squirrel tech like the equivalent of somebody teaching L. Ron Hubbard's stuff outside of the official Church of Scientology they hate that hate they hate squirrels so maybe tag is just like a squirrel org of gate yeah yeah no idea I really hope that somebody else who was in gate or tag can write in yeah tag us yeah and real quick I didn't see a connection to the Titan

[00:51:16] submarine that imploded beyond the ocean gate name am I missing something yeah that kind of lost me too but whatever since it mentioned the Titanic though might as well give people a rabbit hole to explore yeah yeah I know where you're going with this okay yeah so buckle in for those uninitiated there's this theory a conspiracy theory mind you that it wasn't the actual Titanic that sank it was like a nearly identical sister ship

[00:51:45] called the Olympic owned by JP Morgan and the Olympic was underneath it seemed better days so basically as some like part of an insurance scam they swapped the name and sunk it on purpose and I guess to add some additional intrigue there was a bunch of people who were supposed to be on that ship and did not go including JP Morgan himself so take with that what you will yeah man that's crazy stuff I

[00:52:14] haven't gotten too deep into that but I bet you loved that story about the knocks oh I did it wasn't all that scary which is fine but definitely interesting especially hearing the knock on the back door yep yep I love when someone starts by saying that they're not into the paranormal they don't claim to be sensitive and they just happen to have a totally plausible story yeah yeah right

[00:52:42] and like you said it wasn't scary but it didn't need a big dramatic reveal or floating lady in white just those three knocks over and over until it wasn't just three yeah yeah that single knock at the end was I guess unnerving yeah and the timing with her grandfather's death I don't know that's the kind of synchronicity that makes you wonder if something else was trying to prepare them for

[00:53:10] the author's grandpa passing away yeah or maybe the single knock was him saying goodbye just to kind of differentiate from the other three yeah I thought the same thing I think it was related I also thought the way that the author described the dreams was I guess relatable not like full-on horror just that strange unshakable feeling of something being off exactly it reminded me a lot of

[00:53:38] what's referred to as thin places like that sort of yeah veil between reality and the otherworldly or the other side or whatever things just kind of bleed through yeah yeah we've talked about thin places I think that was the term that was used in the past it keeps coming up in these stories and the the hallway closet thing was like just a great little detail you know so subtle but I don't think that it's just you

[00:54:07] know from the house settling okay but calm down who made you structural engineer of the year we do hear a lot of weird noises in this house I constantly hear somebody in my closet it's weird it's like something will move around in my closet I thought that it was the haunted doll before because that's where I kept it before I got rid of it pickles yeah yeah but I still hear noises in my closet not like stuff's just moving it's weird

[00:54:36] that is super strange like directly above me is like the kitchen and a landing that goes out into the backyard and I've been here like home alone in my office hearing just like very like solid thumpy steps like walking up and down that walkway or what that landing yeah and then but it's you know the difference between like a pet's feet moving around and like an actual stomping sound of like human feet and uh yeah no it was it was really strange only

[00:55:04] happened once um but I don't know I don't really think my house is haunted but there have been like a few things yeah a little concerning little concerning especially because of like the three loud bangs in the other house I really hope there isn't like anything out there following me around but I don't think so it would be a lot more apparent if that were the case yep definitely definitely well we'll see we'll see what happens well okay then anyways thank you everybody so much for listening make sure you send your stories

[00:55:34] into stories at odd trails.com if you want to hear them on the show and join our patreon at patreon.com forward slash odd trails it's the best way to listen and support the show again that's patreon.com forward slash odd trails and be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like let's not meet cryptic encounters in the old time radio cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com we'll see y'all next week everybody stay safe peace out

[00:55:57] the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you guys