Episode 71: The Spider Woman

[00:00:00] Do you want to hear something spooky? Some monster was standing there. It reminded me of Bigfoot. In Washington, gray alien. One of the teenage boys started to exhibit signs of textbook demonic possession. I'm Derek Hayes, host of Monsters Among Us podcast. This pure all-white entity staring straight at me. Where there should have been eye pockets, there weren't.

[00:00:24] Monsters Among Us is an anthology of real paranormal stories, told by real witnesses. I never really believed in this Loch Ness Monster nonsense, but something very snake-like lifted its head out of the water. A giant black triangle. It was so big that it blotted out the stars. And I saw what looked like a huge monster. I could see the outline of hair. New episodes of Monsters Among Us drop every Thursday.

[00:00:52] Available wherever you listen to podcasts. Somehow I had lost eight whole hours. Odd Trails contains adult language and content. 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. Trust. Believe.

[00:01:56] I have told this story to many people and while some believe it, some think it was a hallucination. I don't have a history of hallucinating, but maybe this was that one rare time. Anyways, in 2016 I left my hometown in California to work on a ranch in Montana. I found the job through a quick Cool Works search. After applying and receiving the job, it was one short week before I quit my current job and was on a plane to Great Falls, Montana.

[00:02:26] Upon arriving, I met the other two women who would be working on the ranch with me for the season. We were greeted by the ranch manager and immediately given NDAs to sign. After the NDAs, we were told that we would work at a popular talk show host's ranch. It was about a two-hour drive from the Great Falls airport. All three of us were not really the TV watching type. We were more of the move across the country to work on a rural ranch type.

[00:02:56] So while this news was exciting, to be honest, we didn't care that much. We were all much more interested in the bison that we would get to see there. The property was incredible. I don't remember how big it really was, but it was big enough to hold over 100 bison and several grizzlies that had made it their home, specifically a mom and two cubs. The first building on the property was the lake house where guests would be entertained.

[00:03:23] The second building was a good-sized house where the employees lived, which for the time being was just two other women and me. Then the barn, then the ranch manager's home, and so on. The last house on the property was the owner's home. While the road through the property was pretty much a straight shot, each building was off the road about a three or four-minute drive, which sometimes made the buildings hard to see from the road.

[00:03:49] There were no lights at all on the property except for in the buildings themselves. The night sky was pitch dark, but incredible for stargazing. Each building had Wi-Fi and landlines, but you could only get cell service at the owner's home. As I said, the employee housing was pretty nice. We all had our own rooms that lined a long hallway that led to an enormous kitchen slash dining room. The dining room table was one of those old, heavy wooden tables, the type that you would

[00:04:18] want to hide under during an earthquake. Now, all of these details are important to the story. I promise. The first night we were there was uneventful. I had extreme difficulty getting to sleep and an unsettling feeling all night, but nothing unusual happened. As I got ready for bed the second night, I had that same unsettling feeling. I chalked it up to just trying to acclimate to a new place. I could hear the other women getting ready for bed in their own rooms too, but eventually

[00:04:47] their rustling stopped and I assumed they were both asleep. A few hours later, I started to drift off the sleep as well. As my eyes closed, I was suddenly jolted back into full consciousness by a loud bang in the kitchen. It sounded like a cupboard had been opened and slammed shut. My first thought was one of the other women was up for a midnight snack. I hadn't heard them get up, but I figured I just missed it.

[00:05:17] Then I heard what could only be described as somebody full on ransacking our kitchen. I heard silverware drawers being pulled open and thrown on the floor, cupboards opening and slamming, and dishes being thrown to the ground with loud splintering crashes. It sounded like, one by one, each drawer or cupboard was being opened and the contents would fly out and crash to the ground.

[00:05:42] I heard the refrigerator open, all those contents being aggressively pulled out and hit the floor. I specifically remember hearing the beer bottles that we had bought being smashed and apples would go tumbling across the floor with that muted sort of thudding sound. Then I heard the dining room chairs being pushed across the floor, making that screech before smashing into the kitchen walls.

[00:06:08] I then heard the huge dining room table that I referenced earlier also sliding on the linoleum until it sounded like it slammed into the far wall of the kitchen. After what I can only assume was the entire contents of the kitchen being thrown on the floor, I heard things being pushed around, like somebody was moving through the mess, rummaging about. Of course, by this time, I was pretty sure it wasn't one of my roommates.

[00:06:35] I was frozen in my bed, completely unable to move, with two thoughts only. Intruder or grizzly bear? I looked at my phone and I remembered with horror that I didn't have cell service. We were only 45 minutes from any town, but I also didn't have cell service to call animal control or the police. Then I remembered Wi-Fi. Thank God for iMessage. I texted my dad in California explaining the situation.

[00:07:03] I gave him our landline phone number and asked him to call and leave a message pretending to be the ranch manager and saying that he was on his way to check on things because he heard a noise or something along those lines. I figured if it was a bear, the sound of the telephone ringing might scare them away. And if it was an intruder, the contents of the message might scare it away. My dad said that he would call and sure enough, seconds later, I heard the phone ringing loudly from the kitchen.

[00:07:30] The moment that that first ring went off, all of the sounds in the kitchen stopped. The phone rang again, two, three, four times. Then the answering machine picked up. I couldn't hear exactly what my dad was saying, but I could hear his voice coming from the machine. He left the message, then texted me, saying that he had done so and asked for an update. As I was about to respond, I heard the sounds in the kitchen again. Something moving.

[00:07:58] Something moving towards the hallway where our bedrooms were. So, I jumped out of bed, picked up an empty beer bottle from the night before. I figured I could smash and brandish it, and hid in the closet. From the closet, I could see my bedroom door and the light shining through the bottom because the hallway light was on. I texted my dad something like, it's walking towards my bedroom.

[00:08:23] I looked up from my phone just in time to see the light at the bottom of my door taken over by a huge shadow. Something was standing right outside my door. I think I stopped breathing as tears silently flowed down my cheeks. I was shaking, clutching that beer bottle and my phone as hard as I could, just watching this shadow outside of my door. After about 15 seconds, the shadow moved away, back towards the kitchen.

[00:08:54] After I allowed myself to breathe again, I texted my dad that I had seen something outside the door and to call the police because I was now certain there was an intruder. I stayed in that closet for two more hours waiting for the police panic texting my dad for updates every now and then. Because we were so far from town, and there were no lights, and so many buildings on the property, it took them quite a while to finally find my building. I heard a knock coming from the door and I froze.

[00:09:22] Then, I saw a text from my dad saying that the police were there and to let them in. I mustered up all the courage that I could and ran from my bedroom down the hallway and past the kitchen, willing myself not to look at the massive mess that must have been there. The front doors were mostly glass, and I could see two police officers and the ranch manager with a shotgun waiting.

[00:09:45] I opened the door and immediately burst into tears, explaining something was in the house, which had been in the kitchen, etc. The officers hurried to the kitchen and the ranch manager took me aside. I quickly explained what had happened. Then, I joined the police officers in the kitchen. After only a few minutes, he came back and awkwardly but kindly said that there was nothing amiss in the kitchen. The kitchen was fine.

[00:10:14] Nothing amiss? I heard it being torn apart for a solid 20-30 minutes, but nothing? He walked me to the kitchen and it was, as he said, nothing out of place. Not a single dish was broken, no food on the floor, and the dining room table and chairs were exactly where they should be. I don't remember a single thought going through my head. Just deep-seated bewilderment.

[00:10:44] The police checked the entire house. No evidence of forced entry had been found, and every window and door was still locked. If they thought I was crazy, they didn't show it, which I appreciated. I thanked them as they left. The ranch manager stayed behind with me to talk things over a bit more and make sure I was... emotionally okay. When I had finally assured him that I was fine, it was nearly morning by this time anyways,

[00:11:13] he promised he would change all the locks first thing and left. The other two women had woken up and joined us while the cops were still searching the house, but both of them said they didn't hear a thing. After the ranch manager left, we all went back to bed for at least another hour of sleep. By the next morning, the shame and thoughts of, am I crazy, had settled in.

[00:11:39] But they quickly dissipated as I spoke with some of the ranchers who lived on the property full-time. All of them sincerely told me they believed me and said they were not surprised. One, in particular, said he noticed weird shit all the time but had just gotten used to it. He said he thought the ranch was likely an old native ceremonial or burial grounds.

[00:12:04] Though I never confirmed if this speculation was factual or not, it helped me to feel a little less crazy. Throughout the next couple of months, stories of weird shit happening on the ranch, specifically at the employee's house, started coming out. Even the ranch manager himself. Handprints showing up on foggy mirrors and footsteps running across the upstairs landing. All the way up until I left for the season, things would move around the house.

[00:12:31] A lamp that was on the dresser when we went to sleep would be on the front table in the morning. The dining room chairs would randomly end up in the living room. I had a door leading to my bedroom from the outside and there was a small slab of cement that served as a step, maybe two by two feet. One morning I woke up and a huge, hairy, bloody elk leg was placed perfectly on this slab.

[00:12:56] This of course could have been Grizzlies, but it seemed to be placed so intentionally that it weirdly felt like some kind of peace offering. I don't know. I ended up leaving the ranch early for family reasons, but I gotta say, I couldn't wait to get out of there. The job and property and other employees were lovely, but I never was able to shake that horrible, unsettling feeling that kept me up most nights.

[00:13:37] I've been listening to your podcast for a while now and have been contemplating whether or not to share my story. Remembering this story always makes me really nervous, but to hell with it. I live in the Philippines. My personal accounts of scary stories and experiences are usually talked about with friends and family, but are quickly shrugged off.

[00:14:03] I used to live with my mom and my sister in a duplex with a small gate connecting both houses through the garages. My mom would sleep on one side and my sister and I would sleep on the other. Most of the snacks and food were at my mom's house, so my sister and I would go there whenever we got hungry. My mom is a nurse who works the graveyard shift.

[00:14:29] During COVID, she would have 12-hour shifts from 7pm to 7am four times a week. I don't really keep track of her schedule. I just know that she leaves for work at around 6.30 in the evening. Now, remember this one detail. Our mom always comes into our house and then into our bedroom to hiss us goodbye before she heads to work.

[00:14:58] One night, while my sister and I were in our room, our mom stood outside our bedroom door, dressed up for work in her scrubs, with wet hair from showering, ready to leave. She told us that she was leaving for work and instructed us to lock the doors. She didn't come inside our room.

[00:15:19] I didn't think much of it at the time because I thought maybe she was just in a hurry, since it was already 5 minutes to 7. I quickly hugged her goodbye, and then she left. I went back to whatever I was doing at the time and spent some time with my sister. Fast forward to three hours later, at 10pm, my sister and I got hungry.

[00:15:47] As usual, we'd go together to get some snacks or whatever we were craving. We went inside, got some chips, and made sure we had everything so we wouldn't have to make a second trip. We turned off all the lights and started to make our way out of the house using the flashlights on our phones.

[00:16:10] We noticed the sound of mom's old electric fan rotating in her bedroom, so I checked to see if she accidentally left it on before leaving for her night shift. Before I went into the room, I saw my mom's sleeping figure on the bed, facing away from where I stood. I was mortified. Didn't she just say goodbye to us, three hours ago?

[00:16:38] I was freaking out and was about to shit my pants. I called out to my sister in a whisper and asked her if she was seeing what I was seeing. She didn't say anything, but her eyes were wide with fear. We quickly got out of that house and immediately locked all the doors once we got back to our house. Did we just see our mom's doppelganger?

[00:17:06] Or was it actually her sleeping on her bed? The thought of that mortified me, because if that's the case, then maybe I also hugged her doppelganger. I didn't sleep much that night. Neither did my sister. The morning came, and I went to my mom's house to make breakfast.

[00:17:29] I confronted her about what happened the night before, but she just shrugged it off and told me that maybe I was seeing things. I know what I saw. My sister saw it too. That night, our mom left us a rosary to hold onto and assured us that she was going to work. We were scared for a whole week.

[00:17:55] I still don't know whether who I saw on the bed or who I hugged that night was my mom or a doppelganger. It all happened so quickly. But every time I recall it, I get shivers.

[00:18:48] Before I get into it, let me give you some backstory. It was very dark. We were traveling down a two-lane highway in the middle of a long line of cars with nothing but forest on either side as far as you could see. The highway didn't have any street lights, so the only illumination came from the headlights of the cars and a large, handheld spotlight that somewhat a few cars ahead was shining back and forth into the trees.

[00:19:14] We had been driving for a while without seeing anything, not even a car passing in the opposite direction, when the car up ahead shone its light into the woods on the left. That's when something walked out. A Sasquatch walked out of the woods and directly into the spotlight. The whole experience happened so fast that it seemed unreal. Nobody had the time to slow down or react at all. For one moment, it stepped into the light.

[00:19:43] It took another step onto the road. And in between the moving cars, another off to the side of the road, and one last step into the woods on the other side of the road and it was gone. It's something I'll never forget. If you've ever seen the Patterson-Gimlin footage, it looked almost exactly like that.

[00:20:06] It only took four steps and crossed an entire two-lane highway in between moving cars without even flinching or thinking twice. This is the only time I've ever physically seen one. But I have heard them several times in different places. I haven't shared this story with many people over the years. I think for obvious reasons.

[00:20:46] Ever since I could remember, our house was haunted. It's not an old house. In fact, my dad built it himself before my sisters and I were born. Still, it was haunted from the beginning. My best guess is that the house lies right on some sort of border between the world of the living and the world of the dead and whatever else is outside of our realm.

[00:21:15] As I have grown up believing in ghosts and the like, I was never surprised but often uncomfortable with the situation. Usually, we would hear footsteps on the floor above when no one was there, knocking on doors or other weird sounds. Sometimes, things would go missing and turn up in completely different places.

[00:21:43] Some rooms in the house would always freak me out, and I would refuse to sleep in them. Nevertheless, there are four short stories that I would like to share. The first one happened before I was born, but my mother told it to me many times. She took care of her brother, who was dying of cancer.

[00:22:07] The house was still somewhat under construction, and in hindsight, having the heavy dust and building chemicals exposed to someone dying of cancer was not the best choice. My uncle could not accept his death, and according to my mother, he even blamed her in the end. After he died, things began to get dark in the room he passed away in.

[00:22:32] Since the house was divided into two separate apartments, tenants moved into the part of the house my uncle previously died in. And once they settled, things became rough quickly. Doors were slammed shut. Things rattled. Things that were all over the house. The house was turned out of the house, and one night, my uncle's spirit got so angry, he literally threw a table across the room.

[00:22:58] It hit the wall at such an angle that the dent could be seen years later. It was after this incident that they called upon a priest to get the apartment cleansed, and my uncle found peace. However, this didn't stop all the other spirits in the house. When one of my sisters was about nine, we heard her talk to someone in the bathroom.

[00:23:24] The next thing she did was run out screaming and crying, hiding her face in our mother's chest. She was absolutely distraught and terrified for her life. When asked what happened, she would stammer and eventually muster up the courage to tell us what she saw. She was in the bathroom washing her hands when someone touched her shoulder from behind.

[00:23:52] Thinking it was me, her younger sister, she started talking to me. When she looked up into the mirror, however, she saw a girl that looked like she had drowned. Her clothes were wet, she was pale, with blue lips, and she looked distraught. Right next to the sink was a full-body mirror, and when my sister screamed and tried to run,

[00:24:20] she saw the girl still standing there, facing the full-sized mirror. She must have somehow cut her connection to the other world after this incident, since she lost all ability to sense the supernatural since then. Growing up, my siblings and I would constantly swap rooms. When I got a room on the third floor that was shaped like an L,

[00:24:47] I instantly realized why my sister wanted to change rooms. The long rectangle, leading away from the main part of the room, has no windows, and it is really dark back there. The first night, my bed was placed in a way where I would stare into this part of the room. I couldn't sleep at all. I was scared shitless, but nothing happened.

[00:25:14] The very next day, I rearranged my bed so I could face the safe direction of the room. However, this didn't help either. It began with hearing breathing after I turned off the lights, and I would try my best to ignore it. However, it seemed like the thing, whatever it was, was dark and had bad energy, unlike many of the other guests in the house.

[00:25:44] And it fed off my fear. Just writing about it scares me and makes me feel paranoid already. Anyways, the sound of breathing turned into actually feeling breathing on my face. Feeling someone touching my face and, eventually, footsteps on my blanket.

[00:26:07] I could feel someone small get up onto my bed and crawl up my blanket, onto me, and then raspily breathe into my face. I sent it away with the only measure I knew back then. By praying to God, and eventually, after weeks, it seemed that praying had either worked or the entity had lost interest in me, as it suddenly just stopped.

[00:26:37] I tried to change rooms, but I had to stay in this bedroom for quite a while after, and never really felt comfortable in it. The last encounter I want to mention happened not so long ago, illustrating that whatever makes its way into the house still does so, even though most of our family has moved out. At this time, it was a couple of years ago.

[00:27:04] Only my dad and my youngest sister lived in the house, and most of the rooms were empty. When my best friend and her two small children needed a place to stay in between moving houses, my dad offered to take them in for a couple of weeks. Her oldest son was around three or four at the time.

[00:27:26] Both kids loved staying in the big house with a garden, and considering they had known my dad all their lives, he was somewhat like a grandpa to them. Problems began, however, after the kids were settled in one room, and my best friend stayed in the room next door. The boy would constantly wake up at night and have nightmares.

[00:27:51] He would talk to someone while playing alone and have invisible friends, saying people in the house were talking to him, and so on. This was not actually the scary part, though, as they seemed to be friendly ghosts. He talked to a lady who would often try to hold his hand, and another child he played with frequently during this time.

[00:28:18] Eventually, however, the nightmares got worse, and he woke up one night screaming for his mother. When she came into the room, he told her not to turn on the lights, because the man in the corner couldn't see. She asked him what he meant, and he repeated, The man can't see, while pointing to a specific corner in the room, right above his bed.

[00:28:47] His description of the man and his position in the room matched what my sister had seen and cried to my parents about over two decades earlier. Soon after, they moved out. Now, my sister and her family live in this part of the house. Yes, the sister who saw the girl in the mirror.

[00:29:10] They seemed to be fine, but whenever I visit, I still hear the strange noises from my childhood.

[00:29:39] Your story about the ethereal octopus thing reminded me of something that I saw at a friend of a friend's house. We were outside, talking a bit before we went into the house. It was about nine or ten at night. Something behind a car across the street caught my eye. I noticed some kind of movement. When I looked closer, I immediately regretted it. I saw what I like to call the spider woman.

[00:30:10] She was there, just watching our group, and I guess snarling. Her face was very dirty and her hair was long, wild, and tangled. It was standing up in different places. She was on all fours, but she wasn't on her knees. She was on her hands and feet. She was bent over like the wheelers, if you've ever seen Return to Oz. That movie really messed me up as a kid.

[00:30:38] She had eight of these arms and legs, though. They all ended in either hands or feet. They came out of her back and sides, then had a sharp bend towards the ground like spider legs. It went absolutely still, and my now husband asked me what was wrong. I asked him if he was seeing what I was, and he said yes, but he was trying to ignore it so that it wouldn't notice us.

[00:31:08] Both my husband and I tend to see and hear things to either the amusement or dismay of friends and family. I wanted to look away, but I was scared that if I did, she would move closer to us. My friend started talking to me and noticed that I needed to pay more attention. When I finally looked at him, he saw my face and immediately told me not to tell him what I saw.

[00:31:35] Unable to help myself, I looked back and she looked at me. Nothing ever made me feel that kind of darkness before. I couldn't leave my house because my truck was way closer to her than I was willing to get. I asked if we could go inside instead. I had hoped that she couldn't come into the house and would be gone when we left. Thankfully, she was when we returned outside, or maybe I just couldn't see her.

[00:32:03] The area felt cleaner, so we got to my truck and left. I drive past that area almost every day. It's next to and slightly below the freeway, and I can practically see the exact spot where I saw her all those years ago. I get the worst feeling each time I pass it, and I hope we never have a reason to be on that street again.

[00:32:38] When I was seven years old, I came to realize that the supernatural and paranormal are true. My brother and I moved in with my mom and her boyfriend, now my stepdad. He had been living in this house before we moved in. Growing up, the normal paranormal stuff would happen.

[00:33:00] I would see locked doors opening by themselves, stuff out of order, shadow figures, feet under my door, etc. Thankfully, in 2020, we moved, and I felt relief. I thought everything was going to go back to normal, and it did, for three years.

[00:33:22] Now, in 2023, the paranormal has reintroduced itself into my life after stupidly going to a cemetery with my friend, Ezra. Ezra and I brought a spirit box. We did the normal spirit box things, and tried having conversations, but with no luck.

[00:33:46] That is until one day we went back, and the static in the spirit box stopped, when we asked for anyone to state their name. Ezra and I looked at each other, thinking we had broken the box. Then, out of nowhere, the box screams, Ford. Loud and clear. A deep, menacing, male voice.

[00:34:14] Ezra asked if his name was Ford. He said, Yes, Ford. At first, I felt truly uneasy, and asked her if we could say goodbye and leave. Ezra slowly turned her head at me, and with the most frightened eyes I've ever seen, whispered, He told us to run.

[00:34:40] I immediately put my keys in the ignition of my car, but it refused to start. Not even the lights on the dash would appear. I started to panic, and all of a sudden, I looked in my rearview mirror, and saw a man in my back seat. I screamed, turning around, to see no one there.

[00:35:05] I told Ford we wanted to go, and to please let us go. The spirit box turned on by itself, and the words, friends, and please came out. We reassured Ford we weren't here to make friends. His reply? Why? Ezra explained to him that we weren't meant to be friends.

[00:35:34] All of a sudden, someone or something threw a rock at my windshield, busting it. At that point, I told Ezra to call the police, because my car wasn't starting. And now I couldn't see through my cracked windshield. Our phones died at the same time. At this point, I just told Ford what he wanted to hear.

[00:36:01] All right, we'll be your friends, if you let me start my car and leave. To my surprise, my car immediately started, with no struggle. I have never sped so fast in my entire life, all the while being unable to see barely anything in front of me. After that night was over, Ezra and I didn't sleep.

[00:36:28] We stayed up the rest of the night reliving what just happened in our heads, at least 4,000 times. The night after, I went to work since at work nights. I walked into work like normal, and started my normal duties of putting out freight to stock. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man standing at the end of the aisle, staring at me.

[00:36:58] Keep in mind, we are closed, and I had never seen this man before. Until I remembered the man in my back seat from the night prior. I screamed so loudly that my manager came running down to my aisle, asking what happened. The man disappeared as soon as my manager came around the corner. I said, uh, nothing, I'm okay.

[00:37:26] Obviously in shock at what just happened. My manager walked away, and I started working again, shaking and trembling. I then suddenly felt the coldest chill on the back of my neck. I turned around and there he was. I told Ford to please leave me alone for the night.

[00:37:50] I immediately called Ezra and told her what happened, and she said Ford had come to visit her too. Every single night, I see him in my house, at my job, and in the back seat of my car. Everywhere. Ford has attached himself to me, and I don't think he'll ever leave. He taunts me, my cats, and Ezra.

[00:38:18] Ford is unpredictable. He can be nice one day, and mean the next. Every time I pass the cemetery going to Ezra's house, I greet Ford and then ask him to stay away, because my home is not his home.

[00:38:38] Every time I say that, the steering wheel in my car starts to have a mind of its own, until I take it back, and it goes back to normal. I am scared of the life I live now. It's been months, and Ford is still here.

[00:39:11] We recently talked about how much mirrors creep us out. That story about the author's sister actually feeling somebody tap on her shoulder, and then looking up and seeing a girl who looked like she had drowned. No thank you. Definitely. Yeah, it'd be one thing if she only felt tapping or only saw what she thought to be this apparition. But when two and two go together, that's enough to give me the willies.

[00:39:37] Yeah, and the same story, the author's friend's son mentioned seeing, quote unquote, the man in the corner. Yeah. Yeah, and they ended up describing the same thing that the author's sister saw. Absolutely. Another welcomed account of corroboration. Always love that. Yeah, totally. Back to the mirrors, though, I kind of want to talk about this.

[00:40:01] We didn't really go into too much detail the last time, but I was actually scared of mirrors as a kid. My dad would actually scare me and tell me that the boy in the mirror was going to get me. And who was this boy? Where did he come from? Like, mirror land or what? Maybe it was my doppelganger being created in the mirror. And I was slowly watching him, you know, everything, every once in a while something might be a little different. I don't know. I was just creeped out by mirrors.

[00:40:28] I think that I was seeing something there that I don't see as an adult. Reflections always got to me. I remember going to my grandmother's house as a child and she lives in a very old house. I think it was built in maybe like the 40s, 50s. And it has like this playroom with these glass French doors. What we call it a playroom, but it's just like an addition. And the reflection in those mirrors reflect off of the back window and it looks like it extends into infinity.

[00:40:58] So when you see like candles on the dining room table, they just extend out forever. And I always told myself, wow, the farther you go, the more haunted it gets. Things like that. Yeah. Like the haunted hallway or the endless hallway on the haunted mansion. It just. Yeah, exactly. The idea of endlessness is very scary. Looking down. Yeah. Looking down a hallway that just goes forever. Looking in back to back mirrors where it just never ends. That's a really scary thought.

[00:41:28] In relation to that, I've been really into studying space and all that fun stuff. And I've come to find out that one light year. Do you know how do you know how long that is in a distance? I have no clue. Take a guess. You could have told me that the term light year was something that was made up in a movie. And I might have believed you because I know nothing about it. It just seems so silly to me. It's like a black hole. Yeah. It's like, do we? Is that really a thing? But yeah, what? What? Just take a guess. Take a guess.

[00:41:58] How many miles is a light year? I would say 10 trillion. Very. That's not bad at all. Okay. 5.8. 5.8 trillion? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I doubled it, but I was at least like somewhere in the ballpark. What really trips me out is that the earth is just under 8,000 miles and the observable universe is 93 billion light years. Oh my God.

[00:42:26] Just do 93 billion times 5.8 trillion. Yeah. And then you think of the earth. That's just a grain of sand. It's wild. It feels so tiny. Exactly. And you think of how many millions are in billions that are in trillions. And our brains don't really comprehend that until you see it on paper. And you're like, wait, what? I think it's like some weird octillion number as far as like earth relative to the observable universe. It's just so minuscule. It freaks me out.

[00:42:55] You know, my dad used to say when I was a little kid that the biggest number in the world was a Google. This was before the internet. He used to say it was a Google. Like he thought that was hilarious. It was just like a little thing. You just can't keep counting after that. I know my grandpa used to say that too. I think that's where he got it from. And it was just like, he thought it was the funniest joke. He's like, yeah, the highest number is a Google. And kind of weird that Google ended up being the ruler of all, all things, all knowledge.

[00:43:23] I do wonder though, when have they stopped being named? Because if you were to just start writing zeros from me to you in tiny courier new font size eight, eventually there's no name for that number. They start using multiplication into the power of blah, blah, blah. I thought about that so much. Where does our vocabulary of numbers end? Yeah. It's Google. It's Google. It actually is. Ask Google.

[00:43:50] And hopefully soon, AI, chat GPT, please take over Google. Let's do it. Okay, Google. I loved that. You did not let up. You really wanted that phone to work. Yeah. When okay, Google first started or hey, Google first started, like right now, right around the time Siri got popular. I had an Android phone. And when I picked Brandon up from the airport one day, I kept going, hey, Google. Okay, Google. Hey, Google. Okay. And it would never would listen to me.

[00:44:18] I loved your determination and resolve. But anyway, back to the mirrors. It's kind of like how camera lenses aren't a 100% perfect replication. Something is just a little bit off. Yeah. What creeps me out is how everything can be reversed in a photo. If you take like a selfie with the wrong app or something, like it makes everything look unnatural and weird.

[00:44:43] And I've changed which side I part my hair multiple times throughout life, but it still scares me every time when I take a selfie. Yeah. That's why I hate Snapchat. You take a picture and the hair is parted on the wrong side. The text on the t-shirt doesn't read correctly. I don't understand why they can't just flip it. Yeah. You're sitting in the passenger side of your car. That's the weird one. When people do like selfie videos and they're sitting in the passenger side driving, that's too weird. Yeah. I really don't like how it changes which side I part my hair.

[00:45:12] And fun fact, there's actually some psychological thing behind which direction you part your hair. I don't know if you've heard this, but apparently parting it on the left side is associated with masculinity and the right side is, I don't know, beta behavior. I don't know what else to call it, but you can see it in Superman. Clark Kent parts it on the right, but when he becomes Superman, it turns to the left. Just a little subtle thing to make him more manly. That's so silly. I don't understand why.

[00:45:42] Oh man, that's the silliest theory ever. I mean, I was born with a callic on the left side of my head and we're talking about stage left. We're talking about like my left, not somebody else's left, right? Or correct? Right. Yeah. I'm going to do an Abbott and Costello routine here. But yeah, on my left, I always parted my hair growing up. Eventually I actually switched it to the right side because playing guitar, when I had like

[00:46:10] long emo hair, I would look down at the neck of my guitar on my left and then my hair that was swooped down on my right would go down in my face even more and make it even harder. So I started parting my hair on the right side so that my hair would hang down on the left side, which was the direction I looked at my guitar. So that way I could kind of look around my hair. It's silly. It's dumb. I know. But it just made sense to me because I had long, stupid swoopy hair. That makes practical sense though.

[00:46:36] There's no silly psychology behind it, but apparently it's a real thing. I've seen it multiple places and for better or worse, I've always been parting it on the left side. Good. So whatever. I only say that because I don't want you to change it because I'll tell you this. I now have a cowlick on both sides of my head. So my hair doesn't know which side to part on and it always sticks up in the back. So I now I just basically buzz cut my hair all the time because I don't want to deal with it. I kind of don't like you anymore, but that's okay. Not your fault. Hey, I want you to buzz your hair so bad.

[00:47:06] You look good, man. I think I look like a malnourished rat when I do it. No, no, you look sexy. You look like a sultry. Well, if you say so, we can have a hair buzzing party. Was there anything like for me, it was mirrors. I had a lot of weird things that I was scared of, but was there anything that was just normal that everybody that nobody was scared of that you were scared of when you were young? Just something unreasonable. I think most people are scared of this, but I feel like I have a heightened sense of fear.

[00:47:33] Just the usual sense of feeling unsafe in this world between Columbine and then 9-11 as I was growing up and the constant flow of news stories of people getting robbed or killed. I'm basically always on what I call low key high alert. What low key high alert? Yeah. So like, I'm not constantly anxious and worried, but in the back of my mind, I'm always taking safety precautions.

[00:48:00] I never sit with my back facing to a door in a restaurant, things like that. I'll scan my surroundings and get a feel for people, see where the exits are, things like that. And when I drive, I try to drive usually very defensively because I feel like, oh, if I encounter somebody with road rage, I'm going to die. My mind just goes there. Yeah. I do that too, to an extent. Um, I think that it's my anxiety though. My fear of just bad things happening. It is.

[00:48:28] It probably is just a low grade anxiety for both of us. And then the occasional triggers that make it worse. Yeah. I was actually playing a board game with my aunts and uncles who were in town last night. And we were just talking about like, cause it was like our first adult conversation with me being like a full blown adult, you know, sitting around the table with them. We could actually just talk freely. We were talking about just going to therapy and I was talking about my anxiety and they were surprised that I had anxiety. They're going to, you have anxiety?

[00:48:56] Like, like that was something that people just don't have. Like it was such a rare thing to them. They were just like, you have anxiety? What's that like? Like, wait, what's it not like? Yeah. I feel like everybody has, and that's not to downplay it, but it's just more common now. I don't know. Is there something in the water? Who knows? But yeah, I definitely feel that. I think it's just being more discussed these days is what it is. More people are willing to come forward and admit and talk about their experiences, which is great. Yeah.

[00:49:24] I had this one fear growing up aside from the mirrors that I can remember that was silly. You know, that phrase, like when you choke on water or something, somebody says, oh, went down the wrong pipe. Yeah. I used to think that because when people said that, I thought that we had pipes like different tubes in our throats for water or liquid and one for food. Oh, I thought that until like a decade ago. No, wait, really? Yeah. There's some stupid stuff that I still carry over from my childhood. Yeah.

[00:49:53] I actually thought that for a long time. I don't remember when I learned that that wasn't the case. Somebody probably just like insulted me and made fun of me for how stupid I was rightfully so. But yeah, I used to think that there were like pipes for different types of food. And I would worry that I, for some reason I worked out that the water or liquid pipe was on the left side and the food was on the right. So if my tongue was too far to the left, when I swallowed like water, it would go down the right pipe and I would start to choke.

[00:50:23] So I would constantly swallow with my head to the left or to the right, depending on what was in my mouth. I love that. Stupid. I just did the math and I definitely wasn't in my early twenties when I thought that, but still. We thought, we thought it too long. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, and I'm super happy that we got to link up with monsters among us. Derek does such a great job and he has a killer voice, one to envy. Highly recommend you check out his show.

[00:50:52] Yeah, definitely check out that show. It's great. That's a wrap for us. Thank you all for listening. This week you have heard Haunted Ranch or Hallucination by Kat, Doppelganger Mom by Leah, The Time I Saw Sasquatch by Corey, House on the Border Between Worlds by Angie, The Spider Woman by Elizabeth and Elizabeth. If you happen to have a picture of the spot that you saw that Spider-Man at, by all means, send that to us.

[00:51:18] I'd love to just kind of get a picture of what you saw. And then finally, My Friend Ford by Skylar. All the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors. Make sure you send your stories to stories at oddtrails.com and don't forget to sign up for our Patreon over at patreon.com forward slash odd trails if you'd like to get access to ad free versions of all of our episodes, add a higher bit rate for the best listening experience possible.

[00:51:45] Finally, don't forget to check out my other podcasts, Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. Welcome to Paradise, It Sucks and the Old Time Radiocast at crypticcountypodcasts.com or wherever you get your shows. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:51:59] Of diesen The Ghost and the Ghouls Disturb your dance. Right now, don't forget to subscribe to me and watch this video, don't forget to subscribe