Episode 72: A Werewolf Sighting

[00:00:00] Verwandle deine Leidenschaft mit Shopify in ein Business. Und knack Umsatzrekorde mit dem Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Du hast richtig gehört! Der Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Der legendäre Checkout von Shopify vereinfacht das Shoppen auf deiner Website, bis hin zu Social Media und überall dazwischen. Na das ist Musik für deine Ohren. Wie du es auch drehst und wendest, mit Shopify kannst du zu einem echten Hip werden. Starte deinen Test noch heute für nur einen Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de.

[00:00:30] 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. Just trust. Believe.

[00:01:26] I grew up in South Florida, Broward County to be exact. Nowadays, cattle pasture and agriculture are not something you equate with the bright neon lights of the A1A Highway or sultry sunny days at the beach. But when I was 18, there were still parts of the county where teenagers tried to tip over sleeping cows and rode their horses down dirt roads.

[00:01:53] There was even a hitching post at the local Burger King. Trucks were muddy and carried hay and feed. And people still wore boots, wranglers, and cowboy hats. If you know, you know. My boyfriend at the time, I'll call him Rick, lived in one of these last rural areas of Broward County. And this is where my story begins.

[00:02:19] So one night, Rick and I were going to go out to the local arcade, and he had to stop at his house for something. I chose to stay in the car that night because his mother and I did not like each other. When we arrived at his house, he parked in front of what was their game room. It had a lot of windows and a pool table in a bar. And I could see inside where his mother and stepdad were playing a game of pool.

[00:02:48] Now, from where he parked, if I looked to the left, I could see their side yard, which was fairly wide open, and had some trees but mostly grass, and it led to a line of longleaf pines that formed a barrier between his yard and the cow pasture beyond. During the day, you could see the cows out there, but there was a lot of darkness under the pines even during the day.

[00:03:17] They were very lush and very healthy pine trees and created a lot of shade. I don't remember if the moon was full that night. I believe it was because his front yard was very bright for being in such a rural location, because the bright lights of Fort Lauderdale didn't infiltrate the area at that time. As I was sitting in the car, staring into his house, watching him talk to his parents, something caught my eye.

[00:03:48] There was movement in the tree branches at the line of the pasture in his side yard. I stared where the movement was, thinking that maybe a cow had gotten through the line or was grazing through the fence. But that's not what it was. What emerged through that line of trees was a werewolf. I know, I can hear you across time and space. Werewolves don't exist, right?

[00:04:18] I wish that were so. This was long before underworld was a thing. But what came out of those trees was very much like an underworld lichen. Tall, most likely around seven feet, with white fur and glowing green eyes. It stood on two legs.

[00:04:40] Imagine if a dog's hips could keep it upright for extended periods, and that is essentially what you would have. That's what I was looking at. I froze. My body locked down. I couldn't move. I never felt terror like I did at that moment. I watched helplessly as it stood there. It's hand, paw or whatever, was braced on a tree trunk.

[00:05:08] It lifted its muzzle into the air like it was sniffing, testing the wind, searching for something. Could it smell me? Does fear have an aroma? My eyes darted between it and the safety of the house.

[00:05:26] The warm lights, and the three people inside enclosed by walls, seemed like a safe zone, which when I think back on it, was probably giving me a false sense of security. Although I couldn't move, my mind was racing, trying to come up with a successful exit strategy.

[00:05:48] My eyes feverishly gauged the distance between the werewolf and the door leading into the house. About 50 to 70 feet. Would I be able to bolt from the car and get inside before I was noticed? No one knows what they're going to do until they're in a situation such as I was in. Everybody can say, oh, I would do this or I would do that.

[00:06:17] But you simply don't know. My body locked down, but my mind was going a mile a minute. Was I actually seeing what I thought I was seeing? These things existed in movies, not in reality. If werewolves are real, does that mean vampires are? What about fairies? Wondering if he was going to eat me was the biggest refrain going through my brain,

[00:06:47] along with visions of me being ripped into shreds as I tried to run from the car to the front door. My eyes flicked back to where my boyfriend stood inside his house, with his back to me, blissfully unaware of what was going on outside. I thought again that maybe I could get out of the car and into the house before the creature would be upon me.

[00:07:14] But I decided that staying in the car was the safest move to make. I looked back at the werewolf, and he was still there. But now his gaze had shifted, and he was looking right at me. I let out a gasp, the first sound I had made since it came into view.

[00:07:35] I slowly slid down in the front seat, my knees unlocking enough to get me almost below the dashboard, where I peered out, keeping an eye on the monster that should not be in my reality. It seemed like an eternity before his eerie eyes moved from my direction. He turned around and faded back into the trees, heading back towards the cow pasture.

[00:08:03] I continued to slouch in my seat, my eyes locked on that spot where he was, my brain still unable to comprehend what I actually saw. The whole encounter couldn't have taken more than five minutes, if that. I was blown off my axis. I didn't know what to think. Did I really just see what my brain was telling me I saw?

[00:08:30] This was a creature of myth, not something that lived in my world. And I sure as hell couldn't tell anybody what I just saw, because part of me didn't believe in myself. And that's a scary feeling when you can't trust your own brain, or your own eyes. My boyfriend came out of the house at that point and opened up his door. He took one look at me and immediately asked me what was wrong.

[00:09:00] Nothing, nothing is wrong, I told him. Why do you ask? I could hear a tremor in my voice, so I knew I wasn't going to fool him. But I really couldn't tell him what I saw. He said that I looked terrified, and I made some excuse about how being alone on his property in the dark must have given me a case of the spooks. And for a while, that's what I told myself.

[00:09:29] Over time though, when the memory remained very clear in my mind, I knew what I saw. The older I got, the more I embraced that what I saw was real. That day kind of changed my life in a way. I was a big horror movie fan at that point in my life, and werewolves and vampires were my favorite things.

[00:09:53] Then I actually saw a werewolf, and to this day, I can't watch anything with werewolves in it. My husband makes fun of me because, well, who wouldn't? I think he believes me though. Or at least, he wants to believe me. As I said, I find it hard to believe myself sometimes. I've never seen one again.

[00:10:18] And although I really wish I would, I've never seen a vampire either. So, somewhere in Broward County, Florida, there is a werewolf type of entity walking around on two legs. What a fantastical world we could be living in. If there truly are creatures and cryptids that can't be explained, or that hide from explanation. What if more myths were real?

[00:10:47] What if my werewolf isn't the only one out there? I have actually never looked into other werewolf sightings, just because I'm scared to death of what I'm going to see. Werewolves have been mentioned in the historical record since they first surfaced in the Epic of Gilgamesh in 2100 BC. That's a long time to be around if there wasn't some kernel of truth.

[00:11:14] I know people say creatures like werewolves or bigfoot or other cryptids shouldn't exist. And we're brought up to believe that monsters aren't real. There isn't a monster under your bed, in your closet, or standing under your window. But they are real, and they do walk among us. They just choose not to be seen, unless they want to be.

[00:11:41] We are Teresa and Nemo, and therefore we are to Shopify. The platform, the we used before Shopify, has used updates, which have been used to often, that the shop didn't work. Our Nemo Boards Shop makes our own mobile devices a good figure.

[00:12:11] The illustrations on the boards come now very, very clear, what is important to us and what our brand is also made out. Start your test today for 1€ per month on shopify.de. www.shopify.de Verwandle deine Leidenschaft mit Shopify in ein Business. Und knack Umsatzrekorde mit dem Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Du hast richtig gehört! Der Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Der legendäre Checkout von Shopify vereinfacht das Shoppen auf deiner Website,

[00:12:41] bis hin zu Social Media und überall dazwischen. Na das ist Musik für deine Ohren. Wie du es auch drehst und wendest, mit Shopify kannst du zu einem echten Hip werden. Starte deinen Test noch heute für nur 1€ pro Monat auf shopify.de slash rekorde. To preface this story, I had a very tumultuous childhood. I grew up in a broken and oddly religious family. I've always been sensitive to the spirit world, but we didn't talk openly about anything paranormal

[00:13:10] because it was always thought to be evil. That being said, what I am about to tell you impacted me in a huge way. This occurred in 1996 when I was 10 years old. My mom had met the man of her dreams and it was time for us to move in together and assume our roles in this happy little family. We didn't have much money, so they rented the best house that they could afford in western Massachusetts.

[00:13:39] Upon pulling up to the property, the vibe was a bit heavy, but it did not compare to the sinking feeling that you got when you entered the house. It was a large blue two-story house with an unfinished basement and it sat on about an acre or so of heavily wooded land. It had been closed up for a long time and it smelled of dust and what can only be described as damp rot.

[00:14:05] This place was infested with flies and it immediately reminded me of the scene with the priest in the Amityville Horror. Just flies everywhere, dead and alive. I mean this place was falling apart, so it could have been the house rot, but it was still fucking weird. I thought that it was a sign of an evil spirit or energy. We've all seen possession movies, right?

[00:14:31] So we cozy into our creepy new home with no chance of escaping my fate. Things were calm for the first couple of weeks until the first time I was home alone. I came home from school and my parents were out shopping, so I grabbed a snack and cozied up on the sofa with the book. We had a Rottweiler at the time, Arno. He was the beefiest, biggest dog ever. He was a real protective type.

[00:15:00] He was lying on the floor close to the TV and I was in my zone, deep into my story. In the dead silence of the house, something big and heavy-footed ran up the basement stairs and slammed into the door that led into the kitchen. I shit you not. Whatever it was, smashed that door so hard that the whole house shook. Arno and I both jumped, his fur on end and his teeth bared.

[00:15:29] I leashed him, grabbed the cordless phone, as this was the 90s, the time of landlines, and I ran the fuck out of there as fast as I could. My parents came home about 45 minutes later to the dog and me freezing our asses off in the front yard. I told them what had happened and we went to investigate. Well, big surprise here, there was nothing in the basement, which was creepy as hell to begin with.

[00:15:56] It was all stone walls and dirt floor with this rank smell of decay at the far left corner behind a partitioned wall. I hated that basement for the way that it felt and the way that it smelled. But anyways, it was empty. There were no signs of entry. The door, however, had a crack and was splintering at the bottom. We noticed this on our way back up the stairs.

[00:16:22] My parents thought maybe it had been there to begin with and they just blew it off. Needless to say, I was scared half the fucking death. My mom told me just to pray and all the evil things will go away. Cool. Thanks, mom. We went about our daily life routines of ignoring all of the weird stuff happening, but it only seemed to happen when I was alone or so I thought.

[00:16:48] There were a few times I was home alone after school and I heard footsteps upstairs. The upstairs consisted of three bedrooms, two at one end of the hall and one at the other and a bathroom in between. I would hear a kid running, laughing, and then stopping at the top of the stairs. I was brave enough to investigate, but nothing was ever there. I told my mom about these incidents.

[00:17:15] She said that she had heard the same thing a few times when she was alone in the house. Finally, somebody who believed me. That relief, however, was momentary. At this time, I was nearing 12 and my mental health was quickly deteriorating. I was uncomfortable in my home and in my own body, and I began to self-harm. My parents were starting to get very into Catholicism with their church wedding approaching,

[00:17:42] and they didn't have time to deal with me or our ghosts. I couldn't tell them much about how I was hurting and how I believed that I was being negatively affected by whatever the fuck was in that house. So I only spoke of these things with the few friends that I had. During this time, I began having nightmares of a large man in the attic. He was an imposing man with a heavy and dark energy.

[00:18:10] He was bald around 6'5 and 260 pounds. He wore a red and black plaid shirt, dirty trousers, and big brown boots. I never did see his face, but I remember these details. Now, this final experience I had will forever haunt me, and it's the most poignant of all my paranormal experiences. Remember how I told you about the child running and laughing upstairs? Well, here's where it comes full circle.

[00:18:38] According to my digital clock, I awoke on a school night just before 11pm. I used the bathroom, shut out the light, and walked the hall to my room. As I opened my bedroom door, I saw something peculiar standing at the foot of my bed. It was a boy. He couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old, but something was really off about him.

[00:19:04] If you've ever seen a full-bodied apparition, then this might be hard to believe, but that's what I was staring at. A ghost. He was a shade of faded grayish blue, and I could see the white wall through him. I could literally see right through this kid like he was some kind of hologram. He noticed me, and our eyes met.

[00:19:28] I stood in shock and terror, unable to move or make a sound, even though my mom was in the room right next to mine. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, or at least long enough for me to soak in the details of this ghost boy. He had short, disheveled hair, a thin build with knobby knees, and icy cold eyes.

[00:19:50] He wore a short-sleeved, button-down shirt with shorts, suspenders, long socks that were crumpled around his calves, and leather boots that were haphazardly laced. His clothing looked like something a boy would wear in the late 1800s or early 1900s. This makes sense considering that the house was built in the 1800s, and who knows how many people have lived and died here.

[00:20:17] Anyway, in spite of my better judgment, I walked over to my bed, our eyes locked the entire time, where I climbed in and proceeded to pass the hell out with my head under the blanket. I woke up the next morning and told my mom about what had happened. We tried debunking my experience by investigating the lighting in the room, the hallway, and the potential of shadows playing tricks on me.

[00:20:43] That room had two windows and forest green curtains, no moonlight was coming in when they were closed, and I had turned out the bathroom and hallway light when this happened. It was very dark. So, what I saw was legitimate. After this, she believed me, and we dubbed the ghost Little Boy Blue. I never saw him after that night, and I wasn't as scared as I should have been to sleep in that room. But our lease was ending anyway.

[00:21:11] The happiest day I ever spent in that house was when we packed up our shit and we left. But I can't help but think back on that little ghost boy and how he may have needed help. Maybe there was a correlation between him and the man in the plaid shirt. I still think about him all the time, and I wonder if the basement incident also had to do with the man that I was dreaming about. The funny thing is, during a recent discussion with my mom about the house,

[00:21:38] she told me she had dreams of the same man in the attic, but she never did see the boy. Luckily, I stopped self-harming after we left that house, and I really believed that there was something there that didn't want us to be there, or didn't want us to discover what had actually occurred there. I think that whatever it was may have hurt the boy, and it wanted to hurt me too.

[00:22:02] So, if any of you happen to live in a big blue house in Southwick, Massachusetts, you might be living with Little Boy Blue. Don't be afraid of him. He's harmless. But watch out for the man in the attic. He does not want you there.

[00:22:32] Lately, you guys have been talking a lot about strange dream happenings, and I wanted to share an experience I had a while ago. I've always had extremely vivid but incredibly bizarre dreams. Since I can remember, I've always had an obsession with horror, so I welcome nightmares as a little bit of extra entertainment. However, that makes this story a little different from the stories you usually share.

[00:23:00] I normally can't tell that I'm dreaming, even though I did everything I could for months to lucid dream back when I was 12. The only time I ever recognized that I was in a dream, I only had time to summon an ice cream and then promptly forgot I had any control. With that, I stopped trying eventually, and years passed by having wacky dreams and writing out the ones I could remember.

[00:23:30] That brings me to 2020. My year was very different from most, because I went tree planting in an isolated camp in the Canadian wilderness. I spent three months totally out of my comfort zone, but surrounded by people who I would consider family 24-7. Even when I was sleeping, I had someone else's tent within walking distance.

[00:23:58] Once I ended the season of planting, I ended up in an Airbnb by myself for the first time in a long time. Everything was normal, but I was exhausted, and saying goodnight to my long-distance boyfriend at around 9pm. The room I was in had a front door, a small hallway that connected to the bathroom, and then a second door that separated my room from the hallway.

[00:24:27] I always sleep in pitch-black darkness, so I turned off the light and closed both doors securely. I laid in bed, turned away from the door, and drifted off. Quickly after passing out, I started hearing someone going up and down the hallways with heavy boots knocking on people's doors. My body felt heavy, and I couldn't do anything other than listen,

[00:24:55] and I figured whoever it was would find the right room soon. Then, as they got closer, I heard them asking people, where is Sam's room? This made my heart race, because the only person who knew where I was staying was four provinces away, and this was not a voice I recognized. I laid facing away from the door, helpless, as the footsteps approached.

[00:25:26] Then I saw the lights in the hallway start to flicker. With every ounce of energy my tired body had, I tried turning over to look at the door, and it actually started to work. The only way I can describe it is I felt like I was astral projecting, because I felt like I was being pulled back to my left side the whole time I tried to turn,

[00:25:52] and it was the most exhausting thing I've ever tried to do. Finally, I locked eyes with the doorway that was fully open, and the hall light was on. And there was a man. All I could see of him was a tall black figure with a hat that took up the entire doorway. He stood completely still as I came to the realization that someone was standing in my room,

[00:26:22] and I barely had the energy to turn to look at him. Let alone fight him. Then something came over me, and I asked, Do I know you? He answered, No. And my response was, Would you like to introduce yourself? I don't know what was up with me. I just became so calm. He replied,

[00:26:51] No, I'm just here to use your bathroom. I then woke up, facing away from the door, and panicked. He was gone, the door was closed, and the light was off. I don't know if it was all in my head, but it really felt like someone was there. When I checked the time, only about 15 minutes had passed. I'm glad I reacted the way I did,

[00:27:20] because I haven't seen him since. We are Teresa and Nemo. And so we are to Shopify and we have changed. The platform, the we used before Shopify has used to have regularly updates, which have been sometimes made to have been made, that the shop didn't work. End of our Nemo Boards Shop makes our mobile devices a good figure.

[00:27:50] And the illustrations on the boards come now very, very clear, what is important and what our brand is also out. Start your test today for 1€ pro Monat on shopify.de slash radio verwandle deine Leidenschaft mit Shopify in ein Business und knack Umsatzrekorde mit dem Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Du hast richtig gehört. Der Checkout mit der weltweit besten Conversion. Der legendäre Checkout von Shopify vereinfacht das Shoppen auf deiner Website

[00:28:20] bis hin zu Social Media und überall dazwischen. Na, das ist Musik für deine Ohren. Wie du es auch drehst und wendest, mit Shopify kannst du zu einem echten Hip werden. Starte deinen Test noch heute für nur 1€ pro Monat auf shopify.de slash rekorde In 2016, I was working as the production supervisor for a manufacturing company in a small town in the Midwest when they decided to move the operation to a warehouse closer to their main office.

[00:28:49] We settled into the new building and all seemed to go well for a while, but gradually we noticed odd things start to happen that could not be explained. Let me describe the layout of the building as it's important to the explanation of some of the things that happened. when you came in the front door, the QA office was to your right and the break room was to your left. My office was also on the right just past QA and the time clock where employees clocked in, in, out was on the wall

[00:29:18] just outside of my office door. Just past my office door and the time clock was a long hallway about 30 feet down to the left to the restrooms and the production area where some of the employees sewed and did assembly the room had a heavy metal door that banged loudly when anybody used it. Also important. If you turn to the right, there was another door about 10 feet away that opened to a warehouse where we stored manufacturing materials and packed

[00:29:48] and loaded crates of the finished products into trucks for transportation. This warehouse door also banged loudly when someone would go in or out. I can't say exactly when things started to happen because at first we just kind of wrote it off as things happening and then shrugged it off. Several times we would leave the room for breaks or lunch and when we returned, small tools, instruction sheets, and other items

[00:30:17] would be gone only to mysteriously return in plain sight later. I always did a walkthrough of the production room before I left and I began hearing very soft sounds like a radio left on low or maybe a machine left on, but this was never the case. I would always hear these low whispering or murmuring sounds, but nothing was on. Another time, I had left the production room with everybody else to go home and I realized that I had left something

[00:30:47] in the room, so I went back to get it. I distinctly heard the sound of one of the big metal rulers hitting the room's concrete floor. When I went where I heard the noise, nothing was on the floor anywhere. We also used power cutters to cut through thick materials and for safety reasons, the power cords hung down from a strip on the ceiling above the cutting table, so they would just dangle there if nobody were using them.

[00:31:17] Some of the employees would tell me that as they were standing at the table, they would see a hand reaching for one of these power cords from the corner of their eye, but when they turned, no one was there. People also reported having a feeling of somebody coming up next to them, but again, they turned and nobody was there. As time went on, the activity increased. Employees working in the warehouse would come into the production room and ask if I had called them,

[00:31:47] which I had not. We had a man working for us who I'll call Joe, who eventually retired. One day, an employee came into the warehouse and asked if Joe was back because he heard Joe's voice calling his name while he was out there. This made me nervous. I called Joe's wife to make sure that he was okay, and he was. Several times while I was sitting in my office, I would see what appeared to be somebody rushing by my door. When I jumped up

[00:32:16] to see who it was, there was never anyone in the hallway. There was no way someone got down that hallway that I described earlier that quick, and the banging doors would have given them away. Directly across from my office was a storage room with a cupboard for supplies, mops, brooms, a vacuum, and miscellaneous junk. The door to the storage room opened into the room and rested against the wall. One day, I was checking supplies

[00:32:45] when the door slammed shut with a loud bang. I thought that somebody was being funny, so I yanked it open and went to find the guilty party, yelling, okay, who's the funny guy? I was met by three wide-eyed employees who were coming to see what I was so mad about that made me slam the door that hard. No way that door just blew shut on its own. Our plant manager, I'll call him Bob,

[00:33:14] had the most unnerving experience since he was alone in the building after we all left. One time, he was staying to oversee the loading of a truck and he saw a man with a beard, blue plaid shirt, and overalls standing just to the side of him, which he assumed was the driver of the truck. When he turned to speak directly to this man, nobody was there. Many times, Bob would need to come into the production room

[00:33:43] after the rest of us were gone for the day. Bob told me he heard the murmuring or the whispering all the time and would also hear footsteps approaching him, but nobody was ever there. He said he began to loudly announce into the room that he was just there to do such and such thing and then he would be gone and then it stopped. However, one evening, Bob had to wait in the warehouse for a truck that was making a late shipment.

[00:34:12] After the truck left, Bob walked to the front of the warehouse to lock the front doors. He turned to look at the back of the warehouse and noticed a large black mass floating along a group of tall boxes. He watched as it seemed to start coming towards him and realized it was solid, not a shadow. He had a bad feeling as if it were something evil and he watched, frozen, as it turned and floated towards some metal racks

[00:34:42] and disappeared into the wall. He left as quickly as possible. There are many more odd things that have happened, but I think that the puzzle incident is truly bizarre. Sometimes, we would have downtime, so there would be a table in the corner of the room where you could put together a jigsaw puzzle if you wanted to. One woman had put together a complete puzzle except for one piece. We searched everywhere, even checking the vacuum cleaner to see if it had been sucked up. We never found the piece

[00:35:11] and left the puzzle on the table and just forgot about it. We usually did a thorough cleaning of the room once a month, but one day, probably two years later, we cleaned the room and went on a break. After the break, we walked into the room and the puzzle piece was in the middle of the perfectly cleaned floor mat. I picked it up and as the others came back into the room, I announced that I had found the missing piece without even checking. Of course,

[00:35:40] it was the missing piece. After a while, it seemed the activity calmed down. Now in my business, the number of employees would fluctuate a bit and I felt like the activity would increase when we had more employees or worked longer hours than usual. I retired from the company in 2014 and the whole operation moved to another state four years later. Another business now occupies that building and I sometimes think about stopping by

[00:36:10] and asking them if they have any odd activities going on. I am a 25 year old girl from Mumbai, India.

[00:36:39] I want to believe that there is a world beyond our physical one. Although, I have never had any proper encounters or incidents with the spirit, except for a few times when I have felt my loved ones around after their passing or known beforehand that someone really close to my heart is about to move on from this world. It was nearly ten years ago when I experienced the following occurrence.

[00:37:07] I was in a relationship with my now ex for a few years at the time and the relationship was bad, to put it nicely. But, I was naive and realized this far too late. He had given me a ring for my birthday, which I was determined to keep safe, since I lost the first one he gifted me during the first year of our relationship. Remember this part as it will be of significance

[00:37:37] later on. I was visiting my mother's family in Amitabad. For a few days, my mother and I decided to stay with my mom's youngest sister. My aunt had been going through a very tough time and we all thought she was experiencing depression or maybe something worse. She had to go through surgery as well and was on complete bed rest. One night, our entire family,

[00:38:07] including our cousins, had come over for dinner. It was all very happy and everyone had a great evening. After everyone finished their dinner and most of the family left, there were only a few of us remaining at the house. My aunt was resting in her room, and the rest of us were outside chatting away. Then, she suddenly called out to my grandmother in a rather deep voice. My grandmother

[00:38:37] and my mom went inside to check on her, and then my uncle went inside as well. It was just me and my two little cousins waiting outside and wondering what was wrong. We could hear my aunt crying, and we were very anxious as to what was happening inside. We weren't allowed to go in. We waited outside for what felt like hours, but was probably only about 30 minutes.

[00:39:07] To my surprise, my mom came out and asked me to come with her. I was scared, but stepped inside and saw that my aunt was looking different. I couldn't exactly place as to how she was different. She looked at me and her eyes had a different spark to them. It felt like she was seeing me for the first time. She looked at me with so much longing, like she had been

[00:39:37] waiting to see me for so long. I sat on the edge of the bed, still confused about what was happening. She took my hand into hers and caressed it lovingly. Her hand felt different, heavier than usual. The touch was different, not like my aunt's, but I felt comforted and safe. She had tears in her eyes and said to me,

[00:40:05] Finally, I get to see you. And she said my name. She lovingly touched my cheek, and her touch was warm, and somehow felt like it was not my aunt who was touching me. I then went back outside, as my mom instructed me to do. Everything went back to normal. Later that night, when we were tucking ourselves into bed, I asked my mom what that was all about. She told me

[00:40:35] that my grandfather had somehow possessed my aunt to interact with us. I was internally shocked, and I asked my mom whether she really believed that. All she said at that time was, We can't ever truly know. Before going to sleep that night, in my head, I said with complete determination, If that was you, Grandpa, and if you're really here tonight, I want proof.

[00:41:05] If you think the guy I am with is not good for me, you will take the ring, which is in the side pocket of my bag, and I will never see it again. The morning comes, and the first thing I do is check the side pocket of my bag. And of course, the ring was gone. Trust me, I looked for it that entire day, and the next. I had it on me before I went inside the room,

[00:41:33] and I made sure it was in my bag before going in. I searched the entire house. I do believe it was my grandpa that day, and he was more than right, because my ex was the worst person I could have been with. We are Teresa and

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[00:42:32] The following story contains non-descriptive reference to the death of animals. Ghosts and hauntings have always captured my interest, and I believed in them before I ever experienced anything. I remember hearing noises at night when I was a kid, but I never thought too much of it. The first experience that really freaked me out happened when I was around 12 or 13 years old. My sister and I shared a room, and one morning, I noticed my legs were covered in bruises.

[00:43:02] My sister woke up with pain in her back, and my mom checked it out and found 3 long scratches on her back. My parents were very religious. They said a prayer and blessed the house, but nothing ever happened after that. Fast forward 7 years or so, and my then boyfriend and I were looking for a place to live. His friend's dad had a house, and he offered to let us live in it temporarily while we found something else. The house had been abandoned for a while,

[00:43:32] I'm not sure how long, but some of their stuff was still in the house. We were made aware that someone had died in that house, and we weren't really scared though. I kind of expected to feel a presence, an energy of some sort. But, for the time that we lived there, I never sensed anything. A few months after living in the house, we were told that the house had been sold and we needed to move out. One afternoon while packing and moving our stuff, we came back to the house

[00:44:02] to find out that the lights had been turned off. We packed up everything that was left in the dark, and we waited for my boyfriend's friend to arrive with his truck in the room that we slept with a few friends who were helping us. Out of nowhere, my body started feeling heavy, and I started having a hard time breathing. The next thing I knew, I was sobbing and crying uncontrollably. I didn't know what came over me, but I knew that something dark was there with us. I could feel it.

[00:44:32] I cried and begged my boyfriend to take me out of that house. I couldn't even walk, he had to carry me out. After I was outside, still crying, I told my boyfriend that I needed to get the fuck out of there. His friend soon arrived with the truck, and another friend took me home while my boyfriend stayed back and helped pack the truck. Later that day, when my boyfriend got home, he told me that his friend's girlfriend had experienced the same thing as me.

[00:45:01] She entered the house and felt sick to her stomach. She started crying and sobbing and needed to leave the house. I should mention that a mama cat lived outside the house. We cared for her and her kittens when they were born. After the incident that day, I didn't return to the house, but we had a couple of boxes there, so my boyfriend went to the house to get them. He didn't take long to come back. He told me that he found the rest of our stuff

[00:45:29] in a giant trash can that had been put outside. He didn't try to enter the house because right outside of the door were all of the kittens. They weren't alive. It's been close to eight years since that took place. A few things have happened to me after that, during the years. Lights switching on and off, open cabinets, stuff flying from shelves, but nothing compares to that very dark and horrible feeling. Thinking back on that time, I remember my boyfriend and I

[00:45:58] fought so much while we lived there. I'm pretty sure that whatever was there was feeding off of us and clearly got very angry when we left. I hope I never experience anything like this ever again.

[00:46:29] So I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of the werewolves. I was very excited to get a werewolf story on this week's episode. Yeah, it's a nice little addition we got here. The author mentioned being too scared to look up anything related to werewolves, so I decided to do a little digging on their behalf. Pardon the book report, but the origins of werewolves can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome,

[00:46:56] where stories of humans transforming into animals were common. In Norse mythology, there were stories of people who could transform into wolves or bears, known as berserkers. In European folklore, werewolves were often associated with witchcraft and devil worship. Ooh. Oh boy. In many werewolf stories, the transformation is involuntary and the person who becomes a werewolf

[00:47:24] may not even remember what happened during their transformation. In other stories, the transformation is voluntary and the werewolf has control over their actions. One of the most famous werewolf stories is the legend of the beast of Javudan. I hope I got that right. Yeah. A creature that terrorized the French countryside in the 18th century. According to the legend, the beast was a massive wolf-like creature

[00:47:52] that killed over 100 people before it was finally killed. Rest in peace. Werewolf stories always tend to be the saddest, and that's kind of why I like them. You feel bad for the person. It's not like a vampire where they're just, they turn into pure evil. Mm-hmm. Dicks. Yeah. The werewolf is a victim. You know, they don't, like you said, they don't remember turning into a werewolf. I feel the same way about zombies. Bless their hearts too. Yeah.

[00:48:22] I feel so bad for zombies. Especially, I think it was Return of the Living Dead, where the zombie came alive on the operating table and said, they were in pain. They have to eat brains and they were in pain. They just wanted to die. They could feel themselves rotting. It's so depressing. It really is. And that's why I like werewolves, because it's a sad story. They're suffering, like Lon Chaney Jr. in the original Wolfman from Universal. Mm-hmm.

[00:48:48] He was just such a sad guy and he was so upset about what he thinks he did as the werewolf. That's one hell of an ailment. Yeah, definitely. You know, before we started recording in my closet, I heard a growl. It was loud. It was very audible. I don't know what it was. A lot of weird stuff comes out of this closet here in my office. That's where I used to keep pickles,

[00:49:14] pickles, but I moved pickles over into hanging from my wall right in front of me so that we could spend time together while I recorded. But that being said, the growl didn't scare me at all. It was a terrifying growl, but I'm so desensitized because of these podcasts and the weird things that have happened to us. I don't even care. I just looked over and I was like, oh, that was weird. And I just don't even care. It was probably just a werewolf. There you go.

[00:49:42] The hat man encounter was also really neat because the author was able to speak and communicate with the entity. Had it purely been sleep paralysis, in my opinion, it's safe to say they wouldn't have been able to turn their body or say any words out loud at all. And that's not to say sleep paralysis isn't interesting in and of itself. We've mentioned many times how we believe dreams and being in a sleep like state potentially

[00:50:09] puts us in a more susceptible state of mind to experience the paranormal. There are just too many repeated instances that are shared by other people for me to write it off entirely as something that can be explained by pure logic. What were your thoughts on that story? Yeah, them interacting with the hat man definitely puts weight on the side of the scale of shadow people being actual entities and not necessarily just hallucinations. Yeah, I think both arguments hold equal weight there.

[00:50:37] We have to take everything with some healthy skepticism, but I think we can have a little bit of both. Yeah, some healthy skepticism. You got it, baby. Okay. Unrelated to the stories, I was surfing Reddit and I found one of... I really like this subreddit called Would You Rather? I've followed it for years. There's an interesting one that popped up recently. Um, it was from a Redditor named Spaghetti Snake. You're gonna love this one. Are you ready? I am ready.

[00:51:05] Would you rather be a ghost that can interact with things, but you're stuck in the area where you died or be a ghost that cannot interact with anything, but you can go anywhere you want. Only thing is you can just watch. And for the first scenario, you have to stay in that area. For instance, if you die on the street, uh, you have to haunt that one, that single street, you know, that, that, that area, that block.

[00:51:34] Uh, if you die in house, you have to stay in the house. If you die, uh, in a church, you have to stay in the church, that kind of thing. Um, but yeah, the other option, you're a ghost, but you just can't interact with anything. So you just have to watch everything. What would you prefer? I would easily choose the second option. It's more adventurous. I think it would get less stale and who's to say I wouldn't die somewhere very boring. So yeah, give me the second one.

[00:52:01] I can just be a peeping Tom and live out all of my desires. Okay. Yeah. I think that, uh, every human being ever would love to just be a peeping Tom and live out all of their desires and spy on everybody. But at the same time, not being able to interact with anyone for ever for eternity, you don't think that would be kind of rough. I mean, even if it's just haunting or somehow communicating with somebody through channeling

[00:52:29] or even possessing somebody, anything, any type of interaction with something else or somebody else, you could live without that for eternity. I feel like by observing things and just traveling the world, so to speak, I could get some entertainment that way. That is a very valid point. Like if I, if I could die in Disneyland, yeah, let me die in Disneyland. That is the ultimate way to go. Thanks. Thanks.

[00:52:59] You just cracked the case, man. Kill me at Disneyland. I'll die on the Matterhorn. It's a cute one. I've got a, would you rather? Hell yeah. Lay it on me. Would you rather be able to teleport anywhere in the world or be able to time travel? Well, you're limited in both aspects, but technically not in the second one. So you can travel anywhere in the world, but eventually you're going to visit everywhere you're in the world.

[00:53:28] Mm-hmm. Unless you're just not able to within your lifetime. While that would be awesome, you can technically still travel to anywhere in the world without this wish as long as you had the funds and the time to do it. But the time travel thing is something that's unattainable to us. So that would have to be my choice because not only is it something unattainable that no

[00:53:55] matter how much money you have, you just can't get, but you could also travel infinitely back in time and infinitely forward in time. So in comparison, you have so much more stuff to explore than you would if you were just exploring earth only. I agree. Good answer. Good answer. Not to mention, I thought of a little loophole to that. You can time travel five minutes ahead anywhere in the world. Okay.

[00:54:25] Yeah. Yeah. Why not? I guess that was kind of a, that was an easy one. Well, look at it this way. I haven't thought about this. What if you time traveled 12 hours, but didn't move the earth would move, but you would be in that same position. And then you would basically just reappear wherever the, you know, in relation to how, however far the earth moved.

[00:54:50] So you would technically travel in, you know, you would circumvent the earth depending on how far ahead you said it or how far back you said it. I'm complicating this, but you know what I mean, right? Yeah. You could just jump off a vert ramp on some roller blades. Exactly. Time travel and then pull off the world's first 47. I don't know. I can't do math, but you know what I mean? Yes, exactly. Do some super rotations and put Tony Hawk to shame. Exactly. You can just land in France.

[00:55:19] I love it. Oh, that was a fun chat. I enjoyed that. I did too. Thanks for joining me. My pleasure. Thanks everyone for listening this week. You have heard a werewolf sighting by Terry, little boy blue by anonymous. I think I met the hat man by Sam. I didn't hire them by Kyle, the missing ring by viddy. And finally my paranormal experience by a all the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors.

[00:55:46] If you have a story to share, make sure you send it to stories at odd trails.com. And don't forget to sign up for our Patreon. If you want to get ad free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate for the best listening experience, you can do that at patreon.com forward slash odd trails. And finally, don't forget to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts. Let's not meet a true horror podcast. Welcome to paradise. It sucks and the old time radio cast at cryptic county podcasts.com. We'll see you guys next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:56:31] The ghouls disturb you.