Episode 74: Humanoid in Appalachia

[00:00:00] 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. You just trust. Believe.

[00:00:55] As a little girl, I was given a beautiful doll named Lucy by my grandmother. She had long, curly hair and wore a frilly dress. I immediately fell in love with her, but soon after I had Lucy, strange things began to happen. I would wake up in the middle of the night to find she had moved from where I had left her, and sometimes I swear I could hear her whispering to me,

[00:01:24] though I couldn't make out what she was saying. It was unnerving, and I soon stopped playing with Lucy altogether. As I grew older, the occurrences became less frequent, and I chalked them up to an overactive imagination. Then, many years later, when I returned home to visit, I found Lucy in a box in my old

[00:01:50] room. I was flooded with nostalgia and asked my mom for more information about her. She said she had belonged to my great-great-grandmother, who had passed away when my grandmother was just a child. I knew all of that already, but she went on to tell me that my great-great-grandmother had been a deeply troubled

[00:02:13] woman, haunted by the death of her husband and the loss of two of her children. According to family lore, my great-great-grandmother believed that her children's spirits had taken up residence in Lucy, and she would often speak to her as if she were them. After her death, Lucy was passed down through the

[00:02:38] generations, each person experiencing strange occurrences that were attributed to Lucy's supposed haunting. My mom was the only one who didn't experience anything. I was fascinated by this revelation and began to research haunted dolls and other objects. I found that it was a common belief

[00:03:03] among many cultures that objects could be imbued with supernatural power or spirits, and that these objects could have both positive and negative effects on those who possessed them. I also learned about the phenomenon of object memory, which suggests that objects can retain memories and emotions from past

[00:03:27] owners or events. This could explain why haunted objects seem to have a life of their own, and why they often trigger strange occurrences. Even though I hadn't been with Lucy for quite some time, I decided to sit down with her and try to communicate. I sat her down on a table and started telling her

[00:03:51] that it was time to let go of the past and move on. I'm not kidding. I saw her vibrate and shift about an inch. I didn't tell my mom about this. From that moment on, Lucy was no longer haunted. Judge me if you want, but I took her back home with me, and she now sits on top of a bookshelf.

[00:04:18] She somehow brings me comfort. I feel fortunate to have freed Lucy from whatever could be haunting her. But it doesn't end there. The experience with Lucy also got me thinking about the power of objects, how many of the things we own carry memories or emotions with them, and how much of an effect

[00:04:43] they might have in our daily lives. It's a question that stayed with me ever since. Over the years, I've become somewhat of an amateur collector of haunted objects. I visit antique shops and flea markets, always on the lookout for items with interesting histories or strange occurrences attached to them. One of the most interesting objects I've come across

[00:05:10] is a porcelain doll that's said to have been owned by a famous actress in the early 1900s. I took the doll home with me and began to research its history. I discovered that the actress who owned the doll had been plagued by personal demons throughout her life, including drug addiction

[00:05:33] and tumultuous relationships. As I began to spend more time with the doll, I noticed that I too was experiencing strange occurrences. At night I would hear faint whispers and footsteps in my room, and sometimes the doll would appear to have moved on its own. One notably eerie night,

[00:05:58] I woke up to find the doll sitting upright in a chair in the corner of my room. I know for a fact I left her next to the other dolls on top of my bookshelf. I never touch or move any of the dolls or other weird objects in my collection. That was enough for me to feel like maybe I was playing

[00:06:20] with fire. While I do respect whatever energy may be present with them, I couldn't in good conscience continue collecting dolls and other haunted objects. The next day after work, I saged the room, said a prayer, and packed up my collection. Some were taken by an antique shop, the others were donated

[00:06:46] to a thrift store. But I still have Lucy. I'm a 24-year-old woman and I have lived in a small town, in the same home, my entire life. My parents built this home, so there's no previous history here.

[00:07:15] For most of my life, things were quiet, or at least I didn't notice. I was always the different one when it came to my siblings. I was more defiant and open to new experiences, so I enjoyed a lot of things that my siblings did not. But as I got older, I became more aware of the fact that there is definitely more out there than we realize, or if you're my parents, that you're willing to admit.

[00:07:40] This story takes place when I was around 20 years old. Things started small. I always felt like I was hearing things and seeing things out of the corner of my eye. But then, things took a turn. I remember walking into my room one day and feeling uneasy like somebody was there with me. I looked around and saw nobody, so I shrugged it off.

[00:08:03] Over the course of the next couple of weeks, that feeling never went away. Instead, it kept getting stronger and stronger. I kept noticing things being misplaced in my room and things that would mysteriously disappear. Then one night, it all changed. I went to my room to go to bed, and I felt that feeling again. But this time, it was almost suffocating. I tried to ignore it, but when I turned off my

[00:08:30] light and closed my eyes, the feeling was unbearable. And when I opened my eyes, that's when I saw him. There in the corner of my room, in the pits of darkness, stood a tall, black, shadowy figure. I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me, so I kept looking around, but he never moved or left the corner. Safe to say, I slept with my head under the blanket that night. Every night after that,

[00:08:57] he was there. During the day, it was the same feeling, and things were still disappearing or being misplaced, but I only ever saw him at night. It got to the point where I hated my room. Every night, I would see him, and I would feel him. If I closed my eyes, I would feel him approach the side of my bed and stare down at me. But then I would open my eyes, and there he would be, back in the corner. There was no escape.

[00:09:25] He was even in my dreams. I was terrified. I took every opportunity not to come home at night. But if I had no option, I would explain why I slept on the couch. I only went to my room if I absolutely had to, even in the daytime. The worst part about it was, I don't think he liked it when I wasn't up there. Many nights, my dad would come down and ask what the hell I was doing in my room so late because I was making so much noise. But I had not even been up there

[00:09:54] all night. One night in particular, my dog was acting very strange. She was upstairs repeatedly pacing the hallway, scratching and barking at my door, something she had never done in the past. My dad was up there and was surprised when he marched her downstairs to find me on the couch. Even then, she was pacing downstairs, almost like she was looking for something. It took me picking her up and putting her on the couch with me for her to finally calm down and sleep.

[00:10:23] I finally hit a breaking point when he started doing things downstairs. It felt like he was trying to scare me back up into my room. One night, when I was on the couch watching TV, I heard somebody trying to open the garage door. I was overcome with fear. I ran upstairs to grab my dad, sure of the fact that somebody was trying to break in. Within seconds, my dad grabbed his firearm, and he was outside walking the perimeter of the house, but nobody was in sight. There were no signs

[00:10:49] of someone trying to break in at all. He thought that I was crazy or hearing things, but I knew exactly what I heard. For six months, this went on. I told no one. My family didn't believe me, so I wasn't even going to go down that road. And I was scared that people would think that I was crazy, so I stayed quiet. But most of the time, I was on edge. I couldn't sleep anymore, and I had just had enough. I had a friend who had recently opened up about her belief in the paranormal.

[00:11:19] We were hanging out one night, and we made plans for me to stay the night at her house. But we had come to my house for me to grab some clothes, and when I got up to my room, I felt that oh-so-familiar feeling. I knew it was time that I did something about it, but I wanted to see if I was actually crazy, or if she would feel it too. So I made some excuse for her to come up there, and when she did, it confirmed everything. She took two steps into my room, and I asked her what was up.

[00:11:49] She explained that it felt so heavy in my room, and she didn't like it at all. She asked me if I felt it too. I replied yes. It shook her so much that she had to wait for me downstairs. When I finished, I explained to her what had been happening to me for the last six months. She was astonished, but she believed me. We thought it would be best to get out of there so that we could talk more openly about it.

[00:12:17] So back at her house, we stayed up all night researching what this could be and how exactly to get rid of it. We looked for hours with no clear answers. Thankfully, it had never physically harmed or touched me, but I think that was because I never interacted with it or provoked it. If I had, who knows how bad it could have gotten. All I did know was that it was very clear whatever it was was preying on my fear. So we decided to start from square one.

[00:12:45] So one day, when nobody was at home, I went up to my room. I lit some incense my mom had, and I started talking to it. I thanked it for never harming me, but told it that it was in my home and it had no place here, and it was no longer welcome. I demanded that it leave. After that, I recited a prayer that we found, and I left the incense burning there for a while. There was still a lot of fear, but after a couple of days, I noticed that my room had completely changed.

[00:13:15] It felt so much lighter. It was so bright. With everything else happening, I never noticed how dark this energy made my room look. I felt like I could finally breathe again. After this experience, I didn't want to take any chances, so I washed all of my clothes, and I got rid of all the furniture in my room and replaced it. Even went as far as getting a new mattress. I also rearranged everything and repainted the walls.

[00:13:42] But this experience changed me, and even four years later, I don't spend much time in that room. I still find myself sleeping on the couch often. Now, my room has become a dumping ground. Not a place for rest. Still to this day, I have no idea what was haunting me all those months, and how it got there. But I pray every day that it doesn't come back.

[00:14:27] This happened in around 1996, when I was seven. And it wasn't until I was around 15 that my mother told me the entire story. My aunt was moving into a new house, and my mom went to go help her out. The previous owner had passed away, and there was some stuff that got left at the house.

[00:14:50] One of the rooms was more like a library, and there were a bunch of books about the occult and other religions. My mom, while she's not an active practitioner of any religion, she still felt weird throwing away a cross, and I think she also took a book with her, but I can't remember exactly which one. So my mom took it back home, and placed the cross on the wall in the room that my sister

[00:15:20] and I shared. That same night, past midnight, my sister, who was about four years old, woke up crying and screaming. My mom woke up, not thinking anything weird was going on, and thought it was a nightmare and put her to bed. But for the next week, every single night at the exact same hour, my sister would wake up

[00:15:46] crying and screaming, only it would escalate more. My mom tried asking my sister what was wrong. One night, she said there was a big dog in the room, with red eyes and big teeth walking around. On a different night, she said there was a big scary man inside the room by the window, and that he had red eyes and a hat.

[00:16:14] The big dog was also there, and would stay near this scary, shadowy man. My dad's father was evangelical and very religious, so it was no surprise he eventually became a preacher. He went to the house and told my mom that it was most likely all the porcelain harlequin dolls that she had.

[00:16:38] He said, and I quote, that the harlequins had the power of opening a portal to let hundreds of demons into the house, which, by the way, is so not true. He then took all of them to his church and burned them, said a prayer at our house, and used some holy water. My parents were hopeful that this would be the end of it, but it wasn't. It was way worse.

[00:17:08] That night, my sister would end up scratching herself really badly and get into these weird positions like a contortionist, and also she tried scratching my mom really hard as well. Thankfully, my mom decided to seek help once again, this time from her side of the family.

[00:17:29] My grandma and her sisters were all very adept in psychics and espiritismo, which is a type of spiritism from Latin America which believes that evolved and less-evolved spirits can affect health, luck, and other aspects of human life. It was her aunt who asked more relevant questions about the situation, like, when did this start?

[00:17:57] What is new in the house that wasn't there before? Have you been somewhere you haven't been before? My mom explained everything so far, and she remembered the cross, which, by the way, was a regular Christian cross. It wasn't inverted and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. My aunt then gave my mom some very specific instructions.

[00:18:24] She was to immediately go back home, take that cross and go to the cemetery at night, preferably the one where our family is buried, and stay outside. She was then to walk towards the entrance, turn her back to the gate, and throw the cross inside as hard as she could, to make sure it landed inside, and to not look back at all. To get into the car and leave.

[00:18:54] Again, without looking back, not even through the mirror. After she did that, nothing ever happened again, and my sister was back to her normal self. I believe that even after things have been cleansed, depending on the level of intensity, there are spiritual scars left over. And, well, when you inherit your grandma's psychic abilities, it can feel ten times worse.

[00:19:24] I hope you all enjoyed listening to my story. I also hope that it serves as a learning experience for all parents out there. Always do your best to believe in your kids, even if it sounds like it's a simple nightmare. Another thing that I hope people can learn is to be open to various forms of seeking help with dealing with the paranormal.

[00:19:50] Don't be too quick to dismiss it, even if it's not your religion or spiritual belief. Be open, be safe, and maybe do a proper cleanse of any items before you bring them into your home.

[00:20:05] I stumbled upon this podcast while looking for something to listen to while I was bored at work. I've always been a believer in the paranormal, but my beliefs were confirmed when I was 17.

[00:20:33] I'm almost 30 now. I want to mention that I'm Native American, so I grew up being taught about spirituality and connections with things that we cannot see. I grew up in a small New England town. My parents, a brother four years older than me and a sister three years older than me, moved into a house that we lived in while my mother was pregnant with me. So, for 18 years of my life, it was the only house that I knew.

[00:21:02] Many instances happened in this house, but I will only name a few. Growing up, I had nightmares that would wake me in full panic. They always varied, but would contain what I now know as Cerberus and various dark figures. Usually, they would be chasing me or trapping me in the home. These started when I was around five. At least, that's how old I was when I could really recall these dreams,

[00:21:31] and they started sticking with me. Of course, five is very young to be dreaming of demon dogs and other entities, and I just chalked them up as regular nightmares, because all I knew was that it scared me. And nightmares were very scary, right? I must mention that my parents did not watch anything that would evoke these images in my mind. Horror was never in my home.

[00:21:56] The TV was mostly 90s comedy, sitcoms, and the occasional unsolved mysteries. As we got older, my mom began telling us that she knew the house was haunted, and she would hear voices at night. She would smudge the house with sage, and things would quiet down. But they would always seem to ramp back up. Physical things didn't move around the house, but you could sense that things were walking into certain rooms,

[00:22:25] or feelings of intense fear would overcome you in times of being alone. These are other things that I just talked up to being a scared kid, though. I remember playing hide-and-seek with my siblings one day, and they put me in my brother's closet and shut the door. It was pitch black. My breath left my body, and I began to panic. Screaming and crying to let me out, I truly felt like I was suffocating. What confirmed my and my family's beliefs about the paranormal

[00:22:55] was when my friend's mother visited one day. My friend and I were very close in high school. I would spend every weekend with her and her family. Her mom would call me her daughter. My friend's mom was a first-generation immigrant from Thailand, so her English wasn't great. But I was around so much that I started to pick up on the language. We would all talk about the paranormal, and our beliefs and experiences.

[00:23:21] I only ever said that we thought our house was haunted, but, like many paranormal encounters, I didn't have proof. This was when my friend told me her mom had the gift to see and speak to spirits. As an open-minded individual, I found this equally cool and terrifying simultaneously. When my friend told her mom that she had told me about her gift, her mom was initially upset,

[00:23:50] thinking that I would think she was crazy, but she quickly became more comfortable with me knowing as she found out I believed and I knew of the spirit realm. She told me that she didn't always see things, but when her father passed when she was about 21, he visited her in a dream and told her he was giving her this gift and not to be afraid. She asked her mom if she would visit my house. To my surprise, she agreed. The day that she came over,

[00:24:19] it was me, my mom, and my dad. My sister didn't live with us at the time, but my brother still did, but wasn't home. My friend and her mom showed up and I greeted them outside and I asked if they were ready to come in. As we walked through the front door into the living room, I could see my friend's mom start to grow uncomfortable, but eager to look around. I began the tour with my bedroom. She immediately walked into my closet, opened the single bifold door,

[00:24:47] revealing my messy closet and nodded saying, oh yes, very nice. Then shut the door and walked out of the room. I remember thinking, what the hell is in my closet? Normally people don't open your closet when you're giving them a tour of your home. Next was my brother's room, which was right next to mine. We walked in and she immediately turned around and could not get out fast enough. The rest of the house tour was fast.

[00:25:15] She glanced into my parents' room adjacent to my brother's. Very nice, she said. She skipped the bathroom and kitchen, quickly said thank you for showing her our home, and left. It was very clear that she wanted out fast. I left with my friend and her mom. We got in the car and she began to tell my friend what she saw. Now she was speaking Laotian, quickly, so I had no idea what was happening,

[00:25:43] just waiting for my friend to tell me. My friend went white and looked at me, then said, I am never sleeping over your house again. I don't even know how you live there. She then proceeded to tell me her mom opened my closet because an ancestor of mine was in there. She was a lady with wide hips and I was her favorite. She was my protector from the entities in our home. Every night,

[00:26:12] she would fight them off as they would try to get to me. Big hips, I thought, it must be my great aunt Ethel. I confirmed later with my friend's mom with a picture of my great aunt. I just showed her a picture and she reacted shocked and asked who it was. I told her my great aunt, to which she replied, she was my protector, the one that she saw and spoke with in my closet. I lost her when I was five. She was my favorite though.

[00:26:42] This was comforting. I had someone I thought I lost so long ago watching over me, but equally terrifying. What was she protecting me from? I then found out. My friend's mom told my friend, who then translated for me. There were three spirits on my brother's bed, a little boy, an old soldier from the first World War era or sooner, and the third,

[00:27:09] an old 18th century witch. Her eyes were white. She was dressed in all black and she had a lot of jewelry. She hated us and fed off of us arguing. She loved making us angry and watching us fight. We were a close family, but we did argue a lot and the witch hated that we were so close and wanted us to be divided. She then said, there was black smoke

[00:27:39] pouring out of my brother's closet. She described it as a portal to hell and each time the closet opened, it gave spirits the opportunity to come into our home. Terrified now, I continued to listen to my friend's mom say that she wanted out because it was so overwhelming that her head began pounding and she knew that her health was in trouble. She did tell me that there were two spirits in my parents' bedroom, both male,

[00:28:07] one with his back turned to her and one who just stood and looked at her but said nothing. She then said she wasn't sure what was in the basement of the home but it was far worse than any of the spirits she saw in the bedrooms. She would never ever go down there and said that we should board it up because whatever it was was pure evil. Oh, by the way, there were separated rooms in our basement. It wasn't just a normal big open space.

[00:28:36] Our playroom when we were kids was in that basement. It was the only room that was finished and separated from the rest of the basement with a door that we kept shut while the washer and dryer, extra fridge, and deep freezers were kept there on the other side. One year it flooded and the carpet in our playroom got nasty and there was mold so we stopped going down there but I remembered being scared to go alone. I would only go play if my sister and brother

[00:29:06] came with me. Knowing these things validated so many situations that I had experienced growing up in that house but it also terrified me and honestly, it still does to this day. But what really made my hair stand up was what happened when I told my family these things. I was telling my parents about what my friend's mom had seen. My dad sat there accepting but not showing much emotion as he usually did not. My mother was very interested

[00:29:35] and almost elated that the things that she had witnessed were validated. As I was talking to them, my brother came home. Now my brother is a no-nonsense type of guy, very religious so I figured he would say that this was a bunch of bullshit and go about his time. To my surprise, he stopped to talk about it. He stopped me as I began telling them about the witch in the room and describing her. I was surprised, figuring that he'd say this is bullshit

[00:30:05] and walk away but he didn't. He took a deep breath, looked us in the eye and said, I know what she looks like because I've seen her. I was speechless and my body was covered in goosebumps. The one person I for sure thought would call bullshit was now admitting and confirming he had seen this witch in our home and he told no one for 17 years. He began to explain himself. Remember I said

[00:30:35] he was very religious? He dove deep into religion because of this witch. It tormented him since they moved in. She would tell him his God could not save us and she would say she was far stronger than his God. She would laugh at him and tell him he couldn't save us and he was going to kill us all starting with our mother. The witch would disguise herself as our mom to him. He described a time

[00:31:04] when he thought mom was yelling at him, saying really mean, nasty things but he questioned the situation and our mom slowly morphed into the witch. She was trying to trick him. My brother was silently fighting this witch for years trying to protect us all from her evil and whatever other evil he was fighting in our home. Needless to say, we sold the house a year later after I graduated. It was a stressful sell and move but we now knew

[00:31:33] the forces behind this tension. I felt horrible knowing the evils in that home and selling it to an unknowing single dad with a teen boy who was excited to have a home to renovate together as a project but I wanted out. We all did and I felt like it wasn't my place to tell this man what he was walking into. He'd probably think I was crazy anyways. My parents moved halfway across the country for about a month. I moved into an apartment with my brother and sister

[00:32:03] who claims she never experienced anything paranormal in the home. I don't know if this is true or if she's just too afraid to admit anything when my parents moved back I moved into an apartment down the road from our old house with them. We drove by it almost daily and when I drove by at night I would look and you would see a light on but it was odd instead of the whole room being illuminated you could just see the light bulb.

[00:32:33] There was just this faint illumination around it pitch black everywhere else. I do wonder if anything has happened to the new owner and his son all I know is I hope they're strong enough to endure the evil that resides in that house. As for the basement we never found out what was down there. I think it's better that I don't know but I do know my father saw something one day something that scared him so bad he wouldn't even speak about it.

[00:33:02] My mom said he was white like all the blood had drained out of his body and he told her never to go down there again.

[00:33:33] My story dates back to 2010-ish. I lived at home with my parents in Texas during college since my school was very close to home. After school and on weekends I worked at a local restaurant sometimes on the early shift. I'd often get a fast food breakfast in the mornings when I opened up and eat in the parking lot before going in. On this particular dark morning

[00:34:02] roughly 5am or so I was sitting facing the back of the restaurant overlooking some cotton fields. Since the location was pretty rural it wasn't unusual to be able to see the stars but on this morning I saw something else. A domed saucer-like aircraft appeared to be hovering in place over the field. The flanks of the aircraft were kind of dotted

[00:34:31] with pulsing multicolored lights. I'd lived in this area my whole life up to that point and had never seen anything like this. No one farms or waters fields in an aircraft that looks like that and especially not at night. Anyway the object stayed in place hovering for maybe 20 minutes before it disappeared from sight.

[00:35:01] Even though I was struck by it I never told anyone about this because I thought surely I was either mistaken or else would sound like a nut. I sort of forgot about it until a few years later. One evening my dad who worked early mornings commented about something alien related on TV by saying he'd seen a UFO before. Sheepishly I confessed

[00:35:31] I thought I had too. Without me saying what I'd seen or where my dad described seeing the exact same thing hovering in the exact same place before. I'm still unsure if I believe in extraterrestrial phenomena. I feel like there surely has to be some logical explanation for what we saw. Not to mention that what we both saw is a pretty generic concept

[00:36:01] of a UFO. I think maybe our brains could have just filled in blanks with preconceived images. But still, how did we see the same thing in the same place? back

[00:36:35] in 2012, my dad passed and my mom came to live with my family and me in Las Vegas. Her health wasn't the greatest either. She was struggling with alcoholism. Well, over the next two years, we just fell out. She blamed me for my dad dying. She blamed me for my sister dying, saying the wrong child died. I didn't take it to heart, mostly because she was drunk most of the time. She ends up moving out of state,

[00:37:05] and me and my family went back to our lives. But not for long. She absolutely put a huge strain on my marriage. We ended up splitting. However, sometime in 2016, her health got even worse, so I went to live with her, help her pay her bills, and get to doctor's appointments. She had moved to a small, rural town of less than 1,000 residents. The hospital is a block away. The school, pre-K to 12,

[00:37:35] is a block away, and the whole town is a mile long. I spent a few years getting the shitty end of all of this. Again, near the end of 2018, there was a solid week of strange dreams that I kept having. Each dream ended in my mom dying, but my dreams were playing out as if I were path to the house, purposefully making

[00:38:04] it so that she would fall into the snow and get hurt. I did this knowing that she had horrible balance and depended on me to move. Another dream was I would intentionally put water out on the driveway to ice everything over on a night that was below freezing. I did this so that she would slip and fall. I couldn't understand why my brain kept having these dreams. I know I'm not trying to kill my mom and make it look like an accident. September

[00:38:34] 12th woke me up. I got my kids to school. I went back home and my mom asked me to drive her to work. I said yes. She seemed to have been fighting a cold or flu all week. That morning she was a bit unbalanced. I initially thought that it was due to the alcohol. We leave the house to take her to work and she needs help getting into the truck so I help her. I close the door and walk around to the driver's side. I get in and start the truck.

[00:39:05] I looked over at her and she was hunched over looking and sounding like she had fallen asleep. Nope. It I can't help but think that someone or something had been sending me a sign that she would be passing soon. Sending me these vivid dreams of her dying. Maybe I knew and these were

[00:39:35] premonitions. Now I try not to ever ignore these types of dreams. I grew up in a small town in Virginia about an hour from Kentucky. I spent a lot of time outdoors with my parents and always enjoyed exploring the woods.

[00:40:04] Nothing very eventful happened during that period in terms of anything paranormal but I did often hear of various entities that were said to roam around. I figured they were all just urban legends and although interesting I didn't think there was much truth to them. Fast forward to my mid 20s when I brought my best friend from college Jamie who

[00:40:34] had only ever lived in cities and suburbs. I figured it'd be fun to go camping at one of my favorite spots about an hour from my parents house right near the border of Kentucky. The first night was spent hiking during the day and playing games together on my switch at night while the battery lasted. The following day I convinced Jamie to go hiking with me at night. Scary stuff I

[00:41:03] know. Armed with nothing but flashlights and water we headed off onto a different trail than the one we had hiked the day prior. I had been to this area maybe five or six times so I was familiar enough to not be worried. However we both began to feel a sense of unease about ten minutes into the hike. The normally peaceful forest seemed to be alive with

[00:41:33] a sense of danger as if we were being watched. And then we saw it. At first it was just a glimpse of movement in the trees a flash of something dark shifting between the trunks but then it stepped out into the open just up ahead and off to the side of the trail. We both froze in fear. It was humanoid in shape with

[00:42:03] long arms that hung down past its knees and a stood stood to to move or speak. But then the creature let out a guttural

[00:42:32] growl and we knew that we had to get out of there. We spun around and bolted in the opposite direction stumbling over rocks and fallen branches as we tried to put as much distance between us and the creature as possible. And when we finally made it back to the trailhead by our camp which felt like took an hour we were trembling with fear and shock. Jamie was crying and out of breath.

[00:43:03] What the hell was that? She asked. I don't know I don't know was all I could say. I didn't want to believe it but I saw it too. We debated packing up and leaving that night but we felt way too vulnerable standing around outside so we just grabbed our essentials then drove into town only about five minutes away and slept in my locked car.

[00:43:33] We immediately drove back to the campsite the next morning to grab the rest of our stuff not saying much about what happened. I felt like Jamie hated me. When we got there I unzipped the tent. I immediately saw two long vertical tears on the opposite side of the entry about a foot long. I won't say they were claw marks or anything but they looked intentional

[00:44:02] and were definitely big enough for us to have noticed the it. There weren't any low hanging tree branches that could have caused the damage either. I didn't know what to make of it. I tried to lighten the mood and looked at Jamie saying well at least we were smart enough to leave last night. She laughed and said no

[00:44:32] shit I'm just hungry now. So we packed up the rest of our stuff and headed back into town to grab her normal self. Feeling like detectives in a movie I asked our waitress if she knew of any spooky stuff out in the woods. I hadn't heard of any since I was a kid. She perked up and enthusiastically began telling us about sightings of nocturnal entities

[00:45:02] that are pale or whitish in color. They have a humanoid shape with long arms and legs and no distinguishable facial features Jamie asked the waitress if these entities have fur but she just shrugged and walked off with a smile on her face. I can't find information on any cryptids that exactly match what we saw. What do you think?

[00:45:51] We get a lot of messages asking asking about what stories we are looking for how we discern fact from fiction and just the general criteria so to speak I'd say personally I like to see stories that are around a thousand words give or take a few hundred that's typically a good sweet spot. I also like stories that toe the edge of what we consider within the realm of possibility even though that's subjective for many of us as long as your story

[00:46:21] isn't just two sentences saying I went camping and heard a weird noise the end or that you're best friends with Beyonce and she's a vampire you have a decent chance of making it on the show I hope that helps well I'll be honest if somebody has a story about being best friends with Beyonce and they can somehow prove that she's a vampire if it's at least convincing you're going to make it

[00:47:00] not to believe the person because the story that they're telling me doesn't harm me in any way for taking what they say is truth why what's the point of me not believing them it they're not trying to get anything out of me they're not harming me by telling me this story and me believing it what's wrong with that crazy things happen and they're unexplainable so many things have happened in history that are unexplainable and so many things have happened to me that are unexplainable why would I

[00:47:47] something sometime around then they executed this guy because he suggested that the sun not the earth was at the center of the solar system and lo and behold yeah lo and behold it's flat earth yeah what are you gonna do we're floating on a turtles back yeah that's what it was that's the Stephen King thing right I don't remember where that's from yeah no I think that's Stephen King it's from it well I just looked it up on wikipedia and it's called the world turtle

[00:48:16] or the cosmic turtle supposedly there's a giant turtle supporting or containing the world and it occurs within mythologies from several different cultures yeah I was created by a turtle about a turtle in the movies

[00:48:47] me either I was wondering where you got that from but I'm glad we cleared that up yeah I guess it's from the book but turtles are cool I love turtles yeah they're top 10 they're cute and they live forever man they live like a hundred years right tortoises at least I know do yeah yeah that's crazy well to pull it back just a little bit when you were talking about discerning fact and fiction and whatnot yeah it reminded me of the matrix one of my favorite movies I watch it once a year which is that a lot

[00:49:17] you watch movies more than once a year some movies I would say yeah I watch a goofy movie at least once a year it just depends if you have new friends over or something you're just like I gotta show you this movie don't be a menace yeah it's don't be a menace and then a goofy movie those are the two that I watch over and over again and then I love showing people because they usually really enjoy them and brink is always fun to put on as we've discussed oh yeah we've watched drink a lot yeah yeah but anyway what I was gonna say is it reminded me of this quote in the matrix that Morpheus says

[00:49:47] and I haven't memorized because I absolutely love that movie and yeah there's a lot of thought-provoking questions about that but Morpheus asks what is real how do you define real if you're talking about what you can feel what you can smell what you can taste and see then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain and that's all to say all these experiences that people submit to us it's easier for me to feel good within my conscience sharing them because I'm

[00:50:17] not saying that they're based on fact or reality or hard science but they're real for these people they are existing in some way shape or form and the brain is a weird thing it really is and I think that's worth sharing in and of itself a lot of people just say oh that's just sleep paralysis or dreams are just dreams like no there's definitely more out there that quote from the matrix really reminds me of a song from a band called the

[00:50:47] phenomenots they came through my hometown seven or eight years back and I saw them live and they sang this song called it's only chemical and it was about how the feelings of love emotions things like that are just chemicals in your brain and it was such a depressing thought it really struck me like I just went home because I was so depressed from hearing that song because it made me think so literal about something that's probably beyond our comprehension of how powerful it is which is love

[00:51:16] you know sure it's an emotion sure there's chemicals in your brain but to reduce something so big and something that we can't really understand to just chemicals you know it just rubbed me the wrong way I don't I just don't like reducing big ideas down to you know some type of explanation that doesn't suit it you know it's not worthy of that explanation it's way bigger than that so would you take the blue pill if I'm understanding that correctly yeah I would take the blue pill

[00:51:47] yeah I'd like to think I would take the red pill because I have that curiosity and just wanting to know the truth and behind the curtain stuff but I don't think I could I have to stop you there I have to be honest I literally just guessed a color because I don't remember here's the thing I the matrix when it came out my cousin I was staying at my cousin's house and then all our other cousins were there it was like a whole family get together and my cousin had downloaded the matrix off of like Morpheus of all things

[00:52:17] love it and we were all watching it and I think it was just because I don't know what it was but I could not get into it there's too many of us we're all gather around the computer in the kitchen I can't watch this movie like this and it just kind of rubbed me the wrong way so I never really watched it all the way through I saw I've seen clips of it and stuff and I don't even know what blue or red is oh wow we have to rewatch that I was just guessing I'll give you a little summary so basically the red pill shows you the

[00:52:47] truth of life and they expose that we're all just basically connected in like a big pod being fed information and none of it's real yeah what we see what we feel the food we taste the emotions we experience it's all just manufactured down to the binary bits of ones and zeros and nothing's really existing whereas the blue pill is we're all just in la la land and blissfully unaware of the truth that our lives are just a dream it does make sense but when I

[00:53:16] think about existence and I think about how our universe and everything that exists to us is so mathematical ones and zeros binary codes like everything is mathematical right how everything has such intricate design sacred geometry absolutely say I was gonna get there sacred geometry when I hear about those types of things it doesn't make me look at life as any less magical or you know mysterious because then that just kind of

[00:53:44] tells me no there is probably a creator there probably is a god there probably is something more than because somebody had to write it you know what I mean somebody had to write our code it's reaffirming it's definitely reaffirming somebody had to design our DNA you know what I mean it doesn't seem like an accident to me and when I hear things like science and mathematics explain our universe it doesn't make me more of an atheist it doesn't make me more critical of supernatural things it makes me even more

[00:54:12] curious and more of a believer you know what I mean that's kind of a question I've had for a lot of people and this isn't taking a stance with one religion or thought process or anything at all but yes it's safe to say that you and I believe in a creator of some sort of higher power yeah and we won't go any further than that but I am curious those who do consider themselves strong atheists but also believe in paranormal activities that can't be explained by science whatsoever that's never made sense

[00:54:41] to me either I don't think I've ever met an atheist that also believes in supernatural or paranormal stuff yeah I've met several we have fans that are self-proclaimed satanists which are just atheists really and they believe in the paranormal so I am curious how how that would make sense believing in ghosts or spirits visiting us after death whereas there's no creator and that's it that's not throwing any shade that's nothing at all I'm just curious I'm genuinely curious I was on twitch not too long ago maybe a

[00:55:10] week or two ago and I was listening to coast to coast am while I was streaming and art bell had somebody on I think was ghost to ghost which he did every Halloween where he would have people call in and tell their ghost stories and one of the twitch viewers after a woman told her story about a ghost all he could say was there's no way that's true I don't believe that story that sounds made up and I was just like what scent what inside of your brain makes you immediately become

[00:55:39] critical and in disbelief of somebody's story when it you know it's just their truth you know what I mean that's their truth that's what happened to them there's no reason to disbelieve them unless they're trying to convince you to buy something or do somebody harm what is the point of telling them no that's not true because there's no proof you know what I mean there's no point in doing that and I've always thought that way and that's why I love the podcast I agree I agree you might have the occasional outliers who just want to tell a lie just to say hey guess what I told those

[00:56:08] podcasting boys a lie and they put it on the show maybe but that's few and far between hey you know what you did that you got us we got caught whatever good on you we'll send you a gift card to red robin yeah so on to the stories or at least the one about the camping trip in Appalachia what sort of entity do you think the author saw it had long arms a melted face I believe and no discernible facial features grayish skin pale skin something like that but what got

[00:56:38] me was the matted fur that threw me off I have no idea what this could have possibly been yeah I was thinking some type of demon or spirit or alien and then all of a sudden matted fur came in and I started thinking about like Bigfoot and I started thinking about goof troop and I started thinking about movies and then I cycled back to the beginning of our conversation but I did do some googling after I read the story and their only thing I could come up with is the Tanaga Jin it's like this Japanese folklore demon

[00:57:06] that has really long arms but there's no matted fur and it doesn't have I don't think it has like grayish skin or melted face it's just like a person with long arms which is creepy in and of itself but I couldn't find anything yeah me either I thought it could have been the rake but turns out that has its origins in creepy pasta yeah and I don't know kind of we talked about the slender man and how we can make things exist like will them into existence but that's a

[00:57:35] little far-fetched for me well maybe it was rake and rake was willed into existence as a tulpa that we talked about in the past maybe it could be that yeah I don't know this is a new cryptid we can add it to the list next to bunny man we've got a long what are we gonna call him I don't know uh Appalachian Adam I say Appalachian Andy oh well then yeah okay fine maybe it was maybe it was my spirit it was it was a it was my doppelganger my doppelganger's got long

[00:58:05] arms I've got a fuzzy face I've gotten I could be my I've had a long beard it could be matted um this could very well be my my doppelganger dude very well very well I know what I think we should do we should start a series of our own cryptid and will it into existence is throw it out there okay that'd be fun a good one a positive one and we we hereby send Appalachian Andy into your lives and he brings nothing

[00:58:33] but peace love and joy yeah but he will scare you but don't be too alarmed don't worry don't be scared of my long arms my melted face uh my no discernible features and my grayish skin I'm just there to uh just there to entertain and then soon enough boo boo brando will follow behind what does boo boo brando look like he uh has an occasional mustache piercing blue eyes and pale skin that he can't seem to tan who spooky and thanks

[00:59:02] everyone for listening this week you have heard I love Lucy by Hannah he watches me sleep by Tanner a story submission from fran pr 1811 haunted home by sugar cones 72 17 how did we see the same thing by Russell a story from Shannon and finally humanoid in Appalachia by grace all the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors if you want to get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit

[00:59:31] rate for the best listening experience head over to patreon.com forward slash odd trails to sign up and support the show today and don't forget to send your stories into stories at odd trails dot com also 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 over at cryptic county podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you all next week stay safe peace so