Men in Black, or Gangstalkers? – Ep. 243

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[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_02] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_03] Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. You just trust. Believe.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_02] My Men in Black Story by iBaby1 With all of the recent talk about aliens and Disclosure Day, I wanted to share a random experience I had running into a bald white man in a suit, or a man in black, as I've come to find out. Maybe it was a prank. I don't know, but it never really made sense to me. For context, I used to work at Jack in the Box in California.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02] I worked the late night shift from around 8pm until about 3 or 4am. This was in a small town. We were never really busy around that time. The streets were empty by 10pm. We would get the occasional customer, but usually I just cleaned and prepped. Anyways, it's dead as always, and my manager lets me go home early at 3am.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_02] I was a college student at the time and figured it was easier to get gas on the way home, rather than wake up early and get gas before class in the morning. I'm driving home, and again, it's empty. Pitch black. Not a car in sight. But that's normal. My drive home was always like that. I stopped by a local gas station, nothing big. Not like an Arco. Just two pumps, no attendant, and barely lit.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_02] I knew there was most likely nobody there. I pull up to the gas station. I'm alone, or so I think. And when I get out of the car, I notice this tall, white, bald man in a full suit, long jacket, carrying a briefcase. The outfit alone made no sense to me, since it wasn't that cold, nor the style of someone who would be living in that town. It was way too professional, and there was no reason for it.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02] I think nothing of it at first. I assume he's pumping gas, until I notice there are no other cars in the lot, just mine. It was definitely not a walkable area, so the only thing I'm thinking is how he got there with no car, and why he's just standing. It's 3am. My guard is up, obviously, just as it would be with anybody. But the entire time I'm pumping gas, he's just standing there.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_02] He's not smoking or doing anything. He doesn't move the entire time I'm pumping, and I'm just trying to get out of there as fast as I can. We're in clear eyeshot of each other. He's maybe 20 feet away, standing in front of the ice machines outside. As I finish pumping gas and walking around my car, I'm clearly staring at him. I don't want to take my eyes off of him. So I get in my car,

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_02] and I can still see him there, but he never looks at me or acknowledges that I'm even there. As I'm pulling away, I do a final look to see if anything has changed, and almost as if he saw me look at him in the rearview mirror, he just walks off into the distance in my direction. Again, it's not a walkable area. There's nothing he could be heading toward. I can see a bit of him in the rearview mirror,

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_02] and even though I knew that he couldn't keep up with my car, I still took a different way home than I typically would have. I never saw him again, never had an experience like that again, but it just never made sense to me. Why be at that random gas station in this random small town at that time of night doing nothing? I still get chills thinking about it, because something about it was never right.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_02] I wasn't and am not into conspiracies and all that, but later, when I came across other stories, I thought, no way, there is no way we all saw something similar. He looked just as described, super white, very basic looking, but not normal at the same time. I just wanted to share because I've mentioned it to friends before, and they assure me it was probably just some guy.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_05] Who Opened the Door? by Ibrahim I'm a 16-year-old boy from Germany. I recently watched Undertone, and I really enjoyed it. After watching it, I searched for a podcast that covers similar kinds of things, and that's how I found Odd Trails. The incident I want to share happened last year when I was 15 years old, and it's absolutely true. I don't remember the date, but I know it was a Friday,

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_05] because my dad was at the Friday prayer. My mom was bringing my little sister home from kindergarten. When I came home from school, I didn't have my key on me, so I knocked on the door and rang the bell. I knew there wasn't anybody home, but I had a strange feeling that I should still ring the bell. After I rang it, the door opened. Someone who I thought was my mom opened the door and went to the bathroom. She did exactly the same thing

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_05] my mom does every time she goes to the bathroom. She doesn't close the door completely. She leaves it almost closed, and she doesn't lock it either. Completely normal. The only strange thing was that my mom usually hugs me and says hello when I come home. I always get ready to go to the gym when I get home from school, so I didn't think much about it. I hurried to pack my bag and started to head out.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_05] When I was about to leave, one of my sisters came home. When she saw me, she asked, who opened the door? I said, mom did. She's using the toilet. She looked at me confused, and then she went to go check if she was there, but she didn't see anyone. It was such a weird moment because I had a strong feeling that I knew it was my mom who opened the door.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_05] I remember seeing a shadow passing by, but I can't explain it. In the moment, I was 100% sure it was my mom. After that, I called my mom, and she said she was still at the kindergarten picking up my sister. I also asked her if she had closed the door before leaving. She said, yes, I'm sure. I closed it and locked both locks from the outside. I even checked it twice.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_05] Then I wondered if it was maybe my dad who opened the door, but he was still at the Friday prayer and didn't come home until later. It was so strange for me. I still don't know what happened. I hope you guys found my story interesting and could maybe explain what happened.

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[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_02] high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit Rula.com slash trails to get started. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash trails. You deserve mental health care that works with you not against your budget. Stocked While Camping by Accomplished Ad 4334 This is the most terrifying thing that I have ever experienced. It happened

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_02] four years ago when my boyfriend and I were still sort of fresh into the relationship. My sister had recommended snorkeling as a fun thing to do with him. It was this quarry surrounded by a campground filled in with water and it's known for its crystal clear water and diving. There's apparently a helicopter and a school bus that people dive down to sea. My boyfriend and I decided to go camping for the night.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_02] While we were checking in we both separately got this bad feeling about the place but kept it to ourselves until after we left. At first it was a really good time. We snorkeled in the shallower area of the quarry and although the depth of the water was a bit uncanny I was still enjoying myself. The water is 65 feet deep so once you had swam out to the shallow area it immediately dropped off and it was

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_02] pitch black. This is actually where I realized I'm terrified of deep water. Besides the dark deep water while you were swimming there's something very scary about a lake that is perfectly still. I assume because it's a quarry and the water doesn't have a current. my boyfriend and I were winding down our night and we were back at our campsite. We were camping in a grassy patch down a

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_02] hill from the road. Our tent was pitched in a wooded area that our campsite extended into and just across the green was this campsite that looked well lived in though our neighbors were out. We were making hot dogs over the fire when our neighbors got back. It was nighttime by then and they immediately went to sleep. I'd say 20-30 minutes after they got back is when things started to get spooky. My boyfriend and I were

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_02] chatting when we noticed a dark figure watching us from up on the hill. Because of the shadow of the fire we couldn't actually make out the features of the figure but we knew it was staring directly at us. Almost hiding behind our neighbor's truck. He watched us for what felt like forever until he started walking down the road again. We both watched him in dead silence as he walked behind the trees, the same ones connected

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_02] to our campsite that also ran between us and him. I anticipated each time I'd see him step forward, out from behind the tree. He came out from a good four or five of them, and I It wasn't until after that I noticed he had stopped or maybe he was still behind one of the trees. I was completely freaked out. Where did he go?

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_02] I watched my boyfriend looking over at what had happened, thinking the same thing, but he shrugged it off and naively so did I. We actually ended up forgetting about it and then went to the quarry late that night. It was beautiful seeing the stars reflected in the water, but the deep, now all black water was terrifying to say the least. We walked back to our campsite, got into our tent, and smoked a joint.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_02] I soon began to feel this uneasy feeling, which I was trying to ignore, telling myself it was because I was high. After some silence between us, my boyfriend said to me, do you feel like we're being watched? I replied, why would you say that? Half joking, but fully serious, that I was scared. My boyfriend wanted to get out of the tent, so we were standing by my car when I got this idea that

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_02] being in the middle of the field, in the middle of a campground, was the safest place for us. My logic was that if somebody was coming at us, at least we would be able to see them. So we were in the middle of this field, when we saw a similar looking shadow figure from earlier, staring at us. He must have been about 20 yards away. We both noticed him while walking. He was walking in the same direction as us.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_02] We changed directions and so did he. We told each other that if we changed again, and he followed, we were booking it to the car. Well, when we did, he followed. And we booked it to the car. I watched him from my seat as he slowly walked back into the darkness, still staring in our direction. My boyfriend said to me, let's get out of here. I agreed, but all of our camping gear was outside.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02] We quietly got our things together, trying not to freak each other out. The weirdest part of this story, in my opinion, is what happened next. My headlights weren't working, and there was a weird fog over my windshield that didn't go away, no matter what we did. We had to drive out of the woods with only low beams and that strange fog over the window. We could barely see, but we got out of there.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_02] Strangely enough, the fog went away just as we got to the gas station. We got home at 1am. I told my dad the story the next day, and he said that he was glad that we got out of there, or else we could have gotten killed. Two people have died at this campground while snorkeling, which I found out after I got back. My boyfriend and I think it was either a person trying to kill us, or a windigo.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_02] We've kind of settled on windigo because what happened was so unexplainable to us.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_05] I think a demon was watching me sleep, by Sydney. First of all, I just have to say that I love your show. I love listening to all the wild and interesting experiences people have had, both of yours included. At the time of this incident, I was a very new Christian. While I am not religious anymore, I still believed something was trying to scare or harm me,

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_05] because of how much I was pursuing my faith at that point in my life. Just because I'm no longer religious doesn't make this story any less true for me. I still believe in negative energies and spirits, and I think regardless of your belief system, they don't discriminate. There's something to be said for changing your life for the better. And maybe whatever was attached to me didn't like those changes.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_05] This happened sometime between 2012 and 2014. It's been a while, so I don't remember the exact year. I was living in an apartment in Dyersburg, Tennessee. Going to community college and playing basketball. I had a roommate, and our apartment was very small. Maybe around 600 square feet. My bedroom was across the hall from the bathroom. Although, hall is generous.

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_05] It was probably only 5 feet long. I know you guys don't like detailed floor plans, but I promise it's relevant. My bed was on the left side of the room, and directly across from it was my closet. On the closet was a Twilight poster with Robert Pattinson on it. I slept on my left side, so whenever I woke up and opened my eyes, Robert Pattinson was the first thing I would see.

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_05] I've always been a very light sleeper, especially during that time in my life. So waking up in the middle of the night wasn't unusual. One night, probably around 3am, I woke up and needed to use the bathroom. I walked across the hall, used the bathroom, and came right back to bed. The whole thing probably took no more than 30 seconds. I got back into bed and closed my eyes.

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_05] Maybe 10 seconds later, I opened them again. I don't know why. Instead of seeing Robert Pattinson, something was blocking the light from my iPad dock, which was sitting on the bedside table, literally inches from my face. Standing right beside my bed was what looked like someone wearing a dark grey sweatshirt. That's all I could see. I was looking straight at the person's waist.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_05] For a split second, I smiled to myself because I thought it was my roommate trying to scare me. Then I realized there was no way she could have gotten into my room and stood over me without me noticing. I had just come back from the bathroom. Thinking an intruder had somehow gotten into the apartment, I immediately sat straight up and started swinging my arms to hit whoever was standing there. There was nobody there.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_05] I just sat there, in bed, stunned. I know what I saw. How could nobody be there? Needless to say, I slept with the lights on that night, and for the next few nights after that. The next day I called my dad and I told him what had happened. I grew up in a house that was definitely haunted, so strange things in the middle of the night,

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_05] shadow figures, voices, footsteps, weren't new to me. My parents were always very open and honest about what would happen in that house, and they had their own experiences too. That's why I was so heartbroken when my dad told me I must have been dreaming. I wasn't. I know I was awake. I had just gone to the bathroom, and had only been back in bed for about ten seconds.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_05] Because he was so dismissive, I became hesitant to tell people about what happened. One good friend of mine did believe me though. She encouraged me to pray, and tell whatever it was, that it wasn't welcome. I did. It never happened again. To this day I stand by what I saw and what I felt. I have other unexplained and paranormal experiences too.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_05] I don't necessarily consider myself a sensitive person, but I don't think you have to be sensitive to see, hear, or feel something that can't be rationally explained. Thank you for reading.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_02] The Reappearing Book by Anonymous. Four years ago I was moving, so I donated books that I no longer needed, or hadn't read in years.

[00:22:45] [SPEAKER_02] A lot of fiction, some non-fiction. The book that I lost is one of my favorite books of all time. It's a non-fiction book, packed with wonderful information and quotes. It's a limited edition book, so it's pricey online, which is why I never repurchased it. Anyway, back to the story. After I unpacked all of my books in my new house, I noticed that my favorite book was not there.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_02] I immediately realized it must have accidentally been added to my donation stack. I was so annoyed and hurt. I was so hurt, in fact, that I applied Buddhist logic to losing this book and practiced the art of detachment. The idea that things we no longer need leave our lives, and if we do need them, we will get them again. Over the years, I would search for the book on Amazon. It was still pricey.

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_02] What annoyed me most about the price is that I had gotten the book for about seven bucks, so paying an insanely inflated amount was out of the question. Favorite book or not. I checked eBay too, but it was never listed. A couple of weeks ago, I moved again. As I noted earlier, I unpacked my books, and, well, my favorite book reappeared. There's no way I had overlooked it, because my book collection

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_02] had gotten smaller over the years, and I would have definitely noticed it, and not only put it on the shelf, but on my book table. My brain is trying to rationalize it by saying it's because I thought I lost it and detached, but I looked at all of my books before detaching. There was no way I missed it. Cognitive dissonance, or a true glitch in the matrix. Well, all I know is my story, and I'm happy I got my favorite book back.

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[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_05] for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash trails. That's mintmobile.com slash trails. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash trails. That's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of $45 for 3 months, $90 for 6 months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_05] $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. My Own Mandela Effects By Dana

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_05] I'm an older person, but I have a clear memory, and I've always remembered things in sharp detail and retention. I don't normally believe in the Mandela effect. Because I am so old, I remember when Mandela got out of prison. I read the Baron Stain Bears to my children, and knew Ed McMahon represented American Family Publishers, not Publishers Clearinghouse. My mother was constantly entering their sweepstakes.

[00:27:26] [SPEAKER_05] I personally believe, for the most part, it's due to false, selective, or assumptive memory. That being said, I have two incidents that happened to me that I have no explanation for. I don't know how many of your listeners are familiar with Rita's frozen dessert stands. Rita's are little storefront or freestanding dessert stands. They sell frozen custard and flavored shaved ice.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_05] The stands are decorated in red, white, and green, with a green and white canopy. One time, I was waiting in line at Rita's, and there was a plaque on the wall, so I stood there and read the plaque to kill time. It's said that Rita's was started by Rita, a Mexican woman who had moved to Los Angeles and had always wanted to open her own business. She worked very hard until she was able to open her first frozen dessert stand,

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_05] and she decorated it with the colors of the Mexican flag as a homage to her homeland. For years, this was my understanding of how Rita's originated. One day, my husband and I had stopped by Rita's for some frozen custard, and while I was waiting for him to order, I looked up Rita's online, because that's what I do. I like to look up and read things. Much to my surprise, the history of Rita's was that it was opened

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_05] by an Italian-American man in Philadelphia, who named it after his wife, Rita, and used the red, white, and green colors of the Italian flag. This still puzzles me. I can remember clearly reading that plaque attached to the outside wall of Rita's, and I would not have made such a story up. My second Mandela effect took place back in the 70s. It was 1975, to be exact,

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_05] and I know this for sure. I had just left my boyfriend's house to go home, and I was sitting at a four-way stop when a new song came on the radio. It was electronic sounding, which in 1975 really wasn't unusual. There was all kinds of music back then. The song was catchy, and the melody stuck with me, as did the chorus. Video killed the radio star.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_05] I thought to myself, what does that even mean? Video killed the radio star? I didn't really think anything more about it, and when I saw the music video on MTV in 1981, I thought it was a re-release. I happily sang along with it. Well, it was not a re-release. Turns out it came out in 1979, and the music video came out in 1981. How could I have

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_05] heard it in 1975? I'm positive it was 1975. Anyway, those are my two personal Mandela effects. I really am so certain about them. I can't imagine what the explanation is.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_02] A Brief Time Travel by Atlantios000. The story I'm about to tell you took place years ago, in 2022. At the time, I had just started boxing and went to practice in the evenings Monday through Friday. Almost every day, mostly out of habit and not because it was closer, I would pass through a specific part of my city. From 1990 to 2010, that area

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_02] was full of small cafes, coffee houses, bars, and some dive bars. Some are still there, but today, most of the shops have been replaced by other businesses unrelated to serving drinks. One evening, I was walking through the area rather hurriedly because I was running late for boxing practice. As I walked, I clearly saw a shop with a sign outside that read Cafe, the meeting. I thought,

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_02] a new cafe here? Come on, man. Lately, everything's been closing down. But, I didn't think too much of it. As far as I remember, the place had a 2000s vibe, but I was in such a hurry that nothing strange crossed my mind. I didn't have much time to think. The next day, before practice, I decided to go back and check out this new place up close. What a surprise. I couldn't find it anywhere.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_02] I looked down the street. I looked down the street I had walked down the day before. Once, twice, but nothing. A year went by, and every now and again, I think about it. It just so happened that I had some business at a bank located in that area. I arrived and decided to sit at a nearby cafe because the bank wasn't open yet. Since I was there, I asked the cafe owner about the ghost cafe that I had seen the previous year.

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_02] The owner told me that the cafe had indeed existed, but had closed over ten years ago. I immediately pulled my phone out and I looked it up on Google Street View. And sure enough, the cafe was real. I had no idea how this happened. It's perhaps one of the most mind-blowing metaphysical glitch-in-the-matrix things that I have ever experienced.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_05] Episode 243. Here we go with the listener feedback. Little Red Spark, that's a familiar name, says, You guys had me laughing with the Sims talk. Yeah, that was pretty fun. Maybe they were NPCs, but I think maybe it was an imprint. Hmm. I also like the mention of the feeling of a place being haunted tied to an environmental factor. This actually happened in a basement lab in a university. I forgot where, but people thought the lab was haunted.

[00:34:08] [SPEAKER_05] Turns out it's because it was right next to a bunch of electrical equipment or a large machine. Well, sometimes the explanation is a lot simpler than we think.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I'm trying to think of what imprint could mean. I've never heard of that term, at least not in this context. Have you?

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_05] You know, like an event imprints, like the energy that happened. Oh, gotcha.

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. And then they also mentioned feeling a place being haunted tied to an environmental factor. Yeah, definitely. I think that's the majority of hauntings, too.

[00:34:42] [SPEAKER_05] For sure.

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_02] Sophia says, Andy, you caught me off guard again. Just you guys, deep in chat, as per usual. Then you say, I really fucking hate that show, and still said it in such a relaxing manner, yet I can feel your anger. I burst out laughing. Class. Class. Now, I don't remember what show I was talking about. I hate a lot of shows. I fucking hate a lot of shows. And I guess I do kind of have that quiet, sarcastic manner about

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_02] myself. Yeah, I have no idea what show you're talking about, but I probably hate it.

[00:35:18] [SPEAKER_05] I don't remember either. Yeah, it's like good old British deadpan humor. Yeah, it's a lot less on the nose and how Americans like are. Laugh here, get it, get it? Oh my gosh.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

[00:35:30] [SPEAKER_05] Kaylee says, I have had so many dreams of places I've never been to and then randomly come upon them in real life. This has been going on for years and it's such a weird feeling. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's experienced this. happens. Yeah, no, that's happened to me not a whole lot of times, but at least twice, a whopping two times. For sure, I've had that happen before. That is strange. I wonder what the dream has to deal with that, if it's like some retro causality thing, if you

[00:36:00] [SPEAKER_05] remember that. I'm sure most people do. Who knows?

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird one. Rook says, a store that's now defunct that I miss, because we were talking about this last week, is Hastings. I used to go there all the time in high school, even painted my arms and face for a cosplay once in a Hastings bathroom. It feels like Barnes and Noble is trying to fill that void, but it's not the same. Have you heard of Hastings?

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_05] I have, and I've never been to one. I've only been to Barnes and Noble and Borders. Those are the two big ones. I don't Hastings apparently, but I've never been to one.

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I looked at pictures of it and it looked like there was almost a full-blown department store, but without clothes and stuff. It's like electronics, music, books, things like that, that Barnes and Noble would kind of have. Barnes and Noble is kind of more of a gift shop in that sense, and they're trying to do music and they're trying to do movies. I'll say this, one good thing about Barnes and Noble is it's the only place you can go to buy physical Criterion DVDs and Blu-rays in store. You can't find them anywhere, man. Barnes and Noble is the only place.

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_05] We got one here at least. I gotta go check it out.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we've had one in my town that's supposed to be opening all year. They keep saying next month, next month, next month. I thought

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_05] they were all closing like Sears or something.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_02] No, Borders did. Borders is gone.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, okay.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_02] I really liked Borders. They had a great movie section.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_05] I like those bookstores. I remember as a kid I would go just for fun and all that. I liked being around books more than I actually liked reading for some reason. Just being in a quiet bookstore and spending two minutes on a thousand books rather than committing just to one. It was a good time.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, definitely. I agree. I'm going to try and do one of your segues. Sure. Memories. You know, we're talking about memories. I can't do it as smoothly as you. You're doing great. Okay. Let's talk about that time travel story. Let's do it. Let's talk about that time travel story. Sure. Let's do it. Okay. There we go. Okay. So at first, I'm going to do my usual armchair analysis with my skepticism.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_02] So the author thinks that they saw this place and it disappeared. In their case, it could have been that they saw a cafe in a different location and it got mixed up in their head. They remembered something wrong. No matter how certain we are of some memories, they can always be wrong. There are so many things that we misremember all the time. Now, as for the person they talked to that said that the cafe closed a decade prior, this could be what's called telescoping. Basically, when people

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_02] consistently misjudge how long ago something happened. That happens all the time. Right. This is me just trying to explain things away like I always do. The only issue is Google Maps, Street View, and the Street View has a history option so you can look up your house and what it looked like a decade ago. Anyway, the author checked it out and they were right. It was the same cafe in the same spot so they were not mistaken and it pretty much crushed all my best attempts at debunking this. And just the

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_05] fact the other person referred to it as the ghost cafe.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I don't remember if they referred to it as a ghost cafe. I'm referring to it as a ghost cafe.

[00:39:19] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, okay. I probably just took your notes literally then. But yeah, it's still a ghost cafe in my book. I don't care what anybody says, even you. It's a ghost cafe.

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, well, I mean, technically, yeah, there's no debunking this one if you're taking the author's word. In that spirit, I think this is a great story. It's one of my favorite kinds of stories.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_05] Hey, pun intended, in that spirit.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_02] Mm-hmm.

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, well, I guess speaking of spirits, segue. Well, okay, so, Who Opened the Door by Ibrahim. I think that's how you say it. It would be easy just to say that somebody else opened the door, right? Yeah. And it was just something so routine that you didn't catch who actually was opening the door because our brain just fills in what we expect, like you were saying with the memories. Exactly. But that still doesn't explain who could have opened the door

[00:40:10] [SPEAKER_05] if the entire family was out of the house.

[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_05] And they didn't find anybody inside the house when his sister got home, so maybe it was some sort of mimic, which is pretty convenient of an explanation, but that seems to be par of course here. And he said he knew fully that it was his mom. He was so certain of that. Maybe some mimics have a way of making us feel assured that they aren't false copies of whoever they're posing as, you know? Like, I really don't know what else it could have been. It doesn't explain the unlocked door either.

[00:40:39] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. It's probably just too much let's not meet in true crime in my head, but part of me immediately thought, oh wow, this is the way this person is masking some trauma. When they showed up at home, something bad was there. Something bad happened. Somebody was there that wasn't supposed to be there. and they re-remembered it as their mother and that's their story. But that's me really reaching because I have no explanation for this one. It's so bizarre.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, let's go with an innocent mimic who decided to do a favor and there was no trauma involved.

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, much more pleasant than mine.

[00:41:18] [SPEAKER_05] Let's go with that. Yeah.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. All right, I don't have a segue. Let's talk about my Men in Black story. It's the only other one I have some notes for that I wanted to talk about.

[00:41:27] [SPEAKER_05] Sweet. My favorite gang stalkers. That's what I think they are.

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. This plays out perfectly when you think of it that way. But I have a lot to say here. So there's this weird person standing near a closed gas station at night. Yes, that's creepy. But Occam's Razor, it tells me that this guy was waiting for a lift or a ride after getting off of work at the gas station. That's just how I'm trying to explain it away and it makes sense to me. I don't know why he was dressed up all in black in a suit.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_05] I was gonna say, never seen a man in a suit working at a gas station. He could have been like the corporate owner or something, had a weird late night meeting, investors in China or something.

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_02] Exactly. Showed up to audit. Yeah, something. Yeah, something like that. I'm thinking of ways that this could be explained away. Maybe he was up to a drug deal. That was his meeting point. You know, he got dropped off and he's waiting for the guy to pick him up.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_05] I wear a suit but no tie for drug deals. I feel like the tie draws too much attention.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it does. Anytime you see somebody with a tie, they're a drug dealer. I don't see this being a men in black encounter because there was nothing supernatural or strange happening to trigger a men in black encounter, which is usually what it is. They show up during UFO encounters, alien encounters, just general high strangeness. The guy didn't approach the author or try to get any info from him. He just basically ignored him completely until the end of the story where he starts

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_02] following the author as they drive away. Maybe this was some kind of warning, like this guy in black with this briefcase following and watching as you drive away. It's kind of like leaving a calling card, like, hey, don't come back here.

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_05] That or the whole gang stalker thing because it's not always, and it usually isn't very overt as far as like, oh, we're going to kill you and trying to really scare you. It's very in the shadows, like, hey, I'm here and I don't want you to know that for sure I'm here. They're leaving some plausible deniability. Not always, like sometimes it is like very threatening and direct, but a lot of the time it's just like, what? You're crazy. I'm not following you and a lot of gaslighting, but the fact it was only one appearance and it wasn't like they saw the men in

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_05] black at their workplace or something like the next day. So I don't know. The fact it's a one-off, I can't really say.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_02] I'll say this again. This is the exact kind of story that I like on the show. Nothing necessarily supernatural occurs, but it had the elements there so you can make up your own conclusion supernatural or not. Yep. Use your jump to conclusions, Matt. Yeah, I remember that.

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_05] I love Office Space. That's one movie I can watch weekly if I wanted to and I wouldn't get tired of it.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's good. There's a quote from Office Space that I do all the time. Like, my wife's office is on the other side of the wall. I'll bang on the wall and I'll go, check out Channel 9. It's the breast exams.

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_05] That's perfect. I used to be addicted to crack. Okay, anyway, while I have never been addicted to crack, I do think a demon was watching me sleep last night. Oh. At least that's what Sidney thought. Ah, you got me. He got me. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah, all I can really add to this one is, it's like what we've already talked about before, probably at least three or four times, how religion can have some sort

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_05] of attraction or at least make people susceptible to assuming or feeling a paranormal presence, even just like general spirituality and attuning yourself to whatever energy could be out there, good or bad. I think the possibility is what opens the pathway for things to happen, but that still doesn't really explain what she saw and how that thing could be completely visible to her. So,

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_03] yeah,

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_05] maybe these intelligent things pick up on that and that's how they're able to be drawn to you. I don't know, it's really unsettling, especially in sleep. That's when you should be most at ease.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, definitely. There is the whole hypnagogic thing where when you're in between sleep and awake, you can sometimes see figures in your room. That could also be an explanation here, but they're applying a spiritual aspect to it because of their religion, and I think that that just adds another layer to it of well, maybe. That could be. Maybe.

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_05] And blocking the light too, that's one thing I can't really explain with a hypnagogic hallucination type of thing, but I don't know. I don't know. We never know. We just like reading them and sharing them.

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we'll never know. Again, as always, if you have any to share, make sure you send them in to stories at oddtrails.com. If you only get ad-free versions of our episodes, go to patreon.com forward slash oddtrails. You can sign up and get ad-free versions of all our episodes at a higher bit rate. It's the best way to listen to the show. And check We'll see you next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_03] The ghosts and the ghouls disturb you that.