The Despair Monster – Ep. 254

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show. Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. You just trust. Believe.

[00:00:22] [SPEAKER_00] I think my best friend never existed by Elephant Familiar, 52-34. I remember in first grade there was this one particular girl who sat at the desk in front of me, in constant view. I hated her. We would often get into silly quarrels because she would kind of rage bait me, and I would just end up being annoyed by her every single day.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_00] Once I accidentally hit her with my water bottle. I guess I was annoyed by her. I was actually so guilty and scared that I started crying on her behalf. Thankfully, I didn't get into any trouble because she covered for me. We ended up becoming best friends. Like, super close. We even changed seats, sitting together having lunch and all of that.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00] Our homeroom teacher actually got so fed up with us that she changed our seats. She barely ever did that, but we were just that annoying. My memories of her are very vivid. I still remember details about her, and about us, to this day. Like what she looked like. Or calling her my girlfriend because I thought that term referred to female friends.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00] Or that she had this condition where she had an extra finger on the outside of her pinky finger. These are just a few examples. Anyway, after our finals, I'm pretty sure it was the last exam because usually our schools would give us a month holiday before starting a new semester. She told me that she was moving away. I didn't really say anything, but when I got home I cried. A lot.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00] I told my mom everything that had happened and she consoled me, suggesting that I should call her, since we had her number. And I was like, yeah, okay. But then for some reason, I never did. Years passed, and now I'm nearing the end of high school. I still remember her, as I said, very vividly. Throughout the years, I mentioned her to everyone I knew.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00] At least everyone who would have any idea who she was. One of my closest friends, who was in the same section as us, back in first grade, had no idea who I was talking about when I asked them. I thought, okay, they weren't that close. That makes sense. But then I asked another one of our classmates, and they didn't seem to recall either. I just shrugged it off, figuring we were all kids,

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00] and it wasn't necessary that everyone knew her or paid attention to her. Same with my mom. She all of a sudden had no recollection of her whatsoever. Even her phone number, which had been saved in my mom's phone, was suddenly gone. While other friends' numbers remained. Yes, all of this was really weird, but I really didn't question it any further.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_00] A week ago, I finally noticed that she wasn't even in our class photo. Even though I remember her being right beside me, because we had deliberately chosen to stand next to each other. Instead, I was standing next to another old classmate, who also happened to have been her former seatmate. So, I reached out to that seatmate. She told me she never shared her seat with anyone, at least as far as she remembers,

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00] and that she always sat alone. I have no idea what's happening. It's either that she never existed, and I've been losing my mind since middle school, or I've somehow jumped timelines. If something like that is even real, because I'm kind of skeptical about it. But as far as I remember, she has always been a constant in my life, and in my thoughts. See, what scares me is the idea that I've ended up in a different timeline,

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_00] or that my memories of her don't even exist. Considering that she doesn't exist either. Either way, I miss her a lot, and I wish this wasn't something I had imagined. At least, I'm pretty sure I haven't.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_01] Traverse City State Hospital, by Brandy. This story happened at the old state hospital, here in Traverse City, Michigan. The hospital used to be a psychiatric hospital. There are so many different stories about this place, involving the mistreatment of patients. Some of the stories were really dark. Mental health treatment was a disaster, and some of the treatment was so inhumane that it bordered on torture.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_01] The old state hospital shut its doors in 1989. My younger brother and I are close, so we had the same group of friends. In 2008, on Devil's Night, my brother and our group of friends decided we were all going to meet up at the Traverse City Old State Hospital. There are about six different buildings on the ground that held psychiatric patients. There were about 12 of us searching different buildings to see if there was a way inside any of them.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_01] We came to the bell tower, where there was a window that was partially open. This window gave us access to the basement. All 12 of us were able to get in, even our friend who was on crutches with a broken foot. We had to walk through the tunnels to the staircase leading into the building. We walked up the main floor. The hallways were long, with bedrooms on the left side. All of the rooms looked like what you would think a psychiatric hospital room would look like.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_01] Just an open room with a window and nothing else. However, we found a room that had what we thought was a closet. We opened the door, and there was a staircase. When we opened the door to the staircase, I got this overwhelming feeling. It gave me goosebumps and made me feel sick. I told everyone that I had a bad feeling and that I didn't want to go up there.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_01] My brother laughed at me and called me a chicken. Then he and everyone else went up the staircase into the attic. My boyfriend at the time stayed behind with me because he also had a bad feeling. Finally, after about a minute of talking about it, we both decided we'd suck it up and just go up there. As we stepped toward the door to the attic, the door slammed shut. We both looked at each other,

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_01] screamed, and ran out of the room. When we got to the dining room of the building, we stopped running and looked back. When we looked at the room we had just run out of, that door slammed shut too. Then, it slowly opened. My boyfriend and I decided we were going to get out of there. So we ran through the tunnel and back out the window. Everyone else came out a short time after.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01] I have never gone back to that old state hospital. Amazing Cat Food by Smalls I'm pretty sure my cat Hank thinks he owns this house.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_01] He decides when I wake up, where I'm allowed to sit, and when I have to drop whatever I'm doing to scratch his belly. I'm not complaining though. I respect his confidence so much that I feed him the best food possible, without thinking twice. I'm talking about Smalls. Smalls makes fresh cat food with preservative-free, 100% human-grade ingredients that you'd recognize from your own fridge, delivered straight to your door. Their recipes contain at least 80% animal protein

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[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_00] The Duplicated Family by PlayerUnknown This happened last October, and I still haven't found an explanation that makes any sense. I was walking my dog along a canal towpath in the West Midlands, UK. It's a route that I use regularly, with canal on one side, a tall railway fence on the other, and no exits between two road bridges roughly a mile and a half apart.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00] At about 8.25 a.m., this family approached from the opposite direction. They were usually easy to remember. The woman wore a red wool hat, the man was pushing a bright yellow three-wheeled buggy, and they had a tan dachshund in a green harness. As we passed, the woman stopped and asked, Do you know if the little cafe by the locks is open yet?

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_00] I checked my watch and said, Not until 9, I don't think. She thanked me, and we continued in opposite directions. About 8 minutes later, I saw another family walking toward me. It took a few seconds for my brain to register why they looked so familiar. It was the same woman in the red hat, the same man, the same yellow buggy, and the same dachshund. They were also approaching

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00] from the same direction as before. When they reached me, the woman smiled and asked word for word, Do you know if the little cafe by the locks is open yet? I just stared at her. Eventually, I said, You literally just asked me that. Her smile disappeared. She then looked at the man, then back at me and said, Sorry?

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00] I explained that I had passed them less than 10 minutes earlier, and had already answered the exact same question. The man laughed awkwardly and said, Must have been our doubles. They both seemed genuinely confused, so I checked my watch again and told them it was now 8.34. The woman thanked me, although she looked uncomfortable, and they carried on walking.

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_00] I then immediately turned around. They were still there, walking normally in the direction I had come from. They didn't disappear, run off, or behave strangely. The problem is that there was no possible way for them to have gotten ahead of me. There are no side paths on that section. They couldn't have crossed the canal, and the railway fence is far too high to climb. Even if they had turned around

[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_00] after our first conversation and sprinted to the previous bridge, they would have needed to travel more than two miles by road, reach the next bridge and walk back toward me, all in about 8 minutes, while pushing a buggy and walking a dachshund. They also would have had to do it without passing me. When I reached the next bridge, I checked the walking app on my phone because I wondered if I had somehow

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_00] become confused and doubled back without realizing. The map showed one continuous line along the towpath, no missing section and no pause. I was completely sober, well-rested, and not wearing headphones. It was broad daylight, and both encounters lasted long enough for me to remember what everyone looked like. The obvious explanation is that I saw two extremely similar families, but identical clothes,

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_00] the same buggy, the same dog, and the exact same question in the exact same wording feel like a ridiculous number of coincidences. Nothing like it has happened to me since.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_01] Alien, Spirit, or Something Else by Weird John I wasn't going to share this story, but I felt the need after hearing the all-knowing voice story on episode 112. You guys later spoke of synchronicities. When the external voice in your head was mentioned, it reminded me of this story. It's very different, yet very similar. One evening after my wife and daughter

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_01] went to bed, I went out to the living room couch and decided to do some meditation. I should mention that I was going through some anger issues at the time and was trying to tackle them through meditation and introspection. It's also worth noting that my wife and I both had mild paranormal experiences while living in this house. Her major experience was the office door opening and closing on its own while she was working on crafts late one night. This never happened

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_01] before or after. We would also both occasionally feel what was almost a physical presence, despite no one being there. As I started getting into my meditation session, I began to feel a presence come into the room with me. I opened my eyes but didn't see anything. However, the dark room felt like it became even darker. This wasn't in a menacing way, but more like the room

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_01] was literally getting darker. I had read some information about psychic self-defense and one of the suggested methods was visualizing a white or golden aura around you to act as a shield against negative entities. Being an open-minded skeptic, I decided to use this method as it had helped with my anxiety and other paranormal experiences before. The presence felt like it tried to push into my mind,

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_01] but it wasn't able to because of the aura I projected. I then heard a voice clear as day that I knew was coming from within my own head, but it wasn't me. It asked, why won't you let me help you? Employing another psychic defensive method, I silently asked in my mind, do you only have the best interests of me and my family in mind? I waited and waited, but

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_01] heard no reply. So I kept visualizing the aura. No way I was going to gamble with letting some random spirit into my mind. A few seconds later, I felt like my mind or spirit was launched into outer space, and I had a clear vision of seeing the earth from orbit. It was almost as if the presence was an alien that showed me their view from space. This lasted only a few seconds

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_01] before I was back on my couch. I sat up, the presence was gone, and everything was completely back to normal. I know what you and the listeners must be thinking. Sleep paralysis. No way. I've had my share of sleep paralysis experiences, and this was nothing like it. It also didn't feel like a dream, lucid or otherwise, as I'm sure I was conscious throughout the entire ordeal.

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_01] I've even had a brief astral projection experience once before, and this felt different from that as well. I would love to hear if anyone has any theories or similar experiences to share.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_00] The Duplicated Man by Solna. Hello. I'm a 20-year-old woman from a major city in Florida, and I've been thinking about this event that happened about three months ago, more and more lately. What happened just doesn't make sense to me. There is a super stop nearby, and that's where I got on. I'm mentioning this because the super stop begins the route

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_00] for the buses, so when they depart, some buses will go the same way for a bit and then split off into their specific routes. The bus numbers in this event are 39, 45, and 215. I was on 39. All three buses would go straight until a major intersection is reached, then 39 will turn right, 45 will cross lanes and enter the left turning lane, and 215 will continue straight.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00] I was on the bus home. It was 6 p.m., so the sun was still out, beginning to set. There were about eight people on the bus, including me and the driver, so it was pretty empty. Everyone was doing their own thing. I was sitting in the back, more toward the front of the back section, where the second set of doors is. I was looking out of my window when we stopped at a bus stop and I saw a large man, a husky guy

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_00] with super clear skin and pink cheeks. He was walking past at a casual pace. He wasn't weird looking or anything, just a normal guy. But I'm bringing that up because I noted his clear skin while we were sitting there. I was thinking he'd be a beautiful woman and other thoughts like, I need to up my skin care game. Anyway, the guy was walking past the bus. He didn't get on when it stopped.

[00:21:23] [SPEAKER_00] He was just walking by. We then started moving again after the person the bus driver had actually stopped for got on. We passed another stop since no one was there and stopped at the following one since there were people waiting. and that's when I saw the same man from less than a minute ago walking past at the same casual pace. But this time he had a child with him and his partner was walking behind him with the stroller. But this was

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_00] the same exact man. The same clear skin, same rosy cheeks. The time it took us to get there from the stop we had previously stopped at was maybe 45 to 60 seconds. I tried to rationalize it because the 39 wasn't the only bus going that way. I glanced up to see if there was a bus ahead of us and I saw the pink and orange sky instead. No bus obscuring my view.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_00] I was confused as to how he had gotten there when there was no bus ahead of us to have dropped him off. The only bus that could have done so was not ahead of us. It was still at the super stop. I know this is a little all over the place but I have to mention something else. When a bus stops and another is behind it but no one is getting on the second bus it will merge into another lane and go around

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00] the stopped bus to continue its route. The bus behind us was the 45 and I thought maybe he had gotten on that bus. It went ahead of the 39 dropped him off and that's how he got there so fast. But that doesn't make sense either because the 45 does not stop at the stop where I saw him again. It needs to get into the left turning lane and for him to have walked past again he would have had to be ahead of us already. There was no bus obscuring my view from the sunset

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_00] and the 45 didn't even stop at the stop where I saw him the second time. The whole thing happened in under a minute I looked around to see if anyone on the bus had noticed but everyone was just doing their own thing. The situation was so weird. I hope this explanation made sense.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_01] The Despair Monster by Kat My partner and I met under the oddest of circumstances. Mike was a sailor on a destroyer during the Gulf War and I was a girl who just wanted to support the troops. I happened to hear about his ship because someone aboard had written to the Chambers of Commerce and they announced it on the radio. I wrote to any service member on the ship and Mike randomly picked three letters out of a pile.

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_01] Mine happened to be one of them. Over the course of his deployment we fell in love by letter but circumstances kept us apart. Then after twenty years we got together. I never stopped adoring him and wanting to be with him during that time. We lived in Texas for the first five years and then I decided it was time for him to retire from his hospital job. We moved into what had been his parents' home

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_01] outside of Dayton, Ohio. Mike's family had been hesitant to throw things away so I spent many nights cleaning and stripping wallpaper before we moved in. The house is always dark but to me it just feels sad. People who come over always feel heaviness and sometimes they sense a presence but that's not an ability I have. One morning I was exercising in the living room.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_01] It was early so only the cat and I were awake. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving. When I looked over my cell phone was slowly gliding down the coffee table. my cat was at the end of the table so at first I thought maybe he was stretching on the edge and caught a claw on the case. But then I realized he was just sitting there staring at me. There was no water on the table and the phone

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_01] wasn't vibrating so I ruled out those possibilities. I went to touch it and then it stopped moving. Odd and interesting but not much else. There would be other small occurrences over time such as switches that turn on and off but I felt like those could be explained away. Mike's health had been slowly deteriorating over the 10 years we lived together and on December 4th of 2025

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_01] I lost him. It felt like my heart was physically ripped from my chest and replaced with a rock and I wanted to die with him. I was isolated whenever I wasn't working and after about a month I was at the lowest a person could be. I went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night. I spent about an hour thinking about how I could end my suffering. Then I fell back asleep.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_01] Sometime later I heard what sounded like animal feet running on the floor. I have two cats now but at that time they weren't allowed in the bedroom when I was asleep. I felt something jump onto the bed and then it landed on my head. It felt warm and almost like it dripped down the sides. I remember saying out loud get off of me. Nothing changed so I said it louder.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_01] Still nothing changed. So I yelled again even louder get off of me. Still nothing. I froze up and it felt like my mouth was glued shut but I managed to force out in the name of Jesus Christ get off of me. Then suddenly the pressure went away and as people often do after experiencing something

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_01] incredibly bizarre or terrifying I went right back to sleep. The next day I was sure something dark, possibly demonic, had happened. But the more I thought about it, the less sure I was. I have nightmares and cry out in my sleep. And when Mike was half asleep, he used to drop his hand on my face or head to wake me up. So did something dark jump on me when I was at my most vulnerable?

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_01] Did I have a nightmare? Did Mike come to comfort me one last time? I still struggle with depression, and although I long to be with Mike, at least I'm hanging in there. Rest well, my love. I pray we can be together on the other side.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00] World Mental Health Day is this month, and honestly it's one of those reminders that I don't mind getting. For me, it's about checking in with myself a little more often, instead of just powering through and being more open about the people that are around me. Talking about mental health is a good start, but actually taking a step is the part that counts. The hard part is finding a therapist who takes your insurance can be a full-time job, but that's not really a problem with Rula.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_00] Rula is a healthcare company that partners with over 120 insurance plans, and the average copay is just 15 bucks per session. They've got a network of over 23,000 therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, and Rula helps you find one based on your needs, your preferences, and your state. They also stick with you along the way, helping you schedule and checking in on your progress. That's something that's really helped me personally. I love being

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_00] able to just send a message to my therapist, and they'll get back to me and talk about the best time to meet, ask how I'm doing. It's super helpful. Rula also cares about the quality of the care you get. Their providers are carefully screened and vetted, and Rula keeps an eye on the quality of the care while helping you track your own progress in therapy. And it's not just therapy. Rula supports other parts of your mental health journey too, including medication management with a diverse

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_00] network of licensed, experienced professionals. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. 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 for you, not against your budget. Alright, the clock's ticking down just a couple more episodes, and

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_00] Andy is bye-bye. It's kind of

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_01] bittersweet. Goodbye. AOL Instant Messenger messenger type of thing. Yeah. Short and sweet.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Let's get into some feedback. We don't actually have a lot of feedback this week. Tara Roberts starts things off saying, Violet Crumble is so good. Do you know what Tara Roberts is referring to here? Yeah. It is, it's a cookie or like a treat, like a candy bar type thing from Australia. Love it.

[00:31:26] [SPEAKER_01] Love it. Violet Crumble, delicious. Yes, I am familiar.

[00:31:29] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, okay. Yeah, I've never had one, but from what I found, the closest thing is like a Cadbury crunchy type chocolate candy. And yeah, I'm familiar with that type of candy, and I'm a big fan. I like having a good crunch, like a crumbly crunch inside of my chocolate, like even like Nestle crunch, like crunch bites or crunch bars. I love having that.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01] Like when Michelangelo bites into Raf's ear, that sounded so satisfying. I vaguely remember that. Is that one or two? Really? Uh, I want to say two. It's when they start fighting and then Splinter is like backflips now or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One, two. It's, yeah.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_00] And they're just jumping and clapping.

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_01] A little louder. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I can still hear out of this one.

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_00] I remember like Raf like hanging out of the window and going, whoa, and it like echoing really loud and it had this weird like ominous vibe to it. Man, that movie's cool. Mm-hmm. That movie's really good.

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. The third one is the only one that doesn't really get a whole lot of love, which I get, but it's still good in its own right.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Pretty, pretty good. Poor attempt at Larry David and the hipsters comment, but yeah, we agree. Great episode. Was that the name of the person, Larry David and the hipsters?

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_00] It was. That's why I threw it in there. Larry David and the hipsters. Is that like a band or something? I gotta look that up right now.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_01] I thought there was an episode called Larry David and the hipsters. Interesting. I don't know. I'm lost. I'm lost. I'm not all there.

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_00] Larry David and the hipsters is a fictional college folk band from the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, season five, episode eight, the ski lift. I don't remember that specifically. I remember the episode. The ski lift is hilarious. The edible underwear. is so good. I love that one, but I don't remember the Jewish folk music group called Larry David and the hipsters. Nope. Nor do I. Oh yeah. It's when he's talking about all of the Jewish songs that he knows trying to

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_00] pretend and he's like the get felt to fish blues. Oh, that's good stuff. Yeah. We are Curb fans here. Uh, finish things off. We just have another one from our regular Little Red Spark. My best friend and I were sitting in class one day and heard what sounded like a scream in the stairway. We immediately looked at each other, but no one else reacted whatsoever. It was pretty weird. Interesting.

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_00] For mosquito bites, on another subject, I find ice and either lemon or vinegar works well. I suppose you should use a syringe without a needle, like the kind that you use to give pets medicine. Otherwise they wouldn't take it. Yeah. I sometimes give my dogs water with that when they won't drink water and I know they need it. And then you pull the plunger up. I guess it makes like a suction around the bite and it would suck out whatever venom or poison is causing it to itch.

[00:34:20] [SPEAKER_00] If it's even venom or poison, who knows? I don't know enough. And I'm sure, I'm not sure that would do. Saline spray also helps. That's interesting that saline would help.

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_01] Never heard of saline spray doing the trick. I think the closest thing I have is this dry mouth rinse. I'll give that a shot. Kind of want to get bit by a mosquito now.

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_00] Man, I started, I found out there are like different types of mosquitoes that cause different types of bites, like the big welts that come up. That's like a different kind of mosquito and it's out during the day. That's what I've been getting bit by because I'm trying to stay in at night because of the mosquitoes, but they're getting me in the day too. And I've got these big welts all around my ankles driving me crazy. They love my ankles.

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Ankles, the knuckles. Worst ever. Worst place to

[00:35:05] [SPEAKER_00] have anything. Yeah. Well, let's jump into some stories since we don't have long this week, or at least we don't have a lot of comments, a lot of feedback. I want to start talking about the best friend that didn't really exist story. Mm hmm. So it was a great story and it had me thinking back on a couple of my friendships growing up wondering why I haven't been able to find any record of them online. I get that people will disappear and they'll just not want

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_00] to have an online presence. I'm borderline about to do that. But I and I get that that can happen, but I'm talking like no social media, no listings of them online, like their data has been removed from brokers and stuff. I can't find anything about at least I want to say two friends that I grew up with. I can't find anything about them. And I guess I should start asking around online to see if anybody knows. But it is kind of weird that people just disappear from your life. And if they don't have an online

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_00] presence, you'll never hear from them. You'll never know.

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_01] They had to have been CIA assets from the very beginning. They don't have anything online and there's regular, dare I say, NPCs who have just completely vanished without any trace of anything. I mean, I want to say maybe not from the beginning, but they later became assets of the CIA and they helped them disappear and assume a new identity.

[00:36:28] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, because I mean the witness, it could be it could be witness relocation

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01] to that too. Yep. They could have been involved with something Secret Service could have done the whole witness protection thing.

[00:36:39] [SPEAKER_00] It's too hard to say because one of them, the one that I'm thinking about specifically, I don't want to say his name, but I remember from like age 13, 14, we were both drummers at our churches and we would meet up at conventions and stuff and play music together and a really cool guy. Can't find a shred of him online anywhere. Nothing. It's so weird.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_01] I like a challenge. Let's talk offline.

[00:37:05] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, we got to find him. Got to find him. Yeah, he's got a very unique name too. It's pretty crazy how unique his name is. I want you to help me. Okay. Okay. And then so I was finished talking about this story. So someone in the comments on this story and this is interesting. They said it's probably way more likely that everyone else just forgot her because she wasn't important to them. And that could also be the case too. It may just be that nobody remembers this person. But, you know, and I

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_00] would accept that explanation, but I still don't understand how she would disappear from a photo like it's a fucking horror movie or disappear from saved numbers in the phone.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_01] That doesn't make That's what's weird to me is that the author clearly remembers specific details about this person. kind of like with you and your friend, especially the extra finger, yet nobody else remembers her at all. I know childhood memories can be a little unreliable, but you can't really reconcile something that's so vivid. An entire friendship, the exact same person who's completely absent from every other account from anybody else, including the class photo. Nope. Something strange is afoot there. Something is amiss.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, especially with something so specific as having an extra finger, that's not something you forget in school. That's something that is so shockingly different. Not in a bad way, but just so unique to somebody that that's not something you would just forget.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_01] You're more likely to remember an extra finger than a missing finger, in my experience. Agreed. Just saying. Yeah.

[00:38:42] [SPEAKER_00] You know, my father-in-law and my dad both have the same missing finger.

[00:38:47] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, see, case in point, I've never noticed the missing finger on your dad.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it was half of the finger, but I mean, he's got a still. They both have a nub. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. You'd think that my dad was a butcher. You'd think that, you know, he cut his finger off, but actually, here's the story. When he was a baby, his older sister was carrying him when they walked out the door, and he stuck his finger out, and she slammed his finger in the door, and instead of, like, opening the door, going to the hospital to have it fixed, she jerked his hand. She panicked. She jerked his little baby hand out of the

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_00] door and just ripped the finger right off.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01] Whoa. Gnarly. Did they at least keep it, preserve it in a jar or something? I don't know. I don't think so. No. I doubt it. Yeah, that sucks. It'd be funny if they reattached it, like, decades later as, like, a little baby finger.

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_00] It never grew. Yeah. They had to take some skin off of his, the underside of his forearm to, like, patch it up, and, uh, yeah, it looks gross. It's disgusting. I can say that because he's my dad. Yeah. I could say anything I want about him. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And anyways, let's move on.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_01] Well, I'm glad they got your dad to the hospital, and it wasn't a state psychiatric hospital. Yeah. Perhaps overkill for a baby, but I digress. It is my transition. Traverse City State Hospital by Brandy. This is a really fun one. I like it. You know, 2008, Devil's Night, that really sets the tone here. I feel like you and I would have done something on Devil's Night in 2008 if we had known each other that soon, but it was a couple years later when we crossed paths.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It was at least the 2010s for sure.

[00:40:26] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think, I want to say it was like 2011. Mm-hmm. I also want to add that Brandy included a really neat website called Genealogy Trails. No relation. Yeah, this is cool. But it's been around, yeah, it's been around since the early 2000s, has that same early internet vibe and it includes a lot of deaths and everything from that same hospital. So really worth checking out. We'll be sure to add that to the show notes.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_00] Are you sure this isn't just the rebranding of Odd Trails and you're just going to surprise us all when I leave and it's just going to be called Genealogy Trails? I'm not that ballsy. A lot of work.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Oregon Trails.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_00] These are wild, yeah. It's got all kinds, like 1897, July 13th, William Moon hanging. What the? Well, I mean, I guess public executions is something that's coming back in style. God damn it. Ridiculous. Yeah, so I guess it's not that crazy. Drowned himself. Organic heart disease. This is crazy. This website, I read all through this.

[00:41:27] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, there's a lot. There's more than just this one spot. It's definitely worth checking out. Yeah, this is great. Mm-hmm. I wonder if it has anything about some places that we've talked about before but couldn't find much information on. Yeah, it's a good source.

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_00] I'm gonna definitely spend some time on this site. So, yeah, this is a super creepy story. Attics are creepy, period. I hate going in my attic. Have you gone in yours?

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_01] It's not like an official attic, so no, I have no interest in checking it out.

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_00] Okay, yeah. Ours is like an official gigantic attic. Like, you could put a whole room up there.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, lucky. No, I would. I'd for sure check that out.

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_00] The only reason I haven't is most of the space is above my garage, which I had to put insulation in so that I could be out there like during the winter and the summer because I spend most of my time out there and so most of it's taken up by just a bunch of insulation. But I could clear some space and yeah, I'd have like a whole room up there, but it's just creepy. Attics are just creepy to me and it's probably just the association with horror movies. There's always something in the basement or the attic.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_01] I can only really think of a positive association because for whatever reason, I just think of that Rugrats episode, I think it was the Hanukkah episode where everybody gets trapped in the attic and the grandpa is just telling stories about Hanukkah or something like that. And even Goonies, finding the treasure map. Yeah, off the top of my head, all the attic stuff is pretty positive, but of course, yeah, it is definitely spooky.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_00] So I want to talk about two of my stories at once and probably most obvious reason is I titled them similarly, The Duplicated Man and The Duplicated Family. Let's talk about the man first. So I actually changed the names of these two doppelganger stories and also ended up choosing them at random. I didn't know they were going to be doppelganger stories because the titles were like long sentences, so I had to condense them down. So I just came up with something to call them. And yeah, they ended up being so similar. You could say that

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_00] they were basically doppelgangers of each other just by coincidence, by chance. But they did have that thing where the title was basically the plot of the whole story. So, you know, I changed it up a bit. And, uh, but actually going back to the family one first, I want to start there. So this one had some great comments on the original post as well, like with my best friend story. One person said, I wonder if they met their doubles in the cafe. They might have all

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_00] had a laugh about it once they realized that they had the same hat, buggy, dog, etc. Or were in assimilation and the NPCs ran twice on a loop accidentally. That's an interesting thought that if they're not, like, if it wasn't like a time loop where it was the same people and it really is like a doppelganger family and they're headed to the same cafe, they're going to meet up there. What's going to happen? They're going to meet their doubles there. That's kind of wild to think about.

[00:44:12] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, and if there really were no exits along that stretch, there's no way they could have possibly gotten ahead of them.

[00:44:18] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. If the author is telling the truth, I agree, I don't see any way to poke holes in it based on the geography of the path and the surrounding area. The woman asking the same question word for word. Exactly. It would have been nearly impossible for them to somehow double back and, yeah, it's just too weird for it to be a bunch of coincidences and nearly impossible. And, you know, I want to go back to this point. I do think it's a weird coincidence

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_00] that I would pick two stories at random from my list of submissions and end up with stories essentially told the same story. They were the same phenomenon. So, like, in The Duplicated Man, it was the same exact thing. They saw the same person clearly way down the bus line where they couldn't have been walking again, but this time with more people with him. It doesn't make any sense. These are cool. I don't know how to explain it. And it kind of relates back to the story I talked about last time about seeing the same people

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_00] on vacation. Like, yeah, it's this keeps popping up and it's complete, completely by chance. I select stories from a list at random of submissions and they just, for some reason the last two weeks it's been this weird duplicated people thing, this weird doppelganger thing.

[00:45:36] [SPEAKER_01] It really is. It really is. Like, specifically for the duplicated man one, I wonder if there was some sort of shortcut he could have taken between the stops, but still, the fact that he suddenly had his family with him, where were they during the first encounter? How did they all end up ahead of the bus in less than a minute? Both really good stories. Congratulations, you picked some winners. Yeah,

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_00] we picked some winners. I think next week is my last story episode. After that, we're going to do our big finale special and I don't know what we have planned for that.

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_01] Might just be an old-fashioned group of stories for all we know. probably. Nothing special. We'll have a nice little kumbaya at the end either way. Let's look forward to next week and let's hope my poor little mouth and sinuses are back to 100% next week.

[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, my allergies are starting to pick up. It's getting rough. I have to live on allergy medicine again. It's twice a year in the spring and in the fall. I'm just loaded up with antihistamines. Mm-hmm.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_01] Not even in a fun way.

[00:46:34] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If anybody's got a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com and join the Patreon at patreon.com forward slash oddtrails for ad-free versions of all of the episodes and check out my other podcast, Let's Not Meet. See you guys next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_01] Ghosts and the ghouls disturb you, don't.

[00:47:08] Antarctic Lo frames hall Bye.

[00:47:09] [SPEAKER_01] Thank you. Bye.

[00:47:09] You