The Man in Room 117 – Ep. 234

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[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_09] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at OddTrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_03] Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. You just trust. Believe.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_09] The Thing Beyond the Treeline by Elliot Stone 666.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_09] This happened when I was around 11 or 12 years old. I was staying at my uncle's house at the time. He had two kids, and we'll just call them Charlie and Chloe. My uncle's house was surrounded by a deep stretch of woods that always seemed darker than they should have been, even during the day. At night, the forest swallowed every bit of light, leaving only the faintest glow of the moon through the branches. It was late, maybe close to midnight, and I couldn't sleep.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_09] The guest room I was staying in had a small window that faced the backyard, which bled directly into the forest. Usually I would see nothing but the outline of the trees and the leaves, but that night, something was standing just beyond the treeline. At first I thought it was just a person. Tall, thin, and still. But the longer I stared, the more wrong it seemed. Its arms were too long, hanging low past its knees,

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_09] and its head was slightly tilted to the side, like it was curious and listening. I blinked hard. It hadn't moved. I wanted to run and wake up Charlie, Chloe, and my uncle, but something in me just couldn't stop looking at it. My chest tightened, and I swear, the air in the room grew heavier. That's when I stepped forward. It was just enough for me to see that it wasn't human.

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_09] Its legs were bent the wrong way, like an animal's. Its eyes didn't shine like normal animal eyes in the dark. They glowed. I ducked beneath the window instantly, heart hammering, afraid that if I stayed too long, it would catch me staring. For what felt like forever, I stayed crouched on the floor listening. I didn't hear any footsteps, no movement, just silence pressing against the house.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_09] The next day, I asked Charlie and Chloe if they had ever seen anyone in the woods. Charlie laughed, but Chloe went pale. She whispered in my ear not to talk about it, that uncle doesn't like us mentioning it. I didn't bring it up again after that. Part of me wanted to believe that it had all just been a bad memory, some trick of the shadows. But deep down, I knew that it wasn't. Even now, years later,

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_09] I can still remember the way that it stood there silent, waiting, like it had all the time in the world. And sometimes when I think back to those nights at my uncle's house, I can't help but wonder, if I hadn't ducked under that window, if I had just stared a bit longer, would it have moved closer?

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_02] The Man in Room 114 by CJR I'm a new listener. You guys talked about haunted hospitals in your last episode, so I knew I had to send this in.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_02] Hope you like it. In 2009, I was going through a divorce that wasn't quite final yet. To make some extra money, I picked up a part-time night shift doing custodial work at a small regional hospital in Ohio. I won't name it, but it's still operating. I worked Tuesdays and Thursdays, sometimes Saturdays if they needed coverage. It was boring, but it gave me something to do

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_02] besides sitting alone in my apartment. After a while, I knew the place pretty well. I knew every room, every hallway, every corner. There was a small seating area near the elevators with two chairs and a fake plant. The lights there always seemed a little dimmer than the rest of the floor, but I never thought much of it. Nothing weird had ever happened before this. It was just a hospital at night.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02] Beeping monitors, nurses at the station, carts rolling down the hall. Quiet more than anything. The thing I'm writing about happened in November of that year. I remember it was cold outside. Around 2.30 in the morning, I was making my usual rounds with my cart. As I came around the corner near room 114, I saw an older man standing in the hallway just outside the door.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_02] He looked like he was probably in his 80s, thin, wearing a hospital gown and those grippy socks they give to patients. He was standing there looking toward the window at the end of the hall. I figured he'd gotten up and wandered out of his room. I stopped and said something like, Sir, can I help you? Do you need me to get a nurse? He turned and looked at me. He seemed completely normal,

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_02] not confused or disoriented or anything. He said something along the lines of, I'm alright, just looking. His voice sounded calm and normal. I asked if he wanted me to let somebody know he was up, and he shook his head and said he was fine. I remember thinking he seemed pretty with it for someone standing in a hospital hallway at 2.30 in the morning. After that, I just continued working.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_02] About 20 minutes later, I came back through that area, and he was gone. I didn't think much of it. I assumed he'd gone back to his room, or a nurse had helped him. Two or three weeks later, I was talking to one of the overnight nurses. I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but somehow we ended up talking about a patient who had stayed in room 114.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_02] She mentioned an older man who had passed away there earlier that month. Cardiac issues, if I remember right. I said something like, Oh, was he still there when I started? I saw an older guy outside that room one night. She looked at me kind of strangely, and said no. Then she told me that room 114 had actually been empty for weeks, because of a facilities issue.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_02] They weren't using it. When I told her what night I had seen him, she kind of paused. Then, she repeated that the room had been vacant since before then. I described the old man's appearance and mannerisms as best as I could. She looked surprised, but didn't overreact. Just kind of chuckled and said something like, Wow, that's crazy. That was pretty much the end of the conversation.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_02] Somebody needed something, and we both went back to work. I've thought about it a lot over the years. Maybe somehow I got confused. There could be some explanation I never considered, but I know I saw somebody standing there, and I know I spoke to him. I've only told a handful of people about this. Most people either don't believe me, or think I got mixed up somehow. Maybe I did.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02] But I still remember talking to him. That's the part I really can't explain. This message is sponsored by Greenlight.

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[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_09] Bizarre Floating Orb by Legally Not a Cat. I'm going to start this off by saying that the most likely explanation is that I was still dreaming and brains are weird. But it's still bothering me some 30 years later so I thought I would share. I was around 12 years old at the time and my parents had recently separated. It was one of my rare weekends with my dad and he was still trying to prove that he was the cool parent.

[00:14:37] [SPEAKER_09] So he had taken me to the local amusement park that day. I was sleeping alone on the couch next to a lamp that had a weird glow-in-the-dark skeleton pole dancing inside of it. It always kind of freaked me out. I watched it slowly fade after the light was turned off. Anyways, I was asleep after watching the skeleton fade and I was dreaming about random things from the amusement park experience when the dream suddenly cut to a scene

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_09] of a completely white room. I was looking down at another version of myself sitting in a chair. She was wearing a white robe and her hair was wet. Suddenly she looked up at me and calmly said, You need to wake up now. Just like that, my eyes snapped open but immediately I had to squint because something bright was shining into my eyes. I moved my head back a bit and the light moved away at the exact same time and pace.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_09] It was like it was mirroring me. Either it dimmed or my eyes adjusted because I could now see what I was looking at. It was a glowing orb about the size of a grapefruit floating a few inches away from my face. It didn't bob up and down at all. It was completely motionless. Unfortunately, it's difficult to describe what it looked like because I've never seen anything else similar enough to compare it to. But try to imagine

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_09] a glass orb covered in an oily liquid floating over the surface and creating little ripples and waves. As it flowed, the liquid would thin out enough in certain parts to allow me to see. It looked like there was a storm inside, but the colors of the storm clouds were different on each side, split perfectly down the middle. Streaks of purple on the left and streaks of red on the right,

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_09] with random flashes of lightning that lit up the dark clouds just enough to show that something was fluttering in the center. Like a dragonfly, maybe. It was very fast. The confusion wore off at that point, and I began to panic, scrambling and backing up as hard as I could against the couch. It mirrored me, again, by backing away another few feet until it was hovering over the coffee table. I yelled something unintelligible and threw my pillow at it.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_09] The moment my pillow made contact, it blinked out of existence, and the room was plunged into darkness again. My eyes weren't adjusted, and I made one hell of a commotion scrambling over the side of the couch, knocking into things and screaming for my dad. He wasn't particularly happy about this wake-up call, told me it was a nightmare, and said I had to go back to sleep. I was too scared to go very far into the living room to snag my blanket, but I noticed that the skeleton

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_09] was lit up brightly again, as if it had just been exposed to light. I slept on the floor in the hallway. Like I said at the beginning, the most likely explanation is that it was really all in my head. It's strange, though, because it's not like I had ever heard about floating orbs before, or even now. I can't find any stories that sound similar to mine. I'm not sure where the idea would have come from,

[00:18:02] [SPEAKER_09] and it definitely didn't feel like I was dreaming. Anyway, that's the only unexplained experience I've ever had, and it's still something that I randomly think about.

[00:18:29] [SPEAKER_02] The Wrong Apartment by Alex. I don't know if this counts as paranormal activity, but it's the one thing that's happened to me that I still can't file anywhere normal. This was about eight years ago. I was living alone in a fourplex in Boise. The building had two upstairs apartments and two downstairs. Mine was upstairs on the left, and across the landing from me

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_02] was an older man named Don. Don and I weren't friends, but we were friendly enough. The kind of neighbor you'd nod to while carrying groceries. One evening, I came home, and my apartment door was open. Not wide open, just cracked a few inches. I stopped at the top of the stairs and stared at it. I remember trying to convince myself I must have left it that way. I'd done careless

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_02] things before. I went inside and checked the apartment. Nothing looked disturbed, except there was a coffee mug sitting on my kitchen counter. It was white, with a blue stripe around the rim. There was coffee in it, maybe half full, and when I touched it, it felt warm. I didn't drink coffee at the time, I didn't own a coffee maker, and I didn't keep coffee in the apartment.

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_02] That was the part that bothered me. If the door had been open and nothing else was strange, I probably would have forgotten about it after a few days. But the mug made it feel like somebody had been standing in my kitchen shortly before I got home. I called my landlord. He said maintenance hadn't been there. And nobody had permission to enter. He told me to call the police if anything was missing. Nothing was missing, though.

[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_02] I dumped the coffee out, washed the mug, and put it in the cupboard. I don't really know why I kept it. And for a while, nothing happened. Eventually, I stopped thinking about it every time I came home. Then, a few weeks later, Don brought over a piece of mail that ended up in his box by mistake. We talked for a minute on the landing, and at some point he mentioned finding a coffee mug in his apartment

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_02] that he didn't recognize. I asked what it looked like. He said it was white with a blue stripe around the rim. I remember feeling my stomach drop a little. I asked where he'd found it. He said it had been sitting on his kitchen table one morning with coffee in it. He thought maybe somebody had accidentally left it there. I didn't tell him about my mug right away. Honestly, I didn't really know what to say.

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_02] After he went back inside, I got the mug from the cupboard. There was coffee in it again, and I know I rinsed it out. Not much, just a little at the bottom. I stood there staring at it for a while. Looking back, maybe I somehow never washed it. Maybe I only thought I did. I don't know, but I want to say I'm positive that I did. At that point, I put the mug

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_02] in a plastic grocery bag, tied it shut, and left it outside my door. The next morning, it was gone. I didn't ask Don about it. Part of me was worried there was some completely normal explanation that would make me feel ridiculous. A month or so later, I was talking with him outside and eventually asked if he'd ever seen that mug again. He kind of laughed and said he had. Apparently,

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_02] he found it in his apartment more than once. One time, it was on the kitchen table. Another time, it was sitting on the arm of his recliner and left a coffee ring. At some point, he got annoyed and threw it away. We stood there for a second, trying to figure out how either of us could be responsible, and neither explanation really made much sense. Eventually, we just dropped it. Don moved out

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_02] that summer. I stayed until the following spring. A few days before I moved out, I was cleaning the apartment so I could get my deposit back. I was wiping out cabinets in the kitchen when I opened the one above the refrigerator. The mug was sitting inside, white, blue stripe. No coffee this time, just dust inside it. I stood there looking at it for a few seconds,

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_02] then I shut the cabinet. I left it there. I know there are probably normal explanations. Maybe there was more than one mug. Maybe Dawn was messing with me for reasons I'll never understand. I really don't know. What sticks with me is the coffee. The warm coffee in my apartment when I had no way to make it. And later, finding coffee in the mug that I was almost

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_02] positive I cleaned out. I have no idea what was going on.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_09] The Weirdest Day of My Life by Beezle I was lying in bed this morning at around 8am. No TV, no phone, nothing on. All of a sudden I hear the name Ellen. Nobody else lives here. There was no one else. I checked the entire house. It was a full, rounded woman's voice. Just freaked me out. Whatever, it was a spooky thing that happened. I'll be fine. Well,

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_09] I relaxed until about 4pm and went to go buy some alcohol. It's spring break and I'm definitely getting drunk tonight, especially now. So I walk into the liquor store, purchase some beer and some 99 bananas. The register guy checks my ID, even though he knows me, and says he has to start checking because he got in trouble. Well, I then get into my car and start to drive home. I think, man, that voice, that Ellen thing, that was strange this morning.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_09] Somehow, I don't know how, in this tomfoolery, I flashed or teleported back in space time. It was like a glitch. I was back to driving to the liquor store. I look over at my passenger seat and there's no beer, no 99 bananas. I pull in, park, and wonder if I just daydreamed it. I go back in the liquor store and you know what they don't have? 99 bananas. The guy says he ran out about two days ago

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_09] and told me he'd have some more in November. I just bought a bottle and they were in stock with even more on the shelves. So, I got a different drink. I go to purchase it and pull out my ID. I'm 21 but I look 17 so it makes sense that I get carded. The clerk goes, yeah, you're good, I know you. I drive home paying extra attention to my surroundings and the liquor in my passenger seat.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_09] I get into my house and there on my counter is a six pack and the 99 bananas. I still have the other bottle though. This is impossible. If he sold out two days ago, how did I get it? When did I get it? How did it get there? I live 20 minutes away from this liquor store. I didn't just forget the drive. It was an instant teleport feeling. I don't know. I'm just weirded out.

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_02] My mom's creepy couch by Kyle. My mom recently had surgery so I stayed the night at her apartment. She said it was more comfortable for her to sleep on the recliner

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_02] and told me I could sleep in her bed. I said I felt too bad taking her bed so I slept on the couch. She kept insisting I sleep in her room instead but she gave up when she knew I wasn't going to move. It isn't a good couch. She's had it forever, probably before I was even born. One of the cushions slid forward every time I moved and there was a wooden bar underneath that dug into my hip no matter how

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_02] I positioned myself. The living room had a big window facing the street and every so often headlights would slide across the ceiling. I think the lights were what woke me up the first time. A car passed, the room went bright then dark. Then I heard someone whispering my name. It came from underneath the couch. Not the hallway, not the kitchen,

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_02] directly beneath me. I stayed completely still, staring up at the ceiling, trying to decide if I was awake enough to trust myself. Then it happened again. My name, soft, clear, and close. Kyle. I sat up so fast I almost kicked the coffee table over. For a few seconds, I just listened.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_02] Nothing. The apartment was quiet, except for my mom's oxygen machine, and the refrigerator making that little knocking sound old refrigerators make. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight. There was nothing under the couch except a sock and the cap of a prescription bottle. I checked behind the couch too, which was ridiculous, but I did it anyway. Nothing.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_02] The next morning, I mentioned it to my mom while I was making coffee. I didn't say where I heard my name, just that I heard it. I expected her to say I was half-dreaming or something. Instead, she looked at me like she knew something I didn't, kind of like she was trying to tease me. She said, was it under the couch? When she saw my expression, she started laughing, and said,

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_02] it used to do that when you were little. Um, excuse me? This was news to me. Why am I just now hearing about this? I asked her why she never told me, and what she meant by it. She said, because you were four. That was fair, I guess. She couldn't or wouldn't clarify what she meant by it, but she told me she has heard

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_02] her name being whispered on three occasions, starting when I was four, and only late at night when she has been on the couch. Even though my mom's a lot of fun of fun and likes to joke around, I know she isn't just messing with me. She also doesn't seem freaked out by it, so I guess that's good enough for me. I don't really talk to my dad, but next time I do, I plan on asking him if he's had any

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_02] experiences. I'll keep you updated.

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[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_09] Almost Abduction by Original Trick 5255 This literally just happened to me this morning. I was sleeping in bed next to my wife and son. My son is just over a year old and he wakes up throughout the night, so my wife and I have lullabies playing on YouTube on our TV all night to help soothe him when he wakes up. As normal, he wakes up and starts fussing. My wife then pulls him in to breastfeed.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_09] She taps me and tells me that she has to use the bathroom, so she gets up and does her thing. Keep in mind, I'm not drowsy or sleepy at this point. I've been awake for at least 45 minutes, even prior to my son waking up. Anyway, as she's in the bathroom, I'm lying there with my son on the other side of the bed, now back asleep. Then suddenly, I feel paralyzed. I feel as if my body weighs 500 pounds. The sound of the lullaby disappears and it's replaced

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_09] with what I can only describe as rushing wind, as if I'm being shot through a tunnel or a vortex or something. My eyes are wide open. I'm fully conscious. I feel a heavy presence in the room. I hear whispers, but I can't understand anything they're saying. It's so loud, the wind, the water rushing, whatever it was. I was frantically trying to turn over or move, but it felt like I was being held down.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_09] I felt the pain in my lower back, but I couldn't scream, talk, yell, or even whisper. And then I saw it, right there, in front of the bedroom door. A silhouette, not a dark one. It's as if it were invisible or trying to be invisible, but somehow the light from the TV reflected off of it. It was seven feet tall, very slender, almost oval-shaped head, standing there staring. All of this felt like it lasted hours.

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_09] Then just as I caught a glimpse of it, my wife opened the bathroom door and I was free. And it was gone. I haven't told my wife yet. She's very religious, and I honestly don't want her to freak out. But this happened. I've had sleep paralysis before. This was nothing like it. I was wide awake. I feel weird telling this story, but I'm hoping that putting my thoughts into words on the screen can help me better understand what happened.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_09] Was it an alien? I don't know. Could it have just been a freak accident? Sure. Whatever it was, I've never experienced anything like it. Any input is appreciated. Thanks.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_09] All right, jumping into the feedback, Jocelyn says, can someone help me find the episode of the guy and his girl at the lake in July? Goes to the car to grab something and he hears the same whistling noise that he heard years ago with his mom, but he's in a different place. I don't know if it was on here or on Let's Not Meet. Please help. Kindly appreciated. That sounds Let's Not Meet. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You did get some of the details a little mixed up, Jocelyn, but Brandon's correct. It was Let's Not Meet. It was actually season one, episode two, one of the very early episodes.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_09] My favorite episode. Sure. Yes, but this one does border on supernatural. So it's a story about this kid who lives in Michigan and he hears this specific whistling coming from a swamp while he's on a walk. Very Scooby-Doo. And two years later, he's a little bit older, he hears the same whistling, but it's coming from a bush right outside his house by the front door. Well, 14 years later, he's a full-grown adult in his 20s

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_09] and he's moved from Michigan to South Dakota. He's by the lake watching the fireworks on 4th of July and he sees this figure row by on a canoe and it's whistling that same type of whistle. It's kind of like a tune, but it's weird. It's all over the place, but it's the same pattern. And he even has audio that he got on camera of the whistling. I believe it's included at the end of the story on that episode, but if you're interested, go check out season one, episode two of Let's Not Meet if you want to hear that Whistler story.

[00:38:33] [SPEAKER_09] I think it might have been narrated by Sora Narnia of Knife Point Horror. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I gave that one to him. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Go check it out. I have no idea.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's worth it. Worth it.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_02] And from Megan Hammond, we have, Dark is the best show ever. As you watch it, watch it again. And I promise the second watch through is even better than the first. Much like Attack on Titan and plenty of other things, what sort of shows or movies do you think are worth being watched a second time to fully appreciate them? I know the list goes on forever, but for you personally, what second watch really sealed the deal for you?

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_09] Oh yeah, like a lot of the, not necessarily time travel, but like reality bending type movies, like The Matrix. I watched that. Shutter Island's an obvious one. Yep, Shutter Island, Donnie Darko. Movies where like it has like a twist at the end and it had a bunch of foreshadowing and clues leading up to it. So you gotta rewatch it again and then you get all the clues and stuff. So yeah, anything that has to do with time or bending reality, different dimensions, those kinds of movies, definitely rewatch.

[00:39:42] [SPEAKER_02] You know what's funny? I haven't watched a David Lynch movie in probably seven or eight years. Like I liked them when I watched them, but I've only seen them all once for some reason, even though I really liked them. But I finally went back and I watched Mulholland Drive last night and it blew me away, even though it seemed like I was watching it the first time or it felt like it, but our brains and our perception change and our taste, everything just over time, you know, just a different feel for it and I'm ready to watch it for a third time already.

[00:40:10] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah. David Lynch is like the top tier. I don't know why I didn't even bring him up. He's like the top tier as far as like things you need to rewatch because there's so much going on and there's so many parallels and callbacks and it's just a great, it's like a whole universe, his movies. Good stuff there. I love Mulholland Drive. In fact, it's been about 15 years since I've seen it so I should probably rewatch it and I bet I would have a much better appreciation for it as, you know, almost 40 year old Mahan.

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_02] I would happily watch that with you. We should go on Discord and like all press play at once and watch Mulholland Drive.

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah. I could just stream it. Yeah, I could just stream it directly to a voice chat on Discord and we could all watch it there. Yep. Actually, we won't do that. That's illegal. We're joking. Correct. But by all means, go join our Discord if you want to talk about it.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_02] It's in the show notes but don't expect any legal activity.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_02] It does make me really want to watch Dark Now. I got another recommendation through Instagram. I don't know if you also got it too because we tend not to check the official odd trails. People just message us individually.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_09] I did actually get one. So the name of the show is The Kingdom. Okay, yeah. And the reason, yeah, the reason it kind of struck a chord in my head is because Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital, I think is what it was called, was based on this or at least inspired by this show. It was like the American version of it. But yeah, this is a Lars Van Trier TV show from 1990 or maybe the early 90s. I think it might have been like 93 or something. But it's supposed to be very David Lynch-y. Like it's not like

[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_09] Lars Van Trier's other work. It's more surreal and less punishing, I guess. Right.

[00:41:47] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's an interesting character.

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, yeah. So we got to check out not only Dark, but we also got to check out The Kingdom or Rejet. I'm not sure how you would say it. The thing is, I'm not a Lars Van Trier fan. I don't like his movies. I never have. I've tried multiple of them. It's just, I don't like punishing movies where I feel bummed out and like I'm being attacked constantly with like disturbing imagery. Like it just feels like a music video, you know?

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, other Dogma 95 movies are okay. Even Gummo is

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_02] As terrible as it is, something about it has like something redeeming to it. And I like other Dogma 95 movies. The Celebration, I think that one's called Festin, really good. And then this isn't Dogma 95, but The Hunt is so good with Manz Mikkelsen, so good. Oh yeah, yeah. It's super depressing, but very, very good. It's hard to watch. Love Danish films. Magna Talk, that's one I remember from the Duolingo ad.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, I love a good dark, depressing thriller horror movie. It didn't, I guess it doesn't have to be depressing, but I don't like the movies like Lars Vantur where they punish you or they make you just watch awful things. I don't like like movies like Irreversible. Like I just don't like having to just sit there and watch something that makes me sick. I just don't like shock. I think that's what it is. I don't like shock.

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I didn't really care for Hostel, honestly, even like extreme violence. Yeah, people think I'm weird or weak for that, but no, I just don't get anything out of it.

[00:43:18] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, it just bums me out and then I leave wanting to watch, you know, an episode of DuckTales or something as a palate cleanser. Golden Girls. Oh, I love it. I've been watching that every night. Nice. How'd you know? Yeah, I just feel it. Yeah, it's a great show. Okay, going back, Mrs. Zombies says, the way you said Joshua was oddly delightful. I don't know where that came from. I'm sure there are hardcore Friends fans out there that will know. Friends is one of those shows where I know that it's bad.

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_09] I know that it's bad, but it's just a comfort show for me because I watched it when I was a kid. So there you go. Joshua is a Friends reference. Also in reference to hospitals being haunted, Cook County Hospital in Chicago is 100% freaky. I have zero doubts it's haunted in some areas of the hospital. There we go. More haunted hospitals.

[00:44:05] [SPEAKER_02] Ooh, I know. We got more coming too, such as the man in room 214. Now there's a hospital story for us, specifically because we talked about hospitals in the last episode. We got this one in from a pseudo-anonymous initials, CJR.

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah. Let's jump into that story, man. I love that one.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I liked it too. It was very subdued, but I think that's sort of the things that we talked about before, but less is more in things like this. So for that old man just to be saying, he's just looking, oh, I'm fine. I'm okay. And then by the reaction of the author's co-worker like kind of shocked, but oh, okay. That's crazy, man. Yeah, no, it's not, not a whole lot as far as like the haunting, thrilling type of thing. Well, I guess haunting. I kind of use that. Yeah. Like in conjunction with the scariness,

[00:44:52] [SPEAKER_02] but things can be haunting without being scary.

[00:44:55] [SPEAKER_09] I was going to say the same thing. Yeah. I think haunted just qualifies as the presence of spirit or ghost. Correct. In a location, not necessarily.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_02] It has to be scary. No, not at all. Some people just hang around. It is interesting though that he was still at the hospital, you know, so there's one notch for a spirit or a person staying at the place that they died. Probably not a consistent thing though, but hey, at least we got one now.

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_09] I mean, we can't expect the spirit realm or whatever to be consistent and, you know, following the rules of our logic. Exactly. It will not make sense to us always. I mean, it obviously doesn't. Yeah. I do like that the spirit just spoke to them. Like, it's almost like they didn't even know they were dead. Exactly. Yeah. It's like, uh, I'm fine.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_02] Can I help you? Like,

[00:45:43] [SPEAKER_10] are you okay? Yeah,

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_02] I'm fine. Are you like, dude, let me chill. Let me walk around. What's your deal? It is almost kind of a David Lynch type of thing just to like, just to be so casual, but yet be a ghost. I like that. Or spitting out cappuccinos into a napkin. Oh man. Speaking of, uh, Mulholland Drive, how did you feel about that diner scene? I liked it. The first thing I noticed and I didn't notice last time was the camera work. It was clearly a callback to something else. Like, Ooh, I remember this. This feels familiar.

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_02] And then I know, I noticed when they walked away, the table was set and their food wasn't there after all, like little things like that.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_09] The jump scare got me though. Yep. It totally got me. You know, that's actually the same actress that played the nun in the, uh, Conjuring and the nun movies. Ooh, good for her. Little tidbit for you. Uh, let's jump into my orb story. So this girl is focused on this glow in the dark skeleton and I think the skeleton is the key to this. Skeleton key. Yeah, skeleton key. There you go. So the girl's watching it slowly lose its light, you know, cause glow in the dark stuff, it charges up in the light and, uh,

[00:46:50] [SPEAKER_09] they're going to sleep. They slowly watch it, lose the light and then they have that wild experience with the white room and the orb and everything only to find that the skeleton's charged up again when they come out of it or wake up. It's like a light was turned on in the room. That doesn't just happen. That's impossible. And it makes me wonder if this orb that they interacted with was real and it somehow emitted enough light and energy to charge the skeleton back up.

[00:47:16] [SPEAKER_02] So this is kind of a reach, but just because it's an orb shape, it made me think of the boogosphere. Have you seen those videos and gone down that rabbit hole? No, that's a new thing for me. Oh yeah, get into the boogosphere. That thing, really crazy. It could just be some sort of like defense contractor type of thing. Oh. But, it's not just one thing. People are finding these spheres that don't have any sort of welding marks and they're flying around and it doesn't make any sense. But yeah, there's a video out there

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_02] and there's like some professor or some dude talking about them. I'll send you the video, but yeah, no, it's a cool rabbit hole to go down the BUGA sphere. So they're like cut in half. Yeah, they've been retrieved and they're finding like elements like that they're made up of that don't make any sense and using carbon dating, which, you know, people have different opinions on. They're like thousands of years old.

[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_09] Oh, it looks like Bob Lazar was talking about these last year. I'm sure he was, but that's an AI picture of him. So I don't know. I can't trust anything. God, I know. I hate that. I hate it. This is cool. It's probably a hoax, but you'd be surprised. It's interesting. It's extremely interesting. It's something that it's a rabbit hole. I'm definitely going to go down. This is something that I feel like Art Bell would be talking about on his show.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Dive into it and let's revisit it next week. Have like, let's have some continuity here. Kind of like how we're going to talk about a story from last week this week. I like that. I like revisiting, but in a structured way. Speaking of, let's jump into that story. The Death Rattle story by KL. Feel bad because we didn't really get around to this and full disclosure, I didn't get the email or didn't see it until after we did the outro and I had to include it. So going to retroactively go back and talk about it now.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah. And just full disclosure, we can't really talk about every single story. This would end up being an hour long piece of the podcast. You know what I mean? So we just kind of pick out the ones that stand out to us or the ones that we actually have something to bring to the table to talk about.

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_02] So KL did email and mentioned that she was stoked about the story being on the show and everything and she does want to hear our thoughts on it. And I don't know, maybe the accident didn't create something new in her, but maybe it stripped away whatever filter we as humans might have. And after that day, her brain and body could have just been scanning the world at some sort of different frequency, a heightened sense of noticing danger and maybe even coincidences that she couldn't explain before.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_02] Things kind of fit together better. In the warning before the crash, it doesn't really keep things perfectly explained because it wouldn't be pattern recognition after the trauma, obviously, because it happened beforehand. So basically, what I'm trying to say is I wonder if she was already intuitive and the accident and all the trauma made her more aware of the intuition, if that makes sense.

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_09] Yeah, it made her think about it more, look into it, and so it made her more hyper-aware and she was able to predict more things. I have no problem believing that because that's how lucid dreaming worked for me. As soon as I started looking into it and started focusing on it and honing it, I started having more lucid dreams, whereas before, I would have maybe one a year. Wow. You know, now I maybe get one a month, which is actually a lot for somebody who isn't super into it. So yeah, I have no problem

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_09] believing that.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_02] It is interesting, though, how she had that warning to pull over before all this happened. So I think that kind of proves the point that she was already gifted in this sense, but after it happened, it reinforced the gift that she already had and she just became more hyper-aware after the fact. But yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be a clean explanation of you're psychic or it was just trauma. I think you just became extremely tuned in and here you are now. But she's doing well today, so there's an update. Yeah, super traumatic to witness something like that,

[00:51:04] [SPEAKER_02] so glad to hear she's doing good.

[00:51:06] [SPEAKER_09] Good, good. Anyway, okay, before we go, I'll touch on one last thing, that abduction story, or I guess almost abduction story. So I was fully convinced that that was a sleep paralysis experience up until they described the entity in the room. You know, everything was the same, they couldn't move, they felt a weight on their chest, they heard this whooshing sound, and the thing is, this entity wasn't like a shadow figure, it seemed like it had some kind of cloaking capability and it was just standing in the doorway,

[00:51:35] [SPEAKER_09] but the TV light was kind of like shining off of it, like giving it away, like the cloaking couldn't really, didn't really anticipate for the TV. And you know, thanks to movies and TV shows, like I can't help but think of like Predator or an alien when I hear that. So yes, I think this could probably be some kind of alien type figure rather than a general sleep paralysis demon because those sleep paralysis guys all seem to be the same. They're just dark figures,

[00:52:05] [SPEAKER_09] like just a black mass, like a void. And sometimes they'll be wearing a hat, sometimes not. But I've never heard of one like a Predator cloaking device. Yeah,

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_02] that's some Predator stuff right there. To catch a Predator.

[00:52:19] Yeah.

[00:52:21] [SPEAKER_09] The X-Scary story. Good stuff this week. Thanks so much everybody for sending in your stories. If you do have one, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash oddtrails to get ad-free versions of the episodes. It's the best way to listen to the show and support us. And make sure to check out Let's Not Meet and the Old Time Radiocast, my other podcasts, wherever you get your shows. We'll see you guys next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

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