We're Living in a Simulation – Ep. 132

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

[00:00:58] Strange Happenings After A Friend's Passing By Kitty JJ The following story contains references to suicide. If you're thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, dial 988 for the Lifeline Network. They're available 24-7 across the United States.

[00:01:19] Back in May, I lost a friend to suicide. She planned the entire thing out for over a year, and none of us had a clue. She didn't leave a note or anything hinting as to why,

[00:01:32] but through the actions she took on her final day, we realized just how thoroughly she had planned it out, and just how much she no longer wanted to be here. This was just like everyone

[00:01:45] says. They were the life of the party, always happy, full of life, full of joy, and full of love, and now we understand that we missed the signs. I found out 10 days after her passing. Two days later, it was a Monday morning. I got into my car

[00:02:02] and turned it on. It instantly started playing Logic's 1-800 song. For those of you that don't know, that is a song about suicide. I found it odd. My car normally picks a random song,

[00:02:15] but it really had to be that song that day? Well, I decided to let it continue as I drove to work. The song ended, and then it began once more, on replay. I don't play my music on replay.

[00:02:33] I let it play again, and it replayed for a third time. By this time, I arrived at work, trying my hardest not to break down. About an hour went by, and I got a message from a friend

[00:02:45] saying, hey, today's the viewing. I left work early, went home to change into a white outfit, which is what her family asked. Then I picked up white roses and set off to see her one last time.

[00:03:00] It was a beautiful service, and everything was white. During the service, a bird flew into the church and landed directly above her casket, all the way in front of the church. It sat there for about five minutes, facing the audience. Then it flew back and landed

[00:03:18] directly above her boyfriend, where it remained for the rest of the service. A few days after her service, I had a dream of her. We were in a white room, sitting on a white bed. We talked for a while. It felt so peaceful, so warm.

[00:03:35] I know that I asked her why she left, and I know that she told me why. But when I woke up, all I could remember was that we talked for a while, and that she had a beautiful smile,

[00:03:47] but I couldn't remember anything about what was said. About one week later, I was having a rough day thinking about her. So when I left work, I asked her for a sign to let us know that she was

[00:04:00] okay. I drove off, ran some errands, and went home. When I parked, I sat there for a moment, just thinking of her. And then I realized my music had stopped playing. I grabbed my phone

[00:04:14] and I pressed the play button, but it wouldn't play. Then I looked at the song itself, Life Goes On by Tupac. After I read it, it began to play. After this, I began noticing the times,

[00:04:31] 1-11, 11-11, 10-11, and 11-01 whenever I would have a rough day while thinking of her. As I write this, I notice it's 11-01. One day I was out with her boyfriend. He and I have been

[00:04:48] friends since kinder, and he's the reason we all met her. He shouted, it's 1-11. I've been getting a lot of those lately. I looked at him in shock and said, you too? He's had more strange experiences

[00:05:05] since her passing than I have. About one month ago, a friend of mine found three abandoned kittens. I picked them up because I normally shelter kittens until they're old enough to find homes. I showed her boyfriend a photo of the kittens and he suddenly had this

[00:05:22] shocked expression. Those two are the same exact color as the two that she adopted before her passing. On Monday of this week, I picked up a buddy of ours who had just returned from deployment.

[00:05:38] He was away for her passing and for her funeral. I filled him in on her last day and the experiences after. He said that he had been ignoring any signs since her passing. He just wants to move on.

[00:05:54] And they make it harder. As we talked, I looked at the clock and I told him, what did I tell you? Well, it was 11-11. As of yesterday, I began noticing more repeating

[00:06:07] numbers, not just my usual repeating ones. These are just a few of the experiences that have happened since her passing. I'm not sure how to take them or what they could mean exactly. And maybe some of you may have some insight, so I thought I would share.

[00:06:24] That and I find peace in writing. Thanks for reading. Creature in the Dark by Mrs. T This is my husband's encounter and is told from his perspective as a law enforcement officer. This is one of numerous paranormal incidents he's experienced.

[00:07:09] All have chilled me to my core, but this one sticks out more than others. Here it goes. I'm a former law enforcement officer. Back in October of 2008, I was on a prisoner transport

[00:07:24] in the middle of the night. Our agency didn't have a facility to house arrestees at the time, so we transported to one of the available contracted facilities. This particular one was a two and a half hour drive one way, through mostly remote areas with

[00:07:43] no cell service or radio signal. This was a trip I made hundreds of times before, so I was familiar with every part of the route. I was about 20 to 30 miles from my destination

[00:07:57] in a part of the trip that goes through the hills leading to a set of bridges over a river. This was one part of the drive where there was no cell or radio service for several miles.

[00:08:09] This was around 3am. I came around a hill where I could see the bridges. I passed a semi heading in the opposite direction. As the road straightened out, I could see a single light up ahead that appeared to be between the two bridges.

[00:08:27] The first bridge was shorter, maybe two and a half car lengths. The second is about a half mile long and crosses the river. As I got closer, I could see the light moving from side to side across the road.

[00:08:42] I could see it was a person with a flashlight waving their arm signaling for me to stop. Procedure on an inmate transport states we are not to stop under any circumstances. We are to call or radio the nearest agency and report any situation that might require assistance.

[00:09:02] I passed by the person as they were frantically waving for me to stop. I did a quick assessment of the situation. With no cell or radio service for miles, minutes could be crucial if someone needed medical assistance.

[00:09:21] I stopped and backed up my car. I turned on my spotlights and observed the person to be a man dressed in camouflage hunting gear. He had a very large knife hanging from his hip, along with a bow hanging off his shoulder that had an arrow ready to use.

[00:09:40] The man was out of breath and in a panicked tone stated, You have to help me. I instructed him to back up and keep his hands where I could see them and asked what was wrong. The man continued to say,

[00:09:57] You have to help me. Something is chasing me and my friend. Clearly I didn't see any other person besides the man in front of me, so I started looking around the area. We were parked a couple yards on the south side of the

[00:10:13] bridge. I didn't hear or see anyone else around us. I asked the man where his friend was and he pointed to his right to the tree line along the river and said, He's out there somewhere,

[00:10:27] I think. I asked who was chasing them and he replied, I don't know what it is. I asked if it was a person or someone they knew. Did the person have a weapon or were

[00:10:41] they trying to hurt them? In the back of my mind I knew the answer to these questions, but I was trying to get as much information as I could from the man. Now this is where it gets weird. The man stated, You're going to think I'm crazy.

[00:11:00] I told him I needed to know what was happening, no matter if it sounded crazy or not. If his friend was out there we needed to find him and know if he was safe. The man paused for a second

[00:11:14] and said, It's some creature. I asked him how he came to be out in the middle of literally nowhere at this time of night. He went on to say, We've been out here for a couple of days,

[00:11:29] camping along the river, hunting. We got ready for bed when I heard something down by the river. I thought maybe it was this buck we were tracking. I told my friend we should go check it out because

[00:11:42] it might be our last chance to get it before we leave in the morning. So we got our gear and went down to the river. As we got closer I could hear something moving in the water, and I could see a

[00:11:56] silhouette of something, but it didn't look like a deer. He continued, I turned on my spotlight and there was this creature crouched down a few yards in the water. It was looking at us.

[00:12:11] It had red eyes, big sharp teeth, and big hands with long fingers that looked like razor blades. It stood up and it must have been ten feet or taller. It was dark, like black, but it didn't

[00:12:29] look like it had fur on it. It stood staring at us for a couple minutes, then it started slapping its hands in the water and splashing like it was trying to scare us. I told my friend

[00:12:42] to slowly back up and that we're going to go back to our camp. My friend didn't say anything. I turned to look at him, but he was gone. Whatever this thing was started to walk out of the water

[00:12:57] towards me. I turned and started running, not paying attention to where I was going. I could hear that thing running behind me. I came to a hill and saw the road. As soon as I got to

[00:13:10] the road, a semi passed, but I couldn't wave them down. Then you passed and stopped. Considering this happened moments before I stopped, the man's panicked state, and the fact he had a knife and

[00:13:26] bow but never stated he thought about using them, I put some credibility in his story. Against my better judgment, I told him to get in the passenger seat of my car.

[00:13:37] I backed up off the bridge to see if I could see anyone or anything along the tree line. I didn't see anything, so I continued on to my destination with the man and my detainee.

[00:13:50] I drove the rest of the way with my lights and sirens, attempting to make radio contact now that I had service. But for some unknown reason, my radio and cell phone would not work.

[00:14:05] As we got closer to town, the man stated he was going to get his truck and go back to look for his friend. I informed the man he would need to accompany me to the local police department

[00:14:17] so he could explain what happened. He said they wouldn't believe him and asked that I drop him off on the main highway along a residential area. I told him I'd be passing this information on to

[00:14:31] the local police department and he stated, you do what you need to, I'm going back to find my friend. After the man got out of my vehicle, I placed items back on the passenger seat that I had moved

[00:14:45] to make room for him. As my hand touched the seat, I noticed it was ice cold. Odd for someone having sat there for 20-30 miles. I dropped off my detainee and while there I spoke with

[00:15:02] two officers about what happened. Slightly shook, they said this isn't the first time they heard reports of that creature and that they were sending an officer down to that area to look

[00:15:14] for the missing person and would be heading that way as well. As I left to head back, I passed one of their patrol vehicles coming back from the area where I picked that man up.

[00:15:27] When I returned to my station, I called to see if they found his friend. I was told they did but something wasn't adding up with his story. Apparently, the patrol officer I passed had found him. He said he came up to the bridge

[00:15:43] on the north side but pulled off the road to wait for assistance. That was when a man came running up to his vehicle from the river tree line and got in the passenger side yelling, Go, go, go.

[00:15:59] The officer then headed back to town. The man said, Thank God you're here, something is chasing me. The officer informed him he was there looking for him and that I picked up his friend,

[00:16:14] which is how he knew he was down there. The man looked at the officer and asked, What? My friend? What are you talking about? The officer told him the information I told him and the man stated, I've been down here camping and hunting but I've been here alone.

[00:16:37] Both men described the same creature. Both were picked up along the same bridge but on opposite sides. The first man said he was camping on the south side of the river, but the second man stated

[00:16:50] he was camping on the north side. Who did I pick up? Was he even a real person? I'll never know. I'll never know. I still get chills when I drive across that bridge. This wasn't the first or last time someone reported seeing that creature in that area.

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[00:18:45] for free appetizers for life. One appetizer item per box while subscription is active. That's free appetizers for life at hellofresh.com slash trails apps. Now back to the show. Unsettling Phone Calls by Firstman1000 I wanted to share a strange and unsettling experience I had a few years back.

[00:19:27] I'm hoping to get some insight or hear from anyone that has had a similar experience. When I first got my new phone number, I started receiving phone calls for Adam. Since that's my

[00:19:39] name but I didn't know them, I figured they must be looking for some other Adam. I told them they had the wrong number and hung up. These calls continued intermittently and each time the caller

[00:19:51] insisted that I needed to come home because everyone was upset and they knew that it was me. I would respond, I'm Adam but you've got the wrong number. I just got this number and hang up.

[00:20:06] Here's where it gets creepy. I have a distinctive voice. It's not particularly odd but it's unique enough that you would recognize it if you knew me. Despite that, these callers seemed to recognize my voice and were adamant that I come home, repeatedly assuring me that everything was fine.

[00:20:27] I just needed to come home. I've always been the kind of person who moves around a lot. I used to ride the bus frequently, travel all around the US and visit various places. This

[00:20:40] made the calls even more unsettling somehow because I left my family at 16. I've been in touch with them a few times since then and they said that they never called me. Unfortunately,

[00:20:51] I did not save any of the numbers, messages or phone logs because at that time I didn't think anything of it. But as I've gotten older, I've started to think back on it and realize just how

[00:21:04] weird the whole situation was. I've started wishing that I had asked them to meet me somewhere or tell me where to go instead of just ignoring it all. How did they recognize my voice?

[00:21:17] How did they know my first name? Why were they so insistent that I come home? It's been bothering me more and more as I think about all of the strange aspects of those calls. Does anyone have

[00:21:30] any idea what this could have been about or experienced something similar? It's been bothering me for a while and I'd appreciate any thoughts or theories. Toilet Entity by Jam My weird experience happened almost a decade ago but I still remember it so well.

[00:22:12] I worked in a manufacturing plant right after graduation. My employer was only leasing half a portion of the huge building and after 6pm the place is usually empty. The bathroom is situated in the center of a long hallway. The left end of the

[00:22:29] hallway is where the security guards are and the right end is the administration offices. By this time the offices have already been deserted and the hallway lights have been switched off. From the bathroom you need to walk at least a minute to get to each end.

[00:22:47] If someone is walking the echo of their footsteps reverberates throughout. Anyway, I went to the bathroom just past 6pm and entered the first stall nearest to the door. I hadn't even started to do my business when I heard footsteps just a few feet outside the

[00:23:06] bathroom. The footsteps entered, walked past me and went to the farthest stall. The toilet where it entered then flushed and then there was complete silence, like nobody had been in there with me. I knew that this had to be something paranormal because

[00:23:26] of the footsteps. They sounded light-footed and it seemed that they were wearing tennis shoes. Due to the industrial setting of my workplace, everybody in the building has to wear special shoes issued by my employer. They loudly slap the floor when you walk.

[00:23:44] What's also weird is that it felt like this entity walked through the stall I was in, not outside of it. I hurried up and walked out of the stall, then started to push the rest of

[00:23:57] the stall doors open. They were all empty. Whatever walked into the bathroom seemed to have flushed itself down the toilet. I walked over to the security desk and asked if anybody else entered the bathrooms. They said no one else did. I always think about this experience.

[00:24:18] I didn't feel scared because I didn't receive any negative vibes from the entity. It simply passed by. Where did my train go by PracticalBreakfast81? Yesterday I had a very strange experience. I had been visiting my friend in Bristol,

[00:24:56] and it was time to leave. I was traveling to Norwich. I got on my train in Bristol at 3.35. This train took me to Birmingham. I'm going to preface this by saying I definitely 100% got off at Birmingham. I get quite anxious traveling by myself so I'm hyper aware of

[00:25:16] where I need to change trains, etc. When I got off at Birmingham, I went out the front of the station for some fresh air and it said the words Birmingham everywhere so I am absolutely certain

[00:25:28] that's where I was. My next train is the 522 to Cambridge at Platform 10A. I had checked the platform earlier that day. My friend from Bristol had checked the platform 5 minutes before I went

[00:25:42] to get this train and I had checked the departure boards. I had also checked with one of the station's staff that I was on the right platform, which I was. At around 5.18 my train pulls in

[00:25:54] and I get on it. The train before this had left at 5.12, I believe, and the next train wasn't for a little while after that. All this to say that there were no other trains at the platform that I

[00:26:08] could have gotten on other than the 522 to Cambridge, so I board my train. It's around a two-hour journey until I get to where I need to be. I put my headphones on, listen to a podcast, and read some of my book.

[00:26:23] Consistently throughout the journey, I'm texting my boyfriend, my friend in Bristol, and my mom so I know that I didn't fall asleep at any point during this journey. Two hours pass and I should have been going through Petersburg, which is a few stops away from where I

[00:26:38] need to be, so I start making sure I'm ready to get off. I look out the window and the city I see isn't Petersburg. And guess where I am? Birmingham. I started looking at the journey tracker on the

[00:26:53] train line and it says that my train should be in Petersburg. There are no updates anywhere about my train turning around or returning to Birmingham. I check the time on the offhand chance that I had

[00:27:06] fallen asleep and somehow ended up back there. Nothing indicated that that was the case though. I get off the train, back in Birmingham, then I go outside the station and lo and behold,

[00:27:17] it's the exact same station I had been at two hours before. I called my mom very confused. She assumed that I had got on the wrong train, but if I had, I should not have ended up back in

[00:27:29] Birmingham. That doesn't explain it. I go and speak to the customer service staff and they're completely baffled. In fact, they say exactly this to me. If a train from Birmingham had just turned around and come back, we would know about it. That has not happened.

[00:27:48] Everyone assumed that I was crazy and that I had made some mistakes somewhere, but I hadn't. I'm absolutely certain. Any ideas on what the hell happened? I'm completely baffled and freaked out. Missing Time On My Commute By Jared

[00:28:29] My wife is a fan of this podcast, and after she heard some stories about missing time, she told me I should submit my story. So, here you go. This happened in 2019, and I was driving home from work on a Friday evening.

[00:28:47] I usually cut through the back roads so I can avoid the main highway. It sometimes takes a little bit longer for me to get home, but because there's less traffic it's less mentally exhausting.

[00:28:59] To quickly set the scene, the sun was setting and there was a warm glow over the fields and trees that lined the road. There weren't that many other cars. I don't know if it matters, but

[00:29:13] come to think of it, there were hardly any. Midway through my drive, I noticed a strange feeling of heaviness in my head, like a dull pressure. It wasn't quite like any headache I've had. I chalked it up to stress and continued driving. Well, the next thing I remember,

[00:29:35] my car was suddenly in a completely different spot on the road, several miles ahead from where I last remembered being. I glanced at the clock and saw that nearly an hour had passed,

[00:29:48] but it felt like just a few seconds to me. The sky was also noticeably more dim. Panic set in. I pulled over to the side of the road and tried to make sense of what happened.

[00:30:01] I felt disoriented and a bit lightheaded. I checked my phone and I had a missed call from my mom. My phone is always connected to my car through Bluetooth. I would have heard and seen her call.

[00:30:16] It was also 7.45. I should have been home by now. I tried to retrace my thoughts and the drive itself, but I couldn't recall anything after feeling that initial pressure in my head. I decided to continue driving home, my mind racing with possibilities. Had I fallen asleep at the

[00:30:40] wheel? That didn't seem likely, as I definitely would have crashed. I also didn't feel any more tired than usual. Did I experience some kind of seizure? When I got home, my wife could tell

[00:30:56] something was wrong before I even got the chance to tell her. When I told her everything, she looked as worried as I felt. We agreed that I should see the doctor as soon as possible. That night,

[00:31:11] I barely slept. My mind kept replaying the events over and over, trying to find a logical explanation. I called my doctor first thing Monday morning. Thankfully, she was able to see me on Tuesday. She ran several tests, including a CT scan and blood work. Everything came back normal.

[00:31:35] There was no sign of any medical condition that could explain the missing time. The doctor suggested it might have been a form of transient global amnesia, a rare temporary episode of memory loss. But even she admitted it was just a guess.

[00:31:52] I don't know if my friend is messing with me, but he tells me there have been ghost sightings on the road I was on. I always thought missing time was more associated with aliens though.

[00:32:04] To this day, I still don't know what caused that missing time or the strange sensation. But for now, I'm sticking to the main highway, no matter how much I hate traffic. Confused and stuck by Ditzy Doggy

[00:32:49] In the summer of 2022, my family went to a popular camping location in Ohio. I was 17 and my sister was 14. My sister and I shared a tent, so we stayed up giggling and messing around quite a bit, playing things like Uno or talking about boys that she liked.

[00:33:07] Mostly for week one of the two-week trip, things were fine. We slept and talked like normal. Until the second week when things took a turn. I have a really hard time sleeping,

[00:33:20] so when week two rolled around my sister would be passed out asleep and I'd be sitting wide awake for hours at a time. During these hours, when I sat awake, I heard noises. Crunching, crunching, shifting, growling, even howling. The basic outdoor noises.

[00:33:42] For the next two days of week two, I heard a lot of walking and talking in the woods. I would hear somebody say, come here or help me. Sometimes I'd hear faint whispering near my tent.

[00:33:56] I was honestly scared shitless. On the last two nights, which probably had been the worst, my sister was awake, both of us playing Uno with her phone dead and mine on a cool 20%.

[00:34:11] At around maybe 2 a.m., my sister went to lie down and so did I. Until I heard footsteps around the tent. They were heavy. Too heavy for a deer or a wolf, but too light for bears or elk.

[00:34:26] It was almost like a person was walking around my tent. My sister was awake and quietly watched as someone or something pressed on the sides of the tent as well as the door. My sister and I

[00:34:39] moved all the tent zippers into our tents at night to keep people from trying to get in. Clearly this person or thing was looking for these zippers. So we felt pretty smart. This was night four of week two. Now finally, week two, night five. The same heavy footsteps,

[00:35:02] the same touching of the walls of the tent, and the same whispering saying, come here, come out. I was scared. I sat up waiting until 5 a.m., then went outside to wait for my grandma. While sitting

[00:35:15] out there, I heard whispering and screaming, the scariest, most blood chilling screams in the world. It sounded like some kind of animal or person or something, but it was so loud I nearly peed

[00:35:29] myself. I was glad that we left and even happier to not go back for two years. Does anyone know what this is or if it was some guy lurking at our campsite? I talked to my grandparents and they said

[00:35:47] that their little American shepherd at the time had been snarling at something outside the tent walking around. Whatever it was, got scared and let out a husky growl, then ran away. It was around 3 a.m. for them and it scared them.

[00:36:22] I thought the missing time story was a bit concerning how he was still driving his car when he kind of snapped back into reality. Whoops, there goes gravity. As soon as I said that,

[00:36:33] I knew some Eminem reference was on the table. Hopefully he didn't drink a fifth of vodka. Yeah, slim shadiness aside, when he said that he lost an hour of time, that was my first thought. It's one thing to forget a conversation or lose track of a few

[00:36:50] minutes when you're hanging around the house or something, but driving? No thanks. That would freak me out way too much, wondering how I was able to drive a car for so long with basically zero consciousness, or at least it would feel that way after the fact.

[00:37:08] Yeah, it's hard to say what could have happened since the lab work and CT scan came back normal. I just want to know what road it was though. He said that his friend mentioned ghost sightings.

[00:37:21] It would be cool to look into it some more. Yeah, and he made a good point about aliens and UFOs being more tied to that sort of stuff. I know that's not necessarily always the case,

[00:37:32] but maybe there's something more to dig up. Jared or Jared's wife, if you're listening, if you're comfortable sharing your general location and having it broadcasted to the world, just let us know where it happened. Yeah, I'd love to hear about it,

[00:37:47] but he's right though. I also feel like it could be some kind of glitch in the matrix. Mm. It's similar and different from the train story, from practical breakfast. Instead of missing time, it's like entering some kind of time loop that sent you back to

[00:38:05] where you came from, which is completely impossible. I'm thinking a glitch in the matrix too, unless aliens were involved and their spacecraft was doing that chameleon cloaking thing, like the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter. Yeah. That or the simulation is breaking apart. Exactly, exactly. I'm probably misremembering

[00:38:28] this story because I was doing dishes and stuff while I was listening, but our friend, Timothy Renner from Strange Familiars was talking about actually seeing the matrix, like the simulation while riding in the passenger seat of his car. What?

[00:38:43] Yeah, he looked up and he could see it. I don't remember how he described it, but he said it out loud to whoever was driving that he could see the simulation or the matrix. Then he said it was like

[00:38:54] he got pulled out of the car by his legs. It's pretty wild. Some people can see auras and I guess Timothy can see the matrix. I wonder who else can. Yeah, honestly, I don't want to tell any

[00:39:05] more of this story because I'm probably misquoting him already and I don't want to get it wrong. I'll send him an email to see if he can like send over a voice note or something telling his story

[00:39:14] so that we can throw it in the next episode. Cool. As I dive deeper into more existential topics and research though, I'm convinced more and more that we are in some kind of simulation. I've always liked exploring the possibility and still do, especially after seeing the Matrix

[00:39:33] movie when I was like 12, which you still need to watch by the way. I know, I know. I can't say that existentialism has led me to that same conclusion though. I just think we're living in this sort of beautiful chaos and when we can't come up

[00:39:49] with concrete explanations for certain things, our brains like to find meaning by filling in the gaps in whatever way. But yes, anything is possible. We could all very well be part of the latest Sims game from the year 2300 being puppeteered by some AI engineer's 12-year-old kid.

[00:40:10] Yeah, you know I'm glad that you mentioned The Sims. I was listening to this psychotherapist Kalyamodo, someone who I'll be interviewing soon for that other show, and she talked about simulation theory and brought that game up as well. And I can remember at 13 years old after

[00:40:27] playing for a few days thinking, wow, is my reality, is our reality some kind of program like The Sims? I mean, The Sims characters don't have any awareness of me or their simulation.

[00:40:42] They just go about their lives like they're programmed to do. They have no idea when I turn the computer off, it's just a simulation. And I just go back to my own life outside of theirs.

[00:40:54] Maybe we get tired and go to sleep, and that's when the person controlling the simulation turns the computer off. Yeah, I was thinking we'd be programmed to sleep because the computer we're running on, even though it obviously has to be pretty amazing, can't quite handle

[00:41:12] 8 billion instances of life running simultaneously. So we get tagged out to run in the background or something and get rendered at a lower priority for a bit. Yeah, yeah, that could explain why

[00:41:23] dreams are so weird and why even seemingly normal and realistic ones always feel a bit off. Yeah, yeah. I don't even think the simulation needs to be controlled by anyone. We could

[00:41:38] be choosing to step into it kind of like VR. That would explain reincarnation as we just start over again with another character or just replay the same game again. Yeah, I've read countless stories

[00:41:50] of people having memories or vivid dreams about choosing their life or whatever. One of them was a few months ago on the show, I think. I'm not convinced that's the case though, especially

[00:42:00] because so many people live such hard lives or it gets cut way too short. Unless you and I are just a couple of wimps who pick the very easy difficulty every single time we reincarnate. Yeah, could be. I'm also looking into soul contracts. It's this theory where

[00:42:18] we're tricked into signing up for certain disadvantages in the quote unquote game of life in order to incarnate here. I think there are tricksters out there in the astral realm that are tricking us into this game. I don't know. There's a lot of weird different theories,

[00:42:34] but that's just one that I'm looking at. Yeah, I guess that would make sense if we're being played for somebody's entertainment. Maybe this is all just some ultimate VR experience and we're going full circle into some inception type of thing where we're

[00:42:49] using VR within VR and AI is controlling AI. Yeah, I don't hate it. I actually like the idea of this being a simulation. It doesn't even have to be technological. The word simulation,

[00:43:03] it just kind of insinuates that it's a program, but it could just be something more spiritual than that. Yeah, I'm more on board with the spiritual stuff. It just seems a little bit more plausible to me. Maybe there's alternate dimensions existing alongside our own and

[00:43:22] sometimes the frequencies clash and that's when we experience paranormal weird metaphysical stuff or our spiritual self coexists with our physical self and in their own realm and we just continue to exist purely in spiritual form after we die. But why have physical bodies to begin with?

[00:43:41] What's the point? And now we're back to existentialism. Yeah, I think that's possible and it kind of aligns with what I'm thinking. I think our spiritual bodies actually decide to enter into this existence. Basically reincarnation with a choice. The very easy

[00:43:58] mode thing with cheat codes enabled. Yeah. Yeah, sure. So are you thinking that the simulation is starting to fall apart with all of these abductions, missing time and glitch in the matrix stories? And if we're taking the matrix film as gospel, even experiencing deja vu is

[00:44:16] something to be concerned about. I do think it's a huge possibility. Another thing I've been reading into, the Hindus talk about the Kali Yuga coming to an end. It's one of the worst of these four

[00:44:30] periods of time that we're meant to live through. Yeah. Yeah, it could be that the simulation is falling apart and we're ascending and evolving into the next chapter of life, which is supposed

[00:44:41] to be our most enlightened phase of the four. Maybe we're just now beginning to break free of the simulation. Yeah. Or maybe that's why new tropics have gotten so popular. The companies who market them don't want to sound crazy, so they don't outright say it,

[00:44:57] but they're dog whistling to people who want to break free of the matrix. Yeah, that's a great theory. I like that. Yeah, thanks. You know, it kind of just dawned on me that the other Andrew Tate talks about the matrix and simulations. Oh, that fucking guy.

[00:45:16] I know. I know. He's basically your waking shadow demon. Yeah, whatever. It should be obvious by now that neither of us vibe with that guy. I'd really hope so. I still had to put it out there.

[00:45:27] Don't want to give the wrong impression and get attacked online. Yeah, yeah. Talk about the wrong thing at the wrong time and people will just attack you. So dumb. But wait, wait, wait.

[00:45:40] How do you know he talks about the matrix? Are you some kind of hustlers university alpha king? Actually, I just deliver pizzas in Romania. He always talks my ear off. Can't stand the guy.

[00:45:54] Does he tip well? He only gives life tips. So no. Oh, I'm so sorry. Thanks. Anyways, thanks everybody for listening. Make sure you send your stories into stories at oddtrails.com to hear them on the show. All the stories you heard this week were narrated and

[00:46:10] produced with the permission of their respective authors. Make sure you sign up for our Patreon if you want to get ad free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate at patreon.com

[00:46:21] oddtrails and make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Let's Not Meet and the Old Time Radiocast at crypticcountypodcasts.com. Everybody stay safe. Peace out. Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you.