Mimic of the Mountains – Ep. 250

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

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_02] Mimic of the Mountains by Towers is Bart I live in Poland, and during the winter break back in February, a friend and I had planned this whole sunrise hike in the mountains south of our city. Unfortunately, this friend of mine had to bail on me at the last minute, just a few hours before we were supposed to start. I was super disappointed,

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_02] so I decided to go completely alone into the woods at night, which, looking back, I realize was a pretty dumb idea. I caught the earliest bus available, way in the middle of the night, and I was the only passenger on it. After the bus dropped me off at the foot of the mountain, I started my ascent. For context, there was heavy snowfall the day and night before,

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_02] so there was a ton of fresh snow. I hiked through the forest with my headlamp on, a sled in one hand, and a bottle of bear spray in the other, because I liked to be cautious and ready for anything. Right from the start, I was a bit anxious and freaked out because it was my first time hiking alone at night,

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_02] so I was intentionally making a lot of noise. Making noise in the woods alerts nearby animals that a human is around. It reduces the chances of accidentally sneaking up on a bear or something like that, scaring it and triggering an attack. The first part of the hike went smoothly. I occasionally saw some

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_02] eyes reflecting my headlamp in the dark woods, but that's pretty common. Usually just some deer or foxes. Now here's the part that makes me question what I actually saw. About 40 minutes to an hour before sunrise, when it was still pitch black, I was hiking through a very

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02] wide and winding part of the trail. Suddenly I saw something move incredibly fast on the section of the trail right above me. I couldn't get a good look because it was moving so quickly, so I just figured it was a deer and ignored it. The next thing I know, this thing appears right in front of me, rushing straight

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_02] at me. I totally freaked out and, in a split second, was ready to fight for my life, until I noticed it was just an old man on skis. A massive wave of relief washed over me. As he passed by, I laughed out of pure adrenaline and told him how much he scared me. But here's the weird part. Right after that, he stopped

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_02] behind me for a second. I tried to make out some details, like his eyes, but I couldn't see them well. He just let out this faint, hollow, empty chuckle and then skied off. For a while after the hike, I wasn't thinking about it. But later, I started to really reflect. First, there was his completely emotionless and

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_02] empty expression. Second, his features were strangely faint and hard to make out. And then it hit me. This guy skiing down the mountain, through a dense forest, nearly an hour before sunrise, in pitch black darkness, didn't have any light. No flashlight, no headlamp, nothing. Yet he was skiing down

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_02] perfectly in the absolute pitch dark. Now, it might not sound too crazy to you, but why would someone ski down before sunrise? He could have waited just a bit to actually see it, but he chose to head down in total darkness. This would also mean he had to ski tour up the mountain through the entire night.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_02] There weren't any other buses running at that time, and there were zero cars parked in the lot at the foot of the mountain. On top of that, skiing without any source of light in those conditions should be physically impossible. Do I think it was a mimic? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know what to think. Maybe someone out here has some insight or experience with that sort of thing. I don't know a lot about

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_02] mythology or the paranormal or even folklore, but I do know that near this place I was hiking, there's a peak with a history stretching back to 500 BC, which was used by early Slavic people as a

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_02] fortification and an offering and burial site. The Factory Parking Lot by Megan

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00] I don't have anything useful to prove this happened, but here's a story that took place in 2007. I was 22 at the time, and my friend Leah and I worked at the same restaurant just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I'm changing her name because we don't really talk anymore, and I don't necessarily think she'd enjoy strangers tracking her down to ask about this. So we had worked a closing shift, and we were heading back toward the apartment complex where we

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_00] both lived. Leah was driving, and it was around 1130 at night. About 10 minutes from home, Leah said she thought something was wrong with the car. I hadn't noticed anything, but she said the steering wheel felt strange. Then she said, no, seriously, something's vibrating. Then a few seconds later,

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00] I could feel it too. It was a faint, repetitive shutter coming up through the floor. There was a small commercial plaza coming up, so she pulled into the lot. Most of the businesses were already closed. There was a pharmacy at one end, a dry cleaner, a pizza place, and a couple of other smaller storefronts. I remember the lot was mostly empty, except for a few cars near the pharmacy.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_00] Leah parked under one of the lights and shut the engine off. We sat there for a second, and she asked if maybe we had a flat. I told her I hadn't heard anything hit the tire, but we got out to check anyway. Leah crouched beside the front driver's side tire while I walked around the passenger side. All the tires looked normal to me. Then she asked if I could smell something

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00] burning. I told her no. Then I heard a bell. It was a small metallic sound, two quick rings. I looked toward the road and didn't see anything unusual, just the normal cars going by. A few seconds later, I heard it again, except this time it sounded like it was behind us. Then I turned around,

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00] and the pharmacy wasn't there. Instead, there was this brick building, much taller, probably four or five stories, rows of narrow windows with lights on. My first thought, and I know this doesn't really make sense, was that there must have been some bigger building behind the plaza that I just never paid attention to, even though we drove past that plaza constantly. Then I noticed the other stores

[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_00] were gone too. I looked down and saw a metal rail running through a puddle near my feet. There was another one a few feet away. That's when I realized I wasn't standing on asphalt anymore. The ground around us was uneven, reddish-brown brick, with water sitting between some of the gaps. The rails continued past

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00] the building and out of sight. Leah stood up and looked around. I don't remember exactly what either of us said first, but I could tell from her face she was seeing the same thing I was. The parking lot lights were also different, taller poles with smaller lamps farther apart. There were also other brick buildings farther back that hadn't been there before. Lit windows, smoke or steam coming from

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_00] somewhere behind them, and a big smokestack above all of it. Leah asked where we were. I told her I had no idea. The strange thing, one of many I guess, was that our car was still sitting exactly where we'd left it. Just no parking lines under it anymore. Sitting there on the brick like everything else around it. I went over and opened the passenger door. My purse was still on the floor, and the dome

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_00] light came on. So that part was at least normal. Leah got back in the driver's seat and tried to turn on the ignition. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing. Not even a click. There was machinery running somewhere nearby. A repetitive pounding sound and something underneath it, like steam or ventilation. The air smelled smoky and oily, with this metallic edge to it.

[00:10:57] [SPEAKER_00] Leah said years later she remembered it smelling like coal smoke specifically. I don't really know what coal smoke smells like, so I can't personally back that up. But it was industrial, whatever it was. Also, while we were standing there, a man came out of the side door of the building, maybe 50 feet away. He was wearing dark work clothes, some kind of cap, and he was carrying a

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_00] metal container of some kind. Leah quietly whispered to me to not say anything. Then he walked in our direction, close enough that I was sure he'd notice us, or at least the car. But he didn't. He walked right past, maybe 20 feet away, and never once looked over at us. Then he disappeared between two of the buildings. That was honestly one of the stranger parts for me. Stranger than the buildings, even.

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_00] We should have looked completely out of place, and he just acted like there was nothing there. After that, we noticed a few people waiting near the road, under a wooden shelter that hadn't been there before either. There was a woman holding a paper bag, a man in a long coat and a hat. Three or four people total. Not talking, all facing the same direction. I heard that same bell from earlier

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_00] ring again. Then a streetcar came around the corner. It slowed near the shelter. Some people got off, some got on, and it continued on down the road. Leah said something like, there's never been a trolley here. I knew there hadn't. Not in the time we'd lived there anyway. By then we'd both gotten back in the car and locked the doors. We sat there a while, watching what was

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_00] going on outside. People were moving all around inside the building. At one point, there was a bright glow through one of the lower windows, almost like a furnace door opening. Then it went away again. A whistle went off sometime after that, and a bunch of people came out of the building. I assumed it was some kind of shift change. I don't know how long we were sitting there. It felt like a

[00:13:21] [SPEAKER_00] long time, but it could have been a lot shorter. At some point, I noticed what looked like a railroad crossing farther down past the end of the building. That stood out because I knew there wasn't a railroad crossing back there. By 2007, it was more just commercial development and some houses. The gate started coming down, and a freight train went through. We could only see part of it between

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_00] the buildings. Boxcars passing across the road. And we could hear them on the tracks, even from inside the car with the doors shut. I remember that part very clearly. After the train passed, Leah tried the car again. It still wouldn't turn on. Not long after that, headlights showed up behind us, bright enough that we both turned around. It was just a glare through the back window at first.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_00] Then the light swept across the inside of the car. I heard tires going through water. I looked outside, and everything was normal again. The pharmacy was there. So were the other stores. Asphalt, parking lines, regular parking lot lights. A pickup truck had pulled in near the pharmacy.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00] Those were the headlights we saw. Leah tried to start the car again, and it started right up. Normal, no vibration, nothing. We left immediately. I know the obvious thing to do would have been to get back out and look around, but neither of us really wanted to. Not even a little. We just wanted to get home. Once we got back to the apartment, we sat in the car for a while before either of us said much.

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_00] And then we started comparing what we'd seen. The big stuff matched. The brick, the buildings, the workers, the streetcar, and the train. Some smaller things didn't though. She thought the streetcar was green, and I remember it more as a dark red or brown. She remembers more than one smokestack, and I can only remember one. She also swears there was some kind of painted sign on one of

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_00] the buildings. But I honestly don't remember that at all. Neither of us remembered actually watching anything change. I just turned around and it was different. Same thing at the end. The headlights passed over, and it was back. We didn't spend years obsessing over it or anything like that. Every once in a while one of us would bring up the factory parking lot as a joke, but mostly we just

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00] didn't talk about it. Eventually, Leah moved away, and we lost touch for a while, which happens. We actually weren't that close outside of work. So years later, for reasons that had nothing to do with any of this, I was looking through some old photos of the Harrisburg area online, and I came across pictures of the old streetcar system. I hadn't realized how big it used to be, and obviously that got me

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_00] thinking about that night again. So I started looking at older maps too. There'd been a fair amount of industrial development in that area, like warehouses and manufacturing buildings, but I never found a photo of a specific building I could point to and say, I remember that one. What actually got my attention though was an old railroad map. There'd been industrial rail spurs running through part of

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_00] that neighborhood, and one of them passed really close to where the shopping plaza ended up being built. It crossed the road too, close to where I remembered watching the train. I sent Leah a screenshot of the map. I asked her if it looked familiar. She called me pretty much right after, and that was the first real conversation we'd had about it in years. She still remembered

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_00] the train, the streetcar, the car not starting, all of it. I know this happened a long time ago, and my memory isn't perfect. And I know once you start looking at old maps, it's easy to see whatever you're already looking for. I'm not saying I found proof of anything, but the whole thing is still pretty crazy. We sat there and watched the train cross the road, and at the time there was no railroad

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_00] anywhere near there, as far as either of us knew. Then years later I find out there actually had been one a long time ago. It's just so weird. Neither of us have an explanation. What do you guys think?

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[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_02] The timeline shift in Cedar Hill by shrimps is bugs. This happened about 30 years ago in Cedar Hill, Texas. I don't know what kids do these days, but back in my day, the preteens and teens were partial to hanging out at malls and skating rinks. I wasn't a popular kid, and honestly,

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_02] I didn't really bother with trying to make friends because it seems like a waste of time. I've always been more of a sit quietly by myself and draw bugs type. Despite this, some girl from school that I wasn't even friends with invited me to her birthday party at the local skating rink. I felt obliged to go, and thought that I might even have fun if this didn't turn out to be a carry

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_02] situation. I always considered that a real possibility. I talked my mom into driving me there. It was early afternoon on a Sunday in the fall, right on the edge of winter. It was overcast, and it looked like it might rain. There weren't cell phones back then, so my mom just waited in the car for me while I went

[00:21:14] [SPEAKER_02] inside to party. I got bored really quickly. I didn't know anyone, and the music was way too loud and over-stimulating. I couldn't stop thinking about my lovely bed and reading a book while covered in purring sleepy kitties. So I walked around the rink a bit, ate a hot dog or something, and then left after about

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_02] thirty minutes. I got back in the car, and we headed home the same way we came. We had driven this route plenty of other times, since the town is fairly small, and there were only so many routes to get to everything. At some point, the color changed. It snapped me out of my thoughts because I thought

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_02] the sun must have come out. But when I looked around, it was like the color of the air itself had changed. I don't want to call it sepia-toned, but it was like everything was suddenly more earthy. The light that touched everything looked brownish-orange. The colors of things were just off. The green on

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_02] the car looked unusual. Now, I wasn't concerned yet because it was a classic car, so it made sense. But the more I looked around, every car was a classic car. And that's when I started to feel confused. Was there a car show in town? Maybe. But that doesn't explain all the classic cars in people's

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_02] driveways. So then I thought, maybe we were in an older part of town. A neighborhood I hadn't seen before. But I thought we were on the usual path. I didn't remember my mom taking any unusual turns. So I asked her, did we get lost? And that's when my mom gasped. She said something like, Oh my god, you're seeing this too? This isn't right. What's happening?

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_02] I barely got out. The cars! Before the next weird thing happened. I can only explain it as a fade to white before a scene change. The sun started getting brighter and brighter, and we both looked up to see what was causing it, but couldn't see anything in the sky. It was too bright. So we looked back down at the road and everything was suddenly normal again.

[00:23:46] [SPEAKER_02] Overcast, chilly, clouds, 90s cars, familiar route. We were just silent for a few seconds trying to process this. We said something to the effect of, what the heck? Followed by, I have no idea. Followed by, me neither. It was inexplicable. All these years later, my mom and I don't really talk much.

[00:24:14] [SPEAKER_02] We're just very different people, so there's not much to say. When we do get together over the holidays or something, this experience inevitably does come up. Because it's this thing that happened to us that is so unbelievable that no one else would understand except us. It's become a touchstone to keep us bonded in some way despite our differences. I always wondered how many other people drove through

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_02] that stretch of 1940s and 50s Cedar Hill that day in the 90s. There's no way it was just us. We're not like special time-traveling people or anything. I'm not Sam from Quantum Leap running around helping people. I figured any others who experienced it would probably never tell anyone for fear of ridicule, but who knows? I have found a big Reddit group so it can't hurt to ask. And I have so many questions.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_02] Were you there that day? Were you in a car behind us on the road? Did our car look normal? Or was it all old-timey? Are you good at identifying makes and models and can you tell me what year you think we drove through

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_00] the car? Weird mail carrier experience by Peter. I drove long but rural mail routes for about nine

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_00] years. This happened shortly after I started working a route that was mostly gravel roads and had about 40 mailboxes decently far apart from each other. There was this older guy who I'll call Walt. We'd occasionally wave but never had a conversation. I only saw him a handful of times. Sometime in early 2011, I noticed the flag to his mailbox kept going up after I had already passed.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00] About twice a week this would happen, sometimes more. I first figured it was wind since those flags aren't exactly heavy duty. But I don't know how wind would blow it upright like that. None of the others did that and the mailbox was also empty every time I checked. So one morning in January, I'm on the route after we got a couple inches of snow from the night prior. I was going down the road and I saw

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00] that the flag was up again. When I pulled up, I happened to notice there weren't any footprints or tire tracks near the mailbox. Maybe somebody with nothing better to do could have put the flag up before it snowed. But I doubt that personally. The whole thing still kind of bothered me though. Just the fact I still couldn't figure out how or why this kept happening. After that last incident, I mentioned it to another carrier who used to work that route,

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_00] mostly just as a, hey isn't that weird comment. This was the first time I ever mentioned it to her. She asked which mailbox I met. And when I told her the name and address, she looked confused and said, Walt died a few months ago. Apparently she knew because she'd worked the route longer than I had, and heard the news of his passing from a neighbor down the road who she sometimes chatted with.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_00] I had no idea. Like I said, I hardly ever saw him, so I just assumed he was still living there. But then she told me the same thing once happened to her after he died. She passed the box with his flag down, then noticed it was up later when she came back through. She stopped and checked inside the mailbox, but there was nothing inside. I don't know if this story will make the cut,

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_00] but for the record I'm positive it wasn't me messing with the flag and forgetting about it. Just a funny, strange story.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_02] The UFO and the Glowing Eyes by Anonymous I'm sharing two stories. We'll start with the UFO. I don't believe in aliens, even though I saw this with my own eyes, and my mother also saw it, as she was with me that day. But I still don't know what that thing was.

[00:29:09] [SPEAKER_02] We were walking in an area most people used as a dog park. It was early morning and summer. I was 14 years old. Nobody else was around, only me, my mom, and my two small dogs. My mom got a weird feeling and looked up. I looked as well. We both saw this big but far away black donut-shaped object.

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_02] It was like a frisbee, but not flat. It was kind of thick. It had ridges, but it was totally black, with little white circles at the bottom that I assumed were lights. It also had a hole missing in the middle, which is why I called it a donut-shaped UFO. It wasn't moving like a drone,

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_02] and it made no noise at all. It swayed, never stagnant. It could go diagonally, up, down, side to side, and twist. I've never seen a drone like that. It had no propellers or anything like that, just a round, rigid shape. It followed us, and my mom and I were both in shock,

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_02] so we didn't really talk as we watched. Then it zoomed away fast, swerving and flipping and doing weird tricks that no drone could do. And then it went behind a tree and just disappeared. Well, that's it for that one. Let's move on to the yellow-amber-glowing eyes. This is the creepiest of all. It still haunts me to this day. I get chills when I think about it too

[00:30:52] [SPEAKER_02] long. I've seen many ghosts in my life, but only when I was a young child. My mom and I both saw two together, so I'm not just insane. My mom also sees ghosts, and so does my grandma. I don't believe in ghosts, even though I've seen them with my own eyes many times. It's just a weird concept. And honestly,

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_02] I'd rather live in ignorance. I was eight years old when this happened. I've always had a huge imagination, but I never had imaginary friends, and I've never been able to conjure up an image of someone in front of me. I just can't. It was nighttime, and I was sitting on my bed with my lamp. My door was open, and the light spilled into the dark hallway. Diagonal from my bed, where I was

[00:31:47] [SPEAKER_02] sitting, was the door to my mom's office, and that door was also open. The light reached into it faintly. I felt a weird pull to go look into the office. So when I did, I was stunned. I saw this head peeking out from behind my mom's grand wooden desk, but its head wasn't facing me, at least not yet.

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_02] I saw that it was on all floors. Black, a shadow of sorts, lanky and bony, very jagged. Its limbs were bent oddly. Then it turned really slowly toward me, and its yellow amber glowing eyes locked onto mine. I was scared. I couldn't even scream. I was just staring at it. It let out this loud hiss,

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_02] then started crawling out from behind the desk towards the doorway. I was scared, so I called out, hey, stop that. Don't come any closer. It halted, but then continued. I didn't look away, and it eventually went back after my second plea, retreating behind the desk completely. Then, in what I can only describe as a really stupid, bad horror movie decision,

[00:33:09] [SPEAKER_02] I walked towards it. I didn't hear or see it anymore, so I slowly backed up out of the room. But as I entered the threshold of my room, it peeked back out again, so I asked, what are you? Why are you staring at me? It hissed, and I went back to my bed. I laid there,

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_02] staring at its eyes for about ten minutes until I finally fell asleep. I've never seen it since. I haven't seen any other ghosts after this encounter, though I've felt invisible presences. Let's never ever meet again, weird entity.

[00:34:09] [SPEAKER_00] I can't stop eating these M&Ms. Are they the peanut ones or the regular ones? They're actually the minis. Oh, yeah, I like those. You gotta go mini or go peanut. The regular ones are just kind of mid, kind of mid like a Milky Way. Not horrible, but nothing special.

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_02] I actually used to love Milky Ways. It was my favorite candy for a really long time.

[00:34:28] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I need the peanuts. Snickers is like a fully evolved Milky Way. And even though I don't really eat McDonald's anymore, the peanuts on those Sundays, oh man, that made all the difference. Rest in peace, McDonald's peanuts.

[00:34:41] [SPEAKER_01] There's a lot to unpack there. Let's start from the top. When I was a kid, I actually didn't like nuts on anything. I thought they were gross.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_02] So Milky Ways were what I always got because I wanted a candy bar. And it was McDonald's where I actually realized I didn't like nuts on stuff when I got a sundae and it came with it. And I was like, ew, this is disgusting.

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_00] In brownies, that's disgusting. Don't put walnuts or peanuts in a brownie or a candy bar. No thanks.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, because it ruins the whole texture. The whole part of a brownie is it needs to be soft and chewy and gooey. Yeah. But when you put something crunchy in there, it completely throws it off.

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. What's your go-to Halloween candy? Oh boy, a little early for me to be thinking about that. You're going to send me down a path of despair here. But I don't know, simple, like Reese's Pieces, E.G. Fun Home type of thing. Or of course, just Reese's in general. I like eating around the edges and scraping off all the chocolate with my teeth and just having a big ol' hockey puck of peanut butter.

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_02] Interesting. That's kind of how I used to eat my peanut butter and jellies. Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_00] Mm-hmm.

[00:35:49] [SPEAKER_02] Or Pop-Tarts. Pop-Tarts you eat around the edge and then you just get like that big, delicious, cream-filled middle.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, I broke off the edges on Pop-Tarts. I can't just have the bready stuff on its own. That's weird to me.

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_02] It was weird. I used to put butter on them. Like, I would toast them and spread butter on them like they were like a pastry or a... Well, they are a pastry, but...

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I think that's normal.

[00:36:10] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it was good. It was really good. I miss Pop-Tarts. But I know that if I ate them now for breakfast, I would be so sick.

[00:36:17] [SPEAKER_00] No way. I can't believe that was so normalized as a kid. Like, oh, get your Pop-Tart, have this sugary cereal and with this orange juice with probably added sugar into it or Sunny Delight. Oh my God, Sunny Delight was the most unhealthy. I can't stand Sunny Delight. I don't get it. I've never understood the appeal.

[00:36:33] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I liked it as a kid. It was delicious, but not now, no. I've even tried to drink Capri Suns as an adult and I still can't really get into it.

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_00] I can do a Capri Sun. Even as a kid, I thought Sunny Delight was just like bad orange juice. And then when I found out it wasn't good for you, it was like, oh, that's easy. Never again.

[00:36:52] [SPEAKER_02] Now the listeners are saying why I'm leaving the podcast. We've grown so far apart.

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, we hate each other. We hate... We like... Everything we like is different now. On the subject of breakups, we're not even the only ones in recent times. And that's why we drink Christina's Parting Ways. Aw. And not podcast related, but Drew Key 5000, one of the brothers, is gonna go to college instead. Good for him, but yeah, a little sad. I like all their stuff a lot. Who is this? It's... It's like old-time radio-y Frank Sinatra Temptations with trap beats.

[00:37:26] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, yeah. No, I do like them. Yeah, yeah. I saw them on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bummer. I liked those guys. So were Em and Christine copying us or did this or did they announce their departure before me?

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_00] I really don't know. I don't have the time frame locked into memory, but let's just assume Christine was very inspired by you. Emboldened even.

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I owe Em a Game Boy. I was supposed to mod their Game Boy for them. And I think they might have sent it to me and I just never sent it back. I need to contact them.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_00] Tapping into your magical powers, scraping off some DNA for good measure.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_02] Well, anyways, let's get into the feedback. Jennifer A. Stanley says, I still love the fact that my brother did the artwork for the cover for this podcast. Yeah. Hey, Keith. Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy. Another shout out. I'll keep shouting out. He's done great work for all the podcasts I've done so far.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_02] This is Keith from Heavy Mental. Great work. And I'll probably work with him for the rest of my life on all my projects because I just love his style. He's great. Well, hey, you got a cool brother, so you're probably pretty cool too, Jennifer.

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_00] Mm-hmm. And fair disclosure, I'm getting over a cold here, so I'm going to do my best. Ruth Anna P. says, Good stories, as usual, but the one where the two people and the dog getting spooked by something they couldn't see had me thinking Bigfoot too. Mm-hmm. In so many stories I've heard or read, people get the feeling that they are being watched or that something terrifying is nearby, but they can't see it.

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00] It's one thing when it's just humans, but more scary when a dog senses it too. True. Not sure about Bigfoot and different dimensions though, or ET related. I'm not convinced. Yet. Maybe never. Well, never say never. But I guess you said maybe never, so you're not really saying never, so disregard.

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_02] I always find it interesting when skeptics like this podcast, especially enough to give us feedback and comments about stories like this.

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I feel like that's us to a big extent. Maybe 60% belief, 40% skepticism. But of course, every phenomenon and even individual story is different case by case.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_02] Teresa says, The burnout is so real. I'm juggling two jobs at the moment, but plan on dropping one at the end of the year. I'll definitely still be listening to both Let's Not Meet and Odd Trails. Thanks, Teresa. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, yeah. I totally agree. Burnout's rough. And yeah, there comes a point where like when you get so burned out that like you know you have to stop something because if you don't, you're going to start being, you're just going to be so unhappy and you're going to do a poor job.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_02] I didn't want to do a poor job on the podcast. So I felt this was the best way to do it. Plus, I am a musician. And as soon as I started podcasting full time and then picked up an additional podcast on top of the other ones that I'm doing, like I just didn't have time to make music.

[00:40:34] [SPEAKER_02] And I just, I let a decade, almost a decade slip by without making any music except for, you know, whatever stuff is on the podcast. So that's kind of a huge thing for me. I wanted to get back into making music. So, you know, I went out and got to practice space and just trying to put my life back together as an artist and make stuff again.

[00:40:54] [SPEAKER_00] There you go. Yeah. Things are falling into place for both of us. I'll be done with my current job in about a year and I'll be right there with you podcasting full time and being able to pursue more passions.

[00:41:06] [SPEAKER_01] You should, uh, you should get a, uh, you should get a new co-host and see how it goes.

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_00] Let's pass on that. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of unsolicited applications, but I wouldn't want to do that to you. No, thanks.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_02] Uh, moving on. Finally, Tyrell Nash asks, do you have a smoke alarm chirping in the background?

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01] Um, you know what? No comment. I don't even know. Did we address it on the episode or not? I just remember we talked about it at some point. I was like, is there something chirping in the back?

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_00] Okay. Yeah. That's very embarrassing. I wish I could just, uh, blame it on somebody else. Maybe I was recording at a friend's house, but no, right before we hit record, the smoke alarm in the room behind me started chirping and I didn't think it was going to pick up. So maybe there's some in the stories. I don't know, but I tried to take out some of it. Whoops. It is fixed now.

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_02] Our hardware and our software are pretty good at getting rid of all the noises and stuff. Uh, we get compliments on it all the time whenever I talk to other podcasters, but like that would be like the one thing I would expect for it to get rid of. You know what I mean?

[00:42:10] [SPEAKER_00] A sudden spike. That's not the voice. Yeah, no, like my air conditioning and fans can all go off at different times and doesn't pick up at all. But yeah, smoke alarm in the next room. It just right there.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. So the anonymous author that I read two of their stories this week, uh, two in one, they gave us a, a two for the UFO and then the glowing eyes. I didn't really have a lot to say about the UFO because it was just a very traditional UFO sighting. Nothing else really happened there. I did like that. It was a donut, but, uh, the glowing eyes part of the story really creeped me out.

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_02] Mm-hmm.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_00] This is way too intense. Denial. It's like a type of grief, I guess, something that would be traumatic in its own way. So it's, it's easier just to refuse that it happened or give it an explanation that doesn't have to completely shift your entire worldview. That's my guess.

[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I guess I could understand that doing it as a coping mechanism to deal with like the trauma of the experience. Cause you have to, when, when you accept something is real, that is beyond our understanding or supernatural. Mm-hmm. You have to throw out your whole worldview of everything. Everything changes. Your entire life has to change and how you view reality. So yeah, I guess it would be easier to just say, no, that didn't actually happen.

[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Like if you saw Chris Angel walking on water or David Blaine levitate, you're going to have to just accept the fact that that's some magic. Otherwise.

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_02] Man, when I found out so many of David Blaine's like participants were setups, like it was all just like filmed, like all planned and staged that really bummed me out. Like he's obviously a very good magician. I've seen him do like closeup magic. He's fantastic. Mm-hmm. But like the bigger stuff that is clearly, oh yeah, how is he doing that? Like it's all totally set up and it's such a bummer, man. I'm sorry if I broke anybody's spirits with that, but it's true.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_00] I know the levitation thing, it's kind of like just a cool thing where you turn your body a certain way and stand on one tippy toe. So he would get real reactions. Right. And then they would edit in him being like levitated by a crane or something.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_02] Exactly. Yes. He would do the simple like angle yourself and lift yourself up with one toe type thing, which you could find that on the internet 20 years ago. Yeah. On how to do that. But yeah, exactly. He would splice that in with him like 10 feet in the air or something ridiculous. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Listen, if you don't believe it's real, it isn't real and you can move on with life. And I think that's what the author was talking about.

[00:45:10] [SPEAKER_02] However, the fact that three generations of this person's family have been seeing things like this, it's pretty undeniable and convincing. But their denial is strong and I actually respect them for that.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that would take a lot. Having it passed down the family like that, there's no way. No way I could just conveniently deny that.

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_02] I wonder if there's some kind of seer gene. You know what I mean? Like, is it genetic? Is that why we have generations of families that can all see the same ghosts and stuff?

[00:45:44] [SPEAKER_00] It would have to be. Yeah. Maybe some sort of psychological influence that's just passed down and mentioned so many times other people end up seeing it that way or they're looking for it. I don't know. But I would imagine the first would make the most sense. Somebody sees some sort of entity and their relatives are also susceptible to it for a variety of reasons.

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. So does your family have any weird abilities or quirks that have been passed down?

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_00] Hmm. No. I mean, yeah, but nothing paranormal that I want to talk about on here.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Other than some serious trauma. Yeah. I got nothing else.

[00:46:24] [SPEAKER_00] Wow. Wow. It's okay. At least there's something, right? Keeps life interesting. Yeah. Maybe in a different timeline, though, it'd be different.

[00:46:31] [SPEAKER_01] Oh, man. So let's talk timelines. Let's start with yours.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_00] We got two. Yeah, we got two. I love this. I love this. So yeah, Megan's story, the factory parking lot. Obviously, a whole lot happened here. But I would say that the train is probably the strongest detail for everything. Yeah.

[00:47:17] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. I mean, I think that the car should have looked completely impossible in that kind of setting. Maybe, I don't know, they were like seeing the past without physically being a part of it. Like they were just like viewing it and they weren't visible to them. Almost like looking through a window.

[00:47:32] [SPEAKER_00] I guess. Yeah, that wouldn't make sense. Like when you see ghosts or whatever wearing clothes from decades prior, they're just seeing them like kind of through a window past like a little time slip thing. So similar to that. Maybe they were the ghosts back then. They were the workers. Actually, no, because the worker didn't react to seeing them. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the first example would be what it is in this case. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, the car failing, that's a very common thing. Car always has to fail.

[00:48:00] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, we always see mechanical failure in these types of things. Even in like UFO encounters, a lot of times there's mechanical failures, missing time. I wonder if this is somehow related to missing time.

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_00] Could be. Could be. I don't remember if they mentioned missing time in the story. No, no.

[00:48:14] [SPEAKER_02] I'm just trying to piece things together with other types of phenomena. Yeah, these time slips are really weird. So was it like completely by chance that you ended up picking that story?

[00:48:25] [SPEAKER_00] Well, yes and no. Like I saw the one that you had and I was going through the library that I have and I was like, hey, this is perfect. This complements Andy's story perfectly.

[00:48:34] [SPEAKER_02] Right. So this was weird because they saw these changes in color, like things faded to white and then there was like an orangey sepia tone. At least that's what I remember when reading the story.

[00:48:49] [SPEAKER_02] Like it's almost like they were going through some kind of, I don't know, like portal or something that was changed colors of everything during their experience, which is kind of funny to me because they had this era shift where they ended up in like the 40s or 50s with all these classic cars and everything kind of had this orangey old hue to it.

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_01] It's almost like when you have a flashback in a movie and they changed like the color grading on it to make it look like it's a different time and it's older.

[00:49:18] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah. This is a dream. This is a different time.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_01] It's like that's what happened with it.

[00:49:22] [SPEAKER_00] It does feel like life in the 90s was through the lens of whatever color grading Pete and Pete used. Perfect 90s.

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_02] That was, I think that just had to do with like natural lighting and film, filming on film. Like that was just the magic. We lost that magic as soon as we went all digital and everybody started lighting movies and post and color grading everything to shit. Everything looks so flat and ugly now.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_00] And blue. Everybody loves their blue hues everywhere.

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, it's always blue and everything's so clean and pristine like people's kitchens and living rooms or they look like model homes. It just it's garbage. I fucking hate new movies and TV shows, man. It's making me mad. I fucking hate it.

[00:50:04] [SPEAKER_00] I don't think my voice is going to carry much longer for this outro to be honest.

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, that's okay. I gotta go feed my dogs. Hey, if you guys have any stories, make sure you send them in to let's not make sure you send them in to stories at odd trails.com and sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash odd trails to get ad free versions of all of the episodes at a higher bit rate. And make sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like let's not meet in the old time radio cast. We'll see you next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:50:46] [SPEAKER_02] Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you.