Otherworld - Episode 106: Up in the Sky

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Felicia was coming home from music practice with her mother when they saw something strange and unexplainable in the sky. Scared of its unknown power, Felicia kept the experience a secret for years. Similarly, Aidan was a young girl when she and her friend went into the woods one summer day. After getting lost, their disagreements over which direction to take led them to separate. Wandering alone, Aidan stumbled upon something deeply unsettling and mysterious in the sky. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode contains two shorter stories. The events are completely different and have almost nothing to do with each other, aside from the fact that they both involve a young woman seeing something strange up in the sky. I really liked both of these stories, but they were a little shorter than normal episodes, so I thought it would be perfect to just put them together in one longer episode. This first story comes from a woman named, Felicia, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was driving home from school one night

with her mom after some extracurricular activities. It was a completely ordinary day when suddenly they both witnessed something very baffling. The experience lasted only a brief moment, which is why the story was a bit short, but I thought the sighting itself was so extreme and undeniable, and really came out of nowhere. Anyway, let's get this episode started. This is episode 106. The title is Up in the Sky, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby?

Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm not worried about all the science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It swims. We're just wrong.

Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Felicia, and I am a screenwriter. I live right now in Los Angeles, but I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. We lived in a suburb outside of all of the hustle and bustle of the city, so I had a very early 2000s suburban American childhood. I was in orchestra.

I ran track, and I had a good solid group of friends. I was pretty much a latchkey kid and I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and I read a lot of books. I was very imaginative and even before the story, like I felt very paranoid being in my own home because growing up it was me and my mom and my dad would travel a lot for work. And for me it felt like way too big of a house to be in for just us too. But because of that, I would have a lot of paranoia about like ghosts and spirits and paranormal. But for the most part, like other than that, it was a very stable and standard childhood. My dad is just, he's like a very standard Asian dad.

He's an engineer and he has a very, he's sort of engineer minded. He's a little bit awkward in social situations and he loves playing poker. So that's like his sort of almost like hobby that he does all the time. So he's out of the house quite a bit. But my mom is, right now they live in Phoenix, and if Phoenix had like a real housewife, she would definitely be there. She's an artist and she is an interior designer, so she's very much about aesthetics and she's Chinese. She's an immigrant. She came from Taiwan and she's just very gregarious and extroverted and everyone loves her and she believes that everyone loves her.

And she thinks she's like a mini influencer and she sort of is. So she has that sort of like charming quality to her. Her side of the family is all Christian, like Baptist Christian. And so they were converted during the war in Taiwan. And so they all became Christians like in the early, like 1950s or so. Before that, though, there's like a long history of like Chinese superstition and spirits and ancestors and ghosts. So there's like a part of the family that still believes. believes in that, like fortune telling and superstitions and symbols, like, all of that.

But after the 1950s, like, it was a really sort of like hard left into Christianity and believing that, sure, there are ghosts and demons out there, but God protects us from all of those things. Growing up, I used to get told a lot of stories about, like, various superstitions from China that my parents believed but also kind of didn't. And so they would always speak in the same breath about, oh, there's this spiritual superstition, you know, don't invoke or invite the other world to, like, enter into ours. And so I kind of believed in the existence of it while also growing up believing that I was part of a religion that didn't acknowledge those things. So I was sort of like straddling a line between two cultures, which is, you know, like the standard that people say,

but I really felt like there's also this straddling of like the real world and like the afterworld. My mom is very much, she's extremely Christian, doesn't believe in any of those superstitions, but kind of acknowledges them. Like I think that she's just more like, I don't want anything to do with them, but it's not a straight-up denial. She doesn't believe in fortune-telling, like, the idea that there's this, there's this concept called Swamin, which means, like, a fortune teller can, like, you know, read your face, like the moles on your face to tell you what's going to happen in your life,

or, like, you know, hand-reading, reading, reading various things, just like the size of your ear, your nose, that kind of stuff, even your birth date, even the amount of brush strokes in your name, those are all, like, superstitious. where people believe like this can mean a certain thing. And also like your name, it can have like the same sort of phonetic tones as other words. So I know she's superstitious enough where she like, when she named me in Chinese, they had to go to a fortune teller to make sure that the number of brushstrokes, the way that the word flows and potential like phonetic similarities weren't pointing me in a

direction of like, oh, she's going to have misfortune in her life. So there's that. And then there's also like various symbols. I think I believe that August is like the demon month or like, you know, the doors to the after world is like opened slightly kind of like Halloween, but like for an entire month. And you're not supposed to do anything that's taunting or teasing the afterworld or opening the door because that can cause chaos in your life. And I remember like this one time in August, like I had, I was just like wearing like for. for style reasons, just like a little black ribbon around my finger. And she, like, freaked out and made me take it off because she said that was bringing bad luck to the family. And she was kind of right, actually, like, we got into, like, a very minor car accident, which is what prompted her to see the black ribbon. And then she was, like, take that off. So I took it off.

And I guess you would say she believes it, but I think she's just of the, like, believes it, but doesn't want to give power to it. And the idea of Christianity is attractive because to be a true believer means that you don't worship other idols. I think it's easy just to be like, I'm part of this religion now, so those things can't touch me and I disregard them. But she still believes that those are there. Growing up in the Bay Area, it's a highly competitive environment for kids, especially like immigrant kids to grow up in. And as you can imagine, my mom was very much like, you're going to do every activity you're going to. to be an orchestra, you're going to learn to speak Chinese and you're going to play the piano

and there's going to be no sort of debate about it, like you're going to do it. I had to play piano an hour at home every day and I remember that fed a lot into like the paranoid feeling that I would have because I would be playing piano and like my back would be turned to the window which would face out into the sort of hillside and in the darkness like you know that it was very creepy and I would always, it was just like this creepy image of me sitting alone at the piano, like playing it for hours and then the dark hills like overlooking me from behind and it was it was just sort of almost gothic in nature. And then to go play an orchestra, you know, I would have to practice the violin. Similarly, just like in a dark space like playing into

the void, it felt like my mom would always, you know, she would take me to violin class. She would take me to piano class and she would always like do the drop off and the weight there. and then take me home. You know, typically these things last about an hour to an hour and a half. So we would drive from our house. And we lived in the sort of hills area, and we would go to this college called Cal State Hayward, which is now Cal State East Bay.

And you would take the back roads, which it would be like 10 to 15 minutes away, and we would drive through actually a cemetery, and then we would go, there would be like farmhouses and all of that. So it was kind of desolate. And in the woods, and there was, like, a lot of trees and all that. So we would go there at, like, seven, and then by the time daylight savings in the fall, that meant that it would be quite dark. And then driving home, it would get out at around, like, 9 o'clock. So we would be getting home. And because, you know, again, the suburbs, everybody was asleep or in their houses by the time, like 9, 10 o'clock rolled around. it would just be us, like, in the roads coming back. On this particular day, I remember it was just a pretty standard drive through the backwoods area, back to our house, and we were pulling up on our street.

And then I think that one of us noticed, like, there was up in the sky this, like, row of blinking lights. And we were, you know, really kind of weirded out because, again, These drives are mostly uneventful. But to see that, it was kind of strange. So as we were slowly pulling up to our driveway, my mom decided to open the moonroofed so we could get a better look. And it turned out like this thing was taking up the entirety of the sky. And it was so slow moving.

It was just sort of like hanging over us. So we were looking at it. And we could see that it was like this like giant metal craft. And it started to freak us out. Like I feel like both of us got the same. feeling at the same time where this didn't just seem like a plane that was flying too low. When you see a plane pass overhead, you can see like the various lights on it. And that's how you know it's a plane and that's how you identify it.

But when we saw it, it just felt like there was a giant saucer craft. And then there were lights that were blinking all along the side of it, like a very clear sort of metallic. saucer with lights blinking along the pathway of it. Not even in a real pattern, but just enough to outline the shape of the saucer, which clearly was not plain shaped. I guess the lights felt like they were very distant because, you know, they were clearly very bright, but they weren't blinding. It felt like when we saw it that no matter where we were turning, and we were just really

only able to see it through a moonroof and also our windshield, but it felt like it was taking up the entirety of the sky in that way, where it was like, nowhere could we see the sky at that point? You know, it got really close to us. Like, it felt like it was as close as when you look up at the ceiling above you. And how close that is to your face is how close it felt to us. Even in the windshield, it was reaching too far for us to see the other side of it. And so it really just felt like this thing was above us. Like it felt almost suffocating in how much space it was taking overhead. And I think that definitely added to the quality of fear. It felt inescapable. And partly, like, the reason why I think we were stuck there was because we were in our driveway already,

but it was like, what's safe? You know, if this is something that is overtaking the sky, like we'd never seen anything in our human lives, like, that could do something like this. And also, where could you hide from it? With how big it was, it just felt like this is all, this is all it'll ever be. And there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to hide. Like, it is all seeing and all knowing and omnipresent. And that was the most terrifying part.

We were still trying to identify it. And I think, like, again, that's why, like, the fear didn't hit until the moment we were in the driveway. and we look at it and it's like passing over her head really slowly. So it's also not moving with any sort of urgency. And we realize that we're the only people on the street. We're looking around. There's no one else there. There's no one to hear a scream, essentially, if something happened.

And it was that moment that we were like, oh, like this doesn't feel human and it doesn't feel safe. We just felt like when this craft came over us, It just felt like there was no sound whatsoever. It felt like we were in some sort of vacuum where the sound had just being muted by how big this craft was. It was like just dampened by this huge thing.

And I almost feel like I could hear the craft itself in that almost like vibrational tone that happens when something is hovering above you. It's not actually making sound. It's not like a helicopter, but it's like, you can just feel that. that like it's pushing sound waves around. That's just what it felt like.

And it was a completely sort of humorless experience. We were both very scared. I think we were both paralyzed with fear. Again, in our brain, like, had always feared like this other side or like the paranormal and always sort of believed that it was there and always kind of had an inkling that we're repressing something that we don't want to acknowledge for me. like I, you know, all of my interest in the paranormal from my mom, it's this opening to the, to the other side. So I think like both of us, our brains were breaking and we were staring at

this thing being like, what do we do? We also don't know what's going on. Did it just, you know, abduct everybody in this neighborhood because it was so quiet. Not a single person was outside. And we were just like really confused. And so we were looking up and I think my mom and I, we were both looking at where we thought the opening might be, and we were just waiting for it to open and, you know, like those classic abduction scenes, like, and we were just waiting for that. We were holding our breath. And I think that both of us were like, we kind of wanted that to happen because we stared at it for so long.

It's like at that moment that you realize that whatever structures are in place to, like, save you from things like this completely go out the window because it's not like we could call 911. one, we were just looking at this thing and being like, you know, in two seconds, if it decided to open its doors and take us to whatever it came from, like, we would be gone in an instant. Nobody would know, no one would have any trace. And it's completely unbelievable. So all we can do is stare at this thing and pray or hope that it isn't going to abduct us. And also just sort of bewildered by like looking at something you've never seen before and will likely

never see again, this idea that like you're just stuck in this moment, taking it in, but also fearful that this is your last moment on earth. And so we were like, essentially felt like we were staring death in the face. And we were looking at these lights blinking. And they were blinking kind of like, I don't want to say peacefully, but it was like in a way that didn't feel aggressive, but was still strange. And they were blinking and blinking and blinking. And then after a few more blinks, Like it started floating. Like you could tell that it was moving like at a glacial pace above us. And when we when we got that sort of confirmation that it was like moving towards like moving north and we were sort of like not in its path of fire or whatever anymore, we were like, okay, you know, that seems like the worst of it.

Finally, my mom closed the moon roof and was like, I need to, you know, jolt us out of this. this shock or awe or whatever. She closed it and then she drove us into the driveway. And the saucer was still up ahead. Like it's not like it had passed over us or anything. But my mom was like, I have to do something about this. You know, whatever just happened, we're closing the door on this. And just I just remember us leaving, closing the door,

walking the garage and going upstairs. And I had school the next day. So it was very much just like a do the routine to get ready for bed. And I felt like we never spoke about it again, at least for 14 years. And then, yeah, we kind of just like put it to bed after that. What do you do with a memory like this? I held on to it for a really long time. And I didn't even think about telling people again until, you know, in 2020,

2021, when all of those documents were sort of unsealed and the existence of UFO aircraft has been something that the country is known about for many, many years. And that's when I really felt safer to be like, yes, like I know that. And I'm glad to have been able to have experienced it myself. And I think the thing is, like, the first time I ever actually acknowledged it to myself verbally was I was watching Unsolved Mysteries, like the original version of it. And the first episode was about, like, this city in Hudson Valley. I guess Hudson Valley is a city. But, like, all these residents had reported seeing this same exact phenomenon. and when I saw it on TV, I was like, wait, like, I'm pretty sure that I saw the same thing.

Like, I'm almost certain that that's the exact account of things that I had. And so it was through that that I, like, really started expressing it to, like, people more vocally. And also, like, now it's sort of like a story that I tell, like, dinners or, like, when I'm getting to know people or, like, I don't feel that shy or, like, I don't feel that shy or, embarrassed or ashamed about it or scared about it anymore either. Did you ever talk to your mom about it? So that happened also in like 2021 or whenever that like Tesla like Starlink thing started. So my parents live in Phoenix and I was visiting them and in the sky there was like a row of satellite satellite dishes or, you know, like the starling. It was all in a row. And we saw it and we were like, oh my gosh, like that what are those

things? Like those aren't stars. And then it was my mom who initially, she turned to me and initiated it. And she was like, do you remember when we saw that UFO? And I was like, oh my God, like I was just so relieved that she not only remembered, but that she brought it up. Like she felt like it was time to talk about it finally, you know? And so that's when we started talking again about what it felt like, what we remembered, and it was really nice to know that we both remembered it the same way. It's funny because I feel like I never wanted to talk about it with her until that point. And I think it was just because maybe in the early days after the UFO,

it was just like it seemed like we both just wanted to forget that it happened or that we were still stuck in some sort of fear that it would come back if we talked about it. And again, it was because, like, my dad traveled a lot, so he wasn't home at the time, and it was just us in this very large house together. And I think, you know, both of us were going through transitional periods in our life. So it was like, we didn't know, like, everything felt so unclear and unknown. And I think both of us were just desperate for some sort of stability. And I think to talk about this at any point during that time, would feel like things were completely out of control and that whatever was coming or whatever

that was would come back for us. So I think it was just like we wanted to forget it and we felt like we had like dodged death or something and we didn't want to invoke that again. In that same way that I think that like Chinese superstition is if you, it's like invoking something is an invitation to allow it to come back into your life. You know, at some point, when you have like a memory like this, that rationality and science and everything around you tells you that it can't be real or that like you can't prove it so it's not real, at some point you just, you start to question things and you're just like, is it really like my imagination that's sort of gone awry? Like I don't, it feels so clear to me what happened and I can put myself in that space again and I can visualize it so well. yet, you know, half of the people who I tell are going to believe me and half aren't. And even the people who do say they believe me, I don't know if they do or don't because I don't

know what their relationship to UFOs are, you know? So there's always this feeling of like, everyone else out there is denying my reality, but I know that it's real, but who's the wrong one? Like when I get really deep into the weeds, like I can start sort of going back and forth on this in my mind. But then again, if I didn't have my mind, they're securely saying, like, yes, this, like, really happened. I don't know if I would feel as confident today telling that. It suggests, like, another plane or, like, another universe or another worlds that we just don't have access to. And I think when I saw this UFO, it felt like all of those beliefs were just sort of acknowledged or just like I had proof.

that all the things that I believed were real. And I think because of that, like, I feel like it opened the door of some sort of, like, paranormal world where I'm kind of, like, I know that it's there. And for some people, they question that, like, oh, how can I believe something if I can't see it? And for me, it's very much, like, I did see it. It was something that I believed even when I hadn't before. But now it's kind of like, you know, there are things out there that you can't explain. And you'll never get proof of it, but they can still be out there.

And so that's kind of changed my worldview. All right. Thank you to Felicia for sharing her story. By the way, her mom was not interested in being on the podcast, but I did speak to her on the phone about all this. She remembers it exactly the same way as Felicia. With this story, I was blown away at how large this thing was that they saw. I love hearing stories like this,

but there is always a tiny part of it. of me when I'm hearing them that can't help but think maybe this person saw some kind of military craft that we don't know about yet or, you know, all of the classic excuses. But when I hear a story like this, describing something taking up nearly the entire sky, it's kind of hard to explain that away, especially with just a mother and daughter coming home from school on a random night. It's just so shocking. As I said before, this episode contains two stories, and this next one is very unique. It comes from a person named Aden, and it takes place in rural Virginia. At the time, her and her friends like to play in the woods, and one time she ended up getting very lost, during which

time she said that she heard somebody or something following her for hours. This is a very weird story, one that's hard to categorize. I think I'm just going to let Aiden tell it for herself. So my name is Aden. I'm 28 years old. I currently, I just moved to Long Island. I lived in Brooklyn for the last seven years, but I'm originally from Spotsylvania County, Fredericksburg, Virginia, very, very rural area, not a lot going on. Around this time, things were pretty to most. I was mainly living with my brother's dad through some, like, mishap of, like, custody. He was married to my mom. They got divorced.

He ended up getting me and my brother. So I was living with him a majority of the time. This happened like the summer before sixth grade. So, you know, I just finished fifth grade, going into sixth grade. I didn't know a lot of kids in the neighborhood. I knew like one other little girl, so I would hang out with her and my brother and play outside with them pretty much all day, every day. There just really wasn't a ton else to do. The neighborhood was pretty rural, and it was still under development at this time.

So there was a lot of, like, empty houses. All of the back lots of this neighborhood didn't even have houses on it. It was just, like, boxed out clearings. So we would go play in those. We would go look for like old civil war trenches. Spotsylvania is a huge, huge civil war. Just the whole place is like a battlefield. Because it's right in the middle of Richmond and D.C.

So we would lay in trenches. We would shoot baby guns. We'd just run around in the woods following deer trails, looking for creeks, trying to find, you know, cool stuff in the woods. Me and the only other little girl in the neighborhood, We were good friends. And I don't know why on this particular day, my brother wasn't also with us. He'd probably just gotten like a new Madden game or something.

So it was just me and her as opposed to the three of us. And we're wandering around the woods like normal. We're exploring just kind of not going too far, but, you know, the woods that we know pretty well. And we go a little bit further than normal and we find a creek. and it's awesome. It's like deep enough to kind of sit down in. It's super cold. It's not really buggy.

It's got like good banks on the side. So there aren't, you know, you don't have to worry about like snakes or jumping over a bunch of brambles and rocks and stuff. And we were stoked. We're like, this rules. We're going to come here every day. Let's come back tomorrow and have a picnic and like swim.

And just this will be awesome. This is going to be our summer spot. So, so excited. It's like the best thing we could have found in the woods other than, you know, like, I don't know, deer stands were pretty cool or if you found like an old tree house, but this was like top-notch woods find. So the next day, we like pack up lunch and we decide to meet up at her house and then go and find this creek again. And so we, you know, start off into the woods and we walk the same way.

We did the day before. We're following deer trails. And what those are is like deer walk through the woods, usually in the same places all the time. And it creates like these very narrow paths through the grass and the brambles. It's like not an official trail by any means. And they're small. Like children could probably navigate through them well,

but like adults might have trouble. And so we're going down the same deer trail we did the day before, and we're not finding the creek. And we're like, man, I don't really think we were quite, you know, walking this long the day before. Like, it seems like we've been walking for a really long time. Maybe we turned off, you know, the wrong way. We missed a turn or something because that can easily happen

because, like I said, it's just not an official trail by any means. and so we decided to keep going because it's early in the day and we walk for a little bit longer and we're like still nothing so we sit down and we decide to have lunch so you know we sit down we're chilling we're hanging out and having fun and I'm starting I don't know at this point I guess I'm a little bit worried because I don't know exactly where we are and then that's that was not a feeling that I was used to because we were in these woods so often.

I pretty much always knew where I was. So I'm like uneasy, but I'm not like scared or freaked out or anything at this point. So we finish eating and, you know, we kind of talk a little bit about do you think we should turn back? Do you think we should try and find it? Well, what way do you think you should go? What way, you know, what's the right way? we decide to go a certain way we walk in that direction for probably another 15 or 20 minutes and then we find what looks like a bathroom in the middle of the woods there's a full like porcelain

toilet a few feet away from that is like the outline of a tub like the just the white part of the tub not like tile or anything, like a tub basin, and a few feet away from that is like a porcelain sink. And we look at it, we're like, well, that's weird. One, I've never seen that before. Two, how, like, it's heavy. It's a full porcelain toilet. Who is hiking through the woods with this? How did this end up here?

There's no roads around here that you could, like, you know, drive your truck back and, like, dump your bathroom I don't know garbage in the middle of the woods so it was just really strange we were like how and why so it's weird that it was arranged like exactly as a bathroom is arranged

almost like the house disappeared around it like maybe the house burnt down because there's it's so odd that it would be in such like perfect setting out there in the middle of nowhere

and we did look for a foundation of a house. We looked for old stones kind of laid out, you know, in a way that would show that, you know, the foundation of a house had been there. And we didn't really find anything.

That was it. No, you find a lot of nails and stuff around spots where old houses or sheds should have been. We didn't find any nails. We didn't find any, anything to indicate that there had been anything else there

at that point, which was just really, really strange. especially out in the woods where we were. I don't remember who brought it up first, but someone called it Bigfoot's bathroom. And we both thought that was just absolutely hysterical. We were like, yep, that's where he's, you know, sits and uses the toilet.

That's where he washes his hands. And so we got to that part, and I think that was like the very last of the, like, levity of, this excursion. After at this point, things just started to get really strange. I don't know. Up until this point, I had never really been afraid of being in the woods. You know, there's just really nothing to be afraid of. Like, no one's just hanging out back there, you know, waiting to pounce on little girls. Like animals won't really bother you if you don't bother them. You know, snakes suck, but if you're paying attention to where you're walking,

like, you're not going to have a problem with that. So I had never experienced, like, being scared in the woods. And pretty much immediately after we left this bathroom area, we walked into, like, a very strangely, this part of the woods was, like, dense in a way that the other part of the woods hadn't been. The entire ground was covered with like big super ultra green ferns and all of the trees were sparse but they were really tall and they were really thick on top which is just not I'd never seen a patch of woods that looked like that in the woods that we were in that day it's normally like very viny lots of sticks lots of brambles like nowhere wasn't. it just this blanket of ferns.

So it stuck out to both of us, and my friend and I, we remarked on it, and we were like, this is, you know, gorgeous. This is really pretty, but it feels weird. It felt super just dreamy and strange. It could have been, like, because that area was so dark because of how thick the trees were on top

and all of the ferns, it just felt really foreign. And I very, like, distinctly remember that being the moment where my stomach kind of turned a little bit and started to actually be not so much apprehensive of being lost, but like genuinely being afraid that we were lost. Because it was such an alien area of the woods to us. And so I think my friend started to panic around this point too, because around then is when we began to bicker.

I think we should turn back. No, I don't think we should turn back. I want to keep going. Like, well, if we keep going, where are we going? I want to go this way. No, I want to go this way. And I don't remember how much longer we were walking after that, but it gets to the point where she's convinced.

She's like, I'm right. I know I'm right. We need to go this way to get out of the woods. And I'm like, I don't think you're right. I think we need to go this way. I think we need to follow the sun. Like the sun, you know, only, moves in a certain direction. Like, if we follow that, we'll find our way up. And it's incredibly

stupid, but we split up, which as an adult who's like about to have like a daughter of my own, that thought is horrifying. It's like, oh my God, why didn't we stay together? Like, at least stay with somebody. Like, don't be alone in the woods. That's insanely stupid. But that's what we did. I don't know, we bickered a lot, and I guess just both of us had had it that day. So we split up. She takes off one way. I take off the other way. And probably about, I mean, it's hard to judge time, but probably about 20 minutes after we split up, I start to hear someone walking behind me. And I get insanely smug. I'm like, yep, she knew I was right. Here she comes. Like, She was wrong, she got lost, and she got scared, and now she's following me.

And so I think it's my friend. And I turn around and look, and I can't see her. And I'm like, oh, she's probably, you know, ducking. She's probably, you know, I just can't see her. She's hiding because she doesn't want to admit that now she has to follow me because I was right. Which is so stupid. Just looking back, like, man, I was a jerk. So, you know, this goes on for a while where I'm hearing some.

steps behind mine, steps behind mine and steps behind mine. And I keep, you know, whipping my head back, like, you know, quickly and at different intervals to, like, try and catch her. And slowly I start to realize or, I don't know, come to the conclusion that if it was my friend, she wouldn't have let this go on for quite so long. Like, she would have jumped out and tried to scare me or been like, hey, I'm sorry, like, let's walk together. Like, it had been too long for her to be, like, fucking with me, essentially.

How long had it been, would you say? I mean, it's hard to tell because your sense of time, like, humans are terrible at telling time anyway. But when you're just walking in the woods, doing nothing, no cell phone, it's hard to judge, but maybe, like, 45 minutes. Like, it had been quite a while. I was, like, walking for a long time, thinking she was following me. What were you hearing behind you? Just like, like very audibly, like two distinct footsteps crunching leaves behind me. Like, like, two feet.

Like, I thought it was her. Because it didn't sound like a deer. Like, deer don't make a ton of noise when they walk through the woods. They're pretty quiet. So if anything, you'll hear, like, swishing or you'll hear branches, like, moving. around them, but they don't make like big boot stomp sounding noise. You know, their feet are like this big. And in that part of Virginia, it's like we don't have like giant brown bears or anything

that would be stomping around the woods like that with little black bears. Like also wouldn't have made a lot of noise. Foxes don't make any noise at all. And that's pretty much the only things that walk around out there that would have been following me. I mean, it was like stomping. Like a person walking through the woods would sound. And it, I mean, it's also hard to judge like how far away a sound is.

But it didn't sound that far. I mean, maybe 50 feet, 100 feet behind me, which you'd think, you know, you'd at least see a glimpse of someone even through like pretty, fairly dense trees. And it wasn't that dense. It was open enough for me to be walking through it. So I should have seen some.

or anything that was big enough to make that much noise would be visible. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. So I start to realize that maybe it's not my friend, or if it is her, she's, like, gone too far. Like, she should have announced herself. So I do, I turn around, and I yell out, I yell her name, and nothing. I don't hear any stomping.

And also it's like it stops when I stop. When I stop moving, it stops moving. Which is also why I was so sure it was her. So I yell out a few times, you know, asking her to like cut it out, to knock it off. Like, hey, I know it's you. Just stuff like that. Never got any response back. And that freaked me out even more because now I'm thinking like,

you know, what if it's a stranger? What if it's like a man following me through the woods? And I start to get, I mean, not even start to get. I'm like, I'm scared by this point. I'm alone. I don't know where I am. I've like stupidly split up from the only other person who knows, you know, where I am. I don't have a cell phone.

And I don't even think we told anybody where we were going that day. So it's very swiftly occurring to me at this point that I've made enough bad decisions that I am now in like a really bad position. I'm scared. And I just, there's really, there's really nothing I can do either. Like I can't snap my fingers and get out of this situation. Like, you know, if something scares you in pretty much any other. place you have you have like an exit like you can get up and go somewhere else like if you think someone's following you know in the mall leave the mall if you think someone's in your house you can

leave your house you can't just leave being in the middle of the woods and all of this is kind of occurring to me as I'm still walking like just how deeply in trouble I am and this goes on for a long time and I'm getting more scared and more scared. I'm like whipping my head around more often and more often trying to see what's behind me. And I'm picking up the pace. And it's the summer in Virginia. I'm hot and sweaty.

And I'm just, I'm miserable and I just, I want to be home. I want to get out of the woods. I'm scared. I mean, this goes on for hours and hours and hours. I'm just walking. and I'll see a tree that looks vaguely familiar and I'll get excited and I'll go that way and then it's nothing, there's nothing there.

At one point I'm like, maybe I can just find like the ferns again, like that big place where all the ferns were and I just can't get back to that. I'm heinously lost. I'm terrified that someone or something is following me through the woods. And then eventually it starts to get dark, which, I mean, we set out, well before lunch, probably like 10.30.

So I've been in the woods for a really long time at this point. We split up maybe at one, and it's getting dark in the summer. So this is probably like 7.30. I've been to the woods by myself being followed for a really long time. And I'm panicking. I don't want to spend the night in the woods by myself. And I'm walking and walking. walking and walking. And then finally, I come to a clearing in the woods. And it's not like a huge

clearing. It's probably three quarters the size of a football field. And I walk into it and I kind of like, you know, I'm getting excited because I'm like, this is something I haven't seen before. Maybe this is like the back end of someone's property. Maybe I'm like finally finding me. my way out of the woods, and I walk into this clearing, and I look around and almost immediately, I noticed this weird, heavy, dark mass in the sky. Like, this thing, it's, it's hovering probably, I mean, not even hovering. It's completely still. In the middle of the clearing, probably a hundred feet up in the air, like just in line with the highest tree tops. It's about as long as a bus and maybe twice as wide.

The color of it is it's like a dark, misty gray towards the outside. And then as you get closer to the center, there's like this dark color that's almost like super dark purple, like with really, really, really nasty rain clouds. And then even closer to the center of this thing is just pitch black, like so black that it almost looks like looking up at the night sky. But only in the center, it's just, it's like a void. It almost looks like a hole. It almost looks like someone, like if you took a painting, of like a beautiful summer's day and then like painted something on top of it.

Like it looked like it was on top of everything else. Like it looked more defined than everything else and it wasn't moving at all. Like the trees around it are moving. There's a little bit of a breeze. There are other clouds moving and it's just this solid stationary spot. It was very unusually low, much too high to be fog, way too low to be a cloud. It was in such an odd place in the air, just really hovering, like, kind of right in line with the tops of the tallest trees.

And, you know, I'm standing there, and I'm kind of really struck by it because it just looked so wrong, like absolutely wrong. To this day, it's still the strangest thing I've ever seen. And then something even stranger happened, which, like, turns my stomach to talk about to this day. A sound came out of it. And when I say it came out of it, I don't mean, like, there was a sound that happened in the woods

or a sound was nearby. It, like, came bellowing out of this thing. in the sky, and it sounded like old-timey church bells. Like the, dung, dung, dung, dung, dung. But, like, massively loud with just like reverberation, like with gusto. Like, the sound of an old church bell billowing out from this horrible, wrong thing in the sky. I've only heard it with like the really old Baptist church in my time, my town that I grew up in would do that sound at like noon.

Like all of the rest of the hours would just get like dong, dong, dong, dong. But at noon, it would do like this, that like bell progression. And it sounded like a metal bell. Like the sound had, like I said, it had depth. It had reverberation. It wasn't, it didn't sound like thin, like a record. or like music or something like that, it sounded like, so heavy that, like, the air was vibrational, like, when you're close to something making that much noise.

And so after it plays this melody, there's, like, three distinct, very loud gongs, which is like gong, gong, gong, and then it stopped. And normally that would have been. indicate like three o'clock. It definitely wasn't 3 p.m. because it was getting dark in the middle of the summer. And it definitely wasn't 3 a.m. because it was barely getting dark. So that in and of itself was very strange, but the whole thing is strange. So my grandparents had a clock that would also do like a very similar chime to that. And every time I heard it, it like, it would make my stomach turn hearing it still today, like, makes me feel physically queasy because of how absolutely

horrified I was. It's like, I mean, if you've ever been to a really big concert, like, I bartended music venues with, like, live music. And if you stand, like, too close to, like, an amp or if someone's got, like, big cabinets and you can feel the music, like, vibrating, you know, your skin and vibrating in your chest. That's what it felt like. Like, you can feel when music is loud and up close. Like, it has gusto.

It has, like, a physical sensation. And that's what I felt hearing this. So, and, like, like I said, it didn't come from, you know, behind me or nearby. It came, like, I, there was no. mistaking where this sound was coming from and it was billowing out of this thing. It wasn't like earth-shatteringly loud, like it didn't blow my hair back, but it was, it was loud enough that it was jarring. Loud enough that, I mean, you probably would be able to hear it from at least like a mile away.

because I was familiar with the melody. Like I knew, you know, when it was over. I think they say, you know, fight or flight, I think my flight kicked in against my will and my feet were moving before my brain even knew what was happening before my brain could like process or look around or watch this thing for any longer. My feet had already decided to leave.

And I was booking it. blind sprinting through the woods as fast as I possibly could, you know, lunging, grabbing brambles, cutting myself up, like my, you know, shoes are nearly getting torn off. I'm just really scrambled, high sailing it out of there in a random direction, mind you. I, like, didn't plot out, like, now I'm going to run this way. It's just gone. and I am petrified. Like, to this day, that is the most horrified I've probably ever been by anything in my life.

And, like, I've seen some weird shit or been in some dicey, like, really dicey situations. I've departed in Brooklyn. And, yeah, I have never been so deep. truly horrified to my core. And I remember thinking, like, no one's ever going to see me again. Like, I'm gone. I'm gone. Like, that's, that is not something that happens in our reality.

That's not something that should be happening. Like, what I just witnessed, like, I just kept thinking, like, I'm just, I'm gone. No one's ever going to see me again. no one's ever going to see me again. I'm gone as I'm like, fall-assing through the woods. And it starts to get dark, like dark, dark. It's not dusk anymore. And I'm running and I'm crying. I feel like I'm going to throw up and my knees are all torn up and my arms are all torn up. And then finally, I hit something hard about waist high because I'm running blind. I can't, I can't see shit. It's dark. And I hit something

about waist high and I go flying over it. Just ass over teeth. Hit this bar, tumble over it. And that kind of knocks me for a second. And I'm like gathering myself. I'm on the ground and I look around and I had just hit a fence and flipped over it. And I was sitting in a field. And I'm like blinking my eyes really fast.

looking around and trying to like force them to adjust to the dark. And I can sort of make out like a hill on the other side of me with another part of a fence. And just like the biggest wave of relief hit me because I was like, I'm not a farm. I'm at a farm. This is like the back end of someone's property. Like there are people nearby. I'm not lost anymore. I can find somebody who's going to help me.

and I follow the fence back and I eventually come up to like the back of someone's like property, the back of someone's house and I walk around the house. I knock on the front door and I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry to bother you. I probably was just a hot mess, just ragamuffin covered in brambles, bleeding. I'm like so sorry to bother you. I'm lost. I've been lost all day. I don't know where I am.

And I need help getting home. And it was like an older man. I think his wife was like bop it around in the kitchen behind him. And he's like, sure. Are you okay? And I'm like, I'm all right. And he's like, do you want some water? I'm like, yeah, I would love some water.

Because, you know, the only thing I had had that day was the little lunchbox with a capriced in it that I had packed myself. I hadn't had water or food or anything. And so, you know, I sip some water and I tell him where I live. And he goes, oh, you're far. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And he's like, you walked here. And I was like, yeah, I walked through the woods.

And he kind of gave me like a funny look. And I was like, yeah, I'm just, I'm scared. I've been lost in the woods. I want to go home. And so he's like, all right, you know, tells his wife gets me in the car. It's like an old pickup truck and drives me back down the road. And I remember looking around and being like, oh, man, I am far. There was an old church that we passed, not one that has church bells.

So the noise couldn't have been this just to state before the question even comes up. But I remember passing that and me, you know, recognizing it and being like, man, I, like, I'm like miles away from, home. And so, you know, he takes me in my house. I'm like, yep, that's my house. He's like, well, all right. You know, I thank him and I hop out of the truck. And I walk inside and I can like smell that dinner's cooking. And my brother's like on the couch, you know, watching TV and just the relief that washed over me at like finally being home. And also accompanied by the terrifying realization that nobody was worried about me. Nobody was looking for me.

Nobody knew that I had been lost all day. It wasn't uncommon for me to play in the woods all day. And especially if I was hanging out at my friends, I would hang out at her house until pretty much dark. And then, you know, sometimes I'd call home saying I was having dinner at her house. and sometimes I would just come back home, but it just wasn't unusual for me to be out that late, and just absolutely no one was looking for me.

And I didn't tell anyone because, well, I didn't tell my parents because I was terrified, I was going to get in trouble, which I definitely would have. My parents would have been like, you know, what the hell were you thinking? It was so stupid, which they would be totally right. And then the next day, I went and met up with my friend, to be like, dude, what happened to you?

Like, I got lost and like this thing was following me and I saw this like horrible thing. And she's like, I made it out of the woods in almost immediately. She was like, I turned around and walked the way that I thought I was supposed to walk and I was out in like 15 minutes. She's like, I just figured you did the same. So she wasn't looking for me either. Which, you know, it wasn't a huge, massive portion of woods

that I was lost in. Certainly not anywhere you want to be overnight. And just the fact that no one had even, I don't know, just like no one cared where it was. What do you think happened to you? What do you think that was? I don't know. And I mean, I have a lot of theories.

I mean, after this, like I said, I did not go back to the woods. I was terrified. but I was wildly curious. So, you know, I would rent books from the library about, like, paranormal stuff in the woods, and, you know, I would read, like, stories about the Wendigo. And I'm like, well, it wasn't that. You know, I would read stories about Bigfoot and the Talypo

and all of these, like, you know, creatures and just nothing ever really fit the bill. And then when I was old enough to, you know, look online, and I started looking online and trying to find like similar stuff. And like the closest thing I ever came across was like Irish folklore, like fairy stories. And then something that people call glimmer men, like things that are in the woods, but that are like see through and you can't see them. But they follow people.

And like none of that ever really felt right. And I've never seen anything about like the mass, the, the, the, the, loud thing that I saw. I've never heard a similar story ever. So I don't know. I really don't know what happened. I've thought a lot about what it was that could have possibly been following me. You know, the rational side of my brain wants me to think that, you know, maybe it was an animal. You know, maybe it was a mountain lion. They say, you know, that they've been like extinct in Virginia for a hundred years, but you always hear stories from random hunters. You like swear they saw one. So part of me likes to think, well, you know, maybe it was something like that, which is

horrifying in its own way, because that's a very dangerous situation. But something in my gut tells me that that's just not what it was. I mean, you never hear a mountain lion. No. And that's the thing. You really wouldn't. I mean, if you were being stalked by an animal that's like, I mean, that's their bread and butter. They're like they're good at stalking. You don't hear them for a reason. It's really only people that stomp around in the woods like that or maybe something that wanted me to hear it because it was so loud and so distinct. I mean, it just, it had to have been something walking on two feet and it had to have been something that wanted me to hear it. Not even a person walks that heavily through the woods if they're trying

to sneak up on someone. I split up from my friend around probably around one, you know, in the afternoon. It was about an hour after lunch. And whatever this was started following me about 15 minutes later. So from one to like, you know, 7.30, 8 o'clock, that's a really long time for something to be following you through the woods. I mean, that's like, it's like six hours of nonstop following. And it just doesn't make sense. You know, why didn't something happen within that time? It never got closer, it never got further. It just consistently followed for six hours. I mean, that's just really bizarre.

I can't really explain it. And this isn't something that dawned on me until way later, but around where I got lost was the site of like a very famous battle called Bloody Angle. It was a Civil War battle, just known for being. particularly gruesome. And this whole area was like really fraught during the Civil War. There were tons of battles that happened around here.

We used to play in trenches in the backyard. We would lay down and shoot baby guns in them. So maybe that has something to do with it as well. Like maybe the energy from so much turmoil and pain and injury and bloodshed. I mean, maybe that kind of gets trapped in these places and just causes bizarre shit to happen. That could also, yeah, be a distaste possibility. It absolutely truly horrified me, like, to the core of my being so much

that I did not go back in the woods ever. And if I did, it was in my backyard. And if it wasn't my backyard, I actually read this somewhere. And then I ended up, I think I tried it once or twice. But even doing this, I was scared. I would get a ball of yarn and tie it to a tree in my backyard so that I could follow it back and would never get lost again. And even then, I still felt just incredibly uneasy. The woods never felt like a place to play for me ever again.

I never felt comfortable in them. And this continued into adulthood. I didn't go camping until I think I was 22 because I was so afraid of being just like out in the open at night, out in nature at night after this event. And even to this day, like talking about it, thinking about just seeing that thing and like picturing it in the sky and especially hearing the bells or thinking about the bells it like it turns my stomach um it still makes me so scared like i get

sweaty talking about it like my eyes will involuntarily uh just tear up like it still has such a intense fear reaction from me now, even 20 years later. All right. Thank you, Aiden, for sharing that story. Honestly, there was so much in play in this one. It's really hard to categorize. Afterwards, me and Aden looked around on Google Maps quite a bit together to see if there was any churches in the area that had a bell tower. We did not find any.

However, where Aden was lost was actually the site of an extremely bloody battle during the Civil War, known as the Battle of Spotsylvania. This battle had over 32,000 casualties on both sides, and it occurred in a really small area. This was the exact area where Aiden was lost. I mean, she was literally wandering around on top of those battlegrounds. It seems very significant, but also, to my knowledge, it's hard to draw a connection between that and this girl seeing whatever it is that she encountered up in the sky, this purple thing that boomed the Westminster Quarters bell tower chime at her. It's just very weird. I don't know what to make of any of it. I did see that bell towers were important during the Civil War. They were used as a warning called to arms or a way of just telling time, but I don't know. I don't

completely understand it, but I really enjoyed hearing it. Thank you so much once again to Aden and also Felicia for sharing these stories. That brings us to the end of this episode. This episode was called Up in the Sky, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans. This episode was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaefer.

Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer, production help by Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Moor-Curran, Josephina-Fran, and Hillary Shuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld Now for free on the Arborroup. Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or

unexplained, you could send us your story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.