Otherworld - Episode 13: The Lost Necklace

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

A young couple experiences a strange instance of missing time during their freshman year of college. While heading home early to get some rest before a game the next day, these two college athletes decided to stop at a friend's dorm to look for a missing necklace that may have been left there. While on their hands and knees searching for the lost item, something extremely strange occurs. To see photos related to this episode, click here Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter  If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full 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

Hello, Jack. Good morning, doctor. How are you? I'm well. How are you, man? I'm doing pretty good. I'm glad to finally talk to you. That's good to hear, man. I'm sorry about the whole runaround on it. No, no worries. Here, let me find a more quiet place here. Give me one sec here. Yep, no problem.

I'd like to grab some coffee here real quick. Give me a sec. Welcome to Otherworld. This is your host, Jack Wagner. Today's episode is covering a topic that you might find pretty similar to something we've discussed in the show before in an episode. called Over the Fence. It concerns missing time, but it's a little different than what we talked about before. After episode nine came out, a few people reached out

suggesting that maybe Chance hit his head and had some kind of amnesia. That did not make any sense to me for a few different reasons, but the most obvious one is that I've been hit in the head many times. I've been knocked unconscious, and let me tell you, first-hand experience, when that happens, you wake up

and you're very aware that something happens. to you. But because today's episode concerns a similar topic, I thought that maybe it would be best to bring on an expert who knows quite a bit about amnesia and ask them some questions about what it is, how it works, what type of trauma would be required to cause such extreme cases of amnesia, and if it makes any sense as an explanation for what happened to these people. So you're about to meet that person right now. I'm Dr. Galal Seid, and I am a fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. I had a previous focus on functional neurosurgery in my training, and I am currently focused on complex spine surgery. I am a neurosurgeon by training.

That's exactly why I wanted to talk to you today. It's also made it very difficult to get you on the phone because you've been doing surgeries all week. Yeah, we're a busy bunch for sure. Well, I'm glad we made it happen because I want to talk to you today about something you know quite a bit about amnesia. I've had an episode already of a person who has a huge gap of time amongst other strange things that they can't account for. Today's episode concerns the same topic, and I've actually had quite a few people reach out with some very strange stories involving this. And a very popular thing that people like to jump to to explain this away as amnesia, to become this kind of like catch-all explanation for anything paranormal that involves missing periods of time. So what type of trauma and how severe would it have to be to cause extreme amnesia? That's a great question, Jack.

So I think most of what we know about amnesia. So to preface this, you know, most of my training is focused on the idea of brain injury, essentially, and what that leads to in amnesia. It involves the structures of the brain that include the limbic system. So that would be the hippocampus, singular, and the areas in the deep brain, essentially. injuries to these areas typically have to be bilateral to lead to forms of amnesia. Things like antaragrade and retrograde amnesia usually involve bilateral injuries these areas. Really the best description I've seen so far and most recently is in a 2019 paper in Nature Communications

that describes 53 lesions that were combined together to describe pretty effectively where in the brain you'd need to have injuries to cause not only amnesia, but also, if you will, memory enhancement or anti-amnesia. And these are usually for episodic memory, for short-term memory. So I feel that we've gotten to a point now. We have a pretty decent understanding of which areas of the brain are most responsible for memory. And unfortunately, it seems to be a relatively large network, so you can't really pinpoint it to one place in particular.

But if you were, it would be an area called the Subiculum. which is part of the hippocampus and an area called the enterrinal cortex. So this is the interaction between the cortex of the brain and the deep brain, which is the hippocampus that play a large role in memory. So is there a dumb guy version of that you could tell me really quick? Yeah. No, I can simplify, sure. Like how hard does somebody have to get whacked in the head to forget 10 hours of their life?

You know, that's, so that's the hard part of that question, right? because typically and traditionally it's a pretty big injury. It involves having to remove two areas of the deep brain. But I think more recently we've seen that in this 2019 paper, there are sometimes very specific places you can impact in the brain that can affect episodic memory. And typically, though, it does need to involve two sides of the brain. So it's generally not a, it's more of a general,

like more of a problem. the whole system, not just a problem with one specific location. Oh, so it'd have to hit two sides of the brain? Typically, to involve some, to create some kind of amnesia. I mean, there's a whole other section of you can hitting one side of the brain, but those are much more rare, but it's possible. So is there any world where somebody would get amnesia when they're just walking down the street or on a trail, just doing nothing? Yeah, there are a lot of reasons why that would happen, but most of those reasons are going to be denial of blood, so we'd say vascular issues,

and they don't have to be for long periods of time, or they can be involved in aberrant circuits, kind of like mini-seizures, if you will, and it could also come from underlying disease, so that lead to a seizure or lead to a vascular issue. But you could be walking down the trail, and it's possible. So it sounds like rare but possible. That being said,

if any of those things happen to a person, when they came to, they would probably notice some kind of side effects, right? Pain, confusion. I'm sure there's side effects. It wouldn't be like nothing, right? Yeah, if there is trauma, they're definitely going to notice that. If they had a true stroke and not just a transient, ischemic attack, what we call TIA, they would most likely recognize that. Most TIAs you would recognize too. And when people do get this, like, what are they forgetting? What is the experience of it? Is it just like, hey, how do it? I get in this room, like, what was I doing, forgetting somebody's name, or is it entire gaps of time? Like, I have stories of people with huge hours of unaccounted for time. Is that normal? Like,

what is the common amnesia experience? Yeah, I think that they'll, they would usually forget an episode of time that's on the scale of seconds to minutes, essentially. Typically, you know, longer than minutes, it kind of enters that field of, you know, is there underlying structural disease or is there underlying issues with the circuitry of the brain that lead to states called disassociative fugues and these types of

there are there are stories out there of people losing their identity and losing who they are for months at a time and these that starts to get into the world of very, at least to me, the very interesting and the kind of unexplained. I think there's a lot written about it

and I think you know a lot of the way we know these diseases is by understanding injuries to the brain. And I don't know of an injury or an area of the brain or a group of areas of the brain that if they're not working, would lead to a fugitive state. I don't think we conclusively understand that from the perspective of brain structure. So it sounds like this is pretty uncommon for somebody to have hours of time they cannot account for. For that length of time, hours, I would say it's relatively uncommon.

I don't have an explanation, like an acute injury that would lead to an amnesia state for hours, and then everything's back to normal. Well, Dr. Guell, I just want to say a completely hypothetical situation that I'm totally making up has nothing to do with this episode. If I were to tell you that, say, I was crawling around in the ground one night, regular night, and suddenly it flashed forward into the future many hours later, and I have no idea how I got there, no explanation whatsoever. would you say? I would, uh, my first thought would be, uh, I hope everything's okay, obviously. Uh, and really that kind of a time frame, I, I would go, I would, I would recommend you go get checked out by a physician. That amount of time concerns me that something, um, it's had something to do with toxicology or something poisonous or something that, that, uh, uh, you may have ingested or inhaled that prevented your brain from forming new memories during that time period.

No different than what we call milk of amnesia and anesthesia, which is propofal, that induces that state very reliably, obviously, for surgeons. So we know how to cause it with medications, but a jump cut in time, I don't, it's hard for me to pinpoint answers to why that happens. And so if I woke up from that and I had no side effects, I felt completely normal. And let's say even hypothetically, I went and took a drug test after and passed. No trace of any kind of drug or toxin in my system. That would be pretty unusual, wouldn't it?

This is all hypothetical, of course. Yeah, something relatively unusual for sure. All right. Well, thank you so much for talking to me, Dr. Guell. I think I might have some audio files to send to you. you if you're down to listen to them. And then maybe me and you could talk again later on in the future. Yeah, that sounds good. All right, everybody, let's get this episode started. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This is episode 13. The title is The Lost Necklace, and you're listening to Otherworld.

My name is Ashley, and this experience happened to me when I was a freshman in college. I was a soccer player on the soccer team at the University of Northern Colorado, which is in Greeley, so pretty close to the Colorado State University, about 30 minutes away from there. But it is more of a farm town up there. I think that it gets the reputation in Colorado of being kind of more of a farm town and not as big of a presence as CSU or University of Colorado. But I was, like I said, freshman in college and a soccer player on the D1 soccer team up there. I joined the team pretty late about two weeks before school was actually supposed to start.

So for that reason, I was not considered kind of a starter on the team, and I did not travel with the team. And I was dating and started dating my boyfriend at the time who was also a freshman in college, and he was on the football team. Typically, we spent a lot of time with the athletes being in the sports programs up there just because we had such crazy schedules. Both of us were waking up very early, doing weightlifting, getting to the dining hall, the moment it opened and getting breakfast out of the way, finishing all of our classes before lunchtime, heading to a practice, heading to study hall. So with those similar crazy schedules, it worked out nicely to date somebody in that same kind of routine. So his name was Chris. He was on the football team, and we hit it off right off the bat. We were very social, hung out with a lot of the other

athletes and just a lot of other people on campus as well. And with our schedules being so busy, we definitely weren't the type of people that were out every single night. But when we did have the opportunity, we would go out with friends. But with not being on the travel team, I was able to have more of a social life than some of my other teammates who were required to go out of state. And he, the same football team, not much time to party, but we did partake in it when our schedule is allowed for it. But this evening was not one of those nights. So on this particular evening, my teammates were traveling and he had a football game early the next morning. So we were not in our typical party mindset. We weren't ready to go out and get wild. We weren't super energetic. We met up with some teammates. And I don't remember if this was because they kind of were expecting us to go or what the reasoning was behind it. But we were not planning on staying out long, which we didn't. So normally we would go out or go to somebody's dorm or a house. before we'd walk to one of these parties, and we would pregame, and we did not do that this time

around. And I don't know, going into the night, it wasn't like I was super excited to go there, and I don't think he was either. When you have in the back of your mind that you have obligations the next morning, you're not as energetic as you would be knowing that you have nothing going on the next day. So we met up with his teammates at the dorms, and we walked over to a house party, and in Greeley, house parties were really the only thing that you could do on the weekends unless you were 21 and you went to the few bars that we have in town. So we'd meet up. Typically, we'd pregame and then we'd walk to these house parties with our own alcohol. So typically it'd be some beers or a bottle of hard liquor or a mad dog 2020, I think it's what it was called. It's, I don't know, it's gross. But we walked to

this party, no pre-gaming involved. And I think his teammates were a little bit more excited and enthusiastic than we were. But inside these parties, the way that the house parties in Greeley were typically laid out is as many people packed into it the house as possible. And then a lot of people kind of loitering out in the back or the front patio areas. So we didn't show up to the party, didn't step foot inside, didn't go with them when they went inside the house. We were just outside near the back patio. For me, I wasn't super thrilled to be there just because it was a lot of football players. None of my teammates were in town. Like I said, they were all traveling for a soccer game. So I didn't have too many people to talk to aside from my boyfriend at the time.

So we were kind of just standing out back and talking to people here and there that we recognized from his football team. I do remember that we were basically, there were some bushes on one side and then another house on the other side. And yeah, nothing crazy stood out to me about this party. It was just kind of a typical party. We were standing in the back and enjoying our work. one beer. And I honestly think that we were probably only there for 30 minutes to 45 minutes. It was a very short visit to this party. And like I said, brought our own alcohol in a backpack. And we each only had one beer. So we cracked them open ourselves, had the beer. And right after that, pretty much after we finished each one of our single drinks that we had, we wandered back to

the dorms. And we did not go straight back to my dorm or his dorm because I had left a pair of shoes at my teammates dorm. And they lived in the nicer dorm, which was, I think, two to three years old at the time. It was a brand new dorm. There were two of them. There was North Hall and South Hall. And they were in North Hall. And the layout of the dorm was essentially two bedrooms and a shared area between four people. And because I joined the soccer team so late, I was not placed with the rest of the soccer players or the rest of my teammates. I was actually in a different dorm. And I lived with people that I didn't have many shared interests with. I did not spend much, if any, time with them. So I spent a lot of time in my teammates' dorm. So I did leave a pair of shoes in their dorm

that I wanted to pick up before we headed to his dorm and called it night. So we headed to their dorm and they essentially, because this was such a nice new dorm, had a code to get into the building and to get into the individual dorm itself. So they were all on the travel team. They're all traveling. We wanted to stop at the dorm, pick up this pair of shoes, and then head back to his place for the evening. So we get there and grab the shoes. And before we headed out, he said, you know, last time I was here, which I believe was a couple weeks prior, I think that I left my necklace here. So before we go, let's try to find that. And we both remember that it would have been in my teammate, Katie, her room, which was to the left when you came into that particular unit. So the last

thing that we both remembered was crawling around on our hands and knees looking for this necklace, and then that's when it happened. Just like that, it was like a change of scenes. I woke up or came to whatever you want to call it and looked over to my left and he is laying on his back, arms crossed like a mummy, and I am laying the exact same way. It was like zero time had passed. I don't know I don't know the best way to explain it, but we were not tired. We did not sleep. We were not rested. We basically had just changed scenes. We were the last thing that we both recalled was crawling around and then come to and we're laying on our backs like mummies. So the even weirder part, aside from us both waking up in the same exact position, which I should preface, I have never slept on my back. I've always been a stomach sleeper. I sleep on my stomach with one arm above my head, one on my side, and my face turned to the side.

I never, ever sleep on my back, let alone with my arms crossed like that. So that was aside from literally moving from being on the floor to being on my back like a mummy and not knowing what the hell is going on, the weirder thing is that when we checked the time, multiple hours had passed. So I believe that we were crawling around on the floor, probably around midnight. and probably earlier, actually. And when we checked the phone, I believe it was six or seven o'clock in the morning.

And we did not sleep. We did not sleep. We didn't lose any... In our minds, when we had woken up on the bed, it was literally one second later. So looking at the clock and realizing that multiple hours had passed was the second crazy alarming piece of this all.

So, yeah. This wasn't a case of me, waking up and seeing him next to me and like poking him or waking him up. Our eyes opened at the same time. We looked at each other at the same time. He shot out of bed and started pacing around first thing. So he paced around a little bit in the main area and was just saying, what the fuck, what the fuck, what just happened?

And he went into the main area and then was just sitting on the couch. It took me a second to try to figure out what was going on. Like my first reaction when this all happened was obviously what's happening. and then immediately my brain started going to like what could have happened here. Like, let's try to realistically think about what just happened because there's not really a great explanation as to what could have happened. But like I said, this wasn't a case of one of us waking up and waking the other up. We looked at each other and immediately knew that whatever just happened wasn't normal.

To us, no time had passed. It was essentially like a change of scenes in a movie where there is a character somewhere and then in a split second there's somewhere else doing something else. So we weren't tired. Like we weren't about to pass out when we were looking for this necklace. We were going to do this and then head back to his dorm. And then next thing we literally the next thing that we knew, we were arms crossed like mummies coming to at the exact same time.

And yeah, when I wake up, I'm not somebody that's a morning person. I'm not somebody that's full of energy first thing in the morning. I typically snooze my alarm at least seven times. I have like two alarms on my phone set at least every single morning. That's even if I'm getting up at 7 a.m. on a school morning, I'm not a student. But on a school morning on Monday through Friday, it's still, I'm not a morning person. I don't just shoot up out of bed. So this was all extremely abnormal.

You're in like a random person's room, right? Exactly. Yeah. So my teammates that shared this dorm, there were two in the bedroom that this happened in, and then there were two that shared the common area and the main dorm area with those two girls. All four of those girls were out of state traveling for a soccer game. And I was the only person that had their door code to get in. And I, yeah, there was nobody else there.

They had left for the game earlier that morning. So they were out of the state by far at that time. And also, I mean, it's not like, you guys wouldn't have spent the night there normally, right? No, absolutely not. And I, like I said, I spent a lot of time in their dorm, but I didn't sleep over there. I had my own bed in my own dorm that was a three-minute walk away. And he had his own dorm, which was probably a six-minute walk away. So our plan was to grab my shoes, head to his dorm, and stay there.

And then, yeah, if we weren't staying at his dorm ever, then we'd stay at mine. but no, we would never spend the night at somebody else's dorm that didn't belong to us. So what was Heath saying and what were you saying? Like, walk me through that, like those conversations and what was going through your head? I mean, have you ever been in a situation where it's just pure shock? I've been, this is probably the only, one of the only situations in my lifetime where I kind of was at a loss for words. My mind was basically just running crazy, but he was a little bit more vocal. he woke up and was like, what the fuck, what the fuck.

And he was pacing back and forth immediately. So he shot out of bed, just kept repeating what the fuck, what happened. And I pretty much was just sitting on the edge of the bed silent, trying to piece things together in my head and trying to make sense of it all. After a couple minutes of me sitting in the room, I went out to join him in the main area, which he was sitting on the couch in the main area, just kind of hands over face in that position where you're just also trying to make sense set of things. You could tell just based on his body language and the things that he was saying

that he was equally as in shock and in panic mode as I was. But the way that we approached it was different. My mind's running crazy. I'm just kind of locked up silent. And while he's in the other room, hands over face or pacing back and forth, I am sitting on the edge of the bed trying to make sense of it, like I said. So for some reason, the first thing, the first thing, the first thing, thing that I did was start checking my body. So I started checking my body, like, I think I had seen a movie where something like this had happened, like a long time ago. And this sounds corny, but in the movie, I think it was like some sort of alien movie, but they had some sort of like insert behind their ear. So for some reason, I was checking behind my ears, like checking my head,

checking all over my body for scrapes or any sort of like incision that I could find. And to this day, that's still so weird to me that that was like the first thing that I did. And I still don't really know why. But I wasn't able to find much of anything on my body. I wasn't sore anywhere. I couldn't find any bumps or bruises. I couldn't find anything. I didn't feel physically off in any way, which just made it even scarier. You know, you'd think that if this was somebody else's doing, if somebody came in or did this to us, that I'd be able to find something on my body. But, Nothing. I couldn't find a thing. So I went out to join him and we both just kept saying what happened, like what? And we obviously talked about what's the last thing you remember and it was the same.

It was crawling around on hands and knees. And then we like cleared up right there. Like, and then what happened? And it's like, then I woke up right next to you. So it was not one of us remembering something differently. It was not one of us with more recollection of the time missing. It was the exact same. kind of jump cut in time. What were you wearing when you woke up? I was fully clothed. I was still wearing all my clothes. I was still wearing my shoes. So I wasn't wearing anything differently. I wasn't naked. I was the exact same way that I was dressed when I was crawling around on my hands and knees. And he was as well.

Shoes and everything. Shoes and all. The shoes that I came to grab from the dorm, actually. Is Chris a big guy? Like, I can't imagine it makes sense that you would even accidentally fall asleep in a bed like this. You guys are probably, I mean, I imagine he's a big dude. Yeah, he is 6-4. I couldn't tell you how much he weighs, but he was on the football team, so he's a big guy. And I am 5, 6-5-5 and a soccer player, so pretty muscular. And these beds are typical dorm beds. They're twin beds, very small. I mean, sleeping on an average night was pretty crammed with the two of us. And, I mean, being 6-4 in a twin bed and a dorm. His feet, I feel like, would hang off the end of the bed. But the way that they had their dorm set up in their bedroom, which some students would do, some would leave them shorter.

They had it raised up. So these were your standard, like, wooden college twin beds that had the ability to kind of raise up taller. So, I mean, thinking about somebody or something trying to lift a 6-4 dude on a football team up onto this elevated bed is just, insanely hard for me to justify in my head. Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that. Like, if you guys were inhibited in some way, it would be hard to get up there. Can you walk me through what happened again, like right when you woke up? He's in the main room and we're just basically, like, when two people are in shock and they're just trying to figure out what's going on, the dialogue is pretty limited. Like, what happened? What's going on? What do you remember? And then from there,

Like, I think your mind is pretty much still just in, I don't know, fight or flight mode. You're trying to figure out what's going on, but you can't really put that into words very much. I would say that we left, obviously, very shaken up. We were going to walk back to his dorm now that it's morning time and now that this crazy experience has happened to us, we're going to walk back to his dorm before his football game,

which is in a few hours. And we, I would assume, would have wanted to get some more sleep, but we're just, we're in shock for the next several hours before he actually has to go to his football game. I remember we finally, after a couple of hours, we're starting to talk about just different things that this could have been. And most of these things are not normal explanations.

We worked through the typical explanations pretty early on, which included like, did we get roofied? Was there something in our drinks? and every single one of the basic explanations that you could think of, we had a counter for it and we like basically could exclude those. So obviously first assumption or first thing that we could think of is, did somebody come in and do this to us? And obviously the answer to that is my,

everyone that lives in this dorm is not here. If they were in town, if they were in the state, there's no way that they would be able to lift us onto this bed. Does anybody else have the code to this? storm, which was no. I was the only teammate that had the code to that dorm. And one thing that I wish that I would have done is talk to the, I don't know, the RA or the dorm people to see if they did have any sort of security cameras set up in the hallways. I'm not sure if they did, but that's one thing I wish I would have done. But aside from that, we discussed obviously like alcohol. So we're at a party.

obviously there's drinking going on. Could we have been roofied? And then obviously I explained to you earlier, but we brought our own drinks. We didn't have more than one and we opened it ourselves. Like, this was an unopened beer. So unless that beer was roofied while in a factory, there's just zero chance that that could have been the explanation. And also, we were fine walking back to the dorms. We were fine when we were looking for the necklace. We were not impaired at all. we were totally fine. And you woke up feeling fine. Woke up feeling fine.

No headache, no hangover, no fatigue, nothing. Like, we felt totally normal. When you guys were trying to figure it out, like, was there anything that you kind of considered as like, oh, maybe this happened to us, even if you eliminated it? Like, what were those things? Drugs, like people ask if there's any room for drugs.

No, we were both, I mean, at least he was. They didn't take drug testing as seriously on the soccer side, but he was drug tested and there was zero percent chance we weren't offered anything. We didn't take anything. We didn't, yeah, there was, I mean, that's just, I don't even know if we want to include that. We didn't do drugs. I mean, also, there's not a drug that does that. If there is, please email me because I want to use it for flights.

Yeah, exactly. But no, I mean, like, I would think that if there was anything, that was somehow ingested by either one of us that we would have felt differently walking home or, like, might not have even made it home. And, yeah, if there is a drug that makes two people lose five hours of time and just wake up feeling totally normal and, like, no time had passed, I think that that's, yeah, something that could be pretty popular. Is there anything else that ran through your head?

I mean, and then where did your mind go after that? Like, where'd your gut go? So, I mean, even before I rationalized as much as possible and came up with realistic explanations for this, for some reason, my mind went to, I was just taken somewhere and put back. Whether that's by like aliens or, I don't know, ghosts or whatever the case, like I felt like I had just been removed from a situation and then just put back. And obviously put back pretty carefully because you're laying in mummy position, which is not a typical way for anybody to lay. Maybe it is, maybe it's not, but I've never heard of anybody sleeping like that. But literally the first thing, like I said, when I woke up or came to whatever you want to call it, was checking my body. And I still think that that was like, that was my first gut reaction or first instinct was to check my body, which I think is still so eerie to this day.

Because I didn't even think about it. I just started doing it. So that is super eerie to me to this day to even talk about. But gut reaction when I first came to was where was I just taken? And how did I get back here and like what time is it? That after I kind of had that initial reaction, that's when I started to try to rationalize it. Like, okay, this is crazy. There's got to be some sort of explanation for this.

And I mean, to be honest with you, this is why I don't talk to many people about this story. It's just because everybody tries to rationalize it and say like, oh, you, you guys were roofied, oh, you drank too much. And that's not the case at all. And I honestly think to this day that there was some sort of paranormal activity or some sort of paranormal, something paranormal happening, whether that's like being abducted or, I don't know, ghosts. But even like talking about the ghost part of it, if you believe in that stuff, this was a

brand new dorm. This was built like two or three years before this experience happened. This wasn't some old dorm that could have a history of, like, deaths in it or whatever the case. This was a brand new dorm building. So I don't even think that I think that that's a possibility either just because it was so new. But who knows? You say that there was no gap, right? It was a flash.

It was there was zero gap. Was there black? No. It was like a change of scene. Like, we're crawling around and then look over and we're on the. the bed, arms crossed, like that. There was no, like, sometimes when people talk about, like, missing time, they say that it went black, but there wasn't missing time for us. It was just a change of where we were physically located and what we were physically doing. Like, mentally, our, my brain

didn't turn off, and neither did his. And that's why when we woke up or came to in another place in that same room, it was so alarming because you're looking at one thing and then you're looking at the next and no time has passed. Your mind didn't go blank. Your vision didn't go dark. You just physically and mentally were moved. What do you up to now in life? What is your life like now and how does this experience affect the way you see the world? Yeah. So like you said, I feel like I'm a pretty average person. I am now 29, will be 30 in February, but I manage partnerships for a software company and I live near Denver. I think I'm a pretty average person. I have a French bulldog and a boyfriend with a Labradoodle. I would say that this used to impact me a lot more and then ultimately

you have to make the decision to either let something like this go or it will probably end up consuming you, consuming you mentally. So I remember years, I remember years, like the first couple years after this happened, I found myself thinking about it pretty frequently. I know that when we first had this experience in college, us being pretty social, wanted to talk about it with our friends and talk about it with teammates. And pretty quickly found out that all that people wanted to do when we told this story was to kind of rationalize it by saying, you guys were just drunk, this is stupid. So when you tell your story to somebody who, doesn't take it very seriously and tries to poke holes in it, it's just kind of not worthwhile.

And then ultimately, I think that we both let it bother us to the point where we couldn't figure it out. So we decided to just not talk about it because it was starting to consume us. So hop to present day, I think that the way that I think about this whole experience, obviously talking about it still gives me the chills and it'll never be less scary or less weird. as many years go by as I do. But I've come to kind of the mental realization that I will never actually know what happens. Like, that'd be pretty cool if on my deathbed I could figure out what happened. But I, uh, you, you kind of have to mentally just make the decision to say, you know, it was a weird experience. It was crazy. And I'll leave it at that. But like, there's no,

there's zero percent chance that I will ever know for 100 percent fact that this is what happen to me. It's just one of those things that you have to come to terms with that you're not going to have answers. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back. This is Chris. Hey, Chris. It's Jack from Motherworld. Hey, how's it going? Good. Is this a good time to talk? Yeah, I got about 30 minutes in the car. Um, first of all, do you mind if I record this? No, that's fine. So how's it going? Nice to meet you. Good. Just, uh, working, just driving down to, uh, Trinidad, Colorado right now. I own a commercial roofing business and then energy as well, energy development where we develop microgrids using renewable technology,

energy storage, like graphene battery supercapacitors. So that's a project we have going on down in Trinidad right now. So I heard Ashley's full story yesterday. I wanted to talk to you to just basically hear your side of things if you don't mind telling me because I want to, I mean, it's amazing to have a second witness, but also I just wanted to see if you guys remember it the same way. Yeah, and just a disclaimer. I know Ashley's probably a little more detailed and has a better memory than me. I'll give her that. From what I remember, it was, say it would have been like October. I think it was a Friday night, and we were, we had a, we had a football game. I was a red shirt freshman. And so we'd be up and try like, like,

7.38 in the morning, the redshirt freshman always had to be there a little bit earlier, getting things ready to go for the day. And so we went out probably 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, just hung out with some buddies, some friends. And then I remember, I don't think I drank really at all. I don't think we really drink. If we did, it would have been more than like one beer. So I just remember we were walking back to Ashley's dorm, I want to say, or it could have been my dorm but I don't know which one we're going towards but I've been for the weekend

before I lost this cross-pendant necklace that I had been missing for like a little over a week and the last time I had it was in her teammate's dorms I guess her roommate said that it was on last time she saw she was on her desk or something and it was a yeah it was one I had

for like a few years and I had a little cool little diamond in the middle of it just an important piece to me and so I We were just walking by that dorm. So we decided to go up and check it out. I think they were traveling. So none of her roommates were there.

I remember, like, me in having dialogue being like, because I was kind of upset. I was just like, where do you think this thing could be? Do you think this roommate could have taken it? I remember, like, maybe accusing her roommate of stealing this or something and doing this or that with it. And the last thing I really remember was both of us in that room. and I was looking kind of below the desk where they thought it was.

And then that was literally the last thing. I was like, I had the chair pulled out and I was pretty much underneath the desk looking for it. And then it just skipped. After I just like remember waking up. And I was on the inside of Ash, like the closer to the wall on the, on the like a dorm bed and I just woke up super super confused like I wish I knew what was it I still made it to our game day stuff but walked out to the couch and just like just tried to just sat there for a few minutes just trying to think on what the hell happened

we were both just kind of like what the eff it was it was kind of like a little bit of silence because we were both kind of just like bamboozled. I had no idea of why we got to where we were that morning, both on this like bed, which we would never ever sleep on that bed either. The roommate who does sleep in that bed was like, for lack of better words, kind of grussed us out. So for one thing, I never would have even touched that thing.

I don't really want to get into the details of it, but yeah, she just could use their imagination. It's not a bed I would ever sleep in. We talked about it and neither of us could figure out what happened or how we got to where we were on that bed and then just woke up like what was probably about 10 hours later and had no explanation on it. You're using the phrase woke up, but did you think you went to sleep or like how did your brain perceive the transition of time? There was no, like there was, it was in my, it was just like a blip. Like there was just like, it was just like skipped to, I wouldn't even say I woke up because I wasn't even like tired. I was like my eyes open and I just like wake up panicked from what I remember.

I just like woke up and I was just like looked around and I was fully clothed and Ashley was too. I was like in a perfect, I just remember waking up perfectly like parallel. Just like at least they were on my chest like my hands. I don't know if they were completely crossed, but they were definitely like it wasn't a natural sleeping position. Let's just sit. It's not a position that I usually sleep on my side or on my stomach. I'm not a back sleeper. I mean, usually we were boyfriend going to be like cuddling and stuff,

especially we'd pass out together. It was just fully closed. It's just like pretty much parallel to each other. And on our backs, it was just like a glitch, I guess I could call it. Or it just like, just fast forwarded. It was really strange, man. There was nothing of me ever getting on that bed or, ever even getting back up from looking for that necklace.

That was the last thing I remember was down in that like, so picture where a chair goes under a desk. And then like, I wasn't like, I don't know. I was like, did I get knocked out last night or something? I hit my head on the desk and like my had nothing. My head was fine. Like I had no headache. I just came to.

Like I said, I wasn't tired or anything when I woke up. And so yeah, I wasn't called a blackout. It was just more like a, like a just a straight jump, like a jump in time kind of deal. It went from that to me on that bed.

And then I was just like, well, that was weird. And then I just talked to Ashley. She went through the same thing. She was like, yeah, what the hell happened? Why are we here? She kind of was like panicked about it. She was kind of freaked out. But I don't know.

I just like, what are we going to do? Got to move on. So I just left and then I was that. I did just get going because I was running a little bit late to this, to my football game day. So we talked about a little bit later on, but we did, and we like tried researching stuff on it.

That was pretty much it. We talked about it here and there and kind of just gave up trying to figure out what happened. Never found my necklace. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, have you told people about this before? Yeah. I mean, I've talked about it.

But it's not like, it's just like no explanation for it so i mean i know people would probably like just be skeptical about it and be like oh this happened this happened this and that like probably balked your head probably just lay down for a second and pass down like i know for a fact that would never touch that bed for one and i know for a fact we weren't in any kind of like impaired way and so it's not sometimes it's not really worth that conversation but uh i'm not a superstitious guy at all so I try and just to be as realistic as possible. I think, you know, I don't know, like I hit my head or something,

and then I just, I don't know, ended up there. But even then, it just like, it doesn't make sense at all. For both of us to end up in the way we were laying on that bed, fully clothed, just not even under the sheets or anything like that. Nothing makes sense about it. So, I don't know. Like, the room was perfectly fine when we woke up. There was nothing like out of place or destroyed or anything like that.

So it was just me. That's the other thing is that it happened to Ashley too at the same exact time. So it's just like that's the big mystery. And that's what really freaks me out. Ashley wasn't there to do that, to go through that entire thing with me and have the exact same account with me. I would have thought that like, shit, did I get a concussion on football this week? Did I like, did I, like, am I experienced of CTE or what?

Did I just have a, like, my brain just mess up? but for both of us to happen at the exact same time, it says a little different story, for sure. I guess something paranormal could probably be the only explanation for it, but what that exactly is I would not be able to speak to because I'm just not that versed on paranormal stuff, I guess. You know what I thought of too? Like you work in energy, right?

Do you work in, like, gas at all, or is it all electric? Some of us, some stuff that I do is on oil fields, oil and gas fields. I was just going to ask if you knew anything about gas leaks or anything, because I don't even think that could cause it personally, but I wanted to... That was a thought as well. We had some poisoning. What kind of poisoning is that? We wouldn't end up the way we were, I guess.

I think I would probably just pass it out right there, right? I wouldn't have the wits. And I don't know if it would just be centralized to that dorm. It's not a dorm that had its own kitchen or anything like that. It was just like a living room and two bedrooms. in it. So I think there would be other people that would have felt that and felt it. It was a really, that was a really new dorm as well as probably, it was like the newest dorms on campus, the newest nicest ones. We were on like the sixth floor. So I feel like that would have happened to other

people and there would at least been like a alarm that would go off or something. So I don't know. How does this fit in your life? Like what do you do? What did you do with this memory? Nothing. I said I just moved along. I pretty much just like said that happened. And it is what it is. It hasn't happened since, I don't think. It hadn't happened before that. So maybe if it was like a recurring thing, I'd probably want to try and figure out a remedy or really figure out why this is happening or why I'm jumping. Because I mean, that was a full eight to ten hours of my life. That was just like just gone. That happened instantaneously and with no side effects or no nothing to show for it. So once I couldn't figure it,

it out or I come to a conclusion of why or how it happened and I just let it go put it to rest and moved on why why is that would you say whereas like some people would think about it for a long time um I don't know just for the mere fact that it's really busy and I got other things to work on and do and dwell on something that I can't prove and figure out I think Ashley uh she she dwelt she dwelt on it a lot more than I did I move on things a little bit easier. I think it really spook to her, but I was just like,

how you know, that's something that you can't explain have such a big effect on you? I think this happens to a lot of people that they just don't really like me. Like I never would have talked about this to anyone or really brought it up.

But I think a lot of people just like kind of push it in the wayside and it's like it happened. As long as it didn't like put a huge effect on their life, there's not really much reason to dwell on it. They happen a lot more than you. But we probably think, probably know. And what if people want to talk about? Some people are probably embarrassed about it

because people will just kind of throw it in their face, you know. Hello. How's it going? It's good. Dr. Galal. Yes. Or should Dr. Al-Sayed? Yeah, Dr. L. Say, that's fine.

I'm a little getting a little too comfortable over here. I'm sorry. No, no, no. I prefer you to call me G, but Dr. Lsaid works. Oh, Dr. G. Dr. G. Okay. I think that one's already copyrighted.

But, yeah, you can keep going. Okay. So did you have a chance to listen to those audio files I sent you? Yeah. Boy, that is a very unique story. I mean, pretty unsettling what she and her boyfriend went through. I mean, that's a very scary event. It is so weird that that is two people who experience the same event together in that circumstance.

It's very, very, very weird, very, pretty unusual, right? Yeah, I would describe it as extremely unusual, for sure. I mean, I think the fact that it was two people really changes a lot of things. I mean, do you have any hunches or initial instincts? What are your other reactions to this? You know, these kind of situations that involve more than one person, they transgress a few fields. In psychiatry, they would describe it as a foet ad if it's like a shared delusion.

But these two sound to be, you know, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but they don't sound to fit like they fit that profile. In neurosciences, you know, I worry about things like environmental effects like gases, for example, or toxic gases like carbon dioxide of these things, but they tend to have more long-term effects. I worry about electromagnetic waves playing a role or high-frequency ultrasound, but these things are, you know, very rare and expensive equipment and of no need around these areas. So, you know, as a neurosurgeon and as a science, I'm stumped here. This seems pretty unusual.

Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I could possibly think of would be some kind of gas poisoning, which would probably be carbon monoxide. But I did some research and essentially the amount of carbon monoxide it would take to knock a person out like that instantaneously would definitely kill them if they ended up sleeping for 10 hours in the same room with it or even just for like a couple hours. At the very least, they would have side effects when they wake up. in the room with the carbon monoxide leak. Yeah, there'd be more long-term effects to that situation. So I can't really explain it with a gas like radon or carbon monoxide or some of that nature.

It seems to be a very unique situation. And you know what is interesting, like another thing, even if they were in some kind of like disoriented state where they weren't forming memories, you would think that they would pass out on the floor or something or the room would, be messed up, like there'd be some kind of evidence. They wouldn't wake up at the exact same time neatly in this bed that's like six feet off the ground. Fully clothed, too. No. I mean, again, for, you know, there are people that sleepwalk and have these states where they don't, they don't have memory in play, right? Brain's still working. You can still move your body,

but you don't have memory in play. Honestly, I don't have a very good theory when it comes to two people in a room who've had a global transient amnesic state between the two of them that both involve movement and having the same exact profile where they're not injured and there's no injuries and no issues and they just both had a jump cut for 10 hours that seems i don't have an explanation of that at all dude it's such a weird story with those two it's a totally weird story like that that uh that that that is uh you know i don't want to cast doubt on the story itself you know but you're just automatically like did that really happen come on dude you know that kind of thing and that's not good because they've gone through people who go through these types of things

that's what they get all day right so they get exhausted of it and don't want to talk about it again and they start questioning themselves you really don't want to gaslight people who've gone through something scary like that right but at the same time it you know it it demands somebody trying to be rigorous in their mind about the situation and uh i don't have a great explanation for two people in a room, both sharing an event like that, you know. The guy is a football, like, have you ever hung around a football player? They don't want stuff like that happening to them. This is not like something that is fun to share with the guys for a football player. These are pretty straightforward dudes usually. You know what I'm saying? It's not the type

of person. I think they're both invested in having good health and like not having an issue, right? Like, it's like, there really is no reason. You know what I mean? Like, I think they're, they have a pretty, you know, there's, I mean, even her, her, I mean, her story was a little bit, the only time that I was like, wait a second, when she brought up Mad Dog 2020. I was like, why, why are y'all doing that? You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, they weren't drinking it that night. I know, I know, but that was the only flag of like, questionable lifestyle choices as an individual. I mean, I don't think that's questionable at all. I think there's a lot of people out there that grew up drinking Mad Dog 2020,

and some of them even grew up to be successful podcasters that had, you know, a podcast number seven on the Spotify charts recently, maybe. I see that you are either sponsored by the institution that produces Mad Dog 2020 or you have some kind of conflicts of interest with them because you have an incredibly tight emotional attachment to Mad Dog 2020, sir. Look, I'm not going to comment on that, but I guess one final question before I let you go, what do you think of everything that I do on this podcast here with all the paranormal stuff? What do you make of it?

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, the human body and what we do in the biological sciences, it's like reverse engineering a two billion-year-old machine, right? and I think there's a lot out there that we don't understand and it's a noble activity to try and give the world meaning and be able to share that with one another. So, yeah, I applaud your effort and I encourage you to continue. Wow. Well, I certainly will.

And with that being said, that brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Dr. Gilel Al-Syad for joining me and letting me his expertise. This has been episode 13. I'm your host, Jack Wagner, 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 Juice Jackal. Editing and engineering by Theo Schaefer. The artwork for our show is by Coldestack Studios. Once again, this is an independent show, so please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends. If you want to follow us on social media, we're at OtherworldPod on Instagram and Twitter.

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