Otherworld - Episode 145: The Residency

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

When Tim is accepted into an arts residency in rural New York, he’s thrilled to finally have time to focus solely on his paintings. But that opportunity is taken from him when, during one of his first nights, what he initially believes is an intruder appears in his room. This sets off a dark depression in Tim's life and numerous other unexplainable encounters until he is finally offered help by way of a healer. 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 is about a man named Tim. Tim is a professor, as well as a painter, and the story you're about to hear takes place while he is attending an artist residency in upstate New York. If you aren't familiar, an artist residency is a special program that gives artists dedicated time, space, and resources to folks. focus on their work. It's a chance to step away from everyday life, create work in a new environment, and often connect with other artists. This is something that you generally have to apply for

and essentially win. It's usually very competitive and it's a big deal to get a chance to go and do this. There are residences for non-artists as well, but basically it's a time for some to truly focus on their craft and do special work. And it's also a time that would really not be great to have any kind of interruption or distraction,

especially the kind that eventually happened to Tim, as you're about to hear. Tim has lived his entire life as a staunch non-believer and materialist. He is certainly not the first person, the first person of that sort to appear on the show. But I think Tim really clung onto that denial of his own experiences longer than most would. And to make matters worse,

these things were happening to him while he was surrounded by a group of people who were just as skeptical as him that put him in a very difficult position. And that was just the very beginning for Tim. As these experiences continued, and their intensity grew, so did his openness to the possibility that maybe there is more to this world than we fully understand. This episode is called The Residency, and you're listening to Otherworld.

Is this Bobby? Yeah, it's at its core, the science you can't argue with it. 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. I'm going to die. I have a buddle. It's limbs. We're just like wrong.

Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Tim. I am 40 years old and I'm a college professor. I teach people how to paint and draw. I'm also an artist that makes paintings mostly. I grew up a Christian, but I fell away from it probably when I was about 10 or 11. I'd still go to a church with my mom to just to just like make her happy, you know.

And probably since I was about 13, I've been more of like a materialist where kind of what I see in front of me is what I believe in. So I had gotten a text and, you know, call and notification from one of my really good friends. And this is 2022 in August. At that month, he was at a residency

and art residency in upstate New York. And somebody at the residency had fallen out for their spot in September, and they were looking for somebody to replace this person. There was a bunch of studios at this residency, and there was an open room and an open studio so that somebody could go make work for a month at this place. He was trying to find if I was interested in taking over this spot, and I was, and so I went through the motions of getting in touch with this organization and showing

them my work and explaining who I was, and I basically got the spot. The residency was about a mile away from a small town in upstate New York, and it was surrounded by woods. It was a very beautiful area. It was, you know, a small town. I could guess maybe a town of like, you know, a thousand people or something like that. It wasn't uncommon to see wildlife just prancing around the area. We saw a lot of deer when we were out there. It was a very beautiful place. I was excited because I got this really nice studio and this really big bedroom. It was in this kind of older Victorian-era house, with low ceilings and a beautiful porch. There was two different buildings with studios in them.

I was lucky enough to get in the nicer building. The building was two stories. It probably had around 10 to 12 rooms in it. There were, I believe, four residents staying in this building. each person had a studio and their own bathroom and their own place to sleep within the building. And so if you entered my area, you would be entering into a studio, which was probably about 15 by 15 feet. Then you could go into another door, which was a bedroom, which was probably also about 15 by 15 feet. and then it had a bathroom connected to it,

and then behind that was a kitchen, which was for everybody. A lot of people used it, but you could only access the kitchen by walking through my studio, through the bedroom, into the kitchen, or by going outside of the building and entering the kitchen from the outside. The day that the incident happened, it was probably about a week into the residency, and I had been commuting back and forth from New York City to the residency. I was going back every Saturday so I could teach my Saturday classes. And I believe the incident happened on a Monday when I had been back.

The day started off like any other day. I had been there for about a week and we were having, all the residents and I were getting along really, really well. I remember specifically one of them had even told me they were like, oh, we all missed you while you were gone that Saturday, which made me feel nice. Basically, I just spent the whole day painting in the studio, you know, talking with people a little bit. But my mindset while I was there was that I was just there to work. And so what I really wanted to do while I was there is just focus. And nothing like super crazy was going on,

but some of the other residents were, you know, drinking and having a good time, which is totally normal, not to excess or anything like that. But that day, I had been offered a beer, and I had taken a sip of the beer, and I wasn't really drinking at the time. And I was like, you know, I don't really want this. So I remember I'd probably taken two sips out of it and then poured it out. I did not do any drugs that day. I didn't smoke weed. You know, I don't smoke cigarettes. And so the only thing that I had ingested, which could have affected my mind, was two of a beer. Basically, everything was just going completely normal. I had been working in my studio probably until about 9 o'clock. I think I went to bed that night fairly early around 10. And the next thing that I remember is waking up in the middle of the night. And this was probably around 2 o'clock 2 a.m. And I sensed something was not right. The better way I can describe it as I sensed that I wasn't alone in the room.

It was just a feeling that I can describe now, but I probably couldn't have described in the moment. And I sat up out of bed and to my left between the door that led from the kitchen to my studio, there was a space there, and there was a figure that was walking from the door, from the kitchen, towards the door that you would enter into to go into my studio. And I looked at the figure, and I was annoyed because I just assumed it was another resident that didn't want to go outside of the building to enter the kitchen and had come through my studio into my bedroom to then get to the kitchen.

So I sat up out of bed and I said, what are you doing in my room? And I didn't get a response at all. I was just staring at the figure. And what I noticed almost immediately was that the figure was that the figure was walking very slow, almost in a way that seemed very unusual. And as I noticed more and more about it, it was in the shape of a tall, thin man. And that did not describe anybody at the residency, except for me. In that moment, I was flooded with more fear than I have been flooded with in my entire life

because I immediately assumed that this figure in front of me was an intruder. Before I even realized it, a scream was coming up through my three. wrote out of my mouth. And I have never screamed like this in my entire life. It was blood-curdling. Then this figure sort of turned around and faced me. The figure itself was very hard to describe because it was very real in front of me, but it didn't really look like anything I had seen before.

It looked like a black mass, and like there was just a void there. And I could not see inside the figure, but what I could see were its edges. And it's funny that I used the word inside. I don't know if I've ever used that word before to describe it, but it was almost like there was kind of nothing there inside the figure. It was just like a shape and an outline of what looked like a person.

I could reach out and touch this thing if I wanted to. It then, as it faced me, started reaching towards my feet. I never felt it touched the bed, and I never felt it touch my feet. But as it did that, I recoiled my legs into my chest. and it did this very quickly. It then fell over and burst into a ball of orange light. The closest thing I could describe it as is when you're looking at a fire and there is sort of like a pop in the fire of maybe some moisture or something like this

and then some sparks kind of come out of, you know, the wood of the fire. But this was like a large burst of particles just going all over the place. It just sort of burst in front of me. It's very hard to describe. I don't even remember if it illuminated the space. I think I was so confused by what I was seeing that what I picked up on mostly, it looked like a burst of energy that kind of dissipated into all these little pieces and just went into nothing. The thing that really stuck with me about the moment is that there was enough light coming into the room from the outside that I was sure that what I saw,

my eyes were seeing. And I know that's kind of a weird way of describing it. And I know that we have these complex brains and that they can play tricks on us. But to me, it was like unequivocally real what was in front of me. It was so primal the way that my body reacted. The first thing that like a lightning bolt went through my head was, oh my God, I'm about to be murdered. I was flooded so quickly with the most fear I've ever felt in my life. And it was like the closest thing that I can describe it to right now, which doesn't even do it justice,

is like jumping headfirst into a cold plunger and ice bath. The first thing that I found myself doing without even thinking about it was reaching for the light, which was to the left of my bed. it was very, very hard to get the light turned on. My hands and my entire body were shaking uncontrollably. It was surprising just how much my body and my hands were shaking. It was cartoonish. What I remember is the moment that I turned the light on and I looked in my room,

I then screamed again. This one was more conscious. I think I was so frightened. and so alarmed and so confused. When I did that, I was just looking for somebody to hear me. And when I screamed the second time, I sort of like was just in a state of complete confusion and shock in my bed. And I got like a bunch of text messages on my phone. And the other residents and I were on a group chat.

and they were basically like, what is going on? I had gotten a bunch of text messages, and they were like, are you okay? What's going on? And my hands were still shaking, and I had gotten up at that point and was looking around the room. I looked under the bed. I looked in the bathroom. There was nobody there.

And I was just very confused. And there was a guy on the second floor of the building who, we have been getting a long nicely. And I basically like ran up the stairs to the second floor of the building, knocked on his door. He opened it. And he was saying, you know, are you okay? He was actually very comforting in the moment. And we just sat in his studio. But the first thing I wanted to do was just get out of that building. And so what I ended up doing that night was I went to the other building at the residency, which had like a nice little living room in it. and a couch, and I probably got one of the worst nights of sleep that I had ever gotten. I just stayed on the couch in the other building.

I was just sort of like overwhelmed with everything that had happened. I felt not only frightened, but like kind of embarrassed as well. The next morning, we all sit down for breakfast that morning, and everybody is like what happened last night. night. Basically, I kind of told everybody exactly what happened to me. People were like, you know, bringing up sleep paralysis. And I was like, I've had sleep paralysis before. This was not sleep paralysis. I was able to move my body. And I was also, you know, I spoke during this. And they were like, oh, maybe it's a dream. And at the time, I was like, you know, that's possible.

And I remember there was one resident, one in particular, who did not believe what had happened. And I remember one of the residents who was like really, really comforting to me the night beforehand had said something which I just really appreciated. They said, you know, he feels like this happened. Let's just believe him. And that actually meant a lot to me in the moment. And it made me feel less crazy. one of the other residents, which I will call H. After I told the story, she was like, guys, this is really crazy because I was just talking to a good friend of mine on Instagram.

And the friend had been there in August. So I was there in September, and this friend of H had been there. And she says at the breakfast table, she said that it's a good thing. you're not staying in the room that I was staying in because my room was haunted. This happened days beforehand, and it was before any of this event with the thing that I saw had happened. They had had this conversation. I sort of like immediately latched on to it, and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I really wanted to bring what had happened to me or ground it in some type of way,

feel somewhat normal about it. And I remember when, you know, this person H had told me about this, I was like immediately like, can you send me their Instagram? I'd love to talk to them, you know, to hear about what happened. I reached out to this person through Instagram.

What they had told me was that they had never saw anything, but they kept waking up in the middle of the night and they felt like someone or something was in the room with them. It was nice to not feel crazy, basically, like somebody else had maybe experienced something too. But what was really interesting is this person, the next evening, they went to this art fair and then ran into some people who had stayed at the same residency

and then told these people at the art fair what had happened to me. And these people apparently got some weird look on their face and then said, wow, that's wild because somebody else who we were with at the residency experienced a very similar thing. And what they had seen, my understanding is it was a tall, thin man. And instead of being in the room that I was in, this former event that had happened years beforehand had happened upstairs.

Reaching out to this person and then talking to them and understanding that other people had experienced some very strange things in this building, it brought some comfort to the situation that I was in. It made me feel as though I wasn't crazy, basically. The unfortunate thing about this was that before this event, all the residents, and I were getting along great. From that moment with the breakfast on, there was just a lot of tension and, you know,

I think, uncomfortable feelings. And what I would say is it wasn't between everybody. It was basically me and then the rest of the group, with one or two people being very compassionate in between that. I sort of felt like, you know, it really distanced me from the group, unfortunately. The rest of the week, I was not sleeping. sleeping in my room and I could barely work in my art studio.

I only felt comfortable being there during the day and I would leave my door open. It felt like I could escape if I needed to really quickly. The residency was really cool. They gave me a different room to sleep in that wasn't being used. And it was actually like a pretty nice room, but I could not sleep. And I was in, you know, I maybe slept an hour. each day during the day and I could not sleep at night. I was in a terrible mood. I probably, if I could go back and do it over again, I would have left. But unfortunately, I was in a terrible

mood while I was at the rest of the residency. I was completely underslept and I felt very isolated and alone among the other residents. And frankly, I just experienced like one of the most terrifying things I've experienced in my life. You know, I was not my best self. And eventually the other residents and the residency asked me to leave. I think there was just too much tension, weirdness in the air. I think it was about five or six days after it happened. I basically like packed up all my stuff and left.

All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. I drove back to Brooklyn. I was pretty upset about having to leave the residency early, but I just decided I was going to leave it behind me. I had my girlfriend there at the time, who was an amazing person. She did a lot to kind of listen and be supportive of me, which I really appreciated. So, you know, I'm back in Brooklyn, and I slowly started to fall in,

into a very deep depression, and it was sort of unexplainable. I've had depressions in my life before, but this one, it felt really, really heavy, and it felt suffocating and almost like inescapable. I'm just doing my daily thing. I'm teaching, you know, I'm painting in my studio. I'm seeing my friends and kind of telling them about what happened, and my friends are being extremely supportive of me. And what was interesting, when I got back to Brooklyn and to my apartment, I did feel like something had changed. It's hard to describe, but it felt like I had taken

something back with me. I would just be, you know, making food in my kitchen or something like this. And then it would be like the hairs stood up, and I'm feeling it right now, like the hairs would stand up on the back of my neck, and I'd be like, ugh. It feels like there's someone in the room, like something was behind me. And it gave me chills being in my apartment. I at the time was like, I'm just imagining this. This is in my head. It's not anything more than that. And it's not real.

And I'm imagining this because I'm freaked out. About two weeks after I had gotten back from the residency, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I have a small bedroom, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and to my left, the same black figure standing in my room, and it was probably standing about four feet away from me.

I opened my eyes and looked at it, and it ran and disappeared into a corner of my room. I remember I immediately was like, oh my God, what is this thing doing here with me? I was still terrified of what had happened at the residency, and when I saw this thing, in my apartment, I was still incredibly fearful of it. I did not sleep very well the rest of that night, and it was something that I was like, oh God, please let this be my mind playing tricks on me. But once again, it was very real to me.

It was something that even though I saw it in a span of a few seconds, and it was dark in my room, it was very clear that I was not in sleep paralysis, I saw this thing move in my room. The thing that really solidified it as being the same thing that I had seen at the residency was its shape and its feeling. And it's not necessarily because it was a tall, thin man.

It was the fact that it was like a void. It's not black. It was like a void of space. in a human form. And it seemed to have these edges to it, which were mutable. And it sort of seemed like the edges of it moved in this way, which was kind of unexplainable. Almost like there was a space of reality and stuff that I could see. And then once this figure began, there was sort of this space of just like a void.

the edges were sort of this undefinable space. They had a staticy look to them. It was like a void of space. The next day, I was freaked out, but there was a part of me that was denying what I had seen, and I really wanted to believe that it was in my head. Unfortunately, I kind of knew that what I had seen was, was real and I was really, really hoping that I would not have more experiences.

Unfortunately, that is not what happened. I started seeing this thing in my apartment on a inconsistent but fairly regular basis. I would probably see it on the regular about once every month. But sometimes it would be, you know, a few days apart. A lot of times it was very similar. I would wake up and then I would see this figure in my room and it would jump from a place where it was very visible. Once I had woken up, it would then dart underneath my bed or into a corner or outside of the room. sometimes it would appear like it was a little bit smaller,

sometimes it would appear like it was a little bit bigger. But I also think that I saw it crouching sometimes close to me, and that's when it would appear smaller. Then sometimes I would see it farther away, and it would be standing over me, and that's when it appeared to be larger. But it was always this black void, and it was always in a human shape.

I would usually wake up around two or three o'clock in the morning and see it for a couple seconds. It seemed like it would realize that I had woken up and then dart into a corner or sometimes, and this became the regular thing, it would go underneath my bed. It was confusing. It seemed to be in this weird transitional space of where it would move like a person would. in a very nimble way, but then also it did things which were sort of unexplainable. I did not sleep well for months after this experience, and I was sleeping sometimes four hours a night. Occasionally I'd get like a good seven hours of sleep,

but I was very disoriented. And what started happening is while I was in my, apartment, I would start to see things out of the corner of my eye. During the day, there would appear to be something moving in the corner of my vision. I would look and it would be a very quick glimpse of some type of figure and it would move out of the way of my vision. I started to have this intuitive feeling like it was there to thiphon energy off of me. The more distressed I became while all this stuff was going on, seemingly the stronger it became, and the more I sort of felt like it wanted me to be miserable and underslept and in a state of kind of heightened awareness

and in this place of being in fight or flight mode. I was very paranoid in my apartment, and intuitively, it felt like this is what one of its goals was. I felt like pray. I did not know what to do. I kept having these experiences. Occasionally, it would go away for five to six weeks, and then I would see it again.

And throughout this process, I tried saging my apartment. I got into meditation, and I would have experiences with what I thought this thing was in my meditations. I was looking for kind of any way to either if it was just part of my imagination to get rid of it, or if it was something in reality, I would try these things like saging my apartment or asking it to leave, which were sort of like attempts to if this thing was real, or maybe just part of my unconscious to sort of get it away from me.

As I became more comfortable with it, and that's such a strange thing to say, that was when, you know, maybe it would be five or six weeks that I wouldn't see it. And then it was interesting because then when I would see it after five or six weeks, I'd be like, oh my God, I was hoping you had left. But there was still this feeling in my apartment like there was something in there with me, like almost like I had a roommate, just like the worst roommate that you could ever imagine. The thing that finally broke the camel's back, where I was like, this needs to stop.

I am out of my own depth in dealing with this stuff is Christmas of 2024. I was home in New Jersey, visiting my parents. And I had always felt like wherever I was. went that I was still carrying something with me going over, you know, sleeping at a different location, didn't offer a lot of relief. And I was at my parents in New Jersey and it was in between Christmas and New Year's. And I woke up in my childhood. bedroom and opened my eyes and above me was it was a man specifically they were in clothes that were tattered and flowing it looked like a stereotypical ghost the thing that stuck out to me about it was that

i opened my eyes and this thing was floating above me maybe about five or six feet above me very close to the ceiling. And I looked at it for so long, you know, it was probably about eight seconds, which is a long time to be looking at something that is completely unexplainable. I saw the tattered clothes it was wearing and it had like a blue tinge to it and it was very clearly a man. And I remember it was missing its left leg. and as I was looking at it, this one was a little bit alarming because it was so different

than some of the things that I had seen before. The fact that I had been able to just look at it and see the details of its like tattered clothing and the fact that it was missing a leg and the fact that it was, it looked like an actual person. I thought it dissipated in front of me and I was like, wow, that was incredibly real.

My windows in my childhood bedroom, the shades were not down, and there was a lot of light coming into the room. And so it was like so clear to me. And I remember I'd woken up the next morning and I was like, you know what? Any doubt that I had that this stuff was just in my head, it was completely gone. This is very, very odd and all this stuff is real. And if my mind is making this up, it is because there's something that is going on that's either wrong with me or I am actually seeing these things and I really need to address it. After this had happened around Christmas time and New Year's, I was working on a art show. And so I was mainly focused on that, and I was also getting ready for a moitai competition.

And so I was very distracted, but it was in the back of my mind. I was out of my depth, and I really needed to figure out some way of dealing with this, because I just had tried everything that I was comfortable trying. And right around the same time, I was on this dating app, and I had connected. with somebody in New Jersey, they were really into spiritual stuff. And we had just gotten onto it by talking about it. I never told them about my issues with this thing that I kept seeing at night. And I hadn't talked to them in like a couple weeks, but I had their phone number. So I was just, you know, shooting in the dark at that point. I just texted this person. I was like,

hey, I've been having this experience. Do you know of anybody who has dealt with stuff like this? And funny enough, they were like, I know a healer who I have an appointment with in about a month. And this stuff that you're experiencing is way more common that you think. And this person will be able to help you with that. More than likely we'll be able to help you with that. But they're really, they're in very high demand.

And so, like, it's kind of hard to set up an appointment. But I will give you my appointment so that you can take care of this as soon as possible. And so I got in touch with this healer person. Their name is Julie. And I was very happy to get an appointment because the only availability that they had after that was like three months later. I had spoken to them just a little bit over text, and we had this appointment. And I was very skeptical. I at first thought, oh, I will probably have to go to New Jersey because that's where the healer was.

I would have to go to New Jersey, and they'd have to see me in a physical way. That was not the case. What they said was they could do everything that they needed to do over the phone, which to me at first, when I first heard about this, I was like, wow, that seemed like a big red flag. But, you know, I was desperate, and this person came highly recommended from somebody that I, even though I had a very short relationship with them,

you know, I felt like this person was an honest person. So the time came around for me to see them. We spoke on the phone when the appointment time came up, and she was like, okay, So I understand that you are experiencing something, you know, that's very difficult for you. And I kind of told her, I am having this issue. I'm seeing this thing at night. It's been going on for X amount of years.

And I'm not sure what it is and I want to get rid of it. And so she said, okay, I can do this no problem. But it also is going to take a little bit longer than usual. basically her process was that I was to go someplace very comfortable. So I just laid down in my bed and we were going to hang up the phone. And then she was going to, from my understanding, somehow reject herself to where I was and then do things to, you know, cleanse the area around me. And I did not give her. a lot of details. I said very little. And what was interesting about the interaction is that I felt like she didn't need that information either. She didn't really ask me many questions.

It sort of just felt like she was going to rely on her own experience. And so my job in this healing ceremony was basically to lay in bed and just be still and turn on some music while she came to where I was. and then cleansed the area. And so I did that. I think I turned on some Enya, something very easy and relaxing to listen to. And I probably laid there in total a period of about 25 minutes. I was laying down and I was hearing things that were interesting.

I heard some kind of snappy things going on in my room. I heard some like popping. But as I heard these things, 10 minutes had gone by or around 10 minutes. I wasn't looking at the time. But I was like, you know, this is an old building. It could be the building. You know, no big deal. So I continue to lay there.

And I started to have this very interesting sensation where I felt. I felt like my hands and my forearms were getting really, really heavy. Like they were doubled in weight. And there was a part of me too. There was like, oh, I'm laying down, you know, not moving my body very much. So this could be just something that, you know, happens when you're sitting in the same position for a while. But then I had this sensation as though something that was sort of pressing.

into my body, into the center of my body, basically down the front of my rib cage, down into my spinal column, and then being sort of like moved, almost like it wasn't painful, but it felt like somebody was like pressing something through the center of my body, and then like it was moving up through the top of my head. You know, because of this experience, I started meditating. And so I know kind of what it's like to, you know, have these different feelings if you're not moving for a while. But it felt unusual. It felt more physical than other things that I've experienced when I've just been sitting and laying down in a specific spot for a while. And maybe after about 25 minutes, my phone rings.

And it's Julie on the other line. Julie is like, hey, how are you feeling? And I was like, little weird things happened. And I mentioned my forearms, but I very specifically remember I did not mention that feeling of the thing like kind of going through and splitting my body. And I was like, yeah, I know my forearms felt heavy. I feel like pretty normal. And I was like, so, well, like, what's your, you know, like, what's what happened? She went into a lot of detail about what had happened, and I wrote it all down.

Basically, what Julie told me was that she had come into my room, and there was something, and she said that it was not a ghost, and it was something that did not have good intentions. And she mentioned some type of, like, spiritual figure, and she said that her in the spirit, spiritual figure had unattached this thing from me. And the way that they did it was by removing these, and she described them as clips from my arms and from my spine, they removed these clips and these attachments that this thing had attached itself to me and then pulled it out of the top of my head. And there was a couple other things that she said, she said it was really coiled around me and specifically around my spine and my forearms. And I had told her about the forearms, but not about the

spine part. And so that was very, that was very interesting and sort of stuck out to me. And then she mentioned a couple other things, like she removed this mask that I had over my face. And just some things like I didn't totally understand. An interesting thing that she had said was that this thing that was in my room that it attached itself to me was to the left of my bed and in the corner of my room that I had seen it jump into that corner many times. And she said it was there. And she, with the help of this other entity, which was, I guess, benevolent, she had gotten it out of my apartment. But the other thing that she said, which was really interesting, was that there was a portal, some type of portal that was open and it was underneath my bed to the right of me.

And that makes a lot of sense if you understand where I sleep in my bed and where my bed is in my room. And this really stuck out to me because I did not tell her anything about this thing going underneath my bed. And she said that she had closed this portal, that it was like an entrance where other things could possibly like come in and out of. It was very odd hearing all this stuff. Like it made sense to me, but then also like this is not something that you hear almost ever. It was just kind of like an unbelievable thing to hear, but it also made sense. It was a very strange contradiction. I didn't ask a lot of questions. I think I was just mostly like awestruck with what she was telling me. She was like, listen, I want you to get up out of bed and I want you to,

you're going to feel weird and she specifically said, you are going to feel weird because I removed something from inside of your body and there's going to be a space there now. And we sort of need to like readjust your, I don't know how to describe it, like readjust the soul part of your body back into the physical part of your body because it's sort of out of alignment right now. And I was like, oh, okay. And she was like, do you like doing push-ups or jumping jacks? And I was like, yeah, I do them, you know, on a regular basis. And so this is when I had an experience throughout all this stuff, which was kind of undeniable. And so I get up out of bed And as soon as I stand up, I feel like my mind is about three feet back from where my eyes are.

And it was such a strange experience. It was like my head was not inside of my head. But I wasn't viewing myself from the back. But if you've ever disassociated in your body, it was very similar to that. this space between my face and where I felt like my mind and the conscious part of my body was, it felt like it was very small and in the back of my head. And it felt like it was sort of pinpointed back there. And that it had almost felt like pushed and shoved in the back of my head.

And I had this feeling of being very small in the back of my head. And because I felt so small, the distance between myself and the front of my face felt much larger. It was almost like being in a room where, you know, you're in the corner and then you're looking out like a big window in front of you. and I had this incredible tingling sensation throughout the upper part of my body. And it was very, very concentrated on my face. And as I was walking, I go out of my bedroom into my kitchen. And I remember before I left my kitchen, into my living room, I was like, wow, I feel so weird. And I just kept saying that.

I kept saying, wow, I feel really weird. This is very strange. I feel like I'm like almost outside of my body. And so I go in the living room and I'm like, okay, got to do jumping jacks, got to do push-ups. And so I start doing that. And, you know, over a little bit of a period of time, not even three minutes, it starts to feel like that sensation where I'm sort of like not aligned with my body, that starts to go away. The thing that did not go away was this tingling sensation that I had all throughout my

upper torso. And the way that I would describe it is that it felt like not hot and not cold, but a mixture of those things. And like it was this sort of tingley sensation where when you, and part of your arm falls asleep or something like this, maybe you've been sitting in a weird position. It wasn't uncomfortable. It felt actually like relief.

It's like something was being triggered that was good. It was very unusual. And for about 20 minutes afterwards, I just kept saying to myself, wow, I feel really weird right now. And it almost felt like I had had like this new perspective As my face started to feel like it was realigning with my face, I felt like I was seeing things clearly.

I felt like I was actually more in my body and more had a better perspective than I did the hour beforehand. After the cleansing, it was noticeable, very noticeable the difference in my apartment. I haven't seen anything. And I haven't woken up in the middle of the night. It's been about three and a half months since the cleansing. I feel way more comfortable in my apartment.

It no longer feels like there's something here with me. It definitely feels like a weight has been lifted. Occasionally, I get a little bit like my senses kind of go up or the hair stands up on the back of my neck, but it's not the same feeling. It's just sort of like, is this real? Am I safe now? And ultimately, like, I've always come back to the answer. of yes. I am so thankful that I had this meeting with the healer. I'm really thankful it just kind of

all happened, you know, in this really natural way. Even though I had to wait a little while to see the healer, it seemed like it just sort of was serendipitous and happened in this very easy way. And I'm really, I'm very glad that I'm not seeing anything at night anymore. Because now I feel so much more connected to the world around me and the people around me and the things around me. I feel like it's taken a lot of the selfishness and the pressure that kind of comes along with a lot of Western American society. And that's been that that's been like something that's like actually been a huge relief is it's sort of led to like an ego death of mine. You know, I still have an ego, but it's not in control in the same way that it was before.

And it's been actually made my life a lot better. There are a lot of things in our reality that are unexplainable and we do not have the capacity to understand. I would say that there was a reason that this happened. And I like the idea. I don't think it's always true, but I like the idea that we experience things when we're ready to. And I sort of think that this experience, I didn't want to experience it, but now I'm glad I did. Because overall, what the experience led to was actually a lot of growth and a lot of healing.

It got me in touch with a part of myself that I would have not gotten in touch with if the event didn't happen. Most of this place that we call reality, it is not just what we can see, feel, and measure. The experience of having this thing, the attached to me, has really changed the way I think about the world. Thank you so much to Tim for sharing his experience. Not only did I think Tim's experience at the residency sound terrifying and difficult. It's also just unfortunate because residencies like that are often very competitive and hard to get into in the first place. And when you do get it, it's really an opportunity for this small group to focus on doing great work while they're there. so the fact that this apparently haunted room ruined all of that for Tim and caused problems within

this small group is just generally unfortunate all around on top of being completely terrifying. Even though not all of Tim's experiences take place before or after waking up, some of them do, and this episode did make me think back to an earlier episode where I talked about my own experiences with hypnopompic hallucinations. If you're not familiar with that, this is an all-encompassing term for a hallucination that occurs right after you wake up from sleep. There's also a version of this that happens before you go to sleep.

I used to have really bad insomnia in my early 20s and ended up developing this condition. During that, I would wake up, get out of bed, and then have extremely vivid visual hallucinations while being completely awake. It was very crazy for me at the time. I have since learned that apparently I had a rather extreme version of this. By the way, this typically does not happen to just random people out of nowhere.

This was a result of at least a year of sleeping only three to four hours a night. I was not living well. I was also experiencing vertigo during the day. My eyes were twitching all the time, and I was just generally feeling like shit constantly. So when I started experiencing these, I did not think that I was experiencing something paranormal. It was very obvious that something was very wrong with me, and it was probably caused by me sleeping three hours a night for an entire year. Luckily, I have gotten much healthier. This does not happen to me anymore.

And I'm pretty sure I brought this up on the show at first to differentiate between the paranormal and these strange medical things that can happen to you when you're not taking care of your body. However, as time has gone on, and I've talked to more people on the show and learned more, I've realized how mysterious and fascinating that state between wakefulness and sleep really is,

and it's become a lot more complicated for me. As we enter sleep, our body and brain slows down, and our brain can enter a state that is very similar to deep meditation. Many different cultures and religions around the world believe that this state might be a way of accessing alternate planes of existence, a sort of liminal space between the material, and spirit world. This is also a field

that is being scientifically studied more frequently, and there are even some notable figures in history who use this state between sleep and waking life as a creative tool for problem solving. Allegedly, Thomas Edison used to nap

with a steel ball in each hand that would drop to the ground and make a noise causing him to wake up the moment he started drifting into sleep. And he said, that he would often wake up with a solution or breakthrough to whatever problem he was stuck on at the time. And he would find the answer to these things while he was in that state between

sleep and wakefulness. Salvador Dali also intentionally used this state as an inspiration for his artwork. With all of that being said, I initially was quite skeptical myself when it came to experiences that take place near sleep. But as time has gone on, I've realized that there's so much we don't know about consciousness, our brain, and these highly specific states, it can enter what information it may or may not

be able to access during those states. I found it all really interesting, and the more and more I learn about this stuff, the more I realize there are a lot of mysteries surrounding it that hopefully we'll have answers to one day, But essentially, there's a lot we don't know. I think Tim had a similar evolution as me with all of these experiences, and especially with what happened to him at the very end of his story,

with this energy healer that he met on a dating app. I will say that is a very unexpected way for all of this to come to an end. But that being said, sometimes an unconventional problem requires an even more unconventional solution. And in Tim's case, I would say that was very unconventional. However, everything he said about it, I thought was so strange, especially these feelings he was having afterwards and how this energy healer seemed to know what was going on with him,

especially with the physical sensations that were happening to him after this session. I thought all of that was so interesting, and quite frankly, I just like hearing a story about a person who has their views challenged in such a powerful way as they were with Tim in this story, even though what he went through sounded very difficult. With that being said, I'm very happy that things seem to have improved for Tim. I'm glad this is not happening anymore, I hope. And I suppose if it ever starts happening again, at least he has somebody to turn to. who can maybe help them out. Thank you once again to Tim for sharing this story.

This episode was called The Residency, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaefer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man.

The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal. Our artwork is by Coltisack Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you could become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld.

Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, Leah Reese Dennis, Mara Curran, Josephina Francis, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the 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 stories at Stories at otherworldpod.com.