Otherworld - Episode 160: The Runaway

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Tired of being made the subject of abuse and trouble after moving to Utah, Antonio decided to runaway from home. Despite this being a habitual occurrence for him, this night was completely different. As Antonio was hiding from family and the police, he looked up to the sky and saw a large, dark, silent craft taking up the entirety of the sky. Check out our Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode revolves around a guy named Antonio, who grew up kind of bouncing around all over the place, between many different locations and circumstances, sometimes living with his mom, sometimes with his dad, and sometimes on the Navajo Reservation with his grandma. In his teenage years, Antonio found himself getting in trouble a lot, And this made his already tense home life even more difficult. And it was on a night when Antonio found himself in some serious trouble that he ended up seeing something completely unexpected.

This episode is called The Runaway and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science you can't argue. It's not only worried about it is up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. So I'm going to die. I'll go back.

It's limbs. We're just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them ahead. My name is Antonio. I am 37 years old. I currently live in Los Angeles, California. And I work as a designer, specifically in U.X and interaction. And I also DJ on the side as well.

I was born in Utah, and I am quarter now. Navajo, like a quarter like Native American and Spanish, half white. I grew up kind of like all over that area, and I spent a lot of time on the reservation when I was a kid, so I'd always go down to the Navajo Nation. I think part of being mixed-raced is like, you know, you don't really have a step family, and I guess segregation was kind of like a thing,

and a lot of those people from that era were still kind of like young. And so it was just one of those things where it was, kind of weird to be a mixed race kid growing up. And so my white side and Hispanic side really didn't take me in too well. So I always spent a lot of time with the Navajo people. They never asked me about my race or anything or any background.

They just kind of accepted me as family. And so I spent a lot of time with my grandmother speaking Navajo, learning Navajo, keeping up with the traditional ways, with the reservation and my cousins and my family out there. I became very close to them in particular. When I was younger, my mom married a insurance broker out in Los Angeles, and we moved out to Santa Corita, and we got a place out there.

My father had moved to Phoenix, Arizona, around that time. And so it was one of those things where I was kind of like back and forth between two places, and I was kind of far away from the res. But the beautiful thing about living in California was, like, there were so many people from so many different backgrounds that it didn't really matter who you were. you know, it was just like, this is my friend, these are my friends, these are the people over here. Oh, that's cool, like, you know, you're German. Oh, that's cool. Like, you know, you're Dutch or whatever, or like, you're this or that. We never worried about, like, shallow stuff like that. You know what I mean?

It was all just about, like, having fun, playing, you know, that one game with the pole with a ball that goes around. I can't remember what's called, but it was just really nice. And so I always enjoyed my childhood out here. my mom's husband had become like pretty abusive because he wanted like the best out of me. I think he thought like I was like not very well disciplined or something. So he would take it upon himself to kind of like hit me, yell at me, put me down. He took away. I remember he took away like everything out of my room one time where I only had my bed to sleep on and he threw everything in the garbage.

Yeah, I just, I remember collecting cans out of the garbage can when I was a kid to take them into this recycling place down the street from my house. and Santa CREDA and I'd get a little bit of money back and I'd go over to jack in the box and, you know, get the jumbo jack for a dollar. Yeah, it just, it was just kind of like a really surreal thing. I didn't realize how bad it was until I got older, you know. After I graduated elementary school in California, I made the obvious decision to go live with my dad. I thought that would be better. My dad is gay, so he has a boyfriend. It's kind of like one of those things like back in the where it was kind of frowned upon, you know what I mean?

But he was interestingly enough a part of this rodeo association called the IGRA, which is the International Gay Rodeo Association. And so I learned how to ride a horse. I learned how to hurt sheep. I learned how to even break horses. Just being like a little cowboy kid, I guess. You know, my dad had a big truck.

You know, a very masculine man, you know, and you would never know this guy was like into dudes. I mean, it was, you know, because we'd go to the grocery store like women would hit on him and he would always turn them down and stuff and be like oh yeah like I've got somebody you know what I mean I've got a man he was never afraid of being gay it's just how he was you know but his partner he he started kind of getting really aggressive with me kind of again like I started getting like the same kind of abuse and I think like that's like the first time I ran away

was when I was in Arizona I was living out in Glendale with them in an apartment and he He was a wrestling coach, and he had pinned me on the ground and was like contorting my body in a certain way to where I was in a lot of pain. I was really struggling. I was telling him to stop. He had this like really creepy grin on his face. And I hit him as hard as I could. Like I remember just hitting him like right in the stomach. I knocked the wind out of him.

And I was out of that door and I ran into the desert for like, I don't know, like six, seven hours, eight hours or whatever. I came back. My dad really didn't side with me at all. I guess, you know, his partner had told him the story. And I was pretty nervous about it. And so I didn't know what to do. I was like really scared. I called my mom. My mom was living in New Mexico.

She was getting a divorce. And she came from New Mexico all the way over to Arizona to pick me up. She came in the middle of the night. I remember like I called her like that evening. at 3 a.m. or some shit like that. She showed up to the apartment. And my dad was yelling at me, and we didn't talk for like five or six years after that, you know.

And even to this day, like, I'll try to bring that up. Like, hey, like, that guy was, like, terrible to mean. He doesn't necessarily believe it. I don't know. It's just, I just think it's something that he can't process, and I have to kind of, like, accept that. You know what I mean? Because I even talked to my mom about these things, you know,

and I think it's kind of, like, a hard thing for them to come to terms with. So I don't, like, blame them for it because they were never, like, abusive to me. But like, it's like they also did nothing, you know what I mean? So I don't know if that makes sense. But, yeah. So I would go to Utah after New Mexico because my mom was trying to become a teacher out in New Mexico and it wasn't working very well. So she decided to move out to Utah and we were living with my grandmother, who was full Navajo.

Things were really different from me out in Utah. Like I didn't realize, like, I didn't realize, like, I was. I was brown, I think, until I moved back to Utah. And I started experiencing racism in middle school. You know, I would get in trouble with like the human resource officer all the time. He got in trouble too. I went to this middle school called Law Question Your High. He grabbed my shirt, threw me against the locker, and started calling me a spick in front

of like all the kids. One of the kids reported it. He got in trouble for it. He got suspended. The police like have kind of like an idea of who I had. I was and I was just like the odd one out and I would just get in trouble for like nothing like random things just arrested and led into a point where my mom was kind of like very distant, very, you know, not doing anything, getting, you know, randomly upset with me.

I wasn't doing very well in school. I was having a hard time. I was getting bullied. I was like scared to go to school. The only thing I really had was like myself, my thoughts. And I kind of like thought about that time. I ran away into the desert and it kind of felt like a good thing to do. And so I started like, you know, just running away. You know, anytime like I'd get an argument with my mom or anything would happen or like a partner that she was dating would just kind of like be abusive to me or whatever in any manner, I would just be like, okay, I can run. You know, I can get away from here. I can leave. I can go away.

And usually what would happen is like I would run away. The cops would come, you know, to the house, like after they call them at a certain amount. of time and I'd be gone for like one, two days, three days, five days. And so, yeah, I was, where'd you go? Oh, man. I used to go. Okay, so the first thing I would do is I would go to the laundromat. I would get all the change that people would drop underneath there are all the quarters and everything. I would go stay with a friend or something, get some food, some, some stuff to eat, take the bus and just ride around town, not go to school, you know, just, there was a bus route in the Audubman called the 612, pretty much just goes all over the

Ralsatch Front. I would go out to Salt Lake City. I'd go to like the hip hop record store and kind of like just I would look at all the records and there was a virgin music store out there. They put in after the Olympics, I think, and I would go out there. They sold vinyl out there. But yeah, I'd be gone for a while. My friend's dad was in Iraq because the Iraq war was going on. His mom was like cheating on his dad. So she was like never home. It was pretty much as like a house full of kids, you know what I mean, like all the time. So I was able to like stay at a bunk bed in a basement pretty much, unfinished basement for majority of the time. And that was kind of like my second home, to be honest. I mean, because even when John, the guy that went to Iraq came back, he kind of took

me in as like a son almost, you know. So I would definitely just venture into those kinds of places. And I think finding money was my biggest thing first, you know, because I had to like figure out how to get from one place to another. What would end up bringing you back? My grandmother. Just because I know she likes to worry a lot, you know, and I just could not imagine her getting worried. And then I guess my mom, too.

You know, I would like honestly think about it. I'm like, fuck, you know, I can't blame my mom. Yeah, I mean, she's probably worried too, you know. I don't know. It just became a thing where, like, I missed being home. You know what I mean? So. All right, we have to take a break, but we'll be right back with the rest of this episode.

So this night was the beginning of summer, like late spring. I had just got out of school. I was about to enter into high school. So I think it was like 2003, 2004. And I had come home. Just like more late than I usually had, I remember the bus driver, had kicked me off the bus. And so I had to walk like a few miles home.

And that's what caused me coming home late. My mom was upset about that. And she just started arguing at me, yelling at me. I didn't really know how to argue back. When I think you're young and like people are getting upset at you, you kind of just like are like, what do I do? You know, so I was just like, I don't know what to do. And like everything you're doing is like making them more upset.

So we're fighting. my grandmother's like trying to calm down the situation me and my mom are just really arguing she's kind of like following me around the house yelling at me I just go to my room I remember I locked my door and she tried to kick it down

and I was just like this is insane this is intense I just kind of felt like I hate everything going on in my life and I just want to get away So I did what I usually did back then, and I was just like, okay, well, I'm going to run away. I mean, and I had like a little trick to where I would like walk myself in my room. I would just wait till everybody went to bed.

I would sneak out the window. I would jump onto the back deck, and I would just run. Well, that night, I hopped off the back deck, and I went down. and right when I hit the deck, like I got up off the ground and I saw my mom staring at me through the window. And I was just like, oh, my God, like, she sees me. So I was just like, whatever, I'll just go. And so I ran as I was running around the house.

She says, like, if you leave, I'm going to call the police. I remember the police where they were like pretty quickly because I remember seeing the lights come up the street and like all over the place. And there was an apartment complex that had just been built like a little bit away from me. And so I decided to run over there and kind of just get underneath a car or something. I think I was underneath the car for a little bit.

Cop cars are passing by. I saw the lights and everything. I was pretty scared. I think I hopped in the back of a truck at one point. Things kind of started to calm down a little bit. Cops were looking around flashlights in a field next door. I decided to get behind a dumpster. I don't know if you know, like, dumpsters.

They have a cement backing. the dumpster sits in there. I got behind the cement backing of it. So I was laying on this little grassy patch. And I kind of was just like watching everybody go by and everything and all these cars. And the cop cars like started making less and less sound. I was sitting there. I was just kind of thinking.

So I see like kind of like a fence where I am and there's a dumpster. So I see the cops. I wanted to make it pass. this street called Harrison Boulevard. Once I could clear Harrison, I could be home free and I could just, you know, walk all the way up this road called Mountain Road to North Ogden. But the problem was, is like every time I look up there,

there'd be a Weber County Sheriff, there'd be Ogden, North Ogden, Pleasant View, driving. And I was just like, my God, like, there's just, there's like every kind of cop. There's so many cops out there. What is going on? Like I kind of like, at a point where I was just like, there's got to be something else.

going on. Like some bank has to be robbed or something. I was like, this can't all be for me. And so I kind of started getting scared a little bit. I kind of started saying like, well, I'm just going to lay here for a little bit in the grass. So I laid in the grass. I kind of was like staring up. My heart was racing. I think I was just trying to get my heart rate to go down a little bit. I was looking at stars. Obviously, you know, I hadn't run away from home. I was laying behind this dumpster laying on the grass, kind of watching out for cops, a little little bit here and there, waiting for things to cool down a little bit. And I noticed this massive triangle in the sky. You really couldn't see it if you were just looking around.

But if you actually paid attention, you would notice it. And it was massive. It was big. It was like, it was covering this whole area way out to far west desert to this place called Plain City, which is miles away. It was reflecting lights from down below. At the same time, you could see through it and see the stars behind it. So it was very well hidden, if that makes any sense. So I think one of the first things that tip me off about this thing

is I looked up and I noticed that there was a weird object moving around and I was like, those are police lights. and I realized this object is reflecting the lights below, and this is a police car that's on the street with me that's being reflected above. It was making no sound. It looked sleek. It looked like something the military would build.

It really looked almost like a... It looked like a massive stealth bomber. But this thing was about half the size of... a small city. It was a triangle shape. It had these, not black, but darker than black orbs, that outlined to the bottom of it of the triangle shape. And they were so dark, I just remember it was noticeable.

It was like the absence of light. It made it just stand out a little bit. But you could at the same time see through this thing. So you could see the stars on the other side. It just was very, very faint. I noticed that it was stretching from the peak of Ben Lomond to Ockton Peak, just like a little bit over that way, out to West Desert, pointing north. It just seemed very eerie in place.

It almost seemed like a rock. It was really weird. I was like, how long has this been here for? I just had this feeling that this object had been there for like a long time. In terms of movement, it was just staying completely still. The clouds were going right past it. It was just staying stationary. No sound at all, which is really eerie,

because I think when you see something that big, you expect a little bit of noise or something, so this thing wasn't making any at all. It just really didn't make sense. It was hard to, it was hard to believe. It was close, close. I mean, I don't know, like 1,200 feet, 1300 feet. I would say this thing was about as high as a building in downtown Los Angeles.

Like, I would say like it was like, if this thing were to be in downtown L.A., it would barely touch the top of one of the skyscrapers. I don't know how this thing was staying afloat, but it just looked like it had some kind of engine to it, you know. It had these black orbs underneath it that were going in towards the center. Nine of them, I think. But I just remember that they were so dumb. I think I call them engines just because I'm guessing that's how, that's what they were using to stay afloat.

I try to, like, whenever I've told the story, I've told it to like three people. I try to talk about the level of fear I had at that moment. I think when I was young and I got in trouble for my first time from the principal, like I felt really weird. I felt small. I felt minuscule. I felt like I was in serious trouble. Like I felt like what I had done was wrong. And that's the fear I felt when I saw this thing.

I felt like all-encompassing doom, like the world was going to end. Like, I was in trouble. It was just this, like, really inescapable fear where I was frozen. And at the same time, I was having a hard time comprehending what was going on. So what happens next is, like, I'm laying there. I'm just watching this massive object in the sky. I am full of fear. I really don't know what to do it.

I'm like frozen in fear. and I keep telling myself, like, move your hand, move your legs, sit up, get up, move, move, move, move. I'm trying to get my body to move. It's not moving. I'm like frozen. I'm able to, like, just like, okay, get up really quick. I get up really quick, and I run into the dumpster area. And I'm still looking up at this thing, and I run back out to the grass. And I'm like, okay, I'm moving around. Hearts racing. I'm kind of like, okay, I'm going to hide from this thing. So I get underneath a car. And I'm just like looking up and I still see it. And I was just kind of like freaking out, again, thinking of the end of the world, really missing my mom, my grandmother.

I haven't talked to my dad in so long because of this whole thing that had happened. I really thought about him. And I was just like, oh, my God, like, I need to see my dad right now. I need to see my mom. I need to see somebody. I need to talk to somebody. You know, I'm like not doing well. I decided to get up and I started walking.

And I'm just looking at the sky the entire time. and it took off. It was like I was walking towards my home and I was looking up at the sky and it just left. It was just so smooth. Not in a traditional way, I guess they didn't take off

like a rocket ship ring like that. It kind of just like glided. I don't even know how to explain it. Like it was just like, you know, like no noise, nothing. Almost like somebody wiping away a stain on a window. That's how fast it was.

went away and quietly it went away. Nothing like lit up. It was just gone. And I had this humming noise in my ears. And that was really eerie. I had a deep ringing in my ears at that time. But I remember there was just this really deep tone ringing in my ears. I get home. Well, I kind of get home. There's an egg farm across the street of my house. I'm in that parking lot about across the road, highway 89. And cop sees me. pulls in arrest me. So they gave me to like another officer from a different department

from North Ogden and he took me into a little runaway shelter called Archway as he was taking me out to the car. I was like blown back by this like whole thing and I noticed that the officer was like shaking not doing well.

On my mind right now was not even the UFO or any aliens or anything. It was just like what is happening to me. You know what I mean? and I noticed the officer was like looking up at the sky. He had his hand on his gun. I remember that.

Like I remember he had his hand on his gun and he's holding me. Like he was just like looking up and he couldn't stop. And then like even when we'd stop at stop lights, he would just be staring up. And I asked him, I was like, did you see that triangle in the sky? Did you see that big thing up there? I remember him saying he's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, that's pretty normal. Like, you know, he'll offer space like, you know, they do their thing.

just kept looking up at the sky. That was the most noticeable thing. He was driving. He was looking up everywhere at the sky. I was too. You know what I mean? Like I was like occasionally looking up and trying to see if I could see it again.

He was talking about it. I noticed he ran a red light. And he pulled over and he said like, you know, let's say a prayer. And I was like, oh God. He was obviously LDS, you know. I said a prayer with him. He started talking about like everything.

And I remember he mentioned, battle verse. Zachariah 5-1. I just kept asking him about it. I was just like, yeah, what was that? Like, do you know anything about that? Like, what's going on? Do you... Is that why you guys were all out?

Like, because there was a lot of cops. Like, there's got to be something else going on. I mean, they don't send out this many people because of a kid running away. But I don't know. You know, it could have all been for me. So they take me to, um, the shelter, uh, this, uh, this runaway place pretty much.

And I get booked in. They put me in a room by myself. Everything from that point of my life kind of got gradually worse. I didn't have anybody to tell this story to because I was defending myself. And so I just had this really unique experience at that exact same time, which kind of overshadowed my UFO experience. You know what I mean?

And so I felt like nobody would believe me about a fucking UFO the same night. Like, so yeah, I just kind of kept it to myself for a long, long time. I think since that time, like, me and my mom have patched up a lot of our differences and become very strong family members to each other. Me and my dad as well. I think, like, we have a lot of love for each other now more than ever. I did tell him on the story recently, and she totally believed it, which was like, you know, a nice thing to hear. I told my girlfriend at the time. You know, my grandmother, I haven't really told her

much about what's going on. She's out on the Navajo Reservation right now. But I look forward to sharing this experience with her too. I think like the siding fits into my life, kind of like, I just think that there's more to this world and this universe than we think, because we just see what's in front of us. And when you see it,

and you've never seen it before, and you've never experienced it before, I want to let you know that the first time it happens, you're going to be afraid. No matter what you're doing, even if you've been wanting it, it's going to be terrifying. And you're going to want to run back to the people that you care about. After recording this interview, I spoke to Antonio about whether or not we could track down this officer or confirm the precise date of this event from his arrest records. But because he was underage at the time, those records are not public. Antonio did reach out to that youth detention center

to see if they would release his own records to him, but it turns out they no longer have his records, which I think was a great relief to Antonio because I know he has been eager to put this chapter of his life completely behind him. Thank you once again to Antonio for sharing this story and also for letting me know that the international gay rodeo association

is something that exists. I had never heard of this before. I ended up looking online and noticed that they are selling customized 50 years of gay rodeo anniversary belt buckles right now. I don't know. I just feel like there's at least one listener out there who will be very excited to learn this information. I hope somebody ends up getting one of these belt buckles.

Thank you once again to Antonio. This episode was called The Runaway, 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 North Americans

and Juice Jackal. 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, Moira 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.