Otherworld - Episode 169: The Company Retreat

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

When Casey's place of work is celebrating its' ten year anniversary, the company decides to have a fun getaway retreat for all their employees. Except, for some unidentifiable reason, Casey is dreading the trip and has a feeling that something bad is going to happen. She pushes the feeling aside and tries to make the most out of the trip until she no longer can. 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]

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode is one of the more horrifying stories that I've heard in a long time. It comes from a woman named Casey who was working for a tech company at the time that this took place. And her story begins when she has to fly across the world to go to some kind of company retreat in Tel Aviv. She did not want to go on this trip. and she had a terrible feeling about it during the entire lead-up. And then as soon as she arrived at her hotel, she was overcome by a sense of dread.

This was something she tried to ignore and shake off because this was a work trip after all, but things only got worse from there. A warning, this episode contains descriptions of sexual assault that might be difficult for certain listeners. This episode is called The Company Retreat, and you're listening to Otherworld. This is Bobby? At its core, the science, you can't argue.

That's not worried about all of a sudden. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs were just wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them of it. I'm Casey. I'm 28. I'm originally from rural Ohio, not very exciting.

But I now live in Northern California. I'm kind of between jobs. I had a pretty crazy year last year and decided to kind of take a break from my, like, tech career and figure out what comes next. I started working in tech when I was 20. I landed at a really cool company. I ended up meeting my husband there,

and that's when I kind of decided, like, you know, I'm dating this cool guy. I really like my tech job. Everyone that I work with is cool. It's very much work hard, play hard kind of energy, especially back then. I think some of the tropes that you see about tech can be pretty true. Lots of happy hours, drinking at the office, fun dinners on the company card kind of thing. So being like 20, 21 and just like suddenly being thrust into that sort of Bay Area,

going out, lively, city life kind of thing was really fun for me. And, you know, my tech job was never my, I never dreamed of being in tech. I actually wanted to be a dancer when I was growing up and almost did that. But then I had some injuries and said maybe something that could support my lifestyle a little bit more would be better than being a starving artist. So I just kind of doubled down on like, yeah, I'll just work in tech as long as it suits me, kind of jumped around to different companies, landed at a really wonderful company, which is actually where my story takes place.

It was, you know, venture-backed, a little bit more grown up and polished than other companies I'd worked at in the past, but still a lot of fun, you know, that was a really great place to work. I think it was kind of this dream job. It was March of 20, 23. I was working full-time as a recruiter at a very wonderful tech company. And I loved my job. It was the 10-year anniversary of the company,

and they had decided to do a sort of full company, bring all of the employees from all across the U.S. and our international team together for like nine days in total of celebration. One part of me was like, this could be cool, but another part of me just really had this gut feeling of like I don't want to go on this trip for some reason. And I could never really explain that. But I went the whole time I was really nervous.

You know, I flew to Chicago and ran into a co-worker that I really adore. It was his first international flight. He had never traveled abroad before. So I was like, okay, like, I can like redirect to my emotions of feeling like this absolute dread about this trip to, I'm going to help my friend have a really smooth first trip to Tel Aviv, which is where we were all going. because our office had a headquarter in Tel Aviv. Do the 11.5 hour flight from Chicago to Tel Aviv.

Super exhausted. When I got to the hotel, I was suddenly, like, what is going on? The dread kind of came back. The plaza that the hotel was on was just, like, fully under demolition and construction. It was mayhem. There was just, like, concrete and dust everywhere. It was a labyrinth of fences to even, like, find the hotel. entrance. I don't speak Hebrew. I was like, I don't know where I'm going. And I suddenly was like,

nope, I'm stressed out again. I'm not enjoying this. I eventually did find my way into the hotel and got checked in. And immediately upon getting to my room, I just kind of felt like something wasn't right. I remember the hallways were extremely dark, like these like super dark hallways. And when I eventually met up with people later that evening, everyone was like, why is this hotel so dark? And it was just like very eerie to walk around in there. Everything creaked. It seemed very old, and it seemed like they had kind of tried to rent it, like, fake renovate it with, like, paint. And it just wasn't working.

So, like, the vibes were not feeling good. The hotel itself, you know, it's an old brutalist building. Everything for some reason in the hallways was painted black. all of the decor was either like kind of painted like fake gold or like shiny black. And one thing I do remember is there were like these two, I have a picture of them. There were these two deer heads painted black.

They were like fake models of deer heads on the wall that kind of to me looked like something you would buy at like a T.J. Max. But they had obviously painted over it to try and make it look like elevated and chic. And is there just something about it that I was like, none of this is working just like from an interior design perspective. And then from like an atmospheric perspective, it just feels like something is like being covered up here, whether that's like bad pipes or horrible energy or just something. It felt like an attempt at making a like luxury hotel that was just

like missing the mark on every front. And in my room, you know, I was like, okay, like I don't feel super like comfortable in this room, but it's the room I have for a few days. I'm just going to unpack, take a shower, take a quick nap before I have to go to this welcome dinner sort of thing for folks who had arrived that day. So I quickly unpack and I like go to take a shower and I just hear these like really deep sort of guttural like thuds and groaning sounds coming from the walls. And I was like, you know what? I don't like this.

So whatever. Like, it's probably just someone upstairs showering, like trying to kind of dismiss it and like logic myself out of it, like not spook myself. But it created this sense of like primal fear in my body, these sounds. And I did not like it. But I just like, you know, did my stuff, laid down, took a nap for like an hour or so,

trying to like shake this jet lag situation. got up after like an hour, put on some clothes, went downstairs to this little like veranda where we were having a little welcome cocktail hour and charcutory, basically. You know, at this point it was probably like 738. I kind of showed up late. Everyone's having, you know, cocktails, chercutery, hors d'oeuvre sort of thing, light dinner. And I'm just kind of bopping around saying hi to everybody. everyone's super jet lagged talking about their flights.

And at some point during this dinner, I was like, I'm going to excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I went up to my friend who was definitely one of the main coordinators of this whole event and just asked her, where is the bathroom? And she directed me down this hallway. And so I go by myself, and this is where the first sort of truly unusual experience happened on this trip. I am walking down this hallway and the way the bathroom is set up is there's like a big oversized door

you know probably like eight feet tall door super heavy I like push it open I'm not a particularly strong person so it definitely like was one of those doors where you have to like put your like shoulder muscles in some elbow grease to open it and I walk into the bathroom and there's like sinks to the right and then a narrow sort of room with four stalls on the left. And all of the stalls are full floor-to-ceiling doors with like slats, like window blinds. So you can't see in, but you can kind of see out. I noted I like walked past all three empty stalls to go into the fourth empty stall. So I like know that all of those stall doors were open and there was nobody else in there.

And I'm going to the bathroom. And I hear someone walking towards my stall. And at first I, like, for like a split second, I didn't think anything of it. But then it kind of occurred to me like I would have heard that giant primary door open. Because it's big, it's heavy. It made a sound, like it made a door sound that doors make when they open, if that makes sense. When I opened it and I haven't heard anyone open it. So I was immediately like, that's a little odd, but maybe I just.

wasn't paying attention. And the footsteps are coming closer, and then they kind of stop right outside of my stall door. And I can see through the window, like, blind, slat-style door that there's, like, a silhouette of a person there. Couldn't really see, like, any color, I couldn't see any clothing. I couldn't see, like, hair style or any texture. It just looked like almost, like, if someone was standing in front of one of those things, but, like, backlit, it. you couldn't see, like, if they were fully shadowed out on the front, but there was no source of light behind them. So I think that's kind of what scared me the most, is that I was like, this doesn't look

right. And so I don't remember if I said, sorry or occupied, but like that kind of frantic moment when someone's trying to come into a room where you're going to the bathroom and you're like, ah, sorry, kind of did that and then like hurried up with my, you know, going to the bathroom. God situated. And while I'm kind of doing that, the door is like rattling. Like someone has grabbed the door handle and is shaking it. Like they're trying to get in.

And so I was just like panicked and I have a bit of an anxious streak. Like I didn't say anything else because I was like, ooh, I don't know what's going on. I don't like this. And then it just stopped. And they walked away. And I heard their footsteps walk away. But I never heard that door open. first entry door open again. It opened the bathroom door and I looked out and there was no one there.

And I was like, okay, that's weird. So I like opened that big primary door and kind of peeked my head out and there's no one around. And all of this happened in like probably less than a minute. So like they couldn't have gone far. It was kind of a long hallway. I would have seen them. And I just got this feeling of like that was odd. And so I, I wash my hands and go back out, and I find my friend, who's the coordinator. My friendly set is very wooey, witchy. She, you know, has her own magic practice. Like, I go up to her, I'm like, someone just shook my stall door while I was going to the bathroom,

but I never heard the, like, entrance door open, and there was no one around when I looked. And she just kind of whipped her head up at me and was like, oh, yeah, like everyone that got here early. is already telling me crazy stuff like this. And I was like, what, like, what do you mean? You know? And it kind of made my heart sink. Because I was like, I think when something like that happens, it's very easy to try and rationalize it.

I was like, oh, someone was just looking for me. I just wasn't paying attention. There is a logical explanation for this. Even though I'm sympathetic to the fact that there are weird things, like it's like this like self-protection mechanism, at least for me, kicks in to be like, no, there's like a reason. And it's fine and I don't need to worry. But, you know, Lisa proceeds to tell me that multiple people have had, you know, a TV kind of, like, receiver box kind of get thrown across their room while they were not even near it.

Someone else had reported hearing, like, a disembodied voice that sounded what they could only describe as, like, an ancient language they've never heard before in their room the night before. And she's telling me all of these things. And just looking at me like, so yeah, you probably had something weird happen. Which was simultaneously not comforting at all. And also gave me some peace of mind of like, okay, like, at least if we're going to go through this, like we're all going to go through this together. Finished up dinner, I talked to some friends. I went upstairs.

I took some pictures from my, like, window. I had a view of the Mediterranean. It was lovely. Sent it to my family. Let them know I arrive safely. Let my husband know, like, things were going well. And I went to bed. And that was day one.

So day two, there isn't a lot to report. A pretty wonderful day. It was like, it was a Saturday. We didn't have work until the next day. So we were allowed to just hang out. So I had a wonderful day, honestly. Like, nothing super weird happened. still heard those sounds in my bathroom from time to time, which was unsettling.

But it was really like, I slept in. I went to the beach. I went and ate one of the best meals I ever ate. I drank some wine. I went home and took a nap. I kept running into people on the street and they were like, we're going to go do this. And I'd be like, cool, I'll go do that too. I ended up just like, it was someone's birthday.

We ended up going and doing a big birthday dinner and karaoke after. I had a couple too many drinks. I went skinny dipping in the Mediterranean. at like three in the morning, which I guess like that kind of represents a little bit of what working in tech is like of like me and my coworkers are like, yeah, we're going to go skinny dip at three in the morning. It's totally fine. I got my phone stolen during that, which really sucked. And I feel like that's an important detail to me because in that moment, you know, I'm like a little drunk. I'm getting out of the Mediterranean. It's like 3.30 almost four.

I can't find my phone. I'm like, this is the, this is that gut feeling I had for. This is the gut feeling that I had. If something's going to go wrong and I don't want to go on this trip, and it's that I got my phone stolen. And it's not the first time my phone has been stolen while in a foreign country. Like, it happens. I know how to deal with it. It's not the biggest thing in the world, but it's just annoying.

I go back to my hotel. I, like, FaceTime my husband off my computer. And I'm like, I got my phone stolen. He's like, that sucks. Go to bed. And I go to bed. And totally normal day. I wake up.

I have like a pretty mild, moderate hangover. I have to go to work. I have to sit on a bus to get to work. I'm like, I'm hungover. I don't want to do that. That sucks. But like bus to work, we have a full day of speeches. Like a bunch of like, you know, the CEO, executives,

important people at the company are all giving these speeches. We're like sitting in this like theater style room for hours. And I'm just like, man, I'm really tired. I don't want to be here. But I, like, powered through it. It was fine. Had a really good lunch. We went after work to this after party that was like a more formal welcome party with the entire company, not just the U.S. folks. But I was not in the mood.

I was so over it. I'd finally been like, okay, I'm not hung over anymore, but I'm just fucking tired and I want to go home to my hotel and sleep. And I found a couple of people who were like, I'm exhausted to like, let's just go. So we get a cab and we drive, well, we don't drive. We sit in the back of the cab and are driven back to the hotel. And I say good night to everybody in the lobby. We had our separate ways, you know, and after the elevator takes us to our floors. I get to my hotel room and I open the door and I am hit with a horrible smell, like horrible smell. And I'm a horrible smell. And I'm like looking around the room like what is that smell?

And I opened the bathroom door. And there is what I could only presume was like raw sewage like flowing out of my toilet all over the bathroom floor. So that just in it of itself is disgusting. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with this right now, but I have to. I call the front desk. I explained to them like, hey, like my toilet's backing up. I think there's sewage coming out. Can you come clean it?

And they were like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll send someone. And I had to call like three or four times before they actually sent someone. It took like an hour. Eventually, after like an hour or so, they come, they clean it, they bleach it, they scrub it down. I asked the person like, hey, like this was so unsettling. I did not enjoy that this happened in my hotel room. I get a new room. Can I switch rooms? And they were like, no. So I was like, okay, I don't have it in me to fight that. I'll just deal with it and think about it tomorrow. Okay, we have to take a break,

but we'll be right back with the rest of Casey's story. So I like shower in my now post-suage bathroom. I'm still hearing these like groaning, thudding noises. And in my head, I'm like, well, maybe there's like something wrong with the plumbing. And that's why the toilet backed up. I don't know. I've never actually connected the dots on the sound, but it was just this horrendous groaning sound in the background all the time, anytime I was in the bathroom.

And I shower. I lay down for bed and I go to sleep. And I've been asleep for maybe an hour or so, hard to say, but it didn't feel very long. and I kind of come to a little bit, but I'm still like half asleep, and I'm like, oh, like, there's a cat on my bed. Like, I feel like a cat walking on my bed. And then I wake up because I realize I'm in a hotel. There's not supposed to be a cat on my bed, but I have a pet cat at home.

So it just felt very normal to have a cat walking on the bed until I kind of put two and two together in my sleep state of like there's not supposed to be a cat. So I wake up and, you know, it's dark in the room, but I have not closed the blind, so there's still like city lights coming in. And so I can kind of see the room. It's just dark. And I look around and there's no cat. And I'm like, okay. Like, I must have just been dreaming.

And I lay back down and I feel it again. And so I look around and I'm like, what is that feeling? Like, why do I feel like there's a cat here? And I fall back asleep. And then I feel the cat, like this like presumably ghost cat, curl up next to me. and just like lay down, like in like a little circle like a cat does. And I just was like, you know, I guess if there is a lot of ghosts here, as it is becoming apparent to me and my coworkers who are all having weird experiences,

like a cat is not the worst thing that could happen to me, right? And so I'm like, that's fine. I'm just going to ignore this and go back to sleep. I am back asleep, ghost cat. sleeping next to me, presumably. I don't know. And I had this dream that I can't remember any of the details or the visuals of what was happening, but it was dark. It was oppressive. It was like thick. It's the only way I can really describe it. Like it was just like this unholy kind of negativity in my whole experience of this dream.

And I start to feel like something is having sex with me. And I'm asleep. I'm in my dream, you know, and it's not like a sex dream. Like, it didn't feel like that, you know. It felt like slowly over the course of I don't know if it was a minute or five minutes, I don't know. I was asleep. I was kind of like half lucid in my dream, kind of slowly like arriving at this sensation of I'm being penetrated right now. and I think in the instant that I kind of realized, I don't think that that's in my dream,

is when I snapped awake. And when I snapped my eyes open, this all happened in such a quick instant, but I remember it so clearly in that it felt like an eternity while it happened and simultaneously, like, the fastest thing that's ever happened to me. The best way to describe the position I was in is I was, you know, I had fallen asleep, laying flat on my back. And my shoulders and my head and my neck and, like, my upper back were still flat on the bed. But my hips and lower back and knees were in.

in like a bridge position in yoga. Like when you kind of, you put your feet flat on the ground, your knees are kind of pointed at the ceiling, and you lift your pelvis up, and it lifts your lower back off the ground. That's the position I was in, except my feet were not on the bed. It was like I was being suspended, like held up in the air.

In that quick moment, I could still feel that something was happening to my body, that I was being virtually assaulted. But there was no one in that room. It was as still as I left it. And like, you know, the blanket was over me, like how it would be over you when you sleep, like the sheet and the blanket were over me.

And what has confused the shit out of me to this day is like I couldn't see the blanket moving in rhythm with the penetration. I couldn't see anything that would indicate that there was something else in that room with me except that I was being held up. And as soon as I kind of looked down at my body, realized that I was being suspended in the air,

I was dropped. and I hit the bed and it was over. It was kind of really reinforced for me that I was being suspended in the air when I was dropped because the only way I can really explain this is like if I was in a bridge position and my feet were on the bed,

when I had been dropped, my hips would have been the only thing that came down, right? And my knees would still be facing up. Versus I was being held up, my legs, you know, they were just like, there. When I was dropped, they kind of flicked forward a little bit. So I, like, laid flat when I was dropped. There was something, like, holding me up by, like, my glutes or, like, my back. I didn't notice it then. And also the thing that really confuses me about the whole experience is, like, if I'm trying to, like, logic my way through this,

which I've done several times to be, like, this couldn't have been a thing, right? It's, like, so scary. You would think, too, that there would have been some sort of outline of like a body or like a shape of like another presence, like pressed into the bed sheet, like between my legs. And there wasn't. So it's almost as if something was somehow like underneath the blanket with me. But I couldn't see its form. But I could feel that I was being penetrated vaginally by something and being held up by something. that was somehow not, you know, didn't leave a mark on me, didn't scratch me, didn't make itself visible to me.

And I think that for some people, I think that's a part of the reason why, like, I've been so scared to tell the story is because it's like, well, then you were just sleeping. This is just a dream. And it's like, no, this is so real. It happened to me. I've had sleep paralysis before.

and that feeling like I can't move, I did not have that feeling. Like, I did not have that feeling. I felt like I had woken up. Like, I had completely woken up. And the first thing I experience is, like, this freak situation. And then I'm just dropped. Like, it's that fast.

Like, it's like, I wake up, I take this in, I've dropped. And it just doesn't make sense. After that, you know, I didn't get, back to sleep. I think I still had like three, three-ish hours until I had to be up. You know, I didn't have my phone. It had been stolen. So I just kind of laid there for a while, like in shock and in disbelief.

I felt very violated. And I didn't really know how to even start to make sense of it. It's interesting, like I'm dropped. And then I feel like for a couple minutes, like my mind just went blank. I was just frozen and still. And I think I was like scared to move because I was like, what if that thing is still in here?

And I think after a few minutes, that's when like the shock kind of wore off and the panic kicked in. And like my mind just started racing of like, what was that? What happened? How did that happen? That didn't happen.

Did it happen? What happened? like just absolute trying to grasp at any answer. And eventually I got tired of that and was like, I have to go to work today. I'm on a work trip. I'm abroad. I don't have any of my support system near me. Like I have coworkers, but I'm not going to tell them about this kind of a thing.

That's crazy. That's crazy, you know? And so I just kind of curled up in the bed and waited for time to. pass until I had to get up. Then I got up and I remember I had the option to take a bus to work with everybody or I could walk and it was like maybe a mile and a half walk. And I found someone that, like one of my coworkers who I really trust, and I didn't tell her anything. Like I was like, I'm not even speaking a word about this, but I just felt very safe with her as a person. we're still friends to this day.

And I don't think she has any idea to this day that she was like such a source of comfort. But I was just like, hey, do you want to walk to the office? Like, I need some fresh air. And she walked with me. And we stopped and we got a coffee and we walked and we talked about how the trip was going. And I just kind of shoved it down

and went on with my day. Like, I don't have time to think about what just happened to me right now. That afternoon, I started to feel like, you know, I had a cough. And I had like a sniffly nose. And it was 2023, so COVID was still very present. And I just went up to the office manager and was like, hey, like, can I get a COVID test?

Like, I just want to make sure that this is, like, if this is COVID or not. I should leave if it is, you know? And she looked at me. And I thought this was so odd. And she was like, Casey, you look like shit. Take these and leave. And, like, handed me a COVID test and, like, some ibuprofen and, like, sent me back to the hotel. And I was like, I don't feel that bad.

Like, maybe I just looked a mess because I had this horrible night of like not sleeping and this crazy fucking thing happened to me. I went back to the hotel. And I took a COVID test and it had like a faint yes. So I took another one like three hours later and it had a very strong yes. And I started to feel worse. And I reached out to the admin team at work and was like, I have COVID. I am starting to feel really bad.

I can't stay in this. this hotel room anymore. Like, I don't want to be here. And they were like, well, you can get a flight home. And it was this like moral conundrum for me. You know, I have complex health issues and I would never set foot on a plane while I was sick and infect other people. Like, it's just like not in my way I operate. But I was so scared to stay another night in that hotel room that I was like, I'm leaving. And I got on a plane that night and flew back to California because I couldn't stand the idea of being in that hotel another night. The story of me going to Tel Aviv and having a horrible time has become kind of a known

story in my friend group of like, Casey, tell so-and-so about that horrible trip you had, you know, and I'm like, oh, yeah, like, I got my phone stolen and my room flooded with sewage, and it was all this stuff. And people always ask me, like, why did you fly home if you didn't feel good? And I'm like, oh, I just wanted to be home. And I can't tell them, like, I was sexually assaulted by an entity in my room the night before. Like, that's not a conversation that I'm willing to, like, have with people. It kind of sucks that this is, like, a known saga that unfolded in my life, but nobody actually really has known that, like, it was so much worse than just, like, some, you know, shenanigans that happened.

carrying it has felt hard but I think for me I'm a very open book person I'll meet you for the first time and ask you like so you know how is your relationship with your parents you know and like want to talk about it I'm a very open book about myself about my experiences and this is the first thing in my entire life that I have not shared with someone that I trust. So I think it is probably the scariest and worst thing that happened to me. And carrying it has felt very complicated because for me it kind of blurs this line of like, I am very grateful. Like I've never experienced sexual assault in my life prior to this. And for this to happen, it's definitely been confusing of like, is that what that was? But it wasn't from a physical human.

And there's just not, you know, there's not a support group for this kind of a thing. There's not a therapist that's specialized in this kind of a thing. You know, and so talking about it just feels like, man, everyone's going to think I'm, I'm going crazy or something. You know, like it really makes you feel like you're kind of losing your mind a little bit. So the answer to that is just like I've just kind of stuffed it down and I try not to think about it as much as possible. My husband is definitely a skeptic.

So I felt like telling him about it, it's not that I didn't feel like he wouldn't believe me, but I felt like it would risk. for me surfacing any potential sexual trauma around it and I didn't want to bring that into my relationship

at that point, I guess. I just found that if I didn't think about it and I stuffed it down, that didn't affect my intimacy at all. But I feel like talking about it, I run the risk of being like this is now like in the forefront of my mind and I don't know if that will affect how I approach intimacy moving forward.

I've thought about, and I've wondered about, if what happened in the bathroom that was so just kind of like seemingly neutral of an experience and what happened in my hotel room were the same entity or not. And honestly, I have no idea. If it decided to come to me as a cat, like, if you meet me for, like 30 minutes, you know I love cats. Like, it's a very big part of my life. Like, cats are very, very important to me. And, like, that would be the way to get in to me. As far as how it's affected my view of the paranormal, I don't think it has changed too much for me. Like, I think I'm still very comfortable in my stance of, like, the paranormal is real and we don't know what it is.

I think the only thing that's changed is I am a little more cautious, and I'm a little more aware that there are negative things that we don't understand, that want to harm you and violate you and upset you. And I think before this experience, I had only kind of really, you know, just had like weird positive experiences. And this one was incredibly unpleasant and unwelcome. And so I think, yeah, I just kind of opened my eyes to the fact that like there are things that are not, you know, of the light and well-intentioned. Just like there are in the physical world, like that exists.

in the paranormal or unexplained or whatever you call it, too. Thank you so much to Casey for sharing this incredibly difficult story. I also want to take a second to shout out my producers, Haley and Nikki, who were the ones who actually did this interview with Casey. This was such a deeply unsettling story on so many levels. I feel a bit weird speculating about what exactly this could have been. It's one thing hearing stories about things flying off shelves

or feeling somebody tap you on the shoulder who isn't there, but the idea of being violated in this way by an unseen force is incredibly terrifying. It's worth mentioning that I don't receive stories like this very often, so thankfully, I don't think they are very common. survivors of assault already have a difficult time coming forward and talking about what happened to them. It's already something that's very difficult to discuss. The paranormal aspect of this story must have made it even harder to talk about.

Or even to fully categorize as assault, I'm sure, that was very difficult for Casey. I can imagine it might have also been hard to utilize the type of support. that does exist for this type of thing. I'm very grateful that Casey did end up talking to some people about this. I'm grateful that people trust us enough to share stories like this with us and that other world can be a home for them. So thank you again to Casey. I'm, of course, wishing her the best.

This episode has been called The Company Retreat, 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. Our artwork is by Coltysack 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, Mora 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.