Otherworld - Episode 17: Meredith's House Part 1

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

A woman named Meredith tells the story of her upbringing in Florida which intertwines a very tumultuous home life, addiction, a haunted house, shadow people and much more supernatural activity. Meredith originally emailed me about a story that we won’t even get to until part two of this two-part series. I don't think either of us expected this interview to go to some of the places it ended up going to, the full interview was 5 and half hours long.  To see photos related to this episode, click here Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter  If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This week's episode comes from a woman named Meredith. She originally emailed me about a very specific thing that happened to her with her boyfriend in the state of Florida. And she also mentioned that it sort of involved some weird things that were also happening at home with her family. So I knew there was going to be a little bit of background information leading up to the main story she was going to tell me. what I did not expect is that it was going to be five hours of background information. This ended up being a five and a half hour long interview with Meredith, who I got to know very well.

And it ended up being a story that, well, quite frankly, she ended up telling me almost her life story. And as it turns out, there was a lot of paranormal stuff intertwined with her very unusual upbringing. And on top of that, this takes place in Florida. And if you know anything about the state of Florida, you'd know it's a very strange place.

And sometimes, even when there's paranormal stuff happening right in front of you, the Florida can outweird the paranormal. So, this is going to be a two-part episode. In this first part, we're not even going to get to the, paranormal thing she originally emailed me about. I'm just going to let Meredith take it from here. I think everybody's going to love this story. I don't know what else to say about it.

Strap in, this is a strange one. This is episode 17. The title is Meredith's house, and you're listening to Otherworld. Yeah, let us know when you're ready. Okay, okay. This is a story about... It's Meredith.

I grew up in middle of... of nowhere. Middle of nowhere is central Florida, like near Orlando, but still like probably an hour or two driving distance from any major cities, you know, under 10K population and grew up just like ultra, I don't know, everybody there just like hunts, they fish, like I grew up, I still have like the first bass that I ever caught, like mounted, like taxes. exodermied with it like my plaque like saying my name underneath it and um my brother has literally been bitten by an alligator before and um i've been in a rodeo so like yeah i don't think people can tell looking at me now or like listening to me i don't think i have like a country accent or anything but grew up

very rural for sure um i was actually like homeschooled for a little bit of my life so i don't know if you've spent a lot of time in the South, but it's just a very different place, I think, overall. So, like, even though I was raised very religious, I started kind of coming out of it. I actually got sent to, like, the most bootleg private school whenever I was in sixth grade. We were basically a charity case. My mom didn't want to send us to public school. We'd been homeschooled. She was super...

So this tiny kindergarten through 12th grade school offered to let us come through without tuition. They didn't have teachers. They had like video video school. Like they would have like VHS recordings of like classes that were filmed in the 90s. Yeah, there's so many like just weird little things. I feel like if you're in a remote area, just everything gets weirder. and then Florida is weird to start with. So it was like kindergarten through 12th grade, and there were only 60 students total who went there. So it was like super tiny. I had six kids in my

class. My sister had to, we had to read a lot of the Bible and the principal who would like run the classes, the religious or at least the Bible study classes was like not a very good guy. And anyway, like that whole experience made me not like atheist, but I at least wasn't. Christian anymore, you know, and so I would have been, like, 13, I guess, when that happened. And, yeah, I started to, I don't know, like, form my own identity. I hung out with just kind of, like, I don't know, like, yeah, skateboarders, you know, like that kind of thing. But I remember very vividly that the house across from my, like, best friend's house

in high school and middle school was, like, a punk house. Like there were just like 10 people probably all living in the same house. And I'd see them and I'd just be like, they look fun. Like I'd like to be involved with that. I remember finding someone's CD collection in their yard and taking it. Like somebody had just dumped it outside. I don't know if there was like a breakup or like what happened. I was like, who are these people?

And whenever I was 18, I met. guy through my space who I found out like retrospectively had lived in that house. And there were like different bands and stuff that would, like I say bands. It's like hardly even bands. They'd form for like a few weeks, you know, and play some shows and then quit and reform another band. And then it would be like a different name, but the same people kind of traded around. And it's such a small town that you end up knowing, like, yeah, this like whole, this was like, all of the sort of alternative crowds tended to hang out together. Yeah, I listened to the other episode where I talked about the hat man. And I had had this experience with something that,

now that I've heard that episode seems really similar, but I never connected it to the Hatman stories. Like I'd seen mention to the Hatman. I think it like has kind of become a meme even. But I hadn't connected it back to my very, like I lived in a haunted house, but my very first kind of paranormal experience involved seeing an entity, I guess, that looked very. similar. He didn't have a hat though, so it just never connected to me that it was something that maybe other people had seen. This experience, I think, was the scariest one that I've ever had. Like, I've had a bunch of weird stuff connected to my house happen, but this first event was just like so, like, I get freaked out now talking about it. But,

I would have been, I think, 11. My sister, my little sister was 9. We were homeschooled at the time still, so we were, like, at home in the middle of the day. And we used to have, like, a screen-dun porch in the front of the house. And it had been, my dad was a carpenter, and he had, like, I don't know, converted it into just, like, a foyer, you know?

Like, we had six to seven people living in a three-bedroom place with one bathroom. So, like, my room wasn't even a bedroom. It was, like, a converted sunroom. So there were French doors from my room. And my sister and I shared that room leading out into the porch. But at the time, the porch was sealed. But we see this guy just pressed up against the French, like, the window in the French doors.

Like, we had blinds on it, but you see this, like, perfect silhouette. of someone with their hands pressed up against the glass, just like they're looking into the window, so with their head in between their hands. And it just looks wrong. Like, in retrospect, I can kind of pinpoint some reasons why it looked wrong, but I feel like I knew immediately that it wasn't a home intruder. Not that that would be any less scary to have,

a home intruder. Like, I feel like they're scary in different ways. But my sister and I just, like, stopped and stared at it for what felt like a really long time. It seemed bigger than most people. And it didn't have any details. You know, it didn't have any, like, lumps where there might be clothes. It was just, like, a very smooth outline. Like, you could see all the individual fingers. Like, it plausibly could have been a person. But the lack of clothing and lack of like hair, you know, you couldn't see any. It was just like a smooth head. And then it just like faded away.

And it was a really big guy. Like at the time, you're not thinking about anything. You're just terrified. And we, I don't know about my sister, but I had this, I don't know. Like I've been in some scary, like actual scary situations. before, like, where I thought that there was a home intruder or something, and I wasn't as scared as I was in this moment. It was just like the stillness of it, the hands being up against the window where it looks like it's specifically watching, you know, it's not just hanging out there,

it's got its hands pressed up against the window. But after the fact, I thought about it more. At the time, we couldn't use the front door. So this was the year that we got like four hurricanes back to back in Florida. And we had like a big wooden front door. And whenever it would rain a lot, it would like swell up from the humidity. And for a while you could still open it if you like slammed your whole body weight into it. But at a certain point it would get to where you couldn't even open it. while doing that, like I can remember bruising my shoulder, you know, just trying to like get in or out of the front door.

But we had like given up on using it completely. And these are things that I remember because my mom was like, well, should I call the police? Like whenever my sister and I were telling her about this, she was like, well, I should call the police. It was a home invader. And I was like, I don't think that it was. The other thing is our house was like wood floors and elevated on cinder blocks. So any footstep that you made, it's very easy to hear. There's like a lot of reverberation and there were no footsteps.

And then the other thing is that the like foyer area that he would have been in, my mom was like at the time like not a full-blown hoarder. It kind of evolved into floor full-blown hoarding. But the porch was still just full of like random stuff, like a garage. you know, like it was full, the closed-in porch was just full of, like, random objects. So it was really hard to navigate anyway. There was just like a clearing from the front door to like the next front door, because again, it was a closed-in porch.

So we still had, yeah, we had like two doors leading into the house. So I feel like we would have heard something, but this was just silent. So I was trying to convince my mom, like, it wasn't a home invader. I think it was something paranormal. And she didn't actually believe us at first. She was just kind of laughing about it. But then in the next couple of weeks, we had some very mild poltergeist activity kind of.

So the creepiest one was that, so this house was very, very old. It was built. And I think the 1900 or 1910, like somewhere in between that window. And we had this old, like, antique glass doornaub, and it just broke and half and shot, like, 15 feet out into the middle of the living room while my sister and I were home and almost hit our cat. And my sister saw that happen. I heard it happen.

I was, like, in a neighboring room and was like, what just happened? And, yeah, the doorknob was just, like, cleanly, like, broken off. and shot across the room. And then I remember a perfume bottle, like shot off my dresser or something and almost hit me. And then my mom, we were telling my mom about this. Obviously, she can see that the doorknob is gone. And we're both, my sister and I are both maintaining that, like, we didn't break the doorknob. It just, like, flew off.

And my mom was still just kind of like, that's weird, that's creepy. But I don't think was convinced. But then something, I think it was. was like a basket or something, like shot off a shelf that we had that was pretty high up and almost hit her. So like none of the things did end up hitting anybody, but it was like weird that they seemed kind of targeted. Like the doorknob almost hit my cat. The perfume bottle was like aimed at me and then the basket at my mom. So my mom ended up being like, okay, there is a haunting. We need to. She was still pretty religious at the time and it was like, we need to like take care of this.

We need to, like, figure out why this is happening. So, yeah, whenever I was listening to the Hatman episode, they talked about how people would oftentimes see the Hatman before or during times of, like, extreme just, like, stress or really, like, dreadful life circumstances. like that people see it whenever there's inter-familial drama or like people who are homicidal or suicidal or have drug issues I think the guy said too. So when I heard that, I just got like chills because this kind of, that really lines up with

what happened in my house. So my dad had had a drug problem for a few years. He had been addicted to heroin and moved to Florida to get off of it. And he succeeded for a long time. He like turned his life around. He became like this religious convert, which I think is pretty common with addicts to go from being like addicted to using God to kind of get out of it. And you become really religious.

But when his mom died, he relapsed. So when I was seven years old, relapsed and then continued to struggle with it. But my mom up until that point hadn't been, like they got in fights and stuff and it wasn't a great home environment. But it just got off the rails bad shortly after this incident. So my mom started drinking really heavily whenever I was 10 or 11. And it was just like, yeah, the worst home environment. My mom would,

she took Xanax too for anxiety. So it's like, if you're taking Xanax and you're drinking, then you don't even remember half the stuff that you're doing. And she took issue with me being kind of like critical of her drinking. Because when I started going to like private school, for instance, whenever I was in sixth grade, I'd have to get her up in the morning to take my sister and I to school. And I'd get upset because she'd be too out of it for me to even wake up. And I'm like, you need to get up. We've got to go to school.

My mom starts, like, driving us drunk to school every morning. Like, she would run the red lights and stuff. It was terrifying. She would just, like, be out of her mind still drunk. and like, yeah, so there was one day that I got her up for school. We were driving. And before we made it even like more than a couple blocks, not even, we'd just like gone around the corner.

I could tell she was like too inebriated to drive. And I was asking her like, hey, can we please just like turn around? Like, you shouldn't be driving. Let's just go back home. and we're probably a mile out from my house and she's like speeding through a stretch where like other kids are walking to school. You know, it was like freaking me out and a bird just swoops down in front of the car and she hits it. And I don't know about you. I've never hit a bird in my car before.

it was kind of just like already a little bit like oh my god um and i'm like please just like stop the car let us get out we're still we can walk home we're still pretty close um but she's like really bent on driving and mad that i'm asking her to stop the car and we get a little ways further and another bird another bird swoops in and she hits it with the car. And at this point, I'm freaking out. Like, the first one I was like, that, I mean, bad timing, but it didn't like, at this point, I'm starting to feel like just this really bad feeling, like super bad feeling. And I'm like crying, like stop the car.

She keeps going. And the bird swoops down in front of the car and gets hit. And at this point, I'm thinking, I don't know exactly what I'm thinking, but I feel like we're, this is, it can't be anything but a bad omen. like three birds and this drive wasn't that long a cop pulls us over sees her do this pulls us over and i'm sitting there in the passenger seat um wondering do i tell this police officer that she's not safe to drive um do i do that and get her sent to it was just this weird pivotal moment where I could have kind of had someone intervene and make sure that we could get out of the car. But I was also scared of making things worse with my mom and with the rest of my family.

I didn't say anything. We were pretty close to the school at this point. She got it together to talk to the police officer. He did look a little bit like, I'm sure he could see that I had been. than crying. Like, I'm sure the car didn't look like it was a good environment, but you don't expect someone to be drunk at, you know, eight o'clock in the morning either.

So, yeah, we ended up making it school. But obviously, there's nothing explicitly paranormal about this. but it has stuck in my mind ever since. Like, I have not been able to forget that. And, yeah, things didn't get better from that point. You know what I mean? Like, things got worse from there. It was downhill from there.

She started just being really, like, cruel to me. Like, she'd call me names or complain that I was upset. Like, my dad saw it too, and he was just like, don't take it personally. She's just, like, yeah, struggling. But yeah, it got really bad. My mom, I kind of became, like, I guess the scapegoat for the family. I have two other siblings, so four siblings, total, including myself.

And yeah, it was just like constant fighting. Both of my parents are like, my dad was on heroin and also was an alcoholic. So nobody was sober at any point. Everybody kind of hated their lives. It was just toxic, like extremely toxic and got worse and worse. And so whenever I heard that the hat man might show up in situations like that, I just felt like, is, like, what is that? What is it? Like, is it showing up somewhere and then causing issues?

Is it showing up somewhere and like feeding off the energy? Like what is that? And it like freaked me out super bad to think of something that has like an interest in human suffering. Like I have no idea. I'm not claiming to know what it is, but just super, super creepy. And that's what made me want to come on the podcast and talk about this was kind of, yeah, realizing that this might not be a unique experience. Yeah. So after the guy that we saw through the window, the like hat man kind of entity, I had told a couple of our neighborhood friends about that incident.

And I had those neighborhood friends at my house. And my friend, I mean this in the best way possible, but he's like a less awful but still pretty accurate version of like Eric Cartman from South Park in real life. He's like very much just like, I don't know, says stuff that you wouldn't believe. Like he doesn't have the same, it's not like the same flavor of bad stuff, but it is the level of like blatant disrespect and chaos. And he was like, this house isn't haunted. Like that's bullshit, whatever. And he turned off all the lights and was like trying to scare the friends that were there

and were like, if there is anything in this house, like show yourself. and like cackling, you know, like just like laughing. And I love him, but he's got a very weird energy. And as we were talking about this, my closet, we're like in the dark. And my closet in the living room, it's like a linen's cabinet or whatever. You see this like horrible green light through the, like a perfect outline of the closet, like green light. We all see it. and we like open the closet and we don't see it.

We close the closet. We see it. My friend who had originally been very like brazenly like nothing is haunted starts getting really freaked out. He's like, no, what is it though? And I was like, I had told him as he was doing this, like, stop. You're going to get the house haunted again. Like I don't want to talk about it.

Like let's not I. The first thing was really scary. I don't want to invite anything into my house. He ends up getting really freaked out. And then, yeah, the actual full, basically 24-7 kind of haunting happened after that event. The house would just make constant noise. Like there would be footsteps. There would be banging in the walls.

It was like nonstop to the point that we all just got used to it. But our friends would come over and just be like, what is this? Like, why is your house just noisy all the time? like even if you were alone like it would still be so it became a thing where people would like like i heard at one point that you know you're like at a party or something and someone would be like talking about a scary story or something that happened to them and it would devolve into being like imagine that you were at meredith's house in the middle of the night imagine if you had to spend the night there and they'd be like no i could never do that like it was something that people who had

been to the house, we're just like, uh, I never want to come here at night. And like, my sister and I were just, yeah, it was super normal to us to where we didn't even really think about it. At one point, my sister had, I think she had some weed or something. She was probably like 14 and my mom called the cops and the cops told us that they thought the house was haunted. Like they pulled my mom aside and were like, I've never said this before. I feel weird even saying it. But I think your house is haunted. And I can't really explain why.

But you've got like super bad vibes. And I do want to say too, because this is relevant for the future, my mom was always kind of in denial about the house being haunted. Like we just never even brought stuff up to her hardly because she'd try to just brush it under the rug, which was super weird to us. We didn't, I don't know, there were signs everywhere, and she was just like, yeah, it's weird, but it's not haunted. I think while she was in the depths of addiction, she just stopped being able to care about it. She just didn't want to hear about it. So believe it or not, that's not even the story that I came on here to tell today.

So the main story involves something that happened when I was, I guess, 20 to 21. I had started dating. I'd started dating a guy who was in that local kind of like, I don't know, punk scene. and it had come up that my house was haunted. Like I tended to give people kind of a warning before they'd come over to my house. If they didn't come over to my house, I did not talk about it. It wasn't something that I wanted to talk about because people aren't very believing. But if someone was going to come over to my house, I did tend to give them a warning.

like, hey, it is haunted. Like, I don't know what haunted means, but stuff will happen that doesn't make sense. Like, you will probably hear or see something. So I, he ended up saying that he believed me. He'd had, like, a paranormal experience himself. And he described that, He and two other friends had been using a Ouija board.

And they didn't have like the, is it called a planchette? They didn't have the little piece. So they were using a shot glass. And he said that it didn't seem to want to answer questions, but he swore that it was moving on its own. But it was just doing like a figure eight over and over again. And then at one point, the shot glass just shot off the board. at one of the people who was there,

whose name was Jordan. So the three people who were there were the Skytray, who I was dating at the time, and then Jordan and Erica, who were a couple. Later, Jordan and Erica broke up, and it was kind of a messy breakup. And so the Skytray is telling me, like, when they broke up, Erica put the Ouija board in the trunk of

Jordan's car, just as a, like, screw you. And he didn't know it was there. As far as I know, he never found out that that happened. I think he sold the car and did never discover that the Ouija board was in there. Trey was, like, just a total jerk. Like, worst person I've ever dated, honestly. It didn't last very long. We dated for a few months.

And then afterward, I started dating Jordan, the guy who had had the Ouija board and his trunk. And again, we had kind of had the discussion ways into, like maybe a few weeks into dating, that my house was haunted. And he started telling me about stuff that had happened to him. Now, I never told him that I knew about the Ouija board because I knew details of, like, how badly his relationship had ended with Erica. and I didn't want to let on that I did. It was just an awkward sort of subject. And I just didn't, yeah, I didn't feel comfortable telling him about it, especially if he didn't know, then I'd be outing that Erica had done that.

So I just kind of kept that detail to myself that I had a little bit of background. But he did tell me the Ouija board story, and it lined up with what Trey had told me. And he said that, He'd had some experiences lately. He was living in a trailer park. He said that he would see shadows in the trailer pretty often. And, like, I'm pretty skeptical. I feel like one of the things that happens a lot.

Like, if you hear someone telling, like, a haunted house story, they'll say, like, oh, it got, like, cold in a patch, or I saw shadows out of the corner of my eye. And those I just don't put too much stock in because I feel like those are things that can happen for many reasons. So I wasn't prepared to really, like, I was just like, yeah, sure. You know, I wasn't disbelieving him, but in the absence of, like, further evidence, I feel like my mind wasn't made up.

He said he'd see shadows. And the other thing that he told me was happening was that his bed was, would shake all the time. And he said it was super annoying. It would keep him up at night. And later on, whenever he eventually moved in to the house that I lived in with my family. So at the time, it was my sister, myself, my mom, and Jordan. And our bed would shake, too.

And it was like pretty subtle, but it was definitely there. It wasn't like in the exorcist or something where the bed's like moving around or like levitating or anything. But it was still like a very distinct feeling. It was so weird. It was like thinking about it like just sketches me out because I don't know, you're in bed. You're supposed to be like safe and comfortable. And it was like a really fast. kind of almost like a vibration.

Like it would shake just sort of softly, but really quickly and with like a distinct rhythm. First time it happened when we were sleeping in bed together, he like woke me up and was like, hey, do you feel it? And I was like, no. But then as soon as I like was still, I think because I was expecting it to be like the big, like shake, as soon as I was still, I was like, ew, like, okay, I do feel it. And it just, it felt almost like it was your body shake.

like it almost didn't feel like it was the bed shaking. It felt like it was your body. And as I started to describe that to him, he was like, yeah, that's how I feel too. And it was just, I don't know, it was really, and at this point, I still was kind of like, I still thought maybe it's like something in the house doing it. Like maybe it's like water pipes or something that are like, because we had a very old house, like maybe it's something else. But then it would happen to me no matter where I went. And I was like, okay, it's not pipes or something in the house doing it. It's got to be something else. Is there any other time you felt that type of shaking? Like what would produce something similar? What would be the closest? This is like, okay, this is the closest thing that I don't know

how relatable it'll be for people. So the house that I grew up in growing up was also like directly beside a railroad track. But like we couldn't hand. pictures up on the walls because they would just like fall off and stuff. But when a train was like maybe like a mile out, you could kind of subtly feel it coming. And that's kind of what it felt like, was like this just very subtle but like rhythmic shaking. What was the rhythm like? Very fast. Like super just like ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch, like really fast. It was like coming from your body. And I hated it. Like I'd be trying to sleep and it would be. And it would be completely like not happening and then suddenly I'd feel it happen and it was just like it felt like

something was messing with you so while he was living there we had a couple more instance um while we were still living in my house um one was that the animals acted really weird about my bedroom and about um my mom's dog in particular acted weird kind of about my my bed so um before before he moved in there, my cat would come and hang out in my bedroom all the time. And she stopped doing that at all. And it wasn't that she didn't like him. She got along with him well. She was a very friendly cat, always wanted to be on somebody's lap.

If we weren't in my room, she'd be hanging out with us. But if we were in my room, she wouldn't come in. My mom's dog would come into the room and just stare at a spot above my bed. and that freaked us out really bad. It's like that look, that like alert kind of posture and look that dogs get in. It's a German shepherd, so it's like ears are kind of pointed forwards, and it just looked like it was seeing something. So we're just like, again, like, ew, don't like that.

And at one point, I decided to see what would happen if I brought, if I, like, forced my cat into the room, like, if I picked her up and brought her in there with me, because she wouldn't come in of her own volition, And I wanted to see if she would look at the same spot or, like, do anything. So I grab her, I bring her in, I shut the door. And she freaked out. Like, she got all puffy, you know, and she started just, like, making this, like, yowling sound.

And she figured out how to open the door immediately. She just, like, got out of there so fast. She'd never done this before. I'd had her for two or three years. She, like, reached underneath the gap in the door and, like, pulled and just, like, got out. And before, if she'd been in my bedroom, she would just try to, like, push the door open. And it's a pole door, so it didn't work. This is the only time I'd seen her figure out how to get out of the room without my help.

I felt super bad. I felt so bad. I didn't know that it was going to be like that. I thought maybe she'd be a little bit sketched out. I didn't think that she was going to get actually scared. So I never brought her back into my room again. She wouldn't go in the room after that. And then this one's so funny to me, but it's really creepy at the same time.

But my mom was like, when she'd come in or out of the house, and like walk to her bedroom. She hung out most of the time in her bedroom. But while she'd be walking through the house, she'd just be like loudly complaining, like, God, these flies. I'm so sick of these flies. And after a while of this happening,

my sister and Jordan and I ended up comparing notes. We were like, have you guys seen any flies? What is she, like, talking about? And they were like, no, I haven't seen any. And we thought maybe she was just being dramatic. Like she saw a fly and was just like making a big deal about it. And this went on for maybe a week or two. And then she came into the room, my bedroom while Jordan and I were in it.

And she was like talking to us about something. And as she left the room, she was like standing in the doorway. And as she left the room, she said again, like, God, these flies or something like that. And a like cloud of flies flew in. after her and like settled in my room. Like what kind of, how would you, what do you mean cloud of flies? It had to have been between 50 and 100 flies, like house flies. Like not like little ones that like kind of, I've seen like the little tiny ones that will

maybe like. Not like gnats or fruit flies. Yeah, it wasn't that. It was like house flies. And they just like came and after like as she was leaving. They like transferred, I guess from her into my room. And we were just like in shock because she'd been talking about the flies this whole time and we'd never seen them. And like I'm telling you, like we'd seen her walk past us complaining about flies. Never saw them. But we had to spend like days killing all of the flies that were in my room. They wouldn't leave the room. They were just in there. And we had to like swat them and collect them and throw them out. And there were like days of that before we managed to kill all of them. I've never seen anything like that in my life.

We were laughing about it, but also scared. We were like, what is going on, you know? There was another incident with flies. So I, like, woke up one morning, and there was just, like, house flies on my bathroom window, like, covering, like, the entire thing. And around that same time, I woke up at one point, and I heard. like I woke up, it was maybe like 11 o'clock in the morning, and I heard this, like, crazy, like, demon voice. Like, there's, it went like, it was like a horse if a horse was evil. Like, I know that sounds crazy. It was like, brr, like this, like, weird. And I sat there and I was like, what the fuck was that? And then it did the same, like, it did another really loud noise, but it sounded like it was blowing air out of its nose. Like, it sounded like an animal.

And I was like freaked out. Another time I woke up and like you know how there's static discharges that like you hear like an electronic every once in a while like make like a popping noise. I woke up and like every electronic thing that I had in my room. It was like it was traveling around in circles. Like I'd hear a static pop from like my TV and then one for my PlayStation and then from my alarm clock radio. And it was like going slow at first and then it kept like getting faster and faster like these electric popping. noises and then it just stopped but it went on for a long time and I was just like oh okay okay we have to take a quick break but we will be right back um after we've been there for a little while um my mom kicked me out under kind of like like I said my mom and I didn't really get along and it had to do mostly with the fact that I was kind of like I said my mom and I didn't really get along and it had to do mostly with the fact that I was kind of raising my little sister. Like my mom was so irresponsible. Like while we were homeschooled,

she expected me to do all the teaching. She just stayed in her room all day, like, drinking. I was like, I had a lot of responsibility. And my sister was, like, pretty wild. Like, she always wanted to go out to, like, parties and just, like, trusted people she shouldn't have and stuff. And so I was put in this awkward position of, like, I didn't have the power to make her not do anything.

And I was like definitely super worried for her safety all the time. So I just kind of followed her around the places. You know, I'd end up at super sketchy house parties or like convincing her not to like have a handful of mystery pills from some person or like, yeah, it was like very stressful. And my mom knew that I had kind of absorbed those responsibilities, like the responsibility to take care of my little sister. and I think she resented that I was a reminder that she wasn't doing her job as a mom. And that kind of ties back into why I got kicked out. So I had gotten a scholarship. I was going to like, I'd gotten a pretty good scholarship.

It would have paid like roughly like 60% of my like tuition had I gone to university. And I decided to go to community college for a couple of years. and I just saved all the extra money, the extra scholarship money so that I could transfer to university later. And she was really upset about it. Like my dad died when I was 17, basically of doing too many drugs. Like his body was like destroyed. He would drink like a handle of vodka a day and also was taking like Vicodin and also was going to a methadone clinic.

Like, he was, like, just miss, like, just definitely abusing his body, like, to where I knew it was going to happen before it happened. Like, we all knew that he was going to pass away. But after he died, we got

Social Security checks. It was like a thousand a month, I think, and I wanted to move out. I was like, hey, I'm going to move out. I'm going to take my sister, Michael, with me. I don't think this is, like, a good place for her. And my mom was like, you can't, you can't take Michael. And I didn't want to move out without her, though. Like, I really wanted to take the money and just move out, but I didn't want to leave my sister there because I knew that she would probably end up dead. Like, she was just really

reckless going through a lot herself. She really, I wasn't super close with my dad, but she was, and she took his death super hard too. So I was like, I need to stay here. But anyway, what ended up happening is I stayed so that I could continue taking care of my sister. And my mom made me give her all of the social security checks. And keep in mind, she didn't have a mortgage. The house was paid off. She didn't have, I don't know, she didn't have any, I don't have any idea what she spent the money on. You know what I mean?

giving her a thousand a month, just because, like, I could tell that she wanted, she told me she wanted the money and that it was, like, rightfully hers. And she wanted me to start paying her rent, even though I was under 18 at the time. Like, she used that as, like, kind of a pretense. And I was like, you know what? If you wanted that bad, you can have all of it was kind of how it ended up. So I'd go cash the checks and bring her the money. It was almost, like, on my part, like, a test to see if she would take it. You know what I mean? Like, I would. wanted to know, do you really just like, I don't know. And we didn't see any of it hardly. Like, we, she never took us to the dentist. We didn't get haircuts. Like, she didn't buy us clothes.

Like, I was buying that stuff. Um, so it's like, I have no idea what she was doing. And at the time, she would disappear for days at a time and not even tell us where she, like, we had no idea where she even was, you know? Um, so then later on, I had the scholarship money put away, and she started, she would like make kind of backhanded comments about it pretty often, or not backhanded, but like, yeah, I could tell she was unhappy that I was saving money at all. It's just she was already unhappy, but she finally kind of landed on a reason. She was like, I need to qualify for Medicaid or whatever so that my sister could have a medical procedure. She had like a mole. She needed a biopsy on. And she was like, so,

you need to move out. And because that money in the bank, like, we won't qualify. I don't even know if that's true. It might be. No, I don't think that makes any sense at all. I'm just going to tell you that right now. That was kind of my, and I was like, that I didn't feel like arguing the point with her. So I was like, I'll pay.

Like, please don't kick me out. Like, I will just pay for my sister's medical bills. Yeah, isn't a mole biopsy like $200 at most? Yes. Yes, exactly. That's even like without insurance. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, I'll pay for it.

Like, please, like, just I'll pay for it, whatever. Um, and then she just said, like, I was like, I don't even remember exactly how she justified it, but she kicked me out. She kicked Jordan and I out. And it wasn't like that she was unhappy that Jordan was there either. She actually liked Jordan a lot more than she liked me. Um, so she kicked us both out. So yeah, we left. We moved into a trailer park.

My mom, like, okay, this is making my mom sound really bad. And she really was terrible to us for a long time. But to her credit, I do want to say, she got sober within a month of kicking us out. She felt so bad about it and realized that she had done it for, like, just no valid reason. and she had been an alcoholic since I was 11, and now I'm, like, and I think even before that a little bit, I don't really know. And she is sober to this day. Like, I've been to, like, narcotics anonymous class, like, groups and stuff with her. And she's really turned her life around.

Like, I still have a hard time being around her because I have all these just, like, super messed up memories and stuff. it's hard physically for me to be around her. But she's a totally different person. Do you think that was like her rock bottom moment probably? I think so. Yeah. I think that it was. I mean, I'm speculating, but she probably knew why she wanted that money and it was probably a terrible reason. And she knew she kicked her daughter out for whatever that was. I think so. And I think so while I was living there, she was kind of able to, um,

have some sense of denial about it, that she'd been bad to me. Because like I said, a lot of the times she wouldn't even remember what she'd done. She'd be super awful to me. And then if I wasn't, like, friendly the next day, she'd frame it as, like, I have a bad attitude. Like, I'm not a good person. And I think this moment just kind of brought it into, yeah, there is, like, it brought it into focus that I was offering a pay for my sister's medical bills. And instead of letting me do that,

she just kicked me, kicked me out. And it was like effectively sabotaging like my future, kind of like that was the money that I had put away so that I could go to university. I think she was in kind of like a bad crowd down here too. Like I said, she'd disappear for days and I didn't know where she was going. I don't have any confirmation that she ever used any drugs besides Xanax and alcohol, but I suspect that she did have, yeah, a deeper drug problem, especially because now she's going to narcotics anonymous, not alcoholics anonymous. I don't feel like it's my business to ask her, but yeah. Meredith, what do you think is like the halfway point of your story? Because I just realized we've been talking this whole time, but you still haven't even gotten

close to telling me the thing that you actually emailed me about. Like all of this is leading up to the thing that you originally sent in the email, and we haven't even touched on that yet. Trying to sort all of this in my head, there's like Jordan had this, like, weird stuff going on that seems to be connected to him. But I also think that my mom might have been kind of at the center of the stuff that was going on in our house. Oh, I think you had a whole party going on.

Yes. So I didn't want to say anything at first, but I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff. I don't even know if there is such thing as a paranormal expert. But I've heard a lot of stories and there seems to be a theme of these types of entities, I guess, showing up and sort of feeding off of negative emotions in the home or around a person or people. And, I mean, based on what you're telling me right now, it sounds like there was a whole buffet going on in your house, if you will. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I don't know how it would work out timing-wise, but I do kind of, I gave you, like, the very Cliff Notes version of my mom having, like, a very scary episode while my sister had taken, like, DXM.

I always want to say DMX. DMX is not the same thing, but DXM. But my mom, like, tried to, um, she basically tried to kill me. Um, and I feel like we should, I feel like I'll tell you this. You can tell me whether or not you think it should go on the podcast. I don't want to have my last name attached to this or anything, but I feel like, um, I'm comfortable talking about it. But it was like, I feel like good evidence that my mom was kind of, I don't know,

like my sister and I have been talking about it and we were like, was she, like, possessed? Like, what happened? We don't know. Um, but would you be down to hear? Obviously. Okay. So, um, I had, like, I mentioned earlier that I had insomnia. Um, I had such bad insomnia that I basically, like, when I was in high school that I basically didn't sleep at nighttime. Um, it was like, I would fall asleep and I would, instantly start having nightmares and I'd wake up and then I'd be too scared to go to sleep again until it was light outside. Like I can remember going to sleep every day at like 5 a.m. whenever I'd hear my neighbor sprinklers kick on because that was like 5 a.m. And I was like, okay, the sun's

going to be up soon. So I'd fall asleep. And then I'd get like maybe two hours of sleep before school. So I wasn't really sleeping. And one of the things that I developed to cope with that, like to help myself get sleep was like I found that if I slept in different, places each night, it wouldn't happen as much, and I could sleep better. So I'd sleep in the living room, or I'd sleep on my floor, but my sister and I would sometimes swap bedrooms. And this is important, I think, a little bit for what comes next. So I was sleeping in my sister's room, my sister is sleeping in my room. And in the middle of the night, maybe like 12 or 1, my mom comes in, and she's like sobbing and she can't even hardly get words out and she starts saying she sounds like a little kid almost

like her voice is like slurred she's sobbing and she's saying michael's on fire michael's on fire and she's like she's not wearing any like pants she just has a shirt on and she's like tugging on her shirt and like just looks like super freaked out um and i'm like what do you mean what do you mean she's on fire um And she just keeps saying, she's on fire, she's on fire. And so I get up and I follow her into my bedroom where my sister is. And I think my mom was just trying to describe that my sister had a fever. And I had, I think I had known that my sister was planning to do DXM that night. Like, again, I felt responsible for my sister in a lot of ways, but I knew that if I tried,

to tell her not to do certain things that it would alienate me, and then I'd have no say in her life. So I'm concerned, like, okay, is she, like, overdosing or something? Like, that was my thought. My mom still is, like, incoherent, just, like, sobbing. And I, like, ask my sister, she's okay. And she's like, yeah, I'm okay. I think I'm just sick. My mom is, like, we've got to take her to the hospital.

And I was, like, you can't drive. right now. Like, I can tell that you're not fit to drive, and that set my mom off. Again, like I said, my mom, I think, really resented the fact that I was being, like me being responsible for my sister kind of triggered her because in, like, contrast, it kind of highlighted that she wasn't being responsible. So I was like, mom, like, it's okay. I, like, felt my sister's head. It was a little warm, but she wasn't on fire, you know, she wasn't dying. So I was like, I'll just sit up with her and make sure she's okay. And if it gets worse or anything, I'll take her to the hospital.

And I was thinking in my head, too, like, I knew that, like, there was a chance that my sister could have done too much of something. So I was genuinely saying, like, I'll sit up with her. My mom would, like, leave the room. And then I'd be sitting up with my sister just, like, I checked. that she was okay, she said she was okay, and I was just going to hang out in the room. And my mom had come back in the room, and each time she was more angry.

Like, she was super, super just mad at me for staying up with my sister. And at one point, I convinced her to give me her keys, but then she'd come back in and demand the keys back, you know? I was like, just give me your car keys, I'll drive if we need to go to the hospital, but she kept asking for the car keys back and I'd be like, I really don't think you should be driving.

If Michael does need to go to the hospital, I'll drive her. It's okay. Like, I'm fine to drive. I don't mind sitting up. I'm going to keep an eye on her. But my mom is just getting more and more mad. And like, it wasn't unusual for her to get mad. That was very frequent.

But her overall, like, demeanor was just so weird to me. It was like a visceral, like, hatred of me that she was experiencing, whereas typically, like, I think that hatred was there, but it was more subdued or under the surface. This was just, like, very blatant. And at one point, she starts, like, yelling that I am demonic. And she's, like, look at all this stuff in your room. Like, I had artwork. I paint and stuff, so I had, like, paintings that I'd done. Some of them are kind of creepy, but they're not.

they're really like if I showed you you wouldn't feel like they were demonic they're just kind of like surreal little there's nothing it's not like blood and guts or like demons or anything it's honestly it was pretty normal um and she's gesturing just at like everything in my room and saying that I'm evil I'm demonic and you can tell by everything that I keep in my room and I was just like what what are you talking about um you should just go to bed I'm going to take care of it and She's, like, super close to my face, and she's, like, spitting. Like, spit is coming out of her mouth while she's yelling at me. And I'm like, Mom, like, please, you're spitting on me.

You're getting spit on me. And then she starts actually spitting on me. She's like, you want to be, you want me to spit on you? You think I'm spitting? And she starts just, like, actually spitting in my face. And I was just like, okay, you really need to go to bed. That's not okay to do to me. Like, you will, I think I told her, like, you'll regret that, like, to me.

Like, this isn't, I don't know why you're doing this. You know, like, please just go to bed, sleep it off. We can talk about it tomorrow. I'll take care of my sister. And, like, this was over the course of a few hours, right? So she just kept coming back in more mad each time. And I'm trying to keep it together so that I don't freak out my sister. My sister's probably having the worst drug experience anyone has ever had.

Like, she can hear all of this going on. At some point, I hear. just like sobbing and screaming. And I hear this like banging sound coming from the kitchen. And so I walk out to check on my mom, see what's going on. And she has a giant kitchen knife. And she is chopping the counter with it, just like slamming it into the counter to the point that the counter, which was like a laminate covered kind of deal, is splitting.

Like there were cuts in the counter. counter. And I'm like, mom, like, can you give me the knife? Like, can I have the knife? I'll put it away. Like, what's going on, you know? And she gets like super in rage. Like, her eyes are just, like, full of, like, hatred for me. Like, she looks, like, feral, you know? And I'm freaked out at this point. Like, I was mad before and kind of, like, freaked out. But I'm, like, scared. But I'm, like, scared. I like kind of circle around her in the kitchen onto the other side of the counter where she is. And I'm like, please just give me the knife. And like trying to talk her down. And she's just like, again, calling me like demonic. And she picks up the knife or like held it up like high by her

head and was like with force like throwing it. She like moved really fast. And then at the last second she opened her hand instead of like, she like opened her hand maybe half a second sooner. And it looked like she realized what she was doing. You know what I mean? Like she picked it up. She was throwing it at me. She let go of it a little bit sooner than you would have if you had really wanted to like, and we're standing maybe three or four feet apart. It's not like, so it was, I thought I was going to die. Like I thought she was actually going to stab me. But it was like a moment happened in her head where she as she was doing it, that she was doing it. And she threw it, and it ended up kind of, like, landing down.

I remember jumping out of the way. Like, I remember, like, kind of dodging it. It landed by my legs. Like, it, like, almost hit my calves. But it was, like, she had wanted to kill me. After this happens, she goes outside and is just like, now she's seeming sad. She's like, instead of being like super angry, she's like crying and like talking about how she's going to kill herself.

And I'm just like, this has escalated so far. And I'm like chilled. Like I'm just like so freaked out. And I don't want to explain what's going on to my sister. I'm wondering how much of it she can hear. We ended up being up until like four or five o'clock in the morning. But eventually she like tired herself out crying. Like it seemed to that seemed to be a tipping point where she wasn't angry anymore.

She was just like super sad. freaked out and she went to bed. She does not have any memories of this. And I don't know if it's because she was on something. Like, I don't know what happened. To this day, this is the one thing that she doesn't believe me that happened. You know what I mean? Like, she's apologized for everything else whenever this has come up. Like, in the, like, I'd occasionally try to bring it up to her. And she would just say, I don't think that happened. Like, she'd scoff at me. She'd, like, laugh about it. Like, I'm sure that's not what happened.

Anytime I would, like, see the marks in the counter that my mom made, I'd just be like, well, what are these marks in the counter? Like, you made those. She looked, like, deranged. You know, she was super mad. Like, her eyes are, like, glassy and watery. She's got this look of, like, disgust and rage on her face. Like, she had been mad enough earlier to deliberately spit on me.

You know what I mean? Like with contempt, like she was like calling me evil saying I was demonic. And she looked like cracked out. You know what I mean? Like her hair is like very frizzy in my memory. Like I said, she wasn't even wearing pants. She had on like a shirt, like a long shirt and just looked like super. Like in my mind when I look back at it, I'm like, yeah, I could easily believe that she was. was possessed. Like, she had the look of somebody who, whether she's not in control of herself through, like, I don't know, supernatural forces or if it's, like, drugs, like, because I think drugs can do that kind of thing to a person, too. Like, in my mind, I don't know which one it was, or if it was both, but it was, like, it makes me, like, sick to think about it. It was so scary.

And, again, my mom and I had gotten into. physical altercations before, like, she's choked me before, but it wasn't like, even then she didn't look, like, she just looked kind of drunk and mad, you know, but this was like, she looked, it's, yeah, it's hard to describe, but it was very different from how she'd been. So two things that kind of made me think that there might have been. some kind of like maybe she was being, I don't know, like influenced by something. Was that my sister? And this isn't like out of like, I don't know.

Okay. So my sister said that right before my mom came in the room, she had like a hallucination of a shadow person slipping in through my door and then going into. to her body. Like she said she like felt this thing and she's on drugs so it's not like that means anything necessarily. But just creepy additional context, you know. And so she saw this like entity come through the door. But she said this like really freaked her out. I don't know how common it is with DXM. But so she saw this thing come in and then my mom comes in after that like immediately after that like freaking out.

And then also my mom's fixation on like calling me evil and demonic, that was just super strange to me. She hadn't, she had like, I don't know. I think she did get creeped out by the fact that I liked like horror movies and stuff.

But she'd never outright like called me evil or demonic. So it was just very, strange that that was kind of like the lens she was looking at everything through. And then I mentioned earlier that my mom was always like super in denial about there being any haunting going on, even though she definitely, like I said, the house was just constantly. There was like poltergeist kind of sounds just constantly in the house. Like banging and footsteps.

It would sound like people running sometimes. super creepy. Whenever we'd get into arguments and stuff, the lights would turn on and off. Like, it was super common for that to happen. And my mom still denied it. Like, she was just like, there's nothing going on. While I was talking to my sister about this whole thing, our roommate, who ended up living with us, like, a couple years later in my family house, now he's living with us here in Tampa. He said my mom, like, super drunk, came up, to him one time and was like, this house is haunted. There's evil, like, stuff here. And he was Catholic. He, like, went to. My roommate was Catholic and went to Mass and stuff. And she was, like,

asking him to talk to the priest and have the priest come out and exercise, like, cleanse the house. So it was, like, just, and then the flies thing. So, like, the flies were, like, apparently around her for like a week or two before they transferred into my room. So I feel like my mom was kind of at the center maybe to a degree of the stuff going on in my house. But yeah, that night was like one of the worst nights of my life. And like my sisters too, like she's in this very vulnerable state and there's just horrible stuff going on around her. Super creepy.

Like it could 100% just be toxic. up to her being on something and having a bad episode. But the vibes were really, really bad. She said that she saw a shadow person, like, come in the doorway and go into where? Into her. She said she felt it go into, like, her body. I don't know. And it is weird then that my mom was like, I'm just thinking about it.

My mom being, like, your sister's on fire. Like that's a very specific word to use. And it's like creepy that that happened right after. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, we should probably take a break soon. This has probably been a lot for you to tell this whole story. It's definitely going to have to be two parts. There's no way this is going to be one episode.

Yeah, I don't know a lot about DXM at all. I do know one guy who's done a lot of it he's a bit he's an interesting person but we could definitely I could call him if you had any questions about this stuff. Oh man yeah so I'd be curious to know if like seeing shadow people

is common or if it's common Want me to jump him in here? Yeah I'm down to Is it okay if I also message my sister and see if she wants to come talk about it? Okay I'm actually going to call her if that's okay, I'll step out and call her real fast. Hey, are you back home yet? Okay, okay.

I was going to see if you wanted to come talk. You were talking about DXM and wanted to talk about, like, yeah, how that night was for you, because you saw that shadow person. Are you, will you be back anytime soon? We can have you join on your phone. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fine. Okay.

All right. Bye. please if you like this episode, tell your friends, subscribe, and leave a five-star review if you haven't already. You want to follow us on social media? We're at Otherworld Pod. Finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, you could send us that story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.

Stay tuned for part two of this episode coming out next week. My name's Jack Wagner, and you've been listening to Otherworld.