Otherworld - Episode 173: Homecoming Night

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

When it's homecoming night at Matteson's high school, he decides to throw the afterparty for his tight-knit group of friends in his backyard. Living in a small, rural town, he knew everyone who was set to show up. When his friend Bobby pulls in with another silhouette trailing behind him, he innocently assumed it was his younger brother tagging along, only for the mysterious identity to be revealed when the silhouette steps into the light.Check out our Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes in all the way from a town called Climax, North Carolina. A very unusual name for several reasons, I suppose. I actually looked it up. Apparently, it is named Climax because it marked the high point of the nearby railroad. So not exactly an interesting explanation. I guess you could say it's an anti-climax. matic explanation, but either way, the story comes from a man named Madison. And it takes place when he was in high school in the early 2000s.

At this time, Madison was hoping to throw a party at his parents' house in their big open field after the homecoming football game was over. It was a beautiful cloudless night. As his friends started to trickle in after the game, he thought, It would be a normal high school party. But after one of his friends ended up showing up late, he discovered that this night will be one that he will always remember, but for a very terrifying reason.

This episode is called Homecoming Night, and you're listening to Otherworld. This is Bobby? At its core, the science you can't argue. A story about it is up in the sky. frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. if limbs were just like wrong.

Everybody moves back into the night, even if it takes them ahead. People affectionately around here call it, you know, the middle of nowhere. It was about like 30 minutes outside of the nearest city, very, very rural country farming community where I grew up. My family, we lived on about 13 acres of property. It was old family land. So, you know, we lived in a small double wide in the middle of a field surrounded by woods. And on the other side of that was farmland, hundreds of acres of farmland.

So even though we lived on, you know, still a significant patch of land, we were surrounded by just hundreds and hundreds of acres of woods, open fields, dirt roads. Even my house that I lived on, like the road behind us was a gravel road. So it was very rural, very out there. So growing up, you know, I was very accustomed to having to make my own fun, having to kind of use my imagination, which was awesome. You know, growing up as, you know, a 90s kid, you know, it's pretty much all you had anyway.

So to have nature and the outdoors and just things to go and do and experience. floor. It was a lot of fun. So I was always, you know, loved being outside. Animals and creatures being around, you know, didn't freak me out. It was very used to it. Very used to wildlife. Very used to, you know, deer and foxes and, you know, owls and, you know, things that make noises at night. Like, you know, not being weirded out or scared by things in nature, things out, you know, outside because it was just, you know, how we lived. This story happened when I was still in high school. So I was about 17 years old. And, you know, the land that was, you know, the land that we lived on, like I said, 13 acres, lots of open space.

You know, so me and my friends would use that a lot just to hang out. And, you know, sometimes my parents would let us have campouts out there and have, you know, little parties out there as long as everybody would stay the night and be safe. My parents would much rather us be, you know, knowing where we were and where they could keep an eye on us, especially when, like I said, you live in the middle of nowhere. And God knows what else we could have been getting into. So it was probably for the smart decision by my parents to have us, you know, living like that. But this particular night, this night happened in October of 2002.

Like I said, I was 17 years old. and it was homecoming night. And if you're from the South or grew up and around high school football, like that's a huge event in high school. All the kids that graduated come back and kind of party and hang out with all their younger friends. And, you know, everybody kind of makes a big deal out of it. So that particular night, my parents were going to let me have a homecoming party. So the game ended around 9 o'clock, and that's when everyone started coming over to my house.

It was dark at that point. Some was fully down. It was completely dark. And it was a Friday night, beautiful night, like beautiful fall night, clear fall night. You know, in North Carolina that time of year, like, it's still kind of warm. So, you know, we're still all in T-shirts and jeans and stuff like that. It was a very, very comfortable, awesome night, clear night. We couldn't have asked for better weather. We couldn't have asked for better conditions.

Where I lived, our house sat up against a massive field behind the house. And any time we would have a party, that's where my friends would park. They'd turn on this gravel road that led to my house. and would just turn right into the field, like no driveway, no nothing, just drive right into the grass and park behind her house. And so people would park in that field and walk to our house. So it wasn't a long walk. It was probably about 50 yards from, you know,

parking in the field to walking to our house. So a few of us had already gotten there and were, you know, kind of setting up shop, you know, hanging out and just getting ready for the party that night. Nothing major. like nobody was drunk yet, nobody, like, we were very tame at that point. So, you know, so friends started arriving, parking in the field. And as people would park, you would see their brake lights, you would see their silhouettes walking through the field.

And then as you would approach the back of my house, we had a pretty big, like, covered back porch that overlooked the entire field. And then adjacent from that was this kind of outbuilding that sat at the corner of the field in our backyard. And anytime someone would walk from the field to the backyard, we would see, you know, their silhouette would light up because the motion light would come on and you'd see their full body, you'd see them, you know,

walk through and walk up to the porch. And that's kind of how we were greeting people as they would come in. So, like, they'd park, walk through. The motion light would come on and, you know, they'd come up and hang out. About an hour goes by, people keep, you know, filtering in and, you know, everything's going pretty normal. It's just a normal kind of high school hangout.

You know, people hanging out on the back porch, joking around, you know, some music's going, and nothing crazy. Like, we are, it's a very, very standard issue high school gathering at that point. You know, some early 2000s emo or some outcast, probably. It was probably like some saves the day or some outcast in those days. It was probably what we were listening to, you know, just kind of a chill vibe. Like, like said, we weren't raging.

We were just kind of hanging out. So we've got some nice background music. We would have these parties, they wouldn't be huge, you know. We'd usually top out around 30-ish people. But at this particular party, at this time, there's probably only about 10 or 15 people there at this at this moment. So it was kind of lighter in the evening, you know, homecoming night, there's a lot of things going on. And for these parties, they would, you know, there was never any strangers at these parties. Like, you know, being in high school, being in,

like I said, a more rural area, there's no just like strangers to walk up on your party. Like, when you have a field party in the middle of the country, like, you know everybody that's coming or your friends have cleared with you that they're bringing somebody new or want somebody to be there. because my parents were also really big on making sure everybody was there had permission to be there and their parents knew that they were going to be there. So we never had any like surprise visitors to these parties. We always knew everybody who was going to come, everybody that was going to be there. And at that point, too, everyone that was at the party were some of my closest friends. It was some of my like, you know, my girlfriend at the time who's now my wife was there.

You know, it was all like my really core friend group that was there who a lot of them I'm still friends with today. this was probably around like 10 o'clock in the evening at this point hanging out on the back porch got some good music going it's not too crazy kind of this nice relaxed vibe everybody's hanging out and around that time another car pulls in and I can tell by the tail lights who it is at this point it's one of my really good friends his name was Bobby Bobby usually would show up at our functions a little bit later he worked at UPS at the time so he worked like middle he worked in odd shifts and odd hours and he had just gotten off work

and was coming in. And so you see his car kind of pulled into this back into our back field. And, you know, he parks in the field. You can see his brake lights. And, you know, he kind of starts to get out of the car. And Bobby at the time always traveled with his brother. His brother was just a great underneath him and went everywhere with Bobby. So when Bobby went someplace, Johnny was like his sidekick.

You knew Johnny was going to be with him. So when Bobby got out of the car, we saw his silhouette. and then he kind of steps towards the back of his car, and he's kind of backlit by the brake lights. And as he starts to move towards our porch, you can see another silhouette kind of walk up behind him. At that point, we assume that's Johnny, because Johnny is everywhere with him.

So, you know, to see Bobby followed by somebody right behind him was, you know, pretty regular. So Bobby walks towards the back of his car and we see this other silhouette kind of start walking behind him. And they start to walk towards the porch. So they're approaching, you know, moving through the field, approaching the edge, and then they get to that point where the outbuilding is, and the motion light kicks on. And so as Bobby walks through the light, it comes on, and we see Bobby fully lit up.

And as he walks through the light, the person that was following him stops at the edge. You can still see the silhouetted outline of them, and you can see that they're upright. You know, it's just a person that's following Bobby. And they stop at the edge of the light. and kind of hesitate. And beside that same building was the role of crate myrtles, if I remember right. It's a, you know, a small tree. But it was this line of crate my parents had planted a couple years before.

So they're about like five or six feet tall, but they're a little bushy. So they gave some cover. And there was a line of these crate myrtle next to the building. And so as this figure that's following Bobby approaches the light, the motion light comes on, and they stop. And as Bobby walks through, he's moving up towards the port. everybody on the porch is starting to greet them talk shit to him as friends are to do in high school and we're kind of just joking around with him and this figure darts off behind the bushes

and so at that point where we just think johnny is yeah he had a really good sense of humor so we thought you know maybe he's just you know trying to play a trick on us or something like that but a few of us had spotted them so we see uh you know johnny dip behind the bushes and uh you know a few of us at the edge of the porch who are like yelling at him, being like, hey, Johnny, we see you, like, get out here. And as that's happening, he's walking up and he walks up onto the porch. At that time, there's probably of the, you know, 10 to 15 people that are there at that point, the porch probably has about 7 and 10 people on it, coming in, coming out, going into our living room, hanging out on the porch.

And at this time on the back porch, it's me, my girlfriend, and two other of my really good friends are kind of just hanging out there at the rail, looking out at the yard. Another one I have friends says is back to us and is greeting Bobby as he comes up onto the steps. And as Bobby walks up, I kind of look at Bobby and I'm saying, hey man, like, what is Johnny doing? Like, he's being an idiot. What's he doing out there hiding behind the bushes? And then Bobby just looks at me and he's like, what are you talking about?

He looks completely confused. He's like, Johnny didn't come with me. I'm by myself. And at that moment, every hair on my body stands up. If that's not Johnny, then who is it? because when we would have these parties, there were no strangers. Like we didn't invite people that we didn't know. I was in high school.

We liked a party, but we were good kids. You know, like we weren't going to like invite strangers over and we weren't trying to have a rager that night either because my parents would have never let me have a party again either. So I was like really, really dialed in on who was going to be there and what was going on. So if somebody was there crashing the party, that kind of pissed me off. Like we didn't want those people there

because it was going to get us in trouble and kind of ruin our fun. So at that moment, I'm like, okay, who's crashing the party? And so we start yelling at this figure behind the bush. And we look out and they're still there. The motion light had kicked off at this point, but you can still see the silhouette of this person behind the bush. And they're kind of crouts. They're bobbing back and forth like they're kind of sneaking,

like they're trying to scare somebody or like they're trying to hide and stay out of you and they're bobbing back and forth. And we keep just kind of yelling at this figure like, you know, come out, come out. Like, who are you? Like, get out of here, you know, trying to just get this person to leave or show themselves if it's one of our other friends trying to scare us. You know, we're just kind of over it. And we're sitting there yelling at this figure to come out.

And then we all kind of just stop for a second. Like, everybody stops yelling and things get quiet for a second. The motion lights off and that the figure's just standing there, staring back at us, bobbing back and forth. You can only see its silhouetted outline. And then all of a sudden, the motion light kicks on. And when the motion light kicks on, whatever was behind that bush got, it kind of brought it to life. And it steps out into the light.

And at that moment, it goes from being like a five-ish, six-ish-foot figure that looked like a high school kid. And it stands up into the light, and it kind of reveals itself. And this is when the entire night changes. it kind of rises up. It goes from being five, six feet tall to being, you know, I'd probably say somewhere between seven and nine feet tall. I know that's a big range, but it was tall as shit. Like it was taller than any human being I had ever seen.

It stands up out of light, and it's this very tall, naked, tan, just think. Every time I think about it, every hair on my body stands up. The very first thing you notice about it is its head. Its skin is tan, kind of leathery, like a hairless cat almost. And its eyes were dark and blank and had nothing. Like there were no irises, no pupils. And I'll never forget, because I stared right and right at it. I locked eyes with it.

An expressionless face, like a very pointed chin. No, like, distinguishable nose. Like, there's maybe some, I remember, like, some slits there, but no, like, physical nose. and in its mouth was just a line. Like it was just a little like opening, straight line mouth. A very tall head, tall, bald, leathery skin. And then, you know, as you move down the rest of its body, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.

It was this, it was very tall, lanky. Its arms were long and bony. And by bony, I mean, like, it had no, it wasn't muscular or flabby. Like, its skin was very tight to its bone structure. There were long and skinny arms that probably went, you know, resolved down by between its knees and its ankles and its hands. I cannot remember how many fingers it had because they were kind of like bent like it was holding, like they were gripping something. Long skinny fingers that were kind of like clenched, you know, at the end of these long skinny arms.

Didn't get a very good look at its feet, like how they were built because they were kind of obscured by the grass. but it had these really lanky, long legs. And you could see, like, definition that the joints, like it had a bone structure, it had elbows, it had knees, but it didn't have any other distinguishable features that would be, you know, human or mammal or reptile. Its skin was completely, like I said, a leathery, like hairlessness to it.

It was tan, tight to its body, no genitalia, completely featureless, completely naked, and just a blank expression on its. face, you know, did show any form of emotion or fear or anger or aggression. And everyone on the porch who is facing it, you know, it's just, it's just pandemonium at that point. So a girl next to me, she just starts crying immediately when she sees it. Another one of my friends just starts yelling like, holy shit, like what is that? And me, I'm just frozen. Like I can't, I'm just, my eyes are locked on it. I cannot believe what I'm seeing. I've grown up around wildlife. I've grown

up seeing everything that could be in these woods. You know, there was no creature that was a surprise to me. You know, I'd seen everything you could see out there from, you know, stray dogs, foxes, deer. This wasn't any of that. I see those all the time. I know what those look like. It wasn't a person, and if it was a person, it's not unlike any person I'd ever seen before in terms of their features, in terms of the way they moved and stood and walked. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. and it probably stood there for five to ten seconds. It felt like time froze in that moment where you could see it because you're seeing something you've never seen before in your life.

I think right when my friend screamed that out of his mouth, like, what is that? The thing moves from its stationary position and crosses our yard in a matter of steps. Like it felt like it took two steps and it had crossed 10, 20 yards. like in just a couple steps and then it was out of view and past the other side of my house

and so the quickness that it moved with was another thing that was just so indescribable. Like I like it moved unlike any animal, any human that I've ever seen. Like it was a combination of things. It had some springiness to its legs that I like a deer would

but it was upright on two legs and it kind of hopped and you know the way this thing moved just that's kind of like I think that was the moment when that friend of mine kind of started crying. That was when it was crystal clear that this thing was a thing. It properly scared the shit out of everybody that either saw it or witnessed other people see it. I'd say about four or five of us saw it.

Like saw it, like locked eyes on it, can describe it. And the other people on the porch, including my friend Bobby and the person who greeted him when they on the porch, they didn't see it. They saw how we reacted, you know, to see somebody burst in the tears and somebody be screaming and freaking out, that freaked my friends out that didn't see it themselves because they just knew we wouldn't react like that to just anything. And, you know, when this thing darted behind the house,

we were just in shock. We see this thing traverse about, you know, 150-ish yards of distance and not in almost no time at all. Right after we saw it, you know, that was a big event in the middle of this evening. Like it properly freaked everybody out from the people who saw it to the people who didn't. And so that kind of put a damper on things for a little bit. Like everybody went inside.

We kind of sat around and we were talking about it. My parents had come home from dinner and we were telling them about it. And my mom always tells me like she'll never forget. Because we'd had parties before and like, you know, she comes over and we're just a bunch of goofy kids joking around, listening to music, laughing, being loud. She could not believe like just how reserved.

and quiet the scene was when she got there. She'll never forget coming there and just like, we were freaked the fuck out. Like, we were. Like, they knew something was wrong the second they got there. So as the evening went on, a few more people started arriving, people who hadn't been there.

And, you know, that's when kind of feelings start to change a little bit. You know, we're starting to get some courage. I can't imagine one to influence us to have more courage as the night went on. But we were hanging out. And as the party went on, like, we were still all very, very freaked out. But when it ran off, we were, you know, one of the things we were really curious about. And once the initial shock of seeing this thing wore down, a lot of us at the party, you know, wanted to go out and investigate a little bit. Because like I said, it was very tall, a very big creature.

Something like that out in that area, like if you see a large animal in a field, it's usually going to leave some evidence that it was there, whether it was tracks or fur or, or something like that's usually a deer or a fox or something like that's going to leave something behind it so we're like okay well this this creature can't be any different so let's go out there and see what we can find and so we go out there you know with with flashlights and everything we could to try to like see if there's any evidence of it but we didn't spot any tracks like we could see people's footprints they've been a few days without rain so I didn't expect there to be much you could see some like bent grass from people walking through the field like some like a light footprint here or there from humans, but we didn't spot anything in the path of where we had seen this

thing. So we're looking around in all those areas and then, you know, a few of us are like, oh, let's go in the woods and find this thing. And I think we made it maybe like a step or two into the woods. We're like, no way. We're not doing this tonight. My curiosity kind of went away. My curiosity gave with just a big old hell no. And so me and my friends that had gone out there, you know, we tiptoed into the woods a little bit, but turned right back around and went back in the house. Some people left after that, and then, you know, those of us that hung around, like, we kind of, we stayed inside. The next morning, same thing. We got up and looked around just to see if there's anything we could see in daylight that gave any evidence of where it came from, what it was,

where it went. But there was no signs that you would traditionally see from an animal like leaving a trail or breaking a limb or, you know, I'm not like a professional tracker or anything like that, but I had no signs of when an animal's been around or if a big animal's moved through something. and there was just nothing, especially something this size, you know, because it was so tall that even you would think, like moving through the woods, you would see breakage or anything like that. And there was just no evidence of anything being disturbed. That was just another thing that freaked us out,

that freaked us out even more. And I know it freaked my parents out a lot too, because, you know, they had lived out on that property a lot longer than I had. And, you know, my dad didn't think much of it, but my mom's kind of like me. She has very into the possibilities of what can be out there. So she was very intrigued by it. So the wildest thing for me, when I think back on that night,

isn't even so much seeing this creature, which, don't be wrong, that was unsettling and will stick with me as long as I live. But it's the moments before that. It was that 20, 30 seconds where it was following my friend through the field, where it was behind him. moving like a human, standing right next to him without him even realizing it. You know, the way it was kind of creeping and stalking, it's those movements that, you know, are the most haunting

and that stick with me more than even looking at it. Like the vision of this thing is burned into my brain, but what were its intentions? Why was it there? Why was it stalking my friend Bobby like that? That what if, so what if we hadn't been paying attention? What if that light hadn't come on? because in those moments that he was walking from his car

to the edge of the building, I mean, this thing was right on top of him. And Bobby didn't even know it was there. Like he had no feeling of anything being behind him. And so many people saw that part of it. A few of us saw the creature, or whatever you want to call it. But, you know, a lot more people saw it follow Bobby. And they were just distracted by him

when he came up on the porch and greeted everybody. So I think when a lot of us talk about that night and what we remember from it, you can't unsee that. Like I can close my eyes and see it vividly. Like I can see the red brake light casting a shadow and silhouette around this thing. Bobby walking, this thing moving right behind him, so close that we thought it was his brother.

And so that just makes you think, like, what would have this thing done? Bobby in danger? Was it just a wrong place, wrong time? Was this thing just passing through? Was it scared? Was it even something sinister? Because, you know, I think I'd said before that I didn't get the feeling that it was there to hurt us, but at the same time, we don't know.

Like, we did not know what this was, what it was there to do, just that we'd never seen anything like it. And it was just wild. It's why every hair my body stands up when I think about it to this day. It's like those two visuals, in the light and it following my friend, not knowing what it was following him for or what it would have done if, you know, a few events hadn't happened. the way they had. The biggest thing that I took away from this, and a lot of my friends who

were there took away from this too is, you know, it's just that reminder of, you know, how small our understanding of things can be, even when it feels like we know everything about this universe, this world, what's out there, what's possible. And the area we grew up in was a very conservative, religious area, but our family was not. You know, we were very much of a family of science and being open-minded about what's out there in the world. You know, events like this are just little microcosms, I think, of why we kind of raised that way and why we believe that.

There's so much we can't explain in this world. And encounters like this are just really stark reminders of that, you know, and hearing all the stories have been told on this show over the years. It's just, it's affirming in a lot of ways to know that you're not alone. in experiencing this kind of stuff. And because it does happen, and there's so much out there that we can't even begin to explain.

So even with this creature, we called it many different things. It's affectionately an alien in our brain, but to who, you know, it's in the eye of beholder, like what they would see here. It just wasn't human, it wasn't natural. It wasn't of this world.

All I know is I just couldn't explain it. And I think that's something that I've carried more than, more than the fear, more than the uncertainty of the event and how I felt that night is just whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or like I can't get a handle on the world. Just reminding myself that there's so much shit

we don't understand or can't explain. And, you know, that sometimes you just have to leave it to that. If I ever encounter something like this again, I don't know if I want to, but at the same time I would love to know what it was and what its intentions were and why it was following my friend Bobby through the field, why it, you know, stopped for a split second and let us see it, how it was able to move like that,

why it looked like that, what was it, what, you know, was it from Earth, was it, you know, from some other planet, was it from some alternate dimension, was it accrypted, was it, you know, all these questions that run through your brain. But over the years, I've just been able to, you know, just say, I don't know what I don't know, and kind of leave it to that. But it doesn't stop it from being. scary shit story that left an impact on my life and everyone who saw it. So say to anybody out there who is, has seen stuff like this or is skeptical of it, it's just, it's one of those things that you can't, you can't understand it until you're faced with it.

And when that happens, you, it will change you. It will change you. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaefer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki K. Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans and Juice Jackal. Our artwork is by Coldassack 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.