Otherworld - Episode 174: Save The Garden

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

When Mary was 18 years old she woke up paralyzed in the middle of the night to strange troll-like beings surrounding her bed, while a different, taller being observed from the doorway. Though deeply unsettled by this vivid experience she did her best to pass it off as a bad dream. About 6 weeks later, Mary comes to learn that she is pregnant and some time after this, has another puzzling experience while waiting for her husband to come home from work. Many years later, Mary gathers the courage to explore what happened to her so long ago by way of regression therapy. 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 Other World. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes from a woman named Mary, who's in her late 60s. She works in sales and lives in Venture County, California. Having met her, I would say that Mary is a very normal woman, who happens to have a really abnormal story. Like, I think if you were one of her coworkers and she revealed this to you one day, you'd be very shocked. In fact, she is staying anonymous for that very reason.

The story begins when she got married at the age of 18 to an older man and found herself often home alone at night all by herself when her husband was away. On one of these nights, Mary had an experience that started a chain of paranormal events that would follow her through the rest of her life. This is a very intense story with a lot of different elements that kind of come together slowly over the course of many years. This episode contains some sections that may be difficult for some listeners, including a description of a miscarriage.

This episode is called Save the Garden, and you're listening to Otherworld. That's Bobby? At its core of the same. Science, you can't argue. I'm worried about all of science. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Mary, and I'm in sales. I live in Ventura County. I grew up in Long Beach. My mom was an immigrant from Ireland. and my dad was Danish and Heinz 57,

which is like such a conglomeration of background, that that's what we called it. We said we were Irish, Danish, and Heinz 57. So, yeah, I have a, I have grandchildren. I have a son who actually introduced me to this podcast and encouraged me to do this. I'm 68. I do, I sing in a choir at church, big choir.

What else? I'm on a non-profit board. I hike. I'm also a recent, fairly recent cancer survivor. So my hiking is down to a minimum. I'm working on getting back to that. There's pre-cancer and after-cancer things you do for fun. So I'm getting those things back.

So I have five siblings and, you know, we grew up, you know, on the same street. I still know people from that street. So I was born in the late 50s. And so these are people I've known my lifetime. I actually saw one of them night before last. And so I ended up getting married really young. And I could get into all the psychological reasons why I did that, but that part of it doesn't really matter. But I was 18.

And it was a big mistake, and it was very short-lived. And so the experience that I wrote in about happened shortly after the beginning of that six-month marriage. So this would have been in 77. So I was living in Orange County, and he was, he worked at a plant, and he was a swing and graveyard shift kind of guy. And he was older than me, a fair amount. I think he was eight or nine years older than me. And now I look at that and I go, oh, no, no. And back then, you know, you just don't make the same decisions in 18.

So I was at home by myself a lot and at night. And that never bothered me, but, you know, it was, it sort of sets this up. And so we had a couple of dogs, Cocker Spaniels, who can be high energy and kind of difficult at times. But these were actually good, good pups. So I would, you know, I would go to sleep and pretty much I was by myself going to sleep many, many nights. And the dogs would be on the bed with me. So, yeah, one night I woke up and I remember looking at the clock, you know, those old digital alarm clocks. And I remember looking at the clock.

And it was like three something in the morning. The dogs weren't there. So that was weird. So I was always on alert. If the dogs weren't there, do I have to go check and make sure everything's okay in the house? So I opened my eyes

and I realized that I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. I was conscious. The first thing I thought when this happened, though, was that I was dreaming. Shortly after that, though,

within a second or two, I realized that I was conscious and that I was just staring up at the ceiling. And it was really terrifying. I became aware of these creatures. And I remember there being maybe eight or nine of them. And they were around all three sides of the bed. Trying to get a sense of what was happening. was really, really difficult.

I at some point looked at, you know, in the doorway of the bedroom, and there was a taller creature there. But these creatures were kind of like, you know, reptiles in a way. They were kind of had that, you know, skin like a reptile. They were, they sort of had snouts like, you know, different kinds of animals we might see. like a pig or a, you know, in Arizona they have hovelinas, something like that. I didn't know what havalina was back then.

But they were really frightening and they weren't speaking. There wasn't anything audible. But I knew that they were frightening and dangerous and that, you know, I was at risk. They were probably three feet tall. So as I'm laying in the bed, there's three on one side, three on the other side, probably three at the end in the bed. So they were literally surrounding me. They were sort of stout. If you remember in Star Wars, there was sort of a pig-like creature in one of those like bar scenes or something.

They, and, you know, they kind of resembled that a little bit. So they were very, they were, you know, built like fire plugs. They were really like stout and more wide. And maybe three, three and a half feet tall. They weren't very tall. They were, I would say talking, but it wasn't audible. They were communicating with each other sort of, you know. And I don't remember.

them moving from one place to the other. No hair that I remember, and I don't remember teeth, and if they were wearing anything, it was the same color as their skin. So whatever they were wearing would have just blended in. Yeah, the skin was kind of rep—it was kind of like a reptile almost or like a frog. So it looked slimy. It looked wet. in a way. I don't know if they were or not. I don't remember any of them touching me.

I got the sense that they were taking their direction from the one that was in the doorway, and he looked completely different. You know, he was probably, he was probably, I mean, this was an old house, so it was probably a max seven-foot doorway, max, probably between six and a half feet and seven. and he kind of filled up the doorway. You know, he looked like what I identified later as, you know, one of the guys with a, you know, oval face and big eyes and that kind of thing. But not exactly.

Not exactly like the depictions of that. His face, as I remember, had scales. He had more scales. He was not smooth like what you see pictures of. or what you might imagine from pictures. He actually had like a scaled body and a scaled face. But he had those eyes and he had less of a pointy chin than what you see online or in books. He seemed to be running the show.

He seemed to be communicating with them and directing them, at least that was my sense and when nothing is audibly happening you just you just have you know this is all based on on gut feeling and you know observation wasn't really helpful either because I mean yeah they moved but they may have even switched places a couple of times and again my memory of that is a little foggy. They seem to, and I identified this as have like a hive mentality. Like they were all tuned into the same channel,

if that makes sense. I think my vision was so focused on survival because I felt absolutely threatened. I'm just sort of seeing them, surrounding my bed and not, it's so out of the ordinary that I don't, I'm not really processing what they're doing. As I said, I think they may have, like, switched places from time to time, but the amount of time that I was conscious, was minutes. I mean, it was not a long time.

It was just minutes. And I can't, other than the next part of the story waking up the next day, I can't really remember much else from that experience outside of that they were, you know, they were real. I was really paralyzed. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. And I remember there being.

like equal numbers of them. So there was either nine or 12, but I think there was nine of them, three on each side and three at the bottom of the bed. I did call my mom the next morning, and I told her that they were like trolls. That's, yeah, that's how I described them. They were like trolls.

So I felt like none of these creatures had emotions, if that makes sense. They were not, it was like they were, they were just there to do a job. It would be like, it would be like us trapping an animal that was, you know, digging up our yard.

The only thing I can compare it to is that at one point in my life in Los Angeles, I was robbed at gunpoint. And it was similar in that way where, you know, everything goes into slow motion and it is just pure survival. You don't think you're just sort of, you're, you know, I was physically frozen, but I think emotionally I felt frozen too.

Yeah, I couldn't think anything. I was just trying to figure out how to how to survive. And I think mentally and emotionally, I was recording. some of this, but at the time, I was paralyzed in all ways. I remember as a kid, we met astronauts, okay, because of my sister's job. We met astronauts. She was working where they had the simulators for the Apollo program. And so they would probably two or three times.

They came back to our house for dinner or they came to our house for dinner. I was a little kid. I mean, I was six or seven years old. And my dad was a pilot. So I would hear them, you know, talking late in the night. You know, you'd go, like, sneak down the hallway and listen to these guys talking. And one of them talked about how there was this probe that ended up around the orbital module, I think they called it, and that he couldn't explain it. And I remember my dad saying something like, well, if we think we're alone, then we're the most self-centered species in the universe, something like that.

I don't know exactly what he said, but it was along those lines. And so other than that, memory, I didn't have anything about this. And I didn't know if they were from space or if they were, Someone who had had a costume on and came into my house and, you know, injected me with something. I mean, I didn't know at the time. And it took a long time for me to sort of sort this all out the best that I could. It was like you really didn't have at that time, I mean, I was still living in the wonder years, basically. if you remember that show.

That was sort of how I was raised. And, you know, the only thing that we really thought about was barbecues. And I had a bunch of cousins who had immigrated, and we were the center for the family for a long time. And, you know, in high school, I worked and I got pretty decent grades, and I graduated early, and I just sort of, you know, that's all I was really focused on. One of the reasons I knew that I was paralyzed is that I tried to scream, which would be a typical reaction, and nothing came out.

So I was like screaming inside my head. At some point, I don't know whether I, you know, blacked out, passed out. at some point the memory is gone. There's no memory of anything else from that night. If you've ever had anesthesia and they tell you to count back from 100, you know, say $199 and then you're gone, it was kind of like that. Like I've got no conscious memory of going to sleep or them leaving or I just remember them being there.

and then I remember opening my eyes the next day. I had a memory of the night, but I still wasn't sure it was real, did what seemed natural to me, which was call my mom. So my mom, as I said, was, you know, from Ireland. And, you know, I described what happened. And she, you know, she immediately went into, you know,

the old wives tales and stuff. So, and it could have been even a Catholic thing. I don't know where, you know, you put salt at all the openings, the windows and doors. You know, when I told her, I thought they were like trolls. I mean, there's all sorts of mythology in Ireland about creatures who are not friendly on how to prevent them from getting near you again. is that's the salt at the windows and doors.

So I had, I don't know if you, if you ever went to the doctor and you had those little cups that would expand, right? Like they'd put like medication in there. I filled all of them with salt and I'm putting them like obsessively around my house. And she'd been here for a long time. She'd been here since the mid-40s right after World War II. But there's a part of you that always reverts back to,

the mythology of your upbringing, kind of, and there's plenty of that in Ireland. And she said, you know, well, maybe it was a banshee or maybe it was a bad fairy. And, you know, I'm thinking in Orange County, you know, but it was sort of like I just did what she told me to do. And she might have just been telling me to do something, so I would be able to feel like I did something to protect myself and move on, because moms will do that too.

So she was not, she didn't pass this off as nothing, if you know what I mean. It wasn't like she was placating me. She was trying to help me. And part of that was to take some kind of an action to give myself a sense of security. So I did that. And then I thought, oh, God, it was just a bad dream. It was just a really bad dream. And at the time, I was not, you know, I was 18.

I wasn't like much of a drinker. I wasn't, you know, smoking pot, although a lot of my friends did. I just was too busy to do that. I basically moved on. I went, okay, it was just a bad dream. It was, you know, I just have to put this behind me. It was just a really, really crazy, frightening dream.

Yeah, and I didn't tell the guy I was married to at the time. I did not tell him because I just didn't think that this was something he could even wrap his mind around. I just did my life. I just, I went to, you know, it's a school. I did my homework. I went to my job. and outside of not being able to sleep very well, that's what I remember.

I just remember going, okay, this had to be a dream. Just, you know, call it a day and move on. Because I almost didn't have time for it. You know, it's kind of like I went, I'm a busy girl, I don't have time for this. So I convinced myself it was a dream. that went on for a number of weeks and I missed my period. So I thought, oh, you know, I knew this marriage was sort of difficult.

I didn't, you know, I even had the, I had the wherewithal to notice that. And so I went to the medical office or the clinic at school, got a pregnancy test, and it was positive. I was kind of, you know, a little terrified at my age and, you know, kind of joyful because I had had some issues. I had one ovary. I'd had a surgery. I'd had tumors. I'd had cysts in the past, way in the past. So like at 15, 16.

So I wasn't sure whether I'd ever get pregnant. So there was a part of me going, hooray, I'm pregnant. And so I'm... you know, it's early. Nobody wants to get too excited with an early, you know, pregnancy. But I told my mom and probably my sister, and they were excited, sort of, you know, planning out ahead. And it gave them, I think it gave them a sense that they needed to just sort of accept this marriage and calm down.

So I went to my own doctor a few weeks after that. probably another six weeks after that. They confirmed with a blood test that I was pregnant. He did an exam and he said, yes, you're definitely pregnant and you're probably, they didn't do routine ultrasounds back then. Ultrasound was, I know this sounds crazy, but ultrasound was kind of new technology. And they didn't routinely use it. It would be like getting a routine MRI now.

But, you know, other ways of telling somebody who's pregnant and he did an exam. He said, yeah, you know, you're probably, you know, 12, 13 weeks. And so that was just, you know, three and a half headed towards four months. And, you know, first pregnancy, I wasn't showing a lot, but I was showing a little. So a couple of weeks after that, and I'm, you know, sort of now in the planning stages. Am I going to have to quit work? Am I going to have to quit school? Just making decisions like that, thinking about the future.

You know, my mom was a young mom. She was 18 when she had her first. So this was not unusual in my family. So that was sort of how it shifted. So again, I was sort of sleeping badly. And what my go-to was to go to sleep on the sofa with the TV on. And I still was, he was still working graveyard and swing shifts, which is why I was alone a lot.

at night. So I fell asleep on the sofa. I remember I was watching Johnny Carson. That's how long ago this was. And I opened my eyes and that old-fashioned, you know, Indian head with the, you know, with the headdress and static that told you that there was no more programming on. This is how long go, this was. So I see that. And I went, oh, gosh, okay, I really did crash. And I was woken up by the dogs barking, like absolutely furiously barking. And they had somehow, we had like a screened in porch, and they had somehow gotten out of the screened in porch and were outside in the backyard. And I'm looking for them and looking out there, and there's like, it looked like, you know, a helicopter light looking for somebody, like I'm looking for a bad guy. And I just assumed

that there was, you know, a burglar in the neighborhood or somebody they were chasing. And it wasn't the best neighborhood, to be honest. So I corralled the dogs back in. And it. And it was, you got them back inside and got them calm down. And then I realized that I didn't hear a helicopter. I didn't think about that until later. I didn't realize that until later that I saw those lights and I saw the dogs flipped out running around the backyard. But I didn't hear anything.

Like if a helicopter was in your, you know, shining lights in your backyard, you would hear it. So I don't remember whether I went to bed or whether I fell back asleep or I lost consciousness. But from that point on, from getting the dogs back inside, locking the doors, I don't have any memory until I woke up the next morning. So here I had this sort of lost time again. I was on the bathroom floor. I remember because we had pink tile.

and I remember waking up and looking at the pink tile and trying to figure out, I thought, oh, I'm pregnant, I must have passed out, you know, did I hit my head, what happened, I was just trying to get a sense of it all. And I woke up, I, you know, tried to get myself up without falling over because I was really kind of dizzy and weak, like weak need, and I realized that I was bleeding. I actually sat down on the toilet and I thought, well, there's blood. Maybe I'm going to have a miscarriage. I mean, I just wasn't sure.

And I was, you know, looking around to see, you know, what was going on. And had I passed out from a miscarriage or, you know, I just, it was having a hard time putting it all together. There was no blood on my, I'm sure I was wearing, I think I was wearing sweatpants. So it was no blood on my sweatpants. There was no blood on my underwear. I mean, I don't want to get that, you know, weird about it, but the towels were clean, the floor was clean. It was just on my pants, that's all. And when I sat down on the toilet, there was some drops of blood that were in the toilet from sitting down on the toilet. What I thought was that, you know, maybe I was having a miscarriage or that, you know, sometimes you do get some spotting and

bleeding when you're pregnant and it's not anything to worry about, but of course I worried about everything. And, you know, I just sort of did the next thing. I, you know, I had to, you know, I got myself put together so I wouldn't bleed all over anything anymore. And it was like it wasn't terrible bleeding. It was almost like spotting at that point. I go. I go. up and I went, I got myself cleaned up. I, you know, what happens when you get pregnant, you go, I don't need pads anymore. You put them away in the back of the cupboard. And so I got one out and I got myself cleaned up, made sure I wasn't going to, you know, changed my clothes.

And I went to go out from the bathroom. And I checked and make sure I didn't have like, you know, that I had like passed out and hit my head. I hadn't. And I went out into the living room and the dogs had shit and thrown up everywhere. I mean, everywhere. There was just trails of, you know, of dog stuff everywhere. So that made me sick. I got, I lost my, I've lost it, and I got sick.

And then I shook that off and I thought, well, I better just, I put a bandana around my face because we didn't have masks. I put a bandana around my, my mouth and nose and proceeded to clean up after the dogs. And, you know, I thought, God, now I'm going to have to take myself to the doctor and I'm going to have to take them to the vet because something's wrong. but I wasn't putting it together with what had happened weeks before yet. I thought maybe they had gotten to, you know, a gopher or squirrel or rats or something. You know, who knows? I thought maybe they had eaten something outside they weren't supposed to. You know, I just, I wasn't sure.

But whatever it was, it impacted both of them. You know, and they were like one unit. I mean, they went everywhere together. So what one did, the other one did. And so, yeah, I just, you know, I just cleaned up. It took forever. I mean, I had to get a, I'd like a little carpet cleaner thing, so I'm out there on my hands and knees cleaning the carpet.

And, you know, and he wasn't home because he had done a graveyard shift. and then I'm guessing he was a bit of a drinker that he went to the bar after his graveyard shift. So I didn't see him, and I may not have seen him at all that day. The dog seemed to be okay after that. I didn't feed them. I just made sure they had water, and I thought I'm going to put off feeding them so as not to have to do this again in a few hours. At one point, I got back.

to, well, geez, what happened to me? I woke up on the bathroom floor. I must have passed out. I must have something going on with this pregnancy. So, anyway, the next morning, I called the doctor and got right in. And he said that I had miscarried. And I was like, what? I told him how I found myself and he goes he said well what happened to the fetus what happened to the tissue i said there wasn't any and he said uh he said well this wouldn't have been a little bit he said a four month fetus is you know three four inches long he said so this wouldn't have been a little bit this would have been significant and i went by there was nothing i woke up i was spotted And so he scratched his head and he said, well, you must have been passed out or unconscious.

And when I looked back at that, I thought, talk about being, you know, having a doctor pat you on the back of the head and he had to go, okay, honey, you must not be remembering this right. He made this assumption that I, you know, I somehow had a miscarriage. cleaned up after myself and then passed out on the bathroom floor. I mean, that was his assumption. But there wasn't blood on a towel. There wasn't blood anywhere, which was really weird. Because, you know, I mean, I had another miscarriage after that. It's not like nothing.

It's a big event. And the cramping is big. And I thought, well, maybe I just passed out from the pain. You know, and, you know, you just tell yourself these things. You tell yourself that what you saw and what you felt wasn't what you saw and felt. To make it okay with your own mind and your own emotions. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the rest of the story. Hey there, it's Jill Schlesinger.

I'm launching a new show. It's called Money Moves, and your money is going to move. We're going to help you make better financial decisions. We're going to call out the BS you're finding all over social media. We're going to give you actionable guidance to make your financial life clearer, less stressful. We're going to answer your financial questions and take the mystery out of your financial life. Follow and listen to Money Moves with Jill Schlesinger, wherever you get your podcast. So I didn't question him.

I just went, okay. and I had, you know, I had some sadness about that and talked to my mom again and my sister. And, you know, so we had some sadness together and it was like, well, you can try again sort of thing. And I think they were probably in a strange way. They had a sigh of relief, you know, that I wasn't going to be tethered to this guy. And, you know, so the marriage ended shortly after that. He could be, he had a mean streak. He had a violent streak.

So I was happy to have brothers, older brothers. I'll just say that. I'll just say that. So I did take the dogs to the vet, and they said it must have been some sort of, you know, something they ate, something they ingested, because they're fine now. They're dehydrated.

That was the only thing they were was dehydrated. Yeah, so the marriage ended, and I moved back home. After I moved back home, because I had had this tumor removed, I got a pap smear every six months. They just wanted to keep an eye on me, that there weren't any other issues because I had issues so young. And so not long after that, they said,

well, you have, they called it cervical dysplasia, which basically means the cells in a particular part of your body are forming badly, which is the precursor to cancer. So because I had, you know, I saw the doctor so frequently, I mean, every six months, this was an early catch. So they called it cancer. They called it like a stage one cervical cancer. cancer, but they didn't go, well, you have to have this and that. You have to have chemo or radiation. I mean, none of that. So what they would do is they would do a biopsy about every four to six weeks. And basically they were removing any affected tissue, which is very painful to go through. But that was the treatment at the time. At the end of that, and that went on for probably six months, I had those treatments.

they just said, well, we're just going to have to keep an eye on you. So far, you've had a couple of normal pap smears and we just want to make sure they stay that way. So I had a pap smear after that every three months for probably a couple of years. Whatever was going on resolved itself. But they did tell me that I probably didn't need to use birth control, that unless pregnancy was going to be a big issue, don't worry about it. So that was kind of what they told me at the time. I didn't go back to school. I had had two years of college, and I didn't go back to school after that, and I ended up working. So I was sort of personally a little bit lost, and feeling, what happened is drinking made me feel comfortable, made me feel like I fit in my skin. It wasn't like an everyday thing or anything like that, but it increased over time. and 80, 1980, maybe even late 79, I met my son's father. In 1984 was the Olympics in L.A., and we lived in L.A.

and decided to get out of Dodge for the Olympics because it was like, I don't want to deal with it. So we go to Maine for, gosh, probably, I think we're there four weeks. His cousin is who we were staying with and his cousin's wife and I were friends. And so we went into town, I can't remember for what, but we went into town for something. And on our way back, you know, Maine is very sparsely populated and it can be dark. It can be a dark kind of area. And on our way back, she goes, what the hell is that? And we're looking on the side of the car we were driving.

And there's this light and it would go, you know, it would be like a sort of. solid light, like the front light of an airplane that you'd see. So like a bigger and solid. And then it would like turn into like a firecracker light and it would go way up in the sky and then way back down and then over one side and over the other. And then it would turn into this big light again. And she goes, what the hell is that? And I, you know, so we just watched it for a while and then we picked we went back to the house and we picked the guys up and we went we even following this weird light you've got to come with us so they hopped in the truck and we followed this this light to basically a public golf course and i can't remember exactly which one but it was so

it was kind of open space and didn't have a lot of trees so because you're trying to see through trees and above trees otherwise so this area was quite open. So this light literally stops. When we parked the car and got out and we're looking up, the light stopped in the sky. And so we watched it, and then all of a sudden it began to grow and get bigger.

It felt like it was coming closer. You know, that area is in a major traffic area for aircraft between like Boston and New York to light Gander. which used to be a normal stop for people going to Europe. We were in that flight path. So every time, but by the time a jet would be coming overhead, it would be kind of high in the sky. It wouldn't be like you could see it,

but it wasn't like right over a flight path. It was way up. And so every time one of these jets was coming over, this thing would go from being, a fairly good size light, not as big as the sun, but not the size of a star either. So, and it would just shoot and disappear up into the sky, and it would look like a star. And then the plane would pass and it would come back. It was the weirdest thing.

So it would go from being really big to shrinking to this pinpoint and disappearing. Almost like it was avoiding being seen by the big plane, if that makes sense. So we watched this for a while and that at some point it disappeared and didn't come back. And we went back to the house and Brian says this was the cousin. We've been seeing these things forever. They come and hover over the harbor. And these guys are up at 3 in the morning out, you know, getting their boats ready to go out. So he said, no, we've been seeing.

seen these things forever. And then they'd also see these cigar-shaped crap that would burn the tops of the trees. So he said this has been happening in Maine for a long time. Now, this is from a guy who has been fishing lobster for his whole life. So we're not talking about some L.A. person who, you know, you know what I mean? It was just like, if he was saying it, it had to be. to be true. I mean, it was like there was nothing to say other than that. I mean, he's he's not somebody who would even talk about stuff like this. Anyway, I thought it was just a very, it was a very strange thing. And that is a side thing, but you get a sense that once you've been connected, this is me looking back, once you've been connected, that there is some sort of psychic connection.

that there is a way in which whatever these other beings are, that they know where you are, they know how to reach you. We were all part of the music, not me, but my Devin's dad music business. And another friend of ours was also in the music business, and he was engaged to this woman who was, as I remember, a psychologist. And one night we were just all talking about weird things that happened, and I think we brought up the main thing. And then I ended up telling the story about the creatures and the pregnancy.

And this woman says to me, she said, I have a friend who's got this project, and it's involving this author named Whitley Streber and his book, Communion, which has been turned into a film. And they're filming this. he's going to be in Los Angeles and he was asking to invite people that we knew were credible

to come to a gathering at this house he's got rented up like, it was like Sunset Plaza up that way, Hollywood Hills someplace. And he'd like everybody to, you know, come up and meet with the idea that there would be a number of us, and I think there was probably 15 or 20 of us,

that would basically just say our name and the date of our experience. So don't talk about the experience. It's not going to be in the movie. There's no, nobody wanted to get paid. And that was the reason for the gathering was to go over this as a possibility. And would we be interested? And we were like, yeah, sure. As long as I don't, as long as I'm not telling my story,

I'll say I had an experience what my name was and when it happened. It was supposed to sort of lend not credibility but reality that, you know, this happens to real people. It doesn't happen just to people on a random screen or in a book that it's a real thing. So we go up and they have some, you know, food and drink and everybody's sort of hanging out. It wasn't like a conversation necessarily about UFOs or anything else. At some point, I ended up speaking with him. And he said, so, why are you here? And I think I told him briefly.

And so he started asking questions, and every question he asked, it was like, okay, so did you feel paralyzed? Did they look kind of like this? Did they? And every time he asked a question, it was like he knew exactly what I had gone through, which was kind of creepy in a way. It was very unsettling. And I had sort of put it all behind me and turned it into a story that was part of my life. I mean, he was so specifically familiar. He asked if they had made noises and I did have some vague memory, but it was very vague. I couldn't really put my finger on it. He asked me,

how many of the taller ones and I were there, how many creatures were around the bed. You know, and I told him I only saw one taller one. And then, you know, what had happened the weeks later about the helicopter and the dogs. And he asked if I had any evidence of the miscarriage. So it's kind of like he knew my story already, which, again, was sort of difficult.

And it brought it all back. It brought it all back. And we couldn't do this scene in the film because SAG insisted that we all get union cards. And none of us wanted to get paid and we didn't want to have any in-kind. And, you know, we just wanted this to be a real thing. So the scene never happened. It was supposed to be the last scene of the film and it didn't happen. I ended up years later picking up a copy of the book and I started reading it.

and I couldn't. It just brought up too many. It just brought up that fear again, and it brought up a lot of this experience, which I had tried to put into a box, basically, and stuff away on a closet, in the upper shelf of a closet someplace. It was almost like, as I was going through this process,

I had to get to a point where I would face, sort of this underlying fear that I think I was putting down with alcohol. And I can't say that that's the only thing that had the only reason I drank. I mean, I'm of Irish descent. We're sort of, you know, it's kind of like being an Italian and saying you don't drink wine. I felt like I was starting to get to a point where I could start resolving some of this. So, 87 or 88, I started doing the work with Linda. So I heard about this lady named Linda.

I had met her as part of a larger group of friends we had at the time. She was just very interesting. Everybody, you know, tried to call her a psychic, but she said, I'm not a psychic. She said, I don't hang a shingle out that says psychic. She said, I'm very intuitive. I do a particular kind of work, which was a form of regression therapy. And her husband was a photographer and remained that way until they both passed away kind of recently.

And Linda was just somebody who was really safe. And she had heard about my story, I think, at a dinner party. there was sort of a running joke about the okay who's got the story about the aliens oh Mary does she's going to talk about the aliens you know that kind of thing and it was difficult because it was so real to me

and she took it seriously and she asked me how I was doing with it and I say well sometimes I have trouble sleeping and I think I drank a lot over this and I'm sober now and she said to me she said well any if you ever want to you know really do some work on this um we can do that so i got more curious about it and met with her and she said you know i don't do she said it's not like i sit there and do a reading with you or something like that she said you're going to be doing the

work and she explained to me the kind of work that she did which was a form of regression where you're exploring your body memory, what she said, and I want to say this correctly, was not as influenced, that your body memory was not going to be influenced by your life experience or your opinions or input you've had, that your body will remember what it remembers,

if that makes sense. So I did five or six of these sessions with her. So typical, you know, you know, typical little house. I mean, it was not, nothing, no big deal. And she had a room. And the room was really comfortable. And she had a big chair.

And she started out by just, you know, creating a really safe space and saying that, you know, I had to remember that I was in her room, that nothing could harm me. Nothing could come in. Nothing, you know, that we were just going to have our body remember what happened. and that our body could lead us to a more realistic memory of these things that were, you know, had caused me trouble. So what she would do is she would get me relaxed and put me in sort of a meditative state. And then she would ask me where in my body was intense. You know, she said, is anything holding your arm?

Is anything touching your arm? is there, you know, she would look at the actual physical feeling and try and work backwards from that. And then she'd move up. So what's, you know, let's go to your elbow. Is there anything, you know, is there any tension in your, and shoot, that's how it worked. It was a little odd and different.

So it wasn't like, well, go back in your mind and try and remember or anything like that. So in that process, and I don't have, entirely specific memories of the process because it was, in fact, in a meditative, very deep kind of meditative state. I did, I think four or five, I think I did five of these sessions, and they were all about an hour long, in her home. And the first one was me kind of getting the sense of how this worked, because your mind

wants to take over in a way. You know, when it comes to trying to remember, you know, fearful or frightening things that have happened, it's almost like your mind wants to take over and your mind ends up coloring what the memory is. Your body is a lot less subjective or a lot more objective as I found out in this experience. And so the first,

session or maybe two. I was almost getting used to seeing through the lens of my body instead of seeing through the lens of my mind. And, you know, it did take some doing. And I kind of imagine it's sort of like, you know, remembering something that, you know, happened that was traumatic as a child. You may not remember it in the way that it happened, or you may not remember it completely, or maybe your mind wants to block certain things because this is too frightening. So by either the second or third session, I started having recollections of things. And when this happened, she regressed using this technique of moving through different parts of my body that were tense. And she finally got to my eyes.

and she told me to open my eyes, that I was in my room, that these things were surrounding the bed, and that this larger creature was at the door, and that I could safely open my eyes because I was not there anymore. I was in her room, in her chair, in Los Angeles. And so I did. I opened my eyes, and I was not in my bed anymore.

I wasn't sure where I was, but I was not in my bed. It was not in my room and not in my home. And I was sort of in a, it was almost like a, like you would imagine, an old-fashioned surgical theater. It was kind of like a round room, lots of really bright lights, and the small troll-like guys were no longer there. It was all the taller guys. and I can't remember exactly how many of them were there,

but I know there were at least three or four. I'm not laying flat. From my waist up, I'm kind of at an angle, which is the only reason I could see what they were doing because I couldn't move. I don't remember being cold or hot. I don't remember any of that. I just remember being very fearful

of the noise from whatever that drill was and being very fearful of that, you know, scalpel being afraid they were going to cut me open and I had no anesthesia. I mean, I remember thinking that, that, you know, they're going to cut me open and I've got no anesthesia and I'm going to die here. It was not like a memory.

It was like I was there. It was not like I was separate from at all. I definitely felt like I was there. Because the fear would come back and the fear was real. And it was obvious. It was, you know, on the surface. It wasn't something that I was having a memory of. Although that's what we were doing.

At that point, we were dealing with memories. And I remember hearing something that sounded like a drill. And when I tried to look at it, it was almost made of, of glass, like if you can imagine a scalpel that was transparent. It looked like what I was hearing was a drill. Like if, you know, if you've ever looked on any of the medical shows and they're drilling into somebody's skull, it was like that kind of sound.

But it was not made out of metal. None of these, nothing that they seemed to have was anything we could relate to. She had me try to look down on myself, which was harder. But I sort of was able to see what was happening, not from above because I was never able to do that. but from where I had some sort of visual. And it could have been my body remembering and not my mind again. But I saw them using this tool like a scalpel. But it didn't cut and bleed like you would imagine a scalpel would.

It was almost like a hyper-sophisticated laser or something. It's the only way I can. And that's from today trying to describe what I saw back then. So whatever this tool was, it disappeared into my body. It didn't cut my body. It disappeared into it. And this would have been in my abdomen. I do remember having some kind of, you know, a long instrument put it, inserted into my nose.

And just having a lot of pressure in my abdomen. That's what I was remembering in this process with her. I don't remember having any pain, but a lot of fear and a lot of panic. And again, back to that animal comparison, if, you know, I don't know if you've ever had to take an unwilling cat to the vet. And if you have, it can be quite traumatic for you and the cat. But it was sort of like that feeling of helplessness that I was so outmanned and outnumbered. that there was nothing I could do,

except be there and be kind of conscious and not know exactly what was happening to me. That's all I remembered from those moments. I distinctly remember this sort of instrument that looked like it was some kind of tool, like surgical tool, but it was not, solid and it disappeared into my body rather than cutting my skin and having whatever that was in my nose but the timing of that and the timing of the later pregnancy and I didn't put all of this

together until I met Strieber but it was almost like the timing of all of this began to have a through line and make sense They wanted something from my reproductive system. I don't know whether they, you know, whether I got pregnant, whether they took the baby. I mean, I don't know. That's what's been reported by other people. But I don't know that. I just know what the evidence says, what the experience says.

Just so you know, the purpose of me seeing her and the purpose of me doing this work was so I didn't have to live in fear. That was really the reason. It was not so I could have, you know, some, you know, memory and write a book. You know, it was really so I didn't have to live in fear. And it accomplished that. The work with her accomplished that. I have not had, you know, any of these things come back to me in the past, say, 35 years or so. That was like grippingly fearful the way that it was.

and I've done that without drinking. So that's what I set out to accomplish with her. And that may be why I didn't keep copious notes. And I was okay with my memory being a little foggy because I never thought that I would want or need to remember it or have it other than something that happened to me in my past. The last thing that we did together was sort of like, and again it was,

weird. She did the same thing. She put me in a meditative state. And I remember saying to her, you know, asking if her husband was in the room. Because when your eyes are closed, you're sort of sensing. And she said, no. And I said, it feels like there's someone in the room. And I said, oh, it's just no big deal. You know, I kind of passed it off. And she was sort of sensing something too but I think she didn't want to make me uncomfortable or fearful. So she asked me what was happening and I immediately, I mean, I didn't have to go through the process of going from one part of my body to the next to get where this was happening. But I told her, I said, I feel like somebody has opened my skull and they're feeding me at

high pressure, like if you open a fire hydrant. information, data, and I use these words, but I don't know. You know, I've never had this information come out yet. But it was like physics and mathematics and formulas and music. And it was like an entire, like a civilization's data got jammed into my head. Now, have I ever seen it again? No. But at the time, that's what it felt like.

It felt like I was being filled with information and tools and things that I was supposed to, you know, maybe call on later. And they kept repeating in my head. I kept hearing them, say, save the garden. Save the garden, save the garden, save the garden. That's what I kept hearing. And she asked if this was a single person or was it? And I said, it doesn't feel like a single person, but it feels that. And this is, again, weird, feels like a single entity.

It feels like a single voice, maybe for many. And she said, what it, can you ask, you know, if it would identify itself? And so in my head, I did, and it said that its name was Ra. And again, I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know who it was. I later looked it up. And the only thing that I could come up with was some Egyptian god of some sort. It was like the, I think it's like the creator, the Egyptian creator.

And again, none of this has ever happened again. It didn't happen before. I've never, you know, I've never sat down at a, piano, not playing piano, and play piano. You know what I'm saying? It's not like I ever called on this information. But at the time, at that moment, that's what it felt like. It felt like I was being, like my, I was being filled with information that I could not even

comprehend. I mean, I had some advanced math, but it wasn't even on that same level. And that was weird. This whole thing has been, it was weird. So they were telling me that they were giving me the tools that I needed to save the garden. Blur so much as it's information that I can't comprehend. In other words, you know, I mean, I took calculus, okay? I don't remember calculus.

I don't. I took several semesters of calculus. I don't remember any of it. I remember geometry. I remember, you know, algebra. I've used that periodically. I remember statistics, which I took at UCLA. So it's like, and those things are, just like a foreign language, you have to keep using them.

This was, it was, it was so fast. It was like stuck in my head for a rainy day or something. I just don't, no, I don't remember anything specific. I remember it was, it was everything. It was like, you know, it was math and science and physics and everything. Almost that if I had more time in my life, which I haven't been blessed with, I haven't been blessed with a lot of free time. You know, maybe it's something I would have called on or might in the future.

But I don't, I've never, I really haven't done any garden saving, honestly, that I know of. So the end of this session, she's winding down. She's starting to bring me out after all of this sort of, you know, intense part of the session. And, you know, I'm kind of like half conscious. And I go, God, Linda, is there a skunk outside or something? I go, something. She goes, I smell it too. I don't know what it is.

And it was kind of like, you know, like rotten eggs, like sulfur almost. I mean, I remember going to Hawaii, that Volcano National Park thing, and you can smell the sulfur, and it sort of smelled like that. And she goes, let me check with, you know, she said, let me check with my husband. And so she yells outside her husband

and says, are you smelling anything? And he said, no, no, everything's fine out here. And she said, well, walk in the room, okay? So he walks in the room and he goes, whoa. So whatever this, this smell was only in the room. It was not outside. It was only in the room. And she said, okay, thank you.

Just wanted a little confirmation. And he walks out the door and we're there and we're trying to sort of make sense of what had gone on. And the smell is still there. And she goes, man, I don't know what that is, but it's pretty awful. And I said, I said, it smells like a teenage boy's dirty clothes. You know, I mean, it was like we were both making jokes about it. So we're just talking now, just sort of, you know, just talking. And then we both felt like there was electricity, like this intense electricity in the room, along with now this terrible smell.

And then inside the room, it wasn't outside, didn't come from the outside in. it was inside the room there's this huge like bang and power and um and then the lights went out for like three or four blocks in both directions in the fairfax district it was like an implosion not an explosion it was like an implosion and it it was a loud bang and this time her husband heard it because he he came in because he thought something had fallen or, you know, broken or, you know. And seconds, literally seconds later, after this loud bang, the lights went out, the power went out for several blocks in both directions from their act.

And this was in L.A. They actually called Edison the next day to try and find out if there was some sort of, you know, power outage. And they said, well, we see the people. power outage, but we're not sure what it was. We're not sure what the source was. And they really couldn't give them any more information. So we all sort of left that with, you know, we have no earthly idea. She had a supposition that whatever was feeding me this, you know, data or information, that this was an actual, not a memory, but a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a helper of some kind, and that when they left the room, that the power of them leaving was what we

experienced. That's what she said. I have no earthly idea. I don't know. But that was the end of our weird experience. I waited for about half an hour. She lit some candles, and I waited for half an hour. And the smell was gone, too.

As soon as the bang happened and the power went out, the smell. Mel was gone. It was a very weird experience. I got back on my car and drove home and checked in with them the next day, and she said, Edison couldn't really tell us much other than it was, you know, they could not find the source of the outage.

So, and that was our last session. I really have not had any experiences since, that at least I'm aware of, I do remember when I finally did watch Communion, and you can watch it and see this. At some point there is a scene where their trolls are in it. And the first time I saw that, I felt dizzy and ill and had to run out of the room.

I couldn't. I just was like, it was shocking. It was like, oh my God, somebody else saw these little part of my French buckers, you know. It was like I was like I literally had a visceral, physical response and had to leave the room. And this was during COVID. I finally watched the movie during COVID. You know, and it, I mean, it's a theory. I don't know if this is real or not.

I mean, I know what I experienced felt real. but I mean so what I think happened is I think that and this is also based on some of the reading I've done is that they impregnate women I don't know how they pick the woman but they impregnate them and then they take the baby and the fetus I did have a couple of weird dreams

where I actually and I'm trying to remember when I had these dreams, but I'm not somebody that remembers my dreams. And I remembered this one pretty accurately, where I had, you know, a baby in my arms and I was trying to run away from the round room with the baby in my arms. So, and now it couldn't be a baby because, I mean, all this happened when, you know, I had a four, maybe four and a half month fetus. So, So, yeah, I think that, and in the process of removing the baby or the fetus, they create a physical circumstance where you end up with some kind of cellular changes.

And that's a guess. But the fact that I had this dysplasia and that it went away on its own, I didn't have anything other than biopsies is odd. and, you know, maybe when they were done with me, they were done with me. I don't know. But I had to cut the cord, if that makes sense. It's almost like had I stayed attentive or in some cases I've seen people become kind of obsessed with these experiences, that I would retain some sort of connection, and I didn't want that.

I didn't want to have a connection to this experience anymore. I wanted it over. I didn't want to live in fear. And, you know, by and large I have not lived in fear. You know, had a pretty unremarkable and good life. Despite having cancer, for real, which I am now in remission for more than a year, it's, you know, that time of my life seemed to be fraught. with a lot of drama and a lot of fear and a lot of angst.

And as I got through, you know, my 20s and I got sober at the end of my 20s, 29, that seemed to be the kind of the jumping off point for me where I was like, okay, what I got is today. I have today, what can I do with today? I wouldn't have a problem connecting with whatever it was or whoever it was that I connected with in that last session with her because they were different. They were not, they were benevolent. In fact, they were more than benevolent. They were like helpers. It was a completely different energy, for lack of a better word, it was a different energy.

And I wouldn't have a problem being connected to them because they're not out to, you know, out to get me. You know, strangely enough, the cancers I had two that I did have are considered gynecologic cancers. So all these years later come back around. And again, I don't know if they're connected or not, but I did get over them pretty quickly, which was a big surprise to my doctors. So I really do think I had a physical experience. at 18.

And I really do think that it is odd that I had a pregnancy at that point in time where I'm actually showing. Not a lot, but I was showing. That people just don't have

miscarriages and have no evidence of that happening. You don't clean up an entire bathroom and yourself and everything else and dispose of evidence. You know, you just don't do that when you're, you know, passed out.

You know, so that never made any sense to me. So, I mean, I can conclude things, but the truth is that I'll never know. Not really. At the end of the day, I just won't know. And so I had to find a way to live with not knowing for sure. Thank you again to Mary for being so willing to share this story that is very personal to her.

For me, I can't stop thinking about that message that was given to her in the vision or flashback or whatever you think that was. I am always really interested in moments like that where a person is given a message during an experience like this, especially a message cryptic enough where the person receiving it doesn't understand it. I do think some details of that download she described and the messages will stick out to some listeners who are into this type of thing, people who are well-versed in UFO and supernatural lore.

With that said, I know that Mary is not one of those people. And I think I like her own interpretation of the messages. I also think it's kind of crazy that she ended up meeting Whitley Stryber in the way that she did. and was nearly in the movie version of his book, Communion, which she only read one third of, which I think is really interesting. Honestly, even though it's such an unlikely way, I think it's great that she was able to meet some people who had similar experiences to her. Honestly, it's too bad that they did not make it into the final version of that movie.

But if you ask me, I think Mary deserves a movie. version of her own story. It's definitely wild enough. If that happens, I guess we'll just have to remember to use only Screen Actors Guild card-carrying union experiencers if we want to incorporate any kind of documentary element. Thank you once again to Mary for sharing her story. This episode was called Save the Garden,

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 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.

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