Otherworld - Episode 180 - The Treehouse

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

After his family moves into an old hunting cabin outside of San Diego, David strikes up a friendship with someone that may not be amongst the living. Once renovations begin on the house activity ramps up and each family member has experiences that lead them to look back on the property as full of happy but haunted memories. 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 from a guy named David who grew up in what used to be a hunting cabin, located between a few Native American reservations outside of San Diego. For those not familiar with this area, on one side of San Diego is the ocean. Below it is the Mexico border, and then right behind it to the east is wilderness. Complete wilderness that stretches all the way. to the end of the state and eventually becomes the desert. This area where David's house was built, the old hunting cabin, was along a prominent trade route

that span from the eastern mountains of San Diego to the coastline and would eventually become Interstate 8. The house was built with two granite stones holding it up in a river running beneath it, which they believe made it a perfect energetic hotspot for extra. In this episode, you will also hear from David's sister Corinne and his mother Angie, who all experienced things in this house as well. This episode is called The Tree House, and you're listening to Otherworld. This is Bobby? At its core, the science, you can't argue.

It's not only about all the science. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name's David, born and raised in San Diego. I moved up to L.A. shortly after high school and pursued music and photography, did all the stuff there.

And as of probably seven years ago, moved back to San Diego. And I'm a middle school science teacher now on the beach. New father, kind of just living it up, having a good time. I was born in San Diego proper, and when I was two, we moved to East San Diego. A little town that's kind of nestled between three different native reservations. It was cool because there's a lot of culture there. The native culture is really integrated into that town. So I grew up learning about that.

My mom is native, so it kind of helped me feel a little bit more in touch with my roots there. The house itself was over 200 years old. When my parents bought it, they were told that it was originally a stop on the Pony Express. In my research, I've actually found that it belonged to a stagecoach stop that predated the Pony Express. The stagecoach route was called the San Antonio Stagecoach. It went from San Antonio all the way through Arizona, New Mexico. into San Diego and then up to San Francisco. And it followed a prominent trade route that was used by the indigenous people there for hundreds of years

from Yuma, Arizona, onto the coast of San Diego. So they kind of just adapted that trade route and made it the stagecoach route. And so my house was a stop along that route in eastern San Diego kind of after you get past Yuma and the desert. So deep history. It was a very old cabin. So it was, the house itself was really popular amongst my friends because it looks like a tree house. They called it the tree house.

It was originally just a tiny living room and an outdoor kitchen. So there was this old outdoor kitchen part of it. Eventually, once the stage coach closed down, it turned into a hunting cabin. and it was a place for hunters to just kind of stop and stay for the night. And eventually some hunters bought it and kept it themselves and added a second living room onto it and then added a second story onto it, a bedroom upstairs. So it's a really, it's kind of a labyrinth of a house.

You walk in and you're in a living room and there's a kitchen, but then there's a second living room. There are three fireplaces. And then upstairs, there's another kind of, It's a big bedroom. It feels almost like there's a duplex upstairs that had a wall torn off. It seems like it was definitely like a hotel or a hostel for hunters. So it was multiple bedrooms.

And it's just kind of confusing in there. It's just a bit of a labyrinth of a place. But it's super beautiful and there's a creek running right through the bottom of it. And the house sat on these giant granite boulders, which I think have a lot to do with the story. But eventually that run. route became Interstate 8 that runs the length of San Diego. And then my parents bought it in the 90s.

We moved there when I was two. And we all shared the same bedroom. And then my little sister was born. And it became a little cramped. So that's when my dad started renovating the house. And I was probably about four or five around that time. And that's when things started to really ramp up. When we first moved in, my mom says things started happening right away.

So it would be things like we would go out to dinner and come home and all of the lights and all the doors in the house would be on or open. And it led to a lot of fights between my mom and my dad, remember? Because my dad would be like, why did you leave all the doors open? Why did you leave all the lights on? And she was like, you were there too. We left at the same time. We know that everything was closed up.

But my mom would come downstairs in the middle of the night to get water. And she would say like all the pots and pans would be on the floor. Every cabin was open and everything is just on the floor, stacked. And then she would have to at 3 in the morning put everything back away. So weird annoying little things like that. The house, like I mentioned, sat next to a creek. So there's a creek essentially running through the house almost. And so when I was five, I would just hang out outside all day long.

and I would play in that creek. And I would just follow the creek for as far as I could through the woods. No parental guidance at all, which is super dangerous. But while I was down there, in my memory, you know, when you have a really fond memory of doing something fun and you had friends with you, you share that memory with those friends. You know that, okay, this person was there. and when I have this memory, like, yes, this person was also there and they're part of that memory.

It's like that, but I don't remember who it was. I was there with somebody. And I vividly remember that person walking me through the creek and saying, like, hey, let's go check out this over here. Or being like, hey, this is oleander. It's poisonous. Don't touch that. This is poison oak. Don't touch that.

That's poisonous. Oh, there's black. Blackberries down here. Let's go eat some blackberries really quick. These are good. These other berries are not good though. Don't touch those and I vividly remember learning all these things even like learning the name oleander as a five-year-old and being like oh yeah, oleander is bad. But I don't I can't put a face to that person I was with. There was the creek formed a pool in front of the house that had a waterfall. So I would sometimes go to the top of that waterfall. jump off into the pool. Not that it was high, it was like three feet up. And the pool was like four feet deep. And I would splash around in that pool. The pool was, it was damned off in front of our house.

And then litter broken to form another waterfall. And there was reeds on either side, boulders on both sides. I really enjoyed it because it felt like a fort. Like there was bamboo growing wild. and it was kind of like my little zone to get away from everybody. And the bamboo kind of funneled underneath the street that went past our house. So there was a bridge. And I remember the bridge being daunting when I was a kid.

It's this long, dark tunnel that the creek runs through. And there's frogs jumping everywhere in salamanders. And part of what I remember is this person that I was with saying, like, no, it's okay. Let's go through this tunnel. And when we come out the other side, there's going to be blackberries. There's going to be another pool that we can swim in and more bamboo. And we can make a fort down there.

And so I remember being kind of coaxed that it was okay to go through this tunnel. And it totally was. And that kind of ignited like that adventurous, explorative feeling in me to be like, oh, no, like, this is really cool. Let's keep going. And the water was always really cold. So during the hot summer days, it was really fun to kind of splash around in there. And eventually we would follow it even further, catch tadpoles, whatever, through these oak trees. And it would drop off onto a huge waterfall that was like 20, 30 feet even.

And I remember like the discovery of that was the coolest being. you know, five or six years old, finding a waterfall with no one around in the woods. Eventually, I would invite friends and we would go explore it together. But those initial years, I was with somebody, and that person kept me safe the whole time. I would tell my mom, like, oh, yeah, my friend gave me these blackberries. Or my friend told me not to go over there.

And she was like, what do you, like, what friend, what are you talking about? I was the only child that lived in that neighborhood and it wasn't even really a neighborhood. There were a couple spread out houses down the street and they were all, I mean, we never met half of them. But she was obviously worried that I'm just hanging out with somebody in the creek. So she started watching me.

She would go out there and just kind of keep an eye on me and I would say, yeah, this is my Indian friend. And obviously, no one would. was there and she'd be like, okay, and what is he saying? And I would say, yeah, he says that there's some blackberries down there. Let's go. And I would go and show my mom the blackberries and I'd come home. And I'd always tell her like, yeah, he walks me home, but he never comes inside. And eventually my mom stopped letting me go out there because it was creeping her out too much. But that was kind of the first thing. You know, and I want to emphasize that it was very positive.

I keep saying it's a fond memories because it is. I learned a lot and I felt like I was being protected. I think that's the main thing. I felt like there was someone legitimately watching out for me. Most people chalk that up to an imaginary friend and that's fine. But it became more validating later and I'll get to that. So the renovation began and things kind of started ramping up. My uncle, I remember, came and spent the night one time.

We barbecued and had fun, and he fell asleep in the living room on the couch. And the living room faced the backyard, the eastern side of the house, which had a huge window, and you could see out into the backyard, which kind of looks down to the canyon and down to the creek. And I remember waking up in the morning. At this point, it's probably eight years old, and came downstairs, and he was gone. and everything was gone and his car was gone and my mom and my dad were like what's going on

and my mom called him and he was completely freaked out and rattled and he had driven home at like three in the morning because he said people were looking at him through the window from the backyard and tapping on the windows and he just grabbed his stuff and ran

which I would too I don't blame him but what's interesting is later we finished the bedrooms that we added on to the house and we added a laundry room and a bathroom. And my sister's bedroom also had a window facing the eastern side of the yard. And I remember walking past her room one day and there were pillows up against her window blocking off the entire window and curtains. And I was like, what are you doing?

And she was saying that people were looking at her through the window. at night. My name is Corinne. I am David's sister, younger sister. I think the very first thing that I can remember is I would see faces in my window. I had like a really big window that looked into the backyard. And then there was a smaller window on like kind of like where my bed was that was like right against a tree almost. And it was almost like level with the ground. Like if I was outside, I could like look inside my window. The other window that looked into our backyard was super high off the ground. And for some reason, that big window was where I would always see faces. And it would always be like in the middle of the night. It would never just be during the day or anything like that.

I would just wake up. You know, you feel like someone's looking at you. And I would just look over. And there was always either one guy was always there, one guy, or there would be like at least six or seven other faces. And it wasn't like, monstrous faces or anything like that, it was people. And it was like they were just kind of like looking in, looking around, seeing what was going on. The guy that was always there all the time was the creepiest and he was always just smiling. I would say he was like early 40s. So he wasn't super old. He had like short brown hair, a big nose.

And then his smile was just very like, his teeth were like, they weren't kept, they weren't clean. And he was always just in overalls and just creepy. Like, creepily smiling. The other people I would see would be a mix of men and women. And they were just normal. I wouldn't say there was like a mix between people that would be like in their 20s all the way up to their 60s.

And it was almost like I could tell that they wanted to see what was going on. inside the house. And so I would always just put pillows up because I was like, I don't want to wake up in the middle of night and see you because you're creepy. So that was my very first memory. There are two defining moments for me in this house. One, I was about 11 years old. And I was at a friend's house, beautiful summer day. I remember we were having so much fun. I probably spent the night there or whatever, rode my bike home, got home, and there was no one around. Middle of the day. And I went inside, just kind of looking for anybody, open up the door, went through the first living room, went into the second part of the house, the second living room.

And as I crossed through the door, there was a little girl just standing by the fireplace. And I kind of froze. And she turned around, and she was, probably eight years old, I would say. She was wearing a pink dress with white trim. She had a pink bow in her hair. She had long brown hair, dark eyes. And she turned around and we locked eyes. And there was an instant kind of recognition there is what stands up to me. She looked at me and recognized that I was seeing her. And there was a instant kind of recognition there is what stands up to me. is she looked at me and and recognized that I was seeing her.

And there was kind of some, I felt the best way to describe it is like some excitement in her eyes. Like she was kind of like, whoa, okay, he can see me. And she had a slight smile on her face and she turned around and just kind of slowly started walking towards me as if to maybe like introduce herself. I wasn't, there was no malevolence in there at all. She seemed totally friendly, but just something was definitely off.

I knew that I wasn't looking at a human, whatever it was. I can't really place it. Maybe it was the way she was moving or just the way space and time felt. There was a certain energy in that house is very, very electric, I would say. You could, it felt staticy and charged most of the time in there. But I remember during this instance specifically, it was very charged. I could feel it all around me.

And it was like instant. It hit me right away. And so she started walking towards me. And I kind of just freaked out and I sprinted out the house. And I ran into our backyard. And there were these stone steps going up and around our. backyard back around the house and I remember I sprinted out and I ran up those stone steps and stopped and I could hear footsteps coming up the steps towards me as I was standing there. So I ran again

and then I could hear more steps coming down the path towards me. And I remember my cat ran out of the house with me and she, her hair was standing straight up and she was completely freaked out and she was looking back at the steps as well. And I ran all the way around through the backyard, through the front of the house, got my bike, and went back to my friend's house. And I never told anybody that story because it seemed so unbelievable. And I was so freaked out. And I just didn't believe that anyone would ever believe me. It was just, it just was so insane. You know, in hindsight, I kick myself for not just staying put. And because I'm a really curious person and I want to know what would have happened. But as an 11, 12,

year old, you know, I freaked out and I got out of there. But she was super friendly and I felt like it was like, um, being a family member or something, a younger family member who just wanted to play. And I just ran away and I never told anybody. Um, I told my mom about it recently. Um, but she was the only one, which brings me back to my sister. Because when I talk to my sister, yesterday. I asked her, like, you know, what stood out to you about that house? Was there anything that happened? And she said, well, yeah, actually, she was saying that when she was little, and this actually would have been around the same time because she's four years younger than me. She said she lost a tooth. And she had a lot of anxiety about the tooth fairy coming. And so she was

laying in bed, couldn't sleep because she was like, oh, the tooth fairy is going to come at some point. and I'm anxious about it. And she said that she rolled over, and she, remember, Polly Pockets? She had a whole Polly Pockets set, like the house and all this stuff, and it was super organized in this one corner of her room, and she had a very specific way. And she said she rolled over in bed, and something was on the floor playing with her Polly Pockets.

The next biggest thing was my, The toothberry. I thought I saw the toothberry. I had lots of tooth. And I was all excited, put the tooth under my pillow and was waiting. Same thing, woke up in the middle of the night. And I don't know if you remember Polly Pockets, but they're like kind of like Barbies. And I had this whole setup where it was like a house and you could like change their clothes and everything. So I had this whole Polly Pocket set up on my floor. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw, it was like this, I just saw the back of her. And it was like this little girl.

And I remember she was in a sparkly pink dress. And my first thought as a kid was, that's the toothberry. Like, she's playing with my toys. And so I just, like, pretended like I was asleep because my mom always said, like, toothberry's not going to come if you're not asleep. So I was like, I got to pretend like I didn't just see her. So I, like, pretended I was asleep and I could hear her playing with my toys for like a long time. Like, it seemed like an hour. And I ended up, I would like open my eyes, kind of look at her.

She was still there. Back still turned. And I closed my eyes. And then I ended up falling to sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, like, money was under the pillow. And my mom came in. And I was like, really excited. And it was like, the tooth fairy came. And she was like, I know. Like, you know. And I was like, no, like she played with my toys. She played with my Polly Pockets. And my mom was like, no, she didn't. And I was like, yeah, she did. She played for like a long time. My mom was like, no, no. So I got up and I went over to my polypockets and like everything was different. Like the clothes that I had her in, like I always had her in the same outfit. It was a completely different outfit. Things were moved everywhere. And I was like, look, like, because my mom knows, like, how I played

with my toys. And I was like, look, like, she's not wearing the dress. Like, the dress I always had in was like this blue dress. And my mom was just kind of like, okay, well, wasn't the Toothberry, but okay. She was like, we're never going to talk about this again. And,

but I was, I was never freaked out about that one. Like, for some reason as a kid, I was just like, that was cool. Like, Toothberry thought my toys were cool enough to play with, so that was cool. There was a lot of instances where we had this hook that we would use.

Like, if you're going up into our attic and he needed to, like, pull the stairs down, we had this long hook. And we would always lean it up against our stair railing on the second floor. And we would all just be watching TV downstairs. So none of us would be upstairs. And all of a sudden, that hook would come flying down the stairs. Like, someone just threw it down the stairs. and my dad was always like,

who did that, like thinking someone was up there. But all of us, like, it was just me, my dad, my mom, my brother, we were all watching TV downstairs and it would happen. And it happened a few times. And there was one time my brother was in his room upstairs and it happened. And my dad was like, see, it's David. We were like, no, like this has happened with him not even being a home.

So it's definitely not David. I mean, we would, always hear footsteps in the house. It was an old house. So if you're going to walk around the house, so you can hear it. And it was just a lot of creaking. But there was one night in particular where it was like someone was like sprinting downstairs.

Like I could hear them running back and forth. And it was like, do do do do do like super fast. And they'd like, I would hear them run towards the front door, run back. Run towards the front door, run back. And I was kind of like, is that like my mom? Like what's going on?

Like maybe it's my parents doing something downstairs. And this was 3 a.m. And I was kind of scared because I was like, all the lights were still off. Like I kind of like opened my door and it was like pitch black. And I was like, huh, okay. But I just like went back to bed. And then I kept hearing the running and it would pause and it would happen again and pause. And then it paused for a while.

And then all of a sudden it was like. run, run, run, run, run, all the way up the stairs to my bedroom door. And it paused. And I was like, I'm getting, I'm getting like chills to think about it. But it paused. And then I saw my brother and I's bathroom light turn on. And it was on for like maybe two minutes. It turned off, silence.

And then I heard running back down the stairs. And I was like, what was. And I was kind of like, that has to be my brother. it has to be someone's awake, like doing something. And I like peaked out the door again, pitch black. And I heard the running down the stairs again. And I like closed the door again because I was like, I don't know what's happening. And then it stopped for a while.

And I opened my door and I like ran. Yeah, you have to like run across the stairs to get to my parents room. So like ran past the stairs, went to my mom. And I was like, were you running downstairs? like what she was like I thought it was one of you guys and I was like so you heard it and she was like yeah like I thought one of you guys was just like awake being annoying and I was just like no I was like no my mom was like I checked on David and you and dad and like everyone's been like you were just laying there and I was like no like someone came and turned the light on and so then I went to my brother's

room and I was like did you go to the bathroom and he was like no so this was like three in the morning So he was like, why are you waking me up? But no, he didn't use the bathroom. No one used the bathroom. So I went to bed. My mom was like, just go to bed. It's fine. Like, I checked down there.

No one's here. It's okay. And she's like, plus it stopped. So it's okay. And I was like, okay. So I went to bed and I could hear it. It ended up like starting again. And it was up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs, like sprinting really fast.

And I was like, I'm not opening my door. Absolutely not. Because it would like run up, pause at my door, run back down. Run up, pause at my door, run back down. And I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to go out there. We'll be right back after this quick break. During this time, my mom experienced a bunch of stuff. The one that really that I remember the most is she again got up in the middle of the night

to get some water downstairs. because the kitchen was downstairs. And she walked downstairs through the first living room into the second. And there was a sofa to her left. And she walked in that room and there was an old woman just sitting on the sofa, peacefully sitting there. Hi, my name is Angie. And I am David's mom.

It was weird. One time I came down the stairs at night, I was thirsty. I needed to get some water. And I go down the stairs. Like I said, we had to pass. like the entry to the living room to get to the kitchen. And out of the corner of my eye, it's dark because it's, I don't know, it's like two or three in the morning.

I go downstairs, I look, and I see the woman sitting on the chair in the living room, on the sofa. And I keep walking and I stop because I'm thinking, oh, my God, did I just, did I just see that? And I turn around and I come back and she was gone. But I know I could describe her to you. She was there. She was there. But I was like, oh, that must be the lady that watches over the kids. I don't know.

But she was an older lady. She was wearing a dress. She had her hair pulled back. She wasn't overweight, but she wasn't thin. She was not wearing glasses. She didn't have glasses. It was just weird. All kinds of weird.

stuff that happened in that house. The stairs came down and you'd have to pass the living room, like the side of the, you know, the entry to the living room and go into the kitchen. And I would go down and go into the kitchen. We had a really small kitchen because it was the way it was built. It was just, it wasn't a huge kitchen. It was like a galley kitchen. And I went downstairs on time and all of my pots and pans were on the floor.

All of them. No noise, no nothing. And I put them all away. I didn't say anything. I put them all away. Just, you know, went on about my business. I would leave because I would take the kids to school. My husband would leave for work much earlier than me. And I would take the kids to school. And then my husband would get home before me and call me and say, why did you leave the doors open? And I was like, well, I didn't leave the doors open. This happened like three times. And he was really upset with me. And like we got in a huge fight. And I was like, why would I leave the doors? They weren't just unlocked. They were open, like wide open.

And so the last time that we got in a huge fight, he left for work. And I just stood in the middle of the living room and I yelled at them. I said, do not, you can be here if you want. But you're not going to get me in trouble. you're not going to leave the doors open. So unless if you're going to keep causing trouble, you can go. It never happened again, ever. The second big thing that stood out to me,

and this one actually did freak me out for other reasons, but I remember I was probably 13, 14 years old. My parents and my sister had left the house to maybe go out to dinner or something. I stayed home to play video games in my bedroom on the second second. story. They left and all the lights were turned off. The doors were locked. I was cooped up in my bedroom playing video games. And at some point in the night, I heard people walking downstairs. And it's an old house that's on stilts. So when you walk through the house, when someone's walking in the house, you hear it. And I heard multiple people walking around the downstairs area.

and I heard the kitchen drawers opening and closing. You know, I think wherever you live, you know the sound of your drawers opening and closing. And I heard that. And so I figured, okay, my parents are home. Awesome. I'm going to keep playing video games, though, because I'm locked in. And that went on for like 15 minutes or so,

people walking back and forth, walking up the stairs, walking down the stairs, opening and closing the door. and there was part of me, I was kind of like, what are they doing down there? Like, why are they so active? They just, like, they got home 15 minutes ago. And eventually I paused whatever I was doing and said, okay, I'm going to go downstairs and say hi to them.

And I got up and I could see from my bedroom window the driveway. And I noticed that there was no car in the driveway, which kind of perked my interest a little bit. Like, oh, well, okay, that's weird. Do they park somewhere else? I don't know. And I opened the door to my bedroom and all the lights in that. house were on. It's okay. Parents are home and I went downstairs and there had been a load of

laundry in the dryer and all of the clothes that were in the dryer were now strewn about the entire house like on curtain rods on the sofa, on the TV, on the desk. They spanned from the first living room into the second living room. I remember I found some socks on the, on the dinner table, all the way into the kitchen, around the corner, into the front door, I was finding clothes, just thrown. It was like someone had grabbed the laundry out of the dryer and just threw it as hard as they could around the house. And my parents were nowhere to be found. My sister was nowhere to be found. All the lights were on. I checked the front door. The front door was locked. The back door was locked. and I went to the laundry room and the dryer door was wide open and there wasn't a single piece of clothing in there.

All the drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen were open, which I had heard them opening. So I knew that something was in there, but my parents were not there. And in my mind, someone had broken into the house. So I was freaked out. So I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and I ran back up into my room and I closed and locked the door. And I called my parents. and I said someone's in the house. And my dad was having none of this.

He was like, okay, dude, whatever. Like, we're on our way home. Just relax. I think I even remember I called my cousin because I was so freaked out just to be like, dude, just be on the phone with me just until my parents get home. And then my parents came home and obviously they were mad that it was a mess. And I was trying to say, like, no, I didn't do this. I heard someone down here.

And I came downstairs and someone put clothes everywhere. I left the clothes here so you could see it. And then I had to clean up the clothes. But again, that electric feeling in the house was so strong. I don't know if that was just fear from me. It could have been. But like I said, the house was built on giant granite boulders. And a creek was running through it.

You have these ancient oak trees hanging over the entire canyon that it sat in. And granite's a great conductor of electricity. Later on, becoming a science teacher. It's been fun to reflect back on that house and just the geology of it, how it was built. I don't know of too many houses that are just put it on to granite boulders and have water running through it. But that would conduct a ton of energy, energy that you might feel at times. The house I've described is obviously the perfect Halloween part. house and everyone wanted to come to our house for Halloween because we threw these awesome

parties and it was just a cool house to be in. So my parents would have these Halloween parties. And there was one year, this is after we'd experienced all these things. So it was probably 15. My mom hired a psychic to come do palm reading just for fun. And I remember the psychic showed up and as she was walking up the stairs to get to the front door, she stopped and she had never met my mom before. My aunt was actually the one who hired her. So she had never spoken to my mom. And she went up to my mom and said, hi, do you, you're the one that lives here? And my mom said, yeah. And she goes, okay, you don't live here alone. My husband with this lady in and she walks right up to me. There's other people there. She walks

right up to me and she says, oh, you're the one that lives here. And I said, yeah, you know, I am, you know, my name is Angie. I live here with my husband and my two kids. She goes, no, you're not the only one that lives here. And so I was like, well, she goes, well, I'll talk to you about that later. So when I was talking to her later, she told me that the house, the way it was situated, or it is, is still there. The way it's situated is because of the boulders, I guess, and the granite, because they're huge granite boulders and the water, the creek that's always running. It doesn't matter in the dry steers, there's always some water coming up. And the water, it attracts spirits.

And she says, mostly, she goes, this is a, you have a good energy in this house. So it only attracts good energy. She goes, and right now there's a male, an Indian, a little girl, and an old woman. woman that like to be in this area. And she says, the Indian, he's from around here, because it's just, it's an, you know, we have reservations if it's indigenous. And she says, the little girl, she's, she's passing through, she won't be here very long. But the woman, the woman is not from here. And, but she likes it here. She likes the energy. It's very peaceful. And she watches over your children. I remember she came home and she talked to him.

And he was like, hey, if it's cool, I really would just like to see the inside and just see the backyard. And she was like, yeah, sure. And he ended up being a really nice guy. And he just, you know, same thing. We were talking about the history of it. Like, yeah, you know, there's so much history in this house. It was a hunting cabin. And this right here was an outdoor kitchen and the shed that's in the back.

That was actually an extra room for the stagecoach riders to stay. And this horse corral was for the meals to stay in. And I just remember him being in total awe of the house. Like he was just like staring at it. He couldn't stop staring. And it's funny because, you know, I'm pushing 40, a dad now. And not too long ago, my wife and I were driving. We were camping out east and we had to drive back through Interstate 8.

And I was like, can we just go by the house really quick and just see it? And just like, yeah, so we drove by. And then I was that guy parked in front of the house. just staring at it. It's still there. It's new people live there. But I was just parked there staring. And I don't know.

It's something about the creek, something about the granite, the ancient oak trees, this weird labyrinth of a house on stilts that you just want to stare at. I dream about the house almost three times a week. It's in my dream where I'm just at the house doing something. literally last night I was just in the house doing something I don't remember what but I was I was there I've had dreams where I was in my old bedroom and I pushed the clothes aside in the closet and there was a secret door and I went to that door and I was in the attic of the house and there were all these things I was learning about the house that I never knew before that I felt like it was drawing me back to

be like no there's there's more here to uncover and that's kind of the feeling I get from it like there's a lot mystery in there that I want to uncover and that's why I researched the history of it and even before I knew I was coming here to talk about it I was researching just to be like what like I wonder what else is up with that place like why what makes it so special just kind of scrolling on zillow one day and I said I'm going to type in the address and see what happens and it was for sale and I sent it to my sister and I was like what's up and she's like let's buy it and I actually call it contacted the agent and it had sold before we could even go look at it. I enjoyed, I really enjoyed that house.

Yeah, it was weird stuff happening there, but it wasn't, I don't know, some of them were playful, some of them were mischievous, but I don't think whatever was there or going through there at the time. I don't think any of them ever meant us any harm at all. I didn't feel that anyways. there was nothing that was like I don't feel comfortable being here alone or anything like that

it was more of just I don't know if it's just because we grew up with it and obviously the ghosts were there before us and they were just kind of like doing their thing next to us and it was just kind of like okay if you're going to be here, cool

just leave me out of it type of thing kind of like spiders you know like you're creepy you do your thing over there, I'm going to be over here type of thing. But no, I would totally, if it went on the market again, I would love to live there. It's a great house, very fond of it, like David was saying, great memories there. I don't have any creepy ill vibes towards it, if that makes sense. I'm a firm believer that paranormal activity or ghosts, as we know it, are just different.

different incarnations of energy, just different ways that we're perceiving energy. And a lot of physics say that energy can't be created or destroyed. And as humans, we're just big balls of energy that can walk around. And when we pass away, the energy goes somewhere. It doesn't just disappear. And, you know, like that granite and the water harbors electricity, harbors energy. And we feel energy in the form of frequencies. And those frequencies can be heightened.

They can be lowered. So I don't know. What the psychic said was that spirits enjoy being there. They're drawn to it and they just like being there. They like stopping by, which is also interesting because it was a place for people to stop and stay for so many years. Not only for the stage coach, but it's a long, a long-established indigenous trade route that people travel. for hundreds of years before them. They followed that creek to the San Diego River

and then took the San Diego River to the coast. And the indigenous people of this area used it for hundreds and hundreds of years. We had found all kinds of artifacts there. And like I said, it's still nestled between three different reservations. So I think that place has just always been somewhere. The energy that's been established there is one of a safe place to stop and stay. And I think that's what the spirits are doing too.

Some of them maybe longer than others. Okay, thank you so much to David, Corinne, and Angie for sharing their story. What I love most about this story is the fact that despite all of the major paranormal activity in this house, the whole family has such a positive memory of it, even to the point of wanting to buy it back someday. I find the idea that a place can be predisposed to activity based on how or where it was built to be very interesting. Some people say that running water acts as a spiritual highway. Some say it acts as a spiritual barrier. And as far as the boulders, some even speculate that stones, especially granite that contains quartz,

can absorb energy from events and people surrounding them. And there's no doubt that this area had a lot of history. In fact, this is not even the first house with a river running underneath it that appeared on Another World. While I was listening to this, I kept thinking back to the series many things. Sarah, the homeowner in that series, also had a haunted house, and I believe a psychic told her that the reason her house had paranormal activity happening in it was because there used to be a river running underneath it. Now, Sarah didn't know whether or not that was true, but in that series, I was actually able to go back and find some historical maps, and we found out

there was indeed a river running underneath her house, not only a river, but a trading route, kind of similar to this story. Whatever the cause, I am glad that David and his family got to have a positive relationship with this seemingly haunted cabin in the woods. Thank you to David and his family once again. This episode has been called The Treehouse, 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,

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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.