Otherworld - Episode 44: Next to Aly

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

A woman named Aly believes someone or something might have been following her throughout her life and looking out for her. Later, an entity her boyfriend sees in the night, confirms her suspicions. To see photos related to this episode, click here Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we start today's episode, I have a quick announcement. We are actively seeking new stories for the podcast. So, if you have a story you've considered sending in, or if your friend or family member does, now is a good time to do so. I say this at the end of every episode, but right now I'm going to say it at the very start. If you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal,

supernatural, or unexplained, you could email us your story at Stories at otherworldpod.com. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. The story comes from a woman named Allie, who emailed me about a series of things that have happened in her life, which seemed to be connected. And look, there's a lot of people who notice patterns in their life that maybe aren't really there. But Ali is not that type of person. I would describe Allie as very clinical. She originally went to school for neuroscience, and you could tell when you're not that type of person. I would describe Allie as very clinical. She originally went to school for neuroscience, and you could tell when you can tell when you. you listen to or reflect on these experiences. I think normally she would be the type of person

to want to completely dismiss all of the things that you're about to hear her talk about. However, the series of events that have happened have caused her to reconsider her skepticism and that eagerness to dismiss. I think if it weren't for the fact that other people were with her during some of these events, she would probably end up doubting herself more than she already is. A pattern began to emerge in these experiences that seemed to indicate that something or someone was with Allie, possibly watching over her.

For who knows how long, it's entirely possible that whatever this is is still with Allie to this day. Maybe it was even with her when she told me the story that you're about to hear. This is episode 44. The title is,

next to Allie, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is it Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. It's not only about all the science. Up in the sky.

It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs. We're just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. Yeah, so I'm Ali. I'm from Chicago originally,

but we moved around a lot when I was younger. And I've, yeah, I've kind of continued moving around as I've gotten older. I work in marketing now, but I've had kind of a roundabout way of getting there. I studied cognitive science at school with the focus in neuroscience. So it's an interdisciplinary study of the mind. So basically taking different fields to try and understand the mind and the brain. So obviously neuroscience is part of that or psychology, but you also have other things like philosophy or sociology, computer science

and just, yeah, all of these different approaches to really try and understand how we work and how we perceive things. I was kind of always spiritual. Yeah, I just sort of always felt like I believed that there was something else going on more than just what we see at face value. But not really for any particular reason. And I think my sisters are like that as well.

We just always sort of were like, yeah, like there's probably something else out there. I think I'm a very skeptical person. I'm certainly inquisitive. I just kind of always wanted to know why things are the way they are or how things work. I think that's kind of what led me to,

yeah, what I studied in school. There are so many strange experiences. People have often shared experiences that feel very, very real and very, very unsettling, but can be, yeah, probably easily explained away by something in the brain, how something in the brain works

or something in the brain malfunctioning. One obvious example of like the sleep paralysis stuff, which I've had experiences with, and I know many people have, we learned about that in school, and I remember finding it fascinating, but it's just really like when you're sleeping, your brain is sending signals to your body

to let it know that it's asleep and that it shouldn't move. So it's essentially putting your body into a temporary paralysis. And usually that kind of lifts before your consciousness starts to come back. But what they think is happening with sleep paralysis is that your consciousness starts to come back to reality

before your body is released from this state and it becomes hyper-aware of the fact that it's immobile, which can be very frightening. And since you're also still coming out of dreamland, your brain kind of carries over these nightmarish images in order to explain the physical sensation of not being able to move, and that's why people often think they see something in their room or have a scary feeling.

And yeah, maybe that's not true, but that's certainly one of the leading theories. And so there's lots of things like that where I'm fascinated to learn about it, also because when people tell me their stories, I can say, oh, have you ever heard about this theory of why that's happening? Yeah, I've had a series of strange experiences, I guess happen over the course of many years, I guess over a decade or more. For me, it started in 2010 when I was a senior in high school. And the first incident was maybe a similar experience that other people have had. It's kind of your classic Ouija board experience. That year, I was in a new school, my senior year,

and I became friends with some of these girls, and they were part of a group of kids that would hang out at this one house in town that these two brothers lived at. And one day we went there after school, and two of the girls from the older group had a Ouija board, and they were very excited about it. They had just got it that week,

and they were making everyone try playing Ouija. So we got convinced to play. It was me and then two of my friends. And then I believe it was three or four of the older kids. It was just kind of like a party thing. Let's sit down and give it a go. I had never played Ouija before or whatever you want to say, tried Ouija board. But of course, it was something I was interested in.

I always had wanted to try it. And that being said, I also had looked it up before because I really, I always wanted to know with sort of supernatural things, paranormal things, if we're to automatically assume that it's not real, what is the explanation for how it's happening? And what I had discovered before this was that it's kind of like, I don't know if you ever did this sort of, it's like an elementary school trick where you hold a string that has like a little weight attached at the bottom. And then you think about a shape. and slowly the weight at the bottom of the string will start to move in that shape.

So if you're thinking of a circle, that's quite simple. It can start to move in a circle. But even if you get more complex and you start thinking of a triangle or a square, you will see the weight start to move in the shape of the square or whatever you're thinking of. That's basically just because you have very small receptors in your fingers. and when you're thinking about it, you're subconsciously sending a signal to your finger to create this small movement.

So even though you can't detect that you're doing it, you are causing it. That is the, at least at the time, that was the main explanation for how Ouija board works, that if you're playing it, you really want it to work, then you're going to move the planchette, the little signal thing subconsciously. So because I had already looked that up

and that's how I understood it worked. I made everyone hold their arms up in the air, like basically having your elbows pointed up at the ceiling so that your hand is just kind of dropped loosely down. And then I had everyone just lightly put their finger on the planchette, really more like on the fingernail. So really where you don't have a lot of control. So that was how I was trying to avoid anyone subconsciously moving.

it or kind of cheating and directing it. But despite that, despite my best efforts, it was really unlike, I don't really know how to explain it. The planchette, the little messenger thing, it just shot out immediately from under our hands. I really remember the whole time struggling to even just barely graze my finger on the Clanchet, it was moving so quickly. And the same with all of us. It was like we were all trying to keep up with it.

So that's how it started. And we went about it kind of the way anyone would go about using a Ouija board, starting, you know, is there something here? It immediately goes over to yes. Saying, you know, are you a good spirit? Yes, whatever. Asking all of these sort of simple establishing questions. Then people started asking more personal questions. Again, I don't know.

I didn't know the people very well. I cannot remember their questions. But from their reactions, it seemed like they were getting correct answers. And then one of my friends who was also playing, she was skeptical. She didn't like believe it at all. And so she was like, okay, yeah, if you're real, then where am I going next year?

Because again, we were seniors. So most of us were preparing to go to college. She had, however, she ended up going to a program in Tel Aviv, like a one-year temporary program. And she had literally just decided this. I think it was probably that day or maybe the day before that she had just told me and my other friend that she made that decision.

And so she asks this question, and the board immediately spelled out Israel. And again, the other people there, they would not have known. Because she also, she was just kind of deciding and she hadn't really told anyone else and they weren't her close friends. There's no way they would have known. So that was the first thing that for me was really a bit unnerving.

I honestly, like, I was kind of terrified from the moment it started because the planchette was moving so fast. and I was a bit taken aback. That was me trying to kind of myth-bust it, and I did not anticipate it being so extreme right off the bat. So I hadn't said anything. I didn't ask any questions. And then somebody else asked, okay,

if you're really here, then where are you? And it spelled out next to Allie. And this was immediately for me, like I just got full body, chills because it spelled out my name correctly. My full name is Alyssa. And I think, yeah, at least from my experience, most alasas that I need, they don't shorten their name. They just go by Alyssa. But I always went by Allie. And so I spelled my name that way, A-L-Y. And this was like before Instagram, I guess we had Facebook. We weren't super active on it. But it's just like,

I guess people weren't often seeing my name written down and especially that since we were playing with a group of people that I barely knew. I do not believe that they knew how to spell my name correctly. And yeah, for me, that was that was enough and I just got up and stopped playing then. Yeah, that's the first incident. I just kind of left it there. For me, It was, I would say, negative. Like I said, I was trying to kind of understand, okay, how are people playing Ouija? How does this work? I didn't expect my solution to be so quickly disproven.

And then to signal that it was right next to me. That was pretty unnerving for me. So then the next incident was years later. It was after, yeah, so I had already gone to university. I had been working for a little bit and I was getting ready to move to London for work. And I was visiting my godmother and she thought as a fun like going away gift that it would be fun to go have my tarot cards read. So we went to one of those like crystal spiritual shops in a nearby town and they had someone in that day. and they had written on the board what services were available.

So you could do palm reading, tarot cards, you could try to channel a deceased loved one. You could try to look into your future. There were several options. And I think palm reading was cheapest and then tarot cards. Like I just was doing it for fun. This wasn't, I wasn't really like trying to discover my future. So we go to do the terror reading. The lady, the medium took me into a back room.

And it just started how you would expect, like, laying out the cards and just kind of, yeah, expressing certain things about my personality and what these cards meant. This is also a thing. Like, I like to have experiences like that just because I see it as a way to, I see it as a way to, you, yeah, it kind of forces you to self-reflect without having to think of it as like, okay, the truth lies in these cards. There's also something called the Barnum effect where when you are given really generalized information,

but you're told it's about yourself, you believe it to be highly accurate. You really think it's true. And so, you know, again, I have this in mind, and I'm just thinking, yeah, this is like a fun experience where I can interpret this as however real as I want it to. But I would say like halfway through it, I could tell that the medium,

she was getting a little frazzled. She just seemed a bit distracted, and she was kind of, you know, looking off to the side, and she seemed very warm. She kept asking me, like, if it was warm in there, which it was, actually. And then at some point, she stopped and said, I'm really sorry, but there's something like coming through right now.

And it's really, it's making me tell you, like I have to tell you that something is here. And so I again know, yeah, with a psychic or something, people often say, you know, they can try and read you or try and pick out something that happens to a lot of people. and then lead you into giving more information. So I really didn't say anything. I was just like, let's see, let's see what she has to say. And, yeah, she didn't really need me to say anything. She just said it's starting to become clearer that there was like a woman right next to me.

And the medium, she was, again, very, very frazzled. She kept saying, I've never seen this before. I've never seen something like this before. And she basically said that it was confusing because a woman was basically materializing next to me, but it looked like me, like almost identical to me, except several years older.

She said exact same face shape, same features. She had long hair. She was wearing a long hair. She was wearing a long, flowy dress or skirt. She seemed different to me, but looked otherwise like an older version of me. She also said it was unique to her because usually when something would materialize in a reading, a guardian angel, she called it, or a guide or something, that she sees something like that behind the person as if, you know, protecting them. And if it's a deceased love one or someone

just trying to communicate like that, that they usually appear around her because they're trying to pass the message to her to deliver. But she said for me, it was clearly just someone right next to me as if there were two of us getting a tarot card reading. And that, stranger than that, that she looked exactly like an older version of me. So she delivers this information to me and then was like, okay, and then just keeps trying to read the cards. And I'm also at this point a bit distracted as well because I'm again being told that something is next to me

and I cannot see it. And as it went on, she kept being like, okay, okay, and would say, sorry, I have to listen again. And so essentially at this point, we just abandoned the tarot card reading. And she's just fully listening to this being and telling me bits as they become clear to her. And she said that it's, yeah, it's a woman who has been with me my whole life. She thinks of me as her spiritual daughter that she also had a daughter. but her daughter was not spiritual or open to anything of that nature.

And so once she passed, she couldn't communicate with her daughter. But that she found me and, yeah, felt connected. And she thought her name was Sarah, which, yeah, so I call her Sarah, but she couldn't really get any other identifying information. It's just this sort of spirit mother that I have. And the last thing she said was that as I get more, as I reach my 30s, that I should be able to communicate more with this other dimension.

I don't know if that means with her or what, but this was a sort of little ominous last bit. And then she left. At this point, we were well past 20 minutes. She had set a timer for the terra-cornering, and that had gone off ages ago. And then as soon as she said she left, the medium was like, I'm sorry, I have to go, I have to get air.

And then she just left me in the back room. And so I just kind of slowly also went to the front of the store. It's important to note, like, again, I really just was there for a tarot card reading, like, for fun. And this is one of the cheapest option. I was not at all expecting some sort of spirit communication. And as was written on the board there, that was an option, but you have to pay more for it. You have to be there longer. and I could understand if I had paid for that

and then someone is thinking, okay, I have to put on a show. But that's not the case. I really paid the cheapest option, just wanted to have our cards read, and then this just happened. So for me, that felt. And my godmother told me that before I had come out,

she saw obviously the medium coming from the back room and just kind of frantically leaving. And she had tried to make conversation. My godmother said like, oh, how to go? And the woman just looked like she couldn't hear anything and just went outside and was out there smoking a cigarette stove when we left. I was definitely spooked by the experience. And like I said, this is being told to me from a woman who, this is her career, right?

Like she's always doing readings like this, various kinds of readings. And just the confusion that I could feel coming from her was quite unsettling as it was happening. Also, you know, for me, I'm just sat in a room and it's quiet except for the medium talking to me. But very clearly she was getting a lot of noise. Like, you know, if you can imagine someone, like, hearing a radio that's turned up really loud, or they're very overwhelmed in like a crowd. She was acting like that, but to me it was dead silent. So it seems really like she was getting a lot of noise from whatever you want to call it, from this spirit, from this other dimension, whatever it may be. Yeah.

So for me, it was unnerving. but again after I left and was telling this story, it really, I guess I hadn't thought of the Ouija board story in a long time. That was then, I guess, four or five years before this incident. And so it kind of stopped being a story that I was sharing. And it really just suddenly popped back into my mind and it was like so clear and yeah, it felt really connected to me. And in that way, it was sort of a relief.

I also, when I did the Ouija board experience, because it frightened me so much, I just got up and left. And in that way, it also felt kind of unfinished. If you do, I don't know, if you follow the rules of Ouija board or any sort of like seance thing or something, you know, you have to start it, you have to open it,

and then you have to close it. And I couldn't because I was terrified and I left. And so that was another thing that kind of stuck with me where I was like, oh, is this like a scary, I don't know, thing that I've left unresolved? But I just kind of forgot about it eventually. And then with this experience, I was able to see it more in a positive light.

I think. So it made my memory of the Ouija board experience seem a bit less sinister, I hope. Yeah. And then beyond that, you know, if you were to believe what the medium told me, it goes way beyond my Ouija board experience. This is something that has been with me for my entire life. So then it also made me reflect on previous things. Not that I had something like the Ouija board experience or anything before, but just because I had said, I don't know, I always felt like I believed in something spiritual or otherworldly,

being alongside the world as we know it. And then I have to wonder, did I think that because I could sense something with me? I don't know. But yeah, I think this is the, again, like I said, the one Ouija board experience, a lot of people have a freaky situation like that. You could say maybe one of the girls was like, let's prank Allie, and then they figured out, they made sure they knew how to spell my name, whatever. You could explain it away.

but when you connect it with this, to me, it really felt different. It felt very real. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back. The next experience is really just sort of a series of incidents that happened while I was living in London. And at the time, as a joke, I would call it my reverse poltergeist. If you think of the classic poltergeist, like messing things up. I just had a weird series of events where stuff was just appearing that I had misplaced, things that I could never remember to do on my own all of a sudden would be done.

And I really have no explanation for how that happens. Yeah, so you know how when you're, I don't know, things up. You have like spots where you always put your stuff, even if it's so messy, like little piles that add up. And there were many times where I was looking for something and it wasn't in any of these spaces. And then I would just give up and go to bed. And then the next morning, the thing would be perfectly placed on display in a place that I would never leave something because it is very much on display. Like I wouldn't put something right in the center of the walkway or whatever.

I would have just forgotten this if the other experiences hadn't happened. But to me, it just felt like there was something there that was being extremely helpful to me. And it sounded to me like something a mother would do, like if this is Sarah. my spiritual mother, it felt to me like something, yeah, that a nice spirit companion would do for me. It was happening so often that if I couldn't find something, I just wouldn't worry about it anymore because I was like, well, it's going to turn up. The best example, this is, my housemate was out of the country at the time. I'm alone in the flat and I was trying to find the clothes that I wanted to wear for the next day.

And I wanted to wear this shitty red flannel that I've had forever and that I had recently worn. I knew I had it at home, but I could not for the life of me find it. looked everywhere, all of the normal clothes spots, all of the not normal clothes spots where maybe accidentally was, I couldn't find it at all. And so eventually I gave up and I went to bed. And then in the morning, when I came downstairs, the flannel was perfectly folded in a way that I would never fold this flannel. Very perfectly fold. and placed on the floor in the doorway from the stairs leading into the living room.

So not a place where you would leave something usually because we would have to walk through there. It looked to me very intentionally placed there. And this was the, I don't know if it was the first one or if it was just the most obviously placed, object that was returned to me, but this happened all the time over this year. Things were constantly reappearing that I just could not find. And again, my roommate was out of the country, no one else had a key, I do not have any explanation for how it would have ended up where it was.

So since then, I've since moved to Switzerland, and I started dating my boyfriend here and after, I don't know, after the first year, we decided to move in together. And so we had just recently moved into our new place. And yeah, there was one night where he woke me up. I thought he was sleeping. He sounded very distressed. And so I just leaned over and asked him, hey, what's going on, what's going on? And I could see he was looking directly at me then and looked very scared and confused.

And kept asking me how I got into the bed. And I was like, I don't know, like, what do you mean? Like, I've been sleeping. I've been sleeping here. you just woke me up. And he said, no, no, like you were there. You were next to the bed. And I was like, no, I've been sleeping next to you this whole time.

And it just looked then like he was trying to figure out what was going on. And he told me, he said, I saw you standing next to the bed, but you were also in the bed. So you were standing next to yourself watching yourself sleep, which immediately, again, it's like the same thing for all of these experiences. It just sent like a shiver down my spine. But I just let it happen. I said, okay, I think, you know, maybe you had a bad dream.

We'll talk about it tomorrow. And so he fell back asleep. And then we talked about it in the morning. And yeah, he repeated that. he it wasn't like oh i had a bad dream it was like very clear to him that he was seeing me next to the bed um and he that's the main thing he was focusing on and then he eventually saw that i was also in the bed so it was me watching myself sleep and then i asked him to describe it and yeah he he's said, I have, I caught chills again. He described it the same way that he thought it was me,

but when he was looking more close, it looked like an older version of me. And he said the same thing, the long hair, a long dress or skirt. And it was extremely familiar to him. He really thought it was me until he noticed me also in the bed, which, then was what terrified him. And I had not told him any of these experiences before. I obviously told him that then, but I didn't want to also tell him it in the morning until he had fully described it to me.

So he had no leading information at all to know that I have apparently a statement. spirit named Sarah who looks very much like me. And when I told him the other experiences, it just kind of made sense to him. He was like, well, yeah, that sounds like exactly what I, what I saw. But I think it's also important to note that it's, he's not really a very spiritual person, not that he isn't, but he just, he told me he never thought about these things before. He never questioned, like, oh, are ghosts real? Do people have other experiences, whatever?

He just never thought about it. For him to have seen this, yeah, it also was a little unsettling, but definitely connected the dots for me. All right, before we start recording, I heard Ali mentioned you might have some reservations about being on the show. I'm not keen to, yeah, to be on the podcast, to be honest.

Sure. Is that a problem? No, it's not a problem. Just so I understand fully, is your opposition to being on the show like anonymity, people knowing you are? Is it about your voice,

or is it just generally not wanting to be documented or receive attention in any way? Yeah, yeah, that's just in general. I don't like anything which is published from me. But I know that's super important to Alvi. so just make it short and don't say who I have. Nobody's going to know who you are. Yeah, yeah, I know.

It's fine. I'm going to do this for Ellie, but that's just a general thing, like where I try to be, yeah. He's very private. It's a very Swiss thing also. No, I understand. I understand.

Yeah. Hey, at least we know that you're not just making up a story to get on a podcast. No, no, no. it was definitely like when it happens you were definitely scared and then also like when we talked about it in the morning it was really like

I made you tell it first like what you saw before I told you because I wanted to see I wanted to hear what he saw before I was like yeah that's that's the same thing and just the way he described it was like exactly how the medium had described it where she was also very confused, where she was like, yeah, it's clearly like not you. Like it is someone else, but it is very distractingly you. Like it really looks like me.

And that's basically what you said. I remember you being very confused by it. Yeah. Yeah. And he didn't really want to talk about it the next day. But then I had to tell him that, yeah. about SIPA. Well, why don't you start from the beginning and tell me

everything you experienced? Yeah, like what I saw like, like, what I mentioned before, like I just woke up, like I wasn't bad and like, Ellie was sleeping next to me. So I realized like she was there, like not that she was away. And there was like standing this kind of old

version of her next to her and not being like bad or mean or whatever. Like she seemed to be protective or to Ellie, like that you want to protect Ellie. But she was kind of intimidating to me, like, also not in a bad way. She's like, hey, like, I had the feeling like, don't do anything stupid to her, like, kind of that way. And she was like, didn't say anything just like from the expression or how

I received it. And yeah, like what I said, like she was probably like an Ellie version, 15 years older or something, like around like 35 to 40, not super old. old, like just a little bit older. It seems like kind of mature, like really what's going on. Not that hell is not mature. But, and like, yeah, like she was standing there,

like, kind of like how you imagine like a ghost will look like, hairs open, kind of pale, hair down. Like kind of a white night shirtish, or a dress. I don't know exactly what it was. And, like, yeah, just standing on the left side, I didn't move at all or whatever. And just saw her quickly, or not quickly, not just like, think it was a little bit longer.

So I could really, yeah, kind of see her. How long into dating was this? It was within a year. Within a year, yeah, within a year. That's weird, too, because it's like, that would kind of make sense if you had just started dating, right? Like, why do you think she appeared? I have no idea. I have really no idea.

didn't do anything different or whatever. She was there and then I told Ellie about it and then she told me the story what happened to her. And like kind of saying that this lady, whoever told her that someone kind of an older version or older woman is watching her or protect her. You think what you said like protecting her? She didn't say protecting, but she just said that she's always. Yeah, she's always with her. That she cares about me. So you didn't know any of this.

didn't know anything about this until this day and then we talked about it. What did you tell her when you woke up? I think I woke her up that night because I was real like frazzled. I was like, what the fuck's going on? Something's wrong. Yeah, like when something like this happened,

you are kind of, yeah, like shocked. And then I was also scared, to be honest. Like, it was just something, not scared of her in particular that she's going to, but just the situation was completely new, different. And maybe Ellie told you, like, I don't think that there's nothing else around here, but I think I'm not like to go, like, kind of a ghost whisper or something. Yeah.

I can tell. Yeah. That's, did you realize it was her right away? Yeah, but not that I felt like it was her more that I realized after, she seemed like her in an old way. Yeah, like, wait, did you see it and be like, that's Ali? Oh, wait, she's old? No, no, it was more like there's someone's standing because, like, I woke up and it's real not that I, that I was dreaming.

Like, dreams are usually like you think everything is real and then next day you wake up. Or when you can remember the dreams that it felt real in this moment. You know what I mean? Like when you're dreaming, it's something like really everything, even if the world is completely different and you're acting with different people or whatever, It's like, not that you question what's happening when you're dreaming. But in this moment, like, I woke up and I was really aware that I'm waking up, or I felt I was aware about it. And then there was someone standing next to the bed.

And this is, like, completely frightening to someone, or to me at least. Like, it's just because it was a stranger and that was also frightening. I didn't think like, oh, Ellie is standing there. I think it's fine. I'm going back to sleep. It was like, Ellie's next to me. and they're standing an older, not an old woman,

like just a woman which is older than Ellie. And then I got the second impression or like when I was like, hey, that's Ali in an older version. But then it also, like, as it happened, like, it disappeared kind of. Do you remember if she was like in color or if she was in black and white or anything?

Not black and white, but not like it was dark and I would say like in a kind of, in this setting kind of, not glowing in a not super bright but it was there was color but not super colorful because he was dressed like in a white dress like kind of pale from the skin and like dark hair but like with a little yeah blue bluish light i would say yeah this is how i remember it that's very strange the last question I guess is like, has this, has anything happened since? Has it changed? Like, no way you guys?

No. No. We were always kidding. We gave her a name. And it was just like, yeah, she's always here. And like, and sometimes you, yeah, we are sitting on the couch and like, you have this weird feeling that someone is around. Like we are sitting out or saying like, hey, like Sarah is around. But not that I ever seen anything weird again. So what do you make of all of this now? I mean, you kind of came into this as like a scientific person. Like, has this changed the way you think of things? I don't know because I mean, like I said, I always felt like I believed in spiritual things or the possibility of paranormal things. But yeah, I always wanted to approach it from a scientific standpoint. Yeah.

Each individual one, like I said, maybe you could explain a certain way or could be explained by other factors. But when you look at it all together, like scientifically, you can make a connection there. That's just how these things work. When you start to have these experiences and they have a connecting element,

I guess, how can you not sort of, how could you not believe it? Science is about discovering things. It is about not knowing and then trying to figure it out and then knowing. And that's always been the case. And I think of myself as scientific or inquisitive in that way, in that I very much know we don't know everything.

And there's a lot of people who will just say they don't believe in anything paranormal or that it's all fake. And I think that's the least scientific way that you could approach something. It's just saying, we know everything, like, I guess we'll close up shop. But I do think what's confusing to me is that, like I said, since I am open to these ideas and what they could be, I just find it interesting that if you take my story as 100% true for exactly what it is, that there is a spirit Sarah, a spirit named Sarah, who's been with me my whole life.

I don't understand why she hasn't shown herself to me, because, yeah, there's sort of implications or the Ouija board saying they're next to me, but otherwise, if you're talking about true communication appearing visually to someone, it's been to that medium that I saw and then to my boyfriend. So that's sort of interesting to me that I wouldn't have the personal experience of seeing her. Although she did give that ominous message that as I go into my 30s, maybe I will be able to communicate more with such things. And I did just turn 30 last year. so maybe there will be another stop in this journey for me.

All right. I want to thank Allie and her boyfriend so much for telling us this story. I love this one, and I cannot stop thinking about it, particularly because whatever this thing is looks like an older version of Allie. And I've never quite heard that one before. It opens up so many questions. Is it presenting itself that way? Is this some kind of ancestor that looks like Allie?

Is it literally some kind of alternate version of Allie? Or maybe even her higher self, if you will? You could really go on and on. What is it? Why is it there? How did it get attached to her? And is it still there? Not to mention why has it not shown itself to Allie,

but shown itself to all of these other people? The other thing is what she was calling the reverse poltergeist. These little helpful things around the house that were really, really interesting to me. I'm so used to hearing the opposite of that on this show. It was actually really refreshing to hear Allie's version. And I'm personally very, very grateful for my non-haunted house, but if there were some kind of older version of me that wants to come around and maybe pick up my laundry and possibly help edit podcast episodes,

I'm perhaps willing to reconsider. That brings us to the end of this episode. This is episode 44. The title is Next to Alley. And you're listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal and North Americans.

This episode was edited by Justin Mayfield. and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coltosec Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you could become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld.

Our social media is at Otherworld Pod on Instagram and Twitter. Thank you to the team at Odyssey. J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Casey Klauser, Mora Curran, Josephina Francis, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld Now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained,

you can send us your story at stories at otherworldpod.com.