Otherworld - Episode 54: Many Things Pt 1

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Sarah and her husband, Cameron, buy a house that seems too good to be true. After moving in, strange flooding and electrical issues begin to occur. They hear footsteps coming up the stairs that they can't explain. Then, a concerned neighbor calls them over and asks if they have experienced anything unusual. He informs them that the house has been vacant for 8 years and, according to Jewish folklore, places abandoned for that long are susceptible to being inhabited by Dybbuks or malevolent spirits. This is the first episode of a series about this house, the entities that inhabit it, and a series of increasingly disturbing incidents that lead to something latching onto Sarah and attempting to take control. Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode is going to begin a multi-part series that I started working on last October. As soon as I got the email that started all of this, I knew that I was in a little bit over my head. Previously, people were sending me in stories about one time they think they saw something, brief moments in an otherwise normal life. And this email, on the other hand, was pages long, and it included so much. I mean, many of these occurrences laid out in just the first paragraph of the email could have been entire episodes of the show on their own.

But as I read, it all kept getting worse, and it really just became one big story about how this couple, who was writing into me, was able to overcome what was happening in their home. And mind you, when I got this email, I was only four or five episodes into making this show, and I probably was not ready for something so long. And that's why I've been sitting on it for quite some time. The story is about a couple named Sarah and Cameron. They're from Canada, and they moved into a house with a lot of things wrong with it.

And I'm not talking about structurally. It was recently remodeled. everything in that department was fine. The things that were wrong were something that I think was there long before a house ever got built on this land. And there were decisions

that they made along the way that probably made those things worse and even invited worse things in to the house. Eventually, Sarah and her family believed that something in the home tried to take control of her.

Usually, in movies that are about this, they bring in a priest or a medium that comes in and saves the day, which is exactly what this family tried to do. But unlike the movies, the priests and the mediums and the other people that they are reaching out to for help, were not able to provide any help.

And they are left feeling very hopeless for a long time. What initially scared me about this one is how present the fear was when I talked to these people. In the first email, she said she was writing me from a coffee shop, and I didn't think too much of it. Then, once we were communicating over the phone, she would say things like,

hang on, I'll explain later once I'm in the car. I thought she was busy and needing more time to respond, but I eventually realized that she was afraid to talk about this or even write about it while inside of her home. She wouldn't even send a text, talking about the story in abstract while she was inside her house. She would have to go somewhere different to even talk to me about it. She also alluded to other strange things,

like she told me she does charity work as a form of penance to keep this thing from coming back. It was also casual, and I think that's what was so jarring to me. I could tell that she had been operating like this for a really long time to the point where it had just become normal to her. And that was probably one of the first things, that startled me. Now, as everybody knows, I'm not a paranormal guy. When I got this email,

I was having a lot of fun hearing these amazing stories and hoping to get more. I consider myself very open-minded, and it was exciting to hear these things. But this one, I could tell it was really different, and it was a turning point for me. You know, at least in North America, were raised consuming so much media. There are so many fictional books, movies, and even podcasts that tell completely made-up versions of these paranormal topics. And we're so used to the fiction that I think there's always part of our brains

that encounters stories like these from real people and is not able to fully compute it. Like part of you is still processing it as just a story and you're processing the people as characters in that story, even if you know that isn't the case. Maybe that's our brains protecting themselves. Because let me tell you, when something clicks and that illusion suddenly collapses all at once,

it's a terrifying and destabilizing feeling. Questions start to flood into your head that multiply and multiply until you feel very, very alone and scared. That fear for me came, in between the recordings, getting to know these people, and seeing how it affects their lives outside of the story, the fear that exists even after I turned off the microphone, the fear that makes them schedule their entire lives around this still to this day. As frightening as that all sounds, let me also say that this is not just a scary story. It's also a love story. It's a story

about a wealthy Jewish girl named Sarah, and she fell in love with a poor working class kid named Cameron, who was essentially orphaned and left to raise himself as a teenager. He literally lived on his own in high school. And Cameron is not the type of person. A girl like Sarah is meant to end up with, and he's certainly not the type of person her family originally wanted her to be with. but I think that he might be the only one tough enough

to have gotten her through the story you're about to hear. So I think that the backstory of how these two met is important. And for that reason, I'm going to start out this series with a conversation I had with Sarah over the phone where she explained to me how her and her now husband Cameron first met. This is episode 54. the title is Many Things, Part 1

and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm sorry about all the science. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die.

I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the night, even if it takes them in a minute. I'm Sarah, and I grew up near downtown Toronto. pretty in a pretty wealthy neighborhood, I would I would call it upper middle class. And then we definitely moved to an area that would be classified as upper class when I was a teenager.

I went to a really insular, really small, very suffocating private school when I was younger up until eighth grade. And I knew I couldn't go there anymore for high school. Like I knew I needed to like branch out. And I convinced my parents that, no, I didn't want to go to like the more laid back private school that my cousins were going for high school. I wanted to go to like a public high school. So I convinced them and I go. And for like a week at school, like ate lunch by myself. I was feeling very sorry for myself. And I decide, okay, there's these girls. I'm kind of cool with them. We've like smoked together at lunch. I'm going to be friends with them. And we are like partying, partying together all the time.

They were even doing stuff that I wasn't comfortable with, like, pretty serious stuff for 15-year-old. And I was like, whoa. They kind of blew my mind. And they keep telling me about this guy's house. There's this guy and he has no parents. And when you're 15 or like going on 16, you're like, you hit the jackpot. Because every weekend, whether it was with my friends from school or with my old. old friends I grew up with was like, where are we going to party? Are we going to rental hotel room?

Whose parents are away? Where can we go? Like, what parking lot can we find? Like, so hearing that there was a guy who didn't have parents, I was like, that's incredible. You have to take me. You have to take me. You have to take me. You have to take me. You have to take me. And they were like, we'll take you. We'll take you. But he's kind of like picky, like, about who comes to his house. He has to know that you're cool, okay? It was Cameron's house. First time I saw him. He walked up the stairs and I, like, felt, and this is true, I felt something. Like, there was something. I remember, like, I still remember that time because there was like an instant connection there. And he put out his hand. He was wearing a white wife feeder and he had blonde hair that was shaved like Eminem.

And he said, I'm Cameron. And I said, hi, I'm Sarah. And I just start to like him. Like, we start to hang out. This other guy comes to pick me up. and I'm like, don't hug me because like I've sort of been like talking to this other guy. And he's like, if I want to hug you, I'll fucking hug you. And he picks me up in like this giant bear hug.

And then he like officially asked me to be his girlfriend and like I'm so happy. And he comes and picks me up in his illegal Pontiac Grand Am fire engine red. And we pretty much together after that. Like I'm so happy. and my parents are not. My parents are not happy. On my 16th birthday, I want him to come to dinner for my birthday.

And my parents are like, no, he can't come. Like, we're going to, like, this nice Italian restaurant with the rest of your family. Like, he can't come. And I'm like, I want him to come. I don't care. And they put their foot down. They're like, no.

And they give me this really serious talk in the car at home about, like, ostensively it's like about sex but it's not really it's like about like choosing the right person and how that's like important and basically saying he's not the right person um and like they didn't have to say it i knew Cameron Cameron is like orphaned Eminem or like Jay Rock from Driller Park Boys but way better looking and like

I remember thinking at the time like I don't give a shit what anyone says like I love being with him and he makes me feel amazing and he makes me feel so beautiful and like he was from an insanely dysfunctional family I know he has a mother

I know he has an actual mom Like, I know he is a mother, but he doesn't have mom. He is a woman who gave birth to him. I know she's very young. I know that she lives two hours away from him, and I know that when his father died, she wasn't around. She didn't come and pick up the pieces. I know he was raised by his dad with a half-brother that was like nine years older than him,

and his half-brother left him too because he got a girl pregnant. His half-brother left in the car and was like, see ya, take care of yourself. He was 14 years old. there were times where Cameron was like, I don't have enough money to buy my dog food and was like scrambling around the house, like looking for change to buy his pit bull like kibble. I really, you know, my parents,

they can say it didn't, but I think it was already starting to touch them that there was this child that no one was taking care of as well too. Like as much as they didn't want me to be with him, I think they were starting to like feel an openness in their heart towards him. And like, well, someone should be taking care of him. What do you mean? He doesn't have money for dog food.

How is that pot? You know, that kind of thing. We dated and like, like, we made it work through like a lot of stuff. Okay. Like I went off to college very quickly within a year. I was like, I miss him so fucking much. I need to come home and like I need to be with him. I'll go to school wherever he is.

Like, he's in London, Ontario, going to Funshaw, Fanshaw College. I'm going to go to Western University, and I did. I switched. And we start living together. And, like, we had so much fun. Those were, like, the days in my college apartment with Cameron. Like, we were so in love. We had so much fun together.

We partied all the time together. We had a great time. And we're, like, in our own little world. And I was sort of like in his world and like this crappy apartment. And then I would go back to my old life and be like, oh, I forgot. Like that's not where I come from, you know. And I was happy to live with him in a crappy apartment. Like I was really happy.

And if anything, when I came home, I was like, I want to go back to that crappy apartment. And we move, I moved back to Toronto first. Cameron and my relationship, like, isn't good for a couple years. We are always fighting. We, we seem to be, um, instead of like, instead of like attracted to like the differences in each other, we seem to be like at odds with them constantly. Um, and I feel like he wants someone totally different than how I am.

And he feels like I want like some rich Jewish guy that I grew up with. Like, we're, were at odds and it wasn't true at all. And we get in this massive fight and we always got into massive fights, but this time Cameron left and he didn't come back. And so after like three days, it's sinking in that we're really breaking up. And at first I'm so angry because I'm kind of like, we have this like unspoken agreement like we're going to get in fights,

but we always get over them. Like we're not going to ever leave each other. I thought that was the unspoken agreement. And he kind of like, let's go the road. And so at first I'm so focused on how shitty he is, how we needed to break up, how it was terrible. We were all wrong for each other.

And how I'm going to go and find a guy who is exactly the opposite of him, a guy who doesn't have a drinking problem, a guy who comes from a good background, a guy who likes all the same things. that I do, you know, and I try that out and it feels really, it feels really empty. It feels really like, I have this like sinking feeling that this is as good as it's going to get. Like, this is, this is terrible.

This is going to be my life. This is as happy as I'm going to be sort of having fun and liking a guy. I'm never going to feel that feeling. I know in my heart, I'm never going to feel that feeling. Like I felt with Cameron. And he very soon, I have to text him and tell him,

listen, our neighbor saw me with this other guy and Cameron was close with their neighbor. Like, I'm just giving you a head up. And he texts me back and says, well, like, you should also know I'm also seeing somebody. I felt like I was going to die. Like I was so. heartbroken. I do a 180. I'm like, oh my God, no, that was all wrong. I was the problem.

He was incredible and I'm never going to find anyone else like him ever again. And so I write him a letter. And I actually read it to my therapist and she was like, this is one of the saddest things I've ever heard of my whole life. Like I sat him. bed and bogged my eyes out and wrote him this letter saying that I'm never ever going to love anybody like I loved him. And that basically feels like my life is over because he was my life and that him and the cat felt like a family and that I was like losing all of that and that I never got to start a family with him and that's all I really wanted in this life. I didn't want all these things that he thought I wanted. I just wanted to be with him and have a simple life. You know,

and he doesn't respond to my letter. And I am like beyond heartbroken. I'm basically like in a major depression. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I'm crying 24-7 because I'm like he's moved on. He didn't respond. He's moved on. And I'm not going to move on. And I'm not going to move on. this is terrible. My mom was like, I want to come stay with you tonight. Like, you're really upset. And I was like, okay, fine. She comes over.

I go to sleep, cry myself to sleep. And then my mom comes and wakes me up and I'm like, on alert. And she's like, Sarah, Cameron's here. And he wants to talk to you. I've been talking to him for like an hour. And he wants to talk to you. And like, I'm so. nervous because I feel like this is my shot and I go downstairs and like he looks horrible.

I don't even have to like talk to him. He just looks homeless. Like a huge long beard. His face is all gone. He looks terrible and I know immediately without even talking to him that he can't live without me either. It's like clear his day. And like we just talk and talk for a long time and tell him how sorry I am. And then he didn't deserve to be treated like a joke or like an embarrassment or like he wasn't good enough for me because he was because he's an amazing person. I run all these super shitty people. And for some reason he's like amazing. I don't know why. Everyone in his family is so fucking selfish and so into themselves. And Cameron is just the most genuine people person who just has so much love to give to other people.

And we end up falling asleep on the couch and we get back together. And like we fall back in love very, very fast and very, very deeply back in love. we get married, we have a baby, and we fall in love so hard with our child that we made together. And we fall even deeper in love with each other as parents. And I honestly feel like, this kind of sounds so stupid, but I feel like God is real because when I was so desperate, I like was like, if there is a God, please, like, let me just talk to him again. And I had this vision, you're going to like this. I had this vision when I was writing the letter.

My sister got engaged, which felt like it was like a knife, right? You know? And I had this vision when I was writing the letter to Cameron. And I was like, I just want to be at my sister's wedding with Cameron, with my head on his shoulder, like with a baby. Like, that's what I want. Like, I want us carrying a baby at my sister's wedding and to be with him. And we had my baby at my sister's wedding.

Because of COVID, my sister postponed her wedding by one year. And by that time, the baby was a year old. And we brought the baby to the wedding. I think about this every day, every single day, no matter how bad it is between us, I think God that, oh my God, I got my one wish. Like, I got my one thing I begged God for. I know we don't normally begin episodes with such a romantic roller coaster like that,

but I think getting to know these two is very important. They're an unlikely pair, but I don't think the type of private school, rich guy that Sarah's family would have wanted her to end up with would have been tough enough to get her through this saga that you're about to hear. And even though Cameron is a tough guy, he is absolutely terrified of all of this and did not even want Sarah to talk to me about this. He was very adamant. But I believe Sarah is quite good at getting her way. So I'm going to let Sarah take it from here and begin telling the story of this house and what happened to them. My name is Sarah, and at the time of this all happening, I was pretty happy in my life. I was with my boyfriend at the time.

We were living together in a condo and a really small condo that we were renting. And, you know, we were happy there, but ultimately we both, we needed something to kind of like nail us down for sure. And we wanted a good investment too. and, you know, we knew that essentially as well, property values in the city were like only going up and we wanted to kind of get in on it. We were looking for a long time and we were thinking like, okay, maybe we're only going to be able to afford a condo. And we'd look at condos and they were shitty and they were small and it was like, why are we even doing this if we're not even going to get a bigger place? We'd look at houses, but they were they were super, they were super unsuitable. They were like in a ridiculously bad area or they were, you know, there was something really wrong with them, like crazy stuff.

And I actually saw our house on the real, the realtor website. And like there was something about it that put me off. I never like looked further at it. I looked at the outside photos, but I never actually looked at any of the pictures of the inside. Because something about it was just like a put off to me. And I think one day out of desperation, I was like, okay, there's nothing left to look at. This is in our price range.

Let's go look at it. And we went to look at it. And it wasn't like our style. We didn't think that this was the kind of house we're going to get. It was this big new house. We're like much more character people. We like antiques. We don't like new stuff.

We didn't need a six bedroom house, but that's what was there for us. And we basically decided that on a practical level, it worked. We could afford it. So we pretty much had to buy it. And it was an incredible deal. I mean, that's how I feel like scary stories start with a house. You know, it was a great deal.

And that's how ours started. It was an amazing deal. It's honestly unthinkable. When I tell people what I paid for our house, they're shocked. The only sticking point about. our house was the neighborhood. It was not what you would call a bad neighborhood, but it was a weird neighborhood. It was west of a major street in the city.

I'll call it B. And west of B was a very insular, really secluded Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. And I mean, that's not who we are. Cameron's not even Jewish. I'm Jewish on my dad's side, but we're very secular. So I'm not familiar with their customs or traditions, their culture, hardly at all. So it was weird that we're like this young couple and we're going to be moving into this Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, but we did it.

We move in Good Friday. And we had a happy move-in day. And then like at the end of the night, it was me, Cameron and his friend Aaron. And his friend Aaron is, Aaron, if you're listening, you're a great friend, but he often doesn't know when to leave. he would stay at our house for sometimes like a week at a time. No joke. We had to like kick him out. So Cameron and I thought it was really weird when at about one in the morning,

we're watching DVDs and smoking a little bit of hash. All of a sudden he just goes, I got to go. And we're like, okay, buddy, you do that. And we literally hear his tires screeching down the street like out of a cartoon or something and he's gone. And we were looking at each other. other like that was weird but I guess we just got lucky let's go to bed we go to bed that night we're not in our room yet we're in our we're in our guest room because we don't have our furniture and I had this like this I want to call like an urge to keep looking down the hallway like there's

something there I kept looking down the hallway this long skinny creepy hallway nothing there I fall back asleep at some point I wake up to the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs I I think it's Aaron. Like, I think, oh, my God, maybe he was sick and he had to go home for a bed and now he's back. It wasn't him. No one was there. I kind of chalk it up to just being nervous of my new house, maybe, like, smoking weed, which is not something I do all the time.

You know, okay, you're hearing things. You're crazy. Go back to sleep. And I didn't really think anything of it. And about two days later, we had a major flood at our house. Like, our entire basement was trashed. our entire new basement, carpet, drywall, everything was trashed. It was like this unexplainable flood.

It was just like this like water rush. Our toilets were overflowing with water. Our sinks were overflowing with water. It was crazy and we couldn't really explain it. There's no rain. Toronto's not a very rainy place. And we're also, our main floor is not on ground level. Our basement's on ground level, but our main floor is not on ground level, and there are floods in our basement, our toilets on the upper level were overflowing, sinks were overflowing.

There was all this water everywhere, and it was nothing to do with weather. We heard from a plumber that sometimes the sum pumps fill up, but like I said, Cameron's a contractor, and he said that it didn't make sense to him, and he couldn't really figure out why it happened. But honestly, once it was over, we're just like, okay, that was our first hiccup with the house. house, it's over now, we'll fix it, you know, we'll call our insurance company and put in our first claim for the carpet and the drywall and just be done with it. Honestly, after that, like over the summer, this was, like I said, beginning of April, but there wasn't a whole lot. There were noises for sure, but taking these individual incidents that happened over the summer, I think I could look at them now and be like, that doesn't make sense. But on mass, there's,

this inclination to rationalize it as a whole and say, it's new house noises. We're getting used to the pipes. We're getting used to the sound of the house expanding, all that stuff. And, you know, that's what we did. And we didn't really think anything paranormal was happening until what I call the break-in. This is when I consider it actually like breaking in, breaking into our lives. Like, it needed an impetus to come and, like, come through the door, so to speak, and haunt us. And that happened. It was an evening in August. Cameron at the time was playing in an afterwork league once a week. And it would take them quite a while to play their hockey game. You know, they had to suit up and suit down and get off the ice. And it was in the suburbs. So by the time

he got home, it was usually midnight. So when I heard the door opening at 10 p.m. and I heard someone walking downstairs. I was calling out to him saying, hey, did the other team not show up? Did you get hurt? What happened? He didn't answer me. I was like, hey, come on. Like, what's going on? Do you need help? And he wasn't answering me. And I realized, okay, it's not him. Someone else is in my house. I run upstairs to my master washroom. I open the shower for whatever reason, get in the shower, thinking that will, like, soundproof me. Call Cameron. He rushes home and he doesn't find anything. So now I'm like the crazy, needy girlfriend who can't even let their boyfriend play hockey one night a week. It wasn't a good look.

And I felt really embarrassed. I thought, okay, maybe I did make that up in my head, but it didn't feel like it. And that night, we go to bed, three o'clock exactly in the morning, our alarm goes off. And my first thought, I don't know about Cameron, but my first thought was, that's weird. Our alarm isn't hooked up yet. We had the security guy my dad had hooked us up with, and there were all these roadblocks with him coming to help us hook up our security system. Like he always needed like a code from the company, or he needed to talk to somebody about a part for the cameras. There were all these like things and reasons why you couldn't come over.

That was my first thought. Like that's weird. Like is it hooked up? Are the cops going to come? What's happening? So we go downstairs to check it out. We're obviously terrified. Cameron thought he saw somebody walking down the basement stairs, but I didn't see shit, honestly. I didn't see anything. We sort of confer that it's like a malfunction in the alarm and let's disconnect it from electricity

so we can go back to sleep because it's super loud. It's waking up the whole neighborhood. We do that. He does that. I don't know how to do that stuff. Go back to bed, 4.15, so like an hour and 15 minutes later, exactly, it goes off again. And this time, it's impossible

because it's not even hooked up to the electricity. Like, how is it going off? I said, does it have a battery system? He was like, absolutely not. So weird, really weird. This is the point when I started to, and Cameron started to notice too, that the things that were happening were no longer,

we were no longer able to rationalize them. They weren't outwardly terrifying or aggressive or anything like that. They were the best word to describe them is very unnatural. Lots of things happen, but the examples that I have written down and the examples I remember very clearly, the first one was that one night we put a, we had a gas stove and we put a pot of water to boil for pasta, I guess, and it wouldn't come to a boil.

The water literally would not boil. There was heat on the water. The flame was up. It wouldn't come to a boil. We literally didn't eat pasta that night. Like, it didn't come to a boil, and there was this smell. It was, like, bad smell,

but it was only, like, contained to, like, a square foot of space. It was so weird. It was like this tiny bubble of snow. You know, another thing that happened is that I remember going upstairs and it looked cloudy outside and going downstairs and it was sunny outside. And I remember going up and down, up and down to try to check that it was still the same. Just things like that, like you wouldn't call those things terrifying, but they're very unnatural. It was like whatever it was was trying to show us. I can manipulate nature here.

Like, I'm powerful. I can do this. But we weren't, we weren't scared, but we clearly, I think, both knew now that it was something paranormal. We weren't exactly acknowledging it to one another, but we were coming to our own individual understanding. And I think, like, everybody, you know,

you hear about a house being haunted, you want to hear about these incidents because you want proof that the person isn't just scared and over-exaggerating, that they're not looking for attention. You want something like you want to hear that the pictures flew off the wall and you want to hear that, you know, cups filled with water, whatever it is. You want to hear these things. But the truth of the matter is that the scariest thing of all and the most upsetting thing of all is the overarching feeling in that. house that you are not alone, that someone is watching you, and you can, like, hear a pin drop. And I felt that feeling in my house now. There's always going to be people who doubt your story

and who doubt that stuff like this existing at all if they haven't felt it. Because once you feel it, it's like a click. You're just like, okay, yeah, this stuff is real. It feels like someone's watching you. Really? It feels like you're in an, you could be in an empty room and you're your bedroom sitting and reading a book and you have the urge to look over your book because you feel like there's someone there but there's no one there it it feels like you're not alone when you're alone you can feel like the energy of something else in there and it also feels very exhausting because the constant the constant checking that something isn't there is is exhausting mentally and physically exhausting. You're so sleep deprived. You're so desperate for sleep because you're tired because you're

scared. You don't want to fall asleep because you're scared what's going to happen when you're asleep. What's going to wake you up? And you're also on guard. So there's this like perpetual feeling of like of tiredness. And when you do sleep, you have these horrible, horrible dreams. Hold on one second. Mom, can you do the compost later? Sorry. Sorry. She's watching Young and Restless, and I guess she decided if you want to put something in the compost.

Why, why we use this moment to talk? Can you just tell the audience where you're recording now and why? Yeah, I'm recording at my parents' house. Cameron, I should mention now, Cameron is very resistant to me doing this podcast. Very resistant. Let's just say he didn't behave very nicely about something and he relented in the end.

So he knows I want to do it, but he's scared. He's scared it'll come back. And his absolute one stipulation was, do not do this at the house, do not talk about this at the house. He didn't even want me emailing you from our house. He was like, email him at the office.

So I'm doing this at my parents' house. And the original plan was to go to my brother's new house. But his fiance is terrified. It will come there. So she doesn't want me doing this there either. My parents have no problem with it. So I'm doing it here. And they, you know, they like know all this stuff.

Like there's a lot of this that they can vouch for. But like I think a lot of this would also be a bit shocking to them too. Because some of it's like super personal things that I experience on my own, you know? And I think I told you in my. initial story that the dreams were so bad that I would never feel comfortable telling somebody else. They were so disgusting and ungodly and violent and gruesome. And I remember them all. I remember them all. I'll be haunted by them for the rest of my life. They were horrible, awful dreams. Okay. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with the rest of this story.

So I did some research on my house. I went to the Toronto Record. office and I found a lot of weird shit out. It honestly wasn't really surprising that we were going through what we were going through. The first, I mean, glaring, like neon sign thing was that our house was vacant, not our house, our land was vacant for seven years. And I'm pausing because I want the gravity of that to sink in. This is one of the hottest real estate markets in the world. Every inch of property is commodified. A huge lot in the city, central, is just no one wants it for seven years. And then we, you know, we were looking at the title and the ownership, and it was very unclear.

It seemingly had no owner. The city of Toronto didn't own it. Our builder who built the house didn't own it, at least not for the first five years. And the old owner didn't seem to own it. It was so bizarre. Like there was nothing on who owned the property. And I wanted to reach out to the owner of the old bungalow on our property. He had this really generic Italian name, though.

And there's probably like 5,000 of them living in the city of Toronto. And I just knew it would be pointless. I tried a little bit, but like it was finding a needle in a haystack. And we saw also that there were two police calls to the old bungalow. was for animal cruelty and the other was for domestic violence, but that's, that's all we knew. I don't know when the bungalow was knocked down. I don't know if our builder did it. There was no record of that. That's what was so crazy. There was no record of that. But our builder bought the house five years into the seven years that it was just totally vacant. So I don't know if he knocked

down the bungalow or the bungalow was already knocked down. It was just a piece of land. But he He built the house and I know he ran into issues. I know the building of this house took him way longer than he anticipated. He was extremely anxious to unload it. And I heard, like, I heard through the grapevine when everything was said and done that he may or may not have lost a million dollars on this project, which is a lot of money to lose in a, in a transaction. So that shows you how desperate he was, and I think it was one of those projects he wished he never took on. And it shouldn't take two years to build a house,

especially our house. Our house is like a box. It's very basic. It's not, you know, the Taj Mahal. It's a basic builder, new build. You know, Cameron does them all the time. Cameron actually works for, he's an independent contractor, but he's for a couple years now worked for a luxury housing company.

And they throw those houses up in five months. And at this point, I had this little bit of information. So I have Cameron approach our builder. And his reaction was interesting. He was very playful. He was like, ah, you learn the house is haunted, eh? You know, he was very sort of lighthearted about it. I mean, it's also strange when you think about it.

there's a warranty system in Ontario, the province we live in for new houses, where basically the builder has to keep the tenants of the new house happy for at least a year. So I think he was just trying to keep us on his good side. He was very playful. And he said, oh, you figured out it's haunted. I had some trades that had difficulty working or were uncomfortable laying tile. Felt like people were watching them. So it was slightly, you know, like vindicating, okay, you know, we're not crazy here. And then this is around the time where we are invited to dinner by our neighbors. So as I said, Cameron's not Jewish, but he's an extremely friendly person. And he was trying to ingratiate himself into this neighborhood. And everyone loved him, especially the neighbors

across the street. It was an older man with a family. He used to be a moyle that's someone who performs a bris in Judaism on babies. And he was sort of like a holier kind of guy. And Cameron helped him build something. So we invited us over for a dinner. And you know, we, I like, I covered myself up. I wore my only long skirt. We tried to be like really respectful, even though it was like a fish, total fish out of water situation. I had no idea what I was doing. At the end of the night, he says, I want to speak to Cameron alone. And that's just how things are done in their culture. You women, women are not, like, allowed to partake in these types of conversations. So he said, I want to speak to Cameron alone.

I go and sit in the kitchen with his wife and his granddaughters and his daughter. I'm trying to listen in. I can't hear anything. Cameron tells me later that he asks about the house, how we were getting on in the house, and that when Cameron told him some of the things that were going on, he wasn't shocked at all, like complete poker face. He actually said, I'm not surprised. He said that no one in the community would touch the house.

That clearly it was a house made for a Hasidic family. It was perfect. It was kosher kitchen, six bedrooms, two-minute walk from the synagogue, but that no one wanted it. And he said that there was a Jewish law, which stated that after seven years, a cave or a dwelling is after, to become infested with demons.

And the word he used was Dubbix. It's a Jewish word for demons. It's a special kind of Jewish demon. And that the area that the community lived in was known for being haunted and there were families often running to the rabbis for help with hauntings. You know, again, vindicating kind of information

but we thought maybe we were turning to somebody for help and he was just like, I don't know, put some mazes up and keep praying, double thumbs up, let's see how it goes. And he did offer to come and make a blessing on the maziza, but at the time, I don't know why we didn't do the mazazzas at the time. We just didn't do them. And I guess this kind of brings me to like a good segue to say that I don't think that we were serious about it yet.

And I've heard this from so many people because I've talked to a lot of different people who've had their house haunted. And it's the same story. We didn't take it seriously because it wasn't scary or upsetting enough yet. And at first, it might even be exciting in some way or novel or even funny.

And then because of that, you do something dumb and very, very badly regret it. And our something dumb was 100% trying to do a seance. That was sometime in October. My brother came over and like my brother would come over a lot just to hang out. We're really close, tight-knit family, and he's really close with Cameron. And we kind of decided to do this. It was more of a joke than anything.

You know, the candles, the Ouija board. And we were, you know, we were doing it. We put the lights down. We were waiting for something to happen. And nothing happened. And I was a little bit, honestly, like, disappointed. Come on. You're not going to do anything.

You have this platform. Like move the board, dude. Like make the lights flicker. Do something. Nothing happened. And as I was thinking to myself, I'm dumb. I feel dumb. this could possibly all be in my head.

And it was almost like there was a connection there, like it read my mind almost because it happened as soon as I thought that. Like I could see that we had these giant bell, metal bell pendants. And I noticed that one of them looked like it was starting to spin. Then I was like, okay, this movement like isn't just a twitch of my eye. That thing's really moving. And they started to gain momentum and actually hit each other

and then really move back and forth, like those toys that people had in their office with the magnets. And we were looking at each other, laughing, looking back at each other, laughing, like, almost to sort of ask the other person, are you doing this? Like, I'm not doing it. I don't have, like, a little invisible fishing line.

And we all just stare at each other. And just sort of when we were getting over the, like, fantastic, wild. ride of the bend and sitting each other is when all of a sudden music started playing from Cameron's basement and it was a song, Monster Mash. And it was on the radio. I mean, this was around Halloween. It was on the radio and it was playing from the radio. We had a speaker system throughout the house, so it was pretty loud. And I don't remember exactly, but I think Cameron went downstairs to turn it off. I remember Cameron feeling a bit angry.

at this point. Like, screw this. This thing isn't screwing with us. I'm going and turning the music off. And my brother, you know, being, God, what is it? Probably like seven years Cameron's Jr. Was like, that's his big brother figure. So he was kind of like matching energy there. Like, yeah, screw this thing. And he decided to run up to the room that it lived in. It was very clear to not only Cameron and I, but everyone who knew about our situation where this thing lived in our house. It was unmistakable. I don't really know how to verbalize why we knew that, but we just did. It was like a feeling of dread when we went into the closet in our spare room.

Like, that's where the thing lived. The lights would turn on in that closet. That's just like where it lived. And when my brother decided, okay, I'm going to go upstairs and confront this thing, All I heard was like the door slammed. The door slammed in his face and it's the loudest noise I've heard since, that slamming of the door.

And he was not back for a while. I did feel like this was so dramatic. It was putting on a show for us. It was like, you wanted a show, you wanted to communicate with me, well, here it is. Here's your show. You know, that's when it really became,

terrifying and scary and upsetting in the worst way possible. Wow, Sarah, this is a lot. And I feel like we're just starting, aren't we? Right? God. Yeah, well, like you said, it might be super traumatizing to you. Maybe a wish you never heard about this. Be careful.

Well, I do want to talk to Cameron. I don't know how much he's going to. Sure. Yeah. I don't know how much luck I'm going to have there, but wait, I actually meant to ask you, why why is he even cool with you doing this in the first place? Like, what changed? Because originally, it sounded like you weren't going to be able to even do the podcast.

Like, how'd you convince him? Okay. So, actually, this is a really good story because he's often in trouble. He's often in the doghouse. That's just the kind of man he is. it's kind of one of the things I like about him. He truly doesn't give a fuck what anybody thinks about him, including me a lot of the time.

And he just does whatever he wants. And we were coming off one of those incidents where Cameron was very poorly behaved at someone else's party. And I fully support my husband. I didn't think it was that big of a deal, but the other parties were very hurt. and very distraught. Oh, my God.

Maybe told people where to go and how to get there. So he was in the doghouse a little bit. Wait, so he got drunk and offended people at a party. And the only reason you're able to talk to me on this podcast is because you said, let me do this and I'll forgive you. I didn't put it in so many words, but it was very much implied. I mean, because Cameron's reason for me not wanting to do it. Like, he had a good reason.

It wasn't just that he just didn't want me to do it. He didn't want me to do it because he felt that there was a really good chance that energetically this would attract whatever this was back onto us again. And he was really scared. I obviously want to talk to Cameron about this. Like, what do you think that the odds of me being able to talk to him are? I think they're pretty low, honestly. I mean, there's a bunch of different reasons. He's scared about bringing it back.

He just wants to be done with this. he really doesn't want to bring up old wounds, old hurts, old awful, scary feelings. So I would say the chances are pretty low that he'll talk to you. But I don't know, maybe there's hope. Like maybe he'll really want to say his peace. I'll give him your number. Just give him it. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, don't hesitate. If you have any questions, just call me and ask. Okay, so at this point, I had recorded this interview a year ago last October, and I had just wrapped up this first call with Sarah. She had told me a lot of things, a lot of things that you're going to hear on the future episodes,

but I was pretty shocked by her story. It was a lot. And at this point, it had gotten pretty late. It was nighttime. It was probably around 10 p.m. And I was packing up ready to go to bed for sure. I had done enough that day. I had seen enough and heard enough.

And so I was putting things down and ready to move on. I did not expect to talk to Cameron. This is basically told to me over and over that there's no way he would talk to me. As you just heard, he wasn't even okay with her talking to me, but was forced to give in. And yeah, I obviously wanted to hear his side, but I just didn't think it was coming. So I was packing up my stuff, and all of a sudden I get a call from a Canadian cell phone number that I didn't recognize.

And I almost didn't answer it, but I'm glad I did. And it was Cameron. It was a strange call. And it was a very unsettling call, if I'm being honest with you. I could tell he was outside, and I think he was in his garage. He had clearly stepped out to talk to me. He was breathing pretty heavily into the phone, and I think he might have had a couple drinks by this point.

He just kind of started talking and started telling me stuff. I didn't even get to ask too many things. I think he just wanted to tell somebody about this. I think he started talking and just kind of kept going. And it was weird. It was weird hearing a guy like him. I mean, he works construction. He's like, you know, he's a tough guy.

I mean, he's a tough guy, and it's strange, and it's a little unnerving to hear a guy like that so scared. And so he talked for a long time, and I just let him go. He told me a lot of things that Sarah did not mention. He also told me some things that Sarah apparently didn't know, some things that he told me not to repeat to her, some details about incidents. that I think he was kind of keeping from her for her own sake.

And it affected me. It affected me hearing somebody so scared like that, I'm going to be honest with you. Eventually, I asked him if I could try recording some of the call. He said, sure. I just went over to my mic and turned it on instead of recording. I didn't want to interrupt, and I just recorded the speakerphone.

It's not that great, but I did record, like, a couple minutes of it. one thing he told me that really stuck out and that Sarah didn't know is that I guess her brother had made some kind of offering of food to this thing, whatever it is that was in the house. He read online about doing that and he came over and did this, which, you know, that's one of the things that I've heard you just do not do. It's one of the dumbest things you could do. That and the Ouija board combined, I think, is the two bad things. That's the two things you don't do if you think your house is haunted. So yeah, I'll play you a little clip of my conversation with him,

but I usually do not let stories get to me, but for some reason, after my conversation with Cameron, I hung up and went straight to a bar and had three drinks that I drank very quickly back to back and just tried to forget about it because it was unsettling hearing a guy like him be so scared and

and just clearly like needing somebody to talk to about this. Anyway, this is the clip that I recorded. Hang on. Yeah, because he's getting a real story. Okay, it's recording now. So what did her brother tell you? What did he do? He ran online?

He read a lot about some kind of offering of bread. He was questioning the legitimacy of this entire thing. He was in the house. I don't know what he did. But the door slamming shut where he was in. And he went into one of the closets. And there was upside down writing of numbers and shit written on one of the back of the doors. that was never there before.

Slamming and him just looking at me and being like, I'm getting defuck out of here and he ran out. He went out there, three pendant lights that pulled my island. Three pendant lights, I don't know if my wife said this, but the three pennant lights all started swinging and hitting each other. Simultaneously, like a pendulum. I remember like, what?

Dude, she didn't tell me about the writing at all. She did not mention that. This is a new house. This is a new house. So it wasn't like a skew number off a custom door from a fabricator. Jumble of numbers and letters and shit written upside down. And it was gone the next day. I went back to chat and it was gone.

It wasn't fucking there. Did the brother? Go ahead. The brother didn't come back for a while after that. Did he offer it something? Yeah, look, he didn't believe that something was going on, so he offered it bread or something, something like that. He clearly does some research behind our back,

and then offering a new is basically a leak in a way, allow it to enter. And we were laughing about it, right? Which was the wrong thing to do, because clearly pissed it off and made the situation. not much worse. This has been episode 54. The title is,

Many Things, Part 1, and you've been 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. This was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaefer.

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team at Odyssey, J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Casey Klauser, Moira Curran, Josephina Francis, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld Now for free on the Odyssey app and wherever get your podcasts. Also, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us your story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com. Stay tuned because we'll be back with part two very soon.