Otherworld - Episode 7: The Tunnel

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

A college freshman arrives to Connecticut College and discovers that his room is on the basement level of his dorm. An older student on the floor talks about supernatural experiences and shows him an underground tunnel that students use to go between dorms during the winter. Everything is relatively normal until the last week of school when he hears ear-shattering screaming coming from the said tunnel and goes to investigate, only to encounter a full-body apparition.  Please subscribe and help spread the word about Otherworld by telling your friends and leaving us a good review! Remember that the more people that know about Otherworld, the more stories you’ll get to hear. 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

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. So I want to start off today with a little good news, bad news situation. The good news is the show's been growing and doing great. We've kind of climbed up the charts, had some brief appearances on the iTunes and Spotify charts, which is very exciting. I just wanted to say thank you everybody for spreading the word and leaving the reviews. it's so exciting to see a new audience join up and start listening. It makes me very excited for the future of the show. So thank you and welcome if you're a new listener.

The bad news, I lost a listener this week. I lost one of our first listeners, actually, my own future mother-in-law. She texted my fiancé saying that she tried listening to episodes six and turned it off halfway through. And not only is she no longer listening to the podcast, she's been actively telling other people in her family not to listen because she got too scared and she's worried about them, which is very funny. And unfortunate, I hate to lose a listener, but luckily it's been going pretty well. I think we're going to be okay. But that being said, I feel a little bad.

I really am not trying to make a scary podcast. Some of this stuff is scary, but I really want to go on record and say that Otherworld is not always going to be scary. This is coming out Halloween weekend, so if you're listening to this in the future, just know that. It's Halloween weekend, so I'm putting a lot of the scary stories back to back.

After this, it's going to get a little bit nicer. So don't worry. Maybe there's one day where I'll get like some kind of rating system, I'm going on these episodes where I could kind of flag scary and less scary episodes for the people that get spooked easily. Something to consider. Anyway, after this, we'll get into some strange episodes, but some that are very nice, heartwarming, and just weird.

But today's episode is a scary one. it's one of my favorites. I don't think I've responded to an email faster than this one. It comes from a guy named Marshall and takes place his freshman year of college. And when I read what he experienced, it was just instantly, no questions. I was just like, pick a time for the interview, let's go. You know, I've heard a lot of interesting ones, and this takes the cake. It's very vivid and unique.

and I also really like the setting. Freshman year of college, it's a scary time for a lot of reasons. Not supernatural reasons, but it's a weird time to go through. You know, it's a big leap in life. There's a lot of strange changes taking place. Oftentimes you're with weird people

thrown into strange living situations, but like I said, rarely have I heard paranormal stories from this time. and just being a story that takes place in a dorm adds a spin to this that I really, really like. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode. Once again, it comes from somebody named Marshall, and this is episode seven.

The title of this episode is The Tunnel, and you're listening to Otherworld. I'm Marshall. My only encounter with anything, like even like a little bit supernatural or paranormal, occurred, I guess, it's six years ago now. 2016 in the fall when I was moving into Connecticut College as a freshman, I showed up and received my dorm assignment

and realized I'd be living in the basement of one of the older dorms on campus, the Catherine Blunt House. And so I moved in. We had like freshman orientation and it became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that I wasn't going to get along too great with my, two roommates. One of them would like call his mom like multiple times a day, just like ask her random questions. And the other one was from Japan and was really quiet, didn't really seem to have any interest in getting to know us. So I started to make friends with the other kids on my

floor. And when the other sophomores moved in, they were really friendly towards us. And we all kind of became fast friends about six of like the 12 or 15 of us on the floor all became really close really quickly. And so we started getting to know them and asked, you know, why they were living on this floor. And basically they had bad lottery numbers. Ended up in the basement, which, you know, is pretty obviously kind of shitty. It's like dark. It's dank. It's like kind of out of the way. But this one kid, James, told us right off the bat that he had heard rumors that it was haunted as well. And we all kind of rolled our eyes, but he went on and on about how everybody he knows that lives there, claims it was haunted, like, hearing a girl's voice, like, from down the hall,

like, all the time at night. And he claimed that this was from a girl that had died on our campus, like, before the college went co-ed sometime in the 1960s. So we were all really skeptical. But he was super charismatic, and, you know, it was a sophomore who seemed to be, at least in the small world I knew there on that campus, kind of the big man on campus, seemed to have a lot of friends coming through to say hi so we took him up on his offer to like have a tour of the building and you know see what this like haunting thing was all about and so like this was probably day three so we hadn't really explored too much down the whole floor just kind of like getting to know the campus as a whole but he took us down to the end of the hall like a pretty long hallway on the length of the whole

building and at the other end was our laundry room which we'd found but there was a door that was closed but was apparently always unlocked for everybody in the know. And behind it was like a storage closet. Like, all right, nothing too crazy here, just like some old beds and stuff. Like one singular, like 40-watt light bulb hanging in the middle, which was a little bit creepy. And then behind another door, he opened it up to this tunnel. It was lit, so it wasn't too scary. But it was filled with just completely filled wall to like ceiling, floor and everything with graffiti from previous students.

And it was various things. It was like pieces of art, messages, people signing their names, a lot of political statements because it was 2016. So that was like intense on a college campus. But yeah, we all kind of just like rolled our eyes at him. We're like, James, there's no way. This is haunted. And basically brushed it off.

So as the semester goes on, we all became pretty close friends and we would hang out in James's room all the time. James was totally fine with us being there when he wasn't there. we'd always go over there like pretty much every day to like smoke weed, watch movies, play video games, do everything. So I ended up spending like a lot of time with James and he's still one of my best friends today. But like throughout the semester, he kept telling me that he would hear voices at night and there'd be puddles of water on the floor in places that there shouldn't be. Like not near any of the bathrooms, not near any of like the pipes that were in the ceiling and stuff like that. and, you know, I just figured it was, you know, people partying. That tunnel led to one of the other dorms on campus.

And it was kind of considered the stoner dorm, the party dorm, because it was one of the shittier ones that, you know, a lot of people like to live in because it was so shitty. So it was pretty lax about, you know, breaking stuff and all that. So it was pretty common for people who were drunk, especially as it got colder throughout the semester, to go from that dorm to mine using the tunnel. And so, yeah, if people are yelling in a tunnel, it echoes around.

It sounds pretty creepy if you're hearing it just from far away. So it's pretty easy to just brush it off. No big deal. A couple other James stories were that he kept saying he was having nightmares of a little girl coming into his room in his sleep. And again, like people have nightmares all the time, nothing crazy. And his shampoo bottles would keep going missing in the shower. And that was just a mystery throughout the whole year. But yeah, James would keep having these weird experiences where he'd hear stuff, see these puddles, have a bad dream and get freaked out.

And, you know, he would like come into my room a lot of times at night and be like, dude, I'm freaked out. Just let me sleep on your floor. Be like, all right, man, whatever. And this was pretty common. Like everybody on the floor had to put up James every once in a while just because he was free. freaked out. So the semester goes on. These things happen. I just, you know, always write it off to, like, drunk people. The puddles on the ground, maybe that's people spilling drinks. I never, like, got down and sniffed it because who's going to be sniffing beer on the floor, like, whatever. So,

yeah, life just went on until the end of the semester. And Connecticut College has, like, self-scheduled finals. So I was a nervous freshman, so I just decided to take my, line like on the last possible day. I wrote all my papers and was going to take them on the last day, which was not the strategy of most students who would take them as soon as possible, pretty much, as soon, like first or second day, and then party for a night or two, and then leave. So by the time the last day of finals rolled around, the campus was really, really empty. It was kind of a ghost town, but it was nice. I had the library pretty much to myself. It was great. There was nobody else left on my floor besides me.

and this other guy, John, who was like a super senior, finishing up, like, his classes in the fall who lived down the hall, who we really didn't see much of all semester. He was really reclusive. So that night, I, you know, finished studying, like, put on a movie and, like, sitting in my room, just hanging out, getting ready to go to bed. And I begin to hear, like, screaming from down the hall. And, you know, usually, like, when I had heard the screaming earlier in the semester, it was it was in line with people being drunk, whether it was like, you know, yelling and laughing or even yelling, people upset, but usually you could tell they were like slurring words, and it was just like an argument between a couple or something like that.

And nothing really to worry about. So it was a little strange that the campus was so empty. There weren't really any parties going on, and yet there was still yelling. But I brushed it off for five or ten minutes. It kind of sounded at first like I could only hear like, high-pitched whales every, you know, few seconds, it almost felt like. It would just kind of be like a, you know, a woman screaming every 10 seconds or so, like the very loudest part of, you know, somebody yelling a sentence or something.

And then it started to raise in volume and these like kind of screams and exclamations got a little bit louder. They weren't forming any words. it was more just, you know, well, as it got louder, it became apparent that it was kind of like an ongoing moan sound that would like, you know, spike in volume for a second. Like somebody was being, you know, hit or something like that, like the way you would exclaim as a reaction to some sort of like pain, I guess. And that's what started to really freak me out. So that's when I decided that. This had probably happened over 10 minutes.

It got louder and louder. So I finally stepped out of my room. And it felt like as soon as I stepped out of my room, it became like an ear piercing shriek that wouldn't really stop. Just so loud, I couldn't believe it. I, like, covered my ears, and it was just still so loud. It seemed like it was filling the entire hallway. And it was just, it almost felt like the wind was blowing with it.

You know, the air moved with. this scream that was coming like from the direction of that tunnel and you know the instinct was to like run back inside my room pretend it wasn't happening but I stood there for a second and in sheer panic you know knew I needed to find out like what was going on um because it just didn't feel right it I you know it obviously didn't feel human but I couldn't explain it and so I began to like make my way slowly down the hall all the while this like ear piercing shriek like like a banshee i guess um and what led me down the hall i guess was just like some weird morbid curiosity i didn't necessarily feel afraid but almost like you know i had heard all this about

that like stupid hallway from james all semester and i'm like i think there was a part of me in the back of my head that's like there's no way this fucking guy is right that there's something up with that and so yeah i kind of had to force myself to take each step but i just made my way slowly down there it seemed to get a little bit louder but it started out so loud that it was it was hard to tell um and so i made my way to the storage room took a nervous peek around and i didn't see anything um it the air didn't seem really to be rushing from there anymore, but as I turned the corner, it really felt like the sound got a little bit louder as if, you know, I was getting ever closer. Like the second I turned that corner, it felt like, you know, I had come one step closer to the source.

And I don't know. I don't know. I kept moving forward. But just in that situation, there's really know, like, thinking going on, really. Like, my brain was just almost completely empty, just with sheer confusion and fear, basically. And so I made my way across that room and into the hallway. And as I looked around the hallway, and I took one step in, I saw a woman. She seemed to be about college-aged. and she was floating. She was floating about a foot off the ground.

The noise was louder than I can even possibly describe. This screaming, this just like high-pitched, like constant scream. Her head was tilted back straight towards the ceiling. I couldn't see her face because of it because of the height and the way her head was tilted back, like as far as it could go straight up towards that ceiling. She was probably only about a foot away from the ceiling. ceiling with her face. And she was wearing like a striped shirt, vertical stripes, like orange, white, blue and green, jean shorts and like white tennis shoes. She had blonde hair.

And I remember like the detail that like sticks out in my head that I like, I just see so vividly is like little bits of blonde hair coming out. Her hair seemed to be in a ponytail and little bits of blonde hair coming out from her forehead where they had fallen out of this ponytail. I remember thinking to myself, like, she was moving, kind of writhing. It almost seemed like she was, you know, hanging from something in midair. And her body seemed to be writhing. She wasn't, like, transparent or anything, like a ghost, you know, might be if that's what it was or whatever. But she, yeah, she was just floating there.

And I just remember, like, it just seemed like the situation slapped me in the face. I probably screamed. I don't even remember. It was just pure fight or flight panic. And I just sprinted back to my room as fast as I could. I got out of there as fast as I could. And I got in my room, I, like, was just standing there, like, pacing around, like, hyperventilating. And I don't even know what was going through my head.

just like every possible thought at once. What the fuck was that? Am I safe? What's going on? Like, what was that sound? How could, what could that have been? And, you know, when I started to, like, regain a little bit of control over myself, I realized that there was no more screaming or moaning or any sound coming from the hallway.

I, like, held my breath as long as possible. Like, I could barely hear over, like, my heart beating in my ears, but I listened as best as I could, and I really couldn't hear anything. I cracked open the door, and it seemed totally silent. Like, you could hear a pin drop down there, not even like, you know, water, hot air running through the pipes. It just seemed completely dead silent. Maybe by contrast, maybe it was. I don't know. And so I was shocked. I hadn't seen anybody else. to that kid John's room who I hadn't really seen at all that semester, like pounded on his door and he opened it. And I was like, did you hear that? Like, what the, like, I, I don't know if I could

even, like, ask him a clear question. He was very clearly confused and could see I was in a state of panic and basically just like rolled his eyes and told me to fuck off. And I kept knocking and finally got the question out, like, did you hear that screaming? Did you hear that? Did you hear that? and he basically told me like yeah it was just a drunk person like go to bed fuck off and i told him what i'd seen he really didn't believe me i i'm sure i probably didn't even describe it clearly at all i probably just was spitting words at him but he eventually walked down the hallway with me i was like shaking with fear walking like 10 feet behind him basically just trying to make sure that he went in there and actually looked down the hallway with me i was like shaking with fear walking like 10 feet behind him basically just trying to make sure that

He went in there and actually looked down the hallway, and he saw nothing. And, like, just told me to fuck off again. He's like, I'm studying, I got studying to do, go to bed. And so I did, to the best of my ability. I sat in bed, probably shaking for, you know, an hour or two. I eventually got to sleep and whatever. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back. So the last weird part was the next day, I, you know, shower off in the morning, try to clear my head.

I have to go take a test. And I step out of my room. And as I step out, my foot comes down and I hear water splash a little bit. And I look and there's just like a light puddle along the whole hallway. And so I, you know, start looking for where the water's like kind of flowing from. if it's like coming in from anywhere, if it's just been sitting here. And I walk around the corner of the hall and realize that it seems to be coming from James's room. And so he always left his door unlocked for us even after he left for the semester.

And I opened it up and like pretty much everything in there had been soaked. He took most of his stuff for the winter break, but his carpet, like the clothes he had there, any bags left on the ground, he actually, the PlayStation was fried. We were pretty pissed about that. But yeah, his whole room was just, like, soaked. So I called maintenance, like the campus maintenance, and basically told them, you know, there was a flood. Come check it out.

It was in this room, but I had to run to my exam, so I didn't see them coming in. When I came back after my test, they were vacuuming up all the water. And I talked to them and asked what happened. And they said, it must have been groundwater. And I was confused by that because it hadn't rained the night before and there had been snow on the ground. And when it melted a few weeks ago, it like did come in like through my

windows a little bit. But it didn't happen with James's room at all. His windows were sealed. His windows were closed last night when I walked in the room. The windows were closed. So I was just confused. And I asked him if, you know, maybe a pipe had burst or leaked or anything. And they told me that there were no pipes anywhere near like that side of the room. Like the bathrooms weren't near there. There was no reason for any running water to be near there. Even like the steam heating, it was only like a small pipe that went like under his floor apparently.

So it couldn't have been that. And yeah, I somehow felt it must have been related. I mean, he told me he kept seeing puddles of water all semester and hearing these screams. And of course, you know, the last night when it's just, me, I hear the loudest scream and his room gets flooded, which was really strange. After this, you know, everybody, I texted everybody on my floor who I was friends with and told them what happened and they were kind of split on whether they believe me.

James definitely did and was freaked out about coming back. And he eventually did. He didn't want to leave the floor, but one girl moved out. she was kind of, she told campus safety. She was, you know, a kind of new agey girl from California who was big into like crystals and stuff like that. So she told like the housing staff that I had seen a ghost and it had flooded the room and that it was clearly like a bad spirit that wasn't, you know, safe to live around.

And she moved out. And so, yeah, after we lived out the rest of the spring semester there with no, real incidents. I mean, there were still voices coming down the hallway, but I mean, I know for a fact it's been, you know, drunk people partying a few times, but I never heard anything that seemed to be in pain or in anguish or anything like that again. But after we moved out that year, the campus shut down that floor. Nobody was allowed to live down there for the rest of my time at college. maybe they had heard a lot of these stories in past years. I don't know why they never really gave an explanation.

But yeah, I think that's just about everything. Like right off the bat, I was always like, you know, very science-minded. I thought I was going to be an engineer or, you know, a coder, some sort of, like, scientific person. I was always, like, atheistic and, you know, did the, like, physical determinism. like the universe is just like physics set off by the big bang it's all like written in stone it's all going to happen whatever um but after this happened i started thinking a lot more about that because i i just didn't there was no way to explain it you know in a logical way and you know it was a liberal arts college so they kind of invited us to like you know take different classes and you know

i took a class with hume who like you know wrote about me or and just learning about, like, miracles in that philosophical tradition, just, like, basically defined as inexplicable events by God, just, I don't know, it sent me down a rabbit hole. And there were a whole other reasons why I loved studying philosophy, but, you know, you can, at least, like, in the empiricist sense, like, just start with your experiences and figure out what the world is like based on that. And so, yeah, I truly believe that, you know, what you sense and what you perceive is the truth.

I don't think, like, anybody can take for me and I can't take for myself that I saw what I saw. And that night, like, happened. And so that's just part of my experience in this world. And I think everybody's life is kind of filled with inexplicable experiences, whether and, you know, there's no point in trying to design like a big, you know, explanation for everything that happens in life.

So I think since then, my outlook has been in a weird way, more like easygoing, because I feel like, okay, you know, what happens, happens, you do what you can, about what you can, and you live with what you can't. And, yeah,

it's a thing that happened to me, and I was really scared at the moment, and, you know, it is, it has some, like, dark implications, I guess, but I don't think, I don't even necessarily think, like, the typical paranormal explanations of, oh, maybe something bad happened to her, and, you know, it's a tortured spirit who can't leave this realm or whatever. I, I don't necessarily buy into that either. I just, I just think it's something that is impossible to explain. But it happened to me, and I'll keep it as truth, even though I can't explain it. All right. Thank you, Marshall, for telling us that story. Man, I've never, I mean, I've heard a lot of ghost stories. That's the only one that I've heard where it's not anything translucent. It's not like a glimpse. It's fully somebody seeing something floating right there in front of their face with such a vivid description. I mean, it's the details that always get me with these stories. And that's how I, that's a main way I can.

could tell. Also, just the description of her clothes, how much he remembered from it, was very spooky. Another detail that stuck out was the water. I don't want to spoil things, but that's something that I've noticed popping up in stories. I don't know what it means, but it's definitely going to be a factor in a story coming up probably the final the finale episode of this show which is also the only story that has actually really scared me while recording it but that's a long ways away we have a lot more episodes before you hear that one but i would just make a mental note of the water so thank you so much to marshal for telling us that story like i said this is coming out on Halloween weekend. So folks, hope you had a very good Halloween. This is not a Halloween

podcast. We are continuing onward. I have a lot more episodes coming. We're just getting started. So thank you so much for listening. Please continue to spread the word. My name's Jack Wagner, and you have been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Theme song is by Coberman. Our music music and soundtrack is by juice jackal and chrome sparks. Editing and engineering by Theo Schaefer. The artwork for our show is by Coltysak Studios. Once again, this is an independent show,

so please show your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends. 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.