Otherworld - Episode 89: The Spare Room

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Rhys and his siblings grew up believing that their spare room was haunted and avoided it at all costs, that was until he and his brother got older and needed separate bedrooms leaving Rhys with no choice but to made it his new room. Once he settled in he found that the scary memories of his childhood weren't just the overactive imagination of a child. To hear bonus episodes and videos of Otherworld, sign up for the Otherworld Patreon Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your 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 from all the way down in Australia, from a guy named Reese. Reese lived with his family in an old house that had long been rumored to be haunted, but was never taken seriously by anyone until things started to happen to Reese and his siblings. Even then, everyone tried to find a way to write off their experiences as the result of of an overactive imagination. Even though most of this story takes place when Reese wasn't a kid, he was between 12 and 15 for a lot of this,

it's easy for adults to write off some of the strange stuff that kids might say, especially when it comes to the paranormal. But the thing is, when what's happening is not just an overactive imagination, not only is it completely terrifying, it also must be frustrating when nobody around you will take you seriously. As a result, Reese was left to handle this matter

on his own and find a solution. This is episode 89. The title is The Spare Room and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yeah, for it is.

At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm not worried about all of a science. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. If limbs were just wrong. Everybody moved.

back into the night, even if it takes them ahead. My name is Reese Ward. I'm 23 years old. I live in Brisbane, Queensland, but I grew up in rural New South Wales, which is probably where, I guess, the bulk of my paranormal experiences happened in. And, yeah, I guess my relationship to the paranormal, I've always been, like, fairly open-minded. But I think I've just had, like, a lot of weird experience. I feel like I've always had what I call, I guess, like a bit of a spooky radar.

Like, I don't know, it's kind of hard to explain, but I guess going into certain rooms or certain buildings, even certain locations, I might get for no reason at all kind of like just the ebjeeves really. Like, I don't know, I guess I would describe it. It's really weird, but if anyone's seen like Lord of the Rings, if you've seen Lord of the Rings, There's like a scene where Gandalf gets angry at Bilbo and he sort of rises up. But the room starts to darken and yeah, it's kind of like that. It's weird.

It's like I feel like I'll walk into a room and there could be it could be full of windows and yet it'll kind of feel to me like not enough light is entering it. There'll just be something wrong about the room. Like, yeah, it's as if the shadows are deeper and it's dark and then it should be. that's often a visual thing that accompanies me just kind of overall just getting scared when I enter rooms and it can be like context free. No one will say anything about the room and then I might get that feeling and I'll mention it to them and then maybe someone will tell me something happened in this room or I saw something

in this room or or even certain physical locations. My parents were very much avid that such a thing does not exist. Ghost aren't real. There's nothing paranormal at all, you know, in your imagination kind of thing. So I think part of me, I guess I was probably pretty conflicted where I stood back then. I think I wanted to believe in the paranormal and I'd had some minor experiences. And yeah, after the, I guess the main story, when I was 12, I 100% have never looked back, never not believed in the paranormal just because of what I saw and experienced, I guess. So my childhood home, my dad has been living in it since he was in his early 20s. It's a house outside, you know, out in sort of the sticks.

In rural New South Wales, I guess as I said, he never believed in the paranormal. I don't really know what the history of that house was prior to him living there, but I know that he moved in a couple of housemates, the first of which moved in while he was away. And apparently he spent a week alone at the house and then came back and said when my dad came back, the first thing he said to him was, your house is haunted. And obviously my dad didn't believe him. Had lived there for at least a good amount of time and had nothing happened to him. That individual was a police officer, that I imagine not a lot freaks out police officers.

The only story he ever told me that was weird that he couldn't explain was that they, And several people heard it was that a speaker, like a stereo system, which had been unplugged, turned on and started blasting music and then turned off when they... Actually, I don't even think it turned off. I think it just kept blasting music until they were like whatever they did to it, I don't know. But that was the only thing that he could really recall that he was like, yeah, that was a bit strange. I guess the first parallel experience that I had, I had when I was super, super young. not entirely sure what age, but young enough that I think I was possibly still in a crib. I could speak to some extent, but I think I was still confined to a crib.

But I remember waking up in the middle of the night to a voice telling me that I thought had, I guess, interpreted to be my dad's telling me that we should get ice cream and take me out of the crib. And so I followed him down our hallway with this very long hallway, which is kind of actually important to know it. And I remember I followed his sort of footsteps along the hallway. He sort of left like footprints on the wooden floorboards. Footprints just looked, I remember they were really big. So I sort of just assumed that they were my dad's, but they were big footprints, kind of sweaty because they left a mark on the floorboards, which isn't, you know, I mean, when you walk on wooden floorboards barefoot,

you do leave a bit of a mark. But I remember they were like distinctively like pretty big marks. And yeah, I was sort of putting my hands in them, which is gross now. But as a kid was just, I was just following along. But yeah, I do remember them being big and I do remember that being a weird thing that I kind of clocked was that they were big and they were quite sweaty. And yeah, I just, automatically just assumed that they were my dad's. But yeah, I really don't think I ever got a look at what it was that I was following. I think, you know, I vaguely remember out of my periphery seeing, you know, an adult figure. But yeah, as far as getting a look at them and hearing what they had to say, I think it's possible they didn't even speak. And yeah, I just followed an adult

figure. And yeah, followed him all the way there, got to the fridge. He opened up the freezer. You know, the freezer where ice cream was at the very top of the, top of the fridge. A place I definitely could never have gotten to myself. He lifted me up, put me, opened the freezer up, put me on the actual, I guess, bottom of the freezer so I could sit there and cracked open ice cream for me. And I sat there and just ate ice cream for hours. I was never creeped out, never felt off about anything.

I was just happy to be eating ice cream. And then hours later, on the sun, so I slowly came up. My dad came down hearing a bit of racket and was like, what, like, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, you know, you took me to get ice cream. I'm eating ice cream. And he was like, no, no, I didn't. I did not do that. And so that was really, that kind of freaked me out.

Not so much at the time because I think I was so young, but years later was definitely me something that probably formed my early belief in the paranormal that I guess I contested with for some time. Because every time I brought it up with my dad afterwards, he said the same thing, that he just found me there, that I must have somehow climbed it, even though it wasn't physically feasible for me to do so at that age. Yeah, didn't want to divulge me in my paranormal belief, but it really freaked me out later on.

It still does, to be honest. I don't know what it was, whether it's the same thing that I guess haunted me later in life. I'm not sure, but it was a very strange experience for sure. When I was quite young, I'd say probably maybe five or six, I was playing with my brother in the hallway of our house, which is quite a long, straight hallway. At the end of it, there's a room in the middle, which is the spare room. To the left was my sister's room, and then to the road. right was the room that I shared with my brother. Now, I can't remember if we'd always had a fear of

the spare room in the middle or if that came after this incident. It's possible as a bit of both, but I remember I was chasing my brother down the hallway. We were at the bottom of the hallway looking down at the, I guess, spare room, which was directly adjacent to the bottom of the hallway. And yeah, I don't recall exactly what we were doing, but I think we were play fighting, chasing each other around. We're just playing and I turned and looked up and both saw this cloaked figure. It was kind of like a shadow that just, but like 3D that just kind of passed us down the hallway. I guess to physically describe what it looked like, it's, it's, it's a little bit difficult because it's a say that it's not of this world is probably,

you know, kind of a good way of putting it. It was kind of like a shadow in three-dimensional form. It seemed to be around five-foot something when we were younger. It appeared much bigger when I was older, but at least when we were younger, it almost matched our height a little bit. I don't remember it being, you know, as tall as a human adult. And yet, Its body was, as I said, like a three-dimensional shadow. It blurred as it moved. There was no, you couldn't draw a fixed, you know, a fixed, I guess, outline of its body. It was everything, every part of it that moved seemed to blur kind of like a, it seemed very misty.

And it moved extremely quickly. It raced past us and went into that room and the door shut behind it extremely quickly. It didn't look like it was sprinting or trying to sprint. It just moved that quickly. It looked like it was walking and striding out, but not, yeah, as I said, not in any sort of sprinters' stance kind of way. It was just as if its normal walk was far faster than, or time for it moved far faster than it did for us, if that makes sense. And sprinted into the spare room and closed the door behind it. The door just kind of shut behind it.

It didn't grab the handle or anything. And we, I remember being terrified. we screamed, ran out of there. I refused to go down that hallway again for like probably some time. I don't think we slept that night. And from that moment onwards, like I was absolutely terrified of that room. It gave me shivers down my spine every time. I had to go by it.

We used to run in there as quickly as we could, turn the light on in there and shut the door. so that there was a light on and that was how much it freaked us out was that we wanted that door closed at all times and we wanted a light on there at all times and so yeah that was my first experience not only with I guess with I guess the entity that I saw multiple times later on in life but yeah I that incident terrified us that terror lasted for a long time afterwards and then I guess as time wore on, we just kind of assumed that maybe we had an overactive imagination and that we'd imagine the event.

I've got two younger sisters. That was my older brother. They actually remember that event also. You know, they also harbored that same fear of that room and that entity that lived in it. We definitely told our parents about that, the whole way incident. And they did not believe us. which thought that we were kids with overactive imaginations, which is something, that sort of event I remembered,

I've always kind of remembered and always recall that it's always freaked me out because I know what I saw, but I know that, you know, up until I was 12 when I had the experience that really proved everything for me, I think that memory sort of, I had a lot of doubt in my mind about it where, you know, I'd recall it to my parents, not frequently, but, you know, it might come up in conversation, you know, every couple of years or something. And every time I was told, you were kids, overactive imagination. I remember my brother himself didn't really believe it after a while whenever we talk about it.

I was sort of the only one that remembered it and still went, no, that absolutely happened and was still, I guess, a little bit freaked out about it. And because of that event, until I was 12 years old, I still refused to enter that spare room, unless I absolutely had to. And even then I would do it with a great deal of caution. I saw it go in there and I never saw it come out. So, you know, I believed that it lived in there. Well, I was 12 years old when my parents came to me and told me that I had to change bedrooms to the spare room.

me and my brother had for the first 12 years of my life had shared the same room and you know I'd never slept in a room by myself before like so I was I was pretty freaked out I was a little bit spooked about it and I also wasn't very keen for it either because I had a really good relationship with my brother at the time and um but he'd just gotten older he was going to bed later um he was in high school um in his second year at high school so yeah that was My parents thought it would be best to split us up, which was probably the right thing to do. But yeah, I just remember being very apprehensive about the whole move. As I said, never sleeping, had never slept in a room by myself before and then to do so in

the room that I'd always harboured a little bit of fear around. I think at that time, you know, I was definitely leaning more towards the fact that I had imagined it. I hadn't had any real paranormal experience. experiences, you know, since I was a kid. But I remember as soon as I sort of walked into that room, I had that same unsettling feeling. And the room itself kind of matched, I guess, the description I gave earlier where it just seemed like light just didn't go far enough. On top of that, my lamp and the light in the room was extremely dim, no matter kind of the bulb or it seemed that way

to me at least. So yeah, that move was something I was pretty very nervous about and pretty scared, I guess, for. As far as the physical description of the room went, it was pretty much a perfect square. There was a window along the back wall, which faced the doorway. And then to the right of the window was mirrored wardrobes that just spanned across the entire room. And then the opposite end was was the wall and I had my my bed across the wall with the feet I guess facing the window side of the room and in that corner there was a big wardrobe big wooden wardrobe very old very Victorian and then to the right of my bed along the wall where the doorway was I just had a desk and a small table and then yeah along my back wall I just had nothing but just post as decoration

and stuff like that, and the floor was carpeted too. My first, I'd say, a month of living there, things started pretty slow, but ended up kind of turning into a month of absolute hell for me. I think the immediate first instances were all predominantly sleep-related. I started waking up at random points during the night for seemingly no reason. I'm not, you know, I'm not a big believer in, you know, The devil and stuff like that.

I don't really know where I stand with all that stuff. But I know that a lot of the times I was waking up at 3 a.m., which I know a lot of people say is a very paranormal hour, or the witching hour, as they call it. Whether that's just a kind of a coincidence, it was definitely, I was definitely waking up 2, 3 a.m. pretty regularly. Initially, really the only occurrences that were happening was that I kept hearing whispering when I was trying to get to sleep.

And that was immediate, but definitely worse, when I started wake up in the middle of the night. But, you know, it'd be as soon as lights were off, there'd just be slowly creeping rise in volume of what sounded like whispering to a point where I bought a pedestal fan to block it out because I just thought it was in my head. And it was really, really creepy. I couldn't hear what it was whispering.

It was just faint enough that it just sounded. You could just sort of hear, I guess, like a very, a lot of S's, if that makes sense, kind of like a hissing kind of whisper, which was really weird. And then, yeah, things sort of started to progress from there. I have a belief. I remember I believed at the time

that it was feeding off of my fear, which is why things started to get progressively worse as time went on because I got more and more afraid as time passed. It was so, it was so, like, indiscernible, though, so faint that it was like, Like, you know, am I crazy or am I actually hearing this kind of thing? Especially once I got the fan and the whispering definitely got louder

because it was competing with the fan. But I think I always assumed it was a masculine voice. It was so faint that it was to a point where you could really only, as I said, I couldn't tell if it was even real for a while. And then as things progressed and, you know, I got the fan and then I could still hear it over the fan. I was like, this is definitely real. but could never hear what it had to say.

I recorded a couple of times. You know, I just had an iPod and tried to record it. But whether the storage of my iPod filled up or whatever, it would never record past 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and I would never hear anything. The recording would just cut it out. So I guess chronologically, you know, the first thing I noticed was the breaking of the sleep pattern and the whispering.

The second thing was just things being, in the room, things falling off shelves, just all that sort of common stuff you hear about in hauntings that was really freaky when you're trying to get to sleep and a trophy randomly falls off a shelf. From there I started to hear footprints on the carpet, which was, you know, it sort of made that crunching sound that a carpet would make. It used to terrify me to a point where I used to hide under the blanket and then I would hear it sort of getting closer and closer to my bed and then it would just disappear. There would be no returning footsteps,

but after, you know, a deal of time, I would go and I would check, you know, I would peek out and check to see if there was something there and, you know, after maybe two minutes of, you know, hearing footsteps come right up to my bed, peek out and there would be nothing there. And just sort of that, just creeping around my room, objects falling off and then things seem to progress for the worst.

my lamp beside my bed after about a week, just blue, which was pretty much my only source of defense because it was right next to my bed. I used to something would happen and I would run, I would hear something, I'd immediately turn over, flick the light on. And yeah, after way too short amount of time at blue, we replaced the bulb, the second one, same thing, short amount of time passed, the light bulb blue. And yeah, things started to get worse. I started to notice that if I slept on a certain, facing a certain direction, if I slept facing the wall, I would get horrible vivid nightmares. If I faced the door, nothing would happen. If I faced the door, had a horrible nightmare, I would almost always wake up and I would be facing the wall.

To a point where it was just something that I knew would happen and, you know, I just made sure I slept on the right. It was like clockwork. There was no exception to the rule. If I faced the wall, I would have a nightmare. That side of the room seemed to be where, you know, I just made sure. I just made to be where everything would start from. The left-hand corner with a wardrobe would be where the footsteps would start. And then, yes, I started having incidences, you know, actually in my bed while I was sleeping there. We'll be right back after this quick break. Initially, it was a lot of things that were happening around me.

A lot of, as I said, the objects falling off, the footsteps, the whispering. but the first thing that I think actually happened to me physically was one night I felt my blanket shifting. I didn't really know what it was. It was sort of like, I guess there's a gap between my bed and the wall just because of my bed frame. And, you know, of a heavy duna, you know, I sort of just assumed that my duna was sort of falling down the side of the bed. And it wasn't really happening dramatically enough that I'd do anything about it. I was facing the door and I had my blanket, you know, sort of clutched around my hands. But I could feel the blanket shifting behind me.

Yeah, it didn't really make anything of it. And then it sort of felt like it was rising as if, you know, something's in it, which made no sense to me. So I didn't kind of pay it any mind. And then I felt a hand to touch my back. And it wasn't like a freezing cold hand. And it wasn't like a burning sort of touch. like you sort of see in the movies or hear about and like when, you know, people get grabbed and it like burns into their skin.

It was nothing like that. There was no mark that I could find the next morning. It just felt like a human hand touched my back. But it didn't feel like skin either. It felt like no sense. It felt like a hand. I could feel the five fingers. But there was no sensation.

Like it was, it was as if my back was numb when it touched me, except my back wasn't. I could feel a hand. I could feel five fingers in a palm, press against my back. But there was no, like, texture of skin. I don't, I didn't even know how you would describe it. It was like its hand was the numb thing, you know. There was no sensation to it.

It just planted its hand on my back. I felt all five fingers, I felt the palm. But there was no sensation that came with it. There was no warmth of a human hand. There was no, like, fleshy feeling. It was just a hand planted there. But, yeah, when that happened, you know, I freaked out.

I ripped myself away from the wall, turned a light on. I think I got up, you know, probably ran out of the room. I know there were several points during the experience where I tried to sleep in my brother's room where I tried to sleep. You know, my parents' room

and got, you know, politely declined. Ever since then, you know, up until probably only a couple of years ago, I used to tuck my blanket underneath my body so that nothing could get under the there and touch me again. That was how, I guess, scarring that incident was and how, I guess, bewildering it was for me. That was the first, I guess, physical thing to happen to me. So, yeah, that's when things kind of, I guess, that just, the ante got up that day and things just

got worse from there. I had another incident where the blanket to the end of the bed was sort of slowly felt like the blanket was falling off me and falling down the end of the bed. And so, obviously, my reaction was to pull it back. And I remember grabbing and pulling and it just not moving. And I remember thinking, oh, you know, it's stuck. It's jammed somehow. So I sort of sat up a little bit and was yanky on it really hard. And I started making a bit of headway.

And then it pulled back as if something had yanked it back. And so that, you know, freaked me out. And I was like, well, if it wants the blanket off me, I'm not going to let that happen. because I don't, you know, it's obviously near to my feet. And so I had gotten this tugger war with whatever this entity was, you know, which it's hilarious to think about now. But at the time it felt like, you know, do or die. Like, you know, it was strong.

Like I was pulling and I think for the first little bit it was winning. And we sort of reached a bit of a stalemate. And it wasn't like a back and forth. It was like it yanked me forward originally. And then I pulled it back and then it was just stuck. I was sort of shaking, pulling, pulling, and it was not giving, and then it just let go, and I just went flying backwards.

And, you know, the blanket sort of landed on me, and my feet were exposed for a second. I threw the flanger back on, and I was like, stuff this, turn the light on, stood in the middle of the room, and it was like, all right, there's literally nothing at the end of my bad.

Because there were several points where, you know, I thought, there's a person in here, you know? Like, so hand touches my back, someone pulls on my blanket. These are qualities of a human being. There's a person in here. I turn the light on and I'd look under my bed and nothing there. I'd look at the front of my bed, there's nothing there.

My room's small. I'd look in the cupboards. Nothing there. It just, you know, and I would just sit in my room after instances like that for 30 minutes with just a light on. Because that's the thing, my top light never blew. My lamp blew like multiple times. My top light was dim as anything, super dim, but never blue.

And so I would just sit there. And it was so dim that it was like, I didn't feel safe with it on. It was enough light, but it wasn't anything to make me feel particularly comfortable. And yeah, I would just sit there for like 20 minutes, just like, you know, and fetal. Just like, bro, what do I do? Like this thing is just trying to pull my blanket off. No one believes me. I don't want to be in this room.

I begged my parents to let me switch back to my brother's room or be anywhere else or have us switch places. I think I asked multiple times to have him sleep in my room and everybody just thought I was being ridiculous. Meanwhile, I was going toe to toe with the paranormal every night. It was awful and it was affecting school and all sorts of things. and yeah things sort of just kept getting worse and worse

and more common and more common and I couldn't sleep at all when all of this was happening I was sitting next to funnily enough my primary school crush and this other kid who was like the our school's like resident spooky paranormal expert

and he was just this like little ratbag kid that just watched way too many horror movies and he was a nutcase, but very knowledgeable asking him about any horror movie you'd know. And he believed that he'd had his own paranormal experiences. I reckon he was full of it, but he certainly helped me. And so I would come into school pretty much every day. I'm certain that there are events that I don't remember that happened in that room. But I was coming in every day at school.

And the first thing they would ask me is that go, what happened last night? And so I would consult with these two every day and just tell them what was going on. And he was super, super interested. His name's actually Connor. Yeah, he was super, super interested. And he was asking me all these questions. And when things sort of started getting bad, he was kind of encouraging me to try things. You know, first it was to record the event.

And so, yeah, I was recording on an old iPad. And I had it on charge at the time. and, you know, I recorded it. It was like one of the few nights I got like a good sleep in. It got stopped at like, it was like an hour or two in. And then it just like, you know, it's recording facing my room. And then it just, the recording just stops. I've got storage.

It wasn't like a two hour block or, you know, as if, you know, it had a recording time limit. It just was like a strange time, like an hour, 29 minutes. And it just stopped. and it just stopped a lot sooner than I thought it should have. So Connor, the crazy redhead, he was, he just kept telling me to try all this stuff. And it kind of got to a point where, you know, and he'd be coming in and he'd start quoting movies at me and say, well, you know, in the exorcist, you know, what happens is this? And so he ended up, I remember he was very fixated on the movie. I think it's like the last exorcism, which is like the fourth or fifth one in the series, which is,

one that's like in a rural town. He was sort of saying that, you know, it was probably a demon and that my room probably needed to be exercised. And I sort of said, well, like, what do I do? He said, well, you should pray to God. You should say specifically, you know, dear God, you know, give me the strength and the courage to, you know, face the evil in my room.

And so, and I remember I didn't try it immediately. I didn't try it for some time because, you know, I wasn't a Christian person. I wasn't a church go or anything like that. And on top of that, I was scared to speak. I was scared to say anything to it. And that was the other thing was, you know, initially, I think for the first, like, a couple of weeks, Connor kept telling me you should talk to it.

And I was pretty, I think I might have said a couple of things to it. And things just got way worse, like when I spoke to it. And then in the last couple of weeks, he was like, yeah, you shouldn't talk to it. Apparently if you talk to it, it like lets them in. And I was like, yeah, cheers, Connor. Like, that's, that would have been great advice, like, you know, two weeks ago. But anyway, so I sat up, you know, I had the blanket fully over me. And I just mumbled it to myself, whispering, you know, dear God, please give me the strength and the courage to.

And I think for like a few nights prior to that, I'd been asking him to help me get to sleep, you know, the courage to just go to sleep. Whether that helped or not, I can't recall. but I just remember that specific night I said, you've got to give me the strength to get rid of this thing, like enough enough. And I remember I felt, you know, placebo or not, I felt a sense of courage from saying that prayer. The prayer went something along the lines of,

dear God, please give me the strength and the courage to face whatever it is that is in my room. Not a very official prayer, but when I said that, I did feel braver for it. Like I guess the whole thing sort of shook my belief system. And, you know, I mean, if you're seeing an entity pulling on your blanket and touching your back and your sleep, the idea of God doesn't sound so ridiculous. And, you know, I felt I did kind of feel like a bit of a blanket of like, you know,

I guess a religious shield at my side. And I pulled the blanket off. And then I set up my bed and I said, I think it was in the name of the father. the sun and the Holy Spirit be gone from my room and I think I literally just like set it my head first time because I was like I didn't have the courage and that particular night the night that I did it I was desperate because things were it was like you know every night something would happen on the last night everything happened you know there was my blanket wouldn't move something had fall off the shelf I would hear something pacing around the room the whispering was loud

the doors would creak the my lamp you know my lamp probably didn't blow that night specific But, you know, it was just one of those nights where just everything scary that had been happening for a month was happening all at the same time. And so I just, yeah, I set up and set it to myself at first. And then I whispered aloud in the name of, you know, the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit be gone from my room. The second time I said a loud and conversational voice. I never, I think I, you know, I'd like to think I got up and yelled that. But I remember I did like the sign of the cross of my fingers and I said, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. be gone from my room on the last time it emerged from the corner there was no space for it to hide

there yet it just sort of emerged from out of the cupboard which was against the wall it was much bigger than it had been when we were kids six feet probably about you know i guess the average height of you know an adult male i guess and same same physical properties was a shadow in a room that was almost completely dark. I could still see the outline of it. Well, actually, I used to have the hallway light on as well, which did give my room a little bit light, but I could see the shadow and it raced out of my room so quickly that it blew all my posters off my wall, knocked over several items on my shelf, knocked over entire sets of Lego and smashed on the ground. Despite the fact, I never grabbed any of these things.

things. It never, all it did was run out. But it was like, it was like a miniature tornado in my room, which sounds ridiculous, but that's, you know, I remember it just, it was like a whirlwind when I ran. You know, as I said, its body seemed to blur as it ran as if its own body trailed it, trailed itself as it moved. And it got to the door and it paused at the door for, it wouldn't have even been, you know, half a second. But I remember, thinking at the speed it moved. You know, it stared at me for for a lot longer than that. The memory of that at the door really still sends shivers down my spine. Just the way it looked at me. And I don't know what it wanted, but yeah, I remember it was absolutely terrifying

experience and I didn't sleep for the rest of the night, but nothing happened for the rest of the night. Nothing happened in that room ever again in my entire time living in there. The only incident where I saw it again was I was 15 years old. Funnily enough, at the start of the hallway, to the left, was a room which was originally what we called the toy room when we were kids that kind of got turned into more of a gym room for me and a computer room for my brother. And one of my sisters was using the computer in there. and in the door frame we had a pull-up bar which I was using and she turned and looked over at me

and she screamed and I turned around and there was nothing there and I looked there I was like you know you scared the living daylights out of me what what are you screaming at and she said I saw a cloaked hooded shadow behind you staring at you and when I screamed it ran and I was like which way did it run which way did it run you know because I was absolutely terrified that it ran back into my room and and she couldn't tell me she didn't know which way it ran but she said it just fled and then it freaked her out and she she remembers it to this day my entire family after she saw it and i had had that experienced or entire family excluding my parents all my siblings after that event my brother goes okay i do remember the hallway incident

your sister you know our sisters have seen it and you had that experience, you know, I believe it was there. But we've never, never seen it since. The only time since I was a kid and I've actually seen it is in sleep paralysis. I see it every time in sleep paralysis. So much so that there are actually points, I actually feel sleep paralysis coming on. And part of the way that I know that sleep paralysis is coming on is because I can hear its footsteps running towards me on the carpet.

which is absolutely terrifying. And I've learned to be able to sort of snap myself out of sleep paralysis through it. But usually I'll see it sitting on my chest. I'll look at it and it'll be sitting above me and then it'll drop its cloak over my face. And I'll only be able to see through little gaps in its cloak. But yeah, so I've become a little bit of a frequenter of sleep paralysis. And so when I feel it coming on, I can actually kind of snap out of it a little bit.

Yeah, I can actually hear it coming. Really, really strange, really strange that I saw it in real life. And I guess in the sleep paralysis experience as well. My most recent sleep paralysis experience was I woke up and felt like somebody was sitting on my chest. I felt like I was being held down. I remember I looked up. You can't move obviously. but I remember my eyes looked up and I could see the same hooded figure that I had seen in my room

when I was younger. It was really weird because there was, it's hard to explain, but it felt like there was like a familiarity there, like a, or it recognized me. It knew me. It seems, it's really weird to say when obviously no one's speaking and, you know, you've been sleep paralysis and you're not quite awake and cognitive, but it felt like, it just felt like knew each other, if that makes sense. Or at least, like, he or it was pleased about what was occurring.

And then it threw its cow over my face. And I could see nothing except out of this eye through, like, half a crack of the blanket. And it was, you know, as soon as I saw that, I was like, it's time to go. Like, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to stick around for whatever this is. And so I started whittling my pinky, which is how I. get out of sleep paralysis and start getting that movement back. And as soon as I'm able to move my pinky, I can sort of move my hands after that. And I kind of envision sort of getting out of sleep paralysis, like lifting a weight.

So it's like I try and lift whatever's holding me down because it felt like the hooded figure was holding me down. And it was him versus me. And so I, you know, I guess I try to lift him off him. And as soon as I managed to lift my arm off of my bed and sort of try and withdraw the I blinked and it was broad daylight. So super creepy. Super creepy. You know, obviously I can't see, you know, its face is just a black hood.

I mean, it's not even like the black hood covers its face. It's like, it's like the black hood's there. You can see that it's a hood, but the hood is the same color and darkness as the fact, as what's underneath it. So there's definitely a hood there and there's possibly a face there, but it's it's all the same black shadow so i can't actually see you know there was not there was no physical i guess facial expression that made me look at it and go this it recognizes me but it just felt like it there was just like i i felt its presence for one but two it just like it there was

just i just got this feeling as i looked at it like remember me like kind of kind of vibe and as i said There was no physical, I guess, properties that it exude that made me feel that way. I just knew that it recognized me and that it remembered me and that it was pleased. I remember it just seeming like it was pleased to see me. When it left my room, you know, I got, well, I mean, I kicked it out of my room. So I'm sure, you know, it having won over me and getting to be back and, you know, sitting on top of me, you know, well, I can't move. seemed very happy about it. Yeah, something in my heart just told me that that's just the way it felt.

Weirdly enough, I used to tell people about the story my eyes would water. I never felt sad that my eyes would water and my spine would just tingle and shiver, like, mad. But I don't get that sensation anymore because I've told so many people the story. You know, I've believed in the paranormal ever since 100%. I don't believe every paranormal story over here. But, you know, I've got no doubt in my mind that, you know, the paranormal exists. And, you know, I think looking back on it, some of my takeaways or things I think about a lot, it's just one being the spooky radar, as I call it.

And I believe that that may be something that isn't shared by everyone, but I've heard other people talk about it. And it seems like other people may have it. I think I've learned to, like, trust that a bit and lean into it. a little bit. And then, yeah, I guess the other thing is like the religious aspect to it. I'm still not a Christian per se, but it has shaken my resolve a little bit. You know, I do believe that it's possible there is a God because I can't deny that that had a hand in, in expelling whatever it was that was in my room out, whether it was just the placebo effect that I felt confident that

because of religion and whatnot that maybe, you know, I could get rid of it and because it was feeding on my fear maybe, which is what I have kind of grown to believe. I remember straight after that for years I was like not a church going Christian, but I had like a relationship with God because of that event. It's like an adult now. It mostly just, it just gives me food for thought for sure. and it's something I do think about a lot and as I said previously

you know I think if you you have an experience where you're having a little fight with a demon in your room it's not so ridiculous to think that you know there's a god out there so the experience is shaking my beliefs across the board I often said that

I think that the experience and the entity was a matter of happenstance because it went into that room, you know, long before I was in there and it obviously lived in that room, you know, long before I was present there. But I think the circumstances in which I guess my path aligned with this thing was by chance. I think everything that followed after that was a matter of attachment. I think it was very weakly attached to me for years after. I mean, I think there's, you know, a good reason why, you know, it was watching me.

when, you know, my sister spotted it that day. As I said, I do believe I think I've seen it before in the corner of my eye a couple of times. But, you know, I don't get scared about it. I think it's attachment. It sounds silly, but I think for me, its attachment is kind of more out of like, I think it's a bit pissed off with me because I, but I don't, I'm not scared of it anymore. I mean, maybe if it did a bunch of stuff, I'd be scared. But I don't think it has any power over it.

me and has no power here. And I've gotten rid of it before. So I think I could do it again. All right. Thank you so much to Reese for sharing this story. By the way, I was able to speak to Reese's sister off the record about the things that they experienced. She told me her version of events, which were essentially the same thing.

But she was not interested in being on this podcast, nor was his brother, which is not entirely surprising. I don't think this family in particular is very interested in the paranormal. I think that's why they spent so much time writing this off and still probably write it off a good amount to this day, even though they acknowledge that they did see these things. I think a lot of people are like that. I think it's perfectly understandable, and quite honestly, I don't blame them sometimes.

Once again, thank you so much to Reese for sharing this story. I thought it was so creepy. and interesting. And I also like the fact that he was just kind of on his own trying to figure this out however he could with the help of this kid in his class that watches too many horror movies as the only expert he could go to. Either way, I'm very happy to learn that Ries has seemed to have gotten rid of this thing, and I hope it stays that way. This has been episode 89. The title is The Spare Room, 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 and North Americans. The song you're hearing right now is Nerve to Reverse by These New South Wales. This was edited by Justin Mayfield, engineered by Theo Schaefer, and produced by Nikki Kate Delgado. Our artwork is by Coltac Studios. Production help by Nikki Kate Delgado and Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing.

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