Chased by the Church Grim – Ep. 249

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_03] Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. You just trust. Believe.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_05] Hey there, Oddballs. Make sure you stick around for this episode's outro. We have some important information to pass on about the show. But until then, The Church Grim by Riley. This story takes place in the summer of 2011 in a small patch of countryside between Dallas, Oregon and the little community of Bridalwood. I was a junior in high school, and my buddies

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_05] and I decided to play a game of cops and robbers. A few of us would be given a head start to try and run from our friend's house in Bridalwood to another guy's house on the edge of Dallas, maybe a half a mile away. The remainder of our buddies would pursue us through the neighborhoods, fields, and forests in their cars. If those plain cops spotted one of us robbers, their job

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_05] was to jump out of the car, chase us down, and tag us out, turning us into fellow cops. It was probably around midnight when one of my best friends, Brady, and I were making our way along the side of the country highway. Suddenly, we saw one of our friends come peeling around the corner in hot pursuit of us. We started running as another friend in the passenger seat jumped out and began

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_05] chasing us. Brady and I decided we'd be able to lose him if we cut through the cemetery. We jumped the closed gate and ducked behind some decent-sized graves. Our friend ran up to the gate, closely followed by the car he'd jumped out of. Apparently, deciding the jump wasn't worth it, he got back in. We watched his car speed down the highway in search of some of our other friends.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_05] Excited that we had successfully outmaneuvered our pursuers, Brady and I got up, and we started walking through the dark graveyard. Then, in the silence, we suddenly heard something bolting toward us. Assuming our friend must have changed his mind and jumped the gate after us after all, we started running for the edge of the cemetery. As I turned around mid-sprint, expecting to see our

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_05] friend, I instead laid eyes on the biggest, blackest dog I had ever seen. It looked like the beast was running as fast as it possibly could. My first thought was that it had to be some kind of watchdog, but as I kept running and it got closer, I saw something that immediately changed that thought.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_05] Its eyes were glowing red. I turned to my left and saw Brady a little behind me, nearly tripping as I barely avoided tombstones. I don't think I'd ever run harder in my life. We both reached the far side gate and jumped over it. We ended up in a field of sun-scorched grass and

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_05] straw. Then we turned around. The huge, shaggy black dog slowed abruptly near the gate and then disappeared into the shadows. I could have sworn I saw smoke after it was gone. Brady and I booked it to our friend's house in the suburbs of Dallas through the pitch black night. Once we were safely inside,

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_05] we asked each other what we had seen. We had both seen the same thing. The only difference was Brady told me he'd also heard drumming coming from beneath the ground just before we were chased. But both of us knew we'd been chased through that cemetery by a massive black dog with glowing red eyes. A little

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_05] over a decade later, Brady and I reconnected and we made plans to grab some lunch. Thinking about him brought the memory back and before we got together, I decided to do some digging. I have a passion for geography, culture, genealogy, folklore, and myth. And I love finding connections between them.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_05] I searched for stories involving large black dogs with glowing red eyes appearing in graveyards. I discovered there's a long tradition of remarkably similar creatures in British folklore. They go by names like the Grimm or Church Grimm, Black Shuck in England, the Gwilgi in Wales, and the Cuseath in Scotland. According to some folklore, the first buried in a graveyard was

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_05] believed to be doomed to guard or watch over the dead. Rather than condemn a human to that fate, an animal, often a dog, would sometimes be buried first. The dog would then become a kind of supernatural guardian of the cemetery. That immediately made me think about what Brady and I had seen. The drumming Brady heard was also interesting. While looking into that, I found stories about

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_05] hellhounds accompanying something known as the Wild Hunt, a folklore motif found across parts of Northern Europe involving a supernatural procession of spirits or other beings moving through the night. Some versions even describe hounds and drumming. I have no idea whether any of that truly connects to

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_05] what happened to us. Maybe what we saw was an ordinary animal, and it was just distorted by darkness and our adrenaline. Maybe the glowing eyes had some natural explanation. Maybe Brady's drumming came from something completely unrelated. Or maybe we encountered something people have been telling stories

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_05] about for centuries. Was the creature that chased us the Grimm? Did the drumming have anything to do with the Wild Hunt? I don't know. Those are only guesses. All I know for sure is that one summer night in 2011, Brady and I were chased through a cemetery by an enormous black dog with glowing red eyes. And more than a decade later, neither of us has forgotten it.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00] Another side of Mount Hood by Forsaken Hornet 2909. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the concept of no whistling at night, especially in the woods. But some may not be familiar with yoiking. It's a pretty fascinating topic in musical and cultural studies, so I highly recommend reading about it for

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_00] anyone interested in either subject. It's something I learned from my grandmother and cousin as a way of expressing joy or sorrow, to call pets or livestock home, and to connect with the land. However, neither of them ever warned me not to do it in certain places or at certain times, like after dark. I can't speak for

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_00] my cousin, but I do know my grandmother didn't bother telling me because she knew I'd do it anyway out of curiosity and skepticism. Before I go off on a yoiking tangent, I'll get on with the scary tale of me, my friend Judy, and her dog Kingsley, taking a night hike on the southwestern base of Mount Hood in late fall about two years ago. I'll begin by pointing out that her dog breed is known to be extremely

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00] protective of its person and fearless. I had only gotten to know Judy, and this was maybe the second or third short trip to the wilderness we had taken together. We initially became friends largely due to our shared love of the outdoors and adventure. She grew up in Oregon and spends much of her free time camping and going on solo hikes. I used to be a wilderness survival guide and have years of experience in remote areas, both in groups and alone.

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00] Much like I said in a different story that's been on the podcast about myself and another friend, all of this is to say that neither of us get scared easily, and we're both familiar with the sights and strange sounds of the wilderness. On this particular night, our intention was to do a short hike through the snow to let Kingsley romp around. I took a forest service road that I had been on dozens of times

[00:10:04] [SPEAKER_00] that is near an area I often forage during summer. For what it's worth, if you listened to my last story on the podcast about Mount Hood, the area this story takes place is only about nine miles southwest of there. We pulled off the forest road to gear up, put on bibs, change boots, and make sure we had extra of everything plus survival kits. You never know how the weather can change at this elevation,

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00] so I always err on the side of caution. There were no other vehicle tracks up this far, which isn't surprising because the snow was already quite deep and only high-clearance 4x4 vehicles could have made it. Or snowmobiles. The first thing I always do before setting out is check the area for predators, including humans. I carefully walked the 20-30 yard radius around my car looking for tracks.

[00:11:01] [SPEAKER_00] There were definitely ski and snowshoe tracks, but they were likely over a week old. They were barely noticeable and had been covered by a light dusting of snow from a couple of days prior. These tracks stayed on or very near the road. None of them went off into the trees. There were also a dozen game tracks, lots of bird prints, and a lot of snowshoe hair.

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_00] I didn't see any cougar or bear prints, so I eased up a bit and started back toward my friend, who was still at the car changing bibs. As I headed toward her, I wandered off my previous track a bit and noticed a few sets of strange snow prints. At first, I thought they were children's snowshoes, but they weren't quite the right shape. I walked closer and bent down. I thought they must have

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00] been from someone wearing overshoes because they were too short to be snowshoe prints, but too wide to be regular boots. Then I noticed something extremely odd. So odd that at first, it didn't register with me. The tracks seemed to have toes. I could only count four, but the fifth may have been blended in with the last outer toe. The other strange factor is that

[00:12:22] [SPEAKER_00] these were fairly fresh. They looked like they hadn't been dusted like the other nearby snowshoe and ski tracks, and to make it even weirder, there were only five or six tracks total. They seemed to come and go out of nowhere. When I stood up and noticed that they were also really far apart from each other, I stretched out my legs on either side of the pair to try and gauge the step

[00:12:47] [SPEAKER_00] size. I was floored. I'm just under 5'10 and leggy, and I felt like I was about to do the splits, trying to match the stride. I called my friend over, but asked her to keep Kingsley by the car so that he wouldn't disturb the tracks. He stayed put, and she walked over, me still in a split stance. She gave me an odd look until I told her to look down at my feet.

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_00] She saw the tracks and scrunched her face up, trying to figure out what they were from. She doesn't have much experience tracking, so I wasn't expecting her to have any answers, but I needed someone else to see what I was seeing, as a sanity check, and to help me rule out possibilities. I stayed by the tracks and asked her to walk down a bit further to see if she could find more of them. She walked down probably another 20 yards, just to be thorough, and then followed

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_00] her steps back to me. About halfway to me, she stopped and bent over to look at something off to the other side of our mystery tracks. She wanted me to come take a look, so I carefully stood up and walked around the big prints toward her. About five feet before I reached her, I saw what she was so curious about. There were another few sets of tracks almost identical to the ones I had spotted,

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_00] except scaled down in size. The first mystery tracks were probably 17 to 18 inches long, and the smaller ones were about 8 to 10 inches. The smaller prints could have easily been mistaken for a standard adult winter boot, except for the four or five toes at the top, and they also appeared and disappeared from nowhere. We tried to take pictures with our phones,

[00:14:34] [SPEAKER_00] but couldn't get them to come out with the glare of the snow. We stood up and looked at each other, and said jokingly, well, I guess it's Sasquatch and Baby Squatch. She laughed and agreed, because after going over all the details and the age of the other ski and snowshoe tracks, we were out of reasonable ideas. At this point, nothing felt off. We were excited to explore the snowy banks and game

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_00] trails. We headed toward the car for Kingsley and walked down the decommissioned logging road that forked off the forest service road. The second path ran east and gained very slightly in elevation. Kingsley had a blast jumping from a series of small rolling mounds for the next 200 feet or so. The area around the logging road was fairly clear. I think I parked close to the small valley,

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00] and this road led up the mountain very slowly, so it wasn't heavily treed, unlike the other side of the car, which was much denser. The moon was nearly full, so the night was pretty well lit, and the snow was bright. We didn't even need our flashlights if we stayed close enough to the path. I paused for a moment to take in the beauty and appreciate the smell of winter,

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_00] and the relative silence, and felt a sense of joy and gratitude for being able to witness such a beautiful part of the country. I had packed a little bundle that included a one-ounce bottle of whiskey as an offering to the land, something else my grandmother taught me to do. I walked a bit farther off the trail and found an old tree stump that had a flat spot on top. I placed my bundle there and poured out the whiskey. Then I called for Judy, who was a bit ahead with Kingsley. I told her I

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_00] was going to Yoik, and it might sound weird to her, but she had no idea what I was talking about. I did a short three-part song with the intention of expressing joy and gratitude. My mind wandered to the tracks in the snow just for a moment, as I appreciated sharing such an interesting and odd find with a new friend. Kingsley paused his romping to look at me but

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_00] otherwise seemed unbothered, and Judy said it wasn't that weird, so I brushed off the little embarrassment I felt and headed back to the logging road. Kingsley and Judy stayed about 20 feet ahead of me for another minute or two, but then she stopped. She waited for me to reach her. We stood there looking around for a minute. She mentioned how beautiful it was and how cute Kingsley looked in

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_00] the snow. I'm not too sure what changed, but for whatever reason I blurted out that I thought we should head back. We had only spent a fraction of the time we had intended hiking and had barely gotten far from the car, but Judy didn't question me. She said she thought that sounded like a good idea, so we began our short trek back to the main road. We didn't talk at all until we reached the car.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_00] We stopped at the trunk to get out of our snow gear, but after I popped it open I turned around and stared off behind Judy and Kingsley. I then looked at her and asked, does something feel kind of off to you? All she did was repeat back to me what I had said earlier that she thinks it's time to go. My anxiety inexplicably rising, I shut the trunk and said,

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_00] yeah, you're right. It's pretty cold, so I think we could just leave our bibs on anything to get out of there faster. That was my goal, at least. At this point, things took a very hard turn. Kingsley had been facing the car, but after I shut the trunk he whipped around fast and stared in the same direction behind Judy that I had when we got to the trunk. He let out a quick low growl and his

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_00] hackles raised from his neck to the tip of his tail, which was stiff and pointing straight out. He did this for about two seconds before he tucked his tail and started whimpering. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I couldn't swallow for a moment. It felt like my breath had left my body. We had a place for Kingsley in my back seat on the passenger side, so I opened the back door and let him get in. He moved closer to her, but wouldn't turn around to

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_00] jump in. He just kept staring behind her into the thicker part of the forest, tail still tucked and whimpering. At this point, we were both pretty scared. I shined my headlamp into the trees behind Judy searching for reflective eyes from the forest floor, too high up in the trees. But in the back of my mind, I knew it likely wasn't a predatory mammal. There was no way Kingsley would have been whimpering or

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00] tucking his tail over a cougar, bear, or human. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to come up with a rational explanation for the dog's sudden change in behavior. It occurred to me that maybe he had stepped on something or cut his paw, so I suggested to Judy that she examine his paws and do a pat-down all over his body. Kingsley made his field examination

[00:19:52] [SPEAKER_00] extra difficult for her because he stayed completely rigid and wouldn't turn around. Judy had to wedge herself between him and the car to check his rear paws. He wouldn't budge. She didn't find anything stuck in his paws or fur, no blood in the snow that might suggest a cut, but his behavior was really starting to concern me, and once again, I was almost out of rational

[00:20:16] [SPEAKER_00] explanations. The last thing I could think of was maybe being in a new place with a newer person, me, and a new vehicle. Kingsley was just nervous about all the change, but based on what I believed to be true about this breed, as well as how he had behaved on other outings, it didn't make sense. We were both kind of at a loss about what to do with him, since he was so rigid and wouldn't stop

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00] whimpering or staring behind Judy. She tried to coax him into the car and even tried bribing him with treats. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and the feeling of dread was rising. I suggested that maybe I got in the car first and turned the engine on. He'd get the picture and maybe hop in. So, me in the driver's seat, car running and heat blasting. Judy continued to struggle with Kingsley

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_00] for another minute before giving up on coaxing him. She ended up lifting his front half so that it was parallel with the car, then lifted his front paws onto the back seat floor. The entire time, he just whined and stayed stiff as a board. I tried putting a piece of jerky in front of his nose to coax him all the way into the back seat. He couldn't have cared less. The feeling of sheer panic returned.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_00] I glanced behind Judy to make sure that nothing was there, but I was too afraid to look closely. I really didn't want to see anything. She eventually had to push him from his elbows into the car, then lifted his rear all the way up and in. Once Judy was in the passenger seat and all the doors were shut, Kingsley loosened up a bit and sat on his blanket nest, with his head as far into the front

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00] between our seats as he could get it, and continued to whimper. Once we were all in and felt safe, my panic and anxiety started to subside. I took a few deep breaths, looked at Judy and said, that was bizarre. Since I had a few moments to feel more comfortable, and because I'm generally a rational yet curious person, I asked her if she'd be okay with sitting in the car for a bit to see if

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_00] anything or anyone showed up. She agreed, and admitted that she was also a bit curious as to whether perhaps a pack of wolves or some other large animal was out there, evading our detection. We sat in silence, with just the heater blowing and periodic whimpers from Kingsley. A few minutes passed, and the moon was beginning to sink behind the tree line, so I flipped my

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00] headlights on. Everything continued to calm down and ease up, and even the dog ceased his whimpering for about five minutes. I switched my brights on to see if that would allow better views higher up in the tree line, as I was searching for the glint of cougar eyes. Unfortunately, it didn't help, so I rolled my window down a bit and stuck my hand out with my headlamp on full blast.

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_00] An obnoxious 2700 lumens. I scanned the upper tree line until my hand couldn't take the cold anymore. Another five minutes or so had passed, and suddenly this feeling of absolute dread slammed into me. The hairs rose on the back of my neck, and my breathing became shallow. Kingsley began whimpering loudly and swaying in the back seat. Judy just stared with me with wide eyes and a look of

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_00] confusion. I shook my head and turned off the heater to try and hear anything that may be outside. I seriously hate giving into panic and fear. I was brimming with curiosity over what could cause this giant guardian dog to behave this way. Despite my best efforts to fight the rising panic, something in me flipped a switch and said it was time to go, full stop. I put my car into drive and started down the

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_00] mountain. The panic and anxiety were getting worse. My heart felt like it was in my throat, and my mind was racing to find rational explanations. After a minute of safely driving down the road, this horrific surge of panic filled the whole car. Kingsley tried getting into the front seat with us, whimpering like mad, and Judy barely managed to keep him at bay while hurriedly asking if I could drive

[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_00] any faster. The only other time I felt this particular brand of fight-or-flight response is when I played hide-and-seek at night outdoors as a kid, but amplified exponentially. The feeling when you're hiding and the person seeking you is right there, so you hold your breath and close your eyes. But of course I couldn't close my eyes. As a last-ditch effort to try and calm one another,

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_00] I had Judy reach into my glove compartment to grab a mini bundle of dried herbs. I told her to light it and crack the window, in hopes that the smell would help soothe our nerves, and in the back of my mind, maybe drive off whatever it was that may have been following us. Of course, she couldn't get the lighter to work despite it being a new addition to the glove box. She had to use three or four matches

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_00] to finally get it lit, and it barely smoked at all. Eventually she gave up, and we drove down the mountain in silence, with the exception of Kingsley, persistent in his whimpering. We didn't speak until we were so far down the mountain that the snow began to disappear from the road. I felt very lucky to have made it down safely given the speed of our descent. I let out a long breath, thankful for the reprieve from

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_00] the sense of dread and what I can only describe as vicious anxiety. Judy let out a quiet laugh before saying to me, well, you're never allowed to yoik in the forest with me ever again. That helped me to fully dissipate any remaining uneasiness, and we were able to laugh about it once we were on the main highway home. For the next hour, we went over everything together, trying to figure out rational

[00:26:24] [SPEAKER_00] explanations. But they were as elusive as whatever may or may not have chased us down Mount Hood. To this day, I have no idea what it was all about, or the reasons behind the whys and hows. Neither of us went up there with the intention of being scared. We weren't sitting by the fireside telling ghost stories or paranormal happenings. And while we're both open-minded, neither of us is prone to

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_00] super fanciful thinking. At the end of the day, regardless of the potential explanations, Kingsley's demeanor and behavior are what made this all the more difficult to rationalize. All I can say for certain is whether it was volcanic gases, Sasquatch, or aliens, life is much more enjoyable with a little bit of mystery in it.

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[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_05] A Case for Determinism by Ready to Flow. I wanted to drop you a line because I had some relevant experiences regarding the question of whether precognition can give you an opportunity to change things or whether you will just do what you were always going to do. To give you some background, I have a long history of premonitions and precognition that seriously rocked my world.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_05] Stretching back nearly 30 years, it started when I had just turned 20. Mostly I would get weird dreams that turned out to be snippets from real life occurring at some point down the line. A lot of them are mundane, everyday scenarios. A lot of people would just call them deja vus. Most people recognize that they have seen a particular situation before, but don't know why

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_05] they're getting that feeling. Well, I know exactly where I have seen this particular sequence of events. I dreamt it. I've had some dreams that were pretty epic and corresponded to huge, mind-blowing events. Those stories are way too long to write down here. And anyway, I just wanted to add to your discussion with a short little experience that isn't directly connected to the plot of the

[00:31:19] [SPEAKER_05] epic that is my life. Small tangent. I live in Sweden, and during the pandemic, my job had us work from home for two years. Being what I call an extroverted introvert, this was just fine by me. I went for walks, talked on the phone with friends, and rode horses. This incident happened one afternoon after I had

[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_05] finished work. I slammed my laptop shut, ready to take the dog for a walk. I would take him to different neighborhoods every day, so neither of us would get bored. And for this afternoon, I had thought to explore a small neighborhood I had my eyes on for a little while. To give you an idea of where I live, it's a large city, but I live on the outskirts. It's rural, with small neighborhoods dotting the

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_05] landscape, and between them just fields and woods. So I got myself and the dog ready, and all of a sudden I had this memory, for lack of a better word. It was of me walking on the road, and my ex-sister-in-law walking right toward me, with her daughter next to her, and me exclaiming in surprise,

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, is this where you live? This memory stopped me dead in my tracks, because it wasn't a memory. This had never happened before. So I took it as a waking premonition. I hadn't had those before, so this was new, and it weirded me out. At that point, a large portion of my life epic had already

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_05] happened, so I wasn't surprised anymore. Just a bit shaken, and, yeah, I guess also a bit amused. Anyway, I drove to the area, got out of the car, and started walking my dog. I came to a junction and thought to myself, I don't feel like bumping into my ex-sister-in-law today. So instead, I deliberately

[00:33:24] [SPEAKER_05] took the other road from that junction, thinking it would avoid her street. Then I looked up for my dog and froze, who was coming straight toward me with her daughter in tow, if not my ex-sister-in-law. My mouth fell open, and I said, Oh, is this where you live? So, I don't know. If I hadn't had the

[00:33:51] [SPEAKER_05] precog, I would have just walked straight at the junction and not bumped into her. But because I tried to avoid the precog scenario, I ended up creating the precog scenario. Did the precog create the precog? Or was the whole scenario already there, and I just had to catch up to it? Was there even a choice that could have prevented me from bumping into her? What would have happened if I had gone

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_05] straight? Did the choice to go straight even technically exist? Or was I just following the path that time had already cut out for me? The possible casual loop still makes my head hurt. I've tried to get to the bottom of this for so long. I've looked into the block universe theory that could explain some of it. According to that, time isn't linear. It's like a block, and we're just

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_05] making our linear way through it. But all time and everything that will ever happen already exists inside the block. That would explain why some people can have premonitions. If the information of all occurrences already exists, it's not that out there that we, who have evolved in this universe, might also have evolved senses to detect this information. This little incident made me think

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_05] that maybe the block theory really does already exist, as does everything in it. I choose what I have already chosen, because everything is already there. There isn't one moment of choice then. Everything just already is. At the same time, I read and hear a lot from people getting premonitions about bad things happening, then making choices to avoid those things, and then managing to save people and

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_05] circumstances from going down that route. But maybe they get the premonition because they have already saved the day, and the precog is necessary in order for them to save the day in the first place. We'll probably never know for sure.

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_00] So there was a time a while back where I probably could have used therapy. Work stress piling up. Plenty of us have been there. I was having a lot of weird sensations and physical symptoms in my body that were all related to anxiety that I didn't even know about until I actually got some help. When I actually looked into it, half the providers online didn't even take my insurance. I use my insurance for my physical health without thinking twice, so why should mental

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[00:37:58] [SPEAKER_05] So about those D&D dice that you sent me a picture of, please tell me you're going to do a campaign

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_00] sometime soon. That was so much fun. No, I was actually at a Sacramento convention called Sac Anime, and I was at one of the local bookstores that had a stand there, bought some books, and at the register they just had like a mystery pouch of D&D dice. I just grabbed it just because it

[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_05] looked cool. Oh yeah, that's cool. It beats gas station boner pills as far as spontaneous register

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_00] purchases go. Yeah. It was the first convention I've gone to by myself. So I was just kind of like walking around alone with headphones in. It was nice. Oh yeah, it totally is. Company is nice,

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_05] but so is being on your own program. Some of my best trips have been solo. Travel trips in this case.

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_00] You know, when you bring somebody somewhere that you really want to go, like sometimes I'll bring my wife or a friend that's not really into comic books and video games and stuff like that, you just kind of worry about them getting bored and having a good time. And it just ruins the whole

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_05] thing for you. Yeah. It's the same feeling as playing music for somebody. Even if they say that they like it, you're still going to think, oh, they hate it. They're judging me. I got to turn

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_00] this off. Why did I do this? I hate myself. Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly the same feeling. And you're just going to feel that way. Even if they are enjoying themselves, you're just going to feel that way

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_05] regardless if you're like us. Or you have real reason to believe that they're going to like it. And if they don't, then whatever you learn more about them. Yeah. That's like having guests over. I feel like I have to entertain people. And even if they're like, no, I'm good. I'm chilling. It's like, no, I'm being a bad host. Can you like tell me what to do right now? Yeah. I have a constant

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_00] problem, especially when I have our mutual over Armando of asking like, you good? Everything good? Do you need anything? You want to do something else? Is this boring? Like just driving him crazy just because like that's all I'm thinking about. Well, if it's of any consolation,

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_05] I can tell you that I've never been bored at your house because we're just chilling the same thing. I'd be doing it at my own house. Yeah. We're too much alike. Oh yeah. Two peas in a podcast.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_00] So let's get to the little bit of feedback that we have this week. There are only a few recent ones. I'll start here with Cat Cat. I am obsessed with the podcast. There's only one other podcast that did it like this. And when they changed the way they did their stories, I was stuck looking for a new one to listen to. And this one is amazing. Oh, thanks so much, kitty cat. And I feel your pain. Yeah, that can happen. You just want to hear somebody tell the story. You don't want to hear

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_00] them stop mid-sentence and have a conversation when they're telling stories and they like kind of interrupt the stories. I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. I just can't handle that either.

[00:40:40] [SPEAKER_05] We like a straight-laced stories here. Yeah. Stories first and off-topic banter at the end. I only really listen to podcasts if I'm trying to learn about or hear about something specific, a story of some sort, some piece of history or a theory or just whatever it might be. Whatever the title is, that's what I want to hear about. So it drives me up the wall when the hosts start talking about losing their favorite keychain or getting lost at the flea market. I don't want to know that.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_05] Just tell me where Benjamin Franklin lost his virginity. I don't know.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that being said, I guess we should just say it now because I don't know what changes are going to happen to the podcast. Whoa! Yeah, I guess we should just say it.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I wasn't expecting this. Okay, let's do it.

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_00] No, I wasn't either. But we started talking about podcasts changing. So I figured, hey, let's just throw it in and let everyone know. This is raw and real. So to squash any rumors that'll probably be going around, I'll just give you a straight up answer. I'm super burnt out and I want to focus strictly on Let's Not Meet moving forward. I'm leaving Odd Trails at the end of October. So you'll have a solo host here, Brandon. He's

[00:41:56] [SPEAKER_00] going to take over the show and continue taking the reins and doing me proud.

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, the show must go on. Even though Andy's like 50% of the show. Well, he is 50% of the show. It's still going to be 90% Odd Trails, if that makes sense. Still going to be story after story every single week. It's going to be good, though. Bittersweet, but we're both excited about what's to come.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_00] It is definitely bittersweet. I love the community here, so I'll still be involved. I'll still be in Discord. I'll still be hanging out. And I could probably pop in on an episode every once in a while. Yeah. I just want to focus on Let's Not Meet. That's basically it. I'm just really burnt out and tired. Yeah, get you some rest, Daddy. Any more feedback, comments? We have one more comment here from Little Red Spark. Little Red Spark is back.

[00:42:43] [SPEAKER_00] I can confirm that ferrets are tricksters, but if they were really several ferrets in a dad costume, they almost certainly wanted to be let out into the storage area for nefarious purposes. It would explain the blank stare. That's a good point.

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, I feel strangely validated about the ferret thing. I mean, it was just a metaphor, but I think it kind of worked out and this person seemed to have gotten it. I agree. I was so confused. You really were confused. I don't know why. It just threw me for a loop for some reason. I actually, I don't know if you caught it, but I tightened up the edit when you reacted to it because it was such a long pause of like, uh, yeah! Clearly, I tried to make it seem like you got it a little bit. Yeah, I didn't notice that.

[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_05] Well, I don't have a clever transition from ferrets, but let's talk about Riley's story, the hellhound, church grim demon dog thing. It made me realize that you and I have not visited a cemetery before, and that's really weird to me. I feel like we would have or should have done that by now, like at night, I believe. Actually, we haven't even gone to our one in our hometown either, like during the day. That's really weird.

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_00] I feel like we have, but I've actually just gone to a lot of cemeteries with my wife, so I'm probably getting it mixed up or imagining something hallucinating that we did go. But I think you're right. We need to go to a cemetery. I don't know why. I just like going. They're fun.

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_05] There's one like really isolated. I don't know if you know about it, but it's like far west.

[00:44:14] [SPEAKER_00] I already know exactly what you're talking about. My grandma was buried there. Yeah.

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_05] Like the one that supposedly witches were buried there or whatever. There's always a witch or like a native burial ground, but yeah. Like seriously though, they say that there's witches there. Yeah. We should do that. Apparently it's monitored and cops go out there to shoot people off, but whatever. It's worth the risk. They're not going to be out there on a Tuesday.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_00] Hopefully I don't see any ghost hounds.

[00:44:37] [SPEAKER_05] I know. I know. But anyway, yeah. So I think maybe they maybe could have seen some version of a church grim. And to be honest, this is the first time I've heard them called church grim. So that was an interesting educational lesson, but the cemetery setting checks out since they, uh, they typically are connected to graveyards and the dead, but I know that you have your rational side. So let's hear it. What is your rationale for this one?

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_00] I don't actually have a rational side on this one because it disappears into a puff of smoke like a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Here's the weird thing that I was thinking about why the eyes were glowing. The only reason the eyes would glow is if they were like shining a light on it or there was a big light source in the area, but there was like little to no obvious light sources around them. The eyes should not have been shining in the first place.

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_05] Exactly. And that kind of refutes the rational argument that somebody might have as far as, oh, they were just running through a dark cemetery at midnight full of adrenaline. So maybe it was just a great Dane that scared them and they got in their head. I don't know. Like there's, there's always going to be some thing like that, but also we have Brady hearing the drumming. Yeah. I guess from beneath the ground before they were chased. Interesting that he was the only one who heard it. I wonder why or what it could have been, but I'm also curious how loud

[00:45:57] [SPEAKER_05] it was and how close they were to each other at the time because Riley apparently didn't hear it. So was it too soft? Was it far away? Were they far away? Yeah. I mean, it's highly unlikely that Brady

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_00] heard drumming that didn't exist and then saw a hellhound type of dog that wasn't there. Yeah. That Riley just so happened to see as well. Something strange definitely happened there.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_05] Mm-hmm. And of course, when they rendezvoused at their friend's house, they had the same immediate description of what they saw. There wasn't some slow buildup of like BSing each other.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. I love that kind of stuff. It's the red eyes, the red eyes for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So my story this week, I obviously only did one because I had an extra long story. Yeah. This one is a sequel to Hornet's story from episode 222. It was their Twin Peaks and Mount Hood story. I remember it pretty vividly and it was a great story. So I was like, oh yeah, I definitely

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_00] need to feature their sequel. So this one I would say is a pretty clear cut Bigfoot story. And the weird thing is they've got the big feet that obviously are too small for snowshoes and too big for regular shoes, but they also had toes, apparently only four toes, which is a new thing I'm learning about, about Bigfoot. And they're super far spread apart, like almost impossible to walk

[00:47:22] [SPEAKER_00] that way. The author said that they were doing the splits basically to try and reach the stride that whatever it was, was leaving these tracks in the snow.

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_05] I legitimately thought you're trying to describe Bigfoot as being like really bow legged and like having his feet pointed and like outwards, like at 45. Like I was like, what? Like walking like a cowboy about to go into a duel or something. But I assume you mean just a long,

[00:47:45] [SPEAKER_00] straightforward stride. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. He spent a long time on his Sasquatch horse. So he was walking a little weird, but yeah, no, his stride was extremely wide and long and they just, here's the thing. They just disappeared. And this kind of fits with my theory that I've had for years now that Bigfoot is probably interdimensional and that's why we can't catch him. He just phases in and out of our reality. This isn't an animal that exists in our

[00:48:10] [SPEAKER_00] world. It's some kind of being probably similar to humans in a way from a different reality, a different dimension that's coming into ours.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Some sort of extinct hominin human species of some sort, a distant relative of ours. Yeah, maybe.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. It's kind of how the beings from the dimensions we go to when we do out-of-body experiences, astral projection, lucid dreams, it's probably the same way with them. They're like, it's another Bigfoot and we just phase in and out of reality, you know?

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Yeah. Well, two things there. I actually started listening through the hemi-sync tapes, like the original ones, all the way through. Oh, yes. They're so relaxing. They are. I'll keep you posted if I travel. But the other thing I wanted to bring up is how you mentioned Bigfoot potentially being interdimensional. It makes me think of the missing 411 cases. Bigfoot or not, there could be some sort of entity or supernatural being

[00:49:07] [SPEAKER_05] same thing, I guess, that could use portals to go in and out of dimensions and maybe they have the capability to take people with them. Let's keep it moving though. I'm not trying to get into all that.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yoik. This is a new thing for me. Yoiking in the forest. I had to stop myself from laughing every time. Like, I'm not trying to be offensive to this culture, obviously. It just sounds funny when we say it with our American accents. Yoiking in the forest. Not yoinking. That's probably something different. Probably. Yeah. It's just like a ceremonial song that you would sing and you can look it up on YouTube

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_00] and listen to somebody do it. It's kind of cool. I like it.

[00:49:51] [SPEAKER_05] Oh, yeah. That's funny. I was on YouTube listening to quite a bit of it. And then, of course, I had to go down, I don't want to say a rabbit hole, but I looked into Yoiking and the Sami people. They're indigenous to Europe way up north. And according to tradition, they actually receive Yoiks from fairies and elves. I love that. Learned something new this week. Indeed, we did. I've always liked all the different types of straight up acapella stuff. Of course, Gregorian

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_05] chants, but really into Latin liturgy. Check out the latest drop from the Greek diocese. Um, beatboxing, barbershop, muggle singing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. So the story about determinism sent in by Ready to Flow. Cool name, by the way. Great song as well. If you like 90s, 2000s dance music, techno stuff, which I do. Anyway, anyway, I guess we talked about

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_05] this recently, different universe theories about time and pre-planned events, precognition. I mean, we've talked about it probably a dozen times at least, but that's what inspired this person to send in their story. Cool. So first of all, the idea that if she never had the vision, she says she would have walked straight ahead. Yeah. The only reason she turned was because she was trying to avoid what she saw. Yet she still ran into them. Yeah.

[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_05] I feel like the universe is saying, okay, very cute, but you can't outsmart me. So it doesn't matter which way you're going to go left, right, straight ahead. So I wonder what would have happened if she turned around and went back home instead. If that would have broken the sequence or if the ex-sister-in-law would have spawned somewhere else. She intentionally changed her planned route specifically to avoid that encounter. But that route resulted in exactly what she was trying to

[00:51:39] [SPEAKER_00] prevent. Yeah. And it seems like we have a lot of stories where people were able to change an outcome when they got kind of like a vision of what could have happened. Right. This is not the case here. This one, it seems like their ability, their premonition skill, it's not letting them slip up.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. It's interesting to think that precognition doesn't actually allow you to prevent something from happening. Yeah. It could just inform you of what has already been determined. But we hear stories from both sides, people having a precognitive dream or a sudden intuitive sense of knowing that they can't explain and that allowed them to dodge a bullet, no pun intended. And before we even started this show, I used to think that it was impossible to know if precognition

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_05] allows you to change the outcome of something or not. Because if a future event plays out, it confirms the precognition. Yeah. But if something doesn't happen, you know where I'm going with this. Yeah. You have no way of confirming it. Yeah. You have no way of knowing if it would have happened regardless underneath

[00:52:40] [SPEAKER_00] different circumstances. Yeah, I agree. I'm still kind of, you know, the jury's out on the rules with precognition, especially after reading this story. Yeah. And for all we know, there's different

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_05] types of precognition and maybe not all precognitive events are treated equally. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Different types of mimics. Let's just throw in mimic as a buzzword.

[00:53:04] [SPEAKER_00] Oh, yeah. Fun stuff. Yeah, it was a good episode. I love having some longer stories. And yeah, sorry, I didn't expect to come out with the news this early, but I just figured we were on the topic.

[00:53:15] [SPEAKER_05] We might as well throw it out there. I know. I thought we're going to like, how are we going to break the news? But I'm glad we did it all natural. It's that's what they deserve

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_00] for sure. Yeah. Yeah. If we made it a whole thing, it would come off as like disingenuous and weird. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's going to be the same show. You're still going to get all the same stories. Don't worry. It's going to be great. Yep. But hey, if you guys have a story to share, email is going to stay the same. Send it in to stories at odd trails dot com. And if you want to get head free versions of all the episodes at a higher bit rate, join our Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash odd trails and check out the new episodes of my other podcast. Let's not

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_00] meet in the old time radio cast. We'll see you next week. Stay safe. Peace out.

[00:54:18] [SPEAKER_01] Ghosts and the ghouls disturb you, darling.

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