Slipped Into a Different TImeline – Ep. 231

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[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_05] Odd Trails is a true paranormal podcast. If you have a story to share, send it to stories at oddtrails.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_06] Forget facts. Forget logic. Forget everything that seems real. You just... Trust.

[00:01:42] Believe.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_04] I've seen, heard, and felt them by Rachel.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_04] I'm 73 years old, and it seems like we've always lived in haunted places. My friend was drafted during the Vietnam War. As a going-away gift, he gave me a huge pink teddy bear. We said our goodbyes. I was 17 at the time. I placed the bear at the end of my bed and always kept it there. One night, I woke up to something getting on me.

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_04] I was lying down, my legs in the shape of a four. All of a sudden, I felt both legs on each side of my body, and my head was between his hands. I wasn't scared, but at the same time I wanted to know who or what it was. I pretended to be asleep, and I moved just a little to see what would happen. I felt it get up and go back again.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_04] This happened several times. I finally told myself, Okay. At the count of three, toss the blanket and see what it is. I did. And there was nothing there. Out of instinct, I grabbed the bear and threw it to the floor. It never happened again. I don't know if my friend was sending me a message.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_04] I actually never heard from him again, and I don't know if he came home. I never told anyone about this. We later moved into a duplex in front of some apartments. In that duplex, several things happened. We came home from my aunt's funeral, my mother's sister. We went to sleep, and my daughter, who was in the twin bed next to me, looked over and told me she saw my aunt in her coffin.

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_04] I never let her get up to see her, and I hadn't gone up either. So I asked my mom what her sister was wearing. She described the exact outfit my daughter had said. My mother would also see black shadows. She would just curse at them, and they would leave. One night, my mother was gone for the weekend, on a trip with her seniors club.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_04] I came home at around 2am, and my daughter was next door at a sleepover. Since I didn't like sleeping in my room, I slept in the living room, on a pullout bed. I woke up to someone spooning me. That scared the heck out of me. I called my boyfriend, and he came and stayed until morning. Another time, my mom was getting ready for work, at around 5 in the morning.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_04] I had to wait until she was finished, so I could use the bathroom. I kept waiting and waiting. I looked under the door, and I saw the light, and heard the music. I finally knocked and asked if I could use the bathroom. The music stopped. Nothing happened. I opened the door, and no one was there. We moved again to where my aunt used to live,

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_04] and my mother later moved into a house across the street. The owner of that house had passed away there. He was an older man. Very nice. It started with my mother. She was in bed, about to fall asleep, with her arm over her face. Something moved her arm away. And about a year ago, I was doing homework. I decided to go back to college.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_04] And I heard boots walking from the living room to the back of the house. I didn't think much of it at first, but then I stopped and told myself how strange it was. They were military boots. Heavy. But the living room is carpet. I asked my mother, and she said she had heard them too. A neighbor once asked if my oldest daughter was home.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_04] I told her no, that she hadn't been there for a while. The neighbor said she saw her sitting on the porch. She called out to her twice. And the second time, she looked at her, but didn't smile. Didn't respond. Nothing. That wasn't my daughter. In 2014, we rented an apartment. On the day we moved in, I was standing at the entrance to the bedroom, watching my husband

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_04] put some things together. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw an apparition standing next to me. He was wearing a green and yellow argyle sweater vest, and jeans. He looked like he was in his teen years. He just stood there, staring at me. He didn't scare me, but I wanted to get a better look. As I turned my head, he was gone.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_04] About a month later, I woke up in the middle of the night. I'm a messy sleeper, so I noticed right away something was off. My sheet and blanket were switched. The sheet was on top and the blanket underneath. And they were placed nice and neat. I wasn't scared though. I just thought, okay, this little guy is messing with me.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_04] And another time, my oldest sister and her boyfriend were over. I was wearing a sweater when I suddenly felt a cold spot on my back. I asked my husband to feel it, and all he said was, That is weird. Later, he hugged me, and my back was wet. I know I hadn't been near the sink.

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_04] There are other times I've heard voices that sound like my husband, but he's asleep when it happens. One night, I had a dry cough and couldn't stop. From the kitchen, I heard something mocking me. We also keep losing our forks and spoons. We buy new sets, and within a week or so, they're gone. About a month ago, I saw another apparition.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_04] A man wearing a burgundy shirt. I've also seen black shadows, which I ignore. I sleep with my nightlights on. But whatever is here doesn't scare me.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_05] I slipped into a different timeline by VB.

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_05] About one week after turning 30, I dropped my wife and baby off at the mall in our town, while I grabbed lunch with some business partners a few blocks away. Lunch lasted about an hour at this Japanese restaurant that I had been to a few times before. After lunch, I said goodbye to my partners, and then I drove back towards the mall to pick up my daughter and wife and head home.

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_05] But when I approached the mall, I had a feeling I can only describe as unsettling. The two entrances to the mall parking lot closest to the direction I was coming from were blocked off with cones and barricades, including the entrance I had dropped my wife off at. I had to circle all the way around the mall to a distant stoplight and approach from the opposite direction. Again, I couldn't turn into the mall as I was blocked off.

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_05] I was funneled down a one-way street on the far side of the mall. The street had orange barricades on both sides. There were construction workers in orange vests on both sides, but they seemed to feel fake to me, in a way that I can't really describe. I have no memories of entering that one-way street other than a strange construction worker looking at me with these blank eyes as I drove by.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_05] The next thing I knew, I was several blocks away from the mall. I was several blocks away from the mall near the restaurant where I had started, except the buildings were completely different. I felt lost and confused because I had never seen these buildings before. They were several stories taller than anything that had ever been in this town. They were so uncharacteristically out of place.

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_05] I pulled to the side of the road and wondered if I had a stroke or something. For context, I was a completely healthy guy with no prior amnesia events like this, before or after. No alcohol, no drugs. Just a completely sober, healthy guy. Once I came to grips with the situation, I started back toward the mall, thinking maybe I'd just zone out or something. When I approached the mall, it was totally different.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_05] There was an entirely new wing built onto it that wasn't there before. A new massive parking garage, new restaurants all around. I was astonished. All of the barriers and construction workers were gone, and I pulled near one of the entrances to pick my wife and daughter up, but my wife didn't notice anything strange about me. And I never brought it up to her, other than asking, did they change some things at the mall?

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_05] She just said she didn't think so. I swear, the mall and the buildings all around had completely changed. I've lived in the area my whole life, and I go to that mall about once a month. I also have a background in construction, so I'm keenly aware of new building projects, as I like to track them and monitor their progress. So I would have noticed if construction had been going on for a while.

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_05] As I look back, my only other explanation is that I encountered some kind of simulation upgrade? A parallel reality? I don't know. It was like I fell into a glitch that I wasn't supposed to see, as a new patch was uploaded or something. Every time I drive by the mall, I still get weirded out. Like I shouldn't be looking at it. Even typing this, I'm getting chills.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_05] Like I shouldn't draw attention to something like this. Lately, I've been more intentional about what I wear day to day,

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[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_04] Shared Dream with My Husband by Nicole My husband and I had the same dream before we were married. Or even met. We didn't find out until years later while talking about conspiracy theories. We had been discussing them for a while when the dream came up. The dream I had went like this. It was a bright, beautiful day.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_04] A man and I were hiking on a trail. This was my soon-to-be husband. We were also older, maybe in our fifties, and moving a bit slower than the other hikers due to our age. We decided to take a short break. Then we caught up with the rest of the group and made our way to the peak. Once we reached the top, we enjoyed the view for about ten minutes.

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_04] Then, a bright light appeared in the sky, bright enough to make me squint. I put my hand over my eyes to shield them. After that, there was a loud sound and a strong gust of wind that knocked everyone to the ground. We all got back up, and when we looked into the sky, a massive shape was descending directly toward the ridge we were standing on.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_04] After that, I woke up. My heart was pounding, and I was covered in sweat. That was the only time I ever had that dream. It turns out my husband had the exact same dream, down to the age we were when it happened.

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_05] Did I see my dad outside at 1.30am by lame zombie? This happened pre-COVID, either 2018 or 2019, so I was around 13 at the time.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_05] I live in western Pennsylvania, right on the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. My uncle lives about five minutes down the road from me, and I've had some weird paranormal experiences at his house before. This one sticks with me, though. So my mom and I were house-sitting for him while he was away on a work trip. No pets or anything like that, but his house was pretty big and kind of isolated. Woods on one side and a wheat field on the other.

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_05] One night, we were in the basement watching a movie. The setup down there matters. The wall across from the TV is basically all windows, with French doors that go out onto the back patio and pull. Since my uncle wasn't home, none of the outside lights were on, so it was pitch black out there. You couldn't see anything. We were sitting on this L-shaped couch with our backs to the windows.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_05] At some point, I heard that very specific doink sound, like when someone taps on a big glass door. But just one little knock. I sat up and I looked over the back of the couch. Nothing. Total darkness. I figured maybe I imagined it, and I went back to watching the movie. My mom didn't react, so I guess she didn't hear it. But then it happened again.

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_05] This time I looked back, and I saw my dad standing outside. And it didn't just look like him. It was him. He had on his work hat and his old gray Broncos crew neck that he used to wear all the time. The one with the little horse with the orange mane. He was looking down at his phone, and the light from the screen was lighting up his face and chest. I could only see him from about mid-torso up.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_05] He wasn't moving. He was just standing there, looking at his phone. I turned to my mom confused and said, Dad's here. Mind you, this was 1.30 in the morning. She looked back and saw nothing. But I could still see him, clear as day. She told me that he was at home, asleep, and he had work in the morning. I looked back at the TV, then back again.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_05] And he was still there. Same position, not moving, not looking up. Just standing there. At this point, I was confused. I wasn't scared. But I told her again that he was outside, and we should let him in. I don't remember what she said, but I eventually turned back around and pretended I didn't see anything. I don't remember falling asleep, but somehow I did.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_05] The next morning, I called my dad and asked if he had come over the night before. He said no. But he also said he believed that I did see something. I told my uncle too and asked him to check the cameras, but he never did. Or at least, he never told me anything. So I guess he didn't really believe me. Anyway, that's my mimic or skinwalker type story. I still think about it all the time.

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[00:23:36] [SPEAKER_04] The Baby Stealing Shadow Man by Cheryl. I'm currently typing this instead of working, just so I can tell you about the bad juju cloud that has followed me since I was younger. And the baby stealing shadow man. Ever since I was little, I've had these dark cloud feelings before bad things happen. It's like a fog sets in, and everything feels off.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_04] Like something bad is coming. But I don't know when or what. The actual story starts about six years ago, when I was pregnant. My husband and I were driving home from a trip. It was a long drive. In the entire time, I could not shake this terrible, dark feeling. Stronger than anything I'd felt before. We finally stopped at some sketchy hotel.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_04] As soon as we checked in, that feeling hit again, in a wave. Something is not right. But I was exhausted, so I went to bed. That's the last thing I remember. Until... My eyes shoot open in a panic. Every hum in the room stops. The air conditioner, gone. The lights, off.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_04] Everything, dead silent. I feel fear wash over me. I can still see the hallway light under the door. Which made it even weirder. I haven't moved. I'm laying there. And I turn my head toward the window. And that's when I see it. A tall black shadow in the corner of the room. Just standing there.

[00:25:34] [SPEAKER_04] I feel it staring at me. And I cannot move. I try to scream. To move. Nothing. Completely frozen. I look at my husband. He's still asleep. Then the shadow moves closer to the bed. It doesn't speak. It doesn't reach out. It just stands there.

[00:26:01] [SPEAKER_04] And somehow, I knew what it was there for. I could feel it. I start screaming in my head. You can't have him. He is mine. We already love him. Go away. I'm fighting it mentally. Trying to move. Trying to reach my husband. Nothing. Then I put everything I have into one last scream.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_04] I said he is mine. For a second, everything freezes. Silence. Then the hum of the room comes back. I snap out of it and I look back. It's gone. I can move again. I search the room. Nothing. Eventually, I fall back asleep.

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_04] The next morning, I ask the front desk about the power going out. They said it never did. We get back on the road and about an hour later, traffic stops for an accident up ahead. Then my husband starts yelling. He's not stopping. I look in the mirror and a truck is flying toward us, not slowing down. I yanked the wheel to the shoulder.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_04] He slams into us and sends us into a ditch. They get me into an ambulance and check the baby. He's okay. But if we hadn't moved, my stomach would have slammed into the steering wheel. It could have been so bad. But it wasn't. So was the shadow man trying to warn me? Or was he there to take my baby? And I fought him off.

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_04] I'll never know. But I believe the latter. Seven years later, I have a healthy baby boy. And I still think about that night.

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_05] The Sound in the Woods by Adrian Medina Rosa 03. I want to tell you a story. Maybe someone on the internet can help me describe what my girlfriend and I experienced.

[00:28:35] [SPEAKER_05] It was around 4pm. We decided to go to a waterfall that we had seen online. We live in Brazil and we were following this map to the waterfall. We went there by motorcycle and it was already getting close to dark. When we were about 12 minutes away by bike, we decided to continue on foot because the motorcycle just couldn't handle the terrain. We walked for about 24 minutes along a path that split to the left and right.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_05] We checked the map and chose the left path. It was getting darker and I started to find several mushrooms that I had never seen before. We were also seeing signs of water and smooth stones like the ones you find near waterfalls. We walked another 15 minutes and went far past the waterfall. We had taken the wrong path, but we decided to keep going.

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_05] My girlfriend has some kind of spiritual sensitivity. Whenever something is about to go wrong, she feels it beforehand. We kept going until we found a yellow sign that simply said, Danger. It sounds like a joke, but it's not. I decided to climb a bit higher to see if I could spot anything. It was already getting very dark and my girlfriend was starting to panic.

[00:29:57] [SPEAKER_05] After I had gone about 30 steps up, we heard a sound coming from all directions at once. It wasn't like an animal, and it definitely wasn't human. She went into a complete panic and started to run. I wasn't afraid at first because I wanted to understand what the sound was, but I decided to calm her down and head back down with her.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_05] I'm a very rational person, but that loud sound felt like some kind of presence warning us to leave. At the same time, a strong wind seemed to come from every direction. We ran away, and when we got home, we tried to look up animal sounds similar to what we heard, but we couldn't find anything. It's hard to even describe. It just didn't match any animal.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_05] I took photos of the type of mushroom that I found, and the forest that we entered. This happened a week ago, and to this day I still feel like it was something very strong on a spiritual level. I've never felt anything like that before. The curiosity I felt in such an obviously dangerous situation was strange. I felt like I left my body for a moment because the sound was so intense.

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_05] I feel like going back there earlier in the day, but my girlfriend will never allow it. I feel like if nature didn't want us to continue, we should respect that, but I would like to understand why we couldn't go any further.

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[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_05] Apparently my father died four years ago by juice. This is my father's story. He only told it to me once, and we've never spoken about it since. But it's one of the main reasons I believe in parallel universes. About four years ago, my father was struggling with alcoholism, and he would irresponsibly show up to work under the influence quite often.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_05] At the time, his job was about 40 minutes from our house. He usually left late at around 8 or 9 p.m. To get to the town where we lived, he had to drive through a long stretch of road with many sharp curves. That night, he had been drinking as usual but decided to head home instead of staying at work until he sobered up. He was driving erratically, drifting in and out of consciousness.

[00:34:22] [SPEAKER_05] On one of the curves, he crossed into the oncoming lane, and a car traveling at a high speed crashed head-on into his. He vividly remembers the crash, the flash of light, and the sheer impact of the collision. Then he opened his eyes and looked around. He was lying in bed next to my mom, still a little drunk. He looked around in a panic, having no idea how he had gotten home.

[00:34:49] [SPEAKER_05] He peered out of the window, and he saw the car parked outside completely untouched. In the morning, he asked my mom what happened. She told him that he had arrived home, and then gone straight to sleep without saying a single word. He truly believes he died that day, and because he remembered the accident so vividly, he is convinced that God gave him a second chance to redeem himself, quit drinking, and turn his life around. I wish I could provide more details,

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_05] but he told me this story only a few months after it happened, so I've only shared what has stuck with me.

[00:35:48] [SPEAKER_05] Jumping right into the feedback, we've got a comment here from Jared Lind, referencing last week's episode. Wow, when you guys were talking about time being more like the ocean versus being linear like a river, when thinking about that, it brought to mind that perhaps, maybe even metaphorically, time and or existence is, as a complete, an ocean. Whereas, individual life is a river.

[00:36:18] [SPEAKER_05] I guess the ocean could be viewed as the afterlife, and the river, parenthesis, life, moves towards, and you could re-enter at any port of the river once you reach the ocean. Okay. I wanted to get through that without messing up. I think this goes over my head. I didn't get it. I wanted to, and I wanted to include it because I'm sure there are going to be listeners that get it. Maybe you just go read the comment yourself. Maybe I didn't read it aloud properly.

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_04] I mean, it sounds like he's kind of touching on relativity theory, I guess. Okay. Basically, that time isn't some sort of fixed structure. I've heard it described as like a loaf of bread. We're not moving through time. It's like our consciousness is scanning through different slices of bread, but it's already kind of predetermined in the past and future exist simultaneously. We're just scanning different slices of the bread,

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_04] which could explain some of the hauntings and all that like we touched on many times before.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I guess that makes sense.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_04] I guess. I don't know.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. It was an interesting comment. I had to share it for those that may understand it. My brain is fried today. I'm really tired. I don't know about you.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_04] Same. I took a nap mid-afternoon. I usually don't do that anymore.

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_04] Let's see. What else we got? Melissa here? It says, Honestly, something similar has happened to me inside of some dense fog. It was probably the weirdest thing that's happened to me. It felt like three hours had passed and that's not what it was. So strange. Okay. Now I'm a little lost.

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_05] Okay. Yeah. So they're referencing how I was talking about the book last week and time slips being related to fog and different types of weather.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_04] Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:38:10] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I think that what they're saying is they had missing time or time didn't line up and- Through some fog. Yeah. It's related to this dense fog. For some reason, alternate realities, time and all that stuff has been very prevalent in my timeline, in my world right now. All books and movies and anything that I'm consuming all seem to have to do with this topic.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_04] Interesting. Maybe it's the universe's way or whatever of trying to guide you to the ultimate truth, you know? Like Pikachu's tail. What does it look like? Oh yeah. It's all yellow, right? Right. Yeah. I could have sworn it had a black tip on it. Like for sure. Anyway, we don't get into that.

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_05] No, no, no. I remember that one specifically. I had to think about it real hard when you asked me just now, real hard and long.

[00:39:00] [SPEAKER_04] Mm-hmm. So do you actually remember it as being solid yellow or you just recall that's what it currently is because you recently went down the rabbit hole?

[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_05] I remember it as having a black stripe at the very least. I remember it having black on it. But yeah, I guess not. Yeah. Something's going on. Yeah. Let's see. We got a comment here from Erasily. Am I saying that right? Uh, maybe. Okay. Sure. Erasily. They said, isn't the smell of toast in your house a possible sign of an electrical fire?

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_06] Mm, yeah.

[00:39:35] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I've heard somebody say like, if you smell toast, you're having a stroke. You know what I mean? Being a little bit hyperbolic. Same. I've heard that, but never verified it. I did Google search that. Their garbage AI came back with smelling phantom burnt toast or phantosmia? Phantosmia? Phantosmia. Phantosmia. Phantosmia is a sensory illusion often caused by temporary issues like sinus infections, allergies, or stress.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_05] While rarely a sign of a stroke, persistent, unprovoked phantom smells can indicate underlying conditions such as epilepsy, migraine, or COVID-19 related dysfunction. According to AI. I'm not going to say I trust it 100%.

[00:40:19] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, 100% is a little generous.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_05] COVID-19, I can definitely attest to that. Everything kind of smelled like an air filter. This weird charcoal-y smell.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_04] Weird. I wonder if you actually smelled it or if it was just your brain tricking you into thinking that you smelled anything at all. You know what I mean?

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, just the hunger, the desire to smell.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_04] As I'm eating these pistachios. I'm so sorry if you can hear me cracking these, but I'm like really hungry and I need something salty. Alright, last comment here. Synony Mouse says, although our understanding of this will change over time, time is most certainly not linear. Einstein's theory of relativity, oh hey, shows gravity and speed warp time and quantum physics suggests superpositions. Very interesting stuff.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_04] Recently I've been deeply moved by the idea that our physical bodies are more or less antennas that are scanning data sequentially. Doppelgangers, residual haunts and glitches all start to make sense when exploring this concept. Yeah, that's kind of what I was talking about as far as scanning with like the lobes of bread type of thing. It's all, all in one.

[00:41:30] [SPEAKER_05] I thought that I remembered reading that when you have like deja vu, both sides of your brain is kind of like conflicting with each other. It's like you're remembering while you're experiencing at the same time. So you get the sensation of remembering what's happening. Right. Maybe that's what's happening. Like our brains are scanning. It's like scanning what's going on and something malfunctions and what you're experiencing is something that your brain thinks it's remembering at the same time and that's what's causing deja vu.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_04] I do like that. And like the opposite of that would just be forgetting something that did happen and it's not as interesting at all.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_04] It's like, Oh, you're telling me this information. I don't remember, but apparently happened.

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Listen, I love my wife and I do listen to her, but I can't tell you how many times she's told me something and I was listening and I even responded and I couldn't remember it five minutes later.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_04] That's a superpower. You should be proud of that. I think it's okay. At least you're in the moment you are listening to her. At least it sounds like it.

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_05] I can't multitask. That's one thing. If she's talking to me while I'm doing something, I can't listen. We talked about this, how you and I have tried to multitask and every time we do, it doesn't seem like we're getting good work done.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_04] No, no. People say that they can multitask. In reality, everything's only getting like 30% of your effort, whereas you could just give a hundred percent to one thing at a time. It's easier said than done to not multitask, but getting better at focusing on one thing.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Well, I want to jump into my timeline story. Relevant. Mm-hmm. So basically this guy drops off his family at the mall, then he goes to like a work meeting or whatever. And then when he's driving back, things are completely different. Someone on Reddit brought up this disturbing thought because it kind of deals with different timelines where he did drop off his family or didn't drop off his family. And they said, in another timeline, your wife and child are mourning the day that you dropped them off at the mall and you never came back.

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_03] Ooh.

[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_05] That's a scary thought that there are alternate timelines where we just like don't pick up our family or something and they're just stuck there. And that's how bad things happen.

[00:43:36] [SPEAKER_04] Wow. Yeah. I wonder if there is like some different timeline where we forget to pick up our grandma from her hair appointment and then she's just left aimlessly wandering around and gets hit by a car in some different timeline. Like that happened today. Maybe. Maybe we did that.

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. This reignited my interest in reincarnation. Yeah, I could see why. Like we're on some sort of loop. Not because I like it or I believe in it. I used to, but now it scares the hell out of me. Mm-hmm. I've found as I'm getting older life to be very exhausting and I totally wouldn't mind if things just ended.

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_04] Well, what if you reincarnate as like a really relaxed house cat who doesn't have to worry about anything. You get spoiled, you get belly scratches and you actually like them. Wet food.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, absolutely. And that's the problem. Reincarnation both interests me and scares me because the idea of reincarnating as another person is a huge gamble.

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_04] And in some unknown timeline. Yeah, exactly. Well, I guess on that note, we also have Nicole's story. Speaking of timelines, how she shared a dream with her husband way before they met. I really don't know how to interpret the dream itself. It sounds kind of end of times type of thing, but apparently they had the same sort of dream. Not only that, they ended up getting married together. I wish I knew how that conversation came up though and how they realized that.

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_05] Well, I mean, yeah, because they discovered the shared dream years into their marriage during like a casual conversation about conspiracies. So obviously they were pulled together by something that they weren't even aware of until they talked about it and finally discovered they had the shared dream. That makes this a really sweet story.

[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_04] Yep. Yeah. Really ambiguous. I guess that goes without saying being a dream and everything. I just want to know what was in the sky, some sort of meteor, a UFO.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_04] What it actually means. And I wonder if they saw the same exact thing in the sky and what it meant for them.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_04] And if they both woke up at the same time, I got to follow up. Or Nicole, if you're listening, let us know. Answer these questions, please.

[00:45:48] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, please, please. We want to know. We love it when the authors give us feedback and email us. Absolutely. It's always interesting how it's just in the public psyche that things are going to come from space. They're going to come from the sky. It's going to be a light coming from the sky. And I think this has to do just with ancient religious texts from all over the world that talk about this kind of thing.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Weird stuff in the sky or even worshiping the sun or the moon for that matter.

[00:46:15] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. It's been embedded in our psyche. It's just the big, great unknown. I always am more amazed by things in the sea. Have you seen that movie, The Abyss?

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, but I can't remember it. Okay. I know the name. I know it's on my hard drive. Like I can see the abyss, yiffy.mp4. Like I know I have it and I've seen it, but I can't recall it. Yeah.

[00:46:38] [SPEAKER_05] I just remember watching that as a kid, just being amazed by the theory that something like this could be deep underwater, all these unexplored bottom of the ocean. It's just as interesting as space to me, how deep we can go in the ocean and what we'll find and how deep we can go into space and what we'll find. Mm-hmm. I think we just kind of mythologize space and really any uncharted area. We create this mystery around it and we keep seeing that in these stories.

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Uncontacted tribes wherever. Mm-hmm. Don't fly drones by them. That's rude.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, dude. Totally. So let's jump over to the story about the father dying or apparently dying. Yeah. Sounds like a warning or something. I found this one to be really interesting because, well, I guess I'll start it off this way. I find it annoying when in any kind of media, alcohol makes people hallucinate. You know what I'm talking about when you watch like an old TV show and an old movie?

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_04] Dumbo even.

[00:47:37] [SPEAKER_05] Dumbo.

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_04] It's more like LSD, not alcohol. What was going on there? Yeah. It was like acid. It was ridiculous. They have sheets, so I'm told, that are like of those elephants. I've heard that.

[00:47:50] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah, I've heard. That's wild. Mm-hmm. If you're someone who drinks regularly, like the author's father did, I doubt he was hallucinating an entire crash event. When you're someone who drinks regularly like that, you're not having hallucinations. You're functioning. Not functioning well, but you're functioning.

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_06] Mm-hmm.

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_04] Maybe he was just so drunk that he forgot to drive home and he had a dream that he got a dream, no pun intended, would maybe wake him up out of it. I'm really not trying to do these puns, but yeah, that's...

[00:48:35] [SPEAKER_05] No, no, no, no. Pun intended. That's a good one.

[00:48:37] [SPEAKER_04] Pun intended. Yeah, totally, totally. Yeah. That's just kind of what I'm getting from it, is he was meant to see this, meant to feel the fear and sense of dread and oh no, and hopefully kind of go on a different path and not have that actually happen to him. Like he could change that timeline within himself by being aware ahead of time.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_04] Maybe.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_05] Here's another thing that I thought about. I sometimes get feedback from Let's Not Meet listeners complaining that the show somehow condones bad acts that the authors do, like drunk driving and other stuff. And it drives me crazy. Drunk driving is a terrible thing to do and we all agree on that.

[00:49:16] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah, so as assault and stalking, you're just telling a story as it happened. Exactly. Should I have edited out?

[00:49:24] [SPEAKER_05] It's silly. But I continue to see at least a few comments about that kind of thing every time an author makes a poor decision like that. People make poor choices and it's usually an important part of the story. That's my rant. Sorry. I just thought about that when I read this story.

[00:49:38] [SPEAKER_04] It's okay. We all have our triggers.

[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_04] Well, let's move on to Rachel's story. This one is amazing. First of all, thank you for sending this in at the ripe age of 73. Love it. Hell yeah. Wish you the best.

[00:49:54] [SPEAKER_05] Mm hmm.

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_04] And I know some people might hear the story and think, wait a minute, 73. How old is her mom? Like 95? Well, yeah, she very well could be. Yeah, why not? My great grandmother is 97.

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. Mine lived to her mid to late 90s and she was walking the block all the way up through her 90s.

[00:50:12] [SPEAKER_04] Walking the block. That's the big secret right there.

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. So it kept her alive.

[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_04] That's awesome. That's awesome. Getting to the story. I really want to know about the bear.

[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_06] Mm hmm.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_04] She said that she was given this pink bear from her friend who left to go to Vietnam. We don't find out if he ever made it back. Hopefully he did. Yeah. But I really want to know if there's any connection to the bear and that thing straddling her in bed, basically. It obviously stopped once she threw the bear off, but I wonder if it was just like a one off encounter and the bear was involved or not.

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_05] Mm hmm.

[00:50:46] [SPEAKER_04] And more importantly, if her friend knew something may have been attached to the bear or not.

[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_05] Hey, maybe you got the bear at a thrift store. Didn't even know it was haunted. I don't know.

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_04] Yeah. Who knows? Awesome that her daughter was able to describe the aunt's outfit in the funeral. Really cool because as we know, she didn't get to see it. And we find out from Rachel's mom, like, yeah, she did wear this. So really cool to see children being aware of certain things without even trying to make it seem so effortless.

[00:51:18] [SPEAKER_05] Yeah. I think that's the, that's the trick there. I don't know. I got nothing.

[00:51:26] [SPEAKER_04] Hey, fair enough. That's the trick. Tricks are for kids and we are young at heart. I'm tapped out. All right, let's tap it out.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_05] Let's call it. Make sure you send your stories into stories at odd trails.com. Sign up for a patron at patreon.com forward slash odd trails. You're going to get ad free versions of our episodes. Plus you're going to support the show at the patron.com forward slash odd trails and check out my other podcasts. See you guys next week. Everybody stay safe. Peace out.

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