While living with his parents in rural Washington, Zach takes his dog out one night. The dog immediately runs off into a dark forest clearing and when Zach attempts to follow he spots a strange, glowing canine figure in the distance. The mystery deepens when the creature suddenly changes form before his eyes. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [email protected] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [email protected] 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
Chapter 1: How can I submit my paranormal story to Otherworld?
Hey everybody, before we start this episode, I wanted to say that we are currently on the hunt for new stories. So if you have ever experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, now is a good time to send it in. Our email is stories at otherworldpod.com. write up a short summary of what happened to you and send it on in.
If you have a story that you thought about sending in before and hesitated for any number of reasons, do not hesitate, just send it in. My favorite stories are from people who do not want to be interviewed.
I know that makes my job very difficult, but the entire reason I started Otherworld was to get people like that to come forward with these stories that are really difficult to talk about sometimes.
Some stories are complicated or sensitive because they're intertwined with a larger, non-paranormal saga in somebody's life, like in the case of Eilish Poe, who is one of my favorite people I've ever interviewed and a person who has an extremely sensitive story. I talked to Eilish on the phone so many times for a very long time before we ever recorded her story.
Just getting to know each other and making sure she was comfortable talking about everything. We take great care in making these episodes and work with the storytellers to make sure their experience is told in the way that it deserves. So don't hesitate. Don't be nervous. Just send it on in.
If you have a crazy story from a friend or family member, we focus on first-person experiences, but we would love to hear it. So just do me a favor, call them up first, make sure they're willing to tell the story, make sure the story is how you remembered it, and then go ahead and send it in. If you've already sent in your story, thank you very much. We read every single one.
Sometimes we end up recording these stories long after they've been submitted. Sometimes we're just waiting for the right moment to record a certain story. So once again, if you have experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, send us an email, stories at otherworldpod.com. We look forward to reading your story, and I look forward to maybe interviewing you one day.
All right, we're going to go to a quick break and then start the show. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This one comes from a guy named Zach, and it took place shortly after moving back home with his family in rural Washington state after he dropped out of college.
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Chapter 2: Who is the host of Otherworld?
I think everyone has experienced times that are sort of transition periods, a section between two major eras in your life story. Sometimes you don't even know that you're in one of these transition periods until much later on, but sometimes you do know, and you could almost feel a sort of energy in the air during these periods. I think Zach was in one of those during this time.
And sometimes I think that maybe people are a little more prone to experiencing strange things during these periods of transition where everything just seems a little bit thinner, if that makes sense. What happened to Zach and what he saw... I'm not sure I know what to call it, and I don't think he does either, but I will let him explain that for himself. This is episode 117.
The title is The Clearing, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with. I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky.
It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. His limbs were just like, wrong.
Chapter 3: What is Zach's background and current occupation?
Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.
My name's Zach. I'm a cannabis farmer in Olympia, Washington. I grew up here in Olympia, and I spent a lot of my time outdoors. I was a Boy Scout. I did a lot of hiking and backpacking, things like that, a lot of outdoorsy stuff. My job, I clock in and out. I've got a regular weekday schedule. A lot of people have I've learned to have very different wild views of what my work looks like.
Some people ask me, like, am I walking around a cannabis orchard picking up the ripe fruits from the trees or some, you know, some like Garden of Eden idyllic style of growing. It's not quite like that because we harvest the whole plants. So sometimes it does take the form of almost like a factory setting, an assembly line setting where
There's a strict schedule and every 10 days a new room has to come down and then get repopulated. So it's a lot more work than people would think. There's a lot of steps and a lot of diligence. A lot of the job is, frankly, some annoying paperwork and like just double, triple checking that you've done everything correctly.
You haven't left anything on or done anything outside of the norm because they're very particular plants. I grew up third generation Mormon, so all of my grandparents were Mormon and they had kids that were Mormon. I would go to church probably two or three times a week, every week growing up, like kindergarten through high school. I grew up here in Olympia.
I would consider myself a Washingtonian, but I did move here when I was five. I was born in Provo, Utah, which is like, man, that's the spawn point of Mormons right there. It's a very demanding religion, I would say. There's a lot of rules. I wasn't allowed to go play out with my friends on Sundays unless we were doing something rather spiritual, which no kid in the summer wants to do.
But I definitely had... a different view of a lot of things that I have now. You know, like cannabis, for instance, is an obvious one where I grew up being told that it was something really bad or negative. It could only be a negative, that it's ultimately just harmful to you.
Or even worse, you know, it could be the influence of the devil or it could be some sort of very evil thing that controls your mind. I mean, people range the gambit there, but, you know, you hear lots of things My views started to change when I left home at 18 years old. I started to have doubts in high school.
Things that I was being told at church or home didn't necessarily align with what I felt or what I observed outside of those areas. And getting away from home at 18, ironically, going back to Utah where I went to school. So it seems a little bit backwards.
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Chapter 4: What unusual experience did Zach encounter in the barn?
Normally, I'd take her out the back door where there was just one little area of light. But outside of their house, it would just... It opens up into this big field surrounded by trees. There's a nice big, large window in the back door so I can see out there. And I don't see anything. Sometimes I'll check for animals before I let the dog out, you know. And... I opened the door.
She steps out pretty calmly, just like we always do. I think I stayed inside to watch her go outside. And she steps out the patio. I could kind of see in her body language, she was ready to bolt. She's an adventurous dog. She likes to sniff things and check things out. So it wasn't a surprise to me that she would run away. And she's a black dog, so she quickly disappears.
I found some shoes, quickly threw those on, ran out the back door myself. And I start, calmly at first, I start walking down this path, the same one that she went down. And I'm keeping my head on a swivel. I'm trying to see if I can just barely spot her in the dark, or maybe I can hear her footsteps. But no dice. I can't really see anything while I'm first going out there.
The light from the house didn't go very far. I wasn't super far from the house, but the light by now, I can't really see what I'm stepping on super well. I'm going off of my familiarity of the area, just following the path. I'm looking around, but I can't see much at all. I'm really trying to listen closely to see if I can hear something.
But going farther and farther from the house always made me more nervous because I knew the farther that she got, the more likely she was to get into something. I remember walking and looking down to make sure I wasn't going to trip on something in the dark. And when I look up... I see something. It's what looked like the shape of a canine at first.
But I remember it was odd that it didn't seem to pop out of somewhere. It didn't come from behind a tree. I saw it just standing there in a small pile of bush. It felt like it hadn't been there like two seconds ago. It's sitting in the same posture that a dog would have if you told it to sit, but it's facing me directly, pretty still.
At this point, I'm still because I'm a little dumbfounded at what I'm seeing. It doesn't immediately strike me as so odd because it's in a familiar shape like a canine, but the more I look at it, the weirder it looks. I immediately knew it wasn't my dog because my dog is a miniature black lab and this dog is very white. The color is almost like somebody had drowned it in paint, in white paint.
But additionally, the light scattered around it in a really strange way. It was like it was getting a light source that nothing else was. Like it was reflecting light that only it was receiving. It wasn't shining on anything else. I struggle to describe this because I haven't seen anything like it before or since, but it was as if it was putting out light that it shouldn't have.
If you've ever seen a bad Photoshop where the lighting on somebody's face is clearly much too bright for everyone else in the photo, but they just Photoshopped it in. It looked almost something like that. Looking at the thing, it was almost like it was a reverse creature that looks like it's made out of a shadow. Like this thing was made out of light, but it had distinct features.
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Chapter 5: What did Zach see in the clearing that night?
Do you know what went down at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real-life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks? The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death?
These stories and more are told in the new podcast, Hollywoodland, where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award-winning music and true crime podcast, Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.
It threw me off. I was on a bit of a march, you know, trying to get this unruly dog, and almost like it had interrupted me. You know, I stood there and stared at it, and I was trying to figure out, is this some coyote that I haven't seen before? You know, is this a wildlife that I haven't run into yet that doesn't seem...
Super likely, but then my second thought was, I still haven't seen or heard anything from my dog. It's actually quite quiet outside. I'm kind of protective of her, and I didn't want her to get hurt. She also has a bit of a habit of going after any wildlife she sees, so I was definitely worried that she might run after this thing. I kind of snap out of my stun,
and just in a bit of blind drive to protect my dog, I actually start approaching the thing. I start walking towards it because it's still in the area where my dog ran off to. It's like kind of the last direction I saw her run away to. So I keep going towards it and I get a little bit louder. and a little bit more of a frustrated tone. I'm calling out to my dog, you know, get back inside.
I don't know where you are. I'm kind of pulling out all the stops to try and get her to come back to me. She knows the word inside, so I was saying that a lot. I'm moving, I'm still just walking. I didn't want to run, but I have a good march moving towards this thing. And I'm calling out to Olive, and I got maybe...
I probably moved another, yeah, like 30 feet, maybe 10, yeah, 10 yards closer to it while being louder and a little bit more noticeable than I was before. But I'm still keeping one eye on this thing. It's so strange and I'm so kind of confused. I don't want to leave the line of sight, especially since it's been facing me the entire time. It's looking right at me.
So I'm looking right at the thing. I almost never break eye contact with it, really, despite all my yelling and marching. And that's about when the canine figure stood up, but not as a canine. It's almost like from the light, the figure of light that it was, it then stands up into the shape of a man. Man, it's weird.
It's almost like the shape of the man was already inside of the dog, and then it stood out of it like a bug coming out of a cocoon. but it didn't leave much left over. I didn't see anything left behind. I also didn't really see, I didn't see limbs or features halfway through transition because it was so fast. It was very, very smooth. He was standing straight up.
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