Dave and his high school friends take their first solo camping trip together out in rural Ojai. What begins as any normal night suddenly changes when the group is awoken by an unearthly sound. Years later, during his visit to the Integratron, Dave gains insight on what might have happened to him and his friends. 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: Who is David and what is his background?
My name's Dave. I live in the Bay Area. I just work as a software engineer up here just in the local tech hemisphere. I am actually from Southern California and grew up, I had a very normal childhood, had really no experiences in any sort of paranormal activity.
Grew up just kind of vaguely believing in this stuff and never really thinking that it would actually come to fruition or that I would ever really experience anything like this. But that all changed when in the summer of 2013, in between my sophomore and junior year of high school, me and my group of guy friends wanted to do like a little weekend getaway camping trip to Ojai, California.
We were working a little odd-end summer jobs, and so we were accruing like a little bit of money in allowances. So we wanted to kind of have that taste of freedom and like, oh, let's go on a trip all together. And we wanted to do a camping trip.
Chapter 2: What led David and his friends to choose Wheeler Gorge for their camping trip?
And so we looked at some of the local places like El Capitan Ranch on the coast, like central coast, and these kind of boutique camping experiences that are like a few hundred dollars a night. So we said, you know, screw that. We're just going to find the cheapest campsite that we can find, which was this place called Wheeler Gorge in Ojai. And it costs like $40 a night. So between...
A group of eight guys, we just like pulled together some money. It was about the most that we could afford at the time. These were all like my best guy friends. You know, even now, some of them were like, you know, groomsmen in my wedding. So it's my friends, Zach and Diego. Those are like my best friends. They both played football with me and they...
were, I wouldn't really call them tough, but they were certain, like I'm definitely more on the softer side, and they were the guys that kind of brought me out of my, you know, shy, sensitive shell, and really kind of be bros with me. There was Diego's brother, who's this very like stoic guy, and There was two other guys. One guy, we don't really keep in touch with him.
His name is Daniel, but he was a devoted, like sober guy, like didn't drink whatsoever. Like this guy was dead sober the entire time. And then there was two other guys, a guy named Al and a guy named Brian. They were in our friend group at the time as well. So we set out, we load up my old Toyota truck with all of the supplies.
We had like, I think, two racks of beer and we got like, you know, a bunch of hot dogs, you know, typical like teenage boy cuisine and whatnot. And we drove out, it was like in the summer, so it was like super, super hot in Ohio. It was like 90 to 100 degrees, super dry, barely any sun coverage at the campground, barely any people at the campground too. It was just like this...
you know, your typical campground, you know, supervisor guy that lives on premise. And he just came up to us and was like, hey, guys, you know, I basically called our bluff, was like, I know you guys have alcohol. I know you guys are underage. It's cool. I won't bother you. Just, like, don't burn down the forest and we'll be friends.
So we were definitely left to our own devices, and it was just so, so remote out there. And Wheeler Gorge is about 30 minutes inland from Ojai, so it's even deeper into the mountains and even more remote. You know, one of those places where you lose service about 20 minutes away from the campsite, and it's just kind of a dead zone. So the first day we were there, you know, nothing too crazy.
You know, we just played beer pong for like five hours or so, just hung out, you know, typical camping stuff. We all shared this one big family-sized tent that my buddy Zach had brought. So we're all kind of sardined next to each other, side by side. And because it was so hot, we also slept without the tarp on top of the tent.
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Chapter 3: What happened during the first night at the campsite?
Just because there was no moisture, we wanted to be able to see the stars and the whole sky. Because it was so remote, there was no light pollution, so we were able to do that. There was tons of raccoons, though, so the raccoons were just completely shredding through our garbage the entire night, so I remember being kept up by them.
My buddy Brian had snuck in a bag of hot Cheetos into the tent for, like, a little late-night snack, and anybody that's ever been camping knows that you don't keep any food in the tent just for that reason. So the first night, we actually got woke up by a family of raccoons breaking into our tent and undoing the zipper and, like, climbing all over us. So...
Yeah, it was just funny, all the commotion of that. You know how people say like, oh, raccoons have hands? They actually have like little hands. I felt one like step on my thigh and I felt like it was almost just like a shrunken human hand just pressed onto my thigh. So we woke up the next day, you know, had some breakfast, just kind of shook off the night before.
I think we ended up going on a hike, or at least trying to. It was so hot that we couldn't actually really go up on the mountain. And I'm kind of glad that we did not because I'm sure we probably didn't have the necessary supplies. We were all kind of worn out from the festivities of the day before. So I kind of took it a little bit easier, just listened to music.
I think at one point we actually went into town just to get more supplies, really just hung out and just chatted and goofed off like we normally did, but just camping.
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Chapter 4: What was the unearthly humming sound David and his friends experienced?
I was feeling pretty tired and just kind of over the festivities, so I just decided to take it easy and just help out making dinner and make some s'mores and whatnot and just kind of have a quieter evening in preparation of going home the next day. So we all went to bed pretty early, around like 10 or 11 or so.
I was pretty much smack dab in the middle of the tent, just so I had a pretty clear view looking up into the sky. I recall not being obstructed by any sort of trees or even like barely even like the tent poles or whatnot. So I had a pretty clear view of everything. We learned our lesson from the previous night. We got rid of all the food out of the tent.
We hung up our garbage bags on a nearby tree to get them out of reach for the critters and whatnot. So... around one or two in the morning, I hear more commotion. I wake up to my friend, I forget who, I think it was like my Diego's brother or something, like yelling, like, what the fuck is that? Like, what is that?
And my initial thought is like, Brian brought more hot Cheetos into the tent and something else, like a coyote got into the tent. So I woke up disgruntled, but when I actually became conscious, I realized, like, what was actually happening.
My sight and hearing are, like, the first to come, and I'm, like, curled up in my sleeping bag, so I couldn't really see, but I remember hearing this really, really loud humming frequency, like... like just this noise just ringing in my head. And one thing that I recall about this was that it wasn't like a loud volume like you'd hear at like a concert or whatnot, like an artificially loud volume.
It was like my entire body and skeleton was just resonating with this frequency. It was incredibly loud. It was so loud, it was inescapable. You couldn't plug your ears to get away from it. But it wasn't like a splitting, like overly loud concert sound. Like I'm a musician, I play live all the time. Our band, being in a metal band, we're pretty loud.
And so, you know, we wear ear protection because otherwise it's just like that super loud splitting, you know, ear ringing volume. But this didn't really have the same characteristics. This was something that like permeated my skull. Like I'd almost hear like my teeth rattling in my head. It was just inescapable, this loud, just humming noise.
You could try to plug your ears with your fingers and then hum. Like that. And you can hear the hum kind of rattle in your head. You really hear it inside of your head as opposed to this directional sound. sound that's coming into your ears. It's almost like this is coming from inside of your body and then spreading outwards out of your body. You just can't get away from it.
You just can't get it out of your head. And so I kind of wipe the sleep out of my eyes and I look up and there's just this incredibly bright light just beaming down directly on top of us. so bright that it was obscuring not only its own shape, but I couldn't really see anything around me. I couldn't really see any of the trees. I could barely even see my car that was parked 20 feet away.
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Chapter 5: What did David see when he looked up during the mysterious event?
It didn't look like it was tilting due to, like, balancing issues, you know, like a helicopter would. It was just perfectly static floating in the air, like, weightless, basically. But it was massive. The lights seemed to take up most of, if not all, of the surface area of the underneath of the craft, which I assume what we were looking at was the underneath of the craft.
But again, just due to the bright directional lights, I could only really make out just the general shape and the size of it. It looked to be pure black. Now, whether it was the material was black or it was, you know, refracting the light around it, like almost like cloaking. Who's to say? It looked like solid material. It didn't have any sort of shine like metal would. Almost like there's this...
artificial color black called Vantablack. It's the blackest black that there is. So it looked like it wasn't even really registering the light, just no reflection of the light at all. I remember feeling just like a huge knot in my chest of dread. Like not knowing what it was going to do, whether or not we were going to be okay. I remember thinking, like, are we about to be abducted?
Like, are we going to be, like, pulled into, like, a tractor beam or whatnot? So that's why it was really interesting when one of the other people there was saying that they felt like they were floating looking at it, like, almost, like, hypnotically. But I remember just laying there in paralyzed fear, knowing that We were at the mercy of it.
It knew we were there and at this point could do whatever it wanted with us. We had no cell service. We couldn't call anybody. I'm not even sure we would have had time to do anything. We just were, I remember just laying there paralyzed in fear, just like looking at it silently. We just sat there all transfixed in complete silence at this thing that was floating up over us.
And eventually after maybe a minute of it just hovering over us, it just slowly just floated away. As it started to move away from it, it almost felt like it had turned off the hypnotic qualities of the light. It noticeably got quieter immediately as it started to move. So it was almost like
It was beaming something at us, and then once when it deemed whatever it was doing, the task to be complete, then it turned off the hypnotic feeling of what it was doing. It didn't look like the beam was still even present at all when it started to move away. Again, when I said it, it kind of just turned it all off, or at least turned down the light and turned down the resonant frequency.
To go from experiencing something that is so inescapably loud to fading out at the end of a song, it was pretty mind-blowing. All that happened in the span of maybe 20 seconds to where it was directly over us, and then it was completely out of sight in sound.
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Chapter 6: How did the mysterious light and humming sound affect David and his friends?
about 20 seconds, but it didn't look like it was, it didn't like blast off or, you know, I seen the footage of UFOs where they will change direction and, you know, zip off at like unfathomable speeds. This one just seemed to kind of take its time and just move away. At that point, as crazy as it is to say, but I think we all just kind of went back to sleep. We all like made sure everyone was okay.
the guy that brought the hot cheetos into the tent slept through this whole thing. I don't know how he did, but at that point, I think he'd woken up and just be like, like, what? Like, what was happening, you guys? I heard something going on. Which is absurd. But... Yeah, I also remember there not being any sort of noise, any sort of crickets. I couldn't even hear the creek that was next to us.
It was almost just like this thing had just sucked up all the noise out of the environment, even after it was long gone. It was just a completely dead night.
All right, we'll be right back after this quick break. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey say that they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. When people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them.
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Hey, it's Morgan Absher. And I'm Kaylin Moore.
And we're the hosts of the Crime House original podcast, Clues. Every Wednesday, we sneak past the crime scene tape and open a new case file for some of the most gripping true crime cases.
While Kaylin pieces together the timelines and breaks down the hard facts of these cases, I'll be diving into the theories and pulling at the threads that may or may not add up.
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Chapter 7: What was the aftermath of the encounter and how did the craft depart?
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We woke up the next day. Everything was where it was in the campgrounds. Nothing was blown away or out of the ordinary. Our cars were still there. I even noticed that the trash bag that we'd hung up had been completely untouched by any sort of wildlife when the previous night we had tied up the trash can and the raccoons had torn it to shreds.
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Chapter 8: Who sponsors this episode and what other podcasts are promoted?
So it wasn't like we had done a spectacular job of tidying up, but just whatever. Yeah, nothing was disturbed at our campgrounds. It was almost like there wasn't even any wildlife around us in the first place. I was anticipating some sort of ear ringing.
I was fortunate enough to have a childhood where my parents really valued music and live music, so they took me to concerts all the time when I was a kid. And the next day after a show, my ears would always be ringing. We didn't wear earplugs at the time, so ears would always be ringing. This, no ringing in the ears whatsoever. It was almost like it never had happened.
My hearing was perfectly fine. It should have been affected and impacted. I've noticed tinnitus from way quieter things. And yeah, this did not cause any sort of damage to my ears. We just silently packed up just all the gear and whatnot and then we went home. We never really talked about it.
Until like a few years later when we were all like hanging out at like a party or something like that and then we were sharing stories and whatnot and then... One of the guys brought it up and said, guys, remember we saw that UFO on the camping trip in Ojai? And I just remember a kind of a hush falling over the friend group, which was uncharacteristic because myself and my friends are pretty loud.
And, you know, when we're telling stories together, we're pretty boisterous and laughing and whatnot and like yelling over each other. So I just remember everybody just kind of exchanging glances as if to say, Like, oh, shoot, like, you guys remember that too. It wasn't just me, you know?
It was a really sobering moment because I think all of us realized that what we had actually witnessed was actually reality. It was unexplainable, but it was certainly something that we had witnessed and we could no longer, you know, write it off as just a dream or something else that would be more easily explained. We never really got into the specifics of it.
I think we were talked about, you know, the noise and the lights and whatnot. And we all concurred that we had witnessed the same things. I don't... We never really talked about it in detail, which I think we should at this point. But...
Yeah, we definitely agreed on the overall details of the UFO, but I do remember one detail that my friend felt like he was having this out-of-body experience, especially when looking at the lights and hearing the resonant frequency. but he just felt like his body was floating up.
And then once when the aircraft started moving away and we were no longer like in its trance, he remembered like falling quickly back down to earth. Almost like somebody dropped him from like eight feet above and just he hit the ground. Like he said he could feel the force of his self like hitting the ground. I think it wasn't really awkward.
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