Episode 446: Listener Tales 72: Dream, Astral Projections & Alternate Dimensions

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey Weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna.

And this is morbid.

It's a listener tale, which means it's brought to you, for you, by you, from Fuck, it's brought to you by you, for you, from you, and all about you. Now that we don't do them every week, I don't know what the fuck to say. Ah, but here's your treat.

This is our treat. it's everyone's treat. it's just a treat, treat, treat.

Say, treat again, treat.

Yeah, so it's a listener tale, and I feel like it's been a hot second. I know. I'm like, so excited. We haven't done them for a month, I know.

I miss doing them more often, but you know, that's the way the cookie crumbles. And here we are, we're doing one, so today we're going to be doing a theme.

It's dreams and astral projections. Now you might be like, what? But here we are, that's what it is, y'all. But remember when I told you guys that I asked people in my dream what day it was? And everybody got real mad at me and it was real weird.

Well, some of you have also had similar experiences with lucid dreaming, and I am so fascinated with dreams and lucid dreaming. I feel like there's something more to it that we can't understand. I kind of think that, like you go to a different realm when you're dreaming, I kind of love that.

I think you might. Last night in my dream, John did stand up comedy. That's very true, and that's another realm, that's another fucking realm.

Although I think he would be a great stand up comic because he has a great voice for it. He does y'all love his voice. It's true, I do too.

Like, I'm hearing it, but that's it. That's the only reason. Just his voice, his face is great, too.

But, like his voice, a plus primo, a plus schiffskies.

So I'm going to do the first one, and the first one is called, Wow, I'm just kidding, wow.

Toxic, I'm bullying you, stop bullying me. So this first one is entitled. Me and my kid had the same nightmare and lucid dreaming glitch in the matrix. So this one says PDF attached.

Old school smiley emoji I love that and I totally forgot to say my name, but it's Molly lol. It's fine to use.

Thank you Molly. Hey pod girlies, first of all, I'm going to do the mandatory fangirl thing. I'd say you can skip this part, trim it down, et cetera, but we all know what you'll say.

Never. And she wrote that I wrote this one time, with just the glitch part. But at the time, I was pretty new to the listenertail portion of the pod. for some reason, I really slept on the listenertails at first.

A lot of people did, and that's okay. It's all right, because you all came and you all said, Wow, I slept on that. A lot of people like to sleep on the listenertails.

It's true, you know? But now that I've come to the light, I'm resubmitting with Times. New Roman Size 14, double space PDF for your eyeballs viewing pleasure. Atta Girl, look at you, Molly.

Also, I can't remember if it was Ash or Elena who said this. But I was listening to one of your pods recently on that spooky dookie Romanian Hell forest. And one of y'all said Through it was me. One of y'all said, You thought the words to Radioactive was ready to rock you, ready to rock you? That was Ash.

Always ash Well, I thought it was ready.

I love that. Oh, and my late husband alive, obviously alive. At the time, I'm so sorry was like, the song title is literally radioactive. We knew that, Molly.

We knew, but we didn't care. So anyways, you're not alone. We were like, why is this song called Radioactive? When it's ready, Know how I feel, or Ready to rock you?

So that said, obviously I lost my husband. I'm so sorry. big hugs coming your way. Before his death, I was a major true crime junkie for a while.

After he died, it was sudden I'm the one who found him and I had to call 9-1-1 and all that fun, new trauma, shit, oh my God, I know.

We just said, I'm sorry, but like, holy shit, that's on another level, I can't imagine, I'm so sorry. I couldn't really stomach true crime, death related things or 9-1-1 calls, which was just not like myself as a tried and true crime junkie.

I don't blame you at all. No, I don't either. And to be honest, I still don't like 9-1-1 calls. That's why we honestly, we don't really. We never put the audio to them because I think that's a really vulnerable time in someone's life is making a 9-1-1 call.

It's one of the worst things you'll ever have to do. And even like transcripts of them every once in a while we'll talk about. But they bum me out. It's sad, cause it really is.

You're looking at the worst moment of someone's life. Yeah, so I got that your pod helped me get my feet wet after he died. And ease back into one of my biggest interests while keeping it lighthearted and respectful. And I love that about you guys so much.

Thank you, that's like a really big compliment. It is. I know that shit's heavy to share, but sharing heavy shit here really do be the brand. So ayo.

But yeah, I just wanted to share how much y'all helped me get, helped me in getting me to feel more like myself. After the hardest thing I ever went through. More more recently, I was diagnosed with this ultra rare pokemon of a metabolic genetic thing called CPT2, which makes me super weak and causes heart issues. Blah, blah, blah. I did not say that that's in the actual writing, yes.

Don't cry for me, Argentina. I'm so sorry that you're having to deal with this though, I know, and anyway, now I'm getting some treatment, yay.

And less weak and trying to get into the gym, and me, a lard ass, same thoroughly looks forward to the gym. Because you live in my ear holes for an hour and I get endorphins, slash, dopamine. Win, win, I love you.

And good for you, also good for you, man. Yeah, it's hard to motivate yourself, it's really harsh.

I ain't gone in about two weeks. And it's hard to motivate yourself anyways. But motivating yourself when you're going through the trauma that you went through and also dealing with some disorder that you're dealing with, that makes you weak. I can't imagine exactly.

And it sounds like you have a kid, and that's a whole other set of stressors. And like busyness, you know, essentially Molly, we think you're the baddest bitch, essentially Molly, the baddest bitch.

Here's your card. Bum. Anyway, enough about my trash pile. We all got one. Let's give the people the weird shit they came here for.

Recently, I caught the listener tale where y'all were talking about lucid dreaming by accident. And I remembered that. You said to ask the people in your dream the date and time in your dream if you do lucid dream by accident. And to report back, well, flash forward to January 10th, 2023, in the year of our Lord, that's Drew's birthday.

I love that in the Year of Our Lord, I had a dream and that's how I know you're our people. Yeah, like, just the way you talk.

Oh, yeah, I had a dream, and I actually lucid dreamed, which I typically don't do. But I guess I was doing so because, hey-o. I had a kidney infection that had me waking up four times a night to pee and was disrupting you girls rhythm. In a big way. The worst kidney infections are the fucking worst.

Perfect storm for lucid dreaming zero out of ten do not recommend trying at home. So, for additional context, before I actually get into this dream, I feel like it's important to note that I have a desk job and stream true crime, slash, spook pods. Eight plus hours a day while I work, commute in the shower for leisure, et cetera, and never have nightmares, not even after hours of streaming Jack the Ripper content, if you know, you know.

Or if I, as I like to say, icky-ick, I also need to provide some context that will make sense later. As a teen, I was sent to one of those Make Your Troubled Kid Better camps that abuse kids. Oh, that's fucking terrible. I was held there for over two years in Wyoming and it was all around. it was all around an awful time filled with abuse and physical punishments.

That's awful. I've healed that part of my life and haven't had nightmares about it in a couple of years. This happened over a decade ago. You truly are like a badass you are.

To get through all you have, that's why we crowned you. Side note Alayna I had a hardcore run-in with a moose while I was there. Oh my god, me and the moose had a yelling contest to decide who got to keep the camp.

I won and didn't get speared by a moose, so again, this was a win-win. Oh my God, you get better and better, Molly, line by line.

What the hell? So back to the dream I dreamt that I was working in a daycare. I've never been a daycare worker I am, but a lowly insurance agent lol.

But I was, and I am a new employee at this daycare. But I recognized some of the faces there. No one significant. But the one that stands out is just some random girl I worked with two years ago who smelled of cat pee and had clickety-clackety nails. And a Jack Skellington backpack. Slash purse for every occasion, formal or otherwise. Huh? I love that, what a gal.

What a gal. I realized I was dreaming and in my dream. We were locking up the daycare and walking outside. Some employees were almost were already almost at their car. But I was bringing up the rear with a couple of others who were showing me how to lock up. I got outside the daycare and looked around and said to the people nearby me, what's the date and time? The people stopped in their tracks and were like, Why do you need to know?

At this point, I was like, Nah, y'all bitches, be shiesty, and I said very loudly, loud enough for the other people already at their cars to hear me. Does anyone have the date and time? And everyone stopped in their tracks and walked back to me slowly. Like freaking zombies or bots, or some other third thing that is spooky, dooky and undesirable. I looked around again and repeated at a normal volume, What is the date and time?

At that point, the person I used to work with looked at me. And their neck and head twitched to the right like a malfunctioning robot. And said, You can give me 10 pushups for asking that. This was extra strange because this is something that would be said back at the teen camp I went to as a kid in Wyoming. Ooh, I don't like that at all. I got chills, my body did the womb.

I didn't do the pushups good for you. I just challenged firmly, Why won't anyone tell me the date and time? One of the employees looked at a clipboard and said, it's on the list, and another person looked at me and said, she's not on the list. And then I woke up in a cold sweat, about to piss myself.

That is spooky, Ooky. What the fuck? Part of me wonders if it's a nightmare just because of having remembered what was said in the podcast. But also, I listened to spooky pods, far more gruesome on the Reg and never have nightmares about the content. So I feel like I just real life pissed off the simulation, I think so.

That's what I felt, I think so, because I didn't feel like it was just something seeping into my subconscious. No, I'm sure it seeped in for me to ask, but the response was too strange.

It was too strange for me. And in your case, you didn't even know, like, what the response was going to be. Yeah, like, I didn't want to know. And the only thing that I heard later was somebody got like a even weirder response, and my response was more just like people getting angry at me.

Right? And then I kept switching into other like scenarios. And I just, and even John, got angry at me in my dream when I asked him, I want to do it, yeah.

If you thought that was weird, hold on to your butt cheeks, sisters, it gets weirder. Holden For context on this second story about my weird ass dream encounters. This happened a couple of months after my husband passed away.

He passed in the bed in our home, so I had moved a new bed into the living room. So I couldn't because I couldn't bring myself to go into the bedroom. Oh, my girls were sleeping in their bedroom again at this point.

And it was a catty corner to the doorless bedroom that was not, in fact, a bedroom. Additional context I have no bigger fear than snakes. When I was in Wyoming, I was almost bitten by more rattlesnakes than I can count.

I live in Florida and I've walked outside to find snakes sunbathing before and have noped all the way back in my home. And jumped onto the kitchen table behind a closed door with the snake outside for safety. This is not a she is not a Slytherin me, is she?

I'm a Slytherin girl, I am not, anyway I fell asleep, aren't you? A hufflepuff? Sure am.

Anyway, I fell asleep like any other night that I can recall from those days and drifted off to sleep. In my dream. I saw my youngest daughter, Ireland. Oh, I love that, that is a beautiful name. The way you spell it is really cool.

I love that. Oh, that's really pretty. Then four standing in front of me. We seemed to be in some type of dense jungly garden. She was almost glowing, just angelic-like and precious, parental bias aside.

Out of nowhere, a python slithered into view and began to approach Ireland as though it were sizing her up, and it prepared to strike, detaching its jaw. Oh my God, right. As it began to lunge, I dove in front of Ireland. Because you're a mom, Hell yeah.

Reached my hand out and grabbed the massive Nope noodle by the neck obsessed Nope noodle. I love that. In my dream, all I could see was fangs and jaws, and I jolted awake in a cold sweat.

That's really scary now. I'm a spiritual person, I've had many instances of premonitions or encounters with spirit. Especially my hubs, who still hangs around for chats and a joke every now and then. When a dream is significant, I feel like it just hits different and this one hit different. I know exactly what you mean.

You can't really describe it, but it does. It's got a different vibe to it. No sooner than I sat up in bed and began to process, I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet running through my gaping doorhole and pouncing onto my bed. Ireland said I had a nightmare and crawled under my covers. I snuggled her close and said, Me too nugget.

Do you want to talk about it? She thought about it for a moment, then said, No, do you? I smiled and said, No, I don't think so. Maybe another time. Well, we eventually drifted back off to sleep and went about our routine for the day.

The kids loaded into my late husband's car, affectionately referred to as Bessie. Then eventually Bussie, then still later, Struggle Bussie. we cranked Struggle Bussie a few times and proceeded with school drop-offs, work, school pickups, returning back to our house. We didn't speak of the night before or our nightmares, we just went about our day as I was cooking dinner. Ireland said to me, I had a nightmare last night.

I stopped cooking and sat down on the kitchen floor to be at her level, asking, Do you want to talk about it? You're such a good mama, I know, like, being at her level and stuff like, she's a really good mama. And she said, Yeah, I think I'm ready now.

I asked her to tell me what was bothering her, and she whispered I had a dream about a snake.

Chills. I hugged her and said, Oh no, what happened with the snake? and Ireland replied The snake was about to eat me. Then you saved me with your hands and a big push, Oh my God.

I still have no idea what this dream means. It feels super significant, but I have no idea what to make about it. And I think about it often. I don't even know how to effectively segue here other than saying, Thank you so much for reading this. If it makes it on the pod, I will cock out my pantaloons.

Love you guys and thanks for brightening my day. Thank you for brightening our day. Oh, and here's a follow-up. Shameless plug. Y'all inspired me to start a podcast with my best friend Toby.

We are pre-recording now and can be found on Facebook and Instagram. We are called Don't Tell My Therapist Podcast, Oh my God, and are in the recording stages. But we're about to drop our first episode, which we'll talk about. Robert, the world's most haunted doll, and Carl Tanzler, the doctor who mummified his patient and kept her in his bed for seven years. There you go.

So keep it weird, but not so weird that.

But not so weird that you have the same exact dream as your daughter and then you don't even know why. And you don't know what snakes symbolize in a dream. But I've googled it for you and I'm going to tell you in a second and then just don't keep it that weird. But apparently, snakes symbolize a person in the dreamer's life who exhibits low, dirty, toxic or poisonous behavior. So maybe it's like you saved your daughter, or even saved your family from some kind of toxic behavior.

Look at that, I wonder if did you cut anybody out of your life at that time? Or like, Oh, I want to know, or I don't know. Did you like avoid a job that you were gonna take, or like something like that?

Yeah, there has to be something, you know. Also, I just have to put this out here because you provided us with some photos. One, the cover art for your podcast is magnifique. I. I would listen to that without knowing anything about it.

That cover art is elite, I love that cover art so much. Mikey, look at this holy shit, I am obsessed.

Mikey has his entire mouth, just like, Oh, like him, shook, I am, I have, I can't. I'm so obsessed with it. Also, you and your husband are the fucking cutest couple ever. your husband you're, and I love you're calling him the OG hubs.

Oh my god. Og Hubs and he does. It looks like an angelic vinyl album cover you and your hubs, and then you said that you're chapter two, John.

You took advice and found a quality good. John. Oh my god, like you are hilarious. you guys are adorable.

I'm just like, Wow, I love you a lot. I love you. oh my God and your girls. I love you forever. Oh my God, stop it.

And you and your friend, Oh my god, these children are fucking adorable. Molly. We're in love with you and your family and Snake baby and all of it. Oh my God. And that means I think you did. you must have done something that you didn't know.

You did, yeah, like to save you and your girls from somebody or something that would have been poisonous. This is from the cut, it says. If the dream was terror-inducing, start with how the dream made you feel.

That will tell you how urgently you want to identify the potential stressor in your life and address it. A snake within a nightmare is a very good indication that your subconscious feels there's a toxic person in your life. That is an immediate threat. Meaning their toxic behavior has reached a point where your subconscious level has had it and it needs to slap you into attention, there you go, I think that's what it is, Ma'am. So take a look and also take a look Queen Molly.

I'm excited to listen to Don't Tell my therapist podcast because, holy shit, I know, let me see. I'm wondering if it has come out yet, and either way, I'm waiting for it. I'm going to listen to it on the way home if it came out today.

And if it's already out, I'm listening anyway, don't tell my therapist, we're going to check and we're going to tell you if it's out. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh, oh, oh, no, not yet, no.

Okay, well, we're no, we're waiting with bated breath. I'm waiting, put it on your to be listened.

Come on, Molly and Toby, let's do this, Molly and Toby. That was such a good story, thank you.

The best cover art ever? Oops, oops, oops. Exactly okay.

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My next one is called Listener Tale Glitch in Time, and I can already see that it is a bordered PDF. And I am literally so excited right now. Oh my goodness, it's bordered with spider webs, it sure is, and then there's a little spider on the slide. I love it, it's adorable. It says Hello Attached is my tale about a glitch in time.

It is about a 10-minute read and is double is a double-spaced putt-a-fuh. Also attached is my best Tinder pic and my cat who helped me write this. I'm obsessed with all of you. That's a great Tinder pic. Your tattoo is gorgina.

Oh, is that Medusa? I'm obsessed with your cat. What's its name? And thank you for this, it says. Welcome to your worst nightmare ladies.

Oh, I'm excited, I'm obsessed with this border. OMg. Hey weirdos and spooky best friends Ash and Elena and Debdeb, I'm Liz and you can use my name. I found your podcast when you were only at episode 5..

Whoa, I especially like to listen when I'm feeling down or off. Just because you are both so kind and genuinely good people. Thank you. And we share a love of all things weird. And it's nice to find a place where you feel understood. Don't listen to anybody about the underwater sound quality.

I think, bitch, learn to swim because you guys are so amazing, thank you, I found you guys because of my long commute to work years ago. I hated driving and needed a kick in the pants to want to get in my car and consider my pants kicked.

Hell yeah, I look forward to driving now, even in the cold winters of the Albany area. That's a shitty drive, I know that, yeah.

I work in an emergency room and I'm soon to be an emergency room nurse. Oh bad, hell yeah, another Queen.

Ready, here's your crown, another queen. Twinkle, twinkle, I said me.

I don't really know what that means, but it means something. It's magic, you know? But anyway, we can't explain it. Yeah, it's just me.

And a few of my co-workers listened, too. Hey yo Elena, I swear your second book will be pre-ordered so fast the internet will explode. Yes, the first one was amazing and I read it to everyone.

Oh, thank you. The second book is really good, too. I started reading it.

And Ash, congrats on your engagement. Thanks. I've listened to all the listener tales and love them all so much. you are all so talented. Lots of PS and an O-I.

That was my cat on the keyboard. He's helping, I'll leave it. Thank you for leaving, thank you.

I love cats, I love it. When you mentioned wanting stories about glitches and time, this forgotten memory popped into my head and I figured I would share. Let me set the scene. Also ADHD brain warning.

I feel that it's maybe 2017, and I was about 21, in my third year of college. At a huge university, I'm talking like, 30,000 undergrads, damn, that's big.

My major was medicinal chemistry because I wanted to be a doctor at the time. But fuck that for real. I feel that that's a lot of school, I feel that as well. Not long after this incident, excuse me, I joined an ambulance crew and my goals changed because I realized I was an adrenaline junkie.

You're a badass anyway. There were huge lecture halls with many people in each class, even the very specific stupid math ones like this one class I was taking. It was like analytical chemistry or something. It's a normal day in Buffalo, the sky is gray.

It's still too cold to not wear a huge jacket, and the wind is blowing your hair around and numbing your face. I'm there, I walk from my little apartment to class, which takes about 25 minutes. I get to the room where my lecture is held and take off my big coat and attempt to fix my hair. Who am I trying to impress, though?

These nerds. So I forgot the hair and pull out my notebook. Oh so I forget the hair and pull out my notebook with my frozen hands. I forgot gloves again today.

I'm not one of those girls who prints everything out and writes notes on the provided lecture slides from online. That would be too easy. I have my blank notebook, page and pen and take my own goddamn notes because my goddamn ADHD brain would never let me pay attention. Otherwise, it works for me and I don't know.

I'm not a doctor lol. I also never know what day it is. And I like to write the date at the top. So I flip to the last page with the notes and see that the date was two days ago. It's a Monday slash Wednesday type deal in today's Wednesday. I scan the top of the page for the date and my eyes stop on October 18th, my brow creases and the world stops for a second.

That date seems wrong. I dig my phone out and touch the screen. It is October 18th today. Oh weird, I must have written the wrong date two days ago, so no big deal.

That's definitely something I would do. I look down at the rest of the page and read the first thing I wrote down. Just as the professor starts his lecture, it is word for word, the same sentence, he says, but in my handwriting, and I don't remember writing it. What? I'm big confused at this point, y'all.

He goes on and I already know everything he's teaching somehow, and I already wrote notes for it. Even the tangents he goes off on and the jokes he tells, I somehow remember hearing what?

He references a show that will be airing a new episode. That night or the next night that I also watch and tell me why I have a memory of watching it already. I'm looking around the big lecture hall and no one else is confused. This goes on and on, and I'm just following along with pages and pages of already written notes. At this point, I would be in a cold sweat.

I would be like, losing my shit. There's even little pictures drawn in the margins, like how all my notes are. The lecture ends and I turn to my friend near me and say, Wow, that was weird. He literally gave the same lecture on Monday. And she creased her brow and said, what? No, he didn't.

That was all new to me. What I would cry? I would just cry, cry, cry, cry, cry. It's been seven days since I last cried, but I would cry, cry, cry, cry, cry.

We have a sign, we have a sign in the pod lab to see how many days it's been since I've cried. We're going on a week right now, baby, so don't make me cry, so don't make me cry.

Don't make me cry, Argentina. So I turned the pages back to Monday's notes, and there they are different than today's. I'm very confused, but also pissed that I didn't need to be on campus today because I already knew everything. I didn't feel a deja vu feeling that I had experienced everything before. And I don't remember attending that specific lecture before either. But I had all the knowledge and notes I would have acquired from going. That's a glitch in the fucking matrix.

Yeah, the fuck it is. I never want to experience a glitch in the matrix. Not like that, for sure, because I'll feel like I had gone around the bend or something. So the rest of the day was also not weird at all, except for the show that aired the next day.

I watched it with a group of friends and I could recall that I had seen that episode before, even though it had never aired before. What, Walking Dead? Maybe nothing like that has ever happened to me before or since. I'm getting goosebumps right now, just thinking about it.

Did I travel to a new timeline or just pass through real quick and I don't know what's happening? Please help. Maybe a Liz from another timeline was just trying to help a girl out with these notes. God knows I needed it. I'm very connected to the spirit realm and very often have paranormal experiences, but this was just very different.

I guess I just pushed it down where all my other emotions go lol and decided not to process it. And then I eventually forgot about it for years. I figured no one would even believe me if I told them anyway, so I've kept this one deep inside until now. Hell yeah, keep it weird, but not so weird that you get to class already. Have the notes because some weird glitch in the time, but you have no memory of actually taking said notes. So you really should just have stayed home. I need to know what all that kind of shit is.

Like, I just need someone to be like, Yep, it's a simulation, everybody. But they won't. But no one will tell us, they will never tell us, no one will tell us.

It's scary and it bums me out. I don't like it. Oy Well, okay.

We're gonna move on because that's scary and I don't want to experience it. I'm freaked out. We're gonna move on to ListenerTale's alternate universe. When my brother and I found a road that doesn't seem to exist, I am quite literally so fucking excited.

So we're getting better. It says. Hey y'all, the name is Joseph. Feel free to use it because this will absolutely earn me some big bragging rights if you choose to read it on the pod. Well, bragging rights achieved there.

It is first things first. I love the show. Ya boy has ADHD. That must be the theme, too. It has frequent episodes of Hyperfocus, of which Y'all's podcast has been the subject of since April of last year. Excuse me.

That's coming up on a record time for my obsessions. If you're wondering what currently holds the record, it's Hamilton same. At some point. I watched it on Disney Plus with my family and then started listening to it on Spotify. During a 13-hour drive to Florida to work in the Everglades National Park, that's so cool.

We saw a pelican. oh, we saw a pelican kill itself there by jumping into a crocodile. Oh, no, but that's a story for another day. All right, anyway. I became obsessed with Hamilton, memorized the entire thing word for word, learned pretty much every historical discrepancy between the musical and the actual life and events of Hamilton's life.

My lovely wife even got me on the biography.

Cherno wrote. That inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to write the now world-famous musical and took me to see it in real life a couple of years back. She's really the best shout out to real life. All that to say that y'all really might beat my Hamilton obsession record.

Hell yeah, anyway, I realize I'm rabbit trailing here. I've wished for a while that I had a tale to send y'all. So when you told us to send in tales of traveling to alternate universes. I got extremely excited because I have a chance to talk about this. I posted this on Reddit on our glitch in the Matrix some years ago. It's like a Reddit thread some years ago. And it ended up being talked about on a few YouTube channels, posted on blogs. And no one really seemed to have a satisfactory explanation for it.

Well, shit, I've attached the story itself on a 14-size double-space putafa, per tradition. Enjoy, I love you, Joseph. This is going to sound like a load of crock shit, but I swear up and down that this actually happened.

About four years ago, closer to 10 now if you're reading this in 2023.

Damn, I'm confused. I lived in this fairly small, sly speck of a town at the time. I had lived there for about 12 years, so I knew my way around. Our house was about a mile and a half away from the nearest neighborhood.

Our mom intentionally picked that house due to the lack of neighbors. Your mom and I have that in common. It was tucked away, that was great, It was tucked away on a back road with the woods surrounding it.

Every now and then, I liked to take walks with my little brother, who at the time was about 13.

We decided to do just that. We headed up the road and decided to try a new path or a new clearing that we hadn't discovered yet. When we noticed something a little shocking just off the road that led almost directly to the neighborhood, there was a brand new paved road.

No, there wasn't every road in that part of town was gravel road, so seeing an out-of-place paved road was pretty unusual. We stared at it for a while and came to the conclusion that it must have been made within the last few days. Due to the modern but slow growth of the town, however, we had no explanation for how they did it so fast, we decided to explore it a bit.

I remember as soon as we set foot on the road, the air became notably colder by at least five degrees. The road itself was a black pavement, but no dividing lines. It was surrounded by some thick red trees that resembled redwoods, but they were too short and non-native to our state, Southern Arkansas. We walked on the road for about three miles until we decided to head back due to it getting dark. When we got off the road, we felt the temperature go back up.

My brother and I agreed to explore it the next day. Also, my brother ever so kindly reminded me that I left off a key detail. When I posted this on Reddit some years ago. As we were headed back, something kind of odd ran across the road. It stopped maybe 80 feet in front of us and at first glance it looked like a deer, but after a moment we realized it was something else.

Was it a not deer? a not deer? It had short, dark, very, or, excuse me, it had short, dark, far. Very large black eyes and a mouth that looked, for lack of a better description, too human for comfort. The body of a regular, white-tailed deer in four long legs. It briefly looked at us, lifted itself onto its back legs most of the way, sniffed the air and then booked it into the woods.

That was a not deer, that was a not deer, my friend. We had lived in the area for some time at that point and thought we were familiar with the wildlife. But we had never seen anything like that then or since then. Whatever it was, I really don't think it meant to harm us. But more so, wondered why these two hairless apes were gawking at it? Yeah, right.

At roughly, because it was probably like, you're in an alternate dimension, my dudes, you don't belong here. At roughly noon the following day, we set back out to explore this place, only to discover that the entire road was now missing. When I say missing, I mean. The trees that were cleared to make it had apparently grown back, with no sign of the redwood-like trees.

We even began to explore the woods once more, but only to find no sign that it had ever existed. When we asked our parents about it, they said they knew nothing about a new road work being done near us. I've searched and searched for this place, as has my brother. We even went as far as finding some older maps of the area, but nothing listed any road there. We did, however, ask some of the long timers of the town and one gentleman that we'll call Mr.

A said he thought he remembered finding a same or similar road as a boy in that area. But said he didn't think too much about it. As it was many, many years back for him, honestly, I'm stumped. I don't even live in that state anymore, nor does my brother. But we've talked about going back home at some point to see if we can track it down once more. Maybe in the era of smartphones, we can actually get some photographic evidence. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

If y'all are ever in the greater Atlanta area, where my wife and I now reside, hit us up and we can tell you where to go. You probably won't have a stolen organ. Oh no, I don't want a stolen organ. That is so weird, it's absolutely terrifying.

These are the kind of things that just stump me. How do you explain these certain glitches? That it's like, this existed, then, it didn't, I don't know.

And people have had these things happen before. Like this is a very common thing. That somebody will be like, I was here and I remember things happening like that, where I'll be like, No, I am 100 sure that there was a road here, there was something here. Well, and it's even like the Mandela effect.

Like, when you look at like, the Bernstein Bears or the Bernstein Bears. And it's like. I was looking at a TikTok of it the other day and there were so many of them and I was like, No, that's not the correct version, it's not the Bernstein Bears, it's the Bernstein bears.

Get out of here and then there's, like so many other ones. Yes, it's fucking weird, dude, it is so weird.

Everybody would know, Okay, you heard it here first. Government. No, I'm just kidding.

It's not even the government, all right.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a love-hate relationship. En route to the next location.

What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

Or a corrupt police coverup, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery. join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, she's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls.

With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah.

It's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

All right, well, my next one is Grandma Cassidy as a Banshee, or 9-11 morning dream. Damn, I'm scared. I'm assuming these are two different things. I don't know. It says Hello ladies.

I've been listening to your podcast for over a year and I love it. Thank you, thank you. As a former prosecutor, I really enjoy your take on cases. It's refreshing to hear the not lawyer opinions on all things morbid.

I wish more of the lawyers I work with had your common sense. Thanks, I know your witty banter really makes your podcast outstanding. I have an hour-long commute and listening to you both take a deep dive into some of the gnarliest murders. Helps me pass the time as I idle in the Hugh Carey tunnel and mentally count down my days until retirement.

I also love all things spooky, so I really enjoy the episodes on the paranormal and the ghosts and the ghouls. My husband is not a believer, but I am, and I have had some experiences that make me a true believer, especially in ghosts. Ooh, I'm sorry, I have to readjust it, you might hear it.

Okay, squeakity, squeak, squeak. Even though I have a new chair. It took me a bit to want to write this tale because I cry almost every time when I think about what happened. I'm dyslexic, so my spelling is even worse when I'm an emotional wreck. I proofread this several times, so I hope it's legible.

Already I'm like, what dyslexia? Yeah? I have attached here a double-spaced Puttapha 14 fonted Times New Roman. Hell yeah, I would be honored if you read it on one of your listener tales.

You can use my name. Below is a photo of myself and Gavin at the last wedding we attended together. It has been 21 years since he passed away. Aw, I'm sorry, but he will always hold a special place in my heart.

Keep it weird, stay your awesome selves. Love Bridget. Bridget, you're so cute. I love you.

All right, let me see here. Grandma Cassidy Azebanshi. I'm in. My grandmother passed away when I was eight years old. I'm 54 now, so it was a long ass time ago.

You are amazing. I'm the youngest of her 22 grandchildren. We are Irish Catholic, so every sperm is sacred. I am one of five, my mom's one of seven, and grandma was one of 13. Damn.

Holy fucking shit, you get the mathematically progression. And perhaps with each passing generation, sperm was deemed less sacred.

Imagine if my uncle had not been gay, I might have been, I might have had even more cousins. Damn, his funeral is another great tale, not spooky or supernatural, just hilarious. Maybe one day I will send in a putafa on that tale.

It is a doozy, why not? However, I digress. I was the last person in my family to see her alive. My grandmother lived in a neighborhood for just a few years before she passed away.

Or lived in my neighborhood, excuse me, she's lived in a neighborhood, she lived in a neighborhood. Just a few years. I was like, Wow, only a few years.

Other than that, she was living in the woods, lived in my neighborhood. She had spent most of her adult life in the house where she raised her massive brood. One day she was walking to her house from church because it was a day with a Y in it, and, of course, church, church.

And she was hit in the head with an object and robbed, lobbed. She was in her late 70s at the time and was placed in a medically induced coma. Somebody beat and robbed a late 70s woman. What the fuck is wrong with people?

Who are you? On her way home from Church, Gross? After this horrific attack, she was finally convinced to sell her home of more than 60 years and move closer to my family. She moved into a row house a few blocks away from us.

She was unhappy because she missed her butcher, her church, and especially the St. Jerome's Golden Age Society and the Rosary Society, because church, because church. She did not venture out much.

Aw, and was a little depressed. Oh, that makes me so sad, bums me out really hard. I just want to fix this for her.

The day she passed, she uncharacteristically did go out, she went to the bank, and then she came to my grammar school. I remember it was a Wednesday because we had a half day. So the public school kids could receive religious instruction and the Rosary society could meet in our cafeteria. Sorry to bombard you with all the Catholic stuff, but my mama loved her Rosary. In fact, she often mistak-.

She was often mistaken for a nun, not the habit-wearing type, but the groovy, liberated, post-Vatican tube polyester suit-wearing type of nun. That type of nun, you know, just that kind. And my pops loved to complain about the long-ass sermons.

This is a favorite pastime among grumpy Irish Catholic men. Truth, anyhoo, I was the teacher's pet. Yes, that one Hermione had nothing on me.

You're raising your hand, like, Do we have homework? Over the weekend, I was at a class running an errand for my teacher and I saw Grandma in the cafeteria. I waved to her and kept walking. I figured she was there for the Rosary Society meeting. And I had a very important missive to deliver the principle, and I was teacher's pet.

I had a reputation to uphold and I was a massive nerd. It's Leviosa, not Leviosa. I was happy that she decided to join the other purple-haired ladies for some stale crumb cake, wheat coffee and a few rounds of hail, Marys, Hail, Mary, hail.

By the time I got home from school, she was gone. Saddest part was she died while unlocking her door, so we had to call the medical examiner. Grandma and I were close. I loved her costume, jewelry and sleeping at her house when my parents went out, which wasn't often since. My mom always wore a girdle and it took about a week for her to get in and out of that bad boy. I slept in grandma's bed and I remember being fascinated by her extremely sunken eyes.

You know, same. They were literally in the back of her skull and then sank even further. When she slept. She looked like the crypt keeper. I was terrified and fascinated, all at the same time.

You're like yo. My grandma's eyes was deep.

I'm crying those eyes, though. What can eyes do, Nana?

Okay, fast forward to 2001. Oh, we should stop laughing. Oh no, it's 2001. Oh yeah.

That's not good, that's not good. You were correct in saying we should stop laughing. Fast forward to 2001. It's important to note I never dreamed about grandma until the year 2001..

I live in New York City and in 2001 I was living with Gavin, who was a Brit. In the summer of 2001, my dad got very sick with cancer. I'm sorry he had his lymph nodes removed and the surgery really took its toll. We were all really worried that he might not survive.

In early September 2001, I dreamt about my grandmother in the dream. My grandmother was lying on the floor of an all-white room wrapped in a shroud, and my mother was sitting next to her, sobbing. In the dream. I approached my mom and grandma, I moved the shroud away from my grandma's face, and she sat up and let out this horrific wail. Her face was so contorted, she looked like the painting, the scream.

Oh my God, I woke up so suddenly that Gavin woke up, too. I was upset because I believed my grandma was trying to warn me about something awful to my mind. She looked like a banshee, which in Irish folklore is a harbinger for death. I was just gonna say.

I told Gavin about the dream and said, I think it meant that someone was going to die. He hugged me and told me that my dad was a tough old buzzard and he would live a long life. AW. GAVIN Oh, no. And that was like, such a sweet thing that he was like, I'm gonna comfort you.

And now I see where this is going. On September 11, 2001. Gavin got up early for work because he had a meeting his dad was visiting and he was driving into Manhattan with Gavin to catch a bus to Mass. Gavin's aunt and uncle lived there. He kissed me goodbye and said, See you tonight.

I fell back to sleep and got up about an hour later at the time we lived in. Is it Bayonne? Bayonne, Bayonne, I think, Bayonne, New Jersey?

I worked in Midtown, but that day I had a court appearance in Brooklyn, I got to the World Trade Center, where Gavin worked. Around 8.55, I was in the mezzanine under the towers and heading toward the subway, I heard a loud pop, people started running and I had no idea what happened.

A security guard ran over to me and told me to get out of the building now, so I ran out. And across the street, the first tower was on fire and there was paper fluttering everywhere. I asked a man what happened? and he said, Plane hit the building, Oh my god.

I tried to call Gavin, but the cell service had cut. I asked the man, You think they'll evacuate the second tower? I was worried because Gavin worked in the second tower, he said. Definitely, so. I decided to hop on the subway and go to court.

I thought that some untrained pilot like J.

F. Gay Jr. had gotten confused and crashed their plane by accident into the building. That's what we all thought. I was a little distorted and took the train, sorry, disoriented, and took the train going in the wrong direction.

I got off at the next stop and went to the street level. I saw all these people running up the street away from the towers. A woman grabbed my arm and said, Run, and then I heard a very loud boom. A few blocks away, I found a pay phone.

Something happened at the towers and I was not going to make it to court. As I waited on the line for the phone, I heard someone say A second plane hit the second tower. Oh my god, my knees gave way, someone grabbed me and all I could say was he's in the building.

Completely, oh, you're going to, like, actually make me cry. Yeah, completely dazed. I somehow made my way to the office. By the time I got to Midtown, the buildings had collapsed. We were notified in November 2001 that his remains had been recovered.

I'm always grateful that Grandma visited me and tried to warn me. Gavin and I usually commuted into the city together, but that day he had a 7am meeting. I used to beat myself up, wishing that I understood my dream better. You could never, never.

If I knew, then what I know now, I would have tried to get him to stay home and commute with me, he would be alive. You could have had no way of knowing that. There's no way. One quick note.

Gavin visited a priest in a vision. The priest was clairvoyant and often received visitors. My cousin was on a religious retreat because church that the clairvoyant priest was running. During the retreat. He grabbed my cousin and asked her, Did you lose someone in our national tragedy? Whoa?

My cousin said yes, and he went on to say The person you lost was British and talks very fast with a thick accent. I had some trouble understanding him. And then the priest went on to say he wants her to know that he knows she tried to be strong and only cries when she's alone. He loves her and he is safe and happy, and has Rikki tell her not to be sad?

Rikki was his beloved king Charles Spaniel. Gavin carried a picture of Rikki on his keychain. That was the first thing about him that let me know he was boyfriend material. On a humorous note, Gavin had a very thick northern British accent.

No one ever understood him. I often acted as a translator. I proudly say that I am fluent in cockney English. I will be very excited if you share my tale about Grandma Cassidy as a banshee. You guys are awesome and your podcast makes my horrific commute bearable.

Stay lovably weird. Love Bridget. Bridget, I'm so sorry that you went through that. I am so sorry.

That is horrific. We're sending you like the biggest hugs right now. Seriously, and the fact also that you made most of that hilarious up until that point, like you completely prepared everybody with like who you are.

You're a true queen. Oh, it's time, here's your crown.

Wow, we're just we're crowning people. Yeah, left and right, all these queens. Oh my God, we literally forgot to crown. Oh my God, we forgot to crown Joseph.

We didn't crown Joseph Joseph, Kingship yours goes.

Yeah, right, exactly that's what yours does. Everybody gets crowns today. But damn Bridget, that was like, beautifully told.

You and Gavin are beautiful together. That picture is like, Oh, I love you. It's like, Break my heart, I love you both. Oh, I want to give you a hug.

I do, too.

All right, well, I guess I think we have time for one more. I think so, all right, let's see. There's a few here, so I'm going to see which one do you think I should do?

Let's see here.

I think the subject of a true crime story in another dimension, exactly that one. I like it. I just happened to see that and was like, Wait a second, all right, hold on.

You're going to have to vamp for a second because, oh my god, guys, what is up? This is a podcast that I host with my friend Delina, who needs some help. She's actually my sister, just not my friend. Some of you think that we are cousins.

Some of you think that we are brothers, some of you are wrong, some of you are right. We are just two human beings. I don't know where else to go.

We are just two human beings. Oh man, okay, here we go. That reminded me of the America's next top model challenge when they're on miles and out.

Jade is like, not good, and she's incredible, and Joanie is amazing. Yeah, that was good, all right. So this one's called I'm a subject of a true crime story in another dimension.

Please explain, yeah, that's it. And it says you don't have to search. Feel free to use my name. Check the attached. Pedophile.

Check it for an eye-friendly version of the story. All right, it says, Hello. I attempted to write, Oh wait, who's this person? It's Kayla.

Kayla Okay, I just was like, Where's your name? Hi, Kayla? I attempted to write up a cute alliteration as a salutation, but honestly, it's 10 a..m.

On a Sunday and I'm deep into depression. Volume two. This time, it's seasonal. My only flavor of humor is dark roast, that's our only kind of humor, a.k...a.

A little too dark, a little too bitter. And it's pretty easy to get peer pressured into saying, you like it, any, who's it? I'm Kayla, she her.

Double Libra with an Aries moon because I know y'all like to know I love you, double Libra. Hi, thank you both to, and thank you both.

And to all the folks behind the scenes for bringing us the ear candy that is known as morbid podcast. My best friend Courtney. Capricorn Everyone needs a capricorn bestie. I have, like several, we love a capricorn.

We do well. They have a small hobby cast that looks at horror media and finds its parallel real life, true crime and scary stories. Oh, that's cool, it's a lot of work, Slash Stress to create a podcast. But Courtney's and I's friendship was forged in the fire of working as servers at a big restaurant chain in our early and mid 20s. And nothing, I mean, nothing, will bond two women together, like fighting in the trenches of young adulthood, while endless soup, salad and breadsticks at the same time.

Did you work at the Olive Garden? You absolutely did. When you're here, your family, oh shit.

What did you say, your family? what did you say? Except when you're here, you're home, kind of the same thing.

What if it was? When you're here, you're home, No, but that's what Disney world says to you. They say welcome home, they say welcome home, and I say, I don't fucking live here.

That's actually exactly what she said. Happy to say we are out of the soupy ditches now, and more than a decade later, still, the best of friends do you like? Does parm cheese give you like stress? It says you don't have to read this part because sometimes there is such a thing as shameful self-promotion, but our cast is called Nothing Scarier.

And it would be just feel amazing to know that y'all know it exists. It's called Nothing Scarier, it's a podcast, Courtney shared y'all's podcast with me. And damn it if I didn't jump in with two feet and nary a k in the world. For what diving into the bottom of more than 300 episodes of true crime consumed at breakneck speed could do to a person?

Just imagine what researching it does to a person. Exactly that was a few months ago, and I'm just about caught up now. Only reason I haven't continued to rapidly devour episodes is that I shared y'all with my husband, Gemini. Everyone also needs a Gemini life partner, in my opinion.

I was waiting for it. And now we have to listen to episodes together. I mean, we could listen separately, but there's a partner rule there, right? Once a show goes from a my show to an our show, you've entered into a blood pact that can't be broken. I don't make the rules.

You are absolutely correct, you are correct. Thank you so much for all that you do. Including delivering stories with a victim-first mindset and bringing so much light and dignity to very often horrible and heartbreaking situations. Thank you, so much, thank you.

If y'all end up reading this on the cast, I might not shit myself. But I will have a full-on existential crisis in the best way possible as an air sign should. So, dear listeners, if you see a 30-something-year-old, average-looking chick millennial completely disassociating while shopping with headphones in, it might just be me experiencing an out-of-body moment in a cereal aisle. I'll start breathing again in like five minutes, don't worry.

Only one headphone in when you're shopping, that's right. I was listening to one of your most recent listener episodes, and someone called out for other dimension stories. Specifically, they mentioned someone retelling the story of them getting trapped in a dream for a lifetime. When I heard this, I thought, Oh, I have one of those.

So hang tight and don't let the bed bugs bite as I tell you why. I might be the subject of a true crime story in another dimension. Even since I was, ever since I was very little, I've always had a tense relationship with sleep. My family has told me. One of, and you know what I feel like? I should update everyone on this because people were like, how is it going?

My youngest sleeps now, it's crazy, it's awesome, her temperament totally different, so she sleeps now.

She decided that she was over that whole thing and we were over it in the beginning. So I'm glad that she joined us. Ready to join me? But thank you guys, there you go.

Knock on that motherfucking wood. So thank you guys for asking, because people have been like, how's that going? Are you all right? Yeah, so I appreciate you guys.

But now you have puppies that don't sleep. I do now I have those, but you know, we've been conditioned for it and they fuzzy, they fuzzy.

My family has told me one of the only ways to get me to sleep was when, when I was a wee baby, was to allow me to lay on my dad's chest for a while and listen to his heartbeat to fall asleep, that is the purest thing I've ever heard in my goddamn life. There are a number of photos of me as a little human potato, sleeping on my dad's chest, holding him hostage. With a tiny mite. That can only be wielded by a small, sleep resistant child in a house with two absolutely exhausted parents, wow.

I've never related to a sentence more. That's adorable by itself. Not being able to fall asleep without comfort as a kid isn't that odd.

But as I grew up, sleep and I would still not find the right pattern for our relationship. As a kid, I was a night owl. Sleep. Just felt lucky. If I was attempting, it was attempted before 2am. Oh, sorry.

Felt yucky if it was attempted before 2am at the earliest, honestly, still does. Side note someone said My parents gift cards and gold stars because two of their three children shared a bedroom and could not have had more opposite sleep patterns. Oh no.

Where I am, and always will be, a night owl to the extreme, my younger sister, a virgo, is. Sunshine itself, out like a light at dusk, and up like the little beam of sunlight she was with the rising sun. That checks. I'm sure y'all can imagine the type of sister fights that can break out when the disruption of sleep is as constant and unavoidable as taxes, death and my sister's chipper joy at 6am, for real.

The fuck love you Jen, love you Jen. I was around four or five when I started sleepwalking for the first time. I can half remember one of the very first dream bleeds I had as a kid.

I call them dream bleeds, because while this one was scary, they aren't always scary. Sometimes my dreams just leak out and show up in the real world, and the first Dre, I love how casual that is. They just leak out, you know, just a dream bleed.

And the first dream bleed. I can recall I had woken up and found that all my stuffed animals were staring at me. Hate that every single one in the toy box peeking up at me, every toy on the floor rotated to have its little face pointing at me.

Even my chosen bedtime companion, a care bear, they were all staring at me now. I was four-ish when this happened, so I don't remember much more than the eyes and the fear at this point. Oh my god. But at some point, the eyes started blinking, and my underdeveloped and my undeveloped brain screamed, Run for it.

I bolted out of the bedroom, fish flopped like a salmon, running a river over the baby gate, covering the entrance to our room and ran for my parents. Even as they sent me back to bed, I remember the eyes of my stuffed animals still following me. Sometimes the dream bleeds are like that and will hang around even after Reason has called them out for not belonging there. That's a terrifying dream bleed.

I don't like it. We moved to a new. I also love the term Dream Bleed, and I think it's a great band name. Hello Cleveland. we are Dream Bleed.

Can we call it or is it yours? I'm gonna tm it. No, just kidding, I'm just kidding.

It's yours, you came up with it. We moved to a new home when I was five-ish, and it was here that the dreams of my village would start happening. In this dream, I would start sleepwalking more and more, to the point that latches had to be put up high on our screen doors. Or else, I might escape into the night chasing one dream idea or another. Oh, no.

Like the time I walked to the back door late late in the night to go outside to go swimming. In early spring in Michigan, when we didn't have a pool. Or another evening when I decided I needed to go outside and catch the buttons, whatever they were, I love this. Okay, Coraline, honestly, nothing at this point really seems strange or unique.

I was a kid with a shit sleep pattern while my brain was developing. The rational side of me is very aware that there isn't a lot of facts or measurables to pin the idea of me floating off to another dimension on. However, I'm not sure what else this could be called. When I was six or seven, in elementary school, but not the upper level yet, I started dreaming about my village, in my village. It was me internally, my internal monologue, my thoughts and feelings and wishes.

But on the outside, I looked a little different. Whenever I went to my village, I would be lucid dreaming, although at six or seven, I didn't know what that was called. It felt like I would go to sleep and wake up at a different place in time. My first visit to the village was scary.

I felt like I felt everything like I did when I was in my normal body, but the body I was in was just slightly different than mine. The skin a little darker, sun-kissed hair a little shorter. The one time I saw my village face in a mirror, it didn't look like me. Ooh, that's weird.

I don't like that. I looked like I was a relative of non-dream me, but my features were all different. Seeing my other face made me so sad that I never looked in a mirror again when visiting the village. And for a long time. If I suspected I might have a dream bleed going on in the real world, I'd avoid a mirror until I could have confirmed I was fully awake. Interestingly enough, this has led me to be able to navigate my house confidently in the dark, especially during late night trips, bathroom trips.

No light means no mirror and chance to see my other face. Old habits die hard, I guess. Side note I needed to take a break here for a minute. Because honestly, I miss my village and my friends there. And I didn't realize that it would make me this homesick to write about my village. But that's not very tough, rational, totally chill boss babe of me. So let's get back to it. Over the years, from six-ish until I was in my mid-twenties, most often when I dreamt, I would go to my village.

I would still have regular dreams, but from six on in my life, I very rarely have a dream where I'm not aware I am dreaming. I can choose pretty easily to take control of my dreams if I want to, and don't frequently. Because as an adult, I've learned that this is what triggers night terrors and dream bleeds. For almost 20 years of my life, I built a life in my village. Whoa, that's really fucking cool.

You have Minecraft in your brain, you have the Sims in your brain. Yeah, that's the generational difference between us. Here's the generational difference. You got the Sims.

I knew my house there, which I shared with other visitors. Whoa, I knew the neighborhood and the people who worked for the village. Did you fire them? I say village, because it was small, in a valley surrounded by trees.

There were landlines, but no cell phones, even after cell phones were common in the real main world. When I visited, I could walk around town with my village, friends or by myself. I was always around the same age. I was in real life and typically had the same ideas I would in the real world. That is, non-violent ones, or ideas of theft or destruction.

Glad to hear it. One time in my village, I stole something from someone's house. Not glad to hear that. Being that I was aware I was dreaming a visitor and a teenager at the time, I didn't think anything would come of it.

That was until the sheriff rolled up and took me to the station. He told me I needed to be respectful to the village, even if I was a visitor. He told me that because this visitor village had visitors, they had to be even more strict with the laws. Otherwise, the people that belonged to the village would be in total chaos. What?

Seemed reasonable to me. There were the people that lived in this village and they needed the people that visited from the real world to be respectful. The sheriff told me that they've had to lock visitors up before and even execute them to stop them from harming the village. And that he wouldn't want that to happen to me. I've had enough, and she wrote, Fair enough.

Having the fear of the local law enforcement slammed into me, I went back to my regular visits and was respectful to everyone, visitors and residents alike. You might be wondering at this point, how does it all go wrong? Turns out, it all goes wrong pretty spectacularly, with a lot of blood. Some time served and what I think was my execution. Oh my God, I should say here, for the sake, again, of trying to be rational. I have a very active imagination, a constant monologue, a touch of mental health issues, and, if you believe my for you page, probably some neuro-spicy symptoms.

This is very relatable, you know what? Same? I think you're just an air sign. My real life during this time was touched by violence, death and the divorce of my parents.

Honestly, this was good for everyone involved, though. You feel me. And a number of other consequences for the reckless behavior one can develop as they grow up in a world as steady as a house of cards. During an earthquake, it's very possible that, just like a dream bleed, I had a reality bleed back into my village dimension. Bringing with it some of the issues I was dealing with back in the main timeline. I certainly hope so, because I don't think I committed the crime they found me guilty of.

Holy shit. One visit to my village in my early 20s, everything would change. I woke up, quote unquote, in my room in the cabin at the top of the Northernmost hill in the valley. My village room was covered in plants and had far too many windows for someone who typically slept in well past sunrise. It was beautiful, though, and the bed was comfortable.

Waking up in the village is really the only time I can remember waking up feeling rested. As a reminder, when I was in the village, I could feel everything like I do when I was in the real world. I could hold my breath, swimming with friends in the nearby river, gravity applied, and I could feel my feet hitting the earth. This place was either real or the most realistic dream to ever recur. This is crazy.

I am fascinated by this, but like, in the best way.

On this particular day, I put on my brown hiking boots and walked out my bedroom door in a hurry. When I got to the hall, there weren't any other visitors there, which was a little odd, but wasn't any cause for concern. I walked down the flight of stairs that led right to the front door and out into the day, everything was silent, no birds.

No people walking on the street, no bugs in the air, no one mowing the lawn, nothing. I remember feeling very, very unsettled.

I'd been scared in the village before, but nothing like this. I decided to go to the neighbor's house to see if they were home. I wish I would have gone back to my village room and watered my plants, maybe then I'd still be allowed back. I went to my neighbor's house.

A lovely woman and her husband lived there with their dogs. I never remember exactly how many. The door was unlocked, and I very stupidly let myself in. When I walked into the house, all was similarly silent as the world was outside. My fear grew, but with it something different.

Now, like I said, when I was here, my feelings were my feelings, I controlled my actions, it was me. But just then, walking into the silent house of my kind neighbors, who had been there since I first visited as a child, I felt rage.

Rage like I had not felt before in my real life or in my village life. It was compelling, and soon I felt like it was controlling me. As I walked further into the house, down the long hall. That was characteristic of all the homes in the village, regardless of their design style. My boots started slipping and something on the floor. Oh, no, trigger. Warning for gore and implied violence y'all.

I walked into the living room and saw everything that had been splattered in, blood spray up the ceiling and the walls and puddles on the floor. The rage I had been feeling took over then, it was my body and my village, and I was no longer in control. I started smashing photos on the walls, turning over furniture, throwing things out of cabinets.

I remember running up the stairs and in and out of the bedrooms, covering any mirrors with whatever I could find, before destroying the rest of the rooms. A few things to note here. I never, and very thankfully, saw the bodies of my dream neighbors. Just blood. And I had never before this visit, not been in control of my dream body here at the village.

Never after the destruction of the house, a number of villagers arrived at the front door. I'm not sure how they got there or how everyone knew to come, but they were there and suddenly I was in control again. Fear took over and I bolted into the woods.

I felt like I was running for my life, which was silly because I knew I was dreaming, right. Eventually, the villagers caught me and arrested me for the absolutely heinous murder of my friendly dream neighbors. For the next two years, any time I would dream about the village, which was becoming more and more rare, I would be in a cell. Jailed and awaiting trial for the murders. I swore I didn't commit, what the fuck.

My visitor friends would visit me in jail and tell me of all the things that they were doing to try to get me out. Eventually, they would stop showing up. This story is already very long, but in the interest of brevity, I'll jump to the last time. I remember going to the village, which was now really my cell. I woke up this time in prison.

I'd been convicted while I was in the real world. It seemed I sat up over the side of my uncomfortable bed and looked around the room. No one knows at all here in the prison, but they did give me a paper and a pen to write with. I was doodling, thinking about what I had to do in the real main world at work tomorrow. When the sheriff came in, he sat down and told me my last appeal didn't go through. That I would be executed the next day. And that he wanted to come down to talk to me about it.

As a reminder, I'd been visiting the village as a prisoner for years now and had several times been told there was nothing they could do. If I was guilty, the price was execution. At this point in my life, sadly, my other dimension, Dream Village, had become a really boring way to pass my sleeping hours. I had lucidity, but no freedom. This is so wild.

It says, I feel like you need to write a book about this. Truly. I remember the sheriff telling me he was sad for me and that he'd miss me. The only things I recall from the case was that they had my dream boots, boot prints in the blood I'd been found on scene.

As a visitor, I had no alibi and there were no other visitors. At that time. The case was open and shut. The rules, as I was warned years before, would be enforced one way or another. I told sheriff that I would miss him and the village. I told him about the controlling rage, and he nodded as if this had happened to others before.

I woke up to my alarm for work before I got to say a proper goodbye. But I made sure the sheriff knew I knew it wasn't his fault. I might not be back, and I never got to go back. I have memories of the village, of my neighbors, my plants and my adventures. I wonder sometimes if I'll ever run into another visitor to my village in the real world.

Not sure how they would recognize me, but I like to think we could prove to one another that this place exists. Maybe I shouldn't call this world the real world, though, because the village was very real. To me. This would be just the one I'm tethered to and would come back to. I like the life I've built here too, but man, do I miss my village. Nowadays. I choose to not take control of my dreams.

If I ever have a dream bleed, my safety net is asking my husband if I'm awake or not. Thankfully, he never uses this vulnerability to mess with me and quickly lets me know if I'm in the real world or still dreaming. There are many, many ways to write off my experience as a dream world escape and truly not another dimension. I entertain this and some of the other theories that have cropped up to explain my village to me over the years. As much as I entertain possibilities. My heart knows that this place exists out there.

I feel homesick for my village and my friends there. And wish deeply that I could find a way to clear Dream Me's name or bring me back to life on that side. But hopefully, if a true crime podcast exists in the village now, my case can at least be a tantalizing story of a possible wrong conviction. Or used to warn visitors to go back to their room if they arrive in the village to a strange silence. I hope the fate of Dream Me at the Village is a hotly contested controversy that the village folks still chat about to this day. I hope the sheriff that warned me never felt guilt about the outcome. And that any family of my dream neighbors feel they did to get justice if it means they'll be at peace. Lastly, I hope you've enjoyed my story. And if you ever find yourself waking up in a small village in a beautiful valley, you take a walk up the northernmost hill to the large cabin on top.

While you're there, please water my plants. For me, I don't think they've had a drink in a while. Sending love Kayla That was, I just got full chills.

Absolutely captivating, I'm not kidding, Kayla. Write a book, write a book, I will read it.

Make a show out of that, make a TV out of that. I'll back you up that that is your fucking story. If anybody tries to steal it, I will literally go crazy.

Motherfucking Kayla Tm Kayla Tm.

That's one of the most captivating stories that we've ever gotten on this podcast. And when you just ended that with, If you ever wake up in a small village in a valley, walk up the northernmost hill to a small, little cottage. Nope, nope, nope, it's large. a large cottage, excuse me.

You water those fucking plants because I don't think they've had a drink in a while. I'm beyond words like that is the most haunting shit I've ever heard. I believe your village exists.

It does. I've never heard anything like that before. Guys, I can't wait to go to sleep tonight. Holy shit, I've never heard anything like that.

Never in my GD life have I heard something like that before. We gotta end there. But I will have dreams that like, Do you ever have a dream that, you know, you've had before? Yeah, I have had that before. I wonder if that's like a like, a, you know what I mean?

Fuck, it's like that game, Second Life lost me there. It's like, literally I only know of it because they had like an office plot line about it. But it's like a real game called Second Life. And it's like, basically Sims kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, but you make like a whole life and it's like, that's what your village was, that is what your village was, that I'm like, wow.

That was the perfect one to end on. I'm just shook by that. Wow, truly wowie kazowie gula.

All right, damn guys, it's time for us to go to sleep. Holy shit. So thanks for those listener tales, because damn.

You just rocked us. Yeah, I don't have words left, so I'm just going to say the usual thank you for listening and we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

Just as weird as Kayla. Yeah, keep it that weird. just as weird as Kayla with a C. That's awesome, damn.

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