S19 Ep15: Destructive ghosts, flying children, and child snatching owls (Sn. 19 Ep. 15)
01:01:13 Share

Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I'm your guide, Derek Hayes. Great to have you with us here this evening. I hope you're in the mood to hear something spooky. But tonight we're shaking things up here just a bit. I have family visiting from Ohio, so I'm taking some time off.

Now don't worry, I'll be back on Thursday with a brand new episode. A pretty good one, too, I might say. And I have fresh content for you here tonight as well. Unless that is you're one of our coveted Monster Squad members. They got an early listen to this content back when it was released as the Beyond portion of both Season 18, Episode 35 and Season 18, Episode 47. And trust me when I say you want to stick around to the end.

Our final story is a real doozy, and I had to make certain that it was included here tonight. So let's get this thing started. Please enjoy Season 18, Episode 35, already in progress. I just promised to stick around for a month or two if you like what you hear. And you know, something tells me I think you will. Because in the beyond, we play calls like Chad's.

out of Washington State. Hey, Derek. My name's Chad. I'm from northwestern Washington, Skagit County. So if anybody's been in northwestern Washington, it's weird. The entire area is just, there's something wrong with it, especially in Skagit County, around the mental institution.

So my hometown, Cedar Roy, Washington, used to be a coal mining town. It actually used to be two separate towns before they conjoined. The whole town's got just a crazy zany history behind it, and not a lot of it's really recorded besides the museums that you can go into.

But one of the main ways that people actually made a living in the town was the mental asylum towards the eastern part of town going out.

And it got shut down, like a lot of the reformatories got shut down. But this one has quite a big body count. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there is mass graves on the premises. And a lot of kids go there actually to get creeped out and whatnot. But this time, I had just gotten back in the Seattle area and I was going to go visit some old friends.

And we decided against better judgment to go to the barns that are on the property. Now, the barns are sort of self-sufficiency for the mental institution. I assume it was some sort of like therapeutic program or it was manned by staff that were hired on. But the barns themselves are actually right next to the mass graves.

By the way, I've actually pulled up the Wikipedia page right now and I'm looking at it. And the body count inside of that cemetery is actually 1,487. And that's not including the 200 that are interred behind the gym. That is stories that I've heard from people who have actually worked there.

Regardless, we went there at night during the winter. Me, my buddy, another friend, and his girlfriend. And it was snowing. I remember that very, very clearly. It was about two or three inches of snow on the ground. And we walked in. We were checking out all the old buildings. It's dilapidated. It's run down. But it gives you the eerie vibe, and that's what we were going for.

But we're all 18, 19 at the time. As we're walking around, everything's just dead. It wasn't silent. It was just absolutely silent. And we've got our flashlights out. We're kind of snaking our way from the east side. We came through a tree line that goes to an access road that goes towards the graveyard or mass grave, I should probably call it.

But we'd come to that tree line. We were making our way westward into the property. And we thought we heard people talking in some of the long barns. Anybody's been in a long barn. There's really not too many places you could hide. It's for cattle, for God's sake.

Well, we're hearing people talking and we're like, man, some high schoolers are probably screwing with us or something like that. But the more we looked, the less we found. So we're kind of getting creeped out at this point. And one of my buddies goes, we should probably head back to the car. We don't want to get caught by a, well, it's part of a national park. So the ranger could probably get us in trouble. So we're figuring, okay, let's just go back.

So we go to, I think, one of the most easternmost barns. We're walking by and we're hearing the voices again. And at that point, I look at my buddy and he goes, that's coming from that barn right there. And we haven't shown our flashlights in there, so we don't know what's in there. But we're hearing voices pretty clear.

We don't know what they're saying, but they're there. So we go to the mouth of the barn. There's no doors. There's nothing. Some of the buildings have collapsed. And we shine our flashlights down and it hits the back and we've got LEDs, so they're pretty bright on their own.

And at the far end where they actually threw the hay and whatever else they were feeding the cows over these kind of like wooden fencing, there were absolute, just perfect, crisp outlines of people.

And my past experience with shadow people, things that have followed me home, it was just not flipping okay at all. But I'm sitting there watching them, and at first I think, well, that's our silhouette. But given how far away it was and the scale of the people, it was just like clicking in my head. Those are not our shadows. They're a hell of a lot bigger. And so I kind of look at my buddy and I go,

You see that, right? And it was so cliche, but the flashlight died immediately. And it was as we were counting them and we were fully realizing that there's like six or seven of them and there's like four of us. And as soon as that hit me, I was just like, oh my God, I'm actually seeing this.

And then the flashlight died. And the flashlight died. And, of course, turns back on. They're not there. And I'm looking at my buddy. I'm like, we need to get out of here, like, now. So my other buddy, who's with his girlfriend, he thinks that we're screwing with him. And my other friend, we'll just call him T.J.,

My other friend, CJ, is like, dude, no, we need to leave right now. And we're hearing the people talking at the other end of the barn. And it's obviously not people. So we're like, dude, just stop. Cut it out. We need to go.

And he walks into the barn and I look at CJ and he looks at me. I'm like, all right, that's your funeral guy. We walk around the bar. We left him in there. His girlfriend is following us. He stops talking and we're like, is he okay? So we just start to go back to go grab him. Like, dude, come on, let's go.

and he runs by us. He darts over the berm or like the tree line that we had crossed and he's just gone. He's just running back to the car. I'm like,

okay, all right, he probably saw something a hell of a lot worse than we did, so let's just go. So I turn around to follow him because I think my other buddy, CJ, he's right behind me. And then I hear something hit the ground and it was heavy. And my other buddy's girlfriend has already gone through the tree line and she's going back to the car now. And I look back and...

he's on the ground. He's on his back. I'm like, what the hell? You know, like, I'm just like, okay, now I'm being screwed with. There's no way this is happening. And then I noticed very specifically that his, his footprints, he was right behind me. His footprints ended at a certain point and he was like three feet back from where his footprints ended. And,

I'm just sitting there going, there is no way in hell that he faked this. And he's got the wind knocked out of him. I mean, I just, I don't know how you could fake that. But we ended up reconsolidating and we booked it back to the car and

And we ended up going to a local pizza chain and kind of reconsolidating there. We all looked at each other. We were talking about it, but we were like, we all saw that, right? And apparently my other buddy had somebody come up and whisper like right in his ear. And that's why...

booked out of there and left his girlfriend. That was kind of a hard thing to explain. They weren't together for that much long after. Yeah, no, it was probably one of the scariest moments of my life. But on top of all of this, I'd like to say that if you go to abandoned places like this, whether they're open to the public or not, just don't do anything stupid. Don't get hurt. It's just not worth it.

Thanks, Derek, and I love your show. It's the only thing I can really use to pass the time when I'm running a machine at work. Thanks so much. Bye. Thank you, Chad. Now, you know, back in the 1980s, the government shut down most of these state-run mental hospitals. And not only did it leave thousands of disabled people out on their own, but it also left a lot of these buildings empty, left to decay into the ground.

Now, some of these places live on as museums or paranormal tourist spots. And almost all of them share reports of ghosts, spirits, and hauntings. In fact, we opened the show on a story from Athens, Ohio. Another town famous for its very own haunted mental institution. Tragic and terrifying. We thank you again, Chad, for sharing the entry. Is this either breakfast or lunch or dinner? That's it.

Shopping for Father's Day can be tough, especially if you have a dad that's hard to buy for like I do. Thankfully, Quince makes thoughtful gift-giving easy. Quince has all the pieces dad actually want to wear, like organic cotton shirts, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from weekend hangouts to nice dinners.

And the best part is everything with Quince is priced 50-80% less than what you'd find at a similar brand. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes, which makes me feel good about shopping there.

This year for my dad, I went with the Flonet Breeze Performance Bolo. It's soft, moisture-wicking, and it's versatile. He'll be able to wear this golfing, traveling, or to a dinner out. Quinn's has tons of other great gift-giving options for dad, like clothing, knife sets, sunglasses, and even a pickleball set. There's something for everyone.

For the dad who deserves better than basic, Quince has you covered. Go to quince.com forward slash M-A-U for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com forward slash M-A-U to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com forward slash M-A-U. This issue here is that people aren't going to be interested in it.

Welcome back to the show, Monster Squad. It's a damn pleasure to have you with us here tonight. Now, per usual, I have a seriously spooky lineup set up for you this evening. So what do you say we just dive back into it? Up next is a story from across the pond. Please welcome Anonymous from the UK.

Hi Derek and team. Yeah, got a ghost experience for you. Right, okay. My mum and I used to actually live in a really old, old house in a village in the Cotswolds in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Now, what used to happen was, it was an old post office, this place. So the kitchen was very secure. It had a big old wooden door on it and a small little window where, obviously, people used to give their posts through the window and so on and so forth. So the entrance to this house was around the rear. Now, there was never any bad feeling or anything, but it was very cut off and very dark at night. Now, in between the hours of 6 p.m.,

And 9pm. Never before we'd hear a noise on the window. And it would be like this. Always like that. That was it. Now it might sound not very frightening. But I could never find the root cause for it. There would never be anybody there. It would always be on glass.

The conclusion we came to in the end, that it was maybe a residual spirit of some kind, that was actually the old postman coming around, knocking on the window to say that he was actually delivering his post through. Now, what that means, I don't know. It was always on glass. Yes, I knocked on wood, but it sounded exactly like that. It would always be the same repetitious rap. Now, like I say, it would never happen between 6 or 8 p.m. Never after, never before.

Now in the summer it'd be light so of course we could see that there was nobody there. At night in the winter it would be dark so it would be a bit more scary and it was always a bit more scary when you were up there on your own. But apart from that we had no other issues there. But what was the most scary thing apart from this all and maybe some of you listeners might actually be related to this is that we got used to it. It got to the point that what's that oh that's just the ghost and

And that's the thing that I find most frightening, is that we accepted the fact that there was something that we didn't understand was knocking on the window, and we couldn't understand how or what was doing it. It was not a bird. It sounded like knuckles on glass. It didn't sound like a bird hitting its beak. It didn't sound like a twig. It didn't sound like anybody. And also, like I say, we didn't have any need for any curtains, so we could see that there was nobody there, but...

We'd be sat watching the TV and we'd go on the window. Thank you very much. Good night. Thank you, caller. Now, in a weird way, I understand your terror. I've already told this story a couple of times, but for those that haven't heard it, I'll briefly retell it again. When I was 11 or 12, I discovered Saturday Night Live, and it was one of the heydays of the program. Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Farley, Phil Hartman.

I was addicted, and I watched each and every Saturday. Well, one night while I lay on the couch watching Hans and Franz or The Church Lady or something, there was a very sudden and very loud rapping on our front door, which was only a few feet away from the couch that I was laying on at the time. Now, startled doesn't even begin to describe how I felt that night. I quickly ran to the back of the house to wake my dad, who was sleeping in his bedroom.

We grabbed a rifle off the rack and went outside and circled the house. He never did find anything. But you know, that event shook me because I could not imagine how it could have been anything other than a human at best or a monster at worst because it was a loud, deliberate knocking. Now, mind you, we lived in the middle of nowhere down a pretty long driveway through the woods. There was zero reason for anyone to be there.

Especially that time of night. So I get it, caller. Although it only happened to me once, it was enough to stick with me some 30 years later. So thank you again for sharing your harrowing version. And now you get to see the rising of superstars like... One more time exactly where you are...

Lately, the weather's been amazing here, so I've been trying to go on daily morning walks to enjoy the fresh air and catch up on my favorite podcast with Everyday Earbuds from Raycon. Raycon's Everyday Earbuds are the perfect summer accessory, whether you're out walking the trails like me, hitting the gym, or listening to your favorite tunes while you grill out. Enjoy premium audio that goes where you do.

Raycon's latest model is better than ever with a 32-hour battery life and multi-point connectivity that lets you pair with two devices at once. And with Raycon's quick charge function, just 10 minutes of charging yields 90 minutes of battery. I personally love the active noise cancellation, which is often difficult to find at such an accessible price point.

I especially love that feature when I'm on an airplane, or when my neighbor is using his chainsaw for hours at a time. Up here that happens more often than you'd think, but Raycons come in a variety of cool colors to match your summer vibe. Obviously I still went with carbon black, because that's my vibe, but you can choose whatever you like.

They offer a 30-day happiness guarantee return policy. No questions asked. Go to buyraycon.com forward slash M-A-U to get 15% off Raycon's best-selling everyday earbuds. Right now, Raycon is offering 15% off their best-selling everyday earbuds when you go to buyraycon.com forward slash M-A-U. Again, that's buyraycon.com forward slash M-A-U.

Our next stop is a bit of a negative encounter in Indiana. Please welcome Mac to the show. Hey Derek, this is Mac in Indiana. I'm going to leave this story with you about a haunting I experienced at an apartment when I was in college. Okay, so starting off,

I worked early morning and I had classes in the evening and in the afternoon. And my roommate, he went to class in the morning, but this semester he didn't have any morning classes. His classes started around noon to four and then he worked from four to midnight or whatever.

And we lived on the second floor and there was a stairway leading from the street up to a landing where there was two apartments upstairs and two apartments downstairs. There were two doors on the balcony going up to a little balcony and we couldn't open them. They would stop on the floor every time we tried to push them open. And we both played football in high school and then I tried to carry that on into college.

I was a power lifter, I could bench press 450 pounds, squat 700 pounds, deadlift 800 pounds. And I could not get that door past, it would catch on the floor, like the floor was warped. And I woke up one morning and our neighbor was standing in my bedroom.

asking for sugar, a cup of sugar or two cups of sugar. I don't remember exactly. But anyway, so I said from the kitchen and I said, how did you get in here? She goes, all your doors were open. And I get up and I go in the living room and those balcony doors were completely up against the wall open wide. And that didn't bother me so much as our door leading to the stairs in the front were open and also in the back.

And I knock on my roommate's door and I get him up and we're looking around. We're like, how could this happen? And we didn't hear a thing. We both slept right through it. So it was a very peculiar that. But then after that, what happened was I was there alone and I was just going to bed and all of a sudden I hear somebody come up the front steps. I didn't hear the door open, but I heard somebody stomping up the stairs and

And so at first I didn't think anything of it. We had company pretty clearly. So I get to the door, I'm just listening and here comes someone else walking. And it's not like everybody was walking up. I say everybody. It was just like this happened probably 10 times where somebody sounded like they were walking up the stairs. And I stood there listening and I was waiting for this person. They were being real quiet. And I opened the door and no one's there.

and I'm a little freaked out. So I go back to my bedroom, I have a little .22 pistol, and I grab that pistol and this is downtown, relatively, probably average size city in Indiana.

college town and I just set their cradle on my 22th not quite sure what to do I didn't know what it was gonna if it was a ghost I didn't know what I was gonna do to it but uh I was gonna do whatever I had to but anyways I waited for my roommate to get home and then there were other strange things that happened like couches being moved uh

And so I left. I moved out on my own. And what was really strange is it caused my roommate and I to not get along to the point that we got into a fist fight. And I really regretted that, but at the same time, he was the one pushing the situation to become a fist fight. Anyway, and I always felt that was

was also a part of the haunting feeling. You know, you kind of feel like somebody was behind you. So anyway, there's part of that house experiences that kind of creep me out. I don't know if I can tell you or not.

But anyway, I want to tell you a story about some UFO experiences I had. And my dad was in the Army Air Force in World War II. And he was in the Pacific Theater stationed in an air base in the Himalayas or the foothills to the Himalayas.

He would talk about bogeys or Foo Fighters. And again, he was in the Army Air Corps and he was a metalsmith. So the cargo planes would fly the hump, which is the Himalayas. They would fly over into China and deliver supplies. And then he's the guy that repaired the planes that came back shot up.

So he was close to the pilots and all that. And we talked all the time to him about seeing strange, you know, lights in the sky, following them back from China, following them into China. But my dad and I were just looking at the stars one night and all of a sudden, one of the stars, what looked like a star, took off, I mean, incredibly fast and did like a triangle, you know, motion. And

And then the other one I saw with my dad and my uncle, and he was also in the army, but he was in Europe, and he was an army soldier. And all of a sudden, there was this, I looked on the horizon, there's a river that runs behind my uncle's property. And all of a sudden, I saw this, it looked like a missile to me, but it wasn't going fast at all. It was strange. But it had a huge plume of smoke behind it, and it also had

like flames, like you see out of a rocket. I got to see the Discovery take off at a night launch, the space shuttle. And that fire coming out of the space shuttle looked about the same size. We were about 20 miles away. And this was maybe 100, 200 yards away from us. But the fireball was enormous.

But it wasn't making any sound. You couldn't hear it. And you would think from 200, and I was 20 miles away from the space shuttle, the Discovery space shuttle, and the ground was shaking. There was no sound, no nothing going with this. And my uncle told me to go get my mom and my aunt, and they came out and they saw it. And my aunt's like, that is the strangest thing I've ever seen. And I was probably seven years old.

But anyway, I appreciate your show. I love it. I listen to it probably about every day. And I listen to two or three stories a day. And then you probably have the coolest voice I've ever heard. I don't know why you're not in the movies. But anyway, thank you very much. Thank you, Mac. You know, believe it or not, I actually am in a couple of movies. But if you blink, you'll miss me. The Vatican Tapes and I, Frankenstein.

But something tells me that you'll never find me. Now look, there's no denying that most of the calls I play here are terrifying. But nothing is more unsettling to me than a destructive ghost. Breaking things, throwing things, starting fires in the home, or in this case, leaving the doors open for the world to get in. Or worse, my cats to get out. For some reason, that's what I fear the most about a haunting ghost.

the destructive side of it. Now maybe I have my priorities all wrong, or maybe I have them all right. Either way, thank you Mac for sharing your eerie entry. Alright squad, time for tonight's final call. From the states up north, please welcome Chelsea to tonight's program.

Hey, Derek. My name is Chelsea. I'm calling from Michigan. So my story takes place in the fall of 2004. So as a group of my girlfriends in high school, we hung out with a lot of guys from the neighboring city. One of the buddies that we used to hang out with, we met him probably when we were like 14, 15 years old. Anyways, he had played hockey. He was pretty good at it. So he moved out to Montana to play there for a couple of years. In the fall of 2004, which would make it his senior year, he decided to...

moved back to Michigan. So one day I saw on the news a car accident. I didn't think anything of it. I actually spoke to him a couple of days prior. We all wanted to hang out and obviously nothing happened. So turns out, I find out later that evening that that car accident was actually him and his friend. I don't know exactly what was happening. I think they were just doing things that weren't so great as from what I hear. And they drove through a house. So

that street that they had driven down was actually my aunt's street. So from what I know, the driver, which was his buddy survived, she was fine. And then my friend was the passenger and he was killed immediately. So I get a phone call around two, three in the morning, which I was in complete disbelief because I had just spoke to him not that long ago. I didn't think anything of it, but yeah, he had died. So speaking to my friend that next day, we were kind of talking about it and, um,

She told me that she actually had a dream about him that night. And in the dream, she said it was super real. He was at the end of her hallway. They were chit-chatting. And she noticed that his hair was really short. So he did play hockey, and naturally a lot of the guys have hockey hair or longer hair. So when he had moved, the last time we saw him, he had long hair. So we didn't know whether he cut it or not. We didn't think anything of it. After speaking to people,

And his family members at the funeral come to find out he did cut his hair. She's like convinced he came to her in her dream, which I'm not surprised. I feel like he probably would have. So I thought that was pretty weird. So going forward, maybe a month or two after he had passed away, I started having like really weird things happen to me, which is not abnormal for me. While living at my mom's house, I was still like about a junior in high school. I had my room upstairs by myself.

And I was pretty busy. I had cheerleading and other things going on, so I wasn't home all the time. So in the evening, almost every single night for about a month or two, my radio would turn on when I was not upstairs. There was no timer. There was no setting. It really didn't make any sense, but it would just blare music for like an hour and then shut off. Nobody would go upstairs. My brother wouldn't go up there. My mom wouldn't go up there. They were so scared to turn the radio off. So that continued on for as long as I could remember. And then one evening, I was up in my room. It's

This is about a month after he had passed away and I was cleaning my bedroom. I had to walk back downstairs to get something. My bedroom was at the very end of the hallway. I had the radio on, I was cleaning, I had to go downstairs and grab something and I left my phone, my cell phone, up there in my dresser. So I decided to walk down the hallway. I got to the top of the steps and I heard my phone go off.

And it was like I had a text message. So I usually would not turn back around to get that, knowing that the message is still going to be there. But for some reason, I decided to turn back. So as I'm walking down the hallway, I'm listening to the radio and there's this song that's on. It's some Eminem song. I can't remember what it was. And it immediately made me think of him because the song always reminded me of him. So in that moment, I'm thinking of him. The song's playing. I'm going to get my phone because I got a text message. And as I'm looking at my phone and I'm reading the message, I hear something shatter.

So I'm like, okay, well, what the heck is this? I look over and on my shelf on the wall, we had a shot glass that was placed on it. That shot glass actually was the last thing that we all had to do together, which is probably not great being underage and drinking. But anyways, I left it on the shelf, kind of like in memory of him. So I look over, the shot glass had fallen off the shelf, hit my nightstand and shattered on the floor.

I thought it was bizarre because obviously I thought of him with the song and I normally would not turn around down the hallway to go back for anything, especially a text message.

And then, like I said, the shot glass fell off and broke. It wasn't on the ledge. It was clearly up on the shelf good enough. There was nothing going on. There was no vibration. I don't know how it happened. I can't explain it, but it shattered on the floor right there. So I feel like he's always around me or he was at that time. Like I said, things kind of happened. The next month or two, little things here and there that would remind me of him and eventually it kind of stopped. But I just thought it was strange. And with that being said, actually his best friend had passed away today.

Thank you, Chelsea.

How tragic. I think we often forget just how fragile life actually is. And you know it seems like you might be onto something here Chelsea. Of all the things that could have fallen from that shelf, it's a bit coincidental that it would be the very same shot glass that was associated with your fallen friend. Awfully coincidental. Now as scary as a call like this might be, it's also a little bit reassuring because it might just suggest

whatever energy we have, finds a way to continue on. Thank you again, Chelsea, for sharing the entry. Now this is the midway point of tonight's programming. Feel free to stand up and stretch, grab a snack, or maybe a quick bathroom break.

Hey Derek, this is Conrad.

And I have a pretty spooky story to tell you. I'm from southern Tennessee, but this isn't actually my story. This is my grandpa's story. So he was out squirrel hunting. It was early in the morning, and he was kind of just trudging through the woods. And the sun was coming up over the horizon, put a little sparkle on the dew. He couldn't see very well, but he turned this corner into this field.

And when he turned, he looked ahead of him. He was scanning the field looking for any squirrels. When he looks out, he sees this coyote. He's like, oh, that's a coyote right there. Then he watches it for a second. And suddenly, the coyote stands up on two legs and it's swayed right to left.

almost as if gauging distance between like him and the coyote. And then it dropped back down onto four legs and ran off.

And my grandpa, he didn't know what to think of it. He just kind of stood there like, what did I just see? And he couldn't explain it. I just thought that was a really interesting story. I love your podcast. We listen to it all the time. Keep up the good work. Thanks for the podcast. Thank you, Conrad. An upright walking coyote. What a way to kick off this week's Beyond.

Now, in a recent episode, we covered a few stories very similar to this one, but out of mild haunts of East Central and Southeastern Ohio. Season 18, episode 43, if you'd like to dive in deeper on that subject. But the point being that this creature doesn't sound like the Dogman character that we've heard about in the past. A creature known to haunt places like Bray Road, Defiance, Wexford County, or nearby to Conrad.

The land between the lakes. Now those creatures are typically described as being larger. More like a wolf or a German Shepherd. Not like a smaller, upright coyote. So maybe we're talking about offspring here. Which could explain the smaller stature. Or maybe this is a different species altogether. Or perhaps this whole thing is just some huge misidentification. But judging from calls like what we shared a few weeks ago.

and what we just heard from Conrad. I'm wondering if there might not be something unusual out there, and hopefully, one day, we will get to solve this little mystery. But until then, thank you again, Conrad, for the call, and thank you, Monster Squad, for swinging by tonight, because I've got a couple of good ones lined up for you here this evening, and just waiting to you hear what I have to close this episode out with, a story that proves that nowhere is safe.

Hi, Garrett. My name's Garrett. I'm calling from Manitoba, Canada. So my mom was my best friend and she lived with me out in the country, rural Manitoba.

She was losing her eyesight and I decided, you know what, I have to get her to the city. So we got to the city and all of a sudden she was sick, like really fast, like within a week and couldn't walk. So we took her to the hospital and we ended up finding out she had cancer and unfortunately it didn't end well.

I grew up Catholic, and my dad died 30-something years ago, and I was still waiting for a sign, but never got a sign. Every night I'd pray to God, like, God, you've got to give me a sign, something just to keep me going here. And my mom was a very strong-faith Catholic Christian lady, so we had some good conversations over the years, but nevertheless, she just passed after Christmas in 2023. So I'd be like, thank God.

Give me something. Show me a sign or mom, talk to me something. And I never got nothing. So then all of a sudden, and this is maybe going about six months after the passing of my mom, I bumped into an old lady friend that I knew from 20 years ago and we reconnected and started dating and we got married. So I moved all my stuff into her house.

And my mom was a big Christmas fanatic. She had so much Christmas stuff, probably a 24 by 24 room with just extra stuff. But when I moved us back to the city, I had just one little Santa just to put out just so I could, you know, have a little Christmas because it was like around that time when my mom was going to be passing away.

So I ended up moving. I moved everything to my new wife's house after my mom passed. And I know exactly where I put it. I know I put it in this little copper box and the movers came and moved it. So for some reason, I just went to the copper box. As soon as they moved it, I was just like, where's the Santa? Like, I want to set it up. You know, it's around Christmas time.

And I could not find it. So I kind of threw it back in my head, like, well, you know, maybe it's just I had a few too many cocktails. Maybe I did something. Maybe I just put it in another container. Like, I knew they wouldn't steal it. So it was about six months later. I'm downstairs doing a water meter reading. It's, like, way under a crawl space. And I happen to look up, and I see this little blue Santa.

And she's like, no way. Like, there's no way. So I went upstairs. I talked to my wife. I said, did you put that down there? And like, this is the day after I moved in. It was gone. I couldn't find it. So why would that be gone? And she wouldn't mess around with me. I know that. So that was sort of the one that was like, okay, well, maybe mom is really sending me a signal. So the next one was

I moved probably from the country to the city. And then with my mom getting sick, probably about four times. She came from a massive house. There was like hundreds of boxes and removed everything. And my mom packed everything very well. Every box is taped, double taped, this, that, blah, blah, blah.

So my brother asked, have you ever seen dad's watch? It was like a LED, whatever. And yeah, no, I haven't seen that. And I wanted to give it to him, but like I had no clue where it was. He'd never seen it. And I moved these boxes probably about in the last two years, five times. So I'm trying to condense the containers to something smaller and

I lift up a box and I hear a plink. And what falls out? It's that watch. It just totally boggled my mind. There is no way. I've not seen this watch in 40 years. My mom packed the boxes 100%. My brother happened to ask me about this watch and I happened to go and move it after I moved it about, I don't know how many times. And there's no cracks. The tape's not cracked. Okay, that's a pretty good one. So then...

One other time, I'd go to my mom's gravesite as much as I can, two, three, four times a week. My brother and I will meet there and we'll, you know, have a little shot of something. I always set up Christmas stuff, Halloween stuff, all the holidays, yada, yada. For the first Valentine's, I put out all these little plastic cards there. I put them in the vase on the side of my mom's gravestone and...

Just before Christmas, and this is going mid-December of 2024, I wanted to go and put some Christmas stuff around my mom's grave. I go there and put that out, and the same parts are there. So I go back home, and the truck was empty. It was super windy. I emptied out the truck. There was nothing in the back of my truck. Zero. Nothing. So I go into the back of my truck,

I had to go and check something and I see a red heart there. And I'm like, how can that get there? There's no way to get there. So unless the wind picked it up, flew it there, whatever, it's impossible. The back of the cab was totally empty and I never even touched them.

So I'm like, okay, well, that's kind of spooky a little bit. So now I'm really starting to think, oh, you know, maybe mom really is kind of looking out for me. And no word of a lie, the next day, I went out again. My truck never left the driveway. And I look in the back of the truck, and there's another red heart. I just believe that one heart's for me and one heart's for my brother, and that's just the way it is.

And it just blew my mind because there's no doubt these three encounters, they were 110% legit. These couldn't be fake. Nobody did nothing. I waited 30-something years for my dad to get back to me, but I never heard from him. But I heard from my mom now. It gives me a little bit of closure. And it totally changed my life. I certainly don't want to die. You know, I want to live to 100%.

But I certainly don't want to see mom and dad again, obviously. It really was totally amazing. And that's my story. Love your podcast. Listen to the last 13 years, probably within two months, and it's awesome. Have a good night and cheers. Thank you, Garrett. And I'm sorry for your loss. I can tell she meant a lot to you. But how amazing is it that she seemingly sent you a signal? The moved copper box, the little tiny hearts...

The watch. Some things are almost too on the nose to be a coincidence. Now, we certainly can't say for certain that she was reaching out, Garrett. But based upon what I'm hearing, I certainly can't discount those claims either. So regardless, we thank you again for sharing that touching tale. This is recklessness.

Now next up is a strange little entry from Nella from down in Texas. Hi, Derek. This is Nella from Houston. I heard a story, actually a couple from a previous season.

It reminded me of something that happened near my childhood. I used to live in a one-story house back when I was around six-ish. Well, I wasn't sleeping. I promise you that. I know I wasn't sleeping or anything like that. But I remember being able to fly. And I used to play in my backyard. I remember climbing up in this tree I had in this backyard.

I used to be able to fly into the tree and also I would fly around a street light that was in my front yard. I wouldn't go too, too high. I remember as high as I would go was probably like the height of a street light. It's about as high as I would go. I remember doing it about three or four times, but nothing more than that.

But the other thing about it is I would get a warm feeling in my chest when I would think about it, like, years later. Like, it made me really feel good whenever I have a memory of it. I can't explain it. Like, a feeling like you get when you get, like, your first girlfriend or something like that. It feels really good when I think about it. I'd say...

I didn't do it past the age of 10, but definitely like around 5 or 6. But yeah, that's my story. Thank you. I love the show and keep it up. Thank you, Nella. Flying as a child. Well, we've covered this subject a few different times over the years. And it was a shock to me just how many people claimed to have had those exact same abilities. But I'm afraid collecting these accounts is as far as I've made it.

I have zero answers as to how or why this would work, and I don't ever remember having this ability as a child, though I often have dreams in which I do have the ability to fly, even still to this day. Almost as if it's something I've always known how to do and just forget while I'm awake, if that makes any sense at all. Now of course, I'll add Nella's story to the pile and keep my ears to the wisdom post. I'll let you know what comes down the pike.

But until then, thank you again, Nella, for sharing the phone call. And here we are, folks, tonight's final entry, the story that I warned you about. So steady your nerve and join me in welcoming Peter from up in British Columbia. Hi, this is Peter from British Columbia. This takes place during my childhood when we lived at this house on a river in

in Southwest Washington State. In probably late 1960s, this house was rather strange. I always had a very oppressive and dark feeling around it. There were places around the house that I just didn't like to go. I had a really evil sort of feeling around this house for some reason. No backstory, had no idea what might have happened there.

It was a very remote, very isolated house. We were quite a ways from town. Anyway, so I was a child. I was probably about six years old when this started happening. I would go to bed at night. I'd be laying in my bed, and the hallway light was always on because I did have kind of a fear of being in the dark. And like I say, I just always felt kind of scared, especially in the dark in that house.

So the hallway light was on and I was laying looking down the hallway and suddenly I saw what to me was this large owl at the end of the hallway, probably about four feet tall, maybe up in the corner, kind of just suspended there on its own. It wasn't really sitting on anything, just suspended there.

I was looking at this thing in just petrified terror, obviously. I had no idea what it was. And then it swooped down the hallway to my bed and...

It grabbed me by the legs. I don't know how. I don't know if it used its talons or whatever. I remember it grabbing me by my legs and started dragging me off the bed. And this is one of the details of the story that really kind of haunts me. I remember grabbing the bedposts. I remember specifically the bedposts in that bed. They were kind of gold with wooden posts.

I remember grabbing onto them and fighting to try and not be dragged from the bed in these occurrences, which were the same every time and happened night after night. Occasionally, I would somehow be able to hold on. And I remember just like holding on as hard as I possibly could and just being pulled. Occasionally, I would be able to stop this owl thing from dragging me off the bed. But many times it would succeed.

I don't really remember the process of this happening, but I would be brought to a different world. It was always the same, exactly the same. I remember the house specifically. It was like a house out in the open. There was really not any trees around it. And I remember I would just be left there. I was like, where in the heck am I? What am I doing here?

And of course, I obviously, after this happened a few times, I thought, oh, I'm in this place again. People would see me and they wouldn't know who I was. And they kept asking me. They were kind of bothered by the fact that there was this six-year-old child just sort of dropped out of nowhere. They would always be like, what are you doing here? Usually they wouldn't even interact that much with me. They just sort of look at me annoyingly. And it was extremely frightening.

Because, I mean, here I was. My parents weren't there. Nobody knew me. It was just terrifying. I would be obviously transferred somehow back to my bed at some point. Oftentimes, I remembered a dark-haired woman who would come and protect me. She would tell me that she was my actual mother.

I have no reason to believe that my physical mother wasn't my actual mother, but she would tell me that, look, I am your actual mother. I'm here to protect you. And she was very protective. But this happened continually for probably something like six months to a year.

I was so terrified. It was just like traumatizing beyond what you could imagine. And at a certain point, I asked my parents, like, can I have a knife or something that I can fight this thing with? Why? I didn't say, well, why don't you just come to my bedroom and watch and see where this thing is? But I didn't. I was six years old. I don't know. I just kind of thought this was my war to fight or whatever.

I don't know what they thought. I don't know if they thought I was just having recurring nightmares. And then one night, I remember crows outside my window in my bedroom during this thing happening. And they were like crying. And I remember just like my ears almost ringing from them crying.

I got this weird intuition that they were there to protect me as well. They were protective spirits. From that day on, I never had another experience of this. Now, what was this? I don't know. I lived in an extremely stressful household. My father, he had gone through the war and he was extremely depressed and angry. I was very stressed out by this. It actually impacted my health.

I don't know if that had something to do with this. I don't know if it was actually a nightmare in as much as these things would seem very conscious to me. Like I say, the feeling of being pulled off the bed was very conscious to me. Another thing that I remember was...

I had seen The Wizard of Oz, and I'd really been traumatized by those monkeys grabbing Dorothy, whatever, and taking her off to the witch's castle. I don't know if I somehow mixed that up with the owl that they saw, too, in the woods.

I don't know if this became kind of a part of this, if it was a recurring nightmare. It's almost as though maybe I created in my mind because of the reality of these dreams, it was almost like maybe a tulpa or something that actually did have some kind of physical presence and that did have some kind of consistent real form over this time. I mean, there were elements to it that just seemed so real and so consistent that

that it's hard to explain even from the point of view of an older man who knows that there's such things as nightmares and children have recurring nightmares and things like that. It certainly could have been that, but like I say, there were some very odd characteristics about it. So just wanted to share that. Thank you very much. Good Lord, Peter, a giant owl that broke into your room and basically abducted you.

whisking you off to an alien planet, it seems. Now, I'm not going to lie, this sounds like one of those screened memories we talk about almost any time we have an encounter with what people believe to be an owl. And those reports are made fairly often, honestly. And of course, Mike Cleland's work comes to mind here. He's that UFO owl guy. I've put a few links up in the show notes if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

He appears in dozens of YouTube videos on the subject as well. But I've never heard of one of these alien owls physically dragging a child from his bed. That's a detail I cannot recall hearing before. And you know, forgetting these experiences might be what makes Peter's story so different. Because when many people see these owls, their memory is instantly wiped or screened or whatever. But for whatever reason, it didn't work with Peter.

He was able to remember each and every one of those abduction events, which is a terrifying concept. Well, whatever attacked you all those times, Peter, I'm glad to hear that the terror is over. But what a story it made. And we can't thank you enough, Peter, for sharing it tonight with us. And that's going to do it for this evening. Thank you for swinging by.

And if tonight's programming has inspired you to join us in the beyond, here's how you can quickly, easily, and inexpensively join us. Visit MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the Patreon tab. All the info is right there. Or you can visit us at Patreon. Just search for Monsters Among Us. Or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you can scroll down and click the subscribe button.

Either way, five bucks a month gives you access to days worth of content. One dollar gives you all the main content completely ad-free. Again, MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the Patreon tab now.

Monsters Among Us podcast is written and produced by me, Derek Hayes. Copyright Red Crow Media. Additional support is provided by Sarah Carter Hayes, Delaney Bowers, and Connor Ryan. All media used in this production is done so under the protection of fair use. Give us a like and follow on our Instagram and Facebook pages. Give us a like and follow on YouTube as well. And of course, leave us a rate and review wherever that sort of thing is possible.

And don't forget you can catch the show every Saturday evening at 10 p.m. Eastern on the UnX Digital Network. Just visit unxnetwork.com to tune in. And finally, tonight's score was provided by Iron Cthulhu, Apocalypse, Co.ag Music, and Carl Casey at White Bat Audio. Now thank you one last time for tuning in. I trust I'll catch you all here on Thursday. Until then, keep it spooky and have a good night.