Shownotes Transcript
One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news: This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter.
Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again.
Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at HappyMammoth.com with code NEXTCHAPTER at checkout. Visit HappyMammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Ooh, spooksters. This week, I am excited to bring you an episode from our friends at the show Otherworld.
Otherworld features real people who've experienced something paranormal, something supernatural, or just something unexplained. The Washington Post called Otherworld the paranormal this American life because host Jack Wagner goes to great lengths to investigate the strange and the uncanny, and it's something he stumbles into by chance.
After realizing how many people in his life had experienced something that they couldn't explain and never told anyone about, Jack picked out this episode specifically for spook listeners. Otherworld. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. I'm particularly excited for this episode. Since starting the podcast, I've been waiting for this.
for a story to come in from Mexico or Latin America in general. Mexico specifically has such a rich and intense connection to the supernatural with many specific legends
that have been passed down through generations. And as a nation, there seems to just generally be a stronger belief in a spirit world or outside forces that intertwine with the physical. For that reason, and the fact that we make this show just two hours from the Mexican border, I've been eager to do some episodes that take place in Mexico, and I figured we would have gotten more submissions now than we have.
However, we finally got a really exciting one about something very strange happening to a person in Mexico. But the person this happened to is not from Mexico. They are in fact from Scotland of all places.
And this happened to them while they were visiting Mexico and the United States for the very first time after finishing a job at a summer camp. I did not expect our first Mexican Otherworld episode to be coming from a Scottish camp counselor. But then again, I think that kind of unusual perspective is what makes for some of the best episodes of this show. This story ended up being one of my personal favorites.
It's somehow completely terrifying, but also a little funny and heartwarming at the same time. I also just really liked speaking to this person about their experience and hearing the story. This is episode 90. The title is The Long Road Home, and you're listening to Otherworld.
Hello, my name is Simon. I'm 23 years old.
I live in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm currently a bartender and I'm going to be going into studying my masters at the University of Glasgow. Growing up in Scotland is great because, well I mean like we have like everyone has like their nearest castle. It's quite funny. In terms of ghosts and things they're more of like an annoyance than a they're like oh my like this place is haunted like we're gonna
It's just like another thing, but it's like, no, Scotland's lovely, especially I live, well, I grew up between Glasgow and between like the Highlands. So I was able to get a mix of both the city life and the country life, which was great because Scotland is beautiful when it comes in terms of nature and also just in terms of cities as well. So I, for the past couple of years, worked as a camp councillor in Maryland
it was like my first time in America and I was stationed I guess in a camp in Maryland and I was like I've never heard of this state it's going to be interesting and then it turns out I had like Baltimore and Hairspray all that sort of stuff but um so it's a camp for boys and they were either about really really polite ones or like
This is like my fourth home, which is what a kid said to me. So like, you've got that kind of really nice or really spoiled child. And then like, they would ask me things like,
"Do you have technology in Scotland? Do you live in a cabin?" And I'd be like, "Yes, this is my phone." And they'd be like, "You didn't get that to come here?" And I'd say, "No, we have these." I remember a child, and by child I mean a 13-year-old, asked me if we had Halloween in Scotland. And I was like, "We invented it." I don't know what to tell you, but for the most part,
I have some of my best friends live in Maryland. I really loved working at the summer camp and then helping a lot of the international staff kind of get settled and making sure they were comfortable getting paid properly, had social security numbers. I really am passionate about making sure people are comfortable in their workplaces. But afterwards, I have got enough time with my visa where I can travel America for a month. So yeah.
I'd done like Texas, Vegas, I'd done LA as well and I had deferred my masters for like this September coming for this next year because I wanted to keep travelling and I wasn't ready to get back to real life I just thought I finally got this time where I can just do and go whatever I want and I'm going to take full advantage of that like not it's like when am I going to have this chance again and this time again to do this
I've just always wanted to see Mexico. I've got a friend who lives there, I went to go visit him. That's when I flew to Mexico City. Mexico City was lovely so I went for Independence Day. And do you know, I'll never, like I keep saying this to everyone I recommend going to Mexico to like, the people in Mexico were nothing but like so kind and so generous and so
like lovely and I like I've never been somewhere that feels so like kind like everyone seemed to be kind of in it together and it just felt very it felt very not Scottish but just very like everyone in this country is kind of banded together a little bit and it just felt quite lovely and everyone was more than happy to help I
also realized that I was in a new country by myself that I'd never been to and I ended up getting a travel buddy, someone I knew kind of but not really from the job in DC just outside DC. I'm gonna call him Roy. We had the same route, the same route in Mexico
and we were going to travel together because I just thought I don't want to do this alone especially in a place I've never been to before Roy was like a very outgoing person we don't talk anymore but we'll get to that
he uh like always wanted to go to like find the best club in Mexico City he wanted to try all the best like try the best food and then I started to realize that he didn't know any Spanish like past Ola and I was like you were going to Mexico for like a few months and you're you didn't learn any Spanish and he was like well no I just thought they'd speak English and I was like
Okay, right, because I had learnt enough Spanish to get me by and it only strengthened my time there but he was quite arrogant with hospitality workers, things like that, hotel staff and I kind of took that on note but always put it to the back of my head because I just thought I don't want to be travelling alone
And he came up with the idea after Mexico City to go to Puerto Escondido, which I'd never heard of. All I knew that I didn't really know too much about Mexico, like in terms of geography or where to go. I just knew that I wanted to go to Oaxaca next, but we decided to do Puerto Escondido for like a few days.
So it was like a 15 hour bus journey, which I'd been traveling for a few months in America at this point. I can handle a 15 hour bus journey. You know, at least it's not a greyhound. So we had the time of our lives in Mexico City and enjoyed Independence Day. And then we went down to Puerto Escondido and we met up with his friend from back home. And I'll call her Nora.
I had booked a hostel for the three of us because I knew that we were going to be meeting this girl that I had not met before and
We got to the hostel and they start freaking out about the rooms and then they cancel our hostel, which was really annoying. They didn't ask me, they just canceled it. And I was like, oh, you canceled my reservation too? Great. Roy and Nora then booked us a really, really sketchy hotel as far away from the beach as you could imagine. And at this point I was like...
getting kind of sick of them because they were just they were being very horrible to like that the staff in the hostel we cancelled and um i walked in on them like having sex in our room and i was like oh this is this is like this is my holiday this is my this is my thing to travel and they're kind of ruining it a little bit um but anyway uh
Puerto Escondido is an amazing town. It's lovely beaches. I've done a turtle saving sanctuary there so that's why I wanted to go more than anything. I wanted to... they have these lovely kind of... they save these turtle legs from poachers and things and then we farm them, keep them in safe environments and then release them out into the water and make sure that they get... that they're safe which I just thought was a really lovely thing.
to do and it made me feel like I was doing something while I was traveling like I was helping someone or something Roy and Nora didn't want to do this because they were not their thing it was not their thing but it was nice to have that time alone with the turtles anyway I get back to this sketchy hotel
one night after doing like the turtle saving sanctuary and they're like we're going to go to a party in Zipolite beach like it's just off Zipolite beach which is a nudist beach and just it's like a maybe an hour or so drive away from Puerto Escondido and
I've had a few nights of relaxation. I'm ready to party a little bit. So they're like, okay, we found someone who's got a car and they're going to drive us. And I was like, great. Roy and Nona are like dangerously sociable people in the sense where like, if you have a car, you will be driving them after meeting them for like 10 minutes. So do you know what I mean? Like those kind of people. And I was...
this poor boy who I had agreed to like drive them I guess I thought he was I thought he was kind of cute so like he wasn't going to be drinking at the party and I was like maybe I won't drink either because I don't know I was just had I had been traveling a while so I was like you know like he's cute
So there was four of us and we were driving. The drive there was like an hour long. We took the main road and then after a while went on to basically a dirt road because that's, I guess, the road we had to take to get to this kind of beach area. And that road was about 20 minutes, half an hour long to drive on that road. And on that dirt road, I remember driving past like...
there was like a you know when on the side of the road when they have like a like a cross it was a cross it was very distinct because it was painted white and it had three yellow flowers painted onto it and then there was like an abandoned moped so that sort of thing just i guess distinct looking trees all that sort of stuff just but that they were only distinct looking trees because they were the only trees like in a while if you know what i mean so it was
It was nothing really, just a road of nothing. Like I can't really explain anything. It was just the plains, you know, a bit of greenery kind of thing. Like on the way there, I just really wasn't taking note of too much, except I guess the cross that I saw and the skirr.
So we get to this party and it's like an abandoned building almost and it's kind of just off from the beach not too far away. People are clothed though even though it's just off from a nudist beach I do need to see. But I think that it was heavily tourists who were at this party.
It was a kind of weird set up. You would order your drinks and then you would wait upwards of half an hour to get your drink. You would just wait with a ticket and I was like, this is a bit weird. It was just like an average club except that it was outdoors really. Everyone was recording it. Everyone had their camera phones out, all that sort of stuff. So it was very touristy. Maybe halfway through the party,
I was like yeah I'm not feeling this and I don't I'm not I'm not drinking and neither is this guy and this guy was like oh I was thinking about maybe going back and I was like oh same and I was like we could go back and we could go to the hotel or whatever and he was like sounds good so we said to Noda and Roy um we're leaving what are you doing and they said that they're gonna stay and I said well good luck getting home I suppose um
best of luck they have each other and it was like I just felt like I deserved I deserved to to leave them there a little bit I get it yeah we all get it yeah okay I just hate coming across as like a dick but they they needed yeah so me and this guy let's
I'll go by my name, let's call him Peter. We ended up leaving the party and we got into the car. We'd been driving for about 10 minutes. I was actually really relieved to be leaving these two, to be leaving Roy and Nora behind. I can't even describe how... I've never met people that are so irredeemably just...
not nice and like they just there was just like I always look for the nice in people but there was just nothing there's just nothing to them and I was like right well fuck them I'm going to have a good night with this Peter guy so I was like actually kind of happy and like we were just having that weird small talk in the car and
And it was like 10 minutes or so into the drive and we're on the dirt road. So there was no other cars there. It was like pitch dark. There's no street lights or anything. And we hear a thud under the car. And we looked at each other. At first I thought, oh, pothole or some just uneven road. And he said it felt like we were driving over something. So...
We just agreed, okay, we'll get out. Because we'd driven for like maybe 10 more seconds and we're like, no, we should get out. So I get out of the passenger seat and the car's still facing towards the way we were driving. Just keep in mind, like the only light is coming from the car the way we were driving. And I see kind of like a lump of just some, like a lump in the darkness on the road. And I think, oh, like we've hit,
we've hit like an animal or like this isn't we've hit something and I'd started to feel really really really bad because I've never like that's never happened to me before like how could we be like we how could he not have seen that coming and then he takes out his fly his like phone flashlight and all I'm thinking is like what is that like what have we heard and like
Whatever it is, I really really hope it's not dead because this has never happened to me before and I just spent the past couple days saving turtles. Imagine it, I go and hit something, that's not a fun thought. So I'm walking towards this and there's no light on it yet because the car is still facing the way that we were driving.
and I just see a kind of lump in the darkness on the road and I was like, fuck, we've had, we've had like a dog or something. And I remember like getting a little teary eyed because it was, it was just like upset, I guess, about the whole thing. Is like, I was having, you know, I was having like a decent night so far and this had happened and Peter, the guy,
put his flashlight onto it and I was looking at its spine because that's what was facing us at the point, its back and I thought we've fucked this thing up with our car because its spine looked like it was coming out of its back and I was thinking I was like just this pit of dread in my stomach of we've not only we killed something but like we've done we've kind of just messed up its body
The entire body was black and by what I mean by its spine was coming out of its back is that its back was disjointed looking. Its back had jags coming out of where the spine would be. And I thought whatever we've done to this with our car, we've messed its spine up and it's all messed up inside its body and it's trying to come out. And it was just such a horrible pit of dread in my stomach of like,
Like I've done such a horrible thing but then I started to realise that that's how its body was. Like that's not how it's not been messed up. Its body looks like that. It has not hardened spikes but it's got like jags coming out of its back. Like that's just part of how its body is.
and the creature, the animal starts to kind of move and I'm thinking like, I just sigh of relief of thank God. Thank God it's alive. Like I didn't really care at this point what it was. I was like, it's alive. That's all that matters. And then when that feeling of relief passed, I started to think, oh, it's like a mutated dog or like a mutated goat.
something like that or even some kind of black fox I don't know and then it faced us and its eyes were piercing yellow like it could like it's almost like if someone had two flashlights inside its skull their eyes were that yellow its fur was so short but it was like pitch black the animal itself was pitch black and
almost like as dark as the rest of the night and um but my mind is going in slow motion almost at this point because I'm looking at this thing I mean its fur is like really really short and it has yellow eyes and like like points coming out of its back so I remember being like what the fuck is that like what is this I've never seen anything like this before
Peter was just speechless. He just couldn't vocalise anything. I think he was startled more than anything that he had hit something. You know how, like, see if you've ever been in, like, almost an accident or whatever, if you're in the car and something that feels life-threatening happens, you know how that, for those couple of seconds, you're just kind of in silence? It was almost as if he was in that, but for...
for way too long, like he couldn't, he was in total shock that he had hit something and I was just happy that it was not dead. And we watched as the thing began to kind of move and it started to face us and I was just thinking this whole time it was a mixture of relief, confusion and still dread in my stomach of
Now what is going on? Like, I have no idea what I'm looking at. And it begins to rise. It begins to stand up on its hind legs, almost as if a goat would, like when a goat kind of kicks up almost like that, but it doesn't go back down. It stays on its hind legs. And it's about, it's like a four foot-ish tall, I would say, about four foot. And at this point, I had gone over closer.
and Peter had held back holding the light and it didn't seem to mind at like up until this point that we had a light on it I was just like making sure like my number one goal was making sure that whatever this was was okay and then um it just lets out this scream of just it wasn't a scream it's more of a shriek and it was like I was listening to someone find out that their whole family had been killed it was I've never heard anything like it before it was
dreadful to listen to. There's just so many feelings of confusion and like just I have no idea what's going on like this has all happened pretty fast like within two minutes and it was like screaming at us almost like it was doing this horrible horrible noise like see when you hear like foxes cry kind of like that noise of just dread like it I don't know like
I've never heard anything like it before. I just remember thinking we should go. We should get back into the car because this animal is okay but I don't want to get involved any further because this is not... I have no idea how to deal with any of this. So we just give each other a look of let's go, we're good, we're good, it's alive, let's keep driving. So
We get back into the car and Peter is still in just this, I guess, a status shock. Like he doesn't understand what he just saw. And neither do I, but I'm processing it differently than he is. He's just in pure silence and driving. And although I'm not talking to him either, it feels like he doesn't want to talk about it. And it feels like,
All I wanted to do was discuss what just happened. His eyes were on the road. He wasn't looking at me. He was almost like a robot just driving. That's all he was tasked to do, to just drive. And he didn't want to even think about what he just saw. My mind is doing cartwheels at this point. I'm trying to process things. As we're driving away, I can still hear it screaming. And I was just like...
I gave him this look of "What the fuck?" Like, "What the fuck was that?" And he looks at me and he just looks back at the road. And I remember we seen the abandoned scooter we drove past. And I was like, "Okay." And then we kept driving and then we drove past the crucifix, the cross that was on the ground. I say, "Okay, right. We're getting somewhere familiar here." And
I remember like nodding to sleep almost a little bit. And then I woke up again and we drove past the scooter again. And I immediately thought, okay, everything that just happened was just a dream. We're fine. And then I looked to him. Like I'm really trying not to sound crazy to this poor boy at this point. I was like, hey, did we get out of the car earlier and
see that really weird looking animal with the yellow eyes and he said yes. And then I asked him how long I'd been asleep for and he said 20 minutes. I looked around and we were still driving on the dirt road and I was thinking it just doesn't make sense that we're still on this road if we had been driving for that long before we hit the animal. So we had been driving on this road for 50 minutes.
It should have only taken us 20 minutes to half an hour. It didn't make sense that we were still here. All right, we have to take a break, but we'll be right back with the rest of Simon's story. So I was confused. And then we drove past the cross and the road. And he said, like, that's the fifth one of that I've seen. I said, what do you mean? He goes, we keep driving past these crosses and they all look the same.
I said that doesn't make sense because we've on the way here we only drove past one cross and then as I was saying this doesn't make sense we drove past the abandoned scooter again I could just feel almost like everything coming out of my throat of just I just wanted to throw up because I was like
am I in hell? Am I in hell for hitting an animal? What's going on? I looked at the time on the radio of the car and it didn't make sense that we were still on this road. I was adding up all these time numbers that he was telling me. I just said, we shouldn't still be on this road. Did we take a wrong turn? He said, no, because it's a straight road.
Like you can't go off of this dirt road or else it's just dirt. It's just, it's not a road anymore. So by the end of all, we had been driving for about two hours-ish on this just dirt road. We had driven past the cross and the scooter. Like I lost count, but like it was like,
we kept driving past him but it wasn't continuous it would be driving through nothing and then seeing the cross again seeing the scooter again that's when I start to get scared like actually scared for the first time in this whole night of just this feeling of claustrophobia almost of being trapped inside like a loop almost of we just keep going forward there's no other way to go so how do we get out
how do we get out of this loop that felt like... I had at first tried to convince myself that maybe there was more than one cross that we'd driven past and I didn't see it on the drive in. When I lost count of the amount of times we had driven past the cross and driven past the scooter, that's when I started to realise that something wasn't right with time.
and that I was so completely overwhelmed and just I wanted to throw up so I asked Peter to stop driving the car and I had to get out of the car to get fresh air when I got out of the car it was of course pitch black except from the light of the car and in the distance I saw a car coming towards us which
which was great, like it was the feeling was just someone else is here, we're fine, we're good and as the car got closer I started to realize that it was the exact same color and make of car that we were driving it was like the same white car and I thought that my mind didn't really think too much of it at first because I just thought it's another car great and then the car stopped and
I saw the passenger and the driver door, they both opened and two silhouettes got out and the guy coming out of the passenger seat walked to the back of the car as if he was looking at something to the back of the car and the guy who came out of the driver's seat was standing still at the car and flashing a light towards where the passenger was and that's when I realised
that something was messed up. Like something, time had messed up on this road and I was looking at me and Peter finding the animal as if I was watching a movie of us from like an hour ago or whatever. And my mind just couldn't handle it at this moment. So I just got back into the car
And I told Peter, I'm okay. Let's just go home. And he's starting the engine up again. And I look out of the window and in the darkness and just the nothingness, the Mexican nothingness of what was off of the road. I just see two yellow eyes in the distance looking at us. And Peter drove away. And I was...
I just... I've never had this experience before but my mind had already decided we're gonna take all of this in but we're gonna think about it later. We're just gonna get you home Simon first and then we're gonna analyze these thoughts. But yeah, this is my first time deeply analyzing all of this which is bringing back a lot of memories. We drove for...
maybe 20 more minutes and we passed the cross and we passed the scooter two more times and then it wasn't climactic or anything we just got off the road the dirt road just stopped and we got back onto the main road even though I knew that I was driving past new things I kept expecting to see the scooter or the cross
I kept on expecting, my eyes were not coming off the window. I just kept waiting to see the cross and waiting to see the scooter and waiting to be trapped in that loop again. And I find myself, even now I'm back home, sometimes waiting to see the scooter or the cross just instinctually because sometimes
I don't know, like trapped on that road it just felt like an eternity. It was just, it was so, there's no other word for it than claustrophobic. Even though I'm in an outside space I just feel so trapped in a loop. And we drove back to Puerto Escondido, more or less in silence.
We get back to the hotel and I just shut my bedroom door in his face. And I was like, I need to think about everything that happened tonight. Like, this was not, I did not have a good time tonight. And I'm sitting in my room and I'm like, that was us on the road. Like, the car and the people I saw was us looking at the animal. Almost as if I was someone, when we found the monster,
or the animal. It almost as if someone from a distance had been filming that and then it was like I was watching a movie in real life of what we had done but like at a distance and I couldn't wrap my head around it and still can't. I just knew that what I was looking at was us and I was just sitting in this hotel room thinking about all of this and I just couldn't get back. I just couldn't sleep.
because I didn't understand. I didn't understand anything that happened. So Roy and Nora get back the next day and at this point me and Peter had had breakfast and we just kind of we were trying to talk about other things but I think I had made a joke about like CrossFit like I had made a joke about last night and he didn't find it very funny so I kind of we stopped eating breakfast and I was like
fuck this and then I started to realize where is Roy and Nora like why are they not here and then they got they were they got back to the hotel still drunk at like 10 in the morning at this point they immediately could tell that like the vibe wasn't there because they were like oh my god did you and Pierre like have a good night and I was like
No. No, we didn't. And I just thought, Puerto Escondido, you've been great, but I need to keep... I need to leave these people. So I called my friend Saul and I was meant to do a lot more travel in the drawing, Nora. And he said, you can just stay at my house and we can do day trips and things like that. And
that's what I did and I remember our bus to the next destination came this was a couple days later Roy and Nora said to me all right this is our bus and I said no guys this is your bus they watched as my friend Saul a very very fit swimming instructor drove up in a jeep shirtless and picked me up
and I waved them out the window goodbye and I never saw them again and I never will. So I'm living in Playa del Carmen which is an hour away from Cancun that's where my friend Saul lives. This whole thing has been playing on my mind and I don't I've not had any answers yet so I just I just ask him oh hey when I was in Puerto Escondido
I saw this like I think it was like a dog but like it it didn't seem like it and like I'm not too familiar with kind of the wildlife here and I explained what I saw to Saul and he chuckled because he was like well that's that's a chupacabra and it's just like this thing that goes about and it it
like drinks cows or goats bloods and all that sort of stuff and when I went to do some research and I looked at pictures there were similarities to what I saw it did look it looked a bit alien they're all like illustrations they're all like drawn pictures more or less it was a lot like smaller in the pictures I thought it was a lot and
skinnier and more kind of panther like almost like it was on all fours and it was all although it was smaller in the pictures it seemed like more of a threat whereas what I saw on that road seemed more like it's just a creature minding its business and to me that horrible horrible scream I interpreted it as just that's just the noise it makes
Like I never interpreted it as a threat or anything like that. I just interpreted it as that's the noise that animal makes. Well, the whole point of me traveling was to find myself.
cringy. And I remember this whole experience, I was like, you know, I didn't find myself, but I definitely found out who I wasn't. And I wasn't someone who was going to let people like Roy and Noda, like keep me from seeing what I want to see and doing what I want to do. I wasn't going to let one weird, weird night kind of keep me from enjoying the rest of my travels. So I was a swimming instructor in the mornings. So I was
Sitting on the beach watching him take his swimming class and enjoying a margarita like some kind of soccer mum. And doing some Chupacabra research on my phone and looking at it and being like, this is so silly. Because every time I look at this, every time I research this, I can just hear it screaming in the back of my head. Like I can hear, I can still hear it scream. And
if I keep doing this and if I keep on, like, if I keep on ruining my time away, I'm just going to keep hearing the scream. So I decided to put the phone down and enjoy my time in Mexico. I think, honestly, being able to reanalyze all of this has left... I have more questions now than I did before because I've been able to deep dive into it. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that...
having something like this happen to me I'll probably never get an answer for it but I don't know I guess that's what makes it more interesting and that's what's going to keep this probably the weirdest and biggest thing that's ever happened in my life I'm never going to not think about it when I think of core moments of my life this is definitely up there because it shaped me
to be more inquisitive, I guess, and braver when it comes to weird situations and creepy situations. And I'm not so afraid of the dark anymore either. All right. Thank you so much to Simon for sharing his story. I know I joked around about the first Mexican story coming from a Scottish person, but...
I think the most interesting part about this is that Simon is a complete outsider who had absolutely no idea what El Chupacabra is or that it even existed. In fact, when he told this story to me, it kind of seemed like in the aftermath of all this, part of him was thinking that he may have just seen some kind of terrifying animal native to Mexico that he simply hadn't heard of before.
Needless to say, there is no animal in Mexico or anywhere that matches that description. Either way, him having not known about this before is so striking to me and adds an entire new layer onto this already incredible story. That and the time loop him and Peter experienced makes this so bizarre.
I really enjoyed speaking to Simon. He seems like a very kind and sweet person. He's also so naturally funny, even when he wasn't trying to be. I also thought it was very telling that he clearly views Roy and Nora as the real villains of this story because they were rude and unkind to people. Even though he encountered this terrifying creature,
The creature was still not the real villain to him. And even though it was so terrifying seeing this thing, he was still experiencing guilt about potentially hurting it. I think that says a lot. Finally, I just want to say...
We're always looking for stories from other countries, from other cultures and places. But of course, all the stories you hear on this show are submitted by listeners. So if you have a story, send it in to stories at otherworldpod.com. Simon actually wasn't even a listener of the show at the time. His friend is, and the friend basically made him send the story in. I'm so glad that they did.
If you have stories from Mexico, Latin America, or anywhere, we want to hear them. Send them on in. Thank you so much to Simon for sharing this story. This has been episode 90. The title is The Long Road Home, and you've been listening to Otherworld.
Thank you.
If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash otherworld. Our social media is at otherworldpod. That's on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Thank you to the team at Odyssey. J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese-Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Laura Curran, Josephina Francis, and Hilary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained,
You can send us your story at storiesoftheworldpod.com. That was the long road home from Otherworld. And yes, you can find more Otherworld episodes wherever you get your podcasts.