What is your life's biggest mystery that will probably go unsolved?

What is your life's biggest mystery that will probably go unsolved?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What is your life's biggest mystery that will probably go unsolved.
Story one the time I woke up on top of
my refrigerator. I don't remember exactly how old I was,
sometime in my early teens, but it's exactly what I said.
I woke up on top of my refrigerator. I had
been sleeping up there, curled up like a cat, and

(00:20):
to this day I have no idea how I got
up there. There was nobody home at the time who
would or could have put me up there while I
was sleeping, and there's no way I could have climbed
up there unassisted. But there were no chairs or stools
or anything around the fridge I could have used to
climb up, and I obviously couldn't have used one and
put it back while I was still up there. I
also had no prior history of sleepwalking whatsoever, and to

(00:44):
my knowledge, I've never sleep walked again since. To this day,
I have absolutely no idea what happened, and it still
bugs me. If anybody has any theories as to how
this could have been possible, I would love to hear them.
Story two, Is my dad really my dad? When I
was conceived? My mother and her then boyfriend were having

(01:06):
some serious relationship issues. He had been unfaithful to her
with his ex wife. She went on a road trip
to another state with some girlfriends to clear her head
and blow off steam. While there, she ran into another
guy she knew from back home. He had a nice car,
offered to give her a ride in it, and they
spent the night together. She went back home, and shortly

(01:27):
after she and her boyfriend reconciled and resumed dating. Not
long after that, she found out she was pregnant. The
boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion. I don't think
he knew about the other guy, however, but she refused.
They ended up breaking up some time during her pregnancy.
She was fairly sure that the guy with the car
was the father, but didn't know for sure. The ex

(01:47):
assumed he was the father, but didn't really want to
take on a parental role. I came into the world
and during my second year of life she wrote a
letter to the guy with the car, using his mother's address,
as she didn't know he was living at the time.
She told him about me and gave him the choice
of being in my life or not. We were fine
either way. She never got a response. Fast forward thirteen years,

(02:11):
my half sister from my mom's previous marriage was getting married.
The wedding was pretty close to the home of the
guy's mother. I had heard everything my mom could tell
me about him and really wanted to meet him. She
went to the house and formed his mom of my
existence and left our phone number. He called later that
night and we arranged a meeting for the next day.
We lived pretty far apart we met. He was very

(02:34):
friendly and we began to form a relationship. He claimed
he didn't need a paternity test and believed he was
the father. My mom believed it too. He passed away
in a fire about four years later. During the last
two years of his life, we didn't get to see
each other much, but we stayed in contact over the phone.
My mom passed away shortly after due to medical issues.

(02:56):
I haven't heard from her former boyfriend since I was
a toddler, and I know if he's still alive. Story three.
I moved into a new house in July. After unloading
all the things I owned, I realized that I had
neglected some basics, like toilet paper in dish detergent. I
went out and stocked up on a few things, including

(03:17):
a giant pack of my favorite toilet paper, the one
with the bears on it, only to realize that my
mom had picked some up for me while I was out.
This giant pack of toilet paper became a thorn in
my side as I moved into a house that was
a complete gut job, and everywhere I turned I was
tripping over boxes and such. There wasn't a shelf or
cupboard big enough to store it, so I was always

(03:39):
throwing it somewhere q the day I actually need it.
Where is this monstrosity nowhere? I searched every nook and
cranny of my house, which had become a lot more
organized over the past couple of weeks. I searched, I
asked friends and family. It's gone. I went shopping and
tried to forget about it. I still look for that
giant of toilet paper. I can't forget. It haunts me.

(04:04):
How does a humongous pack of toilet paper disappear? And this,
I feel, will be the greatest mystery of my life.
Story four. Around two thousand and four, I was working
as a projectionist at a movie theater. One of the
kids movies had ended, but the last movie of the
night still had about fifty minutes left of its run time,
so one of the things I would typically do was

(04:26):
check the theater for left behind, loose change or unopened candy.
I went down there and looked around for maybe ten minutes.
I made my way back upstairs, thinking I still had
about forty minutes left in my shift, and next thing
I know, my boss is calling me on the walkie
talkie asking if I'm done and ready to go home.
I thought he was just messing with me, which he

(04:46):
sometimes would do, so I didn't think much of it
until I realized none of the movies were running, and
to my surprise, I had somehow just jumped about forty
five minutes into the future. Even my watch was showing
the later time. I've never been able to explain it
to myself, and at this point, I'm just assuming my
mind made the whole thing up. Or maybe I'm a

(05:07):
one time time traveler who randomly moved ahead about forty
five minutes for no apparent reason. Story five. Back in
two thousand and four, I worked with an incredibly beautiful
girl who, one night, while we were on a break together,
just poured her heart out to me about how difficult
life had become. She was a single mom trying to
make ends meet. Anyway, I got up to go back

(05:28):
to work, but before I left, I offered her a hug.
She stood up and hugged me for about thirty seconds.
It was the tightest hug anyone has ever given me
in my life. A couple of months later, I found
myself moving halfway across the country for a career change
that ended up not working out. About six months after that,
I moved back and got my old job again. To
my delight, she was still there. So I showed up

(05:50):
on my first day back with a lot of excitement.
Come to find out she had four days left before
she was moving on and to become a nurse. In
some sense, it's almost like she did to me exactly
what I had done to her. Left for a career opportunity.
I'll always wonder if she felt as strongly for me
as I did for her. I never really got the
chance to tell her. Maybe I should have. Story six. Okay,

(06:13):
So I decided to try a baby gymnastics class with
my one year old. She was having fun, and I
decided to grab my phone to take a few photos
I noticed it wasn't with my bag, but I didn't panic.
I probably left it in the car. I knew I
had it in the car because I'd been listening to
the Hamilton soundtrack. I finished the class and walked to

(06:33):
my car, which was park parallel to the gym. I
put the baby in her seat and called out, Hey, Siri,
a trick I often used to find my phone. Siri
didn't respond. I was slightly more concerned, but I still
got in the car, expecting it to connect to my
phone via Bluetooth because it had to be in the
car right. I started driving, but nothing happened. Now I

(06:56):
knew for sure that my phone wasn't in the car.
I was already nearby, so I pulled into my mom's house,
she lives two minutes from the gym, frantically calling my number.
To my relief, a woman answered and said I had
left my phone at the gym. I thanked her profusely
and told her I'd come right back to collect it.
She said, okay. I drove back to the gym, walked in,

(07:16):
looking a bit embarrassed. The coach smiled and said, forget something.
I laughed and said, my phone. Then she said, yeah,
go walk around and look for it. I paused, what
but I just called it and a woman said it
was found here. The coach looked just as confused, saying
no phone had been handed in and no one had
come in since I left. She asked the two other

(07:37):
moms present if they knew anything. They didn't. Now I
was truly confused. I borrowed the gym's phone to call
my number again. It rang, but no one answered. I
stood at the desk for five minutes, just trying to
process what was happening, before I asked the coach if
I could borrow her phone to use find my iPhone.
She handed it over and I logged in the compass,

(07:57):
spun a few times, then stopped. My phone was close by,
only three streets away, at another gym. I thank the coach.
Drove to that gym, which I had never entered in
my life, and saw my phone sitting on the counter.
I asked the receptionist who turned it in, but she
didn't really know. How did it get to the other gym,

(08:18):
where was it found, who found it? And why didn't
they return it to the first gym since it must
have been lost on the sidewalk from the car to
the original location. I still don't know how it got
to the other gym or where it was found. I
don't think I ever will story seven. Every Valentine's Day
for the last ten to twelve years, I've been sent

(08:39):
a secret admirer card, same handwriting, always in all caps,
always bearing a postmark from a London sorting office. To
this day, I have been unable to determine who's sending it.
My biggest suspicion is that it's either my mother or
my sister. My reasoning is that the cards started when
I was a teenager, a socially awkward kid who didn't

(09:00):
exactly have admirers, and I just can't believe someone outside
my family would keep this going for so long. I've
asked my mom and sister about it numerous times, but
they firmly insist it's not them. I've asked other family
members and they all deny it too. I've tried getting
upset and pleaded with them, telling them it's starting to
bother me and I'd rather just know the truth. But

(09:21):
still the cards arrive either. My family has way more
will power and persistence than I give them credit for.
Or my mystery admirer is truly anonymous, regardless, it continues
to bug me. Like Crazy Story eight. I once got
a random message on my phone saying four hundred minutes
had been added to it. No idea how considering the

(09:43):
only people who could have done it didn't have that
kind of money at the time. It was a nice surprise.
When I was seventeen, I heard sounds like someone stomping
on my roof. I thought maybe it was the landlord
or his son, since we had recently complained about a leak.
I looked everywhere out side, but there were no vehicles,
no ladders. The stomping continued for about ten minutes back

(10:06):
and forth, then stopped. At fifteen. I went to take
a nap after staying up late the night before. My
mom came home from work, banged on my door, and
I walked out of my room. Immediately, I was hit
with a massive wave of heat, and my mom asked
what was going on. I was confused and asked her
the same thing. When she came in, she found the
oven open and turned up to Max and one of

(10:27):
the dining chairs placed directly in front of the bathroom door.
The chair had been moved there once before, during the night,
when my mom had gotten up to use the bathroom.
I could go on, but that's probably enough for now.
Story nine. A few years ago, I was driving through
East London with some friends, literally just driving around without
any destination. We had been on the road for about

(10:49):
ten minutes when I noticed flashes coming from the car
in front, then more flashes. I realized they were taking
pictures of my car. After a few shots, they sped off.
We kept driving for another thirty to forty minutes, and
while going through a different area of East London, someone
in another car ahead of us stuck a camera out
the window and started taking more pictures. After a few photos,

(11:11):
they sped off too, this time running multiple red lights.
There were a lot due to roadworks. About twenty minutes
later we were near the first location where the photos
were taken. We drove into a nearby council estate and
I realized a car was following us closely. I took
a left turn, so did they. I turned right and
they followed again. I pulled into a car park, they

(11:33):
did too. I pulled out, they followed. I started to
feel uneasy, just about ready to speed away, when Suddenly
blue lights came on. The car following us was an
undercover police car. I got pulled over. Two plane clothes
officers approached the vehicle and asked me to step out.
They showed their badges, checked my license and details, looked

(11:54):
through the windows, but didn't search the car, and eventually
let me go. I still don't know if those were
three unrelated incidents or two weird encounters followed by a
police stop, or if everything was somehow connected. It didn't
sit right with me that I was photographed in my
car miles apart, with both cars speeding off, and then

(12:14):
later pulled over for the first time in my life.
I was a new driver at the time. Was I
being followed? Was my old car somehow interesting to random people?
I don't know if you'd call it a mystery, but
it still feels like one to me. Stay ten. Sometime
around two thousand and eight, two roommates and I saw
a giant, winged reptilian creature flying above our Henderson, Nevada

(12:37):
home late one night. After maybe an hour or so,
it flew off into the darkness. We dubbed it the Mothman.
Like the antagonists from the movie with the same name.
The next night, there were two. They flew in lazy
circles over our subdivision, like hawks searching for mice in
a field. One of them flew low enough that the
street lights illuminated it, and I clearly remember seeing a

(12:59):
well to fine quadrceps muscle. The night after that, the
sky was full of them, along with smaller, barking type things.
I can't even begin to describe what they look like.
Then they were gone forever. For months after, we'd stay
up late smoking cigarettes in the bed of my truck
watching the skies. The kicker to the story is that

(13:21):
years later, after I moved to the Pacific Northwest, my
girlfriend and I were hanging out by the river. We
chatted with the family next to us, and when I
mentioned where I used to live, the guy asked, you
ever see any of them flying gargoyles. My girlfriend, who
already knew the story, and I looked at each other
in total shock. Apparently he had a friend in Arizona

(13:41):
who told a similar story. I'm not religious. I don't
buy into outlandish things other people say. I think keem
trails are just vapor condensation. Bigfoot, probably a guy in
a costume I've never claimed to be abducted by aliens,
but I have one giant, unexplainable mystery that I don't
think i'll ever solve. Story eleven. I had a favorite

(14:04):
toy as a kid that I played with every day,
and I always kept it separate from my other toys
so I wouldn't waste time looking for it. It sat
inside this end table looking thing. One day, I went
to grab it and it was gone. I searched everywhere,
and my five or six year old self interrogated the
whole family. No one had any idea where it had gone.

(14:25):
Years later, as a teenager, I found it underneath a
cardboard box in the basement, which had somehow slipped under
the tool bench. I still have no clue how it
got there. Side story, I'm convinced I have a doppelganger
with similar tattoos to mine. In Georgia, I'm from Indiana.
I had to travel there for work and had never
been in that state before, not even in passing. I

(14:47):
stopped at a gas station just outside Atlanta, and as
soon as I walked in, the young cashier smiled brightly
and said, oh my gosh. Hi Confused, I smiled and
said hi back. She asked how i'd and then said,
I see you finally got your half sleeve finished. I
had just completed it about a month prior. I was

(15:07):
definitely weirded out, but I went along with it. Then
she asked, are you still getting your shoulder covered up?
I do have a tattoo on my shoulder and I
had been planning to get it covered for a few months.
I quickly wrapped up the conversation and left. To this day,
I have absolutely no clue what happened, or maybe it
was just an extremely strange coincidence. Story twelve. It was

(15:30):
nineteen ninety six and I was backpacking solo, taking a
train from Prague to Cheskey Krumlov. We got a bit
outside Prague, stopping now and then at various stations. Then
we stopped in a field. I didn't pay much attention
at first, until a minute or two later, when I
realized everyone was getting off the train with all their
luggage and climbing a hill. I was totally confused. I

(15:52):
looked around and saw that everyone had left my car, actually,
everyone had left all the cars. So I grabbed my
backpack and followed them up the hill, trying desperately to
find someone who spoke English. At the top of the
hill were a bunch of buses with signs in check,
each apparently indicating different destinations, but none of them said
Cheskey Krumloff. I stood there indecisively as buses started filling

(16:16):
up and pulling away. Eventually, a little old lady grabbed
me by the arm and pulled me into one of
the last buses. There were no seats left, though someone
kindly offered one to her, so I stood we drove.
I had no idea where we were going, why we
were going there, or how long it would take. Still,
I couldn't find anyone who spoke English. After about twenty minutes,

(16:38):
we reached a small station in a rural area and
there was a train waiting. It looked about the same
as the one we'd been on, though I couldn't be
sure it was the same. All the buses pulled in
and everyone got back on the train, so I did two.
Eventually we arrived in Cheske Krumloff, and I got off.
To this day, I have no idea what happened the

(17:00):
track damaged. Was it some kind of emergency, A herd
of cows blocking the line a quiet disaster they didn't
want to mention. Was it always part of the plan
to switch to buses? I'll never know. Story thirteen. Who
called me at my new house on my new landline
number from a very old cell phone showing my dad's

(17:20):
name on the caller ID, A year after he had
passed away, and many years after we had lost that
phone in number. I wasn't even in the same state anymore.
I had moved and changed numbers several times, and only
one person, my husband, had our new number. This happened
about seven years ago, and I can't remember whether I

(17:41):
actually answered the call and no one was there, or
if I just stared at the caller ID with my
dad's name until it stopped ringing. I was just so
confused and deeply unsettled. I tried calling the number back,
but never got an answer or voicemail. I contacted every
phone company that might have been associated with that number,

(18:01):
explained my situation, thinking maybe it was a stolen phone,
but still still, how would they have my new number
and why would they call me? None of the providers
had records of that number or name anymore, and honestly,
I think they thought I was losing it. The only
somewhat logical explanation I have is that an old acquaintance

(18:22):
somehow ended up with the phone and tried to contact
me and had somehow tracked down my new name and number.
Or maybe I imagined the whole thing. I'll never really know.
Story fourteen. My mom and dad were very sick in
their final months. My dad was paraplegic and my mom
was his full time caregiver. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer,

(18:45):
and after about seven months we knew what was ahead.
She was going to pass away. My dad had a
lot of issues, including struggles with alcohol. I sat down
next to him one day and told him he needed
to start taking physical therapy seriously because she was getting
weak and couldn't continue caring for him. He passed away
in his sleep just a few days later. It was peaceful.

(19:07):
My mom found him in the morning with a glass
in his hand. That's how calm it was. He had
an entire pharmacy at his bedside, including vicodin infentanyl. When
the hospital asked if I wanted an autopsy, I declined.
I was twenty three at the time and felt he
had been through enough in those last years. I couldn't
bear the idea of his body being cut open for answers.

(19:27):
My mom, already very sick herself, didn't argue with my decision.
She was honestly overwhelmed with a mix of relief and guilt,
relief that she wouldn't have to take care of him anymore,
guilt for feeling that way, and anxiety about her own health.
She passed just under four months after him. I think
he may have ended his own life by overdosing, but

(19:48):
I'll never know. A lot still haunts me about those
last few months and what I could have done differently,
but I was a mess and far too young to
navigate that situation with a clear head. Story. My girlfriend
and I moved into an apartment about a year ago.
Nothing strange happened for the first month or so. Then
one day her mostly blind dog was staring into the

(20:09):
closet and barking. We thought he was barking at a dress,
so we said, come on, Nelson, it's just a dress
and shut the closet, but he kept staring in that
direction with an intense, almost aggressive focus. A bit later,
something slid off the counter on its own. It was
a little weird, but we didn't overthink it. Then one
day I was walking to the bathroom and saw something

(20:31):
run across the hallway. I asked my girlfriend where Nelson was,
just in case it was him, but she said he
was right next to her. Another day, while I was
at work, my girlfriend said she saw something that looked
like a shadowy catlike figure. We know it wasn't an
actual cat or any animal, because I'm severely allergic. We've

(20:51):
just come to accept that maybe the place is haunted
by a ghost cat Story sixteen. A few years after
I moved out of my parents' house, though I still
visited weekly, they kept calling me one week to tell
me they saved a piece of coconut custard pie for me.
They were making a really big deal about it, which
felt odd. When I got there that Friday, they were

(21:12):
still going on and on about the pie. When it
came time to eat it, I noticed there was only
one piece missing, not one piece saved. Strange, but I
didn't dwell on it. They both watched me closely as
I took a bite. It tasted terrible, like chemicals or
cleaning solution. I spit it out and told them something
was off. They tried to get me to eat more,

(21:33):
saying maybe I could figure out what went wrong with it.
I refused. They started acting very strange, so I asked
what was going on. My mom acted confused and upset,
saying there was nothing wrong, it was just pie. Then
my dad casually got in his car and left. I
pressed them about it many times afterward, but never got
a real answer. When I really pushed, my mom would

(21:55):
get emotional and accuse me of being paranoid or strange
for thinking something was off. I spent years with them
after that, never learning what actually happened. Now they're both gone,
and I still have no answers. Story seventeen. When I
was around ten years old, my dad and I were
walking down some train tracks in West Virginia. Out of nowhere,
a young man appeared from the woods, probably in his

(22:18):
early twenties. He was shirtless and had strange markings on
his chest and face. It looked like he had used
berry juice to paint on himself. He came over and
started talking to us. I don't remember everything he said
since I was just a kid, but what I do
remember has stayed with me. The tracks we were walking
followed a winding path through the woods and eventually crossed

(22:39):
a huge river via a narrow bridge. The bridge had
no room to walk beside the tracks, just wide enough
for the train. He told us that he walked across
that bridge all the time and claimed a train had
never come while he was crossing. He said a few
more things and then went on his way. A few
minutes later, we saw him reach the bridge and start crossing.
When he was about a quarter of the way across,

(23:00):
we heard a train coming from our direction. It passed us,
going fairly quickly and blocked our view of the bridge.
Then we noticed the trains slowing down and eventually coming
to a complete stop. It couldn't stop fast enough, though
the first car was about three quarters of the way
across the bridge by the time it halted. We ran
to the edge of the cliff to see what had happened.

(23:22):
We looked at the land on the other side and
down into the river below, but there was no sign
of the guy. The train sat there for a few
minutes and then started back up and left. We never
found out what happened to him, and I think about
it all the time. Story eighteen. I went to stay
at a castle with my husband and his family members.
I don't believe in ghosts, but they do, so they

(23:43):
were planning to play ghost hunters. I just wanted the
experience of staying in a castle. We were allowed to
wander around at night after a guided ghost tour. The
room we went to allegedly had two main spirits, a
boy in blue and a gray lady, the usual kind
of legends. The rest of the group sat in the
living room while I sat apart at a little folding

(24:04):
table in the kitchen area. It was open plan. They
didn't want my skeptical presence ruining the energy. While they
tried to communicate. They started asking things like is anyone there,
but weren't getting any responses. Suddenly I felt the energy
drained from my body. I couldn't even hold my head
up and had to rest it on the table. Then
I started feeling these strange electric like sensations touching me.

(24:27):
I told them what I was experiencing and that I
felt something touching my head. They turned the camera toward
me and on the footage they could see a bluish
orb flying out of my head. I said I could
feel something touching my back, and sure enough, the orb
then appeared to exit from my back. That continued for
about five minutes, me describing where I felt something, followed

(24:48):
by the ORB appearing to come in or out of
that exact spot. Then just as quickly as it started,
it stopped. I felt completely normal again. That's my life's mystery.
I don't bel the supernatural. I believe there's probably a
scientific explanation for what happened. There's still a lot we
don't understand. I don't think it was a lens flare.

(25:10):
It was a pitch black room with the curtains closed.
I checked for reflective surfaces, and there was nothing blue
in the area. If it were just dust catching the
infrared light from the night vision camera, it would be
an incredible coincidence for it to match the exact spots
I was naming repeatedly. I don't think it was psychological either.

(25:30):
I don't believe in that kind of stuff, and I
was honestly trying to suppress laughter at how ridiculous it
all seemed. I didn't convince myself into feeling or seeing anything,
but that night still bugs me, and I think it
always will. Story nineteen. I can't remember exactly how old
I was, but I couldn't have been older than ten.
I was living in a small military town in Idaho.

(25:53):
One night, around ten pm, the power went out in
the neighborhood. I've always loved the stars, and my dad
mentioned that with no lights around, I should go check
out how the sky looked. It would be super bright.
I went outside and spend some time just enjoying the view.
Then I got the idea to climb up onto the
roof over our patio. My dad kept a ladder leaning

(26:13):
against the shed right next to the roof for that reason.
I was about halfway up the ladder when I noticed
something unusual. It took me a second to recognize it.
It was the complete absence of sound. No bugs chirping,
no wind blowing, just silence. I looked up and saw
something massive fly overhead, completely silent. It was dark, but

(26:35):
I could just barely make out a huge shape behind it.
It completely blotted out the stars. I had grown up
near an air force base and was used to the
sounds of jets flying overhead. This thing couldn't have been
a jet. There was absolutely no noise. The silence was
so intense I was frozen in place. I ran inside
and told my dad what I saw. He didn't have

(26:56):
any explanation, and even now, after serving in the Air
Force for ten years, I still don't have a good
theory for what it could have been. It scared me then,
and the mystery of it still sticks with me. Story twenty.
I was on a family trip to Yosemite when I
was somewhere between twelve and fourteen years old. I can't
remember exactly. It was me, my parents, and my godparents

(27:17):
one night walking home from dinner. We were on a
path that had dark woods on one side and a
part of town on the other. Through this particular stretch,
there were no buildings on the left, just pitch black
forest on the right. My parents started walking ahead of
me and my godparents maybe about seventy five feet ahead,
while I stayed back talking with my godparents. Between us

(27:39):
and my parents there was an older lady walking alone
keeping pace. I was being a brat intentionally to my godparents,
and they laughed and told me to go bother my
parents instead, so I happily ran and skipped ahead. As
I passed the older lady, she suddenly grabbed my shoulder
and dug her nails into me. She said something along
the lines of you'd better be nice to your grandparents.

(28:02):
I'll never forget the sound of her bracelets. She was
wearing maybe seven to ten of them, clanging together. The
entire encounter lasted maybe ten seconds. She grabbed me, whispered
to me, and then I screamed and ran to my parents, crying.
They asked what happened, and I explained everything. I went
to point back at the lady, but she was gone.

(28:23):
She couldn't have passed my parents, and she couldn't have
walked into town or we'd have seen her. That meant
she must have gone into the woods. My parents didn't
believe me until we got back to the hotel. They
looked at my shoulder and it was red with clear
nail imprints and faint marks from bracelets. I'll never know
who she was or why she walked into the dark
woods that night. Story twenty one. I have two decent ones.

(28:47):
One night, I came home after drinking and went straight
to sleep. The next morning I had a missed call
and voicemail from an unknown number. The message was someone
saying my name over and over again in a soft,
almost crying voice. It sounded like a woman or a
man trying to sound like one. The strange part, I
had just moved to the countryside and had only given

(29:09):
my number to two people, my wife, who was asleep
next to me at the time, and my best friend,
who had crashed on our couch that night because he
couldn't drive home. The second story happened in college. A
few friends and I took a spontaneous spring break trip
to Colorado to go skiing. None of our family or
friends knew exactly where we were. We just drove to Durango,

(29:30):
hopped online at the local library, and started calling around
to find a cabin. We eventually found a place with
just a few cabins, all empty except for the one
where the owner lived. On the first or second night,
there was a knock at the door. It was the
owner telling us we had a phone call on the
main line at her cabin. One of my friends went
with her, but by the time they got there, the

(29:51):
caller had hung up. The owner said the person on
the line had asked to speak to the guys from
Oklahoma who were staying there. All our cars had oak
home of plates, but no one outside the group knew
where we were. The owner didn't have any more information.
We were thoroughly creeped out, especially me, since I had
to sleep in the living room, which had big windows

(30:11):
with no curtains, while the others were in bedrooms. I'll
never know who made that call or how they knew
where we were. Story twenty two. When I was around
four or five years old, I became obsessed with the
idea of flying. I thought that if I just focused
hard enough, I could lift off the ground. I practiced
this for weeks until one day I actually started to

(30:32):
float up to the upper part of a door frame
and then slowly backed down. I was incredibly excited and
ran to tell my mom. She didn't believe me at first,
just said, yeah, sure, But the thing is, she remembers
that day. It never worked again after that, not even
later the same day. Another strange thing happened. Around that
same time. I got a floating balloon from a theme

(30:55):
park and brought it home. I was alone with my
parents out feeling bored. The balloon had lost just enough
gas to hover with its string touching the floor. At
one point I decided to play hide and seek with it,
and somehow it worked. I would hide in another room
behind a sofa, and the balloon would float over to
where I was and find me no open windows. It

(31:16):
happened more than once. For some reason, I expected it
to work like it wasn't just an inanimate object. I
had no witnesses. What puzzles me most is that I
didn't feel any fear. It was fun. I saw a
kind of personality in that balloon. As I grew older,
nothing similar ever happened again. I have no idea what
any of that was, or if it was just a dream,

(31:40):
but it didn't feel like a dream, and my mom's
memory of the first event confirms at least that something
happened while I was awake. Story twenty three. This past summer,
I was dog sitting for some friends of mine. They
have a medium sized, older black lab. Such a beautiful dog,
she rarely barks. One night, I woke up around three

(32:00):
to the sound of barking outside. I listened for a moment,
trying to figure out where it was coming from, and
realized it was her. I knew for a fact she
had been inside when I went to bed, and there
was no one else in the house. I got up
to let her in, assuming I had somehow misremembered, and
left her outside, only to find the back door wide
open with the dead bolt still in the lock position.

(32:22):
The female side of the dead bolt was set into
a load bearing beam and showed no signs of damage.
The dog came running in as soon as I got there.
I shut the door and spent the rest of the
night trying to calm down. The next day, I tried
everything I could to figure out how that door opened
while the dead bolt was engaged. I slammed into it
with my shoulder, tested the hinges. Nothing. I thought maybe

(32:45):
it was spring loaded and the door wasn't fully latched
the night before, so when the dog pushed on it,
it could have opened and the lock re engaged after.
But no, that wasn't it either. Everything was working normally.
There were values near the door untouched. I didn't sleep
well the rest of that week, and I still get
chills thinking about it. Before anyone suggests sleepwalking, my bedroom

(33:09):
door was fully closed and I have no history of sleepwalking.
Still don't. Story twenty four. When my son was around
two years old, he started coming home from preschool singing songs,
but we couldn't always understand the words. Most of the time,
we'd eventually hear the same song somewhere else, and he'd
pointed out as the one he was singing. For example,

(33:30):
he kept singing something that sounded like vordebete ci and
we had no idea what it was. Then one day
we were watching Transformers on Netflix and we realized he
had been trying to say more than meets the eye.
This happened multiple times. He'd sing something we didn't recognize,
and eventually we'd figure it out. But just before he
turned three, he started singing something different, what sounded like

(33:52):
tristabel beebe and sometimes tristable yuckie. We assumed it was
another song or phrase we'd eventually understand. We even asked
his preschool teacher, but she had no idea what it
could be. Not long after, he changed schools and the
mystery phrase never got an answer. To this day, he
occasionally still says it and we still have absolutely no

(34:14):
idea what it means. It's just become one of those
family mysteries we may never solve. Story twenty five. I
know I accidentally created a mystery for someone else and
they might still be trying to figure it out all
these years later. I've been with my boyfriend for five years.
In the first couple of months, we kept things almost
completely quiet. The complication was that my ex, who i'd

(34:37):
broken up with amicably, was kind of friends with my
current boyfriend. They were both in the same friendship circle,
and to avoid drama, we just kept it under wraps.
One evening, I was hanging out at my boyfriend's place
when a mutual friend of my ex showed up unannounced
to return a video game. I quickly ran upstairs to hide. Honestly,
it was kind of fun and exciting. She stayed downstairs

(35:00):
chatting for a while, maybe an hour. I could hear
my boyfriend trying to gently get her to leave since
I was stuck upstairs. Eventually, she went to go, but
then came back in because her car wouldn't start. My
boyfriend offered to go out and take a look. I
should mention we had a cat. When the friend had arrived,
I heard my boyfriend say he was putting the cat
in the kitchen because she was allergic. The kitchen had

(35:22):
a solid door with a sturdy handle. When they both
stepped out, I got really thirsty and went down to
the kitchen to grab a drink. I didn't realize the
cat had slipped out into the living room. I ran
back out of the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
When they came back inside, I heard the friend exclaim
what the actual heck? She was baffled to see the
cat sitting in the living room. She even tested the

(35:45):
door handle trying to figure out how the cat got out.
She was absolutely convinced she'd seen my boyfriend shut the
cat in the kitchen, and he confirmed he had. She
talked about it for months afterward, trying to make sense
of it. I always wonder if she still thinks that
cat had magical powers. Story twenty six. I was a
freshman in college when I started receiving a series of

(36:06):
mysterious and increasingly threatening phone calls. At the time, I
was pledging a fraternity and assumed some of the brothers
were pranking me. The calls always came from a restricted number.
At first, they seemed harmless, asking how I was enjoying
the pledging experience, that sort of thing. But over time
they got darker. The caller started making threats, saying I

(36:27):
was going to be hurt or worse. The weirdest part
wasn't even the threats. It was when the caller began
contacting random people in my life and telling them that
I was in love with them. There was no pattern
to who these people were. Many were men. Now I
am queer, but I was deeply in the closet at
the time, and I'm certain none of the fraternity brothers

(36:48):
knew that. I only found out because people, some of
whom I hadn't spoken to in years, started independently reaching
out to me, asking why they were receiving bizarre voicemails. Eventually,
I in front of the fraternity's president and told him
to ask the brothers to knock it off. He seemed
genuinely confused and insisted no one in the fraternity was
behind it. Eventually the call stopped, but to this day,

(37:12):
I still wonder how the caller a knew such intimate
details of my life and b why they would spend
so much time and energy doing something so strange and
seemingly pointless. I'd like to know who it was one day,
but I've mostly accepted that I never will. Story twenty seven.
Back in college, there was a girl I really liked.
Her smile could brighten the gloomiest day. I remember it

(37:35):
doing just that once. She had been struggling academically and
was falling behind. Before winter break, I finally gathered the
courage to ask her if she'd want to go out
with me sometime. She said yes. One day during my vacation.
This was in two thousand and eight. I really wanted
to talk to her. I had her number saved and
almost dialed it. I was in a different country at

(37:57):
the time, visiting family, but something stopped me, maybe a
bit of ego. I thought she could have called me too,
so I didn't call and just went about my day.
The next morning, several seniors and classmates contacted me with
devastating news she had passed away. Apparently she had gotten
access to her uncle's service revolver and taken her own life.

(38:17):
I reread the messages and news articles over and over.
The timeline seemed to match the very moment I'd almost
called her. I still wonder what might have happened if
I had just dialed that number. Maybe I could have
said something. Maybe I couldn't have done anything. I've never
told anyone about this, not the people I've dated, not
my family, No one knows. I guess this felt like

(38:40):
a good place to finally share it. The anonymity makes
it easier story twenty eight. It was around ten pm
on a Tuesday night. My friend Danny and I had
this tradition of hitting the McDonald's drive through, grabbing some food,
and parking back at his place inside a trailer park complex.
We'd sit in the car, eat and watched conspiracy videos

(39:01):
on his phone. We talked a lot about the wild
things people claimed to have seen, even though neither of
us had ever experienced anything strange. Around eleven thirty pm,
we were sitting in my car watching a video when
suddenly a bright light flashed across a third to half
of the sky. It only lasted a second and then disappeared.
The light was incredibly bright, but oddly it didn't illuminate

(39:25):
the ground or surroundings. We both froze and stared at
each other. Then it flashed again. You saw that, right,
I asked, Yeah, what the heck was that? Danny replied,
It flashed once more and we both freaked out, jumped
out of the car and started recording on our phones,
but the light never came back. Around midnight, I drove

(39:45):
home and stopped at a nearby subway that's opened twenty
four to seven to ask if anyone working had seen it.
They hadn't. We later looked up videos and tried to
figure out what it could have been, but nothing matched.
It was a bright white light that filled a massive
section of the sky, with no sound, no rumble, and
no glow on the ground. I was seventeen when it happened.

(40:07):
Now I'm twenty three, and we still have no clue
what it was. I've told a lot of people about it.
It's not that they don't believe me, but it's really
hard to describe the scale of what we saw. Most
people shrug it off like it was just a flashlight
or something small. But this thing filled what looked like
half the sky. It was pure white and blinding, but

(40:27):
it didn't cast any light on anything else. I've watched
tons of lightning videos, and I can say with one
hundred percent certainty it was not lightning. Story twenty nine.
I'm fourteen years old attending a summer camp organized by
one of the local churches. I'm wearing a silly, funny
hat because that's what nerdy, chubby kids who use humor

(40:47):
as a defense mechanism tend to do. The hat makes
absolutely no sense, but at some point I get this
strange feeling that a girl is flirting with me. We
didn't really know each other, though we had gone to
the same goals for six years at that point. She
was a year younger, cute and popular, and me, I'm
overweight and nerdy, so I naturally assume she isn't flirting.

(41:09):
On the last evening, I returned to the tent I
share with two other boys and notice that my hat
is missing. I had left it in the tent because
we had attended some kind of evening mass. It was strange,
but not the end of the world. Even stranger. Under
my pillow, I find a pair of girls underwear. How
did they end up there? I asked the other boys
if they're messing with me, but they insist they're not

(41:32):
involved at all. A couple of months later, during the
annual school play, I'm in the audience. The cute girl's
older sister is on stage doing a skit, and the
hat she's wearing looks exactly like the one I lost.
I have so many questions, but none of them have
ever been answered. It's been twenty six years, and I
doubt they ever will be. Story thirty, my good friend

(41:53):
in college roommate went missing at sea. He disappeared on
a beautiful sunny day in Biscayne Bay. He was an
incredible experienced sailor, having represented the US in the London
Olympic Games, and had spent his entire life on and
around the ocean. His inflatable boat was later found that day,
tangled in some mooring lines in the same harbor he

(42:13):
had departed from. His life jacket, wallet, and cell phone
were found on the boat, but there was no sign
of Trevor. The GPS showed he had sailed directly to
a specific spot in the bay where he kept crab
and lobster traps. Then the boat appeared to zigzag back
and forth before eventually drifting back into the harbor. Most
people think he drowned, but this man was an incredible

(42:35):
athlete and knew the water as well as anyone could.
For context, Biscayne Bay is a shallow body of water
with a sandy bottom and crystal clear water. Anything floating
would be visible from the sky. A massive three day
search and rescue operation was launched, involving tied scientists, drones, helicopters,

(42:56):
and a fleet of boats. They scoured the area thoroughly,
but his body was never found. Story thirty one. When
I was around thirteen years old, I was playing football
with friends at a local park. The field was massive,
big enough to fit about five full sized football pitches.
During the game, I noticed a woman maybe one hundred
meters away taking photos of us, specifically me, with a

(43:19):
large camera. It really looked like she was focusing on me,
as I was playing goalkeeper and was standing apart from
the other kids. She had long black hair, was dressed
all in black, but was too far away to clearly
see her face. I thought it was strange, but carried
on playing. By the time I mentioned it to my friends,
she had vanished. Later that week, at home, I went

(43:42):
outside to take the rubbish to the garden bin. It
was already dark, though probably not too late, maybe around
eight pm. Our garden was about one hundred feet long,
lined with flowers and bushes on both sides. As I
opened the bin, I saw two large flashes on the
right hand side of the garden, down near the bushes.
I froze in fear. Then another flash, exactly like a

(44:05):
camera flash, went off, and I bolted back inside. For
some reason, I didn't tell my parents, maybe I thought
they wouldn't believe me. There was no logical explanation, and
it never happened again. I'm twenty eight now. This happened
fifteen years ago, and I'm still totally confused by what
happened that night. Story thirty two. One night, I was

(44:27):
sitting with my mom watching TV, waiting for my older
sister to get home. My mom was on one couch
and I was on the other. We were upstairs in
the family room, which overlooked the stairs connecting the first
and second floors. It was around midnight. My mom was
trying to stay awake, though she kept dozing off. She
was angry at my sister for breaking curfew again and

(44:48):
didn't want her sneaking in unnoticed. We'd been watching TV
for about an hour when we heard the downstairs front
door open. We heard shuffling around, no big deal. We
assumed it was my sister. My mom sat up waiting
for her to come up the stairs. We waited and waited.
Then we finally heard someone coming up the stairs, but
the steps were slow, heavy, and accompanied by strange guttural noises.

(45:13):
We watched as someone reached halfway up the stairs and
stopped in the dim light of the TV. We could
only see a silhouette from the shoulders up, just standing
there staring at us, and we were staring back. After
a moment, the figure turned, went back downstairs and exited
out the front door. My mom looked at me and
we were both completely weirded out. About five minutes later,

(45:35):
my sister walked in, loud and obnoxious as usual, chatting
on her phone, turning on lights, and acting totally normal.
She had no clue what had just happened. While my
mom grilled her for being late, she also questioned her
about the weird behavior at the door. My sister was
genuinely confused and had no idea what my mom was
talking about, and I could tell my mom believed her.

(45:58):
My sister wasn't into pranks, and she wasn't creative or
sneaky enough to pull something like that off. Later that night,
my mom came into my room and told me never
to tell my sister what had happened. She said my
sister was such a scaredy cat that it could seriously
mess her up. We still don't know what or who
it was. Maybe it was a drunk neighbor who walked

(46:19):
into the wrong house. Maybe it was something worse we'll
never know. Story thirty three. I studied abroad in Florence,
Italy last fall. My girlfriend was also studying abroad that semester,
but in Prague. During the third weekend of the semester,
she came to visit me. We had a pretty normal
day exploring the city, and around six or seven pm

(46:40):
we decided to head back to my apartment so I
could introduce her to my roommates. I was living on
the fourth floor of an older apartment building about half
a mile from the Duomo. On rainy days, the building
gave off a weird smell, but that's pretty common in
older European cities. Other than that, it was a great place.
When you enter the building, there's a long, windowless hallway

(47:01):
that leads to the stairwell, which connects to all the apartments.
There's a button near the entrance that turns on the
hallway lights for about five minutes. You can also find
one of these buttons on every floor so you don't
have to walk in total darkness. When we walked in,
the lights were already on, which wasn't common, but probably
meant someone had just come in or was on their

(47:22):
way out. We got about halfway down the hallway when
the lights shut off, leaving us in total darkness. No
big deal. I pulled out my phone to use the flashlight,
but as I was doing that, we heard footsteps behind us.
At first, they were slow, then louder, then faster, until
it sounded like someone was sprinting toward us. Florence has

(47:43):
a reputation for pickpockets and thieves. I'd already been robbed twice,
so I assumed someone had slipped in behind us to
mug us. I quickly pushed my girlfriend behind me, raised
my hands to defend myself, and then just like that,
the lights flicked back on and the sound stopped. Looked
but no one was there. Totally freaked out, we ran

(48:03):
upstairs in my apartment. I still have no explanation for
what happened in that hallway. Story thirty four. I was
seventeen and working at a gas station. My mom was
the manager. On weekends, I opened the store by myself
at five am. I followed the usual routine, opened the store,
completed my morning tasks, and waited for customers. Eventually, someone

(48:27):
came in to buy something, but I couldn't see the
buttons on the register. Everything looked spotty and blurry. The
customer asked if I was okay, then told me I
was bleeding. I reached back and touched my head. My
hand came back covered in blood. I don't remember much
after that. The customer called nine to eleven. At some
point I apparently called my mom and told her something

(48:49):
was wrong, but I don't remember making that call. My
mom said the ambulance was already there when she arrived.
She told me she nearly passed out from the sight
of all the blood coming from my head. I ended
up with a concussion, stitches, and a ride to the hospital.
To this day, I have no idea what happened. There
was a security camera aimed at the register, but whatever

(49:10):
happened to me didn't happen there. There was no blood
anywhere in the store, only on me, and nothing was missing.
That was over fifteen years ago, and I still don't
know what caused it. Story thirty five. I woke up
in bed and couldn't move my body, but I was
one hundred percent awake and fully aware. I honestly thought
I had been paralyzed from the neck down, because I

(49:31):
could move my eyes and look around the room. A
dark shadow seeped in from under the door and slowly
took the shape of something that looked like a cross
between the Grim Reaper and a bansheet. Though it didn't
have a scythe it looked like a dark specter in
humanoid form. It moved around the room with long, shadowy
arms that seemed to be feeling their way through the space.

(49:53):
It moved as if it were assessing me, not in
a threatening way, but I still felt an overwhelming dread.
It felt like this thing was waiting for me to die.
I've never been more terrified in my life. It felt
like it lasted forever. Slowly. I began regaining the ability
to move my body, but I was extremely weak. I
tried lifting myself with my elbows, but I collapsed again,

(50:15):
completely drained. The shade was still there, clearly visible, but
it began to shrink. As I gathered more strength and
managed to fall out of bed and stand up, the
shadow rapidly dissipated. What made this so terrifying was that
I'm not a religious or superstitious person, but I know
without any doubt that I saw what I saw. I've

(50:38):
never told anyone because I knew no one would believe me.
People might say it was a hallucination, but I've never
experienced anything like that in my life. I've never taken drugs,
never been on medication, never hallucinated before or since. This
thing looked one hundred percent real. And what terrified me
wasn't just the paralysis. It was how real it looked.

(51:00):
I'm a logical thinker. I've always thought of superstition and
the supernatural as nonsense, but this event shook me. I
actually found myself shouting into the empty room for it
to come back. I looked under the bed, checked the house,
hoping it would return. I wanted to talk to it.
The fear had turned into curiosity and then into frustration.

(51:22):
As much as I don't ever want to go through
that again, some part of me wishes it would return,
just so I could understand what it was. I know
how this sounds, but I was wide awake, fully conscious,
not dreaming. It happened, and I will never forget it.
Story thirty six. This happened when my family was spending
the night at my grandmother's house. I was around ten

(51:44):
to twelve years old, and I've never been able to
explain it. I had been asleep and woke up from
a nightmare about a werewolf like creature with golden, glowing
eyes chasing me. I always slept completely under all of
my blankets, so when I woke up, I was in
total darkness, completely covered. It was hot, but I was
too scared to move. Still, I was old enough to

(52:05):
calm myself down and recognize I just had a nightmare. Eventually,
I worked up the courage to lift the blankets just
a little to let in some air. I chose the
side of the bed not facing the wall. The moment
I lifted the blankets, I saw the golden eyes. I
immediately ducked back under and told myself I was imagining things.
I took a breath, braced myself, and looked again. The

(52:28):
eyes were still there. I was frozen with fear. I
couldn't move. I just laid there, terrified. After what felt
like forever, I finally screamed for my dad. It took
a few tries, but he eventually came in and turned
on the light. I sat up, crying. We both looked
over at the same time and saw that the desk
chair next to my bed had been pulled out and

(52:50):
was facing me. My brother was in the same room
the entire time and somehow didn't wake up through any
of this. People always say it was sleep paralysis, but
I was definitely awake. I was moving, speaking, aware of everything.
I don't know what it was, but it still scares
me to this day. Story thirty seven. A couple of

(53:10):
friends and I really enjoyed smoking in high school. We
got into it later than most and had heard plenty
of stories from other classmates about getting caught by parents
or the police, so we decided to be extremely careful
to avoid getting caught. We kept all our stuff in
a plastic cereal container wrapped in camouflage duct tape. We
called it the box. Inside the box, we stored a

(53:31):
small bong, a helix pipe, rolling papers, swishers, grinders, and
a glass jar. The box would get moved between hiding
spots in our neighborhood. The rule was simple. If it
wasn't at one of our houses, we couldn't get caught
with it. We always made sure no one was watching
when we picked it up or dropped it off. At
one point, we were storing the box behind a tree

(53:52):
about fifteen yards off a quiet street near a few
empty lots. Next to a large house. We dug a
shallow hole behind them the tree and hid the box there,
covering it with leaves and brush to keep it concealed.
One day after school, we went to pick it up
like we always did, but this time something was off.
The jar was missing. It had contained some rolling papers, stems,

(54:15):
and a small bag with about three point five grams
maybe forty dollars worth. Everything else was still in the box,
about four hundred dollars worth of paraphernalia untouched, but the
jar was gone. Every now and then one of us
brings up the missing jar. Every time, it's followed by
a few minutes of silence as we all quietly wonder
what could have happened. To this day, we're still baffled

(54:38):
by the great mystery of the missing Jar. Story thirty eight.
About twenty years ago, I started chatting with a woman
in a chat room. The conversation was deep, and we
quickly became attracted to one another. We ended up chatting
for months. Though we never spoke on the phone or
met in person, we had a strong connection and discussed
a lot of complex personal topics. I don't think we've

(55:00):
traded pictures. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I
was being catfished, but nothing bad ever happened. We just
eventually stopped chatting. Every now and then i'd log in
to see if she was online, but she never was.
Five or six years later, my life fell apart. I
moved to a new place and started over. I was

(55:20):
in a very low place in grasping at anything that
might lift my spirits out of habit or desperation. I
logged back into that old chat client, and like a
sign from the universe, she was online. We instantly reconnected,
like no time had passed. This time we did trade pictures.
She was gorgeous, and to my surprise, she didn't think

(55:42):
I was a troll either. It felt like something straight
out of a movie. I was ecstatic. It genuinely felt
like fate. Still in the back of my mind, I
was waiting for the other shoe to drop until she
told me she would be in my town for a
conference and suggested we meet in person. So we did,
and it was amazing. It was like a fantasy unfolding

(56:03):
in real life, and I couldn't have dreamed a better
version of it. At the end of the night, she
invited me back to her hotel room I went. We
spent hours together in the most electric, intimate connection I've
ever had. It's hard to even describe. Around four AM,
I had to leave because I needed to be at
work in two hours. I'll never forget the moment I

(56:24):
walked out the door, her flawless figure leaning in the doorway, whispering,
please don't go, but I had to. Over the next
two weeks, we kept talking and made plans to see
each other again. The day came, she texted me that
she was on her way and would arrive in about
four to five hours. But six hours later I hadn't

(56:44):
heard from her. I kept trying to reach her, but
she never responded. She never resurfaced. I spent years trying
to find her again. I never discovered any sign that
something bad had happened to her. I got no closure.
A new life now, and I'm happy, but I still
think about her every time I drive past that hotel.

(57:06):
It feels like I met a ghost that became real
for a brief moment, and I wonder what would have
happened if I had let her pull me back through
that door. Story thirty nine. About two years ago, my
family and I went on vacation for a week and
a half. We had someone lined up to take care
of our cats and dogs while we were gone, and
we knew she was doing it. She kept in contact

(57:27):
with my sister on Snapchat the whole time. Everything seemed fine.
We got home around midnight one night. Her friend had
been there earlier that day and everything was reported to
be normal. But when we walked in the door, the
house smelled awful. It was a horrendous combination of cat urine,
sour milk, and rotting garbage. That description doesn't even begin

(57:47):
to convey how overpowering and disgusting it really was. The
smell filled every room and made the entire house nearly unbearable.
We were too exhausted to stay anywhere else that night.
All we could do was open every window and try
to air it out. Luckily, the room I was staying
in didn't smell nearly as bad as the rest of
the house, so I just dealt with it being a

(58:08):
night owl. I stayed up the rest of the night
on my computer. About an hour later, once everyone else
was asleep, the smell hadn't faded at all. It was
still just as strong. But I was hungry despite having
zero appetite because of how bad it was. I wrapped
a shirt around my mouth and nose to filter out
the odor, and went to the kitchen, where it was
much worse. I put the shirt down, opened the fridge,

(58:32):
and then the smell was gone. I mean completely gone,
not weaker gone. From the moment I left my room
to the moment I opened the fridge, maybe fifteen seconds
had passed. That's it. But in that short window of time,
the overwhelming stench that had filled the house just vanished.

(58:53):
I know that might not sound like a big deal
when you read it, but I can't explain how bad
the smell was, or how sudden and complete its disappearance was.
I've tried to think of rational explanations, but nothing fits.
It's one of those things that has never left my mind.
I still think about it because it was just so bizarre.
A house filled with an unbearable odor one moment, and

(59:15):
the next it's gone without a trace.