Carter’s Holiday Pick: Otherworld
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Hey, Conspiracy Theories listeners. This is the second week of our four-week hiatus, but we're still bringing you something I'm sure you'll love. Today, I'm sharing an episode from another one of my favorite podcasts, Otherworld. On our show, we've explored our fair share of paranormal events. And on Otherworld, Jack Wagner interviews regular people with real unexplainable experiences.

Be sure to subscribe to Otherworld wherever you listen to podcasts, and we'll share a link in the show notes. New episodes of Conspiracy Theories will resume December 25th. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. The story comes from a woman named Annalise who lives in New Hampshire. Annalise's family has an area deep in the woods where they've been camping for decades. And during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020,

her and her boyfriend decide to take a trip out there, and that's when something very strange happened to them. I think when you're used to living in a city or in civilization in general, it's easy to forget that there are still a lot of remote places where something can hide or where an event can take place without anyone ever knowing about it. This story is really unique.

I'm not sure if what happened to these people even has a name or category. Maybe even there are multiple things that happened to them at once. Either way, I think you're really going to like this one. This is episode 88. The title is Sawyer River Road, and you're listening to Otherworld. Otherworld

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So my name is Annalise. I'm 26. I was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, and I moved to Townsend, Massachusetts when I was about three years old and have lived here ever since. I'm a fine gardener, so I do a lot of landscaping and work outside building pollinator beds and things like that.

I'm outside every single day, whether I'm working or just enjoying my personal life. Always camping, always hiking, tons of swimming. But yeah, I'm outside like 14 hours a day, just in the rain, snow, heat, all of it. I really, really love that. And gardening was kind of

symbiotic with my personal life. Before that, I was working at a bank for six years, so I was definitely ready for a switch. So yes, I do have experience with paranormal things, I would say. Growing up, there was a lot of strange kind of occurrences in my childhood home, which I still live in today. And it's a lot. There's a lot of little things that kind of

It happened, me and my sister, we dealt with like a mimic. So, you know, there was a couple of times where my sister would come home and, you know, she heard me full blown, like screaming at our dog. And she was like, what the hell? Like, what's going on? And came out of her room and realized that I hadn't even gotten home from school yet. But she was like, it was your voice, like through and through, like no doubt about it. You were pissed and you were screaming at the dog.

And I was like, what? Like, that's terrifying. Chills just instantly. And then I remember it was like the following year we had a giant blizzard. My dad, you know, he has he works for a town, so he has to be at work usually when there's snowstorms and things, you know, fixing plows and whatnot. So he would leave essentially every single storm and it would just be me and my sister.

I was probably like 16 at the time and my sister's 19 or 18 were a few years apart. I remember it was when TiVo came out and something hilarious came on the TV and I paused it with the TiVo trial. And I was like, Andrea, you got to come see this. You got to come see this. And she wasn't answering. So I was like singing her name and I was like, Andrea.

like down the hallway. And she just, her voice goes, what the fuck do you want? You're so annoying. And I was like, Andrea? And like ran down the hallway. She wasn't even home. She had actually gone to our neighbor's house.

And I was so scared that I put on my snow pants and my snow jacket and I sat outside in our driveway until she came home, which was like two hours later. And I was just like in tears, like, oh, my God, like something is in the house, like call our dad. Dad, you got to come home. And, you know, he came home and everything was fine. But it was a lot of like little things.

kind of adding up. And it got to the point where my mom's best friend at the time, they both drove school buses together. And her dad was a Native American chief. And he came to our house. And I really don't even know what he did. All I know is that we had to leave the house for a night

And he did a ceremony of a blessing or something. And everything changed after that point. We never experienced it again. You know, we didn't, I really, everything toned down. I really was like at peace and we really didn't have too many things going on that felt threatening. You know, there was some occasions where like me and my sister would wake up and have like a weird bruise or cut, or I would have these really scary dreams and like,

be screaming for my parents in the night, you know, and I remember all of it. It was very vivid and strange. So it kind of shook me, you know, and I think my parents knew like, okay, something's not right. After that, after that, everything was really good. So I, I felt pretty, pretty okay with staying there, you know, and never had a mimic again, you know, that kind of deal. So I did have some experience with paranormal occurrences, but,

And I do think about it a lot. I don't rule anything out, but I also don't like put my foot down and I'm not like, this is the way that it is. You know, I believe X, Y, and Z. Like I'm very open. I've heard a lot of stories from people. You know, when I start talking about this stuff, usually everyone around me kind of

It's like, oh my God, you're reminding me of this story of what happened to me as a kid. And I just realized at some point, like, okay, I can't deny that people are having experiences and I don't deny myself that. I could sit here all day and try to debunk, debunk, but I just think that the universe moves in mysterious ways and everybody kind of translates that in different ways. So I'm definitely open to a lot of different things.

So this was late March of 2020 and COVID-19 had just kind of hit. And I think everyone kind of experienced their workplace, you know, hitting some kind of halt. And I was working at a bank at the time and I was a bank teller. So I

I immediately lost my job, essentially. They didn't know what to do with us. I was at home and just having a ton of anxiety. And my partner was having a lot of anxiety as well. And we love to camp all the time. And getting two weeks off of work was like a godsend in a way for us because we were like, okay, we got to go camping.

And the place that, you know, it was like no question that we were going to go is this place called Sawyer River Road. And I grew up going there. So I was two months old the first time that my parents brought me up there. So I've been going there before I can even remember.

So my dad, when he was 14 years old, he took a Greyhound bus from Lexington, I believe, with two of his best friends. And they just went up to the Kankamangus Highway in New Hampshire. And they just had some backpacks and they decided that they were just going to go explore the mountains and find some cool spots. And they ended up finding this place, Sawyer River Road.

And my dad, you know, immediately fell in love with the place. And they ended up staying there for a couple of weeks and just kind of camping and making big stone fire pits and huge stone chairs and things like that along this river. And they came upon this trail that kind of went up to, it's almost like a valley of mountains.

with this big, huge pond in the middle of it and a nice three-walled shelter sitting right there, just kind of facing out, looking over this amazing, amazing pond. And they were like, this is sweet, you know? And so he spent his entire life essentially going up there and bringing a bunch of people, 10, 15 people and doing huge campouts on the weekends and kind of just partying up there and living life. I mean, it was the 80s, you know, you're going to be having fun.

So I was so well acquainted with this place. Like I just, I don't go anywhere else essentially because I'm just, that's where my heart is and I want to be there all the time. And so when, you know, COVID hit, we got shut down at the bank two weeks off of work off the bat. We were like, okay, let's break out the zero bags. Let's pack our packs and just head up there and go camping. So we, um,

probably had like 35 to 40 pounds in our packs, which was pretty heavy. The way that you get up to the trailhead is a dirt road and you drive four and a half miles up this dirt road, kind of through the mountains. And you come out to a parking lot with a trailhead. And then you hike like two miles through this, you know, this trail up to the shelter at the top. We, we,

Basically had to park on the highway on this little inlet and hike that whole road up because it was wintertime. So they close all of those roads down. Even just getting there is like 45 minutes extra because this road called Bare Notch Road is closed down for the winter because there's just so much snow. They can't maintain it. So we park at the parking lot.

And we get our packs out and we just started hiking up the road. And it was a pretty long hike. It probably took us four hours to get to the trailhead. So it's quite the haul, you know, and with all that weight, you're just like, holy, holy shit, you know, like, I don't even know if I could do it, but I was crushing it. I was just going for it. And we took a break at the trailhead and

And just like ate some lunch and hung out for a minute and then got back up and decided to do the trail up to the shelter at the top. Like another thing to note was that I was terrified. I could not shake this feeling. Like as soon as I got onto that road of someone just watching me,

It was really just this eerie feeling of being watched. I mean, I almost don't even know how else to describe it. It was like just this presence. I was, you know, looking down at the snow on the road because there was just probably a previous snow, a ton of snowpack on it. And there was like deer, you know, footprints, moose, everything.

A bear, I think we saw at one point. So that was a little unsettling because, you know, there's a bear. Clearly there's bears up here, but I've never really ran into one. And I'm like hoping that this won't be the day that it happens. But yeah, we really...

Come to find out, my partner was feeling the exact same feeling, but we didn't say anything because we didn't want to freak each other out. We just wanted to get up there. But it was just like someone was in the trees watching us or something. I definitely am comfortable in the wilderness. I actually...

you know, I think it was the previous summer. I spent 35 days hiking this local trail by myself completely. And I did it every single day for 35 days. So I had been, you know, hiking completely by myself, um, with no problem. It was strange to feel that way. I kind of just tried to sum it up to, I'm doing this crazy hard hike. I got a ton of weight.

It's winter. Like I, once I get up there, I got to have everything that I need, you know, to survive three, four days, five days, however long we stay. So I just kind of kept trucking. And once you keep your head down and you're just kind of going, you don't, it kind of fades away a little bit because you're just determined on getting from point A to point B. So we, we,

get to the trailhead and we're hiking up now the actual trail from the parking lot at the top of the road up to the shelter. And this was really intimidating because there was no footprints, no tracks whatsoever. And there was a really thick snow on this trail. So when we were hiking up, you're kind of post-hauling your feet through the snow, which means like,

There's basically like a foot of snow, two feet of snow, and there's a hard crust over the top, but it's not enough to support your weight. So your feet will just kind of punch right through it. You have to be really careful because there's big boulders and rocks on this, and you can just stick your foot through and then twist an ankle or something. So we were really taking our time going up there, trying to be careful of that. That was a lot of work. You know, you're sweating at that point, and it's cold out, and you're just trying to kind of get up there.

So we took our time. It probably took another two hours just to hike that two miles up there. And we get to the top and, you know, we were just like, woo, we did it. You know, we made it up here and we were starting to just put our packs down and stretch out a little bit. And I brought two nips of Jack Daniels whiskey, which

So we broke those out and we did a victory shot and we just started unpacking and got our tent set up, pulled out our sleeping bags. You know, we had our firewood going. We had some freeze dry meals. We were heating up and we felt really, really good at that point.

But again, you know, I just I couldn't get over this feeling of someone being up there, you know. And like I said, my partner the entire time was feeling the exact same way. But we just weren't communicating it because you don't want to like let your your fears kind of show in those moments. Because what are we going to do? Hike six hours out? You know, we just got up here. We can't freak ourselves out right now.

So we were just like, okay, we're going to hang out. We did our shot of whiskey. Let's cool down. But I could not...

get, like, I could not leave my partner's side. Like I was right there the entire time, just like kind of following him, which isn't like me at all. Like I'm usually like, oh, I'll go down to the bear hang. I'll, I'll hang it. You know, I'll throw the bear hang over the pole and hang all the food and help you find firewood. You go that way. I'll go this way. But I could not do that. And it was so hard.

overwhelming to the point that I made him go to the bathroom with me in the privy because I was like, do not leave me alone. I cannot be alone right now, which thank God, great guy. Absolutely did it. No question. And, uh, you know, we just were hanging out at that point.

And this is the thing is that the sun goes down like three o'clock up there in that time. So you do not have a lot of daylight. You got to get your firewood. Then you got to have your flashlights ready to go. So the sun kind of started setting and we decided to start a fire. So we started a fire after we ate dinner. We're just kind of hanging out there. And this is funny because I really don't tell this a lot when I talk to my family and friends about this, because I

It just all felt like too much. But that first night we did have something strange happen to us, which, you know, we were just kind of hanging out at the shelter. You know, you're not really talking. You're just chilling out, enjoying the whole essence of the area, trying to alleviate stress that from back home, you know, everything going on with COVID-19. And as we're sitting in front of the fire, we started to hear this sound and

That sounded like children. Screaming. And I kind of assumed it was coyotes. But something didn't seem right about the sound. It fluctuated in really strange ways that I've never experienced. You know, being here when coyotes were howling. Or finding something to kill or something like that. Again, it started like children were screaming like...

And then it turned into about 20 of those. And then there was a little bit of yipping involved. And there was this very strange low tone going on at the same time. Kind of like, oh. It sounded like something was imitating coyotes. But I...

It's tough. It's tough because I really didn't, I didn't rule it out right away. Something was off. Something was off about the sound. I grew up, you know, out where I am and there's coyotes, there's fisher cats, there's bobcats, all types of stuff. I'm so used to that.

But this was like a huge pack of coyotes. And it sounded so close. They were like yelling. Like this like, you know, just like, like children screaming. And we were like, oh my God, what is happening? That is coyotes, right? Like that's coyotes. And my boyfriend, he was kind of joking around. He was like, oh, it's Bigfoot. And he picks up this big log and he whomps it off a tree.

And to be honest with you, I was kind of pissed because I was like, don't do that. Like, you're freaking me out. Like, okay, Bigfoot, you know, he's just joking around. 10 minutes go by. We're just sitting there in silence and we hear a huge like thump, like a wood on wood whack.

It it sounded like somebody had taken wood and hit a tree. And I was so pissed. I was like, no, no, like this isn't this isn't happening. This is like so not OK right now. So we both kind of looked at each other with our jaws dropped and we're like, we should go to bed. Let's go to bed right now.

So we just threw like all of this crackly pine kind of mixture onto the fire to like make sound. And we just crawled right in the tent and went to bed. We were like, not even going to talk about it. Let's go to sleep now. All right. We have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the rest of the story. Hey, Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month?

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So,

We went to bed that night, nothing out of the ordinary. It was pretty cold. We were, you know, kind of boiling water and putting it into Nalgene bottles and like putting it at the end of our sleeping bags to keep our toes warm and stuff like that. You know, just kind of finding little things to do to, you know, fill up time and stay comfortable up there. So we woke up the next morning and

And it was beautiful out. It was absolutely gorgeous outside. But again, just kind of still feeling that strange uncomfortableness of like, I feel like someone's watching me. I just don't feel like I can like run around here freely. Like I have the past 22 years out here. So I was staying really like refrained from leaving the immediate area of the shelter. We both went down to the bear hang about,

I want to say like four yards down the trail and got our food off. And I packed up a bunch of bacon and we got the fire going again in the morning. And we just decided to cook up all this bacon and eggs and have a really good breakfast. And things felt okay. Things were, you know, just slightly odd, but not enough for us to be like freaking out. It got to about 12, you know, and I was like, okay, well,

I think it's time to, you know, get ready for lunch or whatever. And he gets a fire going. And then by like one, one 30, I was like, okay, I'm hungry. I'm ready to eat some lunch. But I noticed that we didn't actually have any water because

I decided that I was going to go filter water alone. And I was like, this is my moment. Like the sun is shining. It's a bluebird day. I just, you know, I want to have a good day. I got to stop literally just hanging out like on top of my partner, you know? So I grabbed all of our bottles and I was going to go fill them up at this little tiny Creek. That's maybe like 40 or 50 feet away from the shelter. And I was like,

And I start walking down this little tiny path to this Creek and I get like, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 feet away. And I just stopped like dead in my tracks. And I feel the slightest rumble just in my feet on the ground. And I stop, I feel like freeze in place. And I just turn around and I'm looking at my partner who is at the shelter in front of the fire ring. And I'm just staring at him and I'm just watching him.

And all of a sudden I just hear this rumbling sound and I'm like, oh shit. So I run over to him and I'm like, do you hear that? And he's like, yeah, what is that? And I'm like, I don't know. And it almost sounded like an ATV in the distance. I was like, you know, really confused. And I was thinking to myself, oh shit. Okay. Rangers are coming.

They saw our car parked at the parking lot. I don't know what the rules and regulations are with COVID and like the national forest being shut down. I have no idea if this is a new thing. Everything is new. I'm questioning everything. And I'm just like, we're going to get yelled at. They're going to tell us we have to leave. And in a matter of like 60 to 90 seconds,

You know, we're both standing there. We're both talking about, oh, shit, like the Rangers, they're coming, you know, and the sound is just changing. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, this is like 20 ATVs. Like, we really fucked up. We're about to get in so much trouble right now. And then I was like, hold on. Like, we got to go away from the fire because sometimes when the wind is blowing on the fire, it kind of has that like sound to it.

So I was like, we got to get away from the fire pit. So I take him kind of to this like swampy inlet off the right hand side of the shelter. And we're standing there. And all of a sudden this sound just transforms into the most intense metallic rumbling I've ever experienced in my entire life. The only way that I can describe it when I'm talking to my family is I

It sounded exactly like a space shuttle taking off at the Kennedy Space Center. Like, just an unbelievable sound. And I was standing about four feet away from my boyfriend, and I couldn't hear a single thing he was saying. We were trying to yell to each other. He says, like, I just instantly turned completely ghost white. And I could just see him mouthing the words, breathe. And I'm, like, looking at him, and I'm like, what's happening, you know? And we both...

experienced this insane pressure in our heads. And as soon as this sound started, I would have done anything to make it end.

Truly anything. I was like running around at one point just like, what do I do? I can't hold my ears. I can like hear it through holding my ears. Like it feels like it's in my head. I've really gone to air shows my whole life. You know, my childhood, my grandfather was a...

like an Air Force pilot. This was something completely different. I've never experienced anything of that magnitude in my life. This sound was so deafening that there's no way, I mean, this, whatever it was, you know, it would have had to be

so close that you couldn't possibly do it. I mean, there's mountains on every single side of this valley, you know? It's just, it seemed impossible to even think about it. Truly, truly, if you pull up a video of a space shuttle taking off at the Kennedy Space Center, you know, just that unbelievable rumbling noise

metallic, like this has to come from like a machine almost I'm thinking in my mind, you know? It's so overwhelming. I mean, it would be as if I was standing next to it, I don't even know, a hundred feet away from a spaceship taking off with no headphones. I mean, me and my boyfriend were standing right next to each other

and just yelling at the top of our lungs, you know, like, what's happening? You know, I don't even know what I was saying. All I knew is I could read his lips saying breathe. I could not hear a single thing he was saying, and we were right next to each other. That sound in totality lasted about four to five minutes. There was probably a solid four minutes of just breathing

You cannot communicate. You cannot hear a single thing that each other are saying. That made us just burst into tears. We couldn't even say anything to each other. It was just, we went to that primal place of pure comfort. We just had to hold each other and cry. The sound at its peak had a pressure with it in our heads. My head genuinely felt like it was a balloon.

And it was maxed out and just about to pop. I was convinced like, you know, my eyes are just going to pop out of my head. Like how, how is this pressure going to release? I, I just would do anything, anything, you know, opening my mouth, trying to crank my ears, you know, it was painful. It was really painful. I could feel my sinuses like draining and oh my God, it was just insane. It was really just overpowering. And I,

I think that was the hardest part about it. You know, you can hear something in your ears, but when it starts affecting your, your sensory like that, that was when I really knew it was serious. And oh my God, the pressure was just so heavy. And I just, again, like I was like imagining my eyeballs just popping out of my head. Like this, this, I needed it to be relieved. I needed to do something, just anything to get it to go away. You know, in that moment,

I think a lot of my logical brain was trying to come through and say, okay, this is something I've never experienced before. What have I never experienced? I've never experienced an avalanche. I've never experienced a rock slide. You know, it's not an earthquake. The water is perfectly still, you know, there's no ripples or anything. So I'm just trying to rule out anything, nothing in the sky. I was looking up at the sky, you know, trying to see if,

Anything was up there, you know, but nothing, nothing, no wind, nothing. Trees weren't moving, just absolutely dead. And I think that, you know, somewhere in that four to five minutes that it was happening, we both realized, okay, well, we can't run from this.

And whatever this is, is way bigger than anything that we can get away from right now. And I just thought we were going to get wiped out. There was a rock face sliding down. We were in the direct path. We're just going to die. Like this is the final moments. And we both just started bawling our eyes out and we were holding each other. And I just remember shaking, you know, we're both just shaking just insanely. And, um,

You know, after like five minutes, it just, you know, within 30 seconds, it just went right down and rumbled out and was gone. We were so fucked up from that. You know, we, I think the first thing we both said was what the fuck just happened? Like what the fuck just happened? And we weren't laughing. You know, we're very like humorous people. I was just still ghost white. And I felt like I had a near death experience.

And I wasn't sure if we were out of the woods yet, you know, if this thing was going to come back or if something just wiped out the trail that we hiked in on, you know, anything just, and we couldn't kiss, we couldn't touch, hug. We just sat, I remember we both sat on our own log and just were staring at the ground like, holy shit.

That just happened. You know, did a nuclear bomb go off? Like, is home gone? Are we even going to be able to get out of here? And it was truly one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced till this day. So at that point, it was about 1.30, 1.30 p.m. And we decided we couldn't leave. We couldn't possibly leave. I mean, we were still so sore from...

the way up that there's no way we could pack everything up and get back to our car before it got dark out. And like I was saying, it's a hard hike. It's very easy to race out of there and hurt yourself. Whether it's just from muscle fatigue or rolling an ankle on a rock underneath the snow, it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. And I just knew in that moment that

We couldn't do that. I mean, our adrenaline was pumping. We were going to try and race off this mountain and you just, you cannot do that. You have to make that decision and do a risk assessment basically on whether or not it's safe to make a decision. You know, you have, you have to make a decision and you know, our decision was to stay that night. You know, the sun went down about an hour and a half after that. So we were,

freaking out just like, what do we do? We had, we had a whole game plan. You know, what do we do if it comes back? Do we, you know, crawl underneath the shelter? Do we actually get all of our stuff packed up, you know, and just cowboy camp in this thing so we can just grab our shit and leave if we have to, um, which we kind of did, you know, we had our shelter, you know, our packs all packed up and then like our tent out with our sleeping bags in it. Cause we,

I mean, you really do have to have your tent just for heat to trap the heat when you're sleeping. Yeah. So we, uh, you know, tried to sleep. I think we probably actually dozed off about 3am, something like that. And when we woke up, it was different. Everything was different. I remember I woke up, you know, with my boyfriend, he was still sleeping and

And I went right down to the bear bag and got the food all by myself. It was like that presence of being watched was completely gone. I really can't even explain that. I went to the bathroom by myself. I pulled out the eggs. I got a fire going. I went and got firewood. It was like, I really can't even explain it. Everything felt completely normal again. I mean, besides what happened and just like the trauma of that.

Um, I was like, holy shit. Well, I lived and I thought I was going to die and I don't even care anymore. You know, I'm just going to go do these things and, and I don't feel like anyone's watching me anymore. It was really wild. So, you know, I got coffee going, I got eggs cooking, my boyfriend wakes up.

And, or maybe, you know, I think I just, I think I just got the food down and I just made coffee and was like, all right, you know, we got to get out of here. We didn't actually eat breakfast at all. And we just packed our shit up as soon as we kind of woke up and we got out of there like as quick as possible. We just kind of started hiking down and we,

weren't really talking much. We were both really shell-shocked and I really just felt stripped down to my soul, truly. And we started hiking down, we got down to the trailhead, felt okay, just kind of going as fast as we really can physically go. And we get about halfway down the auto road and there was a couple walking down

up the road. And we were like, oh my God, people. And we just started pouring this information out to them. And they were probably like, what the hell is happening right now? We were like, do you guys live here? Do you live near here? What happened? Did a bomb go off? Was there an earthquake, anything? And they were like,

No, we live like a couple miles from the trailhead, the road, the parking lot. Nothing weird. And they were like, are you guys okay? And we were like, no, we just had the weirdest thing happen, this sound. And they just kind of were like, oh my God, you know what? This is...

that's weird. I don't know you guys. I wish we had something to tell you, but nothing out of the usual. We were like, okay. And then just kind of went on our way. And oh my gosh, they were probably like, what is going on? Are these people okay? Are they tripping their balls off or something? But we weren't. And we ended up getting to our car and we threw all of our shit in the car.

And right as we were about to sit in our car and drive away, a park ranger pulls up to the gate at the end of the road. And he was going to use his little side-by-side four-wheeler thing. And so we ran over to him and we were asking him like, hey, did an airplane crash? Was there an earthquake? Can you tell us anything about what happened? We experienced this wild sound. We're still trying to kind of

configure what happened and get our shit together. We need an answer to this. We need an answer. And he just was like, no, I have no idea. Weird stuff just happens up here. He just shrugged us off and was like, all right, see ya. And we got in our car and drove away, just totally bewildered.

We were just still kind of silent. You know, it was hard to talk about because we were both like experiencing this weird trauma around it. So we didn't have cell phone reception the entirety of being up there. And we still getting in the car at the trailhead, you know, at the end of the road, the parking lot, really. And as soon as my phone got service, I had a text message notification from my mother saying,

From the previous day at 1.30, when we were experiencing this sound and she texted me asking if everything was okay and that she had a really bad feeling. I ended up calling her immediately after getting the text message. And I was just in tears on the phone with her. And she was like, are you okay? Are you okay? I felt like something was wrong. I felt like I needed to, you know, text you and call you.

I just, I can't even explain it. I just had this really weird sensation that something was wrong. And I told her no, that I wasn't okay. And that we had experienced something very strange and, you know, told her all about the sound and she was just speechless from it.

But she had that intuition that something was wrong, seriously wrong. Or she was back home almost 200 miles away from where we were camping and just having a normal day.

And all of a sudden she felt this weird intuition that something was wrong with me and decided to go out of her way to send me a text message and, you know, shoot me a missed, I had a missed call and text message basically. When we experienced the sound up there, it was 1.30. We had a watch. So our watch said 1.30. We did check because we were concerned about like time loss, you know, so it was 1.30, I think it was 1.31 p.m.

And when I got down off the mountain and I received this text message from my mom, it was time signature the previous day at 1.31 p.m., the exact time that we were experiencing the sound.

Okay, that's the ad. You can go back to doing whatever you were doing now.

So I think the whole drive, we were just kind of like expecting the world to just like collapse. I don't know why. Just, you know, there was a sense of relief. But at the same time, it was like, I got to get the hell out of these mountains. I got to get home. I got to get to what's familiar and comfortable to me. And when we pulled into our driveway, I think that is when...

We really felt that drop off of just like, "Oh my God, we made it home." I did not think we were going to make it home. We made it. Going inside, you know, and we just, we went straight to my dad and my sister, told them everything about it. You know, just freaking out in the kitchen, like, "Oh my God, you know, this happened." And I remember my sister and my dad were like, "Holy shit, when did this happen?"

You know, we gotta tell you what happened to us." And I was like, "Oh my god." So it turns out that around the same exact time that previous day, my sister decided to go for a walk at this little conservation land. And it's just this little dirt road that kind of goes off into the woods. It has two little cement pillars in the front.

And she was walking into this trail and she decides to sit on this little rock right by the tree line. And she's just kind of sitting there and just kind of closing her eyes and like just hanging out. And all of a sudden she said that she heard this sound that sounded like when you're underwater and you hear two pieces of metal clanking together.

And she was like, what the fuck? And like opened her eyes and kind of was like scanning the perimeter, you know, looking around, trying to figure out where is the sound coming from? And she said that she realized that this sound wasn't actually coming from anywhere. It was actually in her head. And she shot up. She said that all of a sudden she just felt this extreme presence of somebody's here. You need to get out. Something is watching you get out.

she told me that she actually had a pocketknife with her and she pulled it out and was running back to her car. So she runs to her car, she gets in the car, she's like "What was that? That was really weird. I've never experienced that." And she gets in the car and she drives five minutes back to my dad's house and as she pulls in the driveway my dad is getting out of his car with our dog and she's like "Hey,

I just had the weirdest thing happen to me. And he was like, oh, that's weird. I just had the weirdest thing happen to me too. While he was on a walk, he heard the exact same sound. These are like miles apart, the places that they were walking around. And he was like, yeah, it sounded like metal on metal, but like underwater. And this is at 1.30, the previous day.

So every single person in my family had something strange happen to them at the exact same time that day that we were experiencing the sound. So my whole family at that point is just freaking out, you know, just like, what, you know, and it was very validating to me because I do believe in that, like,

family connection and things like that. You know, like if something's wrong with my sister, I like have that dream of her or something. And I know to text her and things. So that was really eyeopening to me. Definitely. So when I got home, you know, and I had this discussion with my family and we all kind of discussed about these weird kind of connected experiences that we were having at that same time that day.

I was like, okay, you know, not only is that weird, but it's validating because I do think that whatever just happened was of another realm almost, whether that's paranormal or extraterrestrial, you know, it felt like, it felt like a wormhole had opened up or something and we were just like about to get sucked through it. So I went on,

Facebook. And I made a post and I was like, Hey, I, you know, had this really weird experience with this strange sound, you know, while camping. And like, it wasn't, I just, I don't know what it was. And it was very haunting and ended up getting some comments on it. And it was great because it did actually help me in researching different sounds. Like

Someone had sent the trumpets of the sky and like, Oh, you must've heard trumpets of the sky. And it wasn't that someone sent me something called the Windsor hum. Wasn't that I actually looked up the jet airplane records over New Hampshire. And there was one that day and it was from Cape Cod to Connecticut. So completely, completely not even close to where I was, even if it was a jet. Um,

you know, there was no possible way that it couldn't have been, it really could not have been a jet. I've seen jets. I've been directly under them doing tricks at air shows and things like that. It's nothing that's, I've experienced that. This was something I've never experienced. That magnitude of sound was unreal, unreal. You know, all these like eerie sounds that people have kind of had experiences with.

And another person commented and was like, oh, it sounds like you were almost a missing 411 case. So I ended up finding all of these really strange, unexplainable cases that happen in national forests. And there's all these missing people that, you know, have no explanation on how they were missing, just disappeared in the woods, whether it was national forest, state forest, all these different things.

And that is when I really kind of realized that I don't know if I'll ever find an explanation for what happened to me, but I realized that these forests across the entire U S and I'm sure other places in the world all have this very, very strange thing going on where, you know, unexplainable shit is just happening. It's like a, you know, a magnet for that type of thing. And, um,

I think I realized whether it was paranormal or extraterrestrial, it really did sound like a ship of sorts just right above us, but there was nothing visible. That's the part that really gets me. So that was kind of the extent of my research because I started to get to a point where there were so many things, so many avenues to go down

And it was overwhelming for me. And I was letting it kind of consume my life in this really like open-ended way. And at some point I kind of just kind of accepted that I wasn't going to get a direct answer on what happened. And I just had to not talk about it, you know, anymore. I would say my interpretation of it, of what happened was,

would be that there was something of another realm up there and we intruded on it, whatever it was doing there. And in a way I really felt like, I felt like we were going to get taken away genuinely. And it felt like everything in my soul was being analyzed and like I was being read and I

whatever it was, wanted to see what we were and decided that we were staying genuinely and was just checking us out, trying to see what the deal was. And I don't know, maybe saw something that was like, oh, these people need to stay here. I thought we were going to get sucked up into space, to be honest with you.

I think that they were hearing some form of almost like what I was hearing, you know? I mean, it was different. I mean, it didn't sound like it was underwater or metal or anything like that, like clanging together, but I almost feel like it was like a transfer of energy through to my family, you know, where they both were getting some type of signal or sign that something serious was happening and they're not sure what's going on. So I think that,

I would say my takeaway, I guess you could say from the experience was that, you know, I was really at peace in that moment when I thought I was going to die, which was really, really beautiful. I felt less afraid of things. And I also felt like I had this new door kind of opened in my mind towards strange experiences. You know, I was trying to think, you know, was something trying to show itself to me?

was, you know, but my fear kind of came through. Like I can't, I can't live in that fear. Um, and although I did struggle probably the first couple months, just walking around by myself in the woods, which is something I do every day, almost, um, I learned to work through that. I learned to conquer that fear really well. And since then I've, I've gone up there, you know, every year, two to three times since. And, um,

not had anything like that happen again. So whatever it was, it happened. And I just kind of have to have respect for that. And the fact that I was able to walk away from it in one piece. Yeah, I think it's tough because it was freeing. But at the same time, I think I did have a little PTSD from it, carrying that with me. But I kept going up there. I didn't let that stop me. And

you know, I was able to talk to friends about it and, you know, just kind of vent that out and everything, everything was okay in the end, you know, but you know, there's, there's like that ranger said, there's some weird shit going on up there, but yeah, I would say that's basically it. You know, you just kind of got to dive into stuff and, and just be ready for it and be ready for strange occurrences, I guess. Yeah.

Oh my god, as we're speaking, this crazy thunder and lightning storm is just rolling in right now. Also, are you sitting in pitch darkness right now? It's not. It's not pitch darkness. I don't know. Oh my god. I got no lamp in here. I don't know what I was thinking. Oh, I thought you had a light before.

Okay. The clouds just, you know, honestly, the sun doesn't even set here until like 830, but this like crazy storm is just like coming in right now. You better be careful out there. I know. Seriously. They're coming for me or something. Um, Oh my God. A tree just fell. Oh my God. I actually have to go. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. There's like a microburst happening right now. Holy shit. Are you recording this? I,

Yeah, I'm so sorry. Um, oh my god. I have to go. I'm so sorry a tree just fell on my neighbor's house Okay, I am so sorry If you start hearing a sound start recording, I know seriously, I'll try to get a video of this. This is insane Okay, go go go. I'm so sorry. I have to go. Bye Oh my god

Cooper! Cooper! Oh, shit, my neighbor. Oh, my God. I just came out. A tree just fell on my house. Oh, my windows in my car are open. Oh, Jesus. Okay, thank you so much to Annalise for sharing her story. That part you just heard at the end is exactly how our conversation ended.

That storm rolled in so fast and out of nowhere. I couldn't believe the timing of it all, and I had to keep that part in there. But I'm happy to report Annalise and her cat Cooper are both safe, although I can't say the same for her neighbor's house. I love this story, but I also found it completely terrifying and mystifying. I couldn't imagine experiencing a sound like that for such a long period of time.

Moments of extreme fear are typically very brief, and in this case, it lasted four to five minutes. Enough time for the human mind to go through several cycles of distress and multiple phases of horror. This is one of those that I have not stopped thinking about since I heard it, and I'll probably continue to think about it for a very long time. Thank you so much to Annalise for sharing her story. This has been episode 88.

The title is Sawyer River Road, and you've been listening to Otherworld.

Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans. This episode was edited by myself and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Cul-De-Sac Studios. Production help by Nikki Kate Delgado and Hayley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash otherworld.com.

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