SWAP-A-THON: Houston Strange

0:24 Hey, cool friends, It's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way, I. Am still your host, but you are not listening to SUSTO this week. Welcome to the twenty twenty five Soustal Swapathon. That is right, I feel like I primed you already for this. I gave you all the heads up in the month of December. I am taking time off from the production cycle of SUSTAL and I am bringing to you shows that I think that you will enjoy as much as I do. So I'm sorry you're probably gonna get sick of hearing this specific introduction for these next couple weeks throughout December, but I just wanted to make sure to mind you all about what is going on, so that when you hear this, you're not like, what the hell?

1:04 Where is Aiden? Did he ghost us? You get it kidding? I would never do that to you. However, I would like to introduce you to some more content and more creators that I really think that you would enjoy. If you do, please make sure that you go to these shows pages, that you follow them wherever they are available. And yeah, I will be back in twenty twenty six. I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season. As I mentioned before the break started, I listen. I'm still online, so just because there are no new Sustal episodes, believe me, y'all know I'm chronically online, so you can find me on there. Feel free to send me a message, send me an email. I love hearing from you all, and continue to send in your letters from the beyond by visiting sustalpodcast dot com or my link tree so that we can have some fun stuff to talk about come twenty twenty six, which I can't believe that this year happened already. That's wild to me. Anyway, we're gonna go ahead and get into today's feature. I really hope that you enjoy it and I will see you all in the next year.

1:58 Byeh not gonna lie to you. I wanted to cancel a couple of times. No, I totally guess that because you know, I worked, I have a big corporate job and like this is like dame who I am and ship, but it is giving me PTSD throughout the years. I've buried it and it'll come up every once in a while when, for example, and this is one of the reasons why I've always wanted to tell it. One, it was not gonna lie. It's a scary story, right, But two is the nature of like would you a boards and how like people are so ignorance. It was probably the best word I can figure it because it's the unknown and like people think it's just a game. So what brought this up again?

3:04 Because it comes up the feel of like wanting to like tell it. Of course we're always around the spooky season, but like, had a coworker the other day was like young girl. She's like, I went, she's white, old thing gifts, She's going to several parties, you know, young fun and she says she got a Viking hat with like you know, the beer he put in a side and he drink it and it's you know, funny, ha ha, Right, she got smothered like chats keys for like other gifts and stuff like that. One she mentioned she got to read you boar because she wanted to piss off like you know, her family members. And I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, if you only knew what it can do.

3:52 Welcome to Houston Strange. My name is Adam and I will be your host. Today's episode will be the final installment of season one, and it is an incredible story. I have a few interesting cases lined up for season two, but this is where I need your help. If you have personal stories you'd like to share, or if you know someone in Houston and the surrounding area that you think would be willing to share their experiences, reach out to me through Instagram at Houston Underscore Strange, or through the website Houstonstrange dot com. That's actually how I got today's episode. Stephanie reached out to me through social media, saying that she grew up in Spring Branch, just a few minutes from where I live. She had an experience in the nineties that changed her perspective, and she wanted to share it so that others could learn from her naivety. Now, I'm aware of the dangers of meeting up with strangers off of the Internet, but it's also important to me that my interviewees are comfortable when sharing their stories. Stephanie made it clear that she was not comfortable conducting the interview in her house, not because she didn't know me, but because she was afraid that discussing this experience in her personal safe space might have negative effects. In an extremely huston fashion. We met at a bar in the Spring Branch area, which was all but camouflaged in a non assuming little strip mall, complete with gas pumps in the parking lot, nestled in amongst private residences, used car lots, and mom and pop restaurants. I made my way through the half full bar, scanning people's faces, not knowing what Stephanie looked like, or if she had come with an acquaintance, through to the surprisingly quaint garden smoking area out the back.

5:25 Sitting at one of the picnic benches, Stephanie was well dressed, with long hair covering her shoulders. She looked like a no nonsense businesswoman, just a few years older than myself. The hint of a cardigan with the subtle decorative skull design beneath her overcoat was the only clue that this formality might just be a facade for her corporate nine to five, I introduced myself, set up the mics, and sat down just in time for heavy metal music to start blaring out of the speakers behind us, which I've done my best to clean up. It was a cold night, especially for Houston. Stephanie was nursing a single beer hear people in the bar cars at the busy intersection just outside and driving down the street behind us, And yet I couldn't help but feel just a slight tinge of isolation, as though we were truly hidden away out here.

6:15 So, yes, I've grown up here, grew up here. Excuse me, my family still lives here. I grew up on a street that was a dead end street and there was a lot of people. The street was it was a railroad track from the back end, and we would, you know, run around it was. It was the eighties and this story is takes place in the nineties, so kind of give thought of like how things were back then. We were like lacks key kids. We weren't watched over by parents where they trusted that you know are you know, our asses would be in by you know, the street lights came on. We played in everybody's house. There was so much trust in anybody lived on the block.

7:02 You know. Of course we knew everybody too. There was the. Technology was not what it is now, So think about your no no smartphones, no, you know, laptops not. There's no snow cgi none of this is what they had these days. So everything came from the imagination of your mind. So anything that was like taboo, you had to like learn about it in the library or were a mouth. And back then, when I was growing up, there was a bunch of kids living on the block. They eventually moved away, and where this story takes place, there wasn't a lot of kids left it on the street. It was me and my other friends. So if I can do you, let me show you a picture of the house so I can show you visual at least that.

7:54 Stephanie showed me a fairly recent picture of the house that she had taken from Google Maps, just a six minute drive from where we were sitting. It looks like an idyllic, little, single story Houstonian house. Well aged trees provide ample shade and a little privacy from the not too busy street. There's fences on either side of the well groomed lawn, but they seem to belong to the neighbors. Roses adorn a bricking closed mailbox, adding to the picturesque quality of the house, and other than the barely noticeable Christmas lights hanging from the eaves, the house seems timeless, like it wouldn't be out of place in any decade. There are no sidewalks, just a white line before the tarmac meets grass, and I can almost picture Stephanie and her pals hopping over the drainage ditch to go knocking for their friend.

8:38 So think about these houses or like from the nineteen fifties or big lots. So you have the house sitting on this big piece of property. There was no fences in between, so you can like run across the neighbor's yard and you know, knock on their door. You can even enter walk in. It's really wild. Back in a day, you can like walk in their house. Hey, what's going on missus? Smith? Know, is Jimmy here to play? You know? And it was those days were awesome. It's something that we will never see again. The trust is gone. So if you can see a lot, this is this is the house it took place in. Like I said, giv a visual again, we're latchey kid's parents did not give a shit about us. And I hate to put it that way, but it was, you know, we're left our own devices, you know, and that's created mischief. So this room right here is what I'm going to be talking about.

9:34 So this family here, it was a lady at the time, an older lady and her husband lived there, very nice people. Their niece, girl named April, came down to move with them, and at the time I was like into like, you know, USO's and like dinosaurs, you know, I was. I was fourteen, so a ninth my neighbor who was my bestie, she was in thirteen. She was coming in so like she was like eighth grade or whatnot. And April, who moved there to live with her aunt and uncle. She was a troubled team. She was sixteen, she's a couple of years older, really cool, you know, smoked and Mike did all like cool stuff and cursed and like, you know, oh, you know, you know, we kind of wanted to hang out with her because she was like the cool kid on the block and stuff like that. And at school all the boys like liked her and stuff like that.

10:34 I was like, oh, you know, we always looked up to her and shit. But anyways, she was talking one day about, hey, you know, because we were you know, a supernatural you know, ghosts and you know, if you've seen you know, Unsolved Mysteries, you know, it was a big show at one time, which was on one of your podcasts too. I was like, oh, I remember that story. Yeah. She's like, oh, well, hey guys, you know, I gotta I gotta a WEEKI born. Yeah, and it's my aunt's you know, she's not messing with it and whatnot. And did she started telling some stories and we're getting all excited. My uh and let me back it up some. My friend next door her name was Joyce, and her brother was Wade. He was much older and we didn't see too much of him. He you know, older dude. He got his own buddies, you know whatnot. So me and Joyce hung out and at you know, we're still pretty naive kids and shit like that, you know, but we're like, oh, wow, you gotta read. She's like, let me tell you some stories.

11:32 So she gave some background and she even taught us like rules, and we were just so like intrigued. She even said one time that she was up. She came from like up north somewhere, I don't know, Michigan, Wisconsin, somewhere up there. She was messing with them one night with one of her friends and she ended up having a coffee mug thrown at her head, flew off a table and smacked her. She walked home scared to debt. We were like, oh my god, you've got to see something you owe, something happened to you. Oh wow, well you get what you you know, asked for. And we were so excited because she's like, yeah, let's have a session one night, come on buy, and we were like, oh my god, this is gonna be so cool. So again, if I show you this picture here, this is a better picture the entrance to the house living room, but this is the room, the room I'm going to be talking about. It's about eight by ten. So you have this window here, there's a window right here. On this side, there used to be an ac unit. Over there, there's a bed, and this is a It was a radio and it had a cassette player. Oh my god, I can't lee I'm telling us the story. I'm a little fucking freaked out. Okay, this was like a pile stuff like clothes and like boxes and like just random things.

12:54 It wasn't much to this room at all. The windows were open. So to back it up, she says, hey, come on buy. Later on, she tells us all like, you know, if you play on a day that has rained you're going to get a you know, an evil spirit. You have to keep the doors closed or things could can enter the room without your permission. And that's how she got a coffee cup brown at her mug at her head. If you play with the opposite sex, you'll get a stronger like energy. These are things that she's told us. Play at night time you get a stronger energy or entity. She knew her stuff, which made me think that she was more in dabbling in more of like witchcraft and whatnot. She told us some things, but at the time it was just, you know, we were too excited, like let's see a ghost. So she says, okay, later tonight, we're walking and again latchkey. Kids. We're walking about a half mile to the corner mart, grabbing some like you know, drinks or whatnot snacks, and she's like, come over later tonight. They like somewhere seven eight o'clock when it stark and we'll start. And she goes, I've been talking to someone on the board because she plays by herself. You know, it's someone that's pretty strong. So let's go come on by. I told my friend. I'm like, oh, it's awesome. Okay, we'll see you there.

14:21 Stephanie had arrived to the bar prepared with pen and paper, which she took out at this point in order to provide me with the visual layout of the room where this story takes place. You'll hear her reference this as she tells the story. Now, though, April greets the two friends Stephanie and Joyce at the door, dressed as some sort of old fashioned mystic. She set the mood in the bedroom already, and this doesn't exactly ease Stephanie's nerves. Her aunt and uncle are there, and I mean again, nobody's caring what we're doing. They're not. They're basically turning a blind eye. He's playing the computer. He has some kind of work and I'm not saying computer. It's like an old school like IBM, like those big box ones.

15:03 He has a TV going, he's watching the football game. He's not even blinking at us. He's just like whatever. And her aunt is cooking in a kitchen, she's doing laundry, she's walking around. They have a cat, and that's primarily it in the house. She goes, come with me. We go in into this room, this room, and this is like a this is actually a waterbed, but we sit on the edge over here. The room is dark. She has candles lit everywhere, and she says, I sit on the side. She goes, which one do you want to, like, you know, play, and so just me and my friend Joyce. And Joyce is like, okay, let me sit down. I'll you know, I'll play with you. And so she puts they sit here on the floor. And I don't want to scrible it because there's it moves around, people move around.

15:57 So Joyce her back is to the door and April is facing the door. They she puts the pluncha on the board and it starts like it kind of warms up, and I'm just like, ooh, this is crazy. And she's and she starts asking questions, and I will tell you throughout this story, I don't remember her questions because the environment itself is what speaks the ship. I mean. So she is playing and it starts to speed up some and movement is going, and it starts doing all these figure eights on the board where it gots like a good flow going. I'm thinking, oh, they're probably just fucking with me. They're going like that. But all of a sudden, you hear this in the inside the door, and I'm like, okay, dismiss it. But I'm looking and my friend's looking at me while she's moving like it's moving inside the door.

17:05 Then you hear it inside the closet. I'm like, is she have someone in there? There's no way, no way, because I know everybody on the streets. You know, she don't even have like so many friends. She just moved here. So you would hear it in the closet, this banging, this rapping. It would move to the other closet inside you can tell to the door, to the windows. It would move like something was traveling. And I was like, this is I was told April. I'm like, hey, can you say goodbye? I mean, at first I was excited about it. It's wow, I never heard anything like this.

17:52 And then then I started getting scared. And the noise is serving a heartbeat because it knew it was spooky meat and my friend looked spooked too. This went on for like it felt like an eternity, but I'm pretty sure it's just for a few minutes. So I'm like, April, could you please say goodbye? I can't do this right now. And she's like She's like, I'm trying, it's moving, and it keeps going. Stephanie is visibly uncomfortable at this point. She's holding back tears and her hands are starting to shake. I asked her if she'd like to take a break or anything, but she's determined to get this story out. She takes a deep breath and pushes on.

18:38 She's like, okay, okay, I'll try. And when she's trying, the door that I'm sitting right by, the doorknob starts to jiggle. I said, April, the door's opening up, please say goodbye. And I was getting angry at the time, and my friend was kind of panicking. She's like, move the piece and she's like I'm trying, and you can see her hands were kind of gripping in to move it. And the door starts opening, and there's a door starts opening. I look out. I don't see anything, and I was like my heart was pounding. I reached for the door. She's like, shut the door, and I reached for the door handle, and I swear to you, I could feel what could be a handprint on my arm. Though I don't see anything, I feel this like heat, like an energy.

19:34 Heat was so odd. It couldn't even explain it. I have a handprint on my hand, so I went pushed it with my foot instead, slammed it, shut off my foot and let go and I'm my heart, I said, I got to get out of here. I gotta leave. She eventually pulls the goodbye, and as that happens, the take on the on the radio behind me. Although it just played a song, we basically just not what felt like I said an eternity, which just a few minutes in the tape starts going click click click, click click click. Someone put it on pause. Someone fucking shut it down where it started clicking. I flick on the lights and she gets up. The door opens, like we opened. I'm like, we're done. We're done. I don't see anything, so I'm like, don't hear any more noises, but we're fucking done. And I'm like she, you know, door opens and her face because she's facing the door and I'm like talking to my friend and we're trying to she's facing the door and her face turns pale as a ghost, and I'm like, what what the fuck? I was like, what the fuck did you see? And I'm like, what's going on and I'm in panic mode. Friends in panic mode. Now April's like, holy shit, She's like, I just seen some kind of black mass go through up to the through the ceiling.

20:57 And I was like, I was like, please, do not fuck with me, don't do this to me. I'm like, no fucking way, I'm just shaking, shaking, and she's like, let's let's just take a break. Let's take a break, let's get uple walk out. Okay, cool, Cool. I'm going to be totally honest with you. I usually work long into the night when I'm putting these episodes together, with this one had me checking over my shoulder. As Stephanie is describing this scene, she almost offhandedly mentions how the planchet is moving in a figure of eight motion. I didn't react at the time because I wanted to see if she would say anything about this. But other than talking about it happening again, she didn't mention anything in particular. Some of you might already know where I'm going with this. It is not an uncommon occurrence in Wigi boards stories, but this is definitely the first time I've heard someone bringing it up in a first hand experience.

21:50 We've gone deeper into the potential subconscious interference that can occur when people use wigi boards in previous episodes, so I'm not going to go back over it now. But recently, I actually had the pleasure of guesting on episode ninety six of Perplexity, a mystery podcast hosted by my friend Cadra Brannan, and we discussed this exact phenomenon. Cadra gave me permission to use her episode here, but to be honest, her research and writing is actually just so good that when I tried to cut it down to fit in, it just didn't do it justice. So I'll link her show in the show notes, and I'm also going to re upload that episode to this feed in the next couple of days so you can learn more about the history of wigi boards in general and zozo. The zoso phenomenon allegedly first showed up in popular culture in March two thousand and nine, when paranormal investigator Darren Evans posted his story online. According to Evans, in nineteen eighty two, he found a Wiji board surrounded by glass jazz containing the remains of blackbirds in the crawl space beneath his girlfriend's house. The word zozo was written on the front of the board, while the reverse contained strange hand carved in scripts. Evans decided to go ahead and use this board, and the first time he did, the Planchet seemed to have a mind of its own, speeding around the board.

23:08 In this figure of a pattern on most Tuiji boards, the letters Z and N are the two farthest points, with the letter OH being just beside the end. In Evans's story, the Planchett's figure of eight went from Z to oh, Z to oh repeatedly, and that's where this name Zozo came from. Evans claimed that he eventually made contact with Zozo and a year's long relationship was formed with this entity. The entity would go on to tell Evans things like he was his guardian angel, that he was here to bring his family to paradise, but when asked where this was, the planchet reportedly spelled out Hell. Evans blamed the series of near tragedies and health issues on this entity. When Evans posted his experience online in two thousand and nine, though, he soon discovered that many other people had extremely similar encounters, although maybe without realizing it.

24:02 Like in Stephanie's case. There are many theories as to who or what this Zoso phenomena could be, ranging from an ancient being by the name of Pazuzu, known for his involvement in the infamous Rowland Doe exorcism story, to Zozo being a thought form created by people's subconscious minds. If you want to learn more about this subject, I sincerely urge you to check out episode ninety six of Perplexity, a mystery podcast. It's also not lost on me that Evan's story sounds quite similar to Lawyer's sisters story from episode four, but I was genuinely surprised when Stephanie almost flippantly mentioned this little detail. Lastly, I am aware that I'm not doing a great amount of arguing for the skeptics side here. I don't necessarily believe in the Zozo entity as a big, scary monster, but I find the phenomena fascinating and I genuinely believe everything Stephanie has told me so far.

25:01 At that time, my friend Joyce's brother came home from work or where he came from. She called him up and said, hey, can you come on over. You know, she's all into it, she's excited, she's getting a rise out of it. Be and my friend Joyce, we're in fucking We're panicked. We're even holding hands because I'm like, I am so scared. So her brother, who had the biggest crush on April all the dudes did. They were like, Oh, the spooky chick. She's fucking she's fabulous. She's like, he's like, yeah, I'll do whatever you want. I'll come on over. Okay. So he comes over and I'm like, I'm like, April, I can't go back in. There's there's no way I can't deal with that. My friend couldn't deal with that.

25:43 We're scared. We're like so frightened, and I felt like something was like watching me. She's like, that's fine. She goes let me just you know, we'll go in here and we'll do it, okay. Me and you know Joyce's brother, Way, well, we'll go and do this real quick. And then you know she's all into it. She loves the shit. I'm scared. So me and my friends sit out in this living room area with her uncle who's toying around on the computer, and Joyce is sitting next to me on the couch. We're watching TV. April and Way go back into this room, shut the door, and I guess they proceeded weirdly, and I don't know. I don't know how to explain this.

26:31 The only thing as of age and giving with you know the time of thirty years after, you know, thirty flush years of this shit happening. The only thing I can think of is the same thing. It's the frequency, the energy and like knowing that you can fuck with me and the other scared one, you know, my friend Joyce was when they started. Me and her heard the banging, the knocking, and it sounded like it was by the TV, which would have been by those and I'm like, this is so fucked up. And I didn't say I looked at her, she looked at me. We knew we heard it. We just kind of were holding hands, scared shitless and just you know, didn't say anything. And I just proceeded to watch TV and a Norrid again what felt like an eternity, which is a few minutes they came out and they claimed. I said, did you hear the knocking again?

27:27 She's like, no, not this time. I want I wanted to cry because I felt that that was that thing was after like us, it knew we were very vulnerable, and we were kids, and it was like trying to feed our energy. I don't know, I can't explain these things, but I know what I felt and I know what I heard, and I think I'm a pretty sane person to you know. So they came out. They when I said we were hearing knocks on the on the on the wall or here by the TV. She's like, no way. She's like, I didn't hear anything. She goes, are you'll fucking with us? I'm like, no, April, we're not. I'm like, I'm here as clar as day. Her father or her fathers gives me her uncle didn't say anything. He's still playing on Peter again. Again, these are people like that. Again, this this is a time and age my parents would have done the same. They would have been like, oh you kids.

28:29 You know. So she somehow convinced us to go back in there, and like a dipshit, we went and we were like okay, because I think at the time I was so far gone of being in shock. It was just like, okay, well we'll do it because I felt more. I felt more safe being around her for some reason, because now I know that if we leave. We're still gonna it's still gonna be fucking toying with us. We can't go anywhere. And I'm like, oh my god, what what is you know? What is this? So she's like, I'm just gonna, you know, try to get rid of it.

29:10 Now. We go back in that room and I'm like, I'm not doing this, and my friend Joyce was like, I'm not touching it either. She's like, that's fine, your brother, you know, way it's going to do this, So I said, but the door opens, and and she's like, okay, we'll have way. He's going to put his back to the door so the door doesn't come open. We'll do it with the lights on. Don't worry. Okay, we're just gonna try to get rid of it. Whatnot? I said, okay. And while we're setting up, like you know, we're I'm like, okay, I'm gonna sit here, you know, Okay, she's gonna sit here, and you know, everything's happened quickly. The cat kind of strolls by and he's like trying to put his because Wade put his, you know, starting to back up to the door, and a cat's like, oh, something to play with.

29:55 So you see a Paul, right, A little Paul comes in. Okay, it's a keep cat. She's like, let me put a shirt. She grabs a shirt from a hanger, puts it down on the underneath the door so the cat doesn't claw at his back while he's like trying to like, you know, playing with the board and stuff doesn't distract him. I guess you wouldn't say so. The shirt is like tucked under the door. Lights are on. We go to like come back to like where we're sitting at. The board is on the ground, the planchet is flipped over. She picks it up. The knocking already starts. This time they hear it, both of them, and this time it's so loud on the fucking door where it's rattling. Weights back and he thinks it's funny. I'm just shaking at this point.

30:53 It's pure adrenaline and like where I feel almost a zombie, like where I'm just like I'm in a movie. It's happening. I'm just going through the motions. Boom boom boom. In the closet door, boom boom boom on the corner of the house. Then the AC unit gets rattled starts picking like like rattling it or rattling it boom boom boom, just going at like random spots all around, and it just almost felt like, I'm I'm I don't know where I'm at now. I'm I'm pure panic, like just freaking out, holding my friend's hands and I can feel her shaking, and we're just like, you know, looking at each other like, oh my god, what did we ask for? I don't know what's going on. The bear on the board, it's figure eight, figure eight swimming. She's trying to ask you questions, and it's just flickering back and forth, back and forth. I don't even can you tell you what it's spelling. At this time, I'm just attention around like my surroundings. Boom boom boom, the rattles. There's no one in these clauset's they checked. It's just going around each spot, back and forth, and then it does the heart beat beginning. It's just scaring the piss out of me and hearing it go from the door to the closet. I just so happened.

32:29 I looked over at the window and I seen this black mass. It had no shape. It was so black that it wasn't the color black. It was like a space, like an emptiness of foy and it floated white past that window and then the ace and it started rattling and it came through again. I didn't see it. It took that one time. I said, please, I go, I gotta leave. I can't be here anymore. I've had enough. She did what she needed to do. She was just on that board, you know, telling you you need to go back to the hell. You know that the place in hell where you came from. She's just going off telling its shit. The shirt underneath the door starts going being pulled in and out of the door, like it was like you would see the shirt and then all of a sudden you could see it kind of being pulled out a little bit and then stuffed back in the room, and then pulled out a little bit and then stuffed back in the room, pulled the stuffed and I see it and it went in one more time, came back out, and at that time she closed it out.

33:51 I'm like I can't. I'm like I have work. God about doing this anymore. I'm like, we need to go home. I'm upset. Airby got up. She opens the door, and the shirt that was stuffed in and out of the you know, under the bottom of the door to keep the cat out. It had a knot, this thig in it. So some some someone, some things some took the shirt, nodded it once, noted it twice to this giant knot, and left right there by that door. And after that I stayed at my friend's house. Didn't tell my parents about it, because God blessed, that would have been oh you know, no, no, no, don't you know, why did you do that? And slept with the lights on. I probably slept with the lights on. It had to be a good month. After that. I didn't hang out with April a lot. In fact, I couldn't even tell you when she even left, because she ended up not staying there that much longer. Eventually, like a year or two h I left. Never really talked to these people again.

35:04 I can find Joyce on you know, Facebook and whatnot, but we don't ever talk about what happened. It's something that we buried and it doesn't come back out that much. And I will tell you when of the last time of the everre told stories, probably ten years ago. I think I mean it's a I know it's a real crazy story, but I wish those who think like the Luigi word is like a game. It is not a game if your intent is to like put evil out and to get evil in your house. This is why I couldn't even talk to you about it in my house.

35:50 I don't. I feel like things can attach to people, and at least that night, that thing was after us. It's not completely unheard of for people to feel personally targeted by paranormal activity. But I actually can't believe how April's uncle seems totally oblivious to this situation, almost as though he's in some sort of trance. The knocking noises, this black entity zooming around, something trying to force the door open, this feels like an all out attack on these kids. The knotted up shirt on the ground outside, to me, just feels like a final statement proving that not only was this not the cat just trying to get in, but also it was a very real, tangible item left after an extremely surreal event. I shared my feelings with Stephanie, and I personally believe that this whole episode was some sort of warning, and if it was, it certainly worked at least for Stephanie. I'm fairly sure that she won't be rushing out to play with Ouiji boys anytime soon. I'd love to sit down with April, though, and learn a little bit more about her story. Was she able to just put the board away and forget about it? Did she sleep with the lights on that night?

37:09 And April stands for so much in this story too. The fleeting friendships of adolescents. The cool new person who made us all feel a little bit jealous and a little bit insecure, caused us to act out a little bit or to do things that we wouldn't normally do because we really wanted to impress them, We wanted to be like them, when really we were all in the same boat. Was this a genuine Zoso encounter. I don't know, but I do know that I will be sleeping with the lights on tonight. Let me know what you think it might have been. Comment on YouTube or Spotify or dm me at Houston Underscore Strange on Instagram. A big thank you to Kedra from Perplexity, a mystery podcast. Don't forget to check her show out and keep an eye out for that episode to drop on this feed in the next couple of days. A huge thank you to Stephanie for trusting me with her orient having faith in Houston Strange. This has been season one. Thank you to everyone for listening following along. I'm still very much an independent production. I plan on starting a Patreon with Season two, maybe to fund these little adventures, equipment, et cetera. So let's see where Season two takes us. Stay Strange, Houston,