A haunting in Manchester, Connecticut - In 1993, in an ordinary house in Manchester, Connecticut, five-year-old Michael Jones woke screaming — a smiling pale man touched his shoulder and vanished. At first, no one believed him. Then the bed began shaking on its own. Objects flew. Welts rose on a little boy's skin. And Michael started speaking of visitors he called the bad people — spirits he said wanted to take him to their side.

In this episode, we open the first seven chapters of Denice Jones's 2000 memoir The Other Side: from a face in a photograph Michael could never have seen, to the doctors who found nothing wrong with him at all. Years have passed, but this is a true story — told with respect for the sensitive, kind little boy at its center, and the family who lived it.

Part Two — the investigation — is coming. Until then… leave a light on.

In this episode, we dive into the chilling disappearance of the USS Cyclops, a massive Navy collier that vanished without a trace in March 1918, taking 309 souls with her. Was she a victim of the Bermuda Triangle, a German U-boat, or something far more mundane? We explore the ship's fatal design flaws, her troubled captain, and the firsthand account of a watch officer who believed she was doomed from the start. From rogue waves to giant octopus theories, we examine the evidence before revealing the most plausible theory of all. Join me as we ponder why the ocean still holds its secrets so closely.

Conrad Nervig's article in the Proceedings:

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1969/july/cyclops-mystery

Before the first clearing, before the axes fell, there was the tree. A single root cradling the nine worlds. A trunk reaching from the underworld to the heavens. The Norse called it Yggdrasil. The Celts held their ceremonies beneath its boughs. Elves danced in its shadow. Fairies wove their magic into its bark. And the old gods of the woods—forgotten now—once walked its roots as surely as we walk our cities.

What if the mythical tree was never just a story? What if it was a memory—a long echo of a time when the veil between worlds was thin as morning dew?

In this episode, we search for the World Tree. We ask if Eden was a shift in consciousness, not a garden lost. Then we turn to the living forests of today—the ancient yews of Scotland, the remedies vanishing with every acre burned, cures we may never find.

And finally, we walk where the trees grow twisted. Where visitors vanish. Where something still watches from the shadows of Hoia-Baciu… and the long, dark trail through Vermont.

The roots go deeper than you think. Ancient things are still whispering.