Episode 173: Homecoming Night

Welcome to the world, I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes in all the way from a town called Climax North Carolina, a very unusual name for several reasons, I suppose. I actually looked it up apparently. It is named Climax because it marked the high point of the nearby railroad. So not exactly an interesting explanation. I guess you could say it's an anticlimactic explanation, but either way, the story comes from a man named Madison. And it takes place when he was in high school in the early 2000s. At this time, Madison was hoping to throw a party at his parents' house in their big open field after the homecoming football game was over. It was a beautiful, cloudless night. As his friends started to trickle in after the game, he thought it would be a normal high school party. But after one of his friends ended up showing up late, he discovered that this night will be one that he will always remember, but for a very terrifying reason. This episode is called Homecoming Night and you're listening to other songs. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm gonna die a project. It's LIMS. We're just like, wrong. Everybody knows, that can do the right. Even if it takes them a minute. [Music] My name is Madison. I live in Central North Carolina. I've lived here all my life. I love this state. I've had opportunities to live other places and go be other places, but I've always just kind of felt really drawn to North Carolina. Where I grew up was a much smaller town called Climax, North Carolina. People affectionately around here call it, you know, the middle of nowhere. It was about like 30 minutes outside of the nearest city, very, very rural country farming community where I grew up. My family, we lived on about 13 acres of property. It was old family land. We lived in a small, double wide in the middle of a field, surrounded by woods. On the other side of that was farmland, hundreds of acres of farmland. Even though we lived on, you know, still a significant patch of land, we were surrounded by just hundreds and hundreds of acres of woods, open fields, dirt roads. Even my house that I lived on, the road behind us was a gravel road. So it was very rural, very out there. So growing up, you know, I was very accustomed to having to make my own fun. Having to kind of use my imagination, which was awesome. You know, growing up as, you know, a 90s kid, you know, it's pretty much all you had anyway. So to have nature and the outdoors and just things to go and do and explore was a lot of fun. So I was always, you know, love being outside. Animals and creatures being around, you know, didn't freak me out. It was very used to it, very used to wildlife, very used to, you know, deer and foxes and, you know, owls and, you know, things that make noises at night. Like, you know, not being weirded out or scared by things in nature, things out, you know, outside because it was just, you know, how we lived. This story happened when I was still in high school. So I was about 17 years old. And, you know, the land that we lived on, like, set 13 acres, lots of open space, you know, so me and my friends would use that a lot just to hang out and, you know, sometimes my parents would let us have campouts out there and have, you know, little parties out there as long as everybody would stay the night and be safe. My parents would much rather us be, you know, knowing where we were and where they could keep an eye on us, especially when, like I said, you live in the middle of nowhere, and God knows what else we could have been getting into. So it was probably for the smart decision by my parents to have us, you know, living like that. But this particular night, this night happened in October of 2002. I said, I was 17 years old, and it was homecoming night. And if you're from the south or grew up in around high school football, like that's a huge event in high school. All the kids are graduated, come back and kind of, you know, party and hang out with all their younger friends, and, you know, everybody kind of makes a big deal out of it. So that particular night, my parents were going to let me have the homecoming party. So the game ended around 9 o'clock, and that's when everyone started coming over to my house. It was dark at that point. Some was fully down, and it was completely dark. And it was a Friday night, beautiful night, like beautiful fall night, clear fall night, you know, in North Carolina that time of year, like it's still kind of warm. So, you know, we're still all in T-shirts and jeans and stuff like that. It was a very, very comfortable, awesome night, clear night. We couldn't have asked for better weather, we couldn't have asked for better conditions, where I lived, our house sat up against a massive field behind the house. And anytime we would have a party, that's where my friends would park. They'd turn on this gravel road that led to my house, and would just turn right into the field, like no driveway, no nothing, just like drive right into the grass, and park behind your house. And so people would park in that field and walk to our house. So it wasn't a long walk. It was probably about 50 yards from, you know, parking in the field, to walking to our house. So a few of us had already gotten there, and we're, you know, kind of setting up shop, you know, hanging out and just getting ready for the party that night. Nothing major, like nobody was drunk yet, nobody, like, we were very tame at that point. So, you know, so friends start arriving, parking in the field, and as people would park, you would see their brake lights, you would see their silhouette, walking through the field, and then as you would approach the back of my house, we had a pretty big, like covered back porch that overlooked the entire field. And then adjacent from that was this kind of outbuilding that sat at the corner of the field in our backyard. And anytime someone would walk from the field to the backyard, we would see, you know, they're so light up because the motion light would come on, and you'd see their full body, you'd see them, you know, walk through and walk up to the porch, and that's kind of how we were greeting people as they would come in. So, like, they park, walk through, the motion light would come on, and, you know, they'd come up and hang out. About an hour goes by, people keep, you know, filtering in, and, you know, everything's going pretty normal, just a normal kind of high school, hang out, you know, people hanging out on the back porch, joking around, you know, some music's going, nothing crazy, like we're, it's a very, very standard issue high school gathering at that point, you know, some early 2000s email or some outcasts probably, it was probably like some saves the day or some outcasts. In those days, it was probably, we were listening to, you know, just kind of a chill vibe, like I said, we weren't raging, we were just kind of hanging out, so we've got some nice background music, we would have these parties, they wouldn't be huge, you know, we'd usually top out around 30-ish people, but at this particular party, at this time, there's probably only about 10 or 15 people there at this, at this moment, so it was kind of lighter in the evening, you know, homecoming night, there's a lot of things going on, and for these parties, they would, you know, there was never any strangers at these parties. Like at, you know, being in high school, being in, like, set a more rural area, there's no just like strangers to walk up on your party, like you, when you have a field party in the middle of the country, like you know everybody that's come in or your friends have cleared with you, that they're bringing somebody new or wants somebody to be there, because my parents were also really big on, like, making sure everybody was there had permission to be there, and in their parents knew that they were going to be there, so we never had any, like, surprise visitors to these parties, we always knew everybody who was going to come. Everybody that was going to be there, and at that point too, everyone that was at the party were some of my closest friends, it was some of my, you know, my, my girlfriend at the time who's not my wife was there, you know, it was all like my really core friend group that was there who a lot of them, I'm still friends with today, this was probably around like 10 o'clock in the evening at this point, hanging out on the back porch, got some good music going, it's not too crazy, kind of just nice relax vibe, everybody's hanging out. And around that time, another car pulls in, and I can tell by the tail lights who it is at this point, it's one of my really good friends, his name was Bobby. Bobby usually would show up at our functions a little bit later, he worked at UPS at the time, so he worked like middle, he worked at odd shifts and odd hours, and he had just gotten off work and was coming in. And so you see his car kind of pulled into this back into our backfield, and you know, he parks in the field, you can see his brake lights, and you know, it kind of starts to get out of the car. And Bobby at the time always traveled with his brother, his brother was just a great underneath him, and went everywhere with Bobby, so when Bobby went someplace, Johnny was like his sidekick, you knew Johnny was going to be with him. So when Bobby got out of the car, we saw his silhouette, and then he kind of steps towards the back of his car, and he's kind of backlit by the brake lights. And as he starts to move towards our porch, you can see another silhouette kind of walk up behind him. At that point, we assume that's Johnny, because Johnny is everywhere with him. So, you know, to see Bobby followed by somebody right behind him was, you know, pretty regular. The Bobby walks towards the back of his car, and we see this other silhouette kind of start walking behind him, and they start to walk towards the porch. So they're approaching, you know, moving through the field, approaching the edge, and then they get to that point where that outbuilding is, and the motion light kicks on. And so, as Bobby walks through the light, it comes on, and we see Bobby fully lit up. And as he walks through the light, the person that was following him stops at the edge. You can still see the silhouette out line of them, and you can see that they're upright. You know, it's just a, it's a person that's following Bobby. And they stop at the edge of the light and kind of hesitate. And beside that same building was the Roe of Crate Myrtles, if I remember right, it's a, you know, a small tree. But it was this line of Crate Myrtles that my parents had planted a couple years before. So they are about like five or six feet tall, but they're a little bushy, so they gave us some cover, and there was a line of these Crate Myrtles next to the building. And so, as this figure that's following Bobby approaches the light, the motion light comes on, and they stop. And as Bobby walks through, he's moving up towards the porch. Everybody on the porch is starting to, you know, greet him, talk shit to him, as friends are to do in high school. And we're kind of just joking around with him, and this figure darts off behind the bushes. And so at that point where we just think Johnny is, yeah, he had a really good sense of humor. So we thought, you know, maybe he's just, you know, trying to play a trick on us or something like that. But a few of us had spotted him. So we see, you know, Johnny dip behind the bushes, and, you know, a few of us at the edge of the porch are like, yeah, when Adam be like, hey, Johnny, we see you like, get out here. And as that's happening, he's walking up and he walks up onto the porch. At that time, there's probably of the, you know, 10 to 15 people that are there at that point. There's probably has about seven and 10 people on it coming in, coming out, going into our living room, hanging out on the porch. And at this time on the back porch, it's me, my girlfriend and two other of my really good friends are kind of just hanging out there at the rail, looking out at the yard. Another one of my friends has his back to us and his greeting Bobby as he comes up onto the steps. And his Bobby walks up, I kind of look at Bobby and I'm saying, hey, man, like, what is Johnny doing? Like, he's being an idiot. He's, what's he doing out there hiding behind the bushes? And then Bobby just looks at me and he's like, what are you talking about? He looks completely confused. He's like, Johnny didn't come with me, I'm by myself. And at that moment, every hair on my body stands up. If that's not Johnny, then who is it? Because when we would have these parties, there were no strangers, like we didn't invite people that we didn't know. I was in high school. We liked a party, but we were good kids, you know, like we, we weren't going to like invite strangers over and we weren't trying to have a ranger that night either because my parents would have never let me have a party again either. So I was like, really, really dialed in on who was going to be there and what was going on. So if somebody was there crashing the party, that kind of pissed me off. Like, we didn't want those people there because it was going to get us in trouble and kind of ruin our fun. So at that moment, I'm like, okay, who's crashing the party? And so we start yelling at this figure behind the bush. And we look out and they're still there. The motion light had kicked off at this point, but you can still see the silhouette of this person behind the bush. And they're kind of crouched. They're bobbing back and forth like they're kind of sneaking, like they're trying to scare somebody or like they're trying to hide and stay out of you and they're bobbing back and forth. And we keep, we keep just kind of yelling at this figure like, you know, come out, come out. Like, who are you? Like, get out of here. You know, trying to just get this person to leave or show themselves if it's one of our other friends trying to scare us, you know, we're just kind of over it. And we're sitting there yelling at this figure to come out. And then we all kind of just stop for a second, like everybody stops yelling and things get quiet for a second. The motion lights off and that the figure's just standing there, staring back at us, bobbing back and forth. You can only see its silhouette at outline. And then all of a sudden, the motion light kicks on. And when the motion light kicks on, whatever was behind that bush got, it kind of brought it to life. And it steps out into the light. And at that moment, it goes from being like a five-ish, six-ish foot figure that looked like a high school kid and it stands up into the light and it kind of reveals itself. And this is when the entire night changes. It kind of rises up. It goes from being five, six feet tall to being, you know, I'd probably say somewhere between seven and nine feet tall. I know that's a big range, but it was tall as shit. Like it was taller than any human being I had ever seen. It stands up out of the light and it's this very tall, naked, tan, just thing. Every time I think about it, every hair on my body stands up. The very first thing you notice about it is its head. Its skin is tan, kind of leathery, like a hairless cat almost. And its eyes were dark and blank and had nothing. Like there were no irises, no pupils. And I'll never forget because I stared right at it. I locked eyes with it, an expressionless face, like a very pointed chin, no like distinguishable nose. Maybe some, I remember like some slits there, but no like physical nose. And then its mouth was just a line. Like it was just a little like opening straight line mouth, a very tall head, tall bald, leathery skin. And then, you know, as you move down the rest of its body, we just couldn't, I couldn't just couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was this, it was very tall, lanky. Its arms were long and bony, and by bony I mean like it had no, it wasn't musky. Peeler or flabby, like its skin was very tight to its bone structure. There were long and skinny arms that probably went, you know, resolved down by between its knees and its ankles and its hands. I cannot remember how many fingers it had because they were kind of like bent, like it was holding, like they were gripping something. Lank skinny fingers that were kind of like clenched, you know, at the end of these long skinny arms. Didn't get a very good look at its feet, like how they were built because they were kind of obscured by the grass, but it had these really lanky long legs. I mean, you could see like definition at the joints, like it had a bone structure, it had elbows, it had knees, but it didn't have any other distinguishable features that would be, you know, human or mammal or reptile. Its skin was completely, like I said, a leathery like hairlessness to it. It was tan, tight to its body, no genitalia, completely featureless, completely naked, and just a blank expression on its face, you know, it did show any form of emotion or fear or anger or aggression, and everyone on the porch who was facing it, you know, it's just pandemonium at that point. So, a girl next to me, she just starts crying immediately when she sees it. Another one of my friends just starts yelling, like, holy shit, like what is that? And me, I'm just frozen, like I can't, my eyes are locked on it, I cannot believe what I'm seeing. I've grown up around wildlife, I've grown up seeing everything that could be in these woods. You know, there was no creature that was a surprise to me, you know, I'd seen everything you could see out there from, you know, straight dogs, foxes, deer. This wasn't any of that. I see those all the time. I know what those look like. It wasn't a person, and if it was a person, it's not unlike any person I'd ever seen before, in terms of their features, in terms of the way they moved and stood and walked. Alright, we'll be right back after this quick break. The Unsolved Mysteries podcast is back. I'm Jordan Murphy, and each week I'll take you inside a new investigation. It could be an unsolved murder, an unexplained disappearance, the search for a wanted fugitive, any mystery that still needs answers. We'll follow every new lead, every break in the case, and the moments what a mystery is finally solved. Because after all these years, one thing hasn't changed. Someone, somewhere, knows the truth. Listen to and follow Unsolved Mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcasts. And it probably stood there for five to ten seconds. It felt like time froze in that moment where you can see it because you're seeing something you've never seen before in your life. I think right when my friend screamed that out of his mouth, like, "What is that?" The thing moves from its stationary position and crosses our yard in a matter of steps, like, it felt like it took two steps and it had crossed 10-20 yards in just a couple steps, and then it was out of view and past the other side of my house. And so the quickness that it moved with was another thing that was just so indescribable. I get moved unlike any animal, any human that I've ever seen. ever seen, like it was a combination of things. It had some aspringiness to its legs that I like a deer would, but it was upright on two legs. And it kind of hopped. And you know, the way this thing moves just, that's kind of like, I think that was the moment when that friend of mine kind of started crying. That was when it was crystal clear that this thing was a thing. It properly scared the shit out of everybody that either saw it or witnessed other people see it. I'd say about four or five of us saw it. Like saw it, like locked eyes on it, can't describe it. And the other people on the porch, including my friend Bobby and the person who greeted him when he on the porch, they didn't see it. They saw how we reacted, you know, to see somebody person to tears and somebody be screaming and freaking out. That freaked my friends out that didn't see it themselves because they just knew we wouldn't react like that to just anything. And you know, when this thing darted behind the house, we were just in shock. We see this thing traverse about, you know, 150-ish yards of distance and almost no time at all. Right after we saw it, you know, that was a big event in the middle of this evening. Like it properly freaked everybody out from the people who saw it to the people who didn't. And so that kind of put a damper on things for a little bit. Like everybody went inside. We kind of sat around, we're talking about it. My parents had come home from dinner and we were telling them about it. And my mom always tells me like, she'll never forget. 'Cause we had had parties before and like, you know, she comes over and we're just a bunch of goofy kids joking around, listening to music, laughing, being loud. She could not believe like just how reserved and quiet the scene was when she got there. Like she'll never forget coming there and just like we were freaked the fuck out. Like we were, like they knew something was wrong. The second they got there. So as the evening went on, a few more people started arriving. People who hadn't been there. And you know, that's when kind of feeling start to change a little bit. You know, we're starting to get some courage. Not, I can't imagine an influence us to have more courage as the night went on. But we were hanging out and as the party went on, like we were still all very, very freaked out. But when it ran off, we were, you know, one of the things we were really curious about. And once the initial shock of seeing this thing wore down, a lot of us at the party, you know, wanted to go out and investigate a little bit. Because like I said, it was very tall, a very big creature. Something like that out in that area. Like if you see a large animal in a field, it's usually going to leave some evidence that it was there whether it was tracks or fur or something like that's usually a deer or a fox or something like that. It's going to leave something behind it. So we're like, okay, well, this creature can't be any different. So let's go out there and see what we can find. And so we go out there with flashlights and everything we could to try to like see if there's any evidence of it. But we didn't spot any tracks. Like we could see people's footprints. They've been a few days without rain. So I didn't expect there to be much. You could see some like bent grass from people walking through the field, like some light footprint here there from humans. But we didn't spot anything in the path of where we had seen this thing. So we're looking around in all those areas and you know, a few of us are like, oh, let's go in the woods and find this thing. And I think we made it maybe like a step or two into the woods and we're like, no way. We're not doing this tonight. My curiosity kind of went away. My curiosity gave way just a big ol' hell now. And so me and my friends had gone out there, you know, we tiptoed in the woods a little bit but turned right back around and went back in the house. Some people left after that and then, you know, those of us that hung around, like we kind of, we stayed inside. The next morning, same thing we got up and looked around. Just to see if there's anything we could see in daylight that gave any evidence of where it came from, what it was, where it went. But there was no signs that you would traditionally see from an animal, like leaving a trail or breaking a limb or, you know, I'm not like a professional tracker or anything like that. But I had no signs of when an animal's been around or if a big animal's been through something and there was just nothing, nothing, especially something that size, you know, because it was so tall that even you would think like moving through the woods you would see breakage or anything like that. And there was just no evidence of anything being disturbed. That was just another thing that freaked us out, that freaked us out even more. So, and I know it freaked my parents out a lot too, 'cause, you know, they had lived out on that property a lot longer than I had and, you know, you know, my dad didn't think much of it, but my mom's kind of like me. She has a very into, you know, the possibilities of what can be out there. So she was very intrigued by it. So the wildest thing for me, when I think back on that night, isn't even so much seeing this creature, which don't be wrong, that was unsettling and will stick with me as long as I live, but it's at the moments before that. It was that 20, 30 seconds where it was following my friend through the field where it was behind him, moving like a human, standing right next to him without him even realizing it, you know, the way it was kind of creeping and stalking, it's those movements that, you know, are the most haunting and that stick with me more than even looking at it. Like the vision of this thing is burned into my brain, but what were its intentions? Why was it there? Why was it stalking my friend, Bobby, like that? That what ifs of what if we hadn't been paying attention? What if that light hadn't come on? Because in those moments that he was walking from his car to the edge of the building, I mean, this thing was right on top of him, and Bobby didn't even know it was there. Like he had no feeling of anything being behind him, and so many people saw that part of it, you know, a few of us saw the creature, or whatever you want to call it, but you know, a lot more people saw it follow Bobby, and they were just distracted by him when he came up on the porch and greeted everybody. So I think when a lot of us talk about that night, and what we remember from it, like you can't unsee that, like I can close my eyes and see it vividly. Like I can see the red brake light casting a shadow and silhouette around this thing, Bobby walking this thing moving right behind him, so close that we thought it was his brother. And so that just makes you think like, what would have this thing done? Bobby in danger? Was it just a wrong place, wrong time? Was this thing just passing through? Was it scared? Was it even something sinister? Because, you know, I think I'd said before, that I didn't get the feeling that it was there to hurt us, but at the same time, we don't know. Like we did not know what this was, what it was there to do. Just that we had never seen anything like it, and it was just wild. It's why every hair in my body stands up when I think about it to this day. It's like those two visuals, in the light and it following my friend, not knowing what it was following him for or what it would have done if, you know, a few events hadn't happened the way they had. The biggest thing that I took away from this, and a lot of my friends who were there and took away from this too, is, you know, it's just that reminder of, you know, how small our understanding of things can be, even when it feels like we know everything about this universe, this world, what's out there, what's possible. And the area we grew up in was very, a very conservative, religious area, but our family was not. You know, we were very much a family of science and being open-minded about what's out there in the world. You know, events like this are just little microcosms, I think of why we kind of raised that way and why we believe that. There's so much we can't explain in this world and encounters like this are just really stark reminders of that, you know, in hearing all the stories have been told on this show over the years, it's just, it's affirming in a lot of ways to know that you're not alone in experiencing this kind of stuff. And because it does happen and there's so much out there that we can't even begin to explain. So even with this creature, we called it many different things. It's affectionately and alien in our brain, but to who, you know, it's the eye of the holder, like what they would see here. It just wasn't human, it wasn't natural. It wasn't of this world. All I know is I just couldn't explain it. And I think that's something that I've carried more than, more than the fear, more than the uncertainty of the event and how I felt that night is just, whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed or like I can't get a handle on the world. Just reminding myself that there's so much shit that we don't understand or can't explain. And you know, that sometimes you just have to leave it to that. If I ever encounter something like this again, I don't know if I want to, but at the same time, I would love to know what it was and what its intentions were and why it was following my friend Bobby through the field. Why it, you know, stopped for a split second and let us see it, how it was able to move like that. Why it looked like that. What was it? What, you know, was it from Earth? Was it, you know, from some other planet? Was it from some alternate dimension? Was it a cryptid? Was it, you know, all these questions that run through your brain. But over the years, I've just been able to, you know, just say I don't know what I don't know and kind of leave it to that. But it doesn't stop it from being scary shit story that left me back to my life and everyone who saw it. So to say to anybody out there who has seen stuff like this or is skeptical of it, it's just, it's one of those things that you can't, you can't understand it till you're faced with it. And when that happens, it will change you. It will change you. (gentle music) Other World is Executive Produced and Hosted By Myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Shaffer, Theo Krants, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans and Juice Jackal. Our artwork is by Koldisak Studios. 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 Other World, you can become a patron at patreon.com/otherworld. Our social media is @otherworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, Leah Restennis, Mora Curran, Josephina Frances, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gainer, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Other World now for free on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you can send us your stories at [email protected].