Freddy [Patreon Preview]

Welcome to the other world, Patreon. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This is just a preview of a full bonus episode. If you want to hear the entire thing, it's available now at patreon.com/otherworld. This week we have a bonus episode that is legitimately one of my favorite stories. There's just something about this one that has always peaked my interest and for that reason I've been holding on to it for over a year. In fact, I'm actually looking right now and realizing that I recorded this almost two years ago, which is shocking and a little embarrassing. I can't believe I've been holding on to this for so long. But part of the reason I've been holding it is because as you'll hear, there is mention of a videotape being recorded during part of this story. Now, nothing of significance really got captured on this tape, but I thought it would be so fun to include some of that old analog tape in the episode. But as of now, this tape in question is still missing, but not for lack of trying, I assure you. That being said, this story is still so great without the tape. In fact, it's one that I think is very unique and it comes from a guy named Frank. When Frank was about 14, his dad was in the construction business and started talking about some guys he worked with that had a ghost named Freddie, haunting their small construction office. And when I say small construction office, I basically mean one of those sheet metal garage type buildings that you see on the outskirts of town without a sign, without much of anything really. Just one of those basically industrial strip malls with a series of garage doors. They use this to store drywall and park trailers. It was basically this simple one story building. They noticed that something was going on in this building when coins began materializing from thin air and dropping onto the floor. Eventually, Frank's dad brought him and his brother to see the office and meet Freddie for themselves and they ended up having some very bizarre experiences. Like I said, there's just something about this story that really grabbed me. It's so whimsical. I think you're really going to like it. If you want to hear the full thing, it's out now on Patreon. That's patreon.com/otherworld. This episode is called Freddie and you're listening to other world. My name is Frank Minise and not Frankie Minise from Malcolm in the Middle. It happens a lot. He got famous when I was actually around the same time this event happened. I was like going into high school around that time in middle school. It was very surreal to have a really famous kid actor with the same name as you. I got in fan mail from people who thought who looked up at the address online or whatever and sent fan mail and stuff. Hey, you know what? Jack Wagner is also the name of a famous actor in general hospital in the '80s. I was wanting to know that I understand it. It's like a Michael Bolton situation. I grew up in Tampa, Florida on the Gulf Coast and I stayed there throughout my college year. I went to school in Orlando. I majored in TV production. You see F and I moved out to Los Angeles after I graduated. I got to do some cool internships when I was in college. I interned at Nickelodeon and entered at the Colbert Report. It was fun. I got to be the audience coordinator for the Colbert Report. So like Wednesdays and Mondays, I had to get to like help load the audience in and like watch a live TV. It was really fun. It was like the year he had a bunch of musical guests. He had rush and he had cross-ree sales in Nash. He had a bunch of cool people there. And it was a really fun summer. Growing up in Tampa was really cool. My parents had lived their whole lives. And in fact, my dad was born in my bedroom that I grew up in. And the house that they're currently living in. It was old house in Eboort City, which is this historical neighborhood in Tampa. It's a cool place. There was lots of wildlife and go kayaking on the river with my friends and really nice memories of Tampa, Florida. My dad has a kind of like I guess like a business partner. My dad owns his own dry wall company. That's what he does. So for like construction on a new house and stuff, his company will go and put up the walls in the house. So he's friends with a bunch of construction people. And one of his guys named Ed has an office like a construction office in Tampa. In this industrial part of town, they're a tired store and all this stuff. And he was telling him some strange things were happening. Specifically coins would fall from the ceiling. Just like hit the floor, hit desks and bounce around, cause all kinds of noise. And I remember my mom talking to Ed's wife on the phone as this was happening. So Ed's wife was in the office. My mom was talking her and you can hear over the phone the coins going, "Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, all over the tall floor." It's like, "Oh, that's cool." So my dad was like, "Do you and your brother want to go check it out?" And we're like, "Yeah, of course." It seemed like a fun thing. I was into making movies and stuff. So I brought my video camera. I wanted to kind of like catch some evidence. So at this time, I was freshman in high school. I was 14 and I had just started. So I was around October of that time. And my brother's three years younger than me. So he was around 11. And we were pretty close. We are so close. And we wanted to capture some evidence of some spooky stuff. I didn't really mention this before, but my family's kind of strange about ghosts. Like they're not like a stuff's not real. They're kind of like, "It is real, but they can't hurt you," type, type family. So my, my mom's had a couple of spooky encounters. And my dad and my brother both have had some stuff happen. So when I was, I don't know, maybe seven or eight. During breakfast, my brother told my mom and dad that he saw these lights floating on the ceiling in his bedroom. And my dad was like, "Yes, I used to see those when I was a kid too." My brother described him as fairy lights. He'd be like, "There's fairy lights floating around. There's lights floating in front of you, darting around the ceiling. I had never in my life seen anything like this. And I still have not, but my dad has. And he's occasionally still sees it. And the way he talks about it is so casual. He's like, "Yeah, you'll, you'll see the light come in the corner room and start spinning. Shroom, shroom, shroom, shroom, shroom." And I'll just appear. And he's just like those of your, you know, relatives visiting you. He's so calm about it. So this was all happening in this house in the university that we grew up in. That he grew up in as well, my dad. So this is old house. Supposedly haunted house. My mom would always see things out of a corner of her eye. I think they kept a lot of stuff that they have seen or things that have happened in the house, like from us to not freak us out. I found out later that like some guy hung himself in the kitchen way back before my family moved in there. And my mom had an encounter where she would, there was an old guy across the street. He was sick. He went to the hospital for a little bit. And a week later, my mom was outside and she saw him. He waved at her and he seemed happy. And she would back at him. And she came and told us about it. She told our neighbor, "Hey, I saw the guy across the street. I guess they got out of the hospital. He's fine." And she was like, "No, he died at the hospital." The guy died. And mom's, she kind of got freaked out, but it wasn't the first time that stuff's happened to her. She's walked into rooms and seemed like a lady sitting in a chair that we couldn't really see. But she's always kind of like kept that stuff to herself. I don't think she wanted to really freak us out. So we kind of had that background going into it. So we're going to Ed's office to see this ghost. And my mom didn't want to come. So it's me, my dad, my brother. I think my mom thought this would be a little too much of an experience. And this is the first time we go. If I'm not mistaken, we went about three times. The first time we brought the video camera. We wanted to catch something. We wanted to catch a coin flying through the air. As far as we knew, actually, that was all we knew that it did. It was that coins would just materialize. The office is really plain. I don't know if you've have seen a construction office like this. It was kind of like a modular office building, sort of, metal desks. There were probably three of them in an L-shape. So you walk in, immediately have the turn, there was a desk. And this is 2001, so it wasn't like a lot of computers, it was just papers and stuff. And then there was a little alcove off to the side here. The building was a low concrete construction building in the industrial part of town in Tampa, kind of by the train tracks. There was a tire shop parallel to this place that had some words of happening too. I think Freddie would knock over tires and rearrange tires. They'd go in and find their shop a mess. And they were like, what did a homeless guy break in here? And I think they talked to Ed about, and he's like, there's this thing going around, moving stuff around them in the buildings. And there was an outdoor hanger type garage. I had a bunch of drywall and lumber and a truck. And a bunch of rafters. So it was like maybe two stories high and it went up and back. And they're just machinery and all kinds of construction stuff outside on this outdoor garage. And this is where all the things were happening. Indoor is an outdoors, wherever we were, stuff would happen. But the first time we were inside the office. OK, so my dad parks his truck, and we walk in. I remember just being this weird bright fluorescent light. It was nighttime outside, but inside of this kind of clinical white place. And Ed was sitting there in the chair. He was older than my dad, maybe about 10 or 15 years older than him, and this bigger guy. But he knew me and my brother. We met many times before. And kind of like an uncle figure, I guess, sort of. And he was happy to just have us there and see his new friend that he named Freddie. They named it Freddie, which was scary name for something like this, right? I don't know why they came up on it. I think they named it that because I thought it was kind of scary. But Ed was there. I believe his wife, Emmy, was there. And employee, if his was there, I don't remember this guy. These are all-- I don't know, when you're 14, adults seem so much older than they might really be. There were these hardy construction guys, these known nonsense, Florida construction guys, who have a ghost in their office, and they're showing it off like a pet alligator or something. They don't really know too much about it, but they're like, look at the things that it can do. Look how we figured out about it. So we brought the camera. We turned it on immediately when we walked in. And we just recorded everything. Ed talking about the incidents. And the first thing I remember happening was the coin thing. The coin thing happened. It threw a quarter or something up against the wall. It bounced across the floor, rolled under the thing. They rolled under the desk. They picked up the coin. They put it into this jar that they were keeping all the coins. And they're like, don't take any of these with you. My dad also made it a point. Before my brother and I get in there, he said, do not bring any of the coin's home, or anything that it throws home with you. But I think my parents are kind of like in the back of their minds, we're like, if this is real or whatever, you don't want to risk it coming home with us. We're just getting it upset or something. All right, that brings us to the end of the short preview. If you want to hear the full episode, it's out now. at patreon.com/otherworld.