This is an unusual story from Alex. It's really good, so let's jump
into it. When I was young, we lived in Kernersville, North Carolina.
It was a small town outside of Winston Salem, and it is famous
for being founded by little people, the kerners We lived on the towns of
Main Street, but we were far enough from the middle of the town that
there were only houses and fields cut into the woods around us. Behind us
was a large trailer park that was surrounded by woods. I spent a lot
of time in those woods, playing games and exploring with my friends who lived
in the trailer park. From my earliest memories until we moved when I was
fourteen, something would visit me at night. It wasn't constant or all the
time. Sometimes it would multiple times in a single month, and then it
wouldn't come back for several months. I never mapped out the visits to see
if it was coming more often in certain months or during certain times of the
year. I was just a kid, and I was terrified. The progression
of these events before the experiences was nearly identical over the years. I would
wake up from a sound sleep for no reason. It wasn't a slow awakening.
One minute I'd be asleep, and the next my eyes would be wide
open and I'd be as awake as if it were the middle of the day.
Without understanding this, I would be completely terrified. Anxiety and the flight
or fight reflex would kick into overdrive. If I could have run somewhere to
hide, I would have. But no matter what I did, I couldn't
shake the fear and I couldn't go back to sleep. Within minutes, I
would begin to hear tapping sounds on the aluminum siding from outside across the hallway
from my room. Our house was a little L shaped ranch, and my
bedroom was on the inside corner of that L, next to the front door,
and the tapping occurred in intervals, tapping down the wall toward my parents
room, and then back up the side of the house back to my room.
Once it reached the window of my room, I could hear deep,
heavy breathing. I felt like something was out there, but I always slept
with the windows and blinds and curtains closed behind me. While I faced the
opposite wall. I never saw anything. Hearing a heavy breathing always intensified my
fear, which in turn kept me paralyzed. Sometimes I would accuse myself of
being afraid of nothing, and dare myself to open the window and look outside.
Just turn around, I'd tell myself, But I couldn't force myself to
move. I finally, when I couldn't stand it anymore, I'd scream as
loud as I could and spring out of run out of the room. My
parents would always scold me for scaring them and waking them up. It's just
nightmares, they would say. Now you're going to grow out of this.
Eventually. I even doubted myself as time went on. I doubted that what
I was experiencing was real, no matter how many times it happened. Well.
This continued for all of my young life until we moved. There were
two occasions when something different happened. They were the events that convinced me that
it might not have been my imagination after all. The first experience was when
I was five. We had a deep snow that night, so I was
excited to go out and play in it the next morning. But when I
looked out in my bedroom window and saw footprints ten feet away, I was
disappointed and angry. It looked like my dad had been out there walking around
the house and ruining the pristine snow while luckily put on my heavy winter clothes
and I headed out, and when I passed my mom and dad in the
kitchen, I asked if anyone had been outside. No, they answered,
smiling at me, it's all yours. My mother called after me that I
needed to eat breakfast before I went out, but I couldn't wait. I
couldn't let someone else have all my beautiful snow. Well. I was perplexed,
and it looked like my dad had made the footprints. I followed their
path around the house and I saw that they went off into the field toward
the woods. I went back to the front yard to see where they had
come from, and oddly, they had circled the willow tree by the road,
and from there it seemed as if they came from the woods on the
other side. I went back inside to get my dad so he could see
the prints, and he insisted that I was the first one outside and that
those footprints were mine. They'd been watching me from the window. I did
my best to convince him to come out and look, but he said I
was seeing things. But I knew better, even though I was just a
kid. I was much older when the next event happened. It was about
a year before we moved. I woke up feeling that fear, and as
usual, I couldn't get myself to go back to sleep. I was determined
to fight it, so I popped up in bed and I looked out the
window, but there was nothing there. I had to use the bathroom,
so I stepped over my old English sheep dog, Oliver, who was lying
in the doorway with his belly on the cool wall of the hall floor and
his head on the carpet in my room. In the bathroom, I was
still gripped in fear, but I forced myself to look out the window as
well. There wasn't anything there either. Now back in my bedroom, I
did my best to shake the fear, but it wouldn't let go. I
glanced over at my window as I climbed into bed, and all I saw
was the light of the moon shining through the curtains. I was determined to
force myself to fall asleep, but within a few minutes I heard a commotion
outside. Our outside dog was a black lab Terrier mixed named Zip. It
sounded like she was chasing something. She wasn't barking, but she was growling
and running around like she did when she was chasing stray dogs out of the
yard. And whatever she was chasing it sounded like it was moving around on
two legs. She'd run in on it, snarling, and then I could
hear it stomp off. I was terrified, beyond my limits, and there
was no way I was going to get any sleep, so I got out
of bed. Oliver was on his haunches with his head up and his ears
ray, staring toward the window at the sounds. Instead of going to the
window, I walked down the hallway towards the sliding glass door on the back
side of the limbering room. There was a small window to my right that
was on the same side of the house as my room, and as I
passed by, I dared myself to look out. There was nothing opened the
door, and I called zip. She came running towards me from directly in
front of me, not the direction I expected, and it made me wonder
if she was still the one making all the noises. It had to be
her, what else could be making all those sounds? She sat guard in
front of me As I scanned the woods looking for the source of the noise.
Go to your house, I told her. Zip was my best friend.
She followed me everywhere. I knew her very well, and every time
I was upset with her and told her to go to the house, she
wouldn't go. Instead, she'd sit there and wag her tail and nuzzle my
hand for attention until I turned around. Only then would she do what she
was told. But she didn't do it this time. She went straight to
her house and a flat run and I closed the sliding glass door, and
I forced myself to look outside one last time before walking back to my room.
I gave Oliver a pat as I walked by, and in response,
he laid his head down on his paws. The clock read one forty three
am, and I laid down, but I couldn't sleep. And then the
tapping started like it had so many times before, and I covered my head
and I wrestled with my fear as the tapping moved around to the back of
the house. Oliver's dog tag jingled as he raised his head, and then
his claws made a scratching sound on the floor as if he was backing up
into the hallway, and then the breathing started. I was terrified. I
knew it was real because Oliver knew it was there. I hoped it would
go away, and when I couldn't stand it any longer, I screamed.
My parents rushed into the room and I looked at my clock and it was
two twenty eight am. My parents were angry and accused me of watching too
many horror movies, but that didn't matter to me. After that night,
I knew there was something out there. We moved away from Kernersville to a
house in the country south of Nashville, Tennessee. I didn't have those experiences
for a long time. I thought I could forget about them. I did
for many years, and it simply didn't exist anymore. I still enjoyed the
outdoors, and when I was young, I spent as much time as I
could outside, playing and enjoying nature. All animals seemed to take to me
more than once. I petted and played with dogs whose owners were surprised.
I came home from spring break once when I was in college, and I
spent an evening out with my friends, and when I pulled in around midnight,
my headlights lit up a pen in the backyard, so I could see
the eyeshine of my two dogs who were in their house. They were strays
that I had adopted, and the neighborhood rules dictated the I had to keep
them in a pen at night. Usually when I came home, they would
get up and walk around, and they'd wagged their tails, whining until I
came over to pet them. But on that night, as soon as I
got out of the car, that old fear hit me again. It was
like being punched in the gut and then falling continuously. My stomach jumped up
to my throat and it wouldn't go away. I stared at the pen,
and the dogs stayed put in their house. It was completely silent. Not
even the crickets were chirping. I knew they could feel what I was feeling,
and I started to walk toward the house at a normal pace. I
was a grown man now, there was no fear. This was crazy and
it shouldn't be happening. I opened the back door and I stepped calmly inside,
but I couldn't resist shutting the door as quickly as possible. I went
to the restroom, still perplexed that this was happening, and I looked out
the window but didn't see anything unusual, and I brushed my teeth and I
went to bed. My window was open outside, the blue green light of
mercury vapor street light illuminated everything, and my clock was flashing twelve midnight in
red on the TV stand. I hadn't bother to reset it. I lay
down on the bed, and when I was younger, I always slept facing
away from the window that was on my right side, and I've always slept
on my right side, and with the way my room was situated, that
meant I was facing the window now. So I closed my eyes and then
I opened them. The red light of the clock flashed against the floor like
a neon roadside diner sign. I told myself that this wasn't possible. I
was in another state. I shouldn't be feeling this sphere now. I mentally
searched for some psychological explanation. This couldn't be real, I thought, well,
I believed it was when I was younger, but it wasn't real.
It couldn't have been. I closed my eyes again, but I couldn't keep
them closed, no matter how many times I tried. I just couldn't fall
asleep, and I looked outside for a long time. The last time I
opened my eyes, all I saw was black. And at the same moment
I opened my eyes, I felt a sort of pressure over my entire body
from every point around me. It pushed inside my head, on my brain
too, and I squeezed my eyes shut in defense. And then I noticed
my legs were moving off the side of the bed, like I was being
forced to get up. I clenched every muscle in my body to fight against
whatever was controlling me. Something was telling me to get up and go outside.
I imagined myself walking outside and I fought hard to stay still, but
my leg was slowly moving to the edge of the bed and I kept it
from touching the floor. But I was really straining to hold myself still.
As long as I focused on my body, I could remain still. But
the second I had to take a breath, it moved against my will.
Well. I didn't know what to do. I didn't think I could fight
it much longer, and I started praying our Father, who art in heaven,
how I would be thy name. It seemed to have a slight effect,
just a little, but I felt I would be protected if I had
faith. I knew that God would save me, and I prayed again.
It was hard to say the words while straining every muscle in my body,
and I felt like whatever had me was trying to keep me from speaking well.
I prayed a third time, and before I even finished, it was
all suddenly gone. And I opened my eyes and I could see the blue
green light in the yard and the flashing of the clock face on the floor,
and I felt like a wave receding back into the ocean. I was
immediately relaxed and the fear had gone, and I finished the prayer as I
stared out the window, and then I ran out of my room, shutting
the door behind me, and I fell on the floor and my entire body
was covered in sweat despite the coolness of the night, and all my muscles
were sore. There were no windows I could see out where I sat,
but I felt it was safe, so I grabbed my cigarettes from my own
room and I went outside. The sounds of the night had returned, and
my dogs came out of their house and walked around their pen, and I
finished my cigarette and I went back inside. That was the last time something
like that happened to me. I don't know what it was. I feel
sure it wanted me to go outside, and I don't believe the outcome would
have been good for me. I think that fear I felt is the same
fear some people who had bigfoot encounters feel. And I've told the story a
few times, but nobody has ever taken me seriously. I don't know what
to blame for all this. Is it a demon, a dog man,
a big foot? I can't say. All I know is is that what
I saw was complete blackness, and what I felt was an absolute invasion of
my mind and body. I think God saved me. My faith chased it
away. The instant I began to pray, I knew I was going to
be okay. And maybe there are other people who have experienced this. My
heart goes out to them. It's terrifying not to have control of your own
body. There are accepted psychological explanations for what happened, but I don't think
any of them fit what happened to me. If I know I'm going crazy,
then I must not be insane, right, Ah, very good story.
There's no creature in this story. It is a psychological event in this
guy's life. It has to be because he never saw anything, although he
did see tracks and he heard sounds. But this is creepy, and you
know it's some kind of haunting or who knows what it is. But I
love this story, especially the way he wrote it. He's very clear and
concise, and I really appreciate it. So thanks Alex for sending this.
All Right, this is gonna be a little different. I get several emails
throughout the year, people asking me specific questions about different things, and a
lot of them I don't know how to answer. Most of them are about
Bigfoot, What I think about Bigfoot? What I think about this or that
regarding these mythical creatures, and I don't have an answer for that. To
be candid, I don't really care. I could care less about Bigfoot or
dog man or ghosts or UFO. I'm kind of caring about UFOs. Those
are kind of interesting, and all the other topics are interesting as well,
but I just don't have any skin in that game. I don't I've never
had any interest in does bigfootage exist? Does he not? Anyway, I'm
kind of rambling on, but some of the questions I get are pretty interesting,
and this one in particular, I thought I would take a minute and
answer. The woman that sent me an email is saying that she's been told
she has a nice voice. She's done some recordings for phone answering machines and
things like that, things that you might ask someone in an office to do
if they have a pleasant tone in their voice and they speak well. But
she was asking about getting into voiceover work, and right out of the gate,
I'm gonna say I don't know anything about that. However, I can
talk about my little sphere of the audio things that I do, which are
just fictional and non fictional stories. I'll tell you what I think about the
few facets of the voiceover business, and they're just element triological conclusions I've come
to just by reading and watching as I kind of moved through this. I
guess it's an industry. I don't know. Let me give you an example.
If you were interested in narrating audio books, I'm gonna tell you right
now, there's no money in it, especially if you let's here's the deal.
Like, for instance, ACX, there are over a million registered producers
on ACX. In other words, people looking to narrate audio books at any
given time, there are about probably, let's just say, for an average
number, twenty thousand titles open for audition. So you do the numbers that
how competitive that is. I have audition for no less than a dozen audio
books. I got real excited about it because I thought, well, people
on my podcast say I do a pretty good job, maybe I could get
some audio books. And I have done a dozen or so audio books,
but they're through people that I work with through the Dixie Crypto Channel and the
Steve Lily Channel. But I never got selected for any of those auditions.
A matter of fact, I got some critical notes back. They're constructive criticism.
I never took them to heart. I just listen to what people say
and they're like, oh, your voice is a little your accents a little
thick, You're you know, blah blah blah, and I'm like, okay,
cool. I mean, when the author writes a book, he wants
absolutely the narrator who he thinks or she thinks will do the absolute best job,
and that's their prerogative, and I totally support that. I would be
the same way. But the point is is, regarding audiobook narration, it
is extremely competitive, and if you do get a book and it's not a
If you do get hired to do a book and it's not a best seller,
you're probably gonna be hired with a royalty split. In other words,
you're going to get a little bitty piece of each sale, which, believed
me, it's not much. And if the book is not a major best
seller, that that money adds up. You can work eighty hours, eighty
to one hundred and twenty hours to do an eighty thousand word novel and you
may make two hundred and fifty three hundred bucks off the whole gig. So
it's just not you know, you can do the math on that. What
is that per hour? It's very hard, very hard to make money in
the audiobook narration thing. When I got into this, I didn't have a
plan. I just kind of just started throwing up stories on YouTube. I
didn't think about it, I didn't do I didn't know anything about it.
I just thought it would be a fun thing to do. I didn't know
many I didn't see many people doing it at the time, so I didn't
have many go buys if that means if that makes any sense. But so
anyway, all that to say, the narrat the narration audiobook thing is competitive.
You've got your voiceover work where you can do commercials and things like that.
I don't know anything about that. There are channels out there that explain
that, and they do a good job without how to get into that.
You go through fiber and up works and it's not a complicated process to get
into it. You need some equipment. You need to be good at what
you do. I would never do I don't think I would ever get selected
for anything like that, so I don't do it. Let's see, there
is podcasting now. Podcasting is where there are some promising prospects. The podcasting
industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and if you get into it,
you want to make some change with it. The CPMs on just the podcasting
and I'm talking about the podcast that go out on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
things like that. The CPM is much higher than it is for YouTube.
So there's a chance to make a little money there if you did start
a podcast, no matter what it, no matter what the topic is,
whether you're doing the kind of things that I do, or whether you're doing
interviews, pick a topic, go with it. Sorry, I had to
pause my wife. My old lady walked in and interrupted me. I might
have to She's only going to get one scoop of macaroni tonight for doing that.
Anyway, I encourage anyone to. If you feel like a podcast would
be fun, I think you should do it. And if you want to
do exactly what I'm doing, I think you should do it. I don't
see people getting into this as competition. I see it as entertainment that I
might enjoy. So if you do decide to do a podcast in any format,
whether you're political, or whether you're just kind of you know, in
the middle of the road doing stories like me, or if you're doing a
podcast on you know, things that young mothers might want to do. You
can do a cooking pot, you can do just pick any topic, any
history, anything you want to pick, and you can do a podcast.
It's easy to do. It's easy to upload, find a podcast host.
If anybody's interested, I could do another. I could do another little Q
and A on that and explain what I know about it. But it's easy
to do, and you can find out how to do it. Everywhere you
record it. You find a podcast host, find one that will pay revenue
split don't get in one of the ones that you have to pay for and
you don't get anything back out of it. It doesn't mean you're going to
make much money, but at least you're not going to be paying money.
The podcast hosting business is migrating to that. Matter of fact, I think
you'll find very few that it used to be you had to pay them to
put your podcast up. Now they pay you. So it's changing. They're
seeing the revenue possibilities there and they're making it easy for podcasters to migrate to
their platforms. I use Spreaker. I love the people at Spreaker. They've
been very supportive with me, and so that's how I blast out my podcast
to all the podcast apps. And then I YouTube is a separate thing,
and I have a few videos up on Rumble, but I think I've got
by I don't know, one hundred and twenty seven views on twenty or thirty
videos. Rumble is a political platform. All the free speech people have gone
over there, with people who have been canceled to have gone to Rumble,
and it's a great platform. It's a place you can go and listen to
people say whatever they want to say within the rent within the boundaries of decency.
And I thought about trying to really push my Rumble account, but I
just don't have much there, and it's again it's mainly for political and it's
a big gaming platform. Actually, I never saw the head an interest in
that. I don't like playing video games anyway, and I can't imagine sitting
for hours watching someone else play a video game that could that's some I don't
know nothing against the guys that do it, but it just seems boring to
me, kind of like golf. So yeah, if you are interested in
doing it, if you've been told you have a nice voice and a pleasant
way of speaking, you can buy some equipment. As far as equipment goes,
if you have any questions, just send me an email and I'll tell
you what I have. I'll tell you what I have now. I have
a road I think it's called a Roadcaster Pro. It's just box with a
big red button on it, and it's got little meters and you have to
work with it a little bit to get it set like you want it,
and then you have Then you need a mic or with a mic stand or
a mic boom. You need a chord to connect into the Roadcaster blaster thing
I have here. It's a record everything on an SD card. Then you
transfer it to your computer, and then then we get to the editing software.
I use the Adobe Suite and the audio is done in Adobe Audition.
I do the videos on Adobe Premiere Pro. I do my thumbnails in Adobe
Photoshop. But you can find all of some You can find similar editing software
somewhere out there on the internet free and it's easy to download. You may
have to put up with some ads and a lot of emails, but it's
free. My rig probably I bought it about three years ago and I'm still
using everything I bought. I think I put about six or seven hundred dollars
in it. Now it would probably be close to You could probably get by
under a thousand, but it might be more expensive than seven hundred. However,
you can do. You can set up a podcasting rig. A hell
of lotser than that. You can go buy some of these Zoom products like
they have the I don't know. Just look at the Zoom website. You
can see all kinds of things. And on Amazon you can buy total kits
where you get the recording box. It's a little bitty box it's a very
powerful and you stick an sty card in it, and it comes with microphones,
mic stands. It comes with the chords that connect to the little box
and you just turn it on and set your game settings and you you know,
if you want to do a podcast with four I like a roundtable podcast
with four dudes or four women, or two dudes and two women whatever,
talking about a particular subject. You can stick a microphone in front of airbody's
face and record the whole thing. And I'd love to do something like that.
I just I live out in the middle of nowhere, and nobody around
here. Hell, most people around here can't even speak English, so I
don't really have a pool to choose from a people to get together and talk
about stuff. You can do that, and you can get into it,
probably for less than three hundred bucks that way. So thirteen minutes in,
I just thought I would answer that question to the woman who sent the email.
Thank you for that. I've had several other people sending emails along the
same lines, and I tell them the same thing. Go for it,
absolutely, go for it, find out if you like it. If you
like it, stick with it and just hammer away. And if you have
any specific questions, just send me an email and we'll get on the phone
and I'll kind of walk you through what I think. I don't. I
love helping other people do this stuff, and I'm by no means an expert,
and I just learned it all the hard way, just kind of pecking
and punching and figuring out audio and figuring out what you know, what sounds
good to me. So yeah, go for it. If you want to
start a podcast, don't look for any payback. It's a long run.
It's a long game, and to get into it, it takes a long
time to build an audience. And if you don't you know, if you're
in it for the money, you're after ears and eyes. You want ears
and eyes on your podcast, and you want them to be listening to the
ads so that you get paid for those ads. Running. It's a long
game, and so you kind of got to love it to do it.
You would do You would make more money immediately working at a convenience store or
at McDonald's or at a Walmart. Trust me, you would. There's just
not much money in this, so again, you just have to really enjoy
it. And I hope some of you who have been thinking about this,
will take the leap and do it. And if you have any other questions,
I'll do this once a month and stop and ask answer a question.
I cannot imagine what about me you would want to know. Again, don't
send questions about bigfoot because I'm just going to ignore them because I don't care.
Don't send me blurry pictures. Don't send me the glory videos or things
you think are bigfoot. I think that's great that you have those, is
just that me personally, I'm not interested in that. I think I talked
about that before I got into all this podcasting thing. So anyway, I
just doubled the size of this podcast by really talking about nothing. But I
thought I would answer that lady's question. Thank you, ma'am for sending it.
All Right, that's gonna wind it up for this one. Hope you
guys have a good weekend and we'll see on the next one. Thanks