Episode 183 - Beneath the Bayou

Otherworld

Corinne recounts her harrowing escape from an abusive relationship in Louisiana to seek refuge in her late grandfather's historic home on a bayou

Key takeaways

• Corinne fled her apartment after her boyfriend, Colin, threatened to murder her family and held a Glock to her chest.
• The grandfather's house exhibited strange mechanical hauntings, including an unplugged printer turning itself on and stoves activating spontaneously.
• A massive, eight-to-nine-foot-tall bipedal shadow person was witnessed stalking Corinne near the property's edge.
• Physical manifestations escalated to extreme levels when knives flew from a block and embedded themselves into kitchen walls.
• Corrine experienced profound psychological distress, describing the spiritual energy of the house as feeling 'sticky.'

Main topics

• Domestic violence and escape
• Louisiana bayou culture
• Poltergeist-style hauntings

Notable quotes

Louisiana is, I like to call it haunted front to back.

Conclusion

A gripping narrative that explores the terrifying overlap between huma

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:11) Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode comes from Corinne, who grew up in Marouge, Louisiana, a very small town in the northern part of the state. And Corinne later moved to a nearby city that she says fans of the show Duck Dynasty might be familiar with. I am not sure how big the center of the Venn diagram between Duck Dynasty and Otherworld is. But either way, I think the fact that this story takes place where it does, in Louisiana, is very important. If you've never been down to Louisiana, I have to say it's one of the most unique places I have ever been to. It's a place where you really do feel a strange energy in the air at all times. It's a state where the lines between land and water really blur. and the terrain itself is constantly shifting. It's also a region of the country that feels like a direct link to prehistoric times and a place where you can find real isolation. I'm talking about areas where it feels as though you can easily disappear without a trace at any moment. Corinne's story begins in a rather intense way when her boyfriend threatens to kill her. So she decides to move into her grandfather's old cabin outside of town. This is a cabin that sits on an island in the middle of the bayou. In this cabin, she begins having a number of intense haunted experiences. In fact, I'd say these are some of the most extreme ones we have had on the show thus far. And for Corinne, what was supposed to be a place of refuge starts to drag her deeper into depression and despair. This is a pretty charged episode for a lot of reasons, both paranormal and not. This episode is called Beneath the Bayou, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, Speaker 2 (2:25) the science, you can't argue with. I'm worried about all the science. Speaker 3 (2:28) Up in the sky. Speaker 2 (2:30) It's almost Speaker 1 (2:30) frustrating that Speaker 2 (2:31) it's happening. I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Speaker 1 (2:36) Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. Speaker 1 (3:03) Hi, I'm Corinne. I'm a queer esthetician in Kansas City. My life is pretty quiet nowadays. I kind of just hang out with my cats and my girlfriend. We go out to eat a lot, you know, that sort of thing. Nothing too crazy, just kind of a quiet life. An esthetician is basically someone who does facials and kind of more advanced treatments like microneedling and things like that. I live in Kansas City. I actually live in a historic neighborhood that was kind of created by lesbians. It's really cool. It used to be called Woman Town. Speaker 3 (3:47) How would I think of that name? Speaker 1 (3:48) Right, yeah. It's a cool little historic area of Kansas City. It's really cute. I live in a nice little historic fourplex over there, and it's just a really peaceful little area. So I grew up in a place called Marouge, Louisiana, and Marouge is its own bayou country in kind of the middle north of Louisiana. So it's not the same as bayou country in south Louisiana, but we did have plenty of Creole and Cajun people live around there. I grew up directly on the bayou. So we would have alligators in the yard sometimes. Lots of big snakes, lots of big bugs. We grew up pretty poor. It was, you know, a bayou farm house that was kind of rickety, but still home nonetheless. You know, a big old attic fan for AC and the sweltering Louisiana heat and all of our animals. We had so many chickens. Speaker 1 (4:50) But Marouge is out in the middle of nowhere. It is verifiably 30 minutes from the closest gas station, you know. So it is very deep bayou country. There is this one time, well, several times, that I would go and swim in the bayou as a child. And it would just... freak my grandma out so badly. This was her house, my grandma's house. It would freak her out so badly. And I never understood why as a child, I finally got caught doing it one day because I was covered in mud. And she was so mad. Oh my gosh, she was so mad. And I never understood it until, you know, I'm an adult now and I get, you know, I would probably freak out too if a child of mine was swimming in alligator water. You know, I think I'd be pretty peeved too. Marouche was also this place where, you know, people would definitely go missing a lot. My understanding was that people would be used as gator food. You know, like if some local had a disagreement with somebody or, you know, this, that, or the third, there's lots of pig pens out there and there's lots of gators to kind of cover up crimes. It's definitely... That kind of out in the middle of nowhere where if you go missing, no one's going to find you. I definitely get a lot of strange looks often when I tell stories from down south because it just seems so alien to people that aren't from down there. You know, it's just a totally different world. I brought my girlfriend down there recently a couple years ago to my hometown and showed her around and everything and, you know, took her to, we stayed in the the city nearby. So there were things to do and, you know, places to stay, not just at my grandma's house, but it's just like the Wild West for her. You know, it's, she's from Vermont and it's just such a different world. We had several people around Marouche that had crazy animals. Like one person had just like a bunch of peacocks. One person had a zebra and, you know, everyone down there. is a wildlife rescuer. So if you come across a squirrel that fell out of the tree, that's your squirrel now. Now you have a pet squirrel. I knew a guy that he had seen that a family of raccoons had been run over and there was just one little guy left and he had lost some toes from the accident, but he took this raccoon in and just raised it. He was a beekeeper as well, so we would go and swim at his house. And there would be bees everywhere. And he would just, you know, be going to tend his bees. And there's a little raccoon following him everywhere. It was so cute and just so normal down there to, you know, run into someone who has a crazy pet. I've definitely known people with pet alligators. And I knew a guy that had two king cobras. and a raccoon and, you know, all these things. It's just, everyone's a zookeeper in Louisiana, you know? Louisiana is, I like to call it haunted front to back. I mean, everywhere you go is haunted. Everyone you know has lived in a haunted house. Everyone you know has some crazy story out in the middle of the woods. It's just, I mean, front to back haunted. Everywhere you look, everywhere you go is just... so spooky and you'd be hard pressed to be a non-believer in Louisiana. I mean, I really didn't come across many people who didn't believe in the supernatural in some type of way, or at least, you know, if they were skeptics, had a story where, you know, their beliefs were tested. The swamp is just so just full of life. that it's hard to say that it's not full of, you know, the afterlife as well. There's so many urban legends and local cryptids and things like platyze, otherwise known as swamp eyes. There's just a little bit of something in everything down there. Speaker 1 (9:25) So when I was, I would say, about seven years old, we moved from the country out into the nearby city. I was kind of split between my mom and my dad's house. And my dad lived with my grandmother on the bayou. And when we all moved from the country, I started going to school in... the city and it was such a big culture shock and everything. And it wasn't, I mean, the city is not big. It's not a big city. It's, it's where Duck Dynasty is from, if you know anything about that. So it's not a huge city, but it is still very different than just being out in the mud in the bayou all the time. So I lived in the city off and on until I was 20 and finally moved out on my own. I finally got my own apartment in the city. And that's kind of where everything starts. When I move into my new apartment, I get this job. I'm managing a Walgreens and I'm making my own money. I'm really excited. You know, I have my first place and it's so surreal and it just, it doesn't feel like mine yet. And I start dating. I start, you know, meeting people on the internet and going on dates. And I meet this guy. I'm going to name him Colin. I meet Colin and we go out on a date to Waffle House because I work overnights. So we go to Waffle House in the morning and we hit it off. We hit it off really well. We kind of have similar backgrounds and we get along. We have a similar sense of humor. Everything is going really well. We keep seeing each other for a while. And he meets my mom. My mom likes him. And slowly but surely, I start kind of... feeling odd about Colin. But I ignore this, obviously. I'm young and this is like one of my first serious relationships and everything. So I'm kind of just brushing it off, you know. Colin winds up needing a place to live. So I say, screw it and ask him to move in with me. So my first apartment is now my first apartment with someone else. And things are okay at first. I'm 20. I'm in love. Or I think I am. I'm working my job. He's working his. We get off work and we drink this beer together. And we're just, you know, we're just having a great time and we're partying. And, you know, it just seems pretty normal. But I start noticing. little things about Colin that kind of put me off a little bit, like him not being really excited when I would go and hang out with a friend or something like that. But it was something, it was different than just red flags. It was like this oppressive force around him that I just felt so blindsided by because I hadn't really pay too much attention to this, you know, up until this person is living with me now. And I hadn't really listened to my gut or anything like that. And I'm just slowly being put off by this guy's energy. And one night, I had a friend over. And Speaker 1 (13:00) Her name is Kelly. Kelly and I had become friends pretty recently. She was, you know, again, similar lifestyle. We had a lot in common. She comes over one night and we're all drinking and we're doing a little silly full moon ritual. We're just having a good time. And it gets to be bedtime and Colin goes to bed, just peacefully off to bed. And I stay up with Kelly for a little while. And, you know, it finally gets to be around the time that we're both passing out. So I join Colin in bed and he is huffing and puffing all of a sudden. And I turn to him and I ask, baby, what's wrong? You know, what's going on? Are you okay? Like, are you having