#but I don't know it was just too surreal? creepy? otherworldly?

[fernsandsunflowers]

Something happened before dawn, it was probably nothing, a trick of the light...

I woke up in a different place... It was still dark, my alarm wouldn't ring for another 2 hours, and I had been dreaming about not having an outfit for my cousin's engagement party - how could I have forgotten to get one? Something woke me up, a silent alarm from my body to my dreaming brain - 'something's changed' it said, 'wake up'.

They say our instincts are still there, it's just buried often under too many thoughts, but they are still there. They tell you when someone's watching, they make your hairs stand on end when there's sudden silence, a change in air pressure. Spidey senses. My body didn't give me specifics when it woke me up, just told me there's been a change in the environment. It didn't signal danger, not exactly, it was more like a honeybee anticipating rain. It raised enough of an alarm to make me open my eyes immediately. People who are often woken up in the middle of the night for no reason, would know you never open your eyes when you are suddenly woken up - once they are open you can pretty much just give up sleep for the rest of the night. But something was wrong, my skin was tingling, so I opened my eyes.

There was too much moonlight coming in through the windows, more than there should be with only one curtain drawn open on the opposite end of my bed. On one side of my room is a large window. It takes up most of the space and looks out into a tall hedge. My single bed is set parallel to the windows and takes up just over half their length. The other half is occupied by a cabinet with my plants sitting on top. When I sleep, I draw the black out curtains only half way so that the little light that shines through the hedge doesn't disturb my sleep but my plants are able to enjoy the morning sun even if I am sleeping in that day. I know what my room looks like in the dark, with the curtain drawn only half way. It's dark, with just small patches of dappled moonlight peaking through the hedge.

There was too much light and the room felt cavernous. Like I was in a space that was much larger than the one I went to sleep in. It was the light that really bothered me. Even with the curtains fully open, I don't get this much light in my room at night. I immediately sat up and tried not to freak out when I notice that my curtain was fully open. I don't sleep with my curtain fully open.

My room is on the ground floor, anyone can see into my room through those windows, anyone can see me sleeping. No, no, no I never ever leave my curtain open along my bedside, I know exactly to what length it needs to be drawn so that anyone looking through the open side can only see the end of my bed and never my sleeping body. But the curtain was open, I could see the entire hedge and wait, wait but why are these windows so large? I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again.

Still the same thing. The curtains are open, and the windows are tall, so so tall. The whole room is twice as tall and as large as it should have been and the windows tower all the way to the ceiling. And they are curved, you could fit a gorgeous and extremely spacious reading nook in that curve. I am sitting in the middle of my narrow, single bed, and I am looking directly to my left, out through an open window that should have been covered with a black out curtain. And the hedge outside wasn't a hedge anymore.

There was a quality to the view outside that was the same as the room... It was massive. There was more space between the window and the hedge, and the greenery looked more expansive. It wasn't a narrow hedge before a fence that separated the house from the road across, it was a forest. There were trunks of tall trees silhouetted in the moonlight.

I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again. Nothing's changed. Giant windows, open curtain, forest outside... stay calm. I must be still asleep, trick of the light doesn't last this long. Maybe this is a weird episode of sleep paralysis.

Not sleep paralysis, I get sleep paralysis often, and I have never been able to move in any episode. I pinch myself, again, and then again. I run my hands over my body. I turn my head around, in every angle... I rub my eyes. But no matter what I did, the world around me looked the same. I was in an expansive room so big that I could not see my desk, I could not see my coat rack... there should not have been that much space between my plant cabinet and the windows. It was so bright in here.

And the thing is, the thing that really got my heart in my throat was that when I reached out to the windows, I couldn't seem to touch them. Which makes sense, in this new space. The windows were too far away from my bed for me to reach without getting up and walking to them. But it doesn't make sense for my room. Those windows should be less than an arms length away. I don't know...maybe I was too scared to reach as far as I needed to, I admit I was frozen where I sat on my bed. I was too scared to reach further than the edges of my bed. I did touch the curtains though. When I reached back, I could feel the ends of the curtain hanging at the head of my bed. They were where they would usually hang during the day, when I would have them fully open. Right then though, those ends should have been at the far end of my bed, closer to my feet, not at my head.

My phone was next to my pillow, I looked at the time, it was exactly 5 am. I switched on the flashlight. The world reverted back. The curtain was drawn along my bed, there were my plants, my desk, my coat rack. Everything where it should be. I turned the flashlight off. The curtain remained drawn, there were dim flecks of moonlight shining on my plants.

The room was dark.

Just a trick of the light.

#had a bit of an experience this morning on the 18th feb 23 and wanted to share because I can't stop thinking about it #I've tried to rationalize it but i've never experienced anything like it #there is the rational part of me that knows this must have just been my brain trying to just catch up #but I don't know it was just too surreal? creepy? otherworldly?

[theradioghost]

I don't know if you're still doing podcast recs, but if you are, I really like dramas, horror, sci-fi, honestly anything that gives you the feels (especially if it has lgbtq+ rep). I am not much of a comedy person though unfortunately. The only podcast I finished was tma and I really loved it.

The recommendations are always on tap here, whenever my askbox is open! You might wanna check out:

Archive 81, for a found-footage horror about mysterious archives of tapes full of encounters with otherworldly horror, dark rituals, cults, and a long-suffering archivist with the same name as the show creator who plays him, which despite all that could not possibly be more different from TMA and yet easily matches it as one of the best horror stories I have ever enjoyed. The sound design on this show is basically unparalleled – where TMA has fairly minimalist sound design, A81 goes all out. Quite a few lgbtqa+ folk also.

I Am In Eskew, for a surreal, Lynchian horror about the city of Eskew, where it’s always raining and the streets are never the same twice, as narrated by a man who is trapped there and the woman hired to find him. Take the most viscerally disturbing episodes of TMA as a baseline for how intense this show is, then imagine the Spiral built a city and invited all the other fears over for a party. Also right up there as one of my favorite horror things ever, and recently ended, so you can listen to the whole thing right now.

Within The Wires, for a found-footage scifi dystopia, telling stories from an alternate-history world. Three of the four seasons focus on lgbtqa+ leads, and the first season, a set of instructional meditation tapes provided to a prisoner in a shadowy government institution, is still some of my absolute favorite creative use of medium and framing device ever.

Kane and Feels, for a surreal noir-flavored urban fantasy/horror hybrid, about a magically-inclined academic (and sarcastic little bastard man) named Lucifer Kane and his demon-punching partner with a heart of gold, Brutus Feels. They share a flat in London, they bicker like an old married couple, and they fight supernatural evil. This show WILL confuse the hell out of you and you will enjoy every second of it.

Alice Isn’t Dead, for a weird Americana horror story about a long-distance truck driver, criss-crossing the US in search of her missing wife. Along the way she discovers that both of them have been drawn into a dangerous secret war that seethes in the empty and abandoned expanses of America, and that inhuman hunters have begun to follow her. Also finished! And as the title kind of gives away, the lesbians do not die!

Janus Descending, for a sci-fi horror miniseries about two scientists sent to survey the remains of a dead alien civilization on a distant planet, only to learn all too well why the original inhabitants have disappeared. You hear one character’s story in chronological order and the other in reverse, with their perspectives alternating, which is done in an incredibly clever way so that even technically knowing what will happen it still holds you in suspense right to the end. Also, it made me cry, a lot.

SAYER, for a sci-fi horror with a touch of dark comedy, and probably the single best use of the “evil AI” trope I have ever seen. Tells the story of employees of tech corporation Aerolith Dynamics living on Earth’s artificial second moon, Typhon, in the form of messages from their AI overseer SAYER. The first season is great, the second season is okay, and the third and fourth seasons are fucking amazing.

Tides, for a really interesting sci-fi about a lone biologist trapped on an alien world shaped by deadly tidal forces. It’s different from just about any other sci-fi I know, focusing more on the main character’s interactions with and observations of this strange new world, where she’s very aware that she is the alien invader. (Also I don’t think any of the characters are straight.)

Station to Station, for a thrilling sci-fi mystery where a group of scientists and spies on a research ship (the ocean kind) discover that the time-warping anomaly they’re studying might be causing people to vanish from existence. Corporate espionage and high-stakes heartbreak abound. (And once again I’m not sure anyone is straight.)

The Strange Case of Starship Iris, for Being Gay And Doing Crime IN SPACE! Or, decades after a war with an alien species leaves humanity decimated and under the control of totalitarian leaders, the lone survivor of a research mission joins up with a ragtag crew of rebels and smugglers to figure out why the very government she worked for tried to kill her, and to stop them from inciting a second war. 100% lgbtqa+ found family in space heist action and it’s glorious in every way.

Unwell, for the horror-ish Midwestern gothic story of a young woman who returns to her hometown to help her estranged mother after an injury, and discovers that there is something just a little bit wrong, not just with her mother, but with her mother’s house, and with the whole town. Subtle and creepy. The protagonist is a biracial lesbian, one of the other major characters is nonbinary, the cast in general is super diverse.

The Blood Crow Stories, for an lgbtqa+ focused horror anthology! The four seasons so far have been the stories of an ancient evil stalking the passengers of a WWI-era utopian cruise ship, a dark Western mystery about a group of allies trying to stop the mysterious killer known only as the Savior, a 911 operator in a cyberpunk dystopia who starts getting terrifying phone calls from demons, and strange and deadly goings-on at a film studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Everyone is Very Gay and anyone can die, especially in season 1.

The Tower, for a melancholy experimental miniseries about a young woman who decides she’s going to climb the mysterious Tower, from which no one has ever returned. Quite short and very, very good.

Palimpsest, for a creepy, heartbreakingly sad and yet incredibly beautiful anthology series. Season one is the story of a woman who suspects her new home is haunted, season two is a turn-of-the-century urban fantasy about a girl who falls in love with the imprisoned fae princess she’s been hired to care for, and season three is about a WWII codebreaker who begins seeing ghosts on the streets of London during the Blitz.

Mabel, for a part-horror, part-love story, the kind of faerie tale where you feel obliged to spell it with an E because these are the kind of faeries that are utterly inhuman, and beautiful, and dangerous. Anna, the new caretaker for an elderly woman, leaves messages for her client’s mysteriously absent granddaughter Mabel. An old house in Ireland has a life and desires of its own, few of them friendly. Two women fall in love and set out for vengeance against the King Under The Hill. Creepy, strange, and gorgeously poetic.

Ars Paradoxica, for a sci-fi time travel Cold War espionage thriller. Physicist Dr. Sally Grissom accidentally invents time travel, landing herself – and her invention – in the middle of a classified government experiment during WWII. As the course of history utterly changes around them, she and what friends she can find in this new time must struggle with the ethics of what they’ve done, and the choices they’ll have to make. An aroace protagonist, Black secret agents, time-traveling Latina assassins, Jewish lesbian mathematicians, two men of color whose love changes the course of time itself, this show says a big fuck you to the idea that there’s anything hard about having a diverse cast in a period piece and it will break your heart, multiple times. Also finished!

The Far Meridian, for a genre-bending, poetic, at-times-heartwarming-at-times-heartbreaking story about an agoraphobic woman named Peri who decides to begin a search for her long-missing brother Ace after the lighthouse in which she lives begins mysteriously transporting to different places every day. I can never forget an early review that described this show as “the audio equivalent of a Van Gogh painting.” Suffice to say it is beautiful, and fantastically written and put together.

What’s the Frequency?, for a Surrealist noir horror mystery set in mid-20th-century LA. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I can really explain what goes on in this show, but it features a detective named Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney searching for a missing writer. Meanwhile, the only thing that seems to be playing on the radio is that writer’s show Love, Honor, and Decay, which also seems to be driving people to murder. Fantastically weird, deliciously creepy.

Directive, for a short sci-fi miniseries about a man hired to spend a very, very long trip through space alone, which doesn’t seem all that sad until suddenly it hits you with Every Feel You’ve Ever Had, seriously I don’t want to spoil it so I won’t say anything more but listen to this and then never feel the same way about Tuesdays again.

Wolf 359, for honestly one of the best podcasts out there, containing all of the drama and feels, seriously this show ended over two years ago and I still cry literal tears thinking about it sometimes. It has definite comedic leanings, especially in the first season which reads a bit more like a wacky office comedy set in space, but it takes a sharp turn towards high stakes, action, and feelings and that roller coaster never stops. Take four clashing personalities alone on a constantly-malfunctioning space station eight light years from earth, add some mysterious transmissions from the depths of space, toss in some seriously Jonah-Magnus-level manipulative evil bosses, and get ready to cry.

or, may I suggest Midnight Radio? It’s a lesbian-romance-slash-ghost-story completed miniseries about a late-night 1950s radio host in a small town who begins receiving mysterious letters from one of her listeners, and I have been assured by many people and occasionally their all-caps tweets that it provides ample Feelings! (also I wrote it.)

#holy fuck when did this answer get that long? #anyway I uh. hope at least one of these sounds good to you! #podcast recs #bobbie recommends things #Anonymous #asks #my posts