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Otherworld

Episode 152: Phantom Channel

19 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic of the Phantom Channel episode?

11.877 - 44.23 Jack Wagner

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode features two stories that both revolve around DIY bands and recording. If you aren't familiar with that term or the DIY music scene, this stands for do-it-yourself and it's sort of an all-encompassing term for independent bands, venues, record labels, and various projects run by friends in a specific area, usually with

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44.21 - 71.652 Jack Wagner

very little money. A DIY venue where you might see a show is often a giant old house or a warehouse with way too many people living in it, lots of people coming and going all the time, out-of-town bands crashing on couches who are on tour around the country playing at other very similar DIY spaces in different cities.

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72.29 - 103.147 Jack Wagner

usually just making enough money to pay for gas to get between these various venues. This is all to say that anyone who has been a part of a scene like this can tell you that completely insane things are happening all the time. like real life, non-paranormal things that are harder to believe than any ghost story you might hear on this show if you weren't there to witness it yourself.

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103.908 - 129.908 Jack Wagner

So much so that a supernatural experience occurring in a place like this might be only the third or fourth weirdest thing going on at any given day in a place like this, which adds an interesting layer to the stories you're about to hear. The first one comes from a guy named Beau, who is a producer and audio engineer from Toronto.

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130.79 - 166.401 Jack Wagner

And in this story, they're recording their roommate's band in a barn that they rented outside of town. The second story is an interview I did a long, long time ago about two guys living in a DIY house where somebody tried to use chaos magic to summon an entity named Ramona to make music. This episode is called Phantom Channel, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello?

Chapter 2: How does Beau describe the DIY music scene in Toronto?

166.601 - 176.736 Jack Wagner

Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with. I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky.

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177.117 - 178.359 Connor

It's almost frustrating that it's happening.

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179.46 - 183.246 Unknown

I'm going to die. His limbs were just like, wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.

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208.218 - 231.176 Beau

I'm Beau. I'm a music producer and audio engineer based out of Toronto, Canada. I've been working in music and audio post-production for almost 10 years, and I make records with people. That's my job. I'm grateful to do what I do. Being an audio engineer is a really varied and technical and also creative profession.

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231.196 - 256.355 Beau

It means that I'm recording people, it means that I'm recording everything from, I've done dialogue voiceovers for TV shows, I've done big bands, I've done orchestral and string quartet recording, I've done a lot of rap and singing and I love working as a vocal producer. It's varied in terms of what I do job to job, and that's part of why I love it. And it keeps you creative.

256.375 - 275.212 Beau

You have to stay up to date on everything technical. And it's really focused on telling other people's stories. That's part of what drew me to it. And that's a really rewarding thing to get to do. I work with different bands in Toronto. It's one of the things that I really like to do. We actually throw shows in my house.

275.913 - 304.652 Beau

I live in a sort of DIY queer punk house venue in the east end of Toronto called The Arcade. So my roommate who I live at The Arcade with is named Tim, and Tim's a drummer. Tim has drummed for different bands and formed a band called Crocus. with some friends of theirs, and they had talked to me. This was last summer, so just exactly a year ago.

304.692 - 330.143 Beau

Tim had told me that they were looking at wanting to go and record their band's EP. Crocus's music is kind of like shoegaze, doomgaze, sort of like a lot of bass and heavy. I'd been to their shows and I really loved their sound, and so when Tim asked me to possibly work with their band on recording their first EP, I got really excited about that.

330.123 - 346.95 Beau

Right from the get, they had been talking about wanting to go out of town to record. The thing about living in Toronto and southern Ontario is there's a lot of really beautiful places out of the city. Converted barns, converted churches.

Chapter 3: What unusual experiences occur while recording in the barn?

793.252 - 818.083 Beau

And the song is talking about brooches of consent. And so I think the subject matter in the song and the melody itself follows that feeling of grief and anger and sort of the complex nuances of going through something that feels violating and hard. But it's very beautiful. The melody is very haunting.

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818.063 - 845.814 Beau

So she's just finished writing a lot of these lyrics and is sort of sounding out the melody for this song. And, you know, when someone's singing really close to you, they might not feel comfortable with you sort of staring at them. So I turn around in my chair. I'm facing out into the barn. And Jess, who's sitting in the chair, she's facing me so she can see my face.

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846.655 - 877.032 Beau

And I look up at the door because I see this movement sort of out of the corner of my eye as Jesse's singing. And it's not Tim and Jordan. It's something entirely different. When I look at the door, what I'm seeing is not a person. It just looks like this eight or nine foot hooded or sort of cowled shadow is just standing there.

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877.673 - 900.265 Beau

The closest comparison I can make is it looks like a shrouded sort of Nazgul type of figure in From Lord of the Rings. It doesn't look like it's sucking up the light around it in the way that people will often describe shadow things in different ways. You can still see the light behind it. There is a lamp on, you know, close to the front of the barn.

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900.245 - 936.112 Beau

it was seemed hooded i couldn't see its face i couldn't see eyes or a mouth or hands but it seemed just very physically there as if somebody was wearing a thick very dark opaque black cowled cloak, but it was very tall. And it was just this very large shadow figure. And I didn't see sleeves. It didn't move its hands.

936.612 - 963.759 Beau

It was sort of standing behind this large post or beam that was structurally holding up that part of the roof. And then it just looked like it had physical weight. It didn't look like it was hovering or flying or floating or anything like that. It did really seem like it was sort of standing there. And I just stare at it.

964.32 - 991.734 Beau

I think there's that moment when you see something and it's like getting doused with cold water or something where you realize what you thought you saw is not what's happening, and your brain's going really fast. That's what was happening for me. I'm trying to make sense of it. I'm realizing I'm having a supernatural or paranormal experience in this moment.

992.235 - 1000.249 Beau

And my first thought is, well, I don't want to ruin the vocal take, so I think I probably gasped, but I think I covered my mouth.

1001.174 - 1024.819 Beau

And at that point, probably only after a few seconds of me staring at the thing and seeing it and processing that it's not Tim and Jordan, the thing sort of, it didn't twitch, but it's like it noticed that I was looking at it and very quickly it sort of zips into the corner of the building.

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