CITY LIFE
OTHERWORLD
instagram.com/otherworldpod Jack Wagner in his work space COURTESY OF JACK WAGNER
FEATURE
Ghosts, cryptids, and Chicago The Otherworld podcast explores the city’s stranger side. By MEGAN KIRBY
W
hen Jack Wagner was 15, he made a documentary about the haunting of Wheaton’s Grand Theatre. Built in 1925, the historic theater went through several identities over the decades (including an aughts-era punk venue where Wagner’s band played). When he showed up with his camera, the owner shut Wagner and his buddies in the empty theater—and turned out the lights. And Wagner swears that he saw something moving as he looked up toward the ceiling—some-
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thing he couldn’t explain. He recorded the experience, but when he tried to upload the video files, his computer kept crashing. “I remember getting myself scared in a way where I sort of left the paranormal behind,” he said. “I just opted out.” That is, until he launched the paranormal podcast Otherworld in 2022. Now, researching supernatural stories is Wagner’s full-time job. Episodes chronicle first-person accounts about unexplainable phenomena: ghosts,
aliens, cryptids, and beyond. And even though Wagner left Chicago for Los Angeles in 2014, the show has told several Chicagoland stories, including a “Chicago Tales” episode that delves into three stories adjacent to the Windy City. Otherworld began as a segment on Yeah But Still, a popular Patreon show that Wagner hosted with Brandon Wardell. In October 2020, Wagner asked listeners to email him spooky stories for a Halloween episode, and
submissions came flooding in. “I kept doing it every year, and instead of running out of stories from my audience, there would be more—and they would get more extreme,” he said. “My thinking is that, if I treat these stories seriously and try to tell them in a way that I would any other serious story, more people will come forward to talk about these things. Which has proven to be true.” As Wagner collected more stories and interviews, he realized he had enough for a spin-off series. When he released the first episode of Otherworld in October 2022, he imagined the passion project as a six-episode season. But the podcast blew up, and stories kept overflowing his inbox. The plan had always been to retire Yeah But Still after its 500th episode, which aired in February. Now, Otherworld has aired 29 episodes and has become Wagner’s full-time focus. Wagner’s earnest approach to unbelievable stories has been a hit with his listeners. In less than a year since its genesis, Otherworld has taken off in popularity. At one point, it showed up as number seven in Spotify’s top podcasts list. On Apple Podcasts, it has 4.9 stars from more than 1,800 reviews. A Washington Post article called the show the “This American Life of ghost stories,” and delved into the Gen Z fandom spreading across message boards and Discord servers. The podcast’s 14th episode, “Chicago Tales,” tells three stories from the area: a UFO sighting in Beverly, a Mothman encounter in Elgin, and a Chicagoland woman who has been haunted by the same ghost since she was a teenager. Sometimes, the podcast is the first time the subjects have discussed their stories in depth. Wagner says that when something unexplainable happens to someone, they often want to forget it and move on with their lives. It took some finessing to convince the Mothman source to come on the air. “If you saw the Mothman one time, what do you do with that?” Wagner asked. “You just put it away in the filing cabinet.” Ultimately, that reluctance made the story more authentic. The source didn’t seek out the unexplainable; the unexplainable found him. “That’s the funny thing about Chicago stories, to me—the power of the Chicago brain to ignore something bonkers right in front
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