Otherworld

Jack Wagner goes in search of our ghosts

Author

Tyler Barstow
March 07, 2023 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

I love a good “Zoinks, Scoob!” more than almost anyone else, and if you’re looking for a co-pilot for plummeting into the unknown without having to worry about getting long-gamed into joining a cult then you have extremely come to the right place. I have every single I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This Out Loud At My Girlfriend’s Parents’ House merit badge and I am incapable of getting abducted by aliens because I’d already be boarding the ship.

I don’t know too much about Jack Wagner but I’ve always seen him as something of a Twitter comedy genius. For years he felt like the Scottie Pippen to Brandon Wardell’s Michael Jordan-ish ability to troll the earth to death, and after helping write Like & Subscribe, a show with Dillon Francis that I think was like 700 times better than it should have been, I assumed he would settle into the very profitable role of Professional Goofball that he had carved for himself like an apple and continue planting seeds after he had finished. And to some extent, he did. He and Brandon started doing Yeah, But Still, a podcast which lets us Digital Fogies rest easy knowing we will have a nigh watch for years to come keeping the flame of 2016 Twitter humor alive. But he also started something late-ish last year called Otherworld, and as soon as I heard about it I was hooked.

I’ve never felt more seen by a t-shirt in my life, and I obviously bought one.

Like I mentioned before, I am always down to ride for any sort of meta-normal excursions, but for many years now the Great Beyond has had something of a murky foreign policy and it’s starting to chafe a bit. If something is real, I want to learn about it in the daylight too, and in a way that feels a little bit more approachable than either getting the shit scared out of me or having to listen to the same pantheon of dweebs on late night TV who constantly seem like they’re 15 doinks deep. And who to our wondering eyes should appear, but the great Jack Wagner.

Otherworld is a direct and level-headed look at personal accounts of the paranormal. Great interviewers, like great design, aren’t actually invisible they’re just almost-omnisciently awake to their purpose in any given moment, and Jack Wagner absolutely crushes his role here. With these sorts of topics, and an exploding audience that must range from Miss Cleo clones to Ben Shapiro impersonators, Jack has his work cut out for him and seems to land the plane admirably time and time again. If you’re looking to get your feet wet, I very strongly suggest episodes 20-24. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the 5 episode arc starts with a 2 part story about a step-mom who admirably earned her nickname of “The Black Widow” and ends in a deep dive into declassified CIA docs about a project called The Gateway Process. LFG.

Episodes

Episode 20: The Black Widow Part 1

A woman tells the story of her successful father being taken advantage of by the sketchy people he surrounds himself with. Including the series of increasingly terrible women he dates. Eventually, he starts dating a woman who is far worse than the rest and earns her the nickname "The Black Widow". Things gradually go from bad to worse as the family does their best to adapt, until everything is interrupted by an unexpected visit to a mysterious clairvoyant woman.

Episode 21: The Black Widow Part 2

Our storyteller leaves her clairvoyant reading and things start to happen very quickly. Jack catches up months later for an update, and then sets off to try to find this mysterious clairvoyant woman.

Episode 22: The Ball of Light

Jack sits down for an interview with "the clairvoyant" from The Black Widow episodes. It turns out her name is Wendy. She is a mom and artist living in the Los Angeles area. 10 years ago she experienced an awakening of sorts where she was suddenly bombarded by energy and information. She was going into a trance states for 8 hours at a time and predicting things about people. In this episode, we do our best to tell this complicated story about Wendy, her family and the awakening. Hopefully by the end of this series we will have some answers as to what could possibly be going on with Wendy and people like her.

Episode 23: The Ball of Light Part 2

Jack runs into Wendy at a grocery store and she ends up doing a startling reading on a complete stranger. Jack interviews Wendy about her views on the paranormal and afterlife. Later in the episode, Jack discovers a declassified CIA document that sounds very similar to the first hand experiences Wendy has described about her "awakening" If you would like to read the document in question, you can do so here.

Episode 24: The Gateway Process

In this episode we dive into the declassified CIA document titled "The Gateway Process" and the many complicated theories laid out within it. Jack enlists the help of his much smarter friend Sidu to go through these papers, explain the ideas, and decide whether it makes sense.