Welcome to Otherworld.
I'm your host, Jack Wagner.
What you're about to hear is a strange story about two brothers from Australia named David and Stephen who believe something malevolent was brought into their life when they were just teenagers.
I went into this first interview with David thinking that it would be a quick,
strange, and maybe even funny story.
But as I began speaking to him for the first time,
I realized it was a lot more complex than I imagined.
It's a very long story that took place over 15 years.
And it was honestly somewhat hard for me to fully understand it first.
Partly because the people who went through it all still don't fully understand it themselves.
But whatever it was,
it was very clear that these boys' lives were completely upended by what happened to them.
I ended up speaking with these guys multiple times over a couple months.
Because of the time zones, we also had to talk at very unusual hours,
either extremely early or extremely late.
Either way, one of us was very sleepy every time we talked.
When listening to strange stories regularly, and if you're a person who finds them entertaining,
I think it could be easy to forget that sometimes this stuff really impacts people's lives in a very negative way.
Sometimes for a long time.
And some stories don't have a clear ending or explanation.