Otherworld isn’t your average paranormal podcast

Listen to episode five of Logged On: The Dazed Podcast with Jack Wagner here

“Are you a Mulder or a Scully?” This is the question Jack Wagner (aka @versace_tamagotchi) asked himself when imagining the concept for his podcast, Otherworld, in reference to the cult TV show X-Files. In just one year, the LA-based internet personality has amassed a cult following for his show – dubbed the ‘Paranormal This American Life’ – which features first-hand accounts of real people who’ve experienced strange encounters of the paranormal and unexplainable kind. They’re the sort of anomalous stories usually relegated to the fringe corners of the internet, on conspiracy Reddits and Witchtok. Think: demonic summonings, UFO crash sites, ghost stories, and even a pair of Romani psychics who warn against gnome worship.

But Wagner takes these accounts seriously, shining a journalistic lens onto his subjects, and even going as far as to interview experts, family members and other witnesses to lend credibility to their stories. As for the subjects themselves, they’re mostly average people: teachers, lawyers, paramedics, park rangers – in other words, not the usual type you’d expect to believe in the supernatural, let alone share their stories. “When I started the show, I didn’t really care about any of this stuff,” says Wagner, ”nor did I think too much about it until all of a sudden I had an inbox of emails from people that were just like me”. 

With a fast-growing Gen Z fanbase of both believers and sceptics, Otherworld’s success comes at a strange time when interest in the supernatural is at an all-time high. Whether it’s the US landmark UFO hearing or ‘alien corpses’ and Mayan elf sightings in Mexico, fringe beliefs are entering the mainstream, going as far as to infiltrate official governent narratives (see: “I wanted to believe but the government said they were real”). But Wagner isn’t here to provide answers: “I view this as a sort of anthropological practice,” he asserts. “I’m collecting these accounts, because I do think that it paints a more clear picture when you zoom out and listen to all of them, and you see the patterns between them for yourself.” Read the interview in full below.

It’s been a year since the first episode of Otherworld! How do you feel about how it’s been going so far? Has anything surprised you?

Jack Wagner: It’s been crazy, because initially, it was meant as a mini-series, but the response was so good that I could tell something was different. I’ve made a bunch of different types of things in my career, all sorts of things. I’ve made rap videos, I made a show, comedy podcast, commercials... Dude, I’ve done so many random things and, instantly, I could tell this was resonating in a different way – in a way that I didn’t expect.

I first came across your work as Versace Tamagotchi – by that time, you‘d already amassed a prolific online presence. What made you move into supernatural territory?

Jack Wagner: It wasn’t a conscious choice. The backstory of this is that my friend had one ghost story that was interesting. That came to mind during Halloween when I was working on my other show [Yeah, But Still]. I thought I would just do a little Halloween special, but then I realised that all of these stories are out there and people aren’t telling them.

What I like about your podcast, and what sets it apart from other paranormal shows out there, is that you play both the believer and the sceptic, both Mulder and Scully. Was this something you actively considered when coming up with the concept for the show?

Jack Wagner: I’m always thrilled to hear what people think of the show and how they respond to it. I think our approach is unique, and for me, what’s unique is that I make this show about people. It’s not about the paranormal. It’s always about a person and what they went through. For that reason, I don’t need people to believe in the paranormal. I don't need it to be real and I don’t care. I think there are a lot of shows that bank on the existence of this stuff. Saying that, people have a very binary way of looking at things – for me, the only foolish way to approach it is to write it off completely. 

“Social media, at least recently, has exposed everything. You see the dark side of celebrities, institutions, you’ve seen the dumb side of people that are supposed to be respectable... You realise how stupid they are” – Jack Wagner

There’s been a heightened interest in the paranormal in recent years – why do you think this is? 

Jack Wagner: I think COVID is obviously a big cause of it. Even before that, maybe 2016 would be the big moment. I’m not necessarily saying Trump, but everything was crazy, it was an objectively wild time period. Culturally, there was an upheaval of our institutions. I guess even the opioid crisis is an interesting example where you start to see the institutions are actually causing the problems and you start to look at the experts and be like, wait, who are these people and do they even know what they’re talking about? Do they have good intentions? People are forced to question these things and forced to question what they actually know. Is there anybody in the pilot seat flying this ship?

Why do you think listeners should take these stories seriously?

Jack Wagner: It’s a giant leap to say I believe in Bigfoot and defend this claim. That’s very difficult to defend but it’s way different hearing it from somebody who’s just a regular person who saw something in the woods that left a big impression on them, and they can’t explain it.

When I started the show, I didn’t really care about any of this stuff until all of a sudden I had an inbox of emails from people that were just like me. I was talking to them and they are telling me things where they’re like, ‘look, I’ve never really talked to anybody about this, but I did have this weird time.’ They would describe to me seeing Bigfoot or seeing a ghost or sometimes very intense, long sagas in their life. I could tell they weren’t lying. In fact, I think they’re embarrassed to talk about it because they know how silly it sounds. For me, I don’t need to necessarily say that I believe in Bigfoot all the way but I could say that I believe that something happened to this guy. I just talked to him and I don’t think he’s lying to me. It’s obviously had an impact on him.

Has your personal attitudes towards the paranormal changed since starting the show?

Jack Wagner: A little bit. I haven’t started to believe more, but the thing I’ve realised is that we don’t have things figured out as much as I really thought we did. In terms of trusting science, one thing I’d like to say is that there are a lot of things in science that are just named and that’s all we have – we have no idea what happens. There are a lot of things that are part of our day-to-day life that just have a name and we have no idea why it happens, or what it is, we don’t know. It’s funny, there are people that really trust in those things without realising it, or they assume somebody has explained it and they’re a completely unexplained phenomenon, they just have given them a boring name.

You come from an internet background as well, what role do you think social media and more broadly internet culture plays in this?  

Jack Wagner: It’s interesting, I don’t think social media is helpful. I think it’s actively harmful to finding answers, because the majority of paranormal things on the internet are fake. That’s the downside of this coming into mainstream popularity, as much as it could help a show like mine. I’m also a person that genuinely hopes that some of these things can be taken seriously and figured out and not written off. 

The main thing that’s happened with this coming into the mainstream is that paranormal TikTok is almost entirely people making fake videos to get attention. Not only are they obviously fake, for the most part, and people just assume everything is fake because of that they assume everybody with a story is doing it for attention, which is at least with my show, is very silly to me. The opposite is that there are people who quickly believe in anything without any critical thinking whatsoever. I think that part is harmful.

You have a big following among young people, why do you think that is?

Jack Wagner: I think Gen Z is very curious and suspicious and they’ve learned that they have to rely on themselves and figure things out for themselves, because I think they recognise that we’re all stupid. Social media, at least recently, has exposed everything. It’s really exposed the side of all sorts of things that you're not supposed to see normally. Celebrities – you see the dark side of certain people. You’ve seen the bad side of institutions, you’ve seen the dumb side of people, people that are supposed to be respectable get on Twitter for some reason, and give their opinions and talk unfiltered. You realise how stupid they are. You realise, oh my God. Everybody’s an idiot. They’re all as dumb as me and my friends, all of them – everybody! There’s not some perfect group of geniuses that have it all figured out. We‘re all really crawling around in the dark, aren’t we? I think that became very clear in the last few years. Once you realise that it’s hard to un-realise it.

What’s next for Otherworld?

Jack Wagner: I have so many interviews already recorded and an inbox that’s full of submissions that it’s hard to keep up with. We have no shortage of stories and I’m just excited to continue telling them. My goal has always been for Otherworld to become much more than a podcast and that’s what I’m most excited about. I want Otherworld to become a home for telling stories like this in the way they deserve and hopefully that can expand into other mediums to tell even bigger, more complicated stories.

Find out more about Otherworld here

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