Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign I'm Ben and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new or returning camper, I am happy to have you. Since you are here with us today, I can only imagine that many of you find yourselves drawn to the paranormal or the unexplained. Whether you're a stout believer or a skeptic, at the very least you find yourself an enjoyer of the stories.
[00:00:34] So tonight we will hear a story sent in by one of our camp counselors, Rowan Liddell. Rowan is many things, an author, a paranormal enthusiast, and a seeker. Their submission recounts their experience living in the oldest city in the US and all the paranormal experiences that came along with it.
[00:00:56] As always, before we begin the show, if you want to check out our camp's monthly bonus episodes, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear a ghost story? You'll also gain early access to episodes and more. Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
[00:01:14] I am what my religious studies professor would call a seeker. Over a decade ago, I was in the exact demographic of those who would most likely end up caught in a cult, which in class we refer to as new religions to remain politically correct. Given how cults are often led by narcissists and combined with my dating history, I probably should have taken my professor more seriously. The reason I start with this tidbit of knowledge is because I ultimately am a seeker. More than anything, I want to believe in the paranormal, in higher powers. The problem is, I've been disappointed by reality and all the gods far too often to approach any new experiences with anything more than an unhealthy amount of skepticism. There was a time when I was afraid of the dark and what was in it. I remember vividly being at a sleepover with some friends when they decided they wanted to summon Bloody Mary. I can never tell you what actually happened that night, though, because I was hiding under my blanket when everybody started screaming. All I could do was join in.
[00:02:23] Nowadays, though, I could be swimming through the waters of Florida and have what appears to be a water moccasin swim right by. My only reaction would be to calmly tell everybody, I think we should get out of the water. I know this because, well, I've done this. I'm still jumpy and can be surprised, but it's typically people who are the culprits behind those incidents. PTSD sure makes life fun, doesn't it? Give me all of the critters, ghosts, and none of it will chill me as much as the real monsters. People I began what I call seeking at a young age. From the time I could speak, I loved to tell stories. I collected ghost stories upon every trip to the beaches in the Carolinas and eventually found my home in St. Augustine.
[00:03:08] Living here is very different from the small town in northeast Virginia I grew up in, and in many respects it's more terrifying. However, the rich history of Old Town keeps me coming back for more time after time.
[00:03:21] There's just something wonderful about walking through streets that remind me so much of the old world. I feel connected to the history, and more importantly, the stories we tell about the old town of St. Augustine are dark.
[00:03:36] I have always wanted to be a sensitive, a medium. Growing up, the thought of having conversations with those people who have passed on intrigued me. This idea that no one is ever truly gone made me feel less alone. But as I grew older, I began to see my sensitivities for what they were, not what I wished they were. My extreme empathy was just the hypervigilance of someone waiting for the other shoe to drop. My prophetic dreams were just my brain attempting to process trauma through pattern recognition. The shadows I thought I saw racing in the corner of my eye were just a perk of undiagnosed autism. To me. It just felt like all of these spiritual gifts my mother had been blessed with, or perhaps cursed, depending on who you asked, had skipped me entirely while she conversed with her deceased grandfather. From time to time, I simply collected stories, stories I wanted so desperately to be true, and continued telling and retelling them to perfection.
[00:04:39] Every now and then, though, something happens and I'm reminded that I am, in fact, a seeker. In art. I have always been plagued by dreams. I say plagued because they are almost always vivid in a storybook sense. The dreams I enjoy the most involve sweeping narratives in a colorful cast, clear tales with a beginning, middle, and end.
[00:05:02] Some of my best novel ideas happen as a result of these dreams, but the dreams that truly haunt me happen most often in snapshots.
[00:05:11] I've been surrounded by animals my entire life, and thus death has always been inevitable. Even within the terrible grips of loss, I have often had my dreams to look forward to being with them again, dreams in which my first cat would return to me and tell me how much he missed me and how the most recent animal lost was received with loving arms. He gave me comfort, telling me that one day I would pass on, too, and I would see them all again. These snapshots were a relief, but also not guaranteed to be anything paranormal. I've always processed grief differently from the rest of my family, and I suppose this was perhaps just my unique way of saying goodbye. And it wasn't always exclusive to animals either. After my maternal grandmother passed, I dreamt of her standing on the porch putting on her earrings, and I asked where she was going. I'm going to dance with Elvis. She shouted back at me. She was a huge Elvis fan. It only made sense that I imagined her afterlife full of dancing with the King of Rock. But I've had other dreams too. Dreams that were not so innocent. This past summer, in the sweltering heat of St. Augustine, we had family traveling down from Virginia to visit us. Mom always looked forward to these visits and always dreaded everyone going home after. Unfortunately, I had to work the majority of their visit. The long days of embroidering followed. My working the horse rescue left me exhausted. The week our family visited, I found myself in the throes of one of those snapshot dreams I sometimes longed for, sometimes dreaded. This was one that I dreaded.
[00:06:56] In the dream, I saw my mother collapse on the ground, screaming in agony, begging my father to help. A wasp had stung her. The stinger was lodged in her flesh and she needed him to get it out. My father is not a man known for his actions during states of emergency. He either flies by the seat of his pants or plans everything out down to the letter. There is no in between. Spontaneity to a pathological level was left to my mother and myself, which is why in the dream I was wound up shoving him aside and drawing the venom from my mother myself as he stood there helpless. When I woke, I made sure I ate breakfast before telling my mother the dream. It was an unspoken rule to never share your dreams before you'd eaten. Otherwise your dream would come true. I told her to be careful when she hung out with our family visiting, and she promised she would be. After all, she's allergic to wasps and bee stings. I fully intended to take a nap that day and enjoy my break from the full time gig. I still needed to feed the horses out in Polacca, but that could wait till after I'd caught some shut eye. I didn't think much of it when my dad's phone started ringing. At least I didn't until he shouted for me to come down the hall. I know, I groaned as I peeled myself out of bed.
[00:08:12] What? No matter how old you get, that's probably how you greet your parents when they ask you something, right? I vaguely remember the conversation going something like, Mother was stung by a wasp. We need to go pick her up. My heart leaping into my throat. What? His patient was shot, but my adrenaline was pumping. Where is she? Do we need to take her to the hospital? She's at an Airbnb with the family. I need you to drive her truck back. He continued to apologize for pulling me from my nap, but that was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was the fact that she's just been stung. He could berate me for driving as fast as I did on the St. Augustine backroads, but I didn't care. My dream, my nightmare, had come true and he fulfilled his role to a T. When we arrived, he had no idea what to do and even laughed at the state of my mom when we got there. He didn't realize how serious this was, having forgotten about her allergies, focusing entirely on how our family had chosen to deal with the situation.
[00:09:14] She'd been in the pool, arms out, head laid back, when a wasp landed on her forehead. Before she could swat it away, it stung her right between the eyes. The hole it left was just that, a hole. Later, a black speck that would emerge to show that the stinger had been lodged in her skin, irritating it to the point of necrosis. And what made my father laugh, you ask? How had my cousins, aunts, uncles chosen to deal with it? By feeding my mother one Benadryl after another and giving her shots of Fireball for the pain. My mother hates Fireball, would never drink it willingly. Still, this left her with her eyes swollen shut, face puffy and red beyond recognition, and so heavy with a lisp and limp. She needed help walking out of the Airbnb. I am so grateful for my uncle for helping her get into my dad's car, because my father could only stand to watch. Again, laughing later, he admitted he didn't realize the gravity of the situation. But at the time, he was coping the only way he knew how. With that sick sense of humor. We got mom home. I took care of the horses, took my dad out for dinner and finally came home to sleep.
[00:10:24] At long last, I was finally able to rest. But then my mother woke up early in the morning, clear headed at last, and asked me what had happened. She turned pale when I explained the situation and she recalled certain details. Her eyes were still puffy from the venom and her forehead would bear a black mark for a week before it began to heal. To this day, she swore my alleged powers of precognition had shown their hand through this event. If this was my power, it wasn't very useful. I could do nothing to prevent that outcome. I was just stuck living in it. I've had other experiences, other dreams that seem to point to this precognition, but I'm not sure what to think of it. I am still a seeker. I still look for the shadows moving in the corners of my eyes or obsess over my latest dream. I'm still empathetic, but the reality is I can always explain away my experiences and as weird coincidences or crazy happenstance, I have no proof in the paranormal, just my personal experiences, though I remain endlessly fascinated by the evidence brought forth by others.
[00:11:37] But this is why I like how we can come together with anecdotes to tell around the campfire. Frankly, it's just as good, if not better. Stories are important.
[00:11:47] Stories are what helps us find that new adventure.
[00:11:52] Hopefully I'll be able to seek out some new stories for you. Until next time, Rowan thank you Rowan for allowing me to share your story. I always appreciate your perspectives on all this, and I am quite glad that I am not the only one who holds stories around the paranormal in almost as high regard as the paranormal itself. And I like how you threw my ending right back at me. If you enjoyed Rowan's story, you can find all of their books and other works through Kindle Unlimited. I'll link it in the episode description and with that I'll leave you here for the night. If you want early access to ad free episodes, a shout out at the end of one, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear Ghost Story? And I am glad to have you all as campers on this journey. So please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you are enjoying the show, please leave a review. I love hearing from you. Until next time.
