Haunted Cosmos - Dread Memory in North Carolina

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

For our first inter season installment of the Dusty Tome, we go to North Carolina. There, we find old memory and immeasurable sorrow pierced through with hope through the story of the wailing woman at the stone bridge.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!Want to keep nefarious fairy Bigfoots away and also avoid icky seed oils, preservatives, artificial colorants, and other nasties in your daily shower routine? Then check out the vast array of homemade soaps from our friends at Indigo Sundries Soap Co.! Go to http://indigosundriessoap.com to learn more—and as our gift to you, use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!This episode is sponsored by New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more!http://newdominiondesignco.com/This episode is also sponsored by Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today.https://stonecropadvisors.com/hauntedcosmosThis episode is also sponsored by the King's Ridge Elderberries! Check them out here and use code HAUNTED for 10% off your first order!https://tkrfarm.com/This episode is sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee! Visit their website here to get your first bag free!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully.https://www.squirrellyjoes.com/hauntedcosmosDesignButter offers mobile, web, and product design for a fixed monthly fee. Check out their services here: https://www.designbutter.com/Finally, this episode is sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order.https://graytoadtallow.com/Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Indigo Sundry's Soap Company, Design Butter, New Dominion Design, Grey Toad Tallow, Squirrely Joe's Coffee, Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, and our monthly supporters. Every week here at Haunted Cosmos, we release a special, story-driven show called The Dusty Tome, just for our monthly supporters over at Supercast. But while we prepare a brand new season of the main show in the Haunted Cosmos Laboratory, we decided to give all of you a peek behind the paywall. So welcome to a special release of the dusty tome.

It was a perfect day in the bleeding heart of autumn. The sun was bright and gold, but was not too harsh or hot. The breeze that blew out of the east was cool and wicking and filled with all the smells of Appalach's best things, and the leaves, all the leaves. The leaves looked like they were burning, like they had suffered some glorious metamorphosis for all the summer, and were now finally showing their true. colors. From where I stood, propped up on my mountain bike with one leg standing in the dirt,

this was what the whole world looked like. Or perhaps I thought more how this is what the world should look like. On days like that, the memory of the horrible heat and humidity of summer grows scant in the mind, like a Steinbeckian amnesia in the Salina Valley. All that seems to have ever been is that perfectly sunny, perfectly cool fall day. The kind with the bluest and most cloudless sky you've ever seen that you can only find in the American Southeast. On that day, but the date escapes me. My dad and I were about halfway through

one of our regular trips up to a lakehouse my stepmother's family owned in the rolling blue mountains of Southern North Carolina. It had already been one of the best trips I could ever remember. Spirits had been high since our arrival. The nightly card games and VHS movies had set a soundtrack of laughter under everything that we did

and the endless opportunity for either adventure in the woods or leisure at the lake, men that you could never really be bored. I was young, and times felt simpler then. I'm sure my dad would like to chime in here and say that they weren't simple times at all, but then again, he probably wouldn't. My dad has never been a killjoy. He'd probably rather nod along to my youthful naivete and smile at just how great being a kid with a good dad must be,

something he never experienced. But even now, I do think those days were simpler for him. everyone. If God gives everything in creation seasons of rest and seasons of sewing and reaping, why would he not also give those seasons to time itself? Is it not a field that he plants his providence in? Looking back, I think those days marked the end of some years where time had been let to fallow. Anyways, with the wind whistling through the ageless and haunted trees of DuPont Forest, my dad and I buckled our helmets, fist-bumped, and clipped into our petals to begin the grueling climb up to the top of our trail. That was a climb that kicked my butt no matter how often I did it.

It was one of those that makes you start panting for breath almost immediately because of a nearly vertical first section that required a ton of focus and balance, as well as some stiff legs, that was followed by an only slightly less steep switchback trail that went on for miles. Roots and rocks peppered the trail all the way to its summit ridge, but these obstacles were nothing compared to the sections of loamy and wind-dark dirt which were soft. Your tire would just sink right into those, and all your momentum would vanish and flash. Sure enough, a third of the way into the climb had me cursing the day I was born. Youths are dramatic, too, and thinking nothing at all of the beautiful woods around me or the perfect weather. All I could think of was Sisyphus,

which is to say I could only think of myself, pushing the stupid rock up the stupid hill every stupid day. Once in a while I'd take an extra big gulp of air and hold it down while I sucked on my water bladder for a few drops of relief, but then I'd nearly spit out the water in order to grab hold of more air. It was all really good fun. In those days, my dad always called me a goat on the mountain bike. I would fly ahead of everyone on the climbs like it was the thing I really enjoyed. I guess I must have been fitter back then, and that accounts for the speed.

But one thing that's true now was also true on those days. I always went carelessly fast on climbs because I had to have to be able to be able to hated them so much and just wanted them to be over. But I was also too stubborn to not just not do them. It really was careless, too. I'd often find myself growing faint and passing in and out of heavy tunnel vision at the end of an uphill. One time I did actually pass out, but I didn't care. All I wanted to do was get to the top of this mountain, play around a bit on the bald's BMX track at the top, have a snack, and then gear up for a white-knuckled descent to the parking lot. Like I said, my dad always called me a goat back then.

But when it came time to hop and skip the bike around the switchbacks and over the jumps on the three-mile single-track downhill, I could only dream of keeping up with him. On this day, I had hopes of finally beating him, but I held those hopes loosely and didn't say anything to him about them. Wouldn't want fatherly pity to slow his bike down to make me feel a little bit better. Now that I'm a father, I know how ridiculous that is. If my son told me he wanted to beat me at something,

you can bet it would make me try even harder at it. A father and a son are strange things in this world, so full of tension and so full of affection. Makes one wonder what it all means. Finally, the claustrophobic trees gave way to an open sky on the trail. As it did, the slope grew milder and milder until it was a rolling flat single-track baking in the endless sun it was exposed to. My heaving breaths settled down into rhythmic drones,

and I could hear the birds chirping everywhere once again. I also suddenly regained my appreciation for my surroundings, thinking how foolish I'd been to think it was too hot only a few minutes ago. You know what they say about alpinists, right? How the best of them have the worst memories? Yeah, that can be said about a lot of things. Mothers, pastors, triathletes, and apparently high school mountain bikers too. After a while, my dad came crawling up the trail after me.

We sat in the shade trees on the fringe of the bald and ate a quick snack. The hard part was over. It was time to just enjoy the ride down. But there I go again. I think enjoy is the wrong word. Trying to race down a single-track mountainside in DuPont State Forest, especially when one of those riders racing is actually fast, isn't exactly something you enjoy.

It's fun, make no mistake, but it's only fun after the fact. When you're in it, it's mostly just terrifying. The good kind of terrifying, though. The kind that makes you focus on the trail ahead of you, the kind that makes everything else fall by the fact. wayside. It shoves your mind into a state of necessary control and presents your very manhood with the question, how courageous will you be? D daunting. We finished our snacks and drank a little

bit more water. I admired the salt stains on my shirt from how much I'd sweat and how quick in this weather it had dried up. Then we strapped back in and rolled toward the little channel of re-entry to the woods. What followed was something of a paradox to me. To be honest, I don't remember much of the descent. It is muddied with memories from other cool rides I did in that area. I remember hitting the jumps faster and more confident than I had before. I remember breaking later and lesser than I had on the switchbacks. I trusted my tires. I looked as far down the trail as I could. I peddled in sections that made me question whether doing that might kill me. But that's it, just vague images. Surely the wind must have felt wonderful as it yanked tears out of my eyes and down my cheeks.

I would bet the farm on the checkered light coming in half-blocked and half-brightened by the bleeding leaves above me made it even harder to pick the right line through root and rock gardens. I'm sure of these things, but the details are fuzzy. What I do remember is getting to the bottom of the trail before my dad. I remember how I could hear him cheering me on not far behind me at the beginning, shouting about a nice jump here and a nice turn there, shouting woo's over and over and over again as he had his own fun and terrifying time pushing his own limit. I just assumed that he had been right behind me the whole time because of this,

but looking quickly back over the ride, I realized that somewhere in the midst of it, his cries had fallen away into the woods. I had gone down one of the wildest downhills we knew about faster than my dad. When he did fly out of the trail, the smile on his face was enormous. I figured it was because he'd had so much fun, and he did. But when he rode over to me, I learned the truth. He held out his hand in a sort of thumbs up, but without the thumb.

and said, if I had a torch, I'd pass it to you. My dad was happy because he was proud of me. He was happy because I was the only guy in the world he wanted nothing else for than to surpass him in all of his greatest qualities. And I had in this small thing of riding a bike quickly downhill. He was happy that his son had beaten him. A piece of my soul stayed in DuPont Forest that day. It became a place that helped make me, and therefore I will never escape it. Isn't it funny how that works?

Place is such an interesting thing. It gives us so much that we take and consume for granted, but it most certainly demands things of us too. It demands our affection, even undying, and an unmistakable peace, dare I say, of our soul. Of course, using language like this can get problematic for our modernist ears, which so often insists that putting something in one place means it absolutely cannot be placed in another place too.

This is folly, and we all know it to be. So before anyone gets nervous and starts thinking that this might actually be some pantheistic nonsense pushing its way into this beloved project we're all doing together, let me present you with an illustration. Imagine an oak tree, strong and beautiful, very, very old. Imagine it's cut down by a logger somewhere where had the logger not been there, nobody would have heard it fall. The branches are lopped off, and the stick of heavy timber has placed.

placed onto a truck with other oak trees that look just like it. The truck drives to the lumber yard and some summer employee fires up the sawmill. A couple of forklifts worked together to haul this beast over to the mill, where its rough saw and into all the little planks it will be displayed by and sold for. Its branches were taken, its bark is gone. It's now just a bunch of much smaller pieces that will be further separated by the different carpenters and weakened warriors who buy it. Of course, one could ask the question as to whether or not it is still the same tree, and if it is, which piece of it is.

But that's not the point. The point for this illustration requires all the pieces to be sold together. So let's just say they are. A custom carpenter comes and buys every single plank that belong to that one tree, no more and no less. He takes all the wood to the job site where he joins and planes the surfaces, before molding some into crowns and gluing some into takes. and dovetailing some into hope chests for the different rooms of this one house.

What has now become of the tree? Well, it's been beaten and cut. It's had many of its pieces torn off and left to rod as deadfall in a forgotten woods somewhere. It has lost its look and is now seen always from the inside out. It is quantitatively less than when it was taken from the forest. But qualitatively, it has become so much more. branches guarded the slender form, the slender form has been revealed as a prize. Where bark was guarding the rich grain patterns, the bark has been brushed off like a rope.

And where dryness caked the character in drab beige, finishing oils have made the wood shine as the centerpiece of many rooms in a lovely home. In God's eternal decree, that tree was designed to be killed, and in dying was designed to give beauty to a home and a family, and losing pieces of itself along the world. the way, it was being prepared for the utmost purpose of its existence, making a home more ornate and more fruitful. Isn't man similar to this? Of course it is different, because, for what I'm discussing, with the concept of place, the losing of pieces of a man is a positive thing, and those pieces never get fully left behind, but stick with us in our soul. And yet I think it works. Sometimes I feel

like a tree whose branches got locked off by racing my dad through the pine forests of North Carolina. my branches are still there, and so I care about that place, but I'm better off here and now because I left them behind. And all the while, I'm still body and soul, the total man of the total me, offered each day as a living sacrifice to God. Now that we've established the truth of leaving real, and yet somehow less than totally real, or perhaps more real, pieces of ourselves and the soil of the places that form us,

we can turn to the vein of today's episode. For what happens when the cutting of branches or the trimming of bark is not hidden behind a jovial veil of love and laughter between father and son? What happens when a place cuts our branches off painfully? What happens when it keeps on cutting? What happens when we join in the violence?

There's a good reason I picked the story I did for the introduction of today's show. DuPont State Forest is one of my favorite places in the world. It lies just outside the limits of a small city called Bervard, the city where my dad lives, which is deep in the dark and shadowy bowels of Appalachia. It is also very close to a city, a strange city in these days often an evil city named Asheville.

In case you didn't know, Asheville suffered some of the worst effects of Hurricane Helene's onslaught. Still, the people there, who are in some measure my people, suffer greatly. So I told the story I did, so we would all have a touch point in that gem of a neighborhood in God's world, but also because, if the stories are to be believed, Asheville has endured much more than earth-churning hurricanes before. It has also, they say, seen the continuous cutting of countless souls over the years. They say that the trees and granite chunks in the woods sometimes cry out in lamentation at all the heartache.

Some say entire places cry out. but most say that one place cries out louder than the others. So please, consider the weighty chunks of you that the places you've been formed by have taken away. And while you do so, enjoy this creepy story of Helen's Bridge. In 1884, a fellow named John Evans Brown returned to the fertile foothills and mountains of Appalachia from the rugged fringe lands of New Zealand.

He was returning back to his homeland, for he had grown up in the... sweatbox and bitter-cold extremes of southwestern North Carolina and fondly thought of it as home in all of his travels and fortune-making. It was not, however, an empty-handed return. No, Brown had done very well for himself during his sojourn with the Kiwis. How this fortune was precisely acquired is not entirely known, does not concern us in this tale. All that is important is that he had it. So sensing his trip home would be a permanent one, Brown picked out a favorable spot on the hillside of one of Appalachia's sleeping giants, namely Bo Catcher

Mountain, and threw money at builders until a mansion sprang up from the wet leaves and black dirt like a flower in spring. It was beautiful, a sort of Tudor-style permeated everything, and the timber frame outline of the white stucco made it look like a beacon of light and hope in a place whose fortunes had hitherto been very back and forth. In 1889, after five years of impatiently waiting for his castle in the clouds to be completed, the final stone was laid, and the home was christened with the name Zeelandia by her owner. Just six years later, John Evans Brown died in his new home, and as part of his settlement, Zeelandia was sold to the highest bidder, a man who turned out to be O.D. Revel. Revel's stay in the mansion was somehow shorter than Brown's

and was, of course, far less eventful. In 1904, Philip S. Henry bought the property, and immediately began a series of renovations and additions that saw the place finally come into its own form of absolute flourishing. If its building was like a flower budding fresh from the ground, its rebuilding by Henry was like a maple sapling becoming a monolith pillar of God after years of weathering countless mountain storms and haunted winters. From his work, Zeelandia, which retained its name the whole time, nearly doubled in size. A museum was added, courtyards were landscapes, and entire wings of the mansion suddenly appeared as if out of thin air, and yet as if they'd always been there in another sense.

But with these renovations, the need arose to access the home from other parts of the property that were originally too far removed from the home to worry about. One part was beyond a gully deep in the woods. The sides of this old creek bed from ages past were too steep for cars or wagons, but the idyllic meadow it served as gateway to was also much too lovely to ignore.

Henry had to be able to easily get there, thus a bridge was built. It was a gorgeous stone bridge, named Xilandia Bridge after the castle it paid obeisance to, that almost seemed to fit right into the landscape it now dominated. The mildly rounded archway beneath it seemed supple in support of its cobblestone path on its top. From far away and maybe squinting a bit, one might mistake the bridge for a large tree that had fallen across the gullible.

his reach. It served its purpose well for Henry, but its usefulness was not limited to him. Public roads from town ended up merging with the bridge, and soon Henry happily looked on as other citizens of the blossoming Asheville walked across his feet of engineering at all parts of the day. The particular beauty of its spot was only enhanced by the glimpse of Zeelandia. One could catch through the trees from it as well. It was built in 1909, and then like today, was a landmark for the people. After only a couple of years, the stalking growth of nature started to reclaim bits of the bridge. This only added to its beauty, and it seeming much older than it really was. You might call it a dignified bridge, if there can be such a thing, moss peppered the exposed stones closest to the dirt

banks of the gully, and thick vines of Privet or some other jungle plant, for of course Appalachia is akin to a rainforest for much of the year, stretched further out until stems from either side, nearly met in the middle. In that middle, again as the city developed, a road was established. It was about 40 feet from the bridge down to the cold pavers. Into this sprawling scene of newfound industry mixing with the hard living of Appalachian nature came a woman named Helen. The tales say that she was in her mid-30s when she traipsed into Asheville with a baby on her hip and a dark history following close behind. She'd come looking for work, which was a good, idea seeing as how work was not in short supply in the region. Of course, the lack of any father for

the child made this difficult and just not the least bit scandalous. But desperate startup times for a society sometimes call for a less keen eye on the business of those looking for shelter from some storm in their past. Thus it was that Helen moved to a small cottage that she rented and began work. Exactly what is lost to time while she was also raising her baby. Days passed and Helen carved a life indeed out of the granite boulders of those dark woods. To her, as to everyone else, Asheville was not so bad. Opportunities existed for even the lowest rungs of economic society, the harsh extremes of the sweaty blue infernoes of summer,

and the bitterly cold silver winters were offset with the most lovely springs and falls she had ever experienced. What's more, her little child had finally grown enough to not require quite as much constant attending to, not a toddler but not an infant anymore really and as she got as near as she had ever been to settling into a place and routine the time came for her toll to be paid to the place she was beginning to call home a dark toll it was long ago twelve spies went to study a land their god had told them to possess when they returned from the perilous journey they complained that theirs was a land which consumed its inhabitants oh how often that is true dark places are old places. And in this world, old places are all too frequently shot through with evil. Asheville is such an old place. One morning, Helen began cooking some strips of bacon on her stove top. Her oven was on at the same time. The smell of sourdough biscuits filled the kitchen with

warmth. After a while, one of the oily rags hanging down from the hook above the stove started to smoke before igniting into a sudden burst of quiet flame. Helen was turned around towards her child attending to him. The rag burned long and slow and hot before suddenly falling into the smoking and popping pan of bacon grease. Still, Helen did not see and did not yet smell the dangerous smoke mixing into the wafting clouds of good smoke. A sudden gust of heat smote her back and Helen turned around to see a stove and oven engulfed in oily flames. The terror she felt then must have been something few can imagine. With a wall of death before, her, encroaching on her, and a baby hiding beneath her apron, she was faced with the choice

to immediately grab the child and run out of the house to face the monumental cost of repair that would come of it all or try and put the fire out. She chose wrong. First, she ran her child into the other room where the air was a bit clearer, then not realizing the particular danger of oil fires. Helen ran back to the kitchen and grabbed the jug of water next to the wash basin. She strained to haul it smoothly over the oven before lifting it onto the tent. and up to the crook of her hip. From there, she poured gallons of water onto the fire and watched in searing and burning pain as it unceremoniously swallowed up the liquid and only grew much larger. She scrambled to try and throw towels onto the flames, but they disintegrated into molten black

rubbish right away. Down to her last wit, she turned around, coughing and squinting her eyes at the thick smoke that now filled the entire house. Through the bumps and bruises that came from confusedly rushing through the small place into the other room containing her child, Helen was horrified to see the smoke in it was just as thick and black as it had been in the kitchen. She could not even see her child, though the room was hardly 10 feet square. She tried to find her way to the child's cries without knocking anything over and onto him. She grew dizzy and started to sway this way and that. Finally, to the tune of her crying heart, she collapsed to the floor completely unconscious from

smoke inhalation. The firefighters arrived and did all they could. They finally did douse the fire and were quick to work through the house, looking for the mother and child. They found both incapacitated and started resuscitation efforts as soon as they were clear of the smoke. After what felt as near to countless minutes as a man can feel, Helen shot her eyes open and coughed out a black phlegm. She was alive and was breathing again. Her child, however, was not. And her child never did wake up.

For weeks, neighbors observed, Helen descended into a spiral of sorrow, depression, and guilt. She had done her best, but it wasn't enough. Now her own son, the only thing left that gave life and light and laughter to her, was gone. She cursed and muttered to God in one moment before wailing to the same God, besieging him for pity the next. She was a woman torn between the deaths she now hoped for and the life she was forced to walk each day. And this went on for weeks until she took a walk in the woods one night. Those Pisgan woods, rolling with shadow and noises unclear to the ear on which night had fallen, can overwhelm.

The tightly interlocked branches of the unfeeling trees seem too close in behind, even as they open up before you, like sand floating in a tide and unaware of its prison. And with a full moon staring down on the mad woman with a drunken silver, Helen espied the bridge not too far ahead. She walked to it slowly and ceremoniously. She uncoiled the hemp rope she had brought with her. She anchored the rope and slipped the loop at the other end around her head, and then Helen jumped. It was not long into the morning before she was found, a ghastly harbinger of death swinging gently beneath the bridge. Helen was taken and buried in the local graveyard, but locals even right away started talking of how she'd never really left the bridge that soon bore her name. Today, as visitors flock to the historic remains of Zeelandia, they drive past and oftentimes walk upon the cursed bridge.

Drivers report trouble with their cars' electronics when they roll under the stone. Walkers shiver as they talk about the cloudy and less than solid woman with the crazed look in her face running here and there along the bridge, screaming about her lost child. Nightstalkers hesitate to confess the existential dread they feel when, having walked along the road to the bridge in the dead of night, they are faced with the woman dangling from the top by a stretch of rope wrapped around her neck. They say the woman is smiling, calling to them in a sort of mechanically dead voice, beckoning them closer with a bony and translucent finger. Stay safe. Mask up. Get the Vax. Don't take unnecessary risks. Be careful. We've been coddled,

smothered in warnings, trained to fear and avoid risk. We've been taught to play at safe and be on our guard. And not just against a scraped knee or a failed endeavor. No, we've been taught to censor our speech, our words, even our thoughts. Don't think those dangerous thoughts, don't notice, don't speak out. If you do, we're coming for you. Who's coming for you? It almost doesn't even matter. Whether it's the HR lady at your company, of either sex, weaponized church courts, the social media censors, or even those you once consider to allies. Watch out. Take Take care. Play it safe. But was it always this way? Have we always lived under this kind of stifling, wet blanketing, panopticon? Is this the spirit of our Christian forefathers? Of the men who founded

our nation in blood and in faith, willing to face down all the might of Britannia and her redcoats? There was a time when Americans didn't shrink from risk, when they would rather die than bend. Our Christian forefathers knew what it was to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. They knew what it was to set sail for the unknown. They defied tyrants. They built, explored, and dared great things. Who settled this land? Who built one of the greatest nations ever to be?

Who settled the West and covered the continent from sea to sea with the Christian people? Who searched out glories, crisscrossed the plains with railroads, and fought off usurpers and invaders on all sides. Risk wasn't a bug, it was a feature. Without it, our fathers knew there was no greatness. And now, we're supposed to trade boldness for bureaucracy. We're supposed to tremble at the unknown instead of mastering it? We're supposed to bow and scrape, not even before bullets, but before HR ladies?

We don't think so. It's time to remember who we are. This year, join us here at New Christenum Press for our annual conference, safety third, recovering the American will to greatness. Four days to forge new friendships, build coalition, and work to recover what was lost. It's time to reclaim the spirit that built this nation to break free from fear, to risk, to build, to lead. The future belongs to the bold.

Well, thank you, Ben, for that horrifying and bone-chillingly and cripplingly depressing story that you forced me to read. I want to say thank you for that and just, yeah, wow. Yeah, you're welcome. You know, we had to kind of, that's why the start of the episode was more of a butter up, feel good. father son. Oh, we're riding our bikes.

It's so good time. And then you're like, well, let me tell you about a story where everyone dies and it never gets better. That is. Thank you. Really genuinely tragic. You know, it's stories like this. And I know like we disagree with the stone tape theory and we can talk about exactly what that is. But it is stories like this that make me be like, I get why people are convinced by this stone tape theory idea.

Yeah. Where really heavy events. in history are kind, they kind of like etched themselves into the stone. Mm-hmm. And then as time goes on, there's echoes of what happens. And it kind of like replays the tragedy. I get why people think that. Because this is just, I mean, it's one of the most horrible stories I've ever heard.

Yeah, it's, it is truly depressing. Post-Millennialists often talk about creating generational wealth. But where do you even begin to turn that vision into reality? Stonecrop wealth advisors is here to guide you. They'll demystify the wealth. building process and equip you with the strategies needed to secure a lasting legacy for future generations. With faith-based portfolios, they help align your investments with your values, moving your hard-earned dollars away from woke companies and into businesses advancing

God's kingdom. As fee-only investment advisors, Stonecrop is unwavering in its fiduciary commitment to act in your best interest. That means no commissions, no hidden agendas, just a dedication to serving you. Get started with StoneCrop Wealth Advisors today by visiting StoneCropadvisors.com slash Haunted Cosmos or by clicking the link in the description below. Investment Advisory Services offered through StoneCrop Wealth Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Hey, Ben. I just read that our great-grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry skin as a moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant? Maybe it's grandma's butter

recipe or maybe it's Grato Tallow. Their Tallow products are 100% organic and naturally contain the good stuff your skin craves. No mystery there. So say Sianara, Sammy, to kitchen experiments and say hello to healthier skin. Gratotto Tallow, trusted by skin, envied by Great Grandma's butter recipe. For more information and to get a sample pack, check out Gratotototot.com. Don't forget to use the code Cosmos 15. That's all caps, Cosmos 1-5 for 15% off your order.

On the other hand, it reminds me of something we said in our ghost episode, I think season three or so, that the demons love to manipulate our emotions. So they show up and they latch on to things and they use things for their own purposes that are true, horrifying, depressing, dark things. and then they decide that they're going to like take advantage of that. Yeah. You know, because it's like we know, again, CR published works. We know that that shimmering, hazy person cloud is not actually her dearly departed, Aunt Beatrice.

Great name. That's not where souls go. Beatrice, great name. They don't linger. Yeah. It's a point in ones for Man to die and then judgment. It's like, that's not what happens. But you could see why it would be convenient for like the superstition.

of men combined with the demonic deceit to try and latch on to something like this, and then like re-victimize the world again from something that already brought sin and devastation and pain. And it shouldn't surprise us that some evil power or dark power would use things like this that have already happened. They're not made up. We know that this actually did take place because the world of spirits is a world of intelligences. Like they, do have an intelligence. They can learn. They can know that things happen in a place.

And if they were all, and, you know, like, I believe that all of the angelic spirits were created at one time. So they all have been around for a really long time. It makes sense that they would learn as they go. They would latch on to new things, take up new motifs that end up being, you know, just the same kind of motifs as they were already harping on, but repackaged to stay up to date with the changing world. And that shouldn't surprise us. Like, these dark entities can learn. They do have intelligence. They are being put under the foot of Christ. And they're being squashed. And they're

being, you know, extinguished from the world. But they're still here. Yeah, they're still, active. Yeah. Still trying to deceive. Hey, Ben, can you pass me the butter? Yeah, sure, man. Do you want the white camel butter or the golden cow butter? No, not that butter. Well, what other butter is? is there? I'm talking about design butter who specialize in digital product design, whether it's a mobile or web app. David at Design Butter can help make sure your product is best on the market. Design Better helps you identify problems your users are having and makes the experience better, which results in more sales, return customers, and a level of trust that makes your brand memorable. Dang, design butter. I can't believe it's not actual butter because it's so dang smooth.

Sounds like they need a head to design butter.com for more information. Brian, do you want to know what I've been drinking more of lately? I actually woke up this morning and thought to myself, I want to know what Ben's drinking more of lately. Coffee, can you believe that? Unbelievable, I thought you were in a tea. No, no, I'm into coffee now. And you know who makes the best coffee in the world? Who is it? Squirley Joe's coffee.

Oh, is that that thoroughly Christian business that doesn't hate you and everything you believe in? Yes, not only that, but they also love their neighbor by donating many of their proceeds to a worthy cause called Operation Underground Railroad. Man, everybody should check out Squirrely Joe's Coffee at Squirrely Joe's Coffee.com. That's right. Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully. Man, Ben, I knew we were handsome, but I didn't know we were that handsome until I saw our recent haunted Cosmos thumbnails. Yeah, your skin looks so velvety smooth. I mean, it's unbelievable. Chris at New Dominion Design Company did an absolutely fantastic job not only on those thumbnails,

but on our recent book cover as well. Yeah, exactly. And if you need some design work from Chris, you should go to new dominion design code.com, get started there and he'll serve you right. Man, he will make you look 50% as handsome as Ben guaranteed. Well, guys, we hope you've enjoyed this just really brief, foray into the dusty tone.

That was just one chapter in the dusty tomb. It's got more than 100 chapters, I think, close to 100 at least. Yeah, I think by the time this comes out. Yeah, right around 100. So if you like the main show that we produce, we're obviously hard at work right now, getting ready for the next season of our main show to come out. But we wanted to give you guys just a window into what are our patrons and supporters over at Supercast enjoying every week. And it's this kind of stuff, you know, 30 to 40 minute stories that are sometimes dark,

sometimes strange, sometimes shimmering with light as well. But they're all good. Mostly dark, though. Mostly dark, if we're being honest. If we're being honest. And they're good. They're really well done. And so we hope that you all enjoy the future episodes that you're going to get over the coming weeks.

And I think it'll be a good selection of really what Brian's talking about, all the different vibes that we have with the dusty tone. Yeah, just a few chapters. Yeah. So hope you guys enjoy that. Thank you for watching. And we'll see you next time. Want more haunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content and regular

dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.