Haunted Cosmos - The Dusty Tome, Chapter 6: Stretching Walls and The Third Realm

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Please enjoy this Haunted Cosmos special preview of our patron-exclusive show: The Dusty Tome.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!During this period between Season 1 and 2 in the month of August, we will be releasing one episode of The Dusty Tome per week until Season 2 begins on September 6th. That's five episodes! We hope you enjoy it; and we do hope you consider becoming a patron to gain access to 20+ episodes of The Dusty Tome, and so much more.We are pleased to share our sponsor for this episode: White Tree Solutions. Business Owners and IT Leaders, this is your trusted partner from strategy to implementation, harnessing the power of data and AI for your success.Visit their website or send them an email, [e-mail] our Patreon today by clicking this link!Support the show

During this liminal time, that seemingly interminable threshold between seasons one and two of Haunted Cosmos, we didn't want to leave you empty-eared. But how do we accomplish this, faithful listener? Well, Brian and I decided that we would do this by inviting you all into the inner circle, the sanctum, the walled garden of haunted cosmos, something that we call the Dusty Tome. The Dusty Tome is our weekly patron exclusive show, full of listener stories, historical oddities, and much more. We've released actually more than 20 of them so far, once a week,

and you can get access to all of them right now by signing on to support our work here at Haunted Cosmos. So each Wednesday, during the month of August in the year of Our Lord, 2023, we'll be releasing an episode of The Dusty Tom to our main feed for your enjoyment. That's right, five glimpses behind the curtain. We hope it helps you get through the endless days

of Haunted Cosmos' first off-season. And if you like what you hear, or if you just want to help us continue to make the show possible, consider chipping in monthly. Patrons get early access to add free main episodes, of course a new dusty tome each week, like I said, and some other fun stuff too, like my own musings on patristic works, deep dives into the stranger stories and holy scriptures, and access to our private chat rooms. Bottom line, our patrons are the best. They're actually the ones who make it possible for us to keep releasing haunted cosmos at all.

So, sign up today at patreon.com slash haunted cosmos or tap the link in the description of this episode. That's about enough rambling for now. Let's get on with the show. We're glad that you're here. And the episode that you'll hear tonight is an example of something that we like to do with relative frequency on the dusty tone. And that is to tell you a story that was submitted by a listener of the show or a patron of the show.

And tonight is probably the creepiest example of that that I've heard to date. And we've heard some pretty creepy ones, but this one is just on a whole another level. I really hope that you enjoy it. And again, remember that just because we're telling these stories doesn't mean that we have any of the answers to what happened. It doesn't mean that we necessarily believe the validity and the truth of every little detail that we're telling. It means that it's a compelling and fascinating story. And we think that more people should hear stories like these. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the story of stretching wall.

and the Third Realm. You remember going on some summer camp retreats as a kid? You know, maybe it's a church thing or a school thing, but you spend the day before packing up your bags only to realize at 9 p.m. that night that you don't have something that's absolutely essential to the pack list. So you have to make that walk of shame to your parents' bedroom and tell them that you need to go with them to Walmart at 9 p.m. that night

to spend $30 on this one thing that they had to pay. asked you about weeks ago. Well, look, maybe that was just me. Maybe I was the only kid that did that. But at any rate, there's nothing quite like getting to go to a summer camp, seeing your friends, breathing in that fresh forest air that somehow always feels exotic and cooling, even though the campground was only like 20 miles away and it was the middle of June. There's just magic and the adventurous vitality of youth. The youth truly see every little change in the routine of their day as the most exciting opportunity of their lives.

Maybe adults can learn something from that. You know, on this summer camp, would you solve a mystery? Would you fight a bear? Would you kill a 10-point buck with your bare hands and a knife? Or maybe you'd dig up some buried treasure and bring closure to an age-old legend about some buckaroo from the Old West who hit his stash while running from the law? or maybe you'd stumble on an old Indian burial ground

and come away with the best dango story anyone could ever tell. Look, I could wax poetic about the nostalgia of summer camp and the high stimulation that it provides to a young boy's mind, but that's not why we're here. We are here because one of our friends, much like the majority of us, once went on one of those summer camp trips with a bunch of church youth group pals.

Only this time, the completely unrealistic impossibilities for what might happen actually weren't totally unrealistic or impossible. Remember what I just said about coming away with the best ghost story ever? Yeah, keep that in mind. Because as far as Camp ghost stories go, this is up there with the best of them. And the craziest part is it really happened. The story is going to be told from the first person point of view of the gentleman who submitted it. With that said, business owners and IT leaders, turning your data into a tool for growing your business can be overwhelming. Unlock the power of your data with White Tree Solutions. White Tree Solutions is your trusted partner for data and

analytics solutions. They're dedicated to serving your organization no matter its scale. Their experienced team of technologists will be by your side helping you build a data strategy, leveraging analytics, streamline data operations, or even navigate the frontier of artificial intelligence to help your business win. Stop letting your data be your biggest headache. White Tree Solutions will transform it into a strategic asset, enabling you to better understand your customers, enhance your products, and make smart, data-driven decisions.

Take the first step towards unleashing your data's potential. Get in touch with White Tree Solutions to start empowering data for your data. your organization by visiting WTSData.com or by emailing info at WTSData.com. Or better yet, just check the links in this episode's description. White Tree Solutions, your trusted partner from strategy to implementation, harnessing the power of data and AI for your success. I've got a story for you. No great climax to it, but it was the surest I ever saw the supernatural. I'll just give you entire story. Forgive me if the message is a bit longer than you bargained for. In youth group growing up, our church would go to a summer camp each year for high schoolers. The first year I went was

between my freshman and sophomore year. The only other people my age who went were my two best friends. And because there were just three of us from our church in the same age, they stuck all three of us in a dorm room together. This was special because every other room at the camp abided by a strict two-to-a-room policy. So as you might expect, we felt pretty special and were quite pleased with this deal. My friends had gotten close with a counselor there who had cultivated a little following among the guys. He was this funny, charismatic, high-energy counselor, you know, perfect for our age group. You know that cool youth pastor type? Even if you didn't have one growing up, you probably knew someone who did. Maybe you were even jealous of him. Anyway, this was the guy. I never got to know him all that well,

but of course I knew who he was and my friends loved him. They were always just really impressed with him. So look, the camp was five days, four nights. And on the third night, so well into the week, this one counselor that my friends liked so much invited a bunch of guys to his room to hang out. My friends were invited, and I was invited because I was associated with them. Well, of course, they really wanted to go,

but I was so exhausted from all the activities of the week and that day in particular, that I said I'd just stay back and go to bed a little early. I wasn't a monster, though. I gave them my blessing to go. Isn't that funny? Why is it the young boys, heck, even old men who admire each other, really want their friends' approval before they do something they care about? Anyway, it was decided.

They'd go, I'd stay, everybody gets what they want. So later that night, maybe two or three in the morning, my friends came back and woke me up. They were really worked up about something. They almost seemed manic. They kept raving about how the counselor guy had shown them something they kept calling the, quote, third realm. They said they'd seen a big fire and strange creatures, like angels and demons and then even stuff they couldn't explain either way. They said the counselor had shown them some special light and then seemed to transform himself before their eyes.

Not some big dramatic transformation. something more subtle, like in uncanniness. He wasn't himself anymore. That's all they knew. It was crazy, but I was tired. To be honest, I don't remember everything that they said. But after the camp, it became their focused obsession. They named it becoming a, quote, spirit warrior or something cheesy like that.

I mean, it's a cheesy name, but the way they believed in it, how it affected them, wasn't cheesy at all. It was actually scary. For one of my two friends, this phase died out after about a year. He'd talk about it if you brought it up, but he wasn't obsessed about it anymore. He had moved on to more normal teenage stuff. As for the other friend, though, he quickly devolved. Ever since we were little kids, this one friend had been the crazy, plucky, funny guy, very attractive and athletic, but we never quite took him seriously, I guess.

Imagine the class clown in your high school, except he was also the star quarterback and all the girls loved him. The kid had it all. The students wanted to be like him. The teachers appreciated his grades and sports. The parents loved how respectful he was to them, and the faculty was impressed at all of his prospects for the future. Even his dad was a high achiever.

He'd previously held an elected office and always had a well-respected high-earning job. He was a pillar in our community. Now, he was also very religious, but not in the sort of admirable, quiet, steady piety like the way of Calvin, more like a fire and brimstone kind of guy, but in a negative way. Just picture someone with intense, almost frightening religious zeal, the kind that puts everyone around them on edge. But anyway, I digress.

This second friend eventually slipped into drugs and self-harm. He couldn't let go of the success. experience with a random counselor at a random summer camp. So me and my other friends started kind of ignoring him. We wrote him off. I mean, he was still our friend. But when the spirit warrior stuff would come up, we'd brush it off like, oh, here he goes again on one of his crazy rants,

and we wanted to change the subject as fast as possible. Honestly, we were kind of bad friends in hindsight. We let him follow the drugs eventually. We didn't even try the hard to stop him. But look, sometime during that first year that we, had returned from that fateful camp before the drugs before anything seemed out of hand he invited me to spend the night we were 15 or 16 years old his parents were home it was going to be a great time but i remember noticing something strange almost immediately when we started to wind down for the night this guy had

four brothers and all of us would watch movies or play games all night when i came over but tonight for some reason they went to their own rooms pretty early and they wouldn't come back out they definitely weren't going to be sleeping in the same room as us. As it got late, we made our little floor pallets and I started to doze off when I heard my friends say, do you want to see something cool? Sure, I said. I didn't know what he had planned, and I just kept my eyes on the ceiling, waiting at first for him to draw my attention to something. But then the room started changing. The walls grew a hundred feet tall and they became smooth, almost like smoothed stone. The posters all melted from the places where they'd been tacked.

The little uneven spots that you can see on a painted wall disappeared. It was like a sheet metal wall now. The room didn't get brighter by any source of light, but somehow the room became clearer, even in the darkness, like it was sharper to the eye. The only fixture I could see anymore was the ceiling fan directly above us, which stayed in place, even as the ceiling itself had raised far, far up until it was covered in shadow. But then slowly, even the ceiling fan changed, too.

It began to blacken and droop, blade by blade, and crumple in on itself, almost like a wilted and dying flower. In my alarm, I had just sat there taking it all in. But now I was creeped out. I opened my mouth to say something, and in a moment, it was all gone. everything returned to normal. Well, as I said, my friend got worse and worse for the next couple of years. He always swore he saw demons. One day we couldn't find him during athletics for football.

Turns out he'd been hiding. He didn't want people to see the bruises. His dad had beaten him up after finding drugs. Then one day, it all just stopped. It was like a light switch. He was done with all of it. He started acting normal again. He wasn't on drugs anymore.

He was spending time with us and explained that his father had performed an exorcism on him, and that had freed him from the demons he'd been tormented by for all these years. He was normal again, and beyond that, he became a sincerely devout Christian. And to this day, he's one of the best, most faithful and godly men that I know. Later in the year after that summer camp weirdness, me and that other first friend ended up reporting that counselor to our youth group leader, who, if I recall, had already caught wind of some of my friend's stories.

That counselor was banned from the camp, and I believe he was even fired from his church. I never quite knew what it was I saw that night with my friend, but I have confirmed that it wasn't a dream. I've spoken with them about it briefly on a couple occasions. Hey, you remember that night I stayed over and the room changed? I'd ask, yeah, he'd say. And that was it. In this world, remember two things.

One, there exists much more than just the stuff that you can see. And two, all of it, the scene and the unseen, is embattled. The world is at war with itself. The forces of light and righteousness and goodness win, but that doesn't mean the darkness is not real and doesn't affect things, really. Just look at our own hearts. We brought sin into this world.

We authored the fall of our race by God's decree, and so now the world at any moment is being torn this way and that by cosmic and divine forces of good and evil. But take heart, dear patron. For as I just indicated, all of this is in accordance with the sovereign decree of God and his providential action in the world. Remember the point of everything? What's man's chief end? It's to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

If God is trustworthy, and he is, then we can rest assured knowing that this battle will result in far more glory to God than an obedient Adam and Eve ever could. And that glory to God will also mean good to those who love him and call upon his name. It seems that a world saved from darkness by Christ is a better world than one that never knew the darkness in the first place. Glorified man, to put it another way, is better than in a nature. man. Take our friend's friend here, a soul that was on the precipice of death and darkness forever, counterclaimed by a loving God who would not have him lost. Who among us would not be encouraged by that?

Do not seek the darkness out. Do not play with the demons or ask them to show themselves to you, thinking it fun and games. That is a losing move, friend, and it puts you on the wrong side of forever. Want more Hunted Cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content, as well as exclusive content, in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.