Haunted Cosmos - The House With Many Faces

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben start to ask more probing questions about what makes a house haunted, why we are so interested in haunted house stories, and whether or not any dangers lie in the interest itself.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 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 Squirrelly Joe's Coffee! Visit their website here to purchase your first bag!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today.This episode is also sponsored by Aaron D. Schneider. Visit his website here and support him!Finally, this episode is sponsored by New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more!Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Indigo Sundry Soap, New Dominion Design Co, Stonecrop Wealth Advisors, author Aaron Schneider, and Squirley Joe's Coffee, and our supporters at patreon.com. Did you know that our top two patrons get early access to all of our main shows, and all of our patrons get our main shows ad-free? Patrons also get access to our exclusive weekly show, The Dusty Tome, only available on patreon.com. So, if you like the show, consider becoming a patron today to get access to all these benefits and more. And now, on with the show. In the 11th century, as Christendom reached its height and the Western world flourished in the radiant brightness and vibrance and color that moderns now flippantly and falsely call the dark ages.

A French count of Anjou, probably Jeffrey III, ordered the ground to be broken on a new project. To him, the lush green hills in the fertile river valley of Western France was just begging. to be studied by a new marvel of architecture and foreboding power. Thus, early construction began on a castle that is today called Chateau de Prisac. When it was finished, it was indeed a grand display of beauty, wealth, and protection for the local people. Today it remains a rich piece of historical French culture, owned by a noble French family, but acts as nothing more than a tourist attraction and novelty hotel for rich visitors. It is the story in between the then and now, however, that is of great interest to us.

For you see, it is not only elite modern nobility who yearn to explore the medieval halls and rooms of this marvel, but it is also a frequent haunt of the ghost hunter. That's right, the rich history of these enriched walls apparently tell of far more than just the drama of middle age in Renaissance politics. It seems they also whisper dark things about dark tidings and dark deeds, whose victim still brushes her ghastly hand along their stone faces in the night. This is the story of the ghost of the Green Lady. In 1446, despite the faithfulness and fruitfulness of his wife and queen, King Charles I of France entered once more into the forbidden realm of sin with his mistress,

Agnes Sorel. Already for quite some time, Sorel had been the first officially recognized royal mistress to a monarch in Christendom, and Charles was eager to take full advantage of this agreement he and his two lovers had. So Agnes was soon pregnant with her second child from the sinful affection of King Charles and had soon given birth to the little girl, Charlotte. Though barred from any official monarchial court position due to her illegitimate parentage, Charlotte still enjoyed the love and praise and joy of her mother and father, and even that of the queen, Charles's actual wife. She was richly favored by all, and so was given the gift of a noble marriage in the person

of Jacques de Prezze, a high-born official of Normandy. Not only would the union secure a rich future for Charlotte, it would also ensure a strengthened political position for Charles VIII in the Tenth's Royal Court of France. However, this was only a false hope for both bride and groom. It is said that the affection between the two was seldom ever more than sour, as if both Charlotte and Jacques merely tolerated each other and begrudgingly accepted the marriage proposal

under the oppressive weight of royal pressure. Despite every possibility of joy and peace, the presés seemed to lack that critical like, that critical likeness towards one another, those commonalities that often proved necessary to lasting nuptial happiness. Once the ceremony had passed and the marriage had officially commenced,

the couple moved into the great castle, now turned royal dwelling, Chateau de Prisac. In its already long history, the castle had suffered damage during some of the religious wars which plagued the area in the previous centuries and, over time and at great personal expense,

had been rebuilt by one of Jacques's kinsmen. Thus, King Charles the Seventh, had been happy to bequeath the Chateau to the Prezze family, once the renovations and reparations had been complete. It was sometime in these early days of beginning her new and melancholy life at Chateau de Prisac that Charlotte de Prezze started to be called La Dame Verte, or the Green Lady. Whether it was an attempted pet name by her husband, or an honorific moniker given to the lady to reflect her mastery over the vibrant green hills that surrounded her dwelling has been lost to history. But the name has, at any rate stuck. And apparently, Charlotte did not despise the name herself, as she soon began wearing

ornate and custom dresses always made to be green. Over the next 15 years, Charlotte would give her husband Jacques the gift of five children, some of whom would go on to have notorious lives themselves, but they do not come into these tales. At last, on the night of May 31st, in the year of our Lord 1477, Jacques arrived home from a day of hunting with his mates. Jacques always loved outdoors and the rugged lifestyle his wealth afforded him. He went on several long hunts every year with some of his closest friends. It is said that he always invited Charlotte along with him, but being the more reclusive and sophisticated of the two, she never obliged his offer. On this night, after a formal and somewhat stiff dinner with his wife, Jacques retired to his own

bedroom and left Charlotte to eventually go to hers whenever she wished. But in spite of his expectations of a normal evening, his days of adventure had not ended yet. for soon after the nobleman fell asleep, he was awoken by one of his huntsmen in a mad rush. The man informed Jacques that he had just heard his wife with another man in her room. Jacques, unwilling to be wronged in this way, despite also perhaps hoping he could find a way out of this lifeless and lifelong union,

ran down to Charlotte's room and burst down the door. There he found her in the midst of an adulterous trist with another one of his own friends, Pierre de la Verne. Perhaps it was the sudden rush of anger at his friend who had betrayed him. Perhaps it was years of pent-up frustration at his wife, who he could never quite understand or find love for. Perhaps it was a mixture of these things in league with the general feeling of entitlement we have when we learn that we've been genuinely wronged by someone else. But whatever the cocktail of justification swirling like a potent elixir in his heart, Jacques snapped.

He rushed at the illicit lovers and brutally strangled the both of them, Pierre first and then Charlotte. He did not slow nor second-guess for a single moment as he watched the life and color dispersed out of his bride's face. Charlotte, the Green Lady of Brissac, was no longer a resident of the Great Chateau. Or as the stories go, was she? Legend says that soon after this gruesome murder, Jacques descended into a sort of madness. He had not been arrested or charged with any crime for his sin of passion, and so he had remained housed in his familiar Chateau de Prisac. Only it was not familiar anymore. He heard the painful and sorrowful moans of a woman that sounded much like his late wife

escaping the halls and dark closets of the seven-story mansion every evening and night. He saw the faint figure of a lady made of moonlight drifting with a long train of ghastly fabric down the corridors. He would rub his eyes and it would be gone. His madness reached its zenith with some particular event that is lost to history, but it was horrifying enough to send Jacques fleeing the castle the very next day. He never returned to that place so haunted by his own sin, regret, and allegedly other things now too. Today, visitors still claim to catch glimpses of the Green Lady as her vengeful spirit searches for her husband in their old homes, various rooms.

They claim to hear her screams, her crying, her moaning, her gasping, and her whispers as if she were some prisoner kept in the walls. Though many have been horrified by the sight of Le dame Verde, many others claim to have grown used to the ghost, who is allegedly friendly, to all those who are friendly. But as to the truth of those stories and claims, who can say a final word? And this leads us to deeper questions. For though these stories tend to be as ethereal as the entities which are said to fill them,

we, that is, people, nonetheless seem to care about them a great deal. Why is this? Why are we so interested in ghost stories? And what dangers, if any, lie in the interest itself? It was the mid-1960s as the parent family reeled with excitement. They happily watched the new source of energy

bounce around the walls of their small home in the suburban town of Cumberland, Rhode Island. Roger, the father of the parent family's five girls and husband to the lovely Carolyn had brought a puppy home with him, an African Bessingi, whose vitality and charm enriched the lives of the girls immediately. To Roger and Carolyn's delight, the home rang

with the joyful chaos and laughter of young ladies playing with their family's new best friend. In the wake of this first surge of play and noise, Carolyn called Little April, Cindy, Christine, Nancy, and Andrea around her in a circle to discuss what name the dog should be given. To them, it seemed that such an exotic breed of puppy deserved an equally unique name. The girls suggested what they may, which was mostly a collection of random words thrown together to make funny sounds that were difficult to say and were unbecoming of a dog, such as the way of a child's slapstick humor. Carolyn lovingly rejected these names, and after a moment's thought suggested her own, Bathsheba. Something about it struck a chord in everyone. The name stuck, and so little Bathsheba was

officially christened a part of the family. In later years, Carolyn would wonder if things would somehow have been different had she picked a different name. For this state of serenity and peace and and playfulness in the thin walls of their modest home would not last for long. Andrea, the oldest parent-daughter, fell head over heels for the chipper Bathsheba, and hardly allowed herself to go anywhere without the dog. Thus it was that, again, being the oldest, Andrea naturally slipped into the role of taking responsibility for the dog being fed and walked enough each day. Before one of these walks, as Andrea asked her mom, whether or not she would be allowed

to go alone with Bathsheba, the four other sisters are not. all came hurrying into the room, begging their mother and sister, for them to tag along as well. Carolyn had no problems with it. Andrea had proven herself to be a dependable girl many times over, and so gave her permission for the whole brood of little parents to take Bathsheba for a walk down the street and back. In the midmost of this walk, as the suburban cars drove at their slower suburban pace down the street while drivers waved out their windows of the familiar neighbor girls walking Bathsheba, a group of high schoolers sped around and passed all of them as they shouted and waved their cheerleading pom-poms out the window. The glittering reflection

of bright blue and red from these tassels proved too much for Beth Sheba's self-control to handle. She broke free of Andrea's grip and sprinted across the street to where the high schoolers had been just a second before. Quickly though, Beth Sheba realized she would not catch the speeding car and so contented herself to sit on the opposite sidewalk from Andrea and stare back at her. Andrea, without a second thought, quickly called her beloved dog back over to her. As Bathsheba began her frantic run of obedience back to her beloved Andrea, the first hammer of the Perrin's doom struck with raucous discord on the first nail in their family's coffin. Bathsheba's leash became lashed tightly around one of the small car's wheels. The puppy was

pulled up into the dark Kavaner's wheel well over and over before the commotion finally stopped. Her body slumped down limp onto the dark asphalt. Bones appeared here and there as blood started to pool and the girls looked on with horror at their poor dog's head that had been caved in. Yet the chest still rose slowly up and down, belabored breathing from a suffering creature, beaten to a pulp by the curse. Soon police arrived on the scene and yelled at the parent girls to run home right away. As they ran to tell their mother the news, as they clung tightly onto the child's hope,

Bathsheba's little breaths nourished in their hearts, they heard the two gunshots ring out from behind them, a merciful end to a dog far beyond saving. The pair and family trouble had only just begun. In 1795, the 19-year-old Abigail Cook married the young and ambitious John Arnold. The pair, eager to really begin the adventure of their life together, quickly moved into a lovely farmhouse that connected to acres upon acres of tillable land. Their love warmed the home along with the hearth until soon it was a bustling heart of activity in production, filled with the stomping sounds of little feet running here and there across the wooden floors. Over the course of

22 years, Abigail and John had 14 children together. Tragically, not all of those small souls remained past infancy and childhood, but some persevered, and in their turn, started to bless their parents with progeny of their own. The days rolled by like a greased millstone polished to shining from its constant motion, and eventually Abigail and John discovered themselves to be quite old. With this discovery, John grew tired and began to fade until he finally passed sometime before his blushing bride. His end does not concern us, though if the stories are to be believed, it concerned Abigail to the point of her own downfall. Some say that the 93-year-old woman eventually gave up the ghost from some incurable disease of her day,

and in many respects this is the more official narrative of her demise. But another story exists, one whose truth would serve to strengthen the weighty air of shadow that came to linger over the home she had been so fruitful in. You see, some say that Abigail, those stricken with a broken heart at the loss of her husband, in an ever-growing desire to depart these corporeal realms in order to meet him once again, men formed a gruesome plan in her heart of hearts. On a cold day, as frost bit even at the deepest roots, normally nourished by the warmth of that sun deep in the earth, Abigail, old as she was, climbed up the rickety ladder which hung from the tall central rafter in her old home's barn.

She reached near the top, before stopping, to slip the fraying and rough cord of the noose around her neck. Without any posthumous appearance of hesitation, she stepped away from the ladder and swung to her death from the macabre trapeze until she hovered like some old pagan goddess over the cold hay that lay many feet beneath her, whose stiffness now resembled that of its mistress that ruled over it. And again, though the historicity of this version of Abigail's death is debated, some say that it being true would help to explain a bit of what started to happen next. After the sorrow and trauma from the death of their beloved dog had started to lessen its endless attack on the parent girls,

The father, Roger, realized that his family needed to get away for a while to enjoy vacation. The stress of work had piled on to the man, and unfortunately the neighborhood he had worked so hard to move into was slowly becoming a more and more wretched place. Neighborhood boys, inspired by some vein of depravity that seemed to feed off of one another's coming together, turned their street into a place in which the parent girls were not allowed to walk down alone anymore. This place, their home, which had once felt so safe, was becoming a prison. All of this meant that everyone in the family was especially excited for a planned vacation. Andrea eagerly helped Carolyn with the preparations, while Roger walked his mother through

how they would need her to care for the house while they were away. After all, Bathsheba had only been one of their pets. They still had four cats to feed. Accordingly, the vacation had been a resounding success, and as the family pulled back into the driveway, spirits were high and hopeful once again. But these feelings came crashing down soon enough. For as Andrea hopped out of the car to go greet her cat on the picnic table, Roger went inside to discover mayhem and loss. Someone had completely ransacked their house. The doors were broken through, food and broken furniture littered the ground. Whatever was left

in the fridge and downstairs freezer had been covered in a bath of motor oil. Jewelry was taken, and the other cats were nowhere to be found. Roger then quenched his surge of anger as he heard the sick cries of his eldest daughter outside. She had found her cat unresponsive to her calls, only to then go over to it and find a bloody mess of broken bones and unrecognizable violence. Now, though the case was never fully dealt with due to lack of evidence, it was clear to all that the same demoniac neighbor boys who had begun their reign of terror on the street before the family's getaway were to blame for this crime.

and after many episodes of attempted scorn and harm done to the parents after this, as well as one violent attempt at revenge by Andrea against her new foe, Roger quickly settled on his decision. They had to move away. Thus, Carolyn, after many months of looking through classifieds trying to find a suitable home, stumbled almost by accident upon a listing for a farmhouse out in Harrisville, Rhode Island, not far from Cumberland. Indeed, it was that same house, foggy and full of history,

that Abigail Arnold had found her end in 1001 years before the Perrin's purchase of the home in 1970. Finally, now we come to it. For the Perrin family's stay in this place would be a thing most interesting to the pages of history. In fact, it would spawn a horror franchise that has partially defined a modern generation of genre fans. This is the story of The Conjuring House. Carolyn had just put Little April down for her nap when she got the sudden urge to go and admire the grounds surrounding this charge. charming home she had found and Roger had bought for them. The other girls were out at school, and so with April asleep,

Carolyn was essentially home completely alone. And before addressing the home's chores for the day, she just wanted just one more time to especially go inspect the amazing barn that sat adjacent to the home. The cold winter had begun to dust the ground with snow, but the path to the barn remained a muddy streak of darkness scarred into the loamy earth. Carolyn trod it as if it had been familiar to her for many years.

She pushed open the old side door and walked to the center of the structure with a sort of childlike wonder. When she had first seen this place, it was so full of tools from the previous owner, a Mr. Kenyon, that she didn't appreciate just how big it was. But now, empty of such a horde of iron and wood, she loved to enjoy its emptiness. It was big, full of possibilities for their family, charming, and most important of all, It was theirs. But all at once, something began to happen. Carolyn's mind stirred at a sound like unto the worrying and wishing of a clothes washer filled with water

and spinning fast. She whirled around, wondered what animal, for so she thought it must be, was making so much noise and breaking the fast from household busyness she had been enjoying. Nothing was there. Yet still the sound continued to grow. Finally, she looked up and as if it had had been only inching closer and waiting for her eyes to meet it, she saw a sharp hand scythe spinning in the air and flying towards her with great force. She had seen it though. For a split second she had seen the thing just hovering there in the air, defying gravity itself. But that didn't matter for now. Now was the time for action lest she be seriously injured or killed, and after an instant of instinct begging her to run or turn or do anything but

stand there, her legs locked and she found herself stuck. immovable. She stood unflinching with something akin to apathy welling up inside of her. Impact would be soon, and yet it seemed as though minutes went by before the scythe reached the poor mother. She studied the tool with interest and reverence, while half of her doubled heart shouted at her to protect herself. Finally, the moment came. Carolyn felt the old and coarse blade slap and slide across her neck and shoulder, before it fell unceremoniously to the floor and silence filled up the barn again. The woman, unsettled by her own conflicting behavior during the ordeal,

reached up to feel what wound had afflicted her. She only found a few of her cold weather layers of wool and leather sliced and scarred. Shockingly, she escaped without a scratch. But this gave her little comfort. And as she stumbled back down the muddy path to the Holmes front porch, only one thing filled her mind, spinning around and around on itself, like the scythe that had done.

tried to steal her life. How did that just happen? There had been no tools anywhere in that place the day before, and she knew Roger didn't own a scythe. He never even used one. What was it? What did it mean? Over the coming years, these questions would be answered in a most unsatisfactory way for the family of seven. The deep and dark blue woods blanketing the hills of Rhode Island, it turns out, how's something hellish? Whatever it may be, this malignant force hated that family and that lonely house. In fact, the parents had they the means to see the future, would have had some idea that what was coming was, in fact, coming. For as Roger spoke with some of the locals in town the day or two before the family officially moved in, one of the men grabbed him by the shoulder

when he tried to turn and walk away, looked Roger right in the eye and said in a whisper, for the sake of your family, leave the lights on at night. It started innocently enough. After the incident with the scythe, which Carolyn neglected to tell anyone for months after it happened, some minor strangeness began to afflict the house. Odd noises in the day and night would plague the parents, but they always brushed it off as the normal settling of the 200-year-old home. Items would fall from the shelves or be moved from place to place without any explanation. But in a family of seven, reasons abound for this sort of thing. Oh, it was probably little Cindy, who just played with this and then forgot to tell us about it. And thus, things began as his

with the happenings of a poltergeist, evil and fearful enough on its own, but small compared to what soon followed. The girls started to realize something. The woman who tucked them tightly into the bed every night and gave them a gentle kiss on the forehead was not their mother. Whoever, whatever it was, smelled like fruit and had rougher skin than their mother Carolyn, who also always smelled like lavender. The sisters agreed though that it was a friendly ghost, probably that of that of an old woman, who was responsible for the good night kiss they came to look forward to. Next, the family noted how strange it was that after leaving a mess on the kitchen floor, after prepping dinner, they would come back to clean after having eaten, only to realize

that something had swept all the crumbs up for them into a neat pile in the corner of the room. All agreed now, even scrupulous Roger, that the home was a haunt of jackals and spirits, but at least so they figured they were helpful ones. But soon the deeper truth was made clear. One morning, little Cindy spoke up in a nervous and faltering voice around the breakfast table about something she had heard the night before. She said that voices spoke to her, voices that sounded angry and mocking. They said that she needed to break into the home's walls.

They said the walls were filled with the dry, bony remains of seven soldiers from long ago, who had received quarter at the house only to later be murdered by the man that had offered them the refuge. A cloud covered the sun outside as she said this. The air became darker in the room as otherwise vibrant colors became tinted with gray. Eventually, Carolyn admitted that she had heard the same thing. Things grew more macabre from there as a smell of rotting flesh and old sun-baked blood started to wake the family up every morning at 5.15 a.m. They would feel sick and they wanted to throw up to begin the day.

But the initial crescendo of all this was, reached when the girls became introduced to an evil spirit that claimed to be the ghost of an angry man who died on the property many years ago. The angry man they soon found was also sadistic. We will forego any details, but remember he was haunting a home filled with five little girls. During a night of thin and interrupted sleep, Carolyn awoke to the pale moonlight blocked in her room by the silhouette of a woman dressed in gray. In a way similar to her episode with the scythe, She didn't panic or scream. In fact, she hardly stirred.

She merely watched and listened as the translucent cloud spoke to her in a clear and aged voice, Leave now, or I will curse you to death and gloom. The family was tortured, at their wits' end, and eager for a way out. Unfortunately, the economy would not let them simply move away. They had put everything into this house, and its value had taken an immediate downturn after they moved in. Roger's work could offer no raise, and he had no other prospects. Perens were stuck in the grip of something far greater and far more evil than they had imagined could exist in the world.

But their troubles still had not run their course. Soon the family was introduced to a maniacal spirit, a restless and overtly evil spirit, who claimed headship over the house and all of its tenants, the ghost of a witch by the name of Bathsheba. Bathsheba poked and prodded at the girls. She yanked them out of their beds at night. She slapped them and pulled their hair. She scorned them, mocked them, derided them, belittled them, but she saved her greatest

torments for Carolyn, their mother. You see, Bathsheba being the mistress of the home meant that she saw Carolyn as competition. Apart from this, Bathsheba was evidently infatuated with Roger and sought to seduce him on multiple occasions, but the man was faithful. This enraged the spirit, and her attacks on Carolyn only amplified. Finally, the rope snapped and the family accepted that they needed help. Through the connections of extended family, the parents welcomed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren into their home. Immediately, Lorraine, who claimed to be clairvoyant, sensed an overwhelming dread and pain and despair of light in the home's darkness.

Though they could not perform an exorcism, seeing as how the parents were not Christians and did not have any interest in becoming Christians, they offered to facilitate a seance in the home's basement, in the hopes of gaining more insight into what these increasingly maliciously. spirits wanted. The family sat in the wicked circle to practice their wicked act, and Lorraine, over the course of minutes, pleaded with Bathsheba to stop terrorizing Carolyn. This was no use. Carolyn, according to Andrea, who had snuck downstairs to watch the evil proceedings take place, was possessed by the ancient witch and began speaking in a strange and dark-sounding

language. The chair she was in began to levitate, and her face contorted and bled and greek. grew to profess vile things. The others stood in a panic but dared not approach the woman, this woman who is now clearly no longer their beloved Carolyn. Then all in a flash of motion and painful noise, Carolyn was launched back from where she sat and slammed into the wall of the home's foundation about 20 feet away. All was quiet again.

The Warrens immediately left, troubled in spirit. The parents followed soon after them. They sold the home and the property at the first opportunity and moved to the warrens. to the humid swamp lands of Georgia, from which Carolyn had originally come, in order to live out the remainder of their days in watchful peace. Lorraine Warren never did quite shake the fear she felt at the events in that home. To her, it remains one of the most gruesome and horrific things she ever experienced. Andrea, for her part, refuses to elaborate much on what she saw her mom go through that day

in the basement. She claims that calling it to mind for all of us would be an evil thing in itself. So we come to it at last and ask ourselves once more, why are the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve so compelled by these stories? What are the consequences of this interest? The dangers. Take this, for example. The parent family suffered one of the most brutal hauntings the world has ever seen.

But what is its legacy? Nothing but a Hollywood blockbuster series glorifying the darkness and a three-volume autobiographical work by the oldest daughter of the family that goes largely unnoticed. Oh, and the haunted house is now a spot for tourists and ghost hunters from all over the world. Perhaps there's something more. Perhaps part of the play being run by these forces of shadow and malice is coercing people into forgetting about the humanity, morality, and reality of the thing,

and instead opting for obsession over the darkness of the thing itself. Perhaps they want us drawn into their stories, told their way. To begin to read these stories all around us, as counter-narratives to the true story, the grand epic of God's war with and triumph over evil. These stories, these happenings, they do genuinely matter, but not for the reasons the ghost hunters obsess over. What reasons are those? And how have we been tricked about them before? We will ask and seek answers to these questions in this episode through the lens of another story, one that is somehow even more striking to us than the story of the parent family.

Prepare yourself for a journey up the squeaking stairs and shaded hallways of the Sally House in Atchison, Kansas. Welcome to Haunted Cosmos. We're glad you're here. Welcome, everyone, to this episode, Season 3, episode something. Five? Episode some number. Ten or less. Sea, Fairy, Bigfoot's Fairy, literally Fairy Witchcraft.

Yep, this is episode five. Of Haunted Cosmos. I feel like you just said the word fairy 10 to 12 times and somehow still concluded that this is episode 5, which I think you're right about. You know, last night I read a caption from the Iliad for my wife. And the word ablaze in it was in it. And then also the word blazed was in it. And it was like 15 lines. And she got so annoyed.

She was like, why did you just say blaze 18 times? That makes her sound really catty and nasty. She was being funny. But I was like, I said it twice. It was just twice. And it was great, by the way. Let's not critique Homer, please. Yeah, let's not. Homer, look, he had enough problems.

He was blind. He's good at his craft, though. Yeah, he is. The White Dark Sea. Wow. Okay. Well, welcome. Let's address the elephant in the room for people that are watching on YouTube.

Yeah, let's go. There is an elephant in the room. So people that are just listening on. It's how much taller I am than best. No, it's, we radically changed our set. We did. Yeah, we did. So that now.

we're both sharing a love seat with one another. Yeah, we are. And that is the technical term for it. I'm not saying that to be funny. But it also describes very well, I think, you know, what's going on on this seat? Yeah. Brian and I love each other.

We do. Like, your love surpasses the love of women. Yeah. It's a real David. It's biblical. And, like, frankly, it's Frodo and Sam. I'm not going to say who's who. But I think we all know who's who.

Frodo. Oh, dude. Now I look like a jerk. That was my whole plan. Dang it. Oh, dude, yes. Let us know what you think about the set. We like it.

It's in process. It's comfy. We've got a tasteful, you know, the convalescent by Ferdinand Polotti the second hanging behind us. That's right. Wonderful, wonderful painting. If you can see, like, the sickly girl who's now healed. She's healed.

And she's being shown the light of day once more. She's coming to the light of day. In many ways, our modern culture represents this convalescent girl who is being shown the light of day after having awoken from a sickened stupor of materialism. Yeah, absolutely. You know, two centuries. And the mother guiding her to the light is haunted cosmos. We are like a mother hen that is pushing her chicklings into the life.

I think it's just chicks. But chicklings sounds really good. That's true. That's a good point. Or it sounds like something that you'd buy at a golden pantry gas station. And it's definitely not chicken. But it's fried. Yes.

And it tastes like chicken. Right. Well, guys, we're glad they're here for this episode with us. This is going to be the beginning of a two-part series on, a specific haunted house story. Yes, that was not mentioned until the very end of the cold open. Yeah, right.

Which I think is fun. It is kind of fun. We're setting this up. And again, if you haven't already listened, you should go back and listen to our episode on ghosts. Season two, episode seven or eight or something. But on ghosts helped us lay the groundwork and the foundational paradigm of thought

that we're approaching this subject with. What is a ghost in general? general, what isn't it? And then coming from that into this episode, we're really trying to build off that for specific cases. Yeah, we're saying basically in that episode, we laid out some of the rules. Basically, where are the biblical boundaries where we run into a wall that says, okay, we know that there's not a category for departed human souls that just sort of linger around and walk around places and that when we die, our soul is either with the Lord or it's in a place of torment waiting for the final judgment.

Yes. And so when we come to stories about ghosts, we're looking at something that is in some way a deception. Right. And so we're asking the question, in many cases, they're not actually real. people make up stories, people lie, but people don't only lie. That's one of the things that we say a lot here. And so in these cases where there's a compelling, at least compelling reasons to believe that something may have happened, even if it's embellished or even if it's been warped through history or some of the details lost, what's going on? Right.

What's actually happening in these stories? Yeah. And I think one of the, one of the principal things that we have talked about before, but it really, props up a big chunk of our thought for the show is that all of history is this exposition, whoa, talk much. All of history is this exposition of the words from God to the serpent in Genesis 3 that there will be enmity between the serpent and man and the seat of the woman will crush his head while the serpent bruises the man's heel. And so the way that that looks often, times. And it's not only this, but it is definitely this, is a battle between two warring stories. Yeah. A lot of history is a story of truth and then a counterfeit truth that's trying to

pull you away from the light and into the darkness, but it's presenting itself as this thing that is more true than what you're hearing. Gnosticism is a good example of this, the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. And we won't get into the details, but it basically says that the narrative that we get in the scriptures in Genesis is close, but not quite, where God, who is the true God, was actually acting wrongly in creating the world. He was a lesser God that created the world in an act of rebellion. And so therefore, the world is bad and everything material is bad. And the serpent that went to Eve in the garden was actually the true God who was trying to save humanity from this evil, tyrannical God who made it. And so you see,

How that doesn't, like the opposite side in that case addresses the story, addresses the real story, and faces it, and faces it, and faces it, and says, that is a true and it's a compelling story, but it's not, it's not the real thing. It's not the total truth. Yeah. You should come over here instead. Yeah, you have these, essentially two ways of approaching stories like this, because they happen. And we believe, again, that their stories. that are sometimes false, but also sometimes they're real events that happened, that were really engineered by malevolent spiritual forces undertaking the aim of deception. And the specific deception that they're undertaking is that kind of story. Right. Where they're saying, look, we're going to weave in some elements, even sometimes of the Christian story. We're going to, you know, flee before the priest.

We're going to, you know, this object that's supposedly holy is going to have some effect here, but not an ultimate effect. Or we're going to, you know, we're going to, they weave in different elements. And when we come to these stories, really, I think there's two ways of approaching them. And we're going to try to outline through this story that I think illustrates a lot of the points we're trying to make here. The Sally House story has all of these elements in them. one way that you can approach stories like this is to be taken in by them, is to look at these stories and take an interest in them, become part of the darkness, essentially be seduced by the black allure of these stories. And in many ways, I think this is the aim that the demonic

and unclean spirits and the spiritual forces that are involved in engineering these stories and pretending to be grandma, pretending to be the, you know, the green lady, pretending to, you know, they're in here and they're pretending to be departed spirits. What are they trying to do?

I think they're kind of like collapsed, you know, dead stars that are collapsing in on themselves and they're trying to draw in as many people as they can. They are trying to suck in all of the light and all of the souls that they can.

And the way that they do this in, and I think this is one of the plays being run in these stories is they, they engineer, these stories that are fascinating to human beings because, partly because we're sinful, but also partly because we are spiritual beings. And we are actually called to participate in this cosmic spiritual war. And so there's a part of us that's not blind to it,

but we take interest in it. But what they're trying to get us to do and get people to do is to get sucked into them, be deceived by them, ultimately, so that they can enslave them. and this is the phenomenon where you get the ghost hunters who go in, and they're like the sons of Sceva going in to try and interact with the demons. Right. They might sometimes use the words of Christianity or, you know, whatever, but let's get an EVP. Let's go talk to the ghost. Maybe this is like putting cart before the horse a little bit. So two things. One, if you look

at the fruit of a lot of those ghost hunting things, then you'll see further deception, deception, deception on deception because the spiritual realm is not necessarily beholden to the commands of men. So just because you say, do something, ghost, doesn't mean that they're bound to do anything, actually. Yeah. Not necessarily, at least. And so these ghost hunting groups will have to oftentimes contrive things that they're selling

you as true, but that are actually just blatant lies. That happens a lot. And so that's just sin being compounded on sin. But then the other thing is that kind of another response that people have when they get swept into these stories, but in a way that's completely ungrounded in the truth, ungrounded in the Christian faith, is men like Michael Weatherly. I mentioned him last episode about magic. Weatherby? Weatherly. Weatherly.

I always want to say Weatherby. Weatherby. But that's like an app, I think. Weatherby is what... Or weatherbug is an app. Weatherby is what Mr. Crouch calls Weasley when he's his assistant in Harry Potter. Okay. Well, either way, Michael Weatherly, not Weatherby, where he's saying things like, yeah, I'm a Catholic.

I participate in the Eucharist, and it's like a form of magic. And it's a magical charm. Okay, so he's been so swept up in all of these type of, he's been so interested in these stories, but in a way that's not grounded in proper interest, which is with an eye towards exposing works of darkness instead of participating in them, that he is now implicating himself in serious sin, which is thinking of the sacrament of Christ's body and blood

in such a twisted way that he's now eating and drinking judgment on himself. As if it's a witchcraft. Right. Every time he participates in the Eucharist, that's very bad. And so even with him, even though it like has guard, of Christianity or at least Roman Catholicism, it's still extremely dangerous and it's a potent deception because he's encouraging other people to do as he's doing. Yeah, most of these, most of these deceptions at the bottom

when you start to look through the phenomenon of hauntings and things like this is that most of them attempt to suck you into some kind of spiritual syncretism, where you will say, oh, yes, of course, because a lie mixed with some truth is often much stronger, you know, see the last battle by C.S. Lewis. Or Brandon Sanderson. Rare when others. Dove is when he says that the best lies are made up of small truth. Yeah, you mix in some of the truth of the story of the Christian faith, narcissism, another great example, or the ape shift

with Puzzle the Donkey in the last battle. You mix in a little bit of truth to your lie and it strengthens the lie. So they don't actually often attempt to wholesale reject every aspect of the Christian faith, the true story. They will often mix in elements of it superstitiously in ways that strengthen it. And that's the other way. I said at the beginning of this rant that there was two ways of approaching these stories. One of them is to play into the hands of the demons who are like black holes trying to suck in souls and destroy human beings and their war against the images. of God. And the other way is Ephesians 511. It's to take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but to instead expose them. And so you're not going in and participating in ghost hunts,

and you're not trying to get EVPs, and you're not trying to be clairvoyant. You're not trying to go through mediums and psychics to access the spiritual world. Instead, what you can do is Christians can walk into these stories and they can walk into them with the bright torch of the true story in their hand and explain. all of the moldering dark corners and throw open the windows and let the disinfecting sunlight come into the room. And what we're doing in that is we're exposing the bait on the hook. We're saying look at the bait or look at the hook that's holding up this bait that's drawing you in. We're saying look at the two-way mirror. Look at the tricks. Look at the deception. No, that's not

grandma. No, often in these stories. No, that's not a true historical justification for what happened. The demons come up with origin stories, like superheroes. And they, and they work. And they work. People latch on to them. People get sucked into them. And instead of seeing through these warped lies, what they do instead and coming to the truth is they get taken in by them. And here's the thing. I'm just thinking about this now. Stepping back and really trying to take a big 30,000 foot view on why, we think this is likely at all? Why do I think it's likely that these haunted houses are, A, something is really going on, and what is going on is demonic deception, even down to the

origin story of, you know, why there's a ghost there in the first place? Yeah. Well, we all agree, well, I should say most haunted cosmonauts agree that this is exactly what's happening with ancient mythologies that aren't Christian. The Greek mythology, I was even looking at Chinese, and Hindu mythology this morning. And all of them have these common through threads, you know, seven sages that come after the flood, a giant god that holds up the sky, or, you know, the sky coming into the earth

and creating humans and all these things. Like, all of these are, I think all of us would agree, genuinely compelling stories. That's why they've lasted for so many millennia in the human mind and the human psyche. And yet we would also say, that's a clear demonic deception. Yeah.

Like, I think that Greek mythology is not something that Hesse had sat down one day and just made up. I think that he got his theogony from something. Yeah. And it was something real, and it was something evil and demonic. And so we see this on a grand scale. And now what I'm saying is what if that same thing is happening on a much smaller scale in these individual cases of hauntings. It would make sense that in a more individualistic culture,

you'd have more individualistic deceptions, but that still propagate out quickly through all these different, you know, nations and families, like with the conjuring house. It was one family. Yeah. It was one individual haunting. And yet now we see that it has deceived an entire... Millions of people.

Millions of people through this film franchise. Yeah, stories are powerful. And the demons know this better than many people. And so they will constantly use... story to deceive. One other example, modernly speaking, that I see taking place all over, referencing back to, I think it was our 10th episode, Season 1 on evangelistic aliens, is that you see that the deception of extraterrestrial beings being kind of the exact narrative you would expect for demons to attempt to leverage to deceive a highly sophisticated, technologically advanced

people who are essentially materialist. How many demons, ghosts, or vampires do you have in your investment portfolio? Well, if you've invested in the S&P 500, it's probably more than you think, since it's full of companies who actively support causes that go against your faith. Stonecrop Wealth Advisors is here to help. Stonecrop offers faith-based portfolios to help you direct your hard-earned investment dollars away from those kinds of companies and towards companies that are having a positive impact on society. They also offer comprehensive financial planning to help,

give you peace of mind about your future that these investment dollars support. Get the demons out of your portfolio and instead invest in God's kingdom while you grow your wealth. Contact Stonecrop Wealth Advisors today by visiting Stonecropadvisors.com slash hauntedcosmos. That's stonecropperadvisors.com slash haunted cosmos or just click 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. A boy finding monsters in shadowy ruins and exile searching the edges of civilization.

A child who could change the fate of nations. Disgraced dwarfish soldiers fighting behind enemy lines. I'm Aaron D. Schneider, military and heroic fantasy author. You can find the stories I've described to so much more at my website, aaron D. Schneider.com. If you're looking for stories that are beauty wrapped in barbed wire, worship amidst war and jagged characters carving their way to the truth. And check out my books at Aaron D. Schneider.com.

Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning? Yeah, hopefully everybody does that. Sure, maybe. But do you ever feel tired when you wake up? Well, yeah, Ben, I used to all the time. But then I started drinking this new drink. It's actually called coffee. And it helps you wake up. No way. There's a drink that does that.

Man, I should give it a shot. You definitely need to try this. And when you do, you should buy your coffee from Squirrely Joe's Coffee. They're a thoroughly Christian company who sends you a great coffee at an affordable price. Plus, they even donate some of their proceeds to Operation Underground Railroad, helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirrely Joe's Coffee, and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want if you go to www. That's www.squarelyjo's.com and click shop coffee. And first-time buyers can sign up to receive 20% off of their first order.

Just go to www.squarelyjo's.com or use the link in the description below. Squirrely Joe's coffee. Share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully. And so they say, oh, we're aliens from outer space. However, now, they're clever, though. because a lot of people are starting to realize kind of the thesis that we went through in that episode that these are actually spiritual. This has been happening since the 70s and earlier

with Jacques Vali and many other UAP investigators. So what you're seeing mainstreamed right now as well is yet another syncretizing twist on the story to now people are realizing there's a spiritual element. Materialism is failing in the modern West. And so what the demons are going to do is they're going to continue the ploy, but now they're going to add in an element of,

they're going to allow the narrative of, oh, this is spiritual. And that's going to be, you know, now we're going to see people on Joe Rogan. We're going to see people in the, very much in the mainstream, who are starting to say, no, there are spiritual elements to this.

Oh, and, you know, it's like many of the ancient mythologies, talked about angels and demons. These are real beings. Christianity, this, Hinduism, that, Buddhism, this. And they'll mix them all together. Yeah.

And they'll add, they'll create their own new modern mythology that weaves together the hyper-technical nature of modern life with the ancient spiritualism. But they'll just say that these ancient spiritualities and religious faiths were, they were the warped version of the story. Yeah. And they'll lump Christian faith right in with all the other ones. And they'll strengthen the lie further by letting a little part of their, their lie out that oh yeah hey all along we were spiritual the we're angels actually right exactly i uh and

what you're left with functionally is actually like a a babylonian view of the pantheon of gods which is um already false on its face but you know says that humans are at best an accident and uh or at worst an accident and at best a a race of slaves that the lower gods get to use because they don't want to be you know spent worshiping all that kind of an experiment. But I was thinking when you were saying that of Graham Hancock, I think it's a great modern example. Graham Hancock is a great example of this. But even more than Graham Hancock is the guy and his last name is really hard to say, so I can't remember it, but his first name's Brian. I'm sorry. Not you. It's not me. But a different Brian with an even harder last name to get right. And he wrote the book,

The Secret Faith or something, the lost faith, lost religion. But he's doing exactly. That. He's going through and he's saying that all of these ancient religions, we actually got it wrong. They were all saying just the exact same thing. And Christianity is lumped into it. They were wrong about this, this, and this. We now are right because we're moderns and we're more enlightened. But everything was just a corruption of this one forgotten ancient truth. And now we have it.

And all you got to do is take DMT. CR published works. Yeah, exactly. But that's a perfect example of it. what we're talking about. Let's do three things, Ben. Okay, let's do three. Let's draw some of this together from the stories we told in the cold open.

Yes. And finish a little bit of the connecting the dots. Yes. And I'd like you to do that. Okay. Okay. That's going to be the second thing we do. Okay.

The third thing we do is then we're going to go into the Sally House story. Love it. And we're going to get to it. And you'll see why this is such a perfect story for what we're talking about. And then the first? The third thing we're going to do, which is going to be the first thing we're going to do. is that I'm going to say thank you to all of our supporters of Patreon. Oh, yeah.

We kind of just stopped right. We just like, we jumped right in. Yeah. Thank you guys. You guys have been awesome supporting the show, supporting our sponsors. We really appreciate it. And just so you know, like this show exists because of people who see value in it. Yeah.

And they want to participate in helping make it happen and chip in a little bit each month. So we thank you guys. And if you're, if you like what we're doing on. Haunted Cosmos, then jump in, become a Patreon supporter. Yep. And the tome can be dusted. The tome, hey, speaking of that phrase, someone who I am really sorry, I can't remember who you are, I'm 95% sure you're a patron, so I'm very grateful for your support.

Someone made me some coasters, and it says the tome has been dusted. It's going to be really hard for everyone to see, but it's great work. Thank you to that man. and I'll try to remember your name in the show description. The Dusty Tome is a weekly patron show. His name is right here. It's literally on the back. Eric Blanchard. Thanks, Eric.

Thanks, Eric. You're the man. It's the dusty tombs, the show Ben does every week. It's like 40 minutes, you know, up to 30, 45 minutes. 30 to 40 minutes usually. Of monologue story or a topic in the vein of what we do in our main shows. It's really well done. And some people actually like it. it just as much.

Yeah. Some people even say, give me the dusty tome. I don't even want Brian around. A lot of people use it for their homeschool curriculum. Mom's. Ben's done multi-part series

on dragons on the Salem Witch Trials and many other. You can get a taste for it in some of the episodes we released between the seasons. That's right. Examples of the dusty tome. Ben puts that out every week

for patrons. And it's, seriously, it's awesome. We got a great community of patrons there. We do. And actually, a good segue into another thing

that I wanted to briefly mention. One of our recent Dusty Tome episodes included me reading one of the chapters of our upcoming book as a little sneak peek for our patrons. So if you're interested in the book that we're writing, which is sort of a taxonomy of the world that God has made and what we're supposed to do about it, then you should become a patron. You can get a sneak peek. See kind of the, at least my tone of the chapters that I wrote in the book. And hopefully, Lord willing, will be able to be selling hard copies of that. book by the end of this year. Yep. That's the goal. Right now, we're still on track. So be on the lookout

for that. Yeah. So that said, Ben, let's tie you together some dots here from our cold open stories. And why don't you take us there? Yes, I would really, wow, I would love to. Yeah. That'd be great. So especially with the parent family, it's a, it's a small example of exactly what we're talking about where there's this origin story that we get in the overarching narrative. that basically serves to fuel all of the craze. This is where the haunting comes from. And that is this character of Bathsheba. So the whole conjuring movie franchise,

even a large part of the book that Andrea Perrin wrote about her family's experience, which, by the way, is really well done, called House of Darkness, House of Light. It's a three-part, it's a three-volume book on it. It's very extensive. But it's really focused around this character of Bathsheba. Who is Bathsheba?

And the answer that you get is that Bathsheba was a witch back in the day who, you know, she killed some of her children and sacrificed her children to the devil. And then the way that she was found out was that she was babysitting one of her neighbor's children. And that child also ended up dead. And so she was accused of witchcraft. And she was, you know, accused of being in cahoots with the demons. and ultimately was not found guilty, but still, you know, was practicing. And so the end comes where she sacrifices herself.

And she sacrifices herself because she wants to haunt the house, which doesn't really make sense to me, if I'm being... So she, like, tries to make herself a ghost. Yes. She wants to linger. She wants to be, you know, an unclean spirit in the world, I guess to avoid hell perhaps. I don't know.

But at that point, I would think that hell would be welcome because you're with your devil friend. But anyway, the point is that that story is really compelling to people. People are interested in that, partly because we're, I think, unhealthfully drawn to dark things,

but also partly because when you hear stories like that, it rings true to you because everyone knows that the world is not just stuff. Yes. Unbeliever, believer. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts, the world is not just stuff. God has put things like eternity

into the hearts of men. We read that in Ecclesiastes. And it's true. But the problem is, fallen man is able to take that knowledge of eternity that's in our hearts and do very bad things with it. And one of those bad things is becoming obsessed with darkness and the dark supernatural stories in the world. And so we hear things about, oh, there was this ancient witch and she'd sacrificed children to the devil and she sacrificed herself so that she can haunt this house. And we think, wow, that must be true. Because I know that there's more to the world than just the things that I can see and touch. And also those ancient people were so silly and they were so evil. And they posed as Christians, but they were horrible. And, and, but here's the thing. None of that is true.

Bathsheba was not a witch. She was real. She was real. But she just wasn't. an evil witch. She was a woman who suffered many cases of having stillborn children. She had four kids, three of them died in infancy, or were still born. She was married to a wealthy man who provided well for her and her child. They had a fine estate. She was only tangentially related to the parent house at all. And so here we have this example of this woman who, because of the deaths of her children, future generations looked on her with some kind of uncertainty where they thought, you know, why was she given so much beauty? Why was she given so much wealth? And all she had was one kid. She must have been doing something bad to get all of those other good things.

The answer is no. She was a Christian woman, by all counts, a Christian woman who suffered the effects of the curse, just like every Christian does and dealt with it as she did. but then that story was twisted to become this Bathsheba myth where she was a witch and she was horrible. And the thing is, is like, that's what stuck with everybody moving forward to where even now, you know, Lorraine Warren is talking about how Bathsheba definitely was the witch. She wasn't just the normal woman.

Her being a normal lady, that's the false narrative. That's the lie. And then it is worth noting, I think, that the parent family's belief in that, you know, story of why their house was afflicted and why it stopped at the house and didn't follow them when they moved to Georgia continued on and continues to this day where they were invited onto the set of the conjuring filming and only the daughters went the parents didn't go and it was said that as they were watching the the scene being filmed this great wind came from the east and knocked them all

down and they all got hurt wow but then at the same time that the They were knocked down by the wind. States away in Georgia, their mom just randomly fell over in her home and broke her hip. Was this like a marketing stunt, do you think? No. Or did this really happen? No, like her mom, their mom broke her hip because she fell. And they said that the wind came in.

And here's the thing. Maybe a director pushed her over. They were like, this is going to, this film's going to do numbers. If we can get the demons knocking people over. And like, here's the thing. maybe there was something more to it than just like a coincidental everyone fell. I fully admit that that's possible.

But also, the family blames it on Bathsheba. They blame it on this switch. Like it still has this tight grip on them and they wonder why they're still being afflicted by these things. Well, it's because they're buying into all these things. Yeah. So anyway, this is an example of how

we've seen this happen in a, like a pop cultural phenomenon. But how else might it happen with stories that people aren't as familiar with. Yeah. But that are becoming maybe more familiar to large groups. Yeah, let me bring us into the backstory of the Sally House. The Sally House is a house in Acheson, Kansas, on the Missouri River,

and it is going to demonstrate a lot of what we're looking at here. So I'm going to take us into this story of the legend of Sally. And please do. Man, thank you. Please do. Here we go. In the late 8th, 1800s on the banks of the Missouri River in Acheson, Kansas, a small suburb of Kansas City, a new single-family home was built. Just down the road from where the famed Amelia Earhart would be born some years later,

the home was commissioned by a family with the name of Finney. Their matriarch, Kate Finney, had purchased the plot of land circa 1870 and watched as the final nail was driven in on the house in 1872. In the walls of this lovely cottage, whose windows opened to the sound of the constantly flowing river, Kate and her husband Michael had three children, James, Charles, and Agnes. As the kids grew a bit older, Michael and Kate decided to also purchase the plot of land just to the north of their home. In this way, the aging couple could give at least one of their children an inheritance of dirt on which they might build their lives with a bit of a head start.

Through James moving away and Agnes marrying into another home, the land was given to Charles Finney, who eventually built a house right next to his parents for him and his wife, Louise. This second house was used both as a primary residence and a medical office for Charles, whose education and practice quickly allowed him to become a prominent physician in the town. One night, while Dr. Finney completed some paperwork, a frantic mother rushed through the front door and into the little waiting room with her daughter, Sally. She did this because her girl had suddenly begun complaining about horrible abdominal pain. Finney quickly diagnosed the girl with appendicitis and wasted no time in prepping for

surgery. He anesthetized Sally and ready to remove the faulty organ. He was sure that the appendix might rupture at any moment, which would pour out greater pain, risk, and surgical complications down upon the whole situation, one that was already grim and panicked. But in his urgency, Finney failed to give the anesthesia enough time to do its work. While little Sally continued crying, he reached his scalpel out for the girl's side and began to cut. You must understand he was worried that any more delay would mean a certain and agonizing death for Sally. Her life, of course, was well worth some extra pain to begin the surgery. But in his focus on the trees, Finney miscalculated the forest.

He failed to understand just how little the anesthesia had taken effect, because it hadn't at all. In fact, little Sally had not even received enough in the first place. The scalpel had only cut millimeters when Sally began shrieking. The pain contorted her face and caused her body to convulse. This wreaked further havoc on the incision Finney was making. He didn't pull back fast enough and accidentally lacerated the poor girl's stomach. The rock and the hard place squeezed hard on the mind of the doctor

while he tried to formulate some plan that would save his patient. Again, he could not just stop the surgery. That would guarantee a ruptured appendix that would almost certainly lead to her death. But how could he continue under such conditions? How could he knowingly endanger Sally like this? How could he endure her being awake and fully lucid to the pain he was bound to inflict? Waiting was not on the table, no, this was a moment for action. Dr. Finney set his jaw and continued, despite the fitful jerks and deafening screams from Sally

that left her body bruised in her throat hoarse. The mother, with tears in her eyes, heard all of this from just outside the door to the small operating room. Imagine what must have been going through her head. Imagine being cut off from your tortured child by nothing more than a threshold. a threshold that may as well be a canyon. Despite extra hands that tried to help the doctor by holding the girl as still as possible, the surgery was far too rough.

Despite Dr. Finney's best efforts, little Sally bled out and died on the table. As the soul was sundered from the body and flew away to be, God knows where, a weighty cloud of darkness and tragedy hung on the hearts and minds of everyone present. It bent their backs, no doubt. Some say that the cloud has never left the little house.

Some go further and say that something else, something more real and more sinister, took its place and made its residence in the house, posing as the restless and vengeful spirit of poor Sally. In November of 1992, the young couple, Tony and Deborah Pickman, were finally married before a small handful of family and friends

at the local courthouse. What was meant to be a February wedding the next year was rushed and foregone for the sake of a November date due to Deborah finding out to her unease and Tony's exuberance that she was meant, was pregnant with their first child. Later, the couple would laugh about how difficult and tight things were then. They had to borrow Tony's dad's car to drive to the hotel they were staying out on their wedding night because both his and Debra's were stuck in the shop. Old beaters not worth their

weight in dirt. But even on the day, despite its imperfections, the couple was overjoyed. Over the previous months, they had grown so close to one another and were deeply in love. They had almost forgotten what life had been like without the other in it, even though the vast supermajority of each of their lives to that point had been spent without any knowledge of the other's existence. Funny how that works. Interestingly enough, one of the central talking points that had first brought the lovers together was that of the supernatural.

Tony came from a deeply religious family, but though he admitted to seeing a ghost when he was a boy, he actually didn't think the ideas of high strangeness and ghastly hauntings were all that credible. Deborah, on the other hand, had always harbored a deep love of the paranormal in her heart, and from the time she was a little girl had yearned for some spiritual and haunting experience of her own. She should have been more careful with what she wished for. The young family, now cramped like sardines and the small rental they had already been living in,

began to diligently search for someplace more well-suited to their long-term family plans. They needed a big yard for children, a bigger kitchen for family meals and bedrooms big enough for bunk beds if Lord willing the need ever arose. Eventually they found what they were looking for in a quaint and very old home, sandwiched between two newer builds about two blocks away from the mighty Missouri River. Deborah, always the sleuth, checked some records and discovered that it was the oldest house on the block by far, that it was owned many ages ago by a man named Finney. The pickmans all but begged the landlord, a police officer, to let them be his tenants there.

Inside was a spacious lower level, with three bedrooms upstairs. The interior rang with a golden glow from the fresh peach paint coating the walls that invited love and domestic peace to fill them. The old floors promised an endless soundtrack of charming stories in the form of creeks and squeaks. Deborah could hardly wait to learn where all of the dead spots of the floor were, so that she could softly hop from one to the other in hopes of not waking their sleeping baby. Before they ever moved in on New Year's Eve in 1992, Tony and Deborah Pickman had fallen head over heels for their hearth.

If only they had known then that something had already moved in. All right, so that's the backstory that will ultimately develop into the legend of the Sally House. This idea that this little girl, Sally. Sally, died under horrific circumstances. Yep. Like in this completely tragic and terrible way, you can imagine how much negative emotional energy that that would produce. And so this idea, then, if you go back to our ghost episode, we talk about a lot of these different theories, the stone tape theory where human psychic energy is trapped in a place.

Which, by the way. It's bringing up every time. You do. A, you do bring it up every time. B, I finally figured out like what that meant. What? Recently. I've been talking about it for years.

I was always too afraid to ask. Turns out it's like akin to how records are made, right? It's like a vinyl record. Yeah, yeah. I was like, oh. I've even explained this. Roll the tape back. You know that I was playing chess while you were explaining.

What a guy. What a guy. Okay, sorry. So we've got, you know, people could latch on to that idea. There's this negative energy that's just replaying itself or seeping back out of the house under certain conditions. Then there's this idea that maybe Sally is a human spirit, the girl Sally's spirit, that was trapped there and then became warped and malevolent. But it's a little girl, so there's immaturity and poltergeisty kind of activity.

And almost like playfulness. Yeah, sometimes playfulness. Some kind of playfulness. But then the darkness of her death will come out in negative, malevolous spiritual activity. And then also we have this third kind of idea that we'll see develop around the Sally House and some of the phenomena that takes place. Yes. is that maybe there's even some dark, non-human, malevolent spiritual being that was already in this

area or in this house even when this took place and that the thing this dark spirit does is trap the souls of people or of other spiritual powers and manipulates them and tortures them. So we're going to see some of these develop through the Pickman's residence there. And what we want to point out here before we continue there is, just, again, the way that these hauntings often work is that there will be some sort of backstory like this that is used as justification, along with these ideas of human souls lingering. And so, Ben, talk to us a little about the history, because this doesn't even seem to be. Yeah, so here's the thing. We have no reason to believe that that story with Sally and the

appendicit actually happened. Yeah, right. Now, the guy that owned the house at the time, Charles Finney, C.C. Finney was his initials. He was a doctor. He was a practicing doctor in Acheson. We know that. But there's no records of a girl named Sally coming in and she had appendicitis and it went horribly wrong. And she died on the table and it was this tragedy. Like, maybe. Maybe we don't have a Sally. But we don't know for sure. And so the point that I'm trying to make is that whether or not that story is true, for the purposes of this show, doesn't matter. Doesn't. The point is, the story is powerful, and it's compelling. Even if it's false, it still is compelling people. And it's been compelling people now for generations. Yeah.

I mean, really since, even sometime before the Pickmans, there was, you know, some talk of strange things happening at the house that we'll get into. But especially since the Pickmans in the 1990s, this story of Sally has just completely gripped the imaginations of people. And so it doesn't quite matter if it's false or true. The point is it's powerful. And what is the story saying? Well, the story is saying that somehow, because of some subjective level of disaster or pain or sorrow, a soul was trapped.

Or in the stone tape theory that enough negative emotion welled up. Yeah, psychic energy. Yeah, enough powerful psychic energy weld up so that every time it's bumped, the darkness spills over. and it creates this atmosphere of dread in the place. I would like to say one thing right out the gate. Yeah. In regards to the second option of like somehow the human spirit just lingered there on its own. Yeah, Sally's ghost is just a spirit.

Yeah. It's her spirit, her soul. So we know that that's nonsense biblically. It just is. But even if we were asking like, well, how is it impossible? or what makes it so nonsensical. I would say that every single person in the world, you know, if, frankly, no matter how long they live,

everyone suffers, hardship, sorrow, disappointment, dread, all of these bad things. Because man has made that necessary. Man at the curse made it necessary that he would be sad, that he would be sorrow. Even redeemed man still suffers sorrow. You know, we even see like, in child, birth, even when childbirth goes perfectly, even when raising children goes as well as it can go.

You still have bitter sweetness. You still have sorrow from the mother. It's still painful. It's all these things. Man's made that necessary because we sinned. And so when you start to get into asking questions like how much suffering is enough for a human soul to linger in a place, or how much suffering is enough to compare the suffering of one to another, you're just kind of missing the point because every place in the world has seen the suffering of a person. Everywhere that man has stood on the world, that place in the world has seen man suffering, whether it was, you know, because he's a horrible person or just by nature of the world being cursed is a part, that's beside the point. And so I don't really like this idea that you can

magically reach a limit, like a critical mass of suffering in a certain location, that now that location is open to trapping souls of like the last person to suffer there. Yeah, it's just a nonsensical idea. And you can see how it would be a perfect vehicle for the demonic to mask their activity in conveniently because they hate the image of God. They love to assault image bearers and to cause them mischief in trouble and trial and also to deceive them and to draw them away from the living God. And so if you can develop a theory where you can have an afterlife that is separate from what the Christian scriptures teach, and if you can have a whole other, essentially it's an eschatology.

Eschatology deals with the doctrine of last things for the whole world, but also for individuals. That's a part of eschatology is what happens to a person when they die, et cetera. So there's a Christian eschatology, but now we have this competing demonic eschatology that's. saying, oh, you could also, you know, be real superstitious and be real careful because your soul might get trapped or maybe it's actually a good thing. Maybe there's like, we need to get some mediums and spiritualists and, you know, help free these souls. Yeah, that are too. So let's, hey, let's come and because they need to get to the good place where all souls are meant to go. And you see how this competing eschatology could easily trap somebody into a false

religion into a false idea of reality. So that's the origin of this story. Yeah. Should we keep going? Yeah, if I keep commenting, I'll get ahead of myself. Yeah, let's keep going. I think we should keep going. I will start telling us some stories of what happened, you know,

really once the Pickmans settled in. It started simply enough, as most of these stories do, with the hints of things being a bit off. In every home, it seems, things happen here and there that could be weird if they were thought about long enough. and on their own, these things that happened to the Pickmans would probably be chalked up to just that. But the Sally House was different. When enough of these small and inexplicable disturbances pile on to one another,

the idea of them all being a coincidence slowly loses its tenability. The couple noticed that each night, and only ever at night, as they cuddled on the couch to watch some TV after their long workdays, the warm overhead light above the fireplace would gradually dim, until it hardly shed any light on the room at all. There was no dimmer switch. The bulb was changed and found to be fine. The circuit breaker was replaced to make sure it wasn't causing it,

but none of this made it any difference. Every night, Tony and Deborah would start their evening with the light on and shining bright, but by the time they were ready for bed, it would be down to the lowest dimming one could imagine while still noticing that the light was on. Tony jokingly remarked that it was the house's ghost, and after that it stopped.

On one Saturday, Tony walked upstairs and into the nursery. He wanted to find some inspiration for what color to paint the room and what theme their little baby's own place should have. So he just paced around in circles for a bit and stared at the walls, thinking. Eventually he was content with his brainstorming and left the room to begin traipsing back down the stairs, but something gave him pause. His dog, normally mild-mannered and quiet, stood at the threshold to the nursery and wouldn't move.

She began to growl with a menacing face. She began to bark. She wouldn't stop barking and growling and staring at the empty room, darkened by the window shades pulled down. Tony tried to pet and comfort her. Nothing. He tried to walk back into the room to show her all was well. Nothing.

As the minutes ticked by, Tony became unsettled. But eventually, as if none of it had happened, she abruptly stopped, walked up to Tony with a wagging tail and tongue hanging out, and then ran downstairs to play. The little dog, Sasha, did this same routine over and over again for weeks any time she passed the room. The whole time she refused outright to go inside, but eventually it wore off, and Sasha didn't seem to have a problem with the space anymore. Whatever had bothered her was gone, apparently.

Though enjoying the larger and more beautiful house than the previous rental, the pickmans were still a young couple. Money was tight. When they moved in, the place didn't have any central air conditioning, nor did the landlord have any plans to add it anytime soon. They could only afford one little condenser at the time and placed it in the front window of the master bedroom. This meant that through the rest of the house, the summers were quite warm, if not downright hot, or at least that's what they expected. But many occasions passed wherein Debra walked through shockingly cold spots of the house at random times and all in different places. She felt especially cold at the top of the stairs.

A place guests confirmed was usually one of the warmer spots to them. Deborah was different. She would get near the top of the stairs and feel a sudden draft of freezing air rushing up the stairs behind her. All of this on its own would have registered little in the memories of the couple, were it not for what took place on one fateful night in the middle of May that same year. As Deborah's pregnancy reached its end, and as the stifling heat and humidity really started to flex its strength on the state, their room's air conditioning unit broke, and they were left to endure the late spring and early summer heavy heat without any help.

Upstairs was not an option, far too hot. Instead, the pickmans started to sleep on the couch downstairs, with every window and door in the house wide open. What a time to be alive that you could leave your doors wide open like that. On one of those nights, Deborah was woken by the piercing sound of tortured and blood-curling streams, echoing around the rooms of their home's upper floor. When the screams suddenly stopped, she heard three loud thumping sounds coming down the stairs as if someone had fallen. In her dazed and half-awakened state of mind, she was certain that someone had broken in

and was going to harm them after they had clearly just harmed someone else. She inhaled to scream, but just before she started to let it out, some of her own. Something blunt and heavy smacked her heart across her face and knocked her back down onto the couch. Crying took hold, and the screams escaped in between painful sobs. Tony woke from this and began screaming himself. They screamed at each other in a fury of panic, but were finally calming down after realizing that nothing was happening anymore. As they regained composure and took deep breaths,

they were unsettled at the sight of their cats, hissing and yowling loudly, while they sprinted here and there across the floor with a little. raised backs and puffy tails. They had clearly not yet found a compelling reason to calm down. Deborah suddenly thought, wait, was the scream I heard just the cats yelling? Were the thumps one of them falling down the stairs? Was the impact to my face one of them jumping aimlessly in the dark? Maybe so. But the next question quickly became clear in her mind, as if it was some monolith revealed by a strong desert wind. What is making them act this way? They've never done this before. With this in mind, she walked upstairs timidly, wondering if the same thing that had bothered Sasha

had now turned its attention to the cats. She found nothing but emptiness in every room. Emptiness and chill, it was freezing upstairs, too cold for comfort, while the downstairs felt warm like an oven. A little over one month later, the Pickman's son, Taylor Jacob, was born to them on June 26, 1993. With the introduction of young Taylor, the events plaguing the home started to take on a more obviously sinister flavor. One day, during a week where Deborah's sister, Karen, was visiting the family and helping with the newborn, the group arrived back home after a day spent at Tony's parents' house. Taylor had fallen asleep in the car, so they just brought him into the house in his car seat so that he wouldn't get woken up unnecessarily. Once everything from the car was unpacked and Taylor was still sleeping soundly beside the

couch in the living room, Tony went upstairs to use the bathroom. After a couple of minutes, he came back down with an odd expression on his face. He shuffled over to Deborah and whispered to her, asking her why she had done that to the stuffed animals in Taylor's room. Deborah, now equally confused, said she didn't know what he meant. She had just set them up on the bed that morning, a group of stuffed elephants and bears and monkeys and dogs all smiling and sitting up on the bed looking at the opposite wall. Tony told her and Karen to follow him upstairs. As the baby's door gently swung open from Tony's push,

the light from the upstairs hallway revealed something deeply unsettling in the middle of the room. There on the floor in front of the bed lay all the stuffed animals, set up to be seated and organized into a perfect circle with their backs toward the center. In the middle of them, a teddy bear lay on its back gazing up at the ceiling. Tony turned the lights on to see more clearly what this was. The eerieness troubled them all. It felt strangely cold in the room. The stillness of the air, both outside and in,

meant that the silence which passed between Tony, Deborah, and Karen spoke volumes and only added to the stress. Soon they all realized the truth. None of them had any explanation for it. Either someone had broken into their house while they were at Tony's parents and did this as some sort of weird joke, or, well, something else had happened. Some nonsense theories about the wind knocking the animals into a perfect circle

were offered up in a desperate attempt to avoid thinking of the only real possibilities. But without much left to say, Tony turned off the light, and they all walked slowly downstairs through a cold and sudden draft coming up against them. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs and were standing in the living room, Karen turned and looked back up. In a rushed but otherwise emotionless tone, she said, the light is back on. Tony, didn't you turn it off? Tony just tilted his head and let out a nervous sigh. I did. Now terrified, all three of them went once more up the stairs. They expected to catch some

intruder in their home, hiding away in their baby's nursery waiting to jump out and attack them. After a timid and methodical sweep of the entire upstairs, though, nothing was found. All of them picked up the stuffed animals and put them back on the bed, something they had neglected to do before. And as Tony put the central teddy bear back onto the small wicker chair it normally sat on in the room's corner, Deborah turned off the light once more and they went to the living room again. The next half hour was spent in awkward rambling and even more awkward silence. Nobody wanted to address what they were witnessing, but nobody could really think about anything else. Their hearts raced with questions and an ever-growing sense of dread.

Finally, after fighting the urge for some time, Deborah spoke up and said she had to use the the bathroom. Tony and Karen promised to stay at the bottom of the stairs to watch her and make sure she was okay. They were done pretending not to be spooked at everything. But as Deborah reached the top of the stairs and succumbed to the overpowering urge to glance into the nursery and make sure everything was still as they had left it, the hearts of all three sank into a deep pit in their stomachs. And they heard Deborah utter the very words they were praying not to hear. In a loud and shaky whisper, and without turning to look at them, she said, the bear is on the floor again.

Eventually, the events of that dreadful night did conclude. Deborah drove Karen to the airport the next day as Tony drove to work. On his way to work, though, Tony had called his mom to tell her about the previous night's fear and strangeness. Apparently, Tony's mom was a curious woman, and much like her daughter-in-law, she was always up for a bit of investigation. She remembered that she had the number of the mother to the home's previous tenants. She called and explained some of the weirdness of what her son was experiencing. This old friend then assured Tony's mom that she would call her daughter right away to ask if anything akin to these events had ever happened to them.

Hours went by, and Tony's mom's phone rang. She picked up to hear that same old woman, her old friend on the other line. She'd made good on her promise and began to relay what her daughter told her. The previous tenant, at the time of their residence, also a very young married couple like Tony and Deborah, said that she always was oppressed by a horrible smell at odd times and places in the house. Sometimes it lingered in the kitchen and sometimes the bathroom, places one might expect to find the odd smell every now and then. Sometimes it filled the bedrooms, or just one of the bedrooms at a time. She never did figure out

what it was. The woman said that her son had slept in the corner bedroom upstairs, the same room that now served as the Pickman's nursery. She would always be picking up his toys and scolding her son for leaving them strewn about all the time, and he would always reply, but mommy, I didn't play with those toys. And she always chalked that up to the fibs befitting a child. Her daughter, a bit older than the boy, had slept in the room with the walk-in closet. During their time living there, the daughter grew fond of going into the closet and closing the door to play with her toys. She did it almost every day for many hours.

She grew attached to the closet and was always sad to leave. She said that her friend lived in there, her best playmate, a little girl named Sally. Do Sally's back. Are you kidding me right now? Can I just say? Yeah. Imaginary friends in general are creepy. Can we just do a whole episode?

It's just imaginary friends. There's no point other than this is creepy. And like if your kid says, hey, I have an imaginary friend, what you need to say, parent, is like, I love you. Stop playing with them. No, you don't. I don't like the idea. Even if it's like a genuinely imaginary thing, it's still creepy. My little buddy Ari when he was firstborn.

So he was, you know, alone without siblings for a period of time. And then his siblings, like, were very young as well. So he had some, he had, he had this great couple of imaginary friends. Oh, man. One of them's name was Elevato. Elevato was like, Elevator. Is this just an elevator? Not, and I asked to that.

I said, is he named after like elevator? I think he just heard the word elevator and he thought it was a cool word. So he named. It is kind of a cool, like, fantasy elevator. The best one, though, I can't remember the name. It was like, but we had a neighbor. And his name was like Kyle or something. Brian, I got bad news.

The other day, I was using one of the big box soap products to wash myself. And I got this weird urge to go buy a. Stanley Cup and fill it with iced coffee. And it started to feel a little cold in the house. I just wanted to wrap myself up in like a heavy wool blanket. And then also, I started Googling ticket prices to Taylor Swift concerts. Ben, what are you doing? Don't you know that these big box soap companies just jam all their soaps full of hormone disrupting chemicals? They're probably turning you into a girl. Well, I know that now, but what am I supposed to do about it? Ben, you ignorant normie. All you've needed to do is go to indigo sundry soap.com and support a great Christian family business that's making all

sorts of soaps that are completely free of hormone disrupting chemicals and other nasties. Okay, I am literally going to indigosundry soap.com right now. Tell me what to buy. Ben, what I would recommend doing is clicking on bundles and then selecting the best one for you. You could get the men six pack. You could get my favorite, the clay bundle. Ooh, I like the pipe and jug bundle. That seems cool. Or a men six pack, because that'll make me feel like I have something. that I actually don't. So true, King. And you know what else I heard?

Because they're such good friends of the show, Indigo Sundry Soap Company is offering 10% off your order if you just use all caps, discount code Haunted Cosmos, no spaces. Wait, Brian, you're going way too fast. I didn't get all that. Is that information in the show description? Ben, you ignorant normie. It's always in the show description.

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And reach out to Jenkins for all your graphic needs. And as always, that link will be in the description. And Kyle was like a firefighter and a really cool guy. Like strong, you know, a lot like me. A lot. I was going to say, sounds like a lot. And my little boy loved him. Like he would, he was, thought he was the coolest.

It was actually kind of like for me. A bit hard of like, oh, that sucks. Yeah. Oh, he's a firefighter. Yeah. I put out fires and save people's lives. Well, I'm like, I preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I put out the fires of hell in people's hearts.

To like a three to 40 year old though that. So he, he had this imaginary friend that was literally just our neighbor, the same name and everything. And he would, but he'd be like, yuck. Me and Kyle, like, were. like he flies helicopters and you're like this could get dangerous

he can like he can like shoot any gun in the world and like it wasn't creepy so much as it just hurt my feelings my son this way more impressive imaginary friend than you dad my son

yeah it's just dad I wish I had it just hurt my son has never had imaginary friends yet but what he does he does like the imagination is so crazy

he just personifies all of his construction site trucks that he has. Yeah. So, like, he talks about how, oh, mixer truck is a little tired today. Mixer truck didn't have a good enough dinner last night. And I'm like, are you just talking about yourself? Is mixer truck you? Oh, it was Justin. Justin was the name.

My parents, even, like his grandparents are still going. They laugh about Justin all the time. But, dude, I get it. They're like, hey, did Justin do anything? I bet Justin wouldn't have dropped that catch. You know, that assassination or something. But anyway, in terms of Sally House. In terms of Sally House, you know, what we have here is a classic case of your dog being able to figure out that you're suspended before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But genuinely, I did find this interesting. So the whole episode with Sasha barking into the nursery, that's creepy as it is. First of all, I've seen videos of dogs doing that. And I think every single time, places haunted. Do you think dogs just mess with us? They're like, hey, watch this. And they just look off in a room where there's nobody like,

rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, bro, bro. Maybe dogs are just dumb. That could be such a possibility. Couldn't be. Couldn't be true. Could be true, but couldn't be true. Like, it depends on the breed. Small dogs are dumb.

But if it's a big dog doing it, it's full, it's totally credible. Loavably dumb. They're all dumb, but they're lovable. German shepherds are smart. True. My grandma was big, you know, we grew up with a lot of German shepherds. Your grandma was big.

She, she bred German shepherds. I'm sorry. For Schutzened, for canine training. And so we had these big, just amazing, like imported fruit. Not these American curs. Yeah. That are all deracinated bloodlines.

Dang. And thrown into a world of chaos. So these dogs are like Uber-Minched? They were bare Uber-Mensched German Shepherds. And they never saw any ghosts. I don't know what I'm going with this. But if one of them had like started barking into what was going to be your kid's nursery in a few months. Oh yeah, Solomon.

If you had done that, I would have been like, get out. We're moving. Yeah, seriously. No, but then. But dogs, they get. I love sitting on this love scene. You do it so much better. Dude, you look so good.

Like, up close. Like, I can just, like, seeing the grow. Great point, too. You just keep hitting me. You just keep hitting me this whole time. What's crazy about this story of what I think, in a serious point, again, I know you were going to say something you were, but like is what you're about to say. Okay. Listen.

What I'm saying is that every single day at work, I go make tacos in the church's courtyard. Yeah. For us. Yeah. Okay. Our neighbors who we share a fence with, they have two golden doodles. Yep. That when I for the first few weeks when I would do tacos, they barked at me the whole time I was out there. They were like, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'll fight you.

But guess what? Then they stopped. But guess what else? Why? Once I shaved the beard, they started doing it again. But then when I literally said, y'all know me, they recognize my voice and they stopped. That's funny. So here's the point that I'm making. Sasha was seen a ghost. But then Sasha got used to... Yeah, I repeat myself.

But then Sasha got used to the ghost. Uh-huh. And said, I recognize... I recognize them now. I recognize that that demon is just a part of this. Yeah, Lysanaheev. You don't know what that is. But anyone that has seen Dune too

will think that that's funny. No idea what you're talking about. And so they recognize them this. Is this that big worm? There are worms in the movie. Is that what you just said, though? No. Lissana Agaib is like the...

the Messiah title. So, the point that I'm making is that the fact that Sasha did this proves definitively that this house is haunted by a demon. I see. What I think is interesting about this story is, again, going back to the fake historical roots or quasi-historical roots, even if they're rooted in something real, of the demons giving you the backstory. Oh, I'm Sally.

Exactly. And you're just going to believe them? the little girl. That's crazy to me. It's crazy. You're just gonna believe like this, this voice speaking to you

out of the ether. It gives people what they, not necessarily what they want, but it gives them what they expect. Right. They hear the story of this little girl who died on the operator table

and whose soul is now trapped. They hear the story and they think, therefore, the house is haunted by the little girl who died on the table. I'm just still,

I'm caught, and you called it an operator table. It's an operating table. So especially like a phone operator. When did I say that just now? Moments ago. Dude, I don't remember anything that I said. It can be held responsible for any of it.

Keep going. But then they encounter the demon. Yeah. And the demon says, guess what? Call me Sally. Call me Sally. Because I'm Sally. Yeah.

And then everyone's willing to just be like, of course. This is an innocent little, just a playful little girl. And what we'll see as the story develops this other theme, just be prepared for it, is the way that the, the, the, the, the, manipulates the people differently to actually bring schism into their marriage. Oh, yeah. So it's funny because if it's a demon, demons hate God. They hate everything God loves.

They hate everything good, true, and beautiful. So you take something like a human, a marriage or a human relationship that can glorify God. And they immediately, it gets in there and it's like, it's so nefarious the way that it, it convinces the mom, Deborah Pickman, that this is a little. little girl that needs to be nurtured. Yes. And so it keeps showing her this, like, kind face. But then it just absolutely hates the guy, Tony Pickman. My guy, Tony.

He'll have this horrible stuff. Like, it's scratching him. It's literally catching him on fire if the stories aren't to believe. Just jump ahead. It's hocking stuff at him. This is called an Easter egg. It's a foreshadowing. It's a full on spoil.

It's called foreshadowing. It's like in Harry Potter one, they're like, Harry's a horrors. It's called foreshadow. Harry is. Yeah. Okay. Harry's a horrocks.

Okay. Sorry. You've had like 20 years, though. So it is interesting, though, that it shows them what they expect, but then it uses those false expectations to sow dissension. It's not good. Okay. There's nothing neutral about it.

We even see an attempt at this, I think, an unsuccessful one in the parent family. Yeah. Credit to them. Where Bathsheba was, like, trying to get all lovey-dovey with Roger. Oh, yeah. I was saying, like, hey, I'm the mistress of the house. Like, you got to get with me. Yep.

You know, and forget Carolyn. Literally tried to kill Carolyn. Yep. Now, they don't let it affect their marriage nearly as much because they're both in agreement on what's going on. But it's still that same attempt. Yep. They see Christ and the church preached in the marriage.

Even, you know, even if they aren't Christians. Yeah. It's still what marriage is showing for better or worse. And it hates it. It hates it. It hates it so much. Yep. So listen, here's the deal.

It's time to close it out. It's time to close it out. We're hungry. Our audience is hungry. And we're going to leave you guys. Depending on the time of the day. We're going to leave you guys hungry for more. It was a good segue.

By giving a bit of a cliffhanger. Yeah. To finish out part one of this series in the Sally House. Once again, I closed out my document. I'm going to start us. So I'll take us into this story and buckle up, guys. We hope we'll see you next time. And, man, this story,

where he gets wild. And like, if you see any dogs barking in any context whatsoever, know that there's a demon close by. Immediately pray. Okay. Tony was frustrated. His brother George just wouldn't believe his story about the stuffed animals and teddy bears.

He thought he could trust him. He thought after all these years that his brother would be able to tell how serious he was being. He wasn't joking. After hours of trying to convince his brother to believe him, to help him, he finally snapped. He grabbed the camera sitting on the shelf, pointed it at the Beanie Baby, sitting beside the TV in the living room and said,

Sally, if you're in here, smile and say cheese. He snapped the camera and immediately heard the yelp escape his brother's mouth. He started shouting about how the thing had moved. Its head had turned. Its mouth had twitched or something. George was finally a believer, and it sent the world into a frenzy. The two men started to spring towards the stairs to run up into the nursery where Deborah was playing with the baby. Only George couldn't. And as Tony reached the bottom step, he heard the pitiful whimper from his brother. Tony, I can't move. His face was painted white, lifeless and pale.

He was dizzy and confused and scared behind his own comprehension. He said later that he could feel something that felt like a someone holding him back and forcing him to heal. Finally, he was let go and they both ran up to Deborah and Taylor, skipping steps as they jumped. in a rush Tony told Deborah to start packing. They'd be going to his parents' house for the night. George remained white-faced and unsteady. He just kept repeating, I can't believe it moved.

The chaos started to take on some kind of order, and George rushed out to get his truck ready while Tony and Deborah packed. Deborah got clothes. Tony got Taylor. He threw his car seat up into the couch and started to buckle his boy in as his wife brought the bags down and put them beside him.

Suddenly Tony lashed out. with a cry of pain. Ow! Dang it, he said. Something bit me. Deborah lifted up his shirt and everything stopped. She let the loose fitting and thin fabric drop back down where it had just covered. The slight breeze felt good to Tony.

He asked what she saw. She didn't reply right away. She didn't want to. He asked again. She lived to the shirt back up with trepidation, praying that she had been mistaken, praying that whatever she had just seen would somehow be gone. It wasn't.

There, on Tony's back, three bleeding scratches were now cut deep into the sinew. Sally was getting angrier now. Deborah felt a maddening rush of bitter cold passed through her. Not a chill, no. That would have been welcome compared to this. This was like being awoken from a deep sleep by a bucket of icy water. Something had to give soon. They couldn't go on like this.

And so they called a special friend of a friend, a woman named Barbara, a woman who claimed to be a psychic and medium. Though the two had never spoken, Deborah wasted no time in asking for her opinion on the family's trouble. Something striking occurred in that conversation. Something tangential to the root of the issue, but something nonetheless important.

Deborah found herself speaking of Sally as if she was just a part of their lives, almost like she already accepted that she was sharing the house with them for the long haul. She spoke of their poltergeist in a way some other unaffectionate and cold family might speak of a problematic child. Sally this, Sally that. Sally was already running their lives.

Deborah asked the basic questions. Is she always here? Can she go through walls? Can she reach things that are higher up than a normal girl could reach? To these, Barbara gave the predictable answers. Yes, yes, and yes. Eventually, the interrogation got deeper. Why is she here?

To which Barbara responded, she likes the baby. When Deborah countered by asking why she has to do all of these things if she just wants to watch over the child, Barbara quickly told her. She wants you to know. The conversation went on like this for quite some time before Barbara finally left Deborah with some next steps to explore once the call was over, and Tony had come home from work. The medium said that they needed to acknowledge her.

They needed to invite her into the family, into the discussion. They needed to lay out some ground rules that she must follow if she wished to remain welcome in their home. They needed to be her parents, in a sense. The time of them needing to work out whether or not they would accept their reality at all was far gone. Now is the time for action. This entity had thrust itself upon them, and the counsel they received for dealing with it was a dreaded weight that neither Pickman parent wished to carry. Welcome it.

But pushing their own desires for normal life. side, that is exactly what they did. Deborah listened intently to Barbara's advice and then perked up slightly as she ended the phone call with a slight tremor in her voice. If talking to her doesn't work, there are other ways to get rid of your house blessed. Also recite exercising incantations in each where we do this if you decide it's what you want. Finally, Deborah asked her if she could be wrong about the spirit being that of an innocent and dainty little girl. After all, those scratches on Tony's back were very real. and very painful for him.

Barbara reassured the tortured mother. She said that she was quite certain of Sally being an overall harmless entity, and that was it. The phone call ended, and Deborah was left feeling even more exhausted than before. She told Tony about all of it and asked what he thought about trying to implement some of her recommendations. A bit more reluctantly than his wife, he eventually agreed to try. They stood in the home's living room and called Sally. They asked her to come and join them because they had some things to say. After a short time, Deborah noticed the cats began to act funny again, like they had on

the night so long ago when she was woken by the screaming and thumping down the stairs. She began to politely and gently address Sally. She welcomed her. She cautiously began listing out some ground rules that the sprite would have to follow if she wished to remain welcome in the Pickman's home. She glanced over at Tony and noticed him staring up at the fan on the ceiling. The cats were looking in the same spot with twitching mouths and massive tails. The little dangling nod was spinning.

Deborah wrapped up her speech and for some reason waited for some kind of response. It never came. Whatever was haunting them was not willing, able, or otherwise quite ready to communicate so openly back to them. Unsettled by the foreboding silence, Deborah added one last thing in a surprisingly cheerful and upbeat tone. Sally, if I leave paper and some crayons out for you, maybe you could write something or draw something for us. We would be very proud of you, and we would hang it up on our fridge. Yes, I think that would be a good idea.

Again, silence. She walked up the stairs and into the nursery, pulled out some yellow construction paper in a fresh box of crayons, and wrote in big letters with the red one. Hello, Sally. How old are you? Some days later, after none of them, Nothing of note had really happened.

Deborah found herself talking to her neighbor, a woman named Carol. The conversation began normally enough, and the small talk flowed steadily for both women for a while. Eventually, though, Deborah could no longer stop herself from asking her neighbor if she had ever heard of weird things happening in their house. While Carol listened with genuine interest to Deborah's stories, she ultimately said that no, she didn't recall ever hearing anything from the previous tenants. However, as the conversation was ending, Carol did ask Deborah one odd question.

Do you leave your baby's light on at night? Deborah was taken aback at how random the question seemed. No, she replied. We still keep him in a bassinet in our room each night, and all the lights are off in the house. Oh, her neighbor replied with a puzzled and worried look. Our bedroom window looks right up at your nursery window. Most nights, between my husband and I, one of us gets up late to use the bathroom. We always comment the next morning on how strange it is that you leave that room's light on each night.

As the implications of this final comment rattled around in Deborah's mind, she received a phone call. It was Barbara. The medium felt a bit uneasy. She asked how things were going and asked if she would be allowed to come visit the family during her stay in Kansas City in two days. With some form of seriousness and gravity, she said, join us in two weeks for part two of our journey through the sally house and our study of the question how do demons use hauntings to ruin people 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