Haunted Cosmos - The Lost Colony, Part I

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Please enjoy this sixth inter-season episode of our Patreon exclusive show, The Dusty Tome. In this episode, we talk about ghost towns and a certain famous lost colony!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 New Dominion Design Co. Visit their website here and learn more!This episode is sponsored by Backwards Planning Financial. Visit Joe's website here or give him a call (615-767-2555).This episode is sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee! Visit their website here to get your first bag free!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully.Finally, this episode is sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order.Support the show

to the sixth interseason dusty tome release as a special Hanna Cosmos thing, I guess, to fill the time between seasons three and four. You'll all be glad to know that we're still plugging right away, going strong on season four, and we're really excited to release the first episodes of that to you guys. We've recorded the first couple episodes, you know, already work on episode three, feeling good ahead of the ball.

And I think that this really is some of our best content yet, just really excited for you guys to hear it. Thank you all for listening to the show. It's absolutely impossible without you. Of course, a special shout out to our patrons who support us on Patreon. And if you like these episodes of the Dusty Tome and want to hear more,

feel free to sign up to become a patron and you can get access to over 75 Dusty Tome episodes. And with a new one releasing each week, we try to give those patrons the utmost value. And also the top two tiers of our patronage will get early access to the main shows. So very shortly here, we're going to be giving those top two tiers

access to the first episode of season four, totally produced, totally mastered, and also totally ad-free. So definitely take advantage of that. If that interests you guys, apart from that, I think that all that's left to say is that this show is brought to you

by those patrons, as well as Indigo Sundry Soap Company, backwards planning financial, new Dominion Design Co, gray-toed tallow and squirrely joe's coffee very grateful to our sponsors for their support would highly recommend that you check out their products we think that they're all very very good and worthy of your interest and with that sit back relax and please enjoy the show the friends piled into the chrysler newport once day had already fallen under the security blanket of night it was 1985 the world was no

less complicated then than it is now, but it sure seems so to the group of teenagers gearing up for a night of adventure. Quiet and crisp fall air gripped their souls with anticipation. They were a part of this place, their home, their people. And so the changing seasons from cold to colder could have that effect on their total man. The engine turned over and the tires let out an almost imperceptible squeak as the driver scurried her quickly out of the carport and onto the somber neighborhood road. Little inklings of frost like bullet holes began to melt away from the windshield as the heat from jokes and spooky stories filled the car with adolescent glee. All the while, northern serenity that grew at an even clip with the ever-darkening sky

was only interrupted by the monotonous drum of the car speeding down the black roads of the backcountry, towards the remote spot they had picked for that night's fun. Night changes many thoughts. Eventually, the car came to a stop on the soft and grassy shoulder of a gravel road that had not been used in a very long time. The cutting of the engine filled the air with vacuum that the night birds soon filled, while a steampunk fume of crude oil burning off the exhaust pipe, painted their scene with Americana glory. Through the yellow haze of old flashlights through fog, the ringleader found what he was looking for in the peppered field of dying and dead and tall grass that stretched. stretched before them. You see, this place was a cemetery, a particularly eerie cemetery at that. The ground their mucks walked on was a place once filled to the brim with the corpses of ancestors

long dead. Older Americans who had given their backs to the cause of the blessing these children were now reaping. Only now, for the most part, it was emptied out. Years, even decades prior, most of the headstones had been upturned and hauled off along with the exhumed bodies of the dead, in light of better burial options closer to family and more vibrant parts of the state of Michigan. Only those who had no progeny left, or those whose progeny could not afford the move remained. Legends started to spread that some among the handful of remaining graves in this forsaken yard were left because of who they belonged to, robbers, murderers, even demoniac witches. It was said that these wicked and black epitaphed boulders were talismans of darkness and doom,

that intrepid macabreists messed with at their own risk. Naturally, teenage kids were therefore drawn to the drama, the intrigue, and the potential danger of this place. And so this group of friends made light of the strange sense of alarm they all felt. They described the cold spots they walked through, the echoes of voices they thought they heard propagating out of the wood, the slivers of whispering but faint light they saw slipping and dancing around certain trees, or on the moonlit bases of distant hills.

They continued to laugh, but an outside ear would have said the laughter had become labored and forced. They continued to search, but their eyes glazed over, and they hoped against all hope that they would not actually see anything. They kept walking around, but the discrete paths became more and more circular,

and more grouped together, until they all found one another again, huddled in a tight bond, in the midmost of this ethereal threshold they perceived, between their known world and one unknown to them, whose door lay opened just a few feet away, or so it all seemed. Finally, with the impulsive excitement worn off, the ringleader of the group, the one who had been driving, marched over to the headstone, the most infamous one of all those left.

He gripped it tightly above a crack that ran the entire width of it, grunted with effort, and wiggled the upper half of this rock free from its base sunken into the earth. He carried it briskly, adjusting his grip every now and then over to his car and set it into the backseat floorboard, a souvenir for his troubles, one that he hoped would seal his status as a man most brave. But in order to really understand why he chose this particular headstone for his thieving, we have to go back a little bit and look at how it got there. In the late 1870s, railroads were still the kings of transportation across great distances. The boom of the industry had meant a proverbial gold mine for any willing to yield up the sweat equity necessary as a sacrifice to the powers it be in the government at the time.

This rich opportunity struck the cords of countless entrepreneurs right to the quick. One such young hopeful was a well-to-do man named George Shana, who seeing the need for a stop along the North Central Railway in Michigan, sued for a land grant he intended to use to start a township. This land was granted to the wise and appealing businessman, and thus ride off the railroad through the dense woods between two of the world's greatest lakes, the settlement of Parishana was founded. Her beginnings were humble. A general store off the rail station allowed wayfaring and weary travelers and tradesmen to stock up on goods and stretch their legs during long journeys to more industrious places. But over time, Parishana evolved into a thriving heart of common. commerce herself a schoolhouse pumped up saw mills started raking in the income that was

sprouting all around the area doctors started practices telegraph stations and post offices lent credibility to the whole operation and before long dozens and dozens of modest homes started lining the ever-growing network of streets winding out to the town's boundary the early days of Pereshaena were a golden age of flourishing young families finding work and rest and serendipity in the harsh adventure of paving a path forward for a whole new and untapped region of the world and then it all started to go wrong the stories say that a bad seed was thrown into the wine dark and rich soil of the budding social structure new things tend to be so delicate the smallest drop of poison can turn even the strongest man into a withering tree felled in its prime

towns are no different there supposedly was a woman and Parashana who stood as a sort of outcast against the backdrop of the rest. She had brought a child born out of wedlock with her to the town. She behaved in such reclusive manners and seemed to default to a sort of loathing of her neighbors. People wondered why she had come there at all if she only wanted to be on her own. Eventually people stopped seeing any sign of her child anywhere also. And as they followed the trace breadcrumbs of suspicion lit by a bright moon of being send against, the people began to wonder if this newcomer may actually be an enemy within their gates.

They started to figure her for a witch. Her behavior worsened and thus the evidence mounted against her. Whether there was some moment of grand reveal between her and the forces of darkness as a question lost to history, what we do know is that the people of Pereshena unanimously banded together and cast the witch from their midst, sending her to fend for herself in exile. In retaliation, the alleged witch did two things. First, she cursed Pereschena and all of her people with grotesque curses. Second, she did her best to remain a bane in their lives by staying just outside of the city limits

and reigning whatever supernatural woe she could contrive onto them while still abiding by the terms of the exile. Many claim that this is why the epidemics began. The town of 1,500 people suffered wave after wave. of crippling diphtheria in 1893 and 1897. In the midmost of these curses falling on their heads, the townsfolk reacted in a way that was either unreasonable panic or biblical justice, only God knows which one. By hanging the woman accused of witchcraft from an oak tree, some leagues away from downtown.

By 1901, 25 people lived in Parishana, and that number had fallen to 18 by 1917. At that point, the town was declared to be an abandoned ghost town. The Michigan State Government sold the land via auction, the final residents left, and the land sits unused to this day. In the intervening years, buildings have fallen to ruin and have mostly been reclaimed by the natural landscape around them. All that remains of Parishana is a forgotten whisper of a place that used to be beating with vitality. A ghost town where many say shades and strange lights appear in the haunting. night in that graveyard, the one the kids visited in 1985, the one they stole from. And what was it exactly that they stole? But like I said, not many headstones remained

to be vandalized or taken as prizes, but one that did remain was one set up underneath an oak tree on the edge of the cemetery. It was the headstone belonging to the witch of Parashena, that same witch who allegedly cursed the town to its utter and complete dengue. No. Weeks passed without incident after the unsettling night the friends had endured. All of them waited to see if something, anything what happened to them is retaliation for their stealing the witch's grave. Finally the furtive steps of lingering depravity caught up to them on a clear winter's

night where in the same group was traveling once again in that same Chrysler that had carried them up to the shadowy and forgotten home of the dead. This time the friends were driving from house to house. The mood was light and the headstones still sat in the rear floorboard. All that had changed was that one of the friends, the only girl in the group, had learned that she was with child. Suddenly, in the middle of a crystal clear northern night, a snow squall struck the road they were on as if it was a light being switched on in a dark room.

The driver slowed and slowed and slowed and slowed as visibility shrank to nothing and the road grew slick with fresh sloshing snow. driver felt the car give way to the snow first, but it was only a split second before everyone else in the car silently lurched for something to hold onto in a blind panic. It was like each person was trying to sink deeper into the car to replace the impact that was sure to come, and come it did. The car smash into the tree was like something in slow motion. It was like something tragic and gruesome but fascinating that gripped the eyes and forbade them from looking away. side struck right at the front door, behind which sat the pregnant young woman. The car wrapped

around the tree like it was giving a hug. She wrapped with it and broke her sternum and multiple ribs. Her body was used as an airbag by the driver who was not wearing a seatbelt and flew across the car to her. The first man in the back broke his leg and received multiple lacerations all over his body, and the last passenger broke both of his kneecaps. Ultimately, everyone ended up being fine. Though the woman had to be kept in the hospital for a week while she healed and her baby was monitored. The baby was okay, by the way. After the wreck in a brief period of recovery, the three male passengers took a trip to the tow yard to inspect the damaged under their friend's car. As one examined the open driver's door, he noticed a tarp covering the floorboard. He peeled it

back and his soul tinged with uncertainty and fear. There, smashed up to the front of the car and wedged underneath the gas and brake pedals, sat the piece of the witch's headstone his friend had taken so many months prior. It was like a desert monolith that mocked him with its unfeeling and apathetic and unchanging bent towards tragedy and lamentation. The driver remembered trying to slam on the brakes during the spin-out on the snow, but he could never get the pedal to move. The friends ripped the headstone out from where it had stared at them and drove it back

to Parishana that night, rejoining it with the middle. with the rest of the cursed and almost forgotten grave that sat like a blight on the roots of the oak tree that gave it shade. 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 indigo sundrysoap.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's 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. Okay, so I'm going to go to indigo sundry soap.com. I'm going to pick the men's six-pack bundle, and I'm going to use code haunted cosmos at checkout, all caps, no spaces. And if I forgot all that, it's in the description of the show. Of course, Ben. And if you just do that, then you will stop wanting to do all of those girly things. And maybe you'll, I don't know, maybe want to buy a classic car to restore or something dignified. We are living in the beginning of a new reformation. Christian content is being produced at a rapid rate. Art, businesses, publications, ministries, and a thousand other mediums are acting as agents to get us out of our current anti-Christian world. And all of these mediums are going to need marketing to help them get more eyes and ears on them.

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There are some of the most haunted and haunting places in the world. How uncanny it is to walk among a place that used to be thousands of people's home. The buildings that used to witness life, the triumph of the youth, the peace of the elderly, and the laughter of children should never also be tombstones. At least not in our minds. It is too uncanny, too inhuman, too surreal and dreamlike. A ghost town is like an old empty water park that is ill-lit, but that still works. You walk in as if in a dream state with your tube under one arm and your towel over the other.

Soft and cheerful, childlike music plays over the speakers you can't see, and the smell of chlorine and a hint of mildew strikes your nose. The lazy river is racing through the tile. lineed canal carved for it into a dark tunnel whose end you cannot see. Three slides, one red, one yellow, and one green, are sitting before you with dark entrances open, within a plastic smiling clown face built for some liminal decor. You are alone. And soon you are lost.

And soon you could swear you hear the wet steps of something or someone sneaking behind you. But every time you turn, there's nothing there. I'm reminded of the fellowship in the Lord of the Rings, finally entering the minds of Moria. Orgimli expected the warm welcome of kith and kin for he and his new friends. What they found was not only disappointing but downright disheartening. Darkness permeated the grandest of halls. The crackling of aged bones long bereft of sinew and flesh met their steps, and whispers from undelved corridors met them along the way.

Well did Bormore say that Khazad Doom was no longer. longer a mine, but a tomb. What is implied in this is that Moria was more than a mere tomb for bodies. It was also a mausoleum for the soul, for the human spirit, as if the memory of jocund revelry deep in the mountain that no longer sings is worse than if the vitality had never been there in the first place. Ghost towns are frightening. They are the monuments of how fickle man's life is, of how feeble his efforts really are, of how hopeless he has every reason to be if he labors in vain without the blessing of the Lord. It should not surprise us to learn that the lion's share of the world's known ghost towns were once centers of gross and depraved

moral license and narcissistic lust. But not all of them were. And those that weren't service up even greater mystery. Reluctantly, John White climbed aboard a schooner set to sail back east towards England and her monarch Elizabeth I. White had to be able to. just finished kissing his granddaughter goodbye and hugging his only child, who he was leaving behind for this what was meant to be a quick journey there and back again. The morning haze had lifted from the shore of the new world as the sun painted the wading waves with technicolor hues of red like blood and purple like galaxies and orange like fire. The droning repetition of waves coming in and back out, in and back out once more lent a symphony of melancholy to the already saddened man.

Nothing bad had happened. In fact, this journey of his was what he knew was supposed to happen if his plans had gone well. But leaving his people, his tribe and new colony, his own kindred and progeny, was as difficult to task he had ever been asked to do in his life. England no longer felt like home anymore. Nothing was familiar there like this place had become with its sand and salt spray, an evening breeze that kissed the skin and left it feeling crackly and electrified. nonetheless he had to go. If he didn't, who would? After all, he was the governor.

The buck stopped with him. The journey across the Atlantic was arduous and taxing to an extreme degree. Weather racked the ship like an older brother wrestling his younger pup down to submission. Disease spread amongst the crew and cut their numbers down to a fraction of what they had been when they left. White escaped the hunger and blight and threat of being tossed overboard. by the rogue waves, and despite all of nature seeming set against his making it, he and the remaining crew aimlessly drifted into a small Irish harbor past due, and without any idea as to how they had actually gotten there. Providence had not yet fully turned its light from the man it seemed.

Unfortunately, though, the trials that were to meet him in his attempt to get back to his newfound colony were only just beginning. In the thick of religious reformation and tumult in Europe, the sovereigns of different countries were starting to act like petty children in a school lunchroom, who throw soldiers and tariffs at frenemies who had offended them instead of food. Queen Elizabeth I of England was not immune to the squabbles. She and her former love interest turned arch-enemy, King Philip II of Spain, had paid very little mind to their country's ever-weakening bond until it was too late. Spain threatened to send their armada across the channel, to launch an all-out attack on the

Protestant island they and their staunch Catholicism now loathed with seething passion. This meant that Elizabeth was forced to monitor the movement of her own country's vessels with an iron fist for their own protection. She required that all overseas travel be directly approved by her before being undertaken. Once he had found the supplies he needed and recruited the new settlers he intended to take back with him, a task that took no more than a few days, White was forced to wait for charter approval from the Crown before leaving again to go back home. This approval took months to receive, and when it finally was received, had to be forestalled further due to inclement weather. Eventually, his charter was revoked, and White was back at square

one. With his colony now in desperate need of the promised supplies and fresh strength of new families, White got desperate. In his desperation, he sought the help of a privateer, a government government-sanctioned pirate and asked him to let he and his people and their things sail with him across the Atlantic. The privateer was heading for the Caribbean and White was willing to pay a hefty premium for the man to stop on the coast of Virginia on his way. But though the privateer agreed and the party set off soon after, their vessel was immediately attacked by French pirates off the coast of Morocco. The fighting was bloody and brutal. John White was shot in his rear and received a deep saber cut across his head, but he made it out alive with most of his people and all of his supplies.

And they limped back to England for succor and recovery. More delays. The Spanish Armada arrived off the shores of Britain soon after White returned. For two years, the fighting did not stop. Finally, once England had won a costly victory, White was ready to try and make it back home again. He worried about his people constantly now. They had counted on him to bring them the things they needed to survive, but what was planned to take six months had taken 36 instead. But even still, the freshly minted end to the war did not mean an end to the watchful hostilities. England could spare no vessel dedicated to finding about 100 settlers in the new world, wondering what was happening to their governor and why he was so delayed.

The best White could do was gain passage on an English berth, crossing the Atlantic to find weakened Spanish ships that they might be able to plunder. White claimed to board the Hopewell, at the head of a small team, and settled in for the long and undulating trek across the unfeeling ocean. Months passed, hot summer months, where it was made very clear to White and his new settlers that their destination was the lowest priority in the mind of the pillaging captain and his rag-tag crew. But eventually their turn for success came. White's ship and its partnership, the moonlight, crept north from Florida until the familiar outer banks were visible to him again. He sighed a breath of sincere and well-earned relief.

Where the departure had been painted by dawn's mad march through the skies, the arrival was cloaked in frames of soft glow as sunset ran her ethereal golden train across the world in her chase of Helios' glimmer. As he neared more and more, His heart wakened to the excitement and relief of what he saw, a plume of smoke. His people were still there, right where he'd left them. Finally, their ordeal was over, he thought. But the heavy gears of God's eternal decree are unchanging, unsearchable, and oftentimes difficult for us to fit ourselves through.

White was only scratching the surface of what would be his trouble. The next morning marked White's attempt at reaching his people he so longed to see again. Two smaller vessels were filled with an investigation party, and the small boats set for the shore of the Pamlico, where her men leaned heavily on the oars. Those still on the main cruisers fired off three artillery rounds to signal to any settlers on land the long-awaited arrival of their leader. White's team beached first, and turned to find they had somehow far outpaced the other party behind them. As they waited for the second ship to catch up, the weather turned violent. with a sudden gale that pushed the tide forcibly into the small inlet they were using to make their arrival. White watched helplessly as the second boat was toppled over from behind.

His men foundered near the second sandbar as water pounded them against the boat or drug them back out to sea. Soon, none of the men were visible through the waves. They had all drowned. A foreboating start to a miserable plight. The crew waited, wondering. what to do before the weather suddenly turned calm again. White marveled at how it seemed as though Silla and Carybdis had swum from their eastern homes to partake of one last meal before the modern world sent them to their cynical graves. With their own supplies tarnished by the weather,

the crew rode back to the boats to resupply before setting off that same evening to hopefully, finally, make it to Roanoke. They reached near enough to shore when darkness had already fallen, and so dropped anchor and spent a helpless and stressful night in the smaller boats, counting the minutes before the moons vanishing behind the veil of a blue morning sky. Dawn came with her lustful impatience, and White remembered something. It was his granddaughter's third birthday, Virginia Dare, the first child born in the new world. He disembarked as quickly as he could and climbed the steep bank towards home. He found no one. He found no countrymen, but soon picked up on the tracks of Indians that had been there recently,

signs of life at last. He hiked further up and further in until he stumbled upon a tree whose trunk had the letters C-R-O carved into it. White's heart sank once more at discovering this code he had agreed upon with his people. Before he had left three years prior, he told them to leave signs behind as to where he might find them if they should have to leave Rowanoke. And if the people were leaving in an emergency, a cross was to be left carved over the message. There was no cross. He pressed on to the settlement's little market square. Passing the walls guarding the place was like stepping into a dream, one that feels so real

and yet also makes one feel as though they're walking through syrup or thick mud away from a threat chasing after them. Trees butted at the stump around houses that were being reclaimed by name. nature and had been left ramshackle long ago. Roves were torn away or caved in. Grasses grew along paths that had been left untrod for far too long. And right in the middle of it all was a great tree with a word carved at eye level for white. Croa Toen. There was no cross carved above it.

What happened to the lost colony of Rona? 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