Welcome to a preview of this week's Patreon episode, one that was slightly delayed, but I think it's well worth the wait. This week I am joined by Soleil from our recent two-part series entitled Folly Beach. If you haven't heard that, both of the episodes are already out on Patreon. You can listen to them right now. That series already has so much going on in it. It's a completely crazy story. and during my multiple interviews with Soleil, she told me that she had another story, a ghost story that she experienced when she was growing up and it takes place at the same beach, Folly Beach. At the time, I told her, we should just save this one because your story already has so much going on but she joined me for this episode to talk about that additional story and I have to say, I thought it would be a little bonus story. it ended up being a lot crazier than I ever imagined. It's actually a series of events that takes place over three years and starts when her mom decides to take a Civil War relic that she found at a beach near an old fort. Aside from that, we also talk about her reaction to the episodes, Reiki, cats, and hanging out with high school goths in graveyards. This is a short preview. If you want to hear the full thing, along with Folly Beach parts one and two. They are all out now at patreon.com slash otherworld. This was way back in like the early 2000s. This would have been sometime between 2004 and 2006 that this occurred. Um, there are two forts out on Folly beach that were never properly excavated. One of them was on the beach and the other is in the woods. It is still in the woods intact and has still not been properly excavated. Um, the one that was on the beach was washing away and it was huge news and every huge local news and everybody was talking about it. Who was, you know, interested in like, you know, preserving local history, that kind of thing. Um, so my mom was like, hey guys, we're going to go out to Folly Beach and we're going to go check out what's out there. So we all got our little shovels and we went out there. And the thing that was really interesting was that because Folly Beach is a barrier island, the sand is constantly shifting and the ocean is constantly picking things up and bringing them back out. So as soon as something gets buried, it eventually gets uncovered. And so when we got there, there was so much of the fort that was just sticking up out of the sand and there were things that you could just, I mean, you could just lean down and pick stuff up. It was, it was a pretty wild experience. And this was a, this was a fort before? Yeah. And you can, you can actually still see it. Um, it's in the ocean now and you can still see the concrete pillars sticking out of the water. Um, but it's fully underwater now. Um, so civil war fort. Yep. A civil war fort. Um, this was the fort of the 54th regiment, which was you know the first all regiment in South Carolina So we go out there there just stuff laying around There also a ton of archaeologists out there because they are there to collect and preserve what they can of South Carolina history. And so it was pretty cool. And it was also very lucky. I found a bunch of fossilized cow bones. My brother found a button. My stepdad found a coin and my mom found this thing. It was a little metal 54. And we were like, that's crazy actually. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy. So, um, this guy walks over and he's like, Hey, you know, I'm a local archeologist. What have you got? I can tell you about it. And so we show him everything and I show him my cow bones and he's like, Oh yeah. So these are here because they would roast entire cows on the beach and that's how they would feed the army. so there's a ton of fossilized cow bones that were like coming up out of the sand and then he explained you know like the button was like a civil war period button but like he couldn't tell us like exactly what it was from and he looked at the coin and he gave my brother like or my dad an approximation of like when the coin was from and then when my mom showed him the 54 he was like wow this is a really special find these were on the helmets of all the soldiers because we do have one of the old uniforms still intact. So we know exactly what their uniforms look like. And she had found one of the little metal 54s that would have been on a soldier's cap. So we're stoked. We're all like, we're all big into history. So we go home, we're so excited. We're like, oh wow, like we just like walked away with like a real piece of like South Carolina history. And like, it's okay for us to have it because normally it's not okay for you to go to a historical site and just kind of pick through artifacts. Yeah, I was going to say, that seems very unusual. Well, South Carolina is an unusual place. This is a very southern experience you're having where there's like an open archaeological site that's just washing into the ocean, and people can come and pick through it. Yep. So we're super excited. We wash everything together. And then my mom has this mosaic table that she still has. I love that table. and we all like wash our stuff and we lay it on the table to dry and we all sit around the table and we're just like everyone is so happy and then it was like this scene from the mummy where everyone's sitting there and like the wind goes like and then everyone gets a chill up their spine um that happened to my family we were all sitting around the table and it was like the air shifted and we all had the same feeling we all looked at each other and in unison we said we have to take the stuff back. So we go literally right then, right there, we get in the car and we go take the stuff back, but my mom can't let go of the 54. So we agree. It's really cool. And like, we don't, we also like want to keep it. So we take, we take the 54 back home. And what followed was about three years of nonstop paranormal activity in our house. It was experienced by... Three years? Yep, three years. It did not stop Tell me Yeah I want to hear about this Oh yeah I going to hit some highlights for you Please So the paranormal activity did not stop Yeah I want to hear about this Oh yeah I gonna I gonna hit some highlights for you please So they did the paranormal activity did not stop until the 54 disappeared We have no idea where it went My mom has this huge curio cabinet that she has like all of her little like collections and treasures. Yeah. And she had it on display on the first, like the very first shelf. And it was like right in like the back. And we have no like who would have opened it and specifically taken that like, you know, there's like little like crystal figurines and stuff like if somebody was going to rob us, like who would come in and take just like this little tiny iron metal 54? We're just saying we have no explanation for where it went. Anyway, so one of the things that I frequently experienced the first time I experienced it, it was really scary. I was home alone. um my parents were out of town I was babysitting um my little brother I'm like 17 at the time um and he's like 10 um and I'm also responsible for caring for our dogs so it's nighttime about to go to bed I let the dogs out because we had we had a golden retriever and a chihuahua and they were really good uh really good well-behaved dogs and so I you it was easy to just let them in the backyard, like without the leash. So they go to go to the bathroom and I hear somebody from the woods. And so our house was backed up to the woods and that used to be all wetlands. Now it's a golf course. And I hear somebody calling my dog's names from the woods and my dogs hear it too. They stop and they look at it. And Lola, our golden retriever who never growled at anybody, growls and she runs back to the house. And then as the dogs are running back to the house, I hear somebody yelling my name. And so I freak out. I call my parents. I'm like, there's somebody in the woods calling my name and my parents are like, you're making it up. Or it's John messing with you. John's our neighbor who like, I went to high school with his son and he, he, him and his wife have always just been so nice to me. Like they used to like give me rides to school and stuff. And like John would just never do something like that. Like he was he would like tell you stupid dad jokes. But John's not the kind of guy who would like go stand in the woods and like try to creep you out. So I was like, I really don't think that that's true. But whatever. No, you know, my parents don't believe me. Fast forward three months later. I'm out of town with my parents. We're on a family trip. My mom's friend, Becca, good family friend, is watching the dogs. and she calls my mom and she's like, Hey, I can't go over to your house anymore. I took your dogs to my house. And my mom's like, what happened? And she was like, Oh, I was letting your dogs out. And somebody in the woods are calling your dogs names. And then they started calling my name and my husband's name. And her husband was there. And he was like, he also heard it. And he was like yelling through the phone. And my parents just like, look at me. And I'm like, I told you, I told you I didn't make that up. So that was like the beginning. And like I assume nobody would, absolutely nobody would know those people's names. No nobody would have known Becca and Brian did not come over to my parents house very often and like they hadn been introduced to anybody in their neighborhood And then of course like this kept happening This happened to my brother This happened to my brother with his friends This happened to some of my friends. This happened to me again, several times after this. Sometimes you would even hear somebody walking around in the woods. Like you could hear like crunching and footsteps, but there was never- Oh, that's so weird. There was never anybody there. What did the voice sound like? It would change. Sometimes it sounded like our mom, and sometimes it sounded like just a guy. Yeah, Hunter would run back to the house, and he'd be like, is mom here? I heard her calling me. And I'm like, no, mom's not home yet. Like, that used to happen all the time. That's really weird. Another thing that was going on was, and it took us, this is all the stuff that was happening in the beginning. And we didn't connect it to the 54 until later. Like we didn't connect it to the Folly Beach stuff until like probably a year into the activity. So we have this L-shaped hallway and there's light switch at each end of the hallway. And at the beginning of the hallway is my bedroom. And at the end of the hallway is my brother's bedroom. so like they're side by side but like you know like I it's kind of hard to explain but I'd be walking down the hallway to go to my room and I'd hear the light switch click and the lights would go out and for a while I just thought it was my brother messing with me like it didn't scare me at all and then uh one day I was laying in my room and my brother busted in my room and like I have loft bed. So I'm like up off the floor. And my brother's like, you need to stop doing that. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he's like turning off the light. And then he like looks at me and he's like, he like realizes, you know, like I'm in my bed. Like I couldn't have done it. And he's like, is it you, are you turning off the light? And I was just like, no, I thought you were doing that. And so after that, after that realization, we just started telling each other when it would happen and it kept happening. And sometimes it would happen when nobody else was home. There was also this one time my whole family experienced this. We were all sitting in the living room watching a TV show and this cold person, like, cause it felt like a whole body embraced each of us in a line. Oh my God. It just like passed from person to person. It was a really, really creepy experience. There is a... That's so... Like a hug? Yeah, it felt like something was like embracing you. By the way, this is like my reactions right now are why I edit myself out of the podcast normally. that's terrifying though that's crazy it was pretty scary um i remember we all just kind of looked at each other and um we were like we just sat there and i don't know what did we say i remember my mom saying something to the effect of like well it it's definitely gone like whatever it was is definitely it's not in the room anymore and then we just tried to continue on as normal
