5 Terrifying Southern Urban Legends | Grey Man, Haint Blue & More | Spooky Scary Storytime

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello, hello, my little creeps. I say that in the most endearing way possible.

[00:00:03]Welcome back to Spooky Scary Story Time, the series where we share listeners allegedly true stories about the creepiest or most unsettling things that they've ever experienced. Today's compilation is all location-based stories. So whether that's residual energy that's stuck hanging around after something happened, whether it's an urban legend tied to a specific area, or whether it's just a string of mysteries all happening in the same geographic location, I wanted to bring you some stories from people who think that there's just something a little bit weird going on where they live. I was in South Carolina last week, primarily in the Charleston area, and so a lot of the stories in today's episode are stories from that area. It turns out Charleston is a very beautiful city, but also has a long history and is supposedly also very haunted. Thanks to everyone who has sent me on little side quests all week and you had me going to different locations and just checking out some really great great restaurants and scenic views and I am so grateful for this community for just being here and pointing me in the right direction while I was there. I did mix in some other stories from other places just to kind of keep this episode interesting and prevent it from being all about Charleston, but there were quite a few from the area that I thought were interesting enough to be included.

[00:01:08]So, I hope you enjoy today's stories. To be transparent, also, there is one story in this compilation that is a little bit rough in terms of the recording. I was filming in the lobby of my hotel because I was sharing the hotel room with my toddler who was acting chaotic and I really wanted to get that video done.

[00:01:23]Um, but I didn't bring a mic. I was illprepared. I'm so sorry. But all the other ones should be good. I'm gonna try to adjust the audio levels on that specific story just to make it more bearable. This is my apology in advance.

[00:01:33]Other than that, I hope you enjoy the stories.

[00:01:39]The Greyman is an urban legend around Paulie's Island, South Carolina, about an entity who shows up right before major hurricanes to warn residents about incoming disaster. So, I picture him as sort of like a moth man-esque figure.

[00:01:53]Sightings of the Greyman date back supposedly to 1822. And I got a story about the Greyman. And this came from someone named Tommy who says his family goes back generations in South Carolina.

[00:02:02]His father's side were merchants. His mother's side were rice planters. But he says in 1989 he had his own encounter with the Greyman. Growing up, Tommy's family always summered in the Folly Beach area. And he said he loved it back then. It was known as the edge of America. There was always something going on. You could hear bands playing.

[00:02:18]Just had this very eclectic bohemian vibe that he said has sort of been lost to time. Although that area does still retain some of those qualities. But in September of 1989, he had come home from college for the weekend and he brought his girlfriend and took her to Folly Beach so she could experience it. And he said that was the place to be. And even though they knew there was this big storm coming, people were walking around and acting like everything was normal.

[00:02:41]He said there were still fishermen on the boardwalk were still out dragging their coolers all around. And he said he took his girlfriend down the old pier that was originally built in 1931. By the time they walked it in 1989, it had actually already burned down twice. They suspected arson both times and he's sort of giving his girlfriend this oral history of the area. The new pier was just a few years old at that point and he said it looked brand new. There were lights hanging all around. The wooden planks were still fresh and they're walking down and just having a really good night. But they go back and he said that around 10 p.m. that night he wanted to get out and clear his head. So he went for a solo walk down the boardwalk.

[00:03:17]Apparently, because they knew this category 4 storm was coming, they had been debating leaving. And his girlfriend wanted to stay and party, but he was already debating packing up the truck and leaving. He said he remembers walking down the boardwalk and it wasn't even raining at that point. The sky was like this weird purple color and the wind had just started picking up. And he said he was noticing that some of the bars and the places were closing early, like shuttering their windows. It's just sort of an eerie night. Like, you know that feeling when you know a big storm's coming and you step outside and the air just feels electric? Like, that's what I'm imagining. He walks past this row of shuttered shops, past where the old Atlantic pavilion used to be, where there was a dance hall, and that's when he saw this figure. And he was standing in the sand, just past where the boards met the beach, facing the water, tall and thin, in a long gray coat and a gray top hat. He said he looked completely out of place, like this guy belonged in the 1920s or 30s. had no rain gear, no flashlight, nothing. He just looked like he was standing there out of an old photograph. He was just gray from head to toe. And he said as he got closer, he thought he was maybe just like some kind of old-timer who had maybe had a drink too many and was admiring the ocean. But as he got closer, maybe like 10 feet away, the man turned and looked at him and he said his face sort of blurred at the edges, like he couldn't make out distinct features. As this figure looked at him, he said he heard a voice in his own head that said, "Go now. the house won't stand. Tommy says it felt almost like an intrusive thought, but it wasn't his own. He said this figure just looked at him and he recognized something in his eyes. Like for a second, he was like, "Do I know him from somewhere?" Or a feeling similar to when you look at like an old family photograph and you recognize that the person in the picture is somebody who you used to know. He said as he looked at this man, he had this ache in his chest, like he was feeling a broken heart, but like the pain wasn't his own either. like somehow this man's pain had reached across the space between them and had latched onto him somehow. Said the way that this guy looked at him just felt personal. It felt like he knew him and he couldn't explain it. And as he's watching this man, this man just disperses into the air like fog. Tommy says while he's never really believed in anything supernatural, this experience stands out as something very real that he believes showed up to him for good reason. On his mother's side, his greatgreat greatgrandfather in 1822 lost a brother to a big hurricane, the same one that birthed the Greyman legend. And the story in his family went that the guy had been riding home on his horse to get back to his wife when the storm hit. And the storm took both him and his horse down. Never found his body, but they did find his coat in the marsh days later. And ever since, Tommy says that the old folks said that the spear doesn't just wander and warn strangers. It seeks out those who have blood ties to the land. And Tommy says whether it was the Greyman or it was the ghost of this relative, this is who he believes he encountered. It was this entity that is still seeking out his lost love, still seeking out his sweetheart. And when he couldn't find her, he settles for whoever he can warn.

[00:06:15]Because whoever this entity was felt personal. It felt like it knew that he had been arguing with his girlfriend about leaving early. It knew that they were staying at this old beach rental that his own grandfather had built in the ' 50s. just knew that there was a chance that he wasn't going to leave the beach. And he said the weirdest thing is that even as he was packing up the car that night because he had convinced his girlfriend to leave, he still felt this ache as the wind shifted and he still felt like he was seeing this gray figure out of his peripheral vision. Says his girlfriend thought he was crazy, but he drove home. He was shaking. She was convinced that he had made the whole thing up in order to convince her to leave. Within 2 days, Hurricane Hugo hit and the pier was completely destroyed.

[00:06:53]Certain houses on the point were completely gone. But his own grandfather's rental, which sat about two blocks back, was completely untouched without a single shingle missing. Says some neighbors who stayed lost everything, and one family claimed that their entire roof was lifted off as they huddled inside. How his family's rental survived, he doesn't know. But he says he did do more digging into the Greyman legend after his experience. And while these stories are tied to Paulie's Island up the coast, original stories of the Greyman are eerily similar to his family story. There was a young man who was riding back on his horse to get to his fiance who lived on Pauliey's Island. But he says looking back, this was my relative, the marshes would have cut straight through folly. Either way, the legend is that those who see the grey man and leave, their houses are fine. But those who see him and ignore him, well, in those cases, the ocean just takes what it wants. Said there's some old gull folks in the area who say that the greyman is not a ghost of someone who was lost in a storm, but a collector of sorts. somebody who shows you the way out but still leaves a piece of themselves of their aching behind so that you never feel quite the same after the storm passes. Other theories claim that he is plowed in Weston the rice planter who owned half the coast in the 1800s. Others say he's a Confederate soldier who rode home to warn his family before dropping dead from exhaustion.

[00:08:10]People even claim that it's Perlie himself, the man who the island is named for where the legend originates. There's really not too many legends that go down to Folly Beach, but he says, "Whatever I saw that night warned me of what was coming, and it was wearing a gray coat.

[00:08:29]Seventh floor of the Basin Park Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is arguably one of the most haunted places in the US, is not just haunted. It's a portal." According to someone named Dee, who sent me the submission for Spooky Scary Story Time, and she told me about the creepiest thing that happened while she worked there. And she says she's actually used to paranormal activity at this hotel. spirits, energy, presences.

[00:08:46]It's all sort of part of the job. But a lot of people that work there get away with the unexplained occurrences there by just not believing. She says she believes. And while she was working at the Lucky Seven Bar in this hotel, also Basin Park Hotel, please don't come for me. Please don't sue me. This is all alleged. She actually got so used to some of the spirits or presences she felt while working the bar that she just called them her regulars. They were harmless. They were residual. They were just sort of passing through. She would do things like flicker the lights or she would hear their footsteps. And she said she actually got comfortable with some of these presences. They just felt like the energy shifted when they entered a room. And one in particular she got very comfortable with. And she named him Arthur. And she said she felt this general aura of like protection with him. Like sort of like he was her Casper. Said he would come in around the same time every single night with the same feeling and the same energy. And she would greet him. She would be like, "Hey, how are you?" Same as any bartender would with a regular walking into the bar and that was it. He would just be there. He was calm. He was neutral. She never felt anything besides peace when he was around, which is why when she experienced something else, she knew it wasn't Arthur. He knew that this other presence was stronger and that it wanted to harm her. She said she was working alone and the AC wasn't doing much. It was a really hot night. Fans were running, the doors were cracked open. They were trying to catch any breeze they could, but she said the room felt suffocating. The bar was completely empty and she was sitting at a table near the bar, facing the door, just kind of playing on her phone. Then she heard the door open and then there was the sound of footsteps. She looked up. She saw the door was open, but no one had entered. And she's like, "It's not a big deal. It's probably just Arthur. It's probably just one of the regulars." It was a little earlier than Arthur normally came in. And she's like, "Uh, you know, don't think anything of it."

[00:10:19]And again, this paranormal activity is normal at this hotel. She says, "Anyone that works there can tell you this." So anyway, she goes back to looking at her phone, not freaking out yet. Why would she? This happens all the time. She heard the sound of a pool ball being cracked across the table. It was deliberate, like someone had lined up a shot and then taken it. And so she looks over and she sees one of the balls rolling across the pool table. And of course, she's still completely alone in the bar. And this was more intense activity than she was used to. Normally, she just felt a presence. But all of a sudden, the entire bar seemed to come alive at once. There were footsteps in every direction. Glasses were clinking behind the bar. Balls across each table were striking and scattering in every direction, and it sounded like there was laughter coming from at least 20 people all around the bar. She said if she had been standing outside the door, it would have sounded like a group of people had just flooded the bar all at once. And she said she immediately jumped up and she was scanning the room for any type of movement, a shadow, a reflection, just something to make sense of the noise, but of course there was nothing.

[00:11:16]She said I could feel presences moving all around me. It felt like people were walking past me and I knew I wasn't alone. said it felt like I was standing in the room while another reality was layered over me and an entirely different dimension was bleeding into mine. And she said, "I'm telling you, as someone who had grown pretty used to paranormal activity in this bar, this was the creepiest experience in my life because it did not feel harmless and then all at once it stopped." She says the silence felt wrong. It didn't feel like silence as in everything had disappeared. It felt like things had gotten silent on purpose, like they were waiting for something. They were just being quiet. And then she said the window started rattling. It wasn't a gentle rattle. She said it was violent, like something was trying to get in.

[00:11:59]Before she could even process what was happening, her body went numb. And she said she can only describe what felt like hot oil being poured all over her skin. It was like a surge of energy shot through her. It was overwhelming. It was consuming. And she jumped up and ran out into the hallway. She ran down to the front desk and told the people working that something weird was going on upstairs. And some of the people laughed at her, but another girl who worked at the front desk who knew her offered to go back up with her. The time they got back up to the seventh floor bar, she said she was still shaking and she was trying to close everything out as quickly as she could. Her register was facing the door and her co-orker who worked the front desk was sitting at the bar facing the door. They were quietly talking when her coworker went silent and she stared past her at the door. She said quietly, "I don't want to freak you out, but I can see him." Edie said she was too scared to turn around, but she looked at her coworker and she said, "I know. Just ignore him." She says she meant it because she knows that engaging is the worst thing that you can do. Kept going about her clothes the fastest that she could, but she said the entire time she felt a body pressed up against her.

[00:13:00]And the longer they ignored him, the worse it got. She said that he seemed to get angry. He was pressing into her harder. It felt like pressure was building in the air. And then she said all of a sudden that feeling turned familiar, like she knew that energy before, but it had felt harmless. said she had to work a few shifts up there after that night because she couldn't afford to quit, but eventually she did.

[00:13:20]That presence didn't leave her alone entirely after she left. She said she still felt the sensation of being watched even when she was home. Same presence seemed to follow her around town. And she said she even saw a few practitioners about it trying to figure out how something had attached to her.

[00:13:35]From what she gathered from seeing these different practitioners, uh she was told that it was a warlock, a very powerful one. One told her that all of the energy she felt all of the spirits that she called her regulars were energy and entities tied to him were his captives and they were coming to her for help.

[00:13:53]And she said she doesn't want to get too into that because she said that there's a lot of belief surrounding this. She doesn't want to put a target on herself.

[00:14:00]So I'm not sure exactly what she means by that. But she did say that what she experienced changed her and what she believes changed how seriously she takes what she feels. says, "We always want to rationalize these things and we always want to find a logical way to explain them away. Always tell ourselves that nothing can touch us outside of what we believe and that we just freak out and that nothing is really real." But she says, "The truth is that many things exist outside of our understanding and they all deserve respect." Said, "One thing that I've realized after experiencing this and talking to all these practitioners and practicing a little bit myself now is how many people walk around with no protection and no grounding." She said they're just available for anything to attach to them. She said as a result, she started practicing grounding, protection, and boundaries. She said these things matter, especially in places like Eureka Springs where a lot of factors make the town what it is. The water table, the limestone, the history. Says there's a reason so many sensitive people are drawn there because you can feel that energy all the time. said she does have more information, but she is more so interested if people are even interested in what she has to say, either about what she's learned or about her other experiences. So, she'll be seeing the comments. Her name is Dee. Let her know.

[00:15:16]Let's talk about the color blue and why so many people in the south still paint their houses this color and what it's protecting them from. This spooky scary story time, which is also a little bit of a spooky scary history lesson, comes from Eta. And she says she was raised within and still practices certain elements of the Gulla culture, which was brought over originally by enslaved people from West Africa and sort of evolved it before, during, and after emancipation. And while it's not a closed practice like hudoo, she says it is a protected one, and many people within the culture don't like to talk about it with outsiders, but she would rather have you get this information from someone on the inside. She said she thinks this community is largely open-minded and she appreciates other people's perspectives, but she wanted to clear some things up because she knows that there's like a spooky element attached to Gola a lot of the time, but it's not evil like people think. Family has been in South Carolina for generations. Her fourth great granddaddy worked the rice fields and he built a house after emancipation that she and her two daughters still live in to this day. That it's nothing fancy. It's a three- room shack essentially with a tin roof. But every single spring she and her daughters mix up paint blue and they paint the entire house. says they used to use indigo from old diveats, lime, sweet milk, and just enough white lead paint to get that robin's egg blue color. It says the original Gulla people did this because they knew from the old folks who crossed over on ships that restless spirits could not cross water.

[00:16:30]Believe the ocean was the line between the living and whatever followed. And if you painted the ceiling that color, the Hannes would get confused, thinking they already crossed the sky or the ocean and they would turn back. He was also raised to keep bottle trees in the yard. And these were bottles that they put on branches of old cedar trees to catch whatever rattled in the wind. Spirits would slip inside at night and in the morning the sun would burn them up. Old root work suggested putting salt on every threshold and a handful of rice on the front porch if you suspected a boohag. These traditions were passed woman to woman and her own great granny said that this was called keeping the line clean. This is interesting because her great granny also said that hints were the spirits that didn't die clean.

[00:17:06]They're thought to be the spirits of those who died wrong or with unfinished business, who were wronged or whose spirits refused to leave the low country soil. They still remember what they endured and are still angry about it and are willing to take it out on whoever lives on that soil today. Some of them are just tricksters and mostly harmless, like a cold spot in a room or a door that won't stay closed. But other ones are angrier and meaner, and they don't mess with you physically, but they get inside your head and make you crazy.

[00:17:32]These are the dangerous ones because they wear the faces of people you miss.

[00:17:36]They go inside your head and they make you question if your thoughts are your own, if your doubts are real, if you have the will to keep living. Sometimes they slip into your dreams and they ride you at night until you lose your will to live. You feel a sensation on your chest at night feeling like you can't move or you can't breathe. I think it's what people describe as sleep paralysis.

[00:17:55]That's a boohhag. And she says that these are women who sold their souls or women who died so angry that they couldn't stay buried. And at night they shed their skin like a snake. They fly out on the wind until they find a house with any crack that they can enter. So a keyhole, window gap, even the space below a door. They'll find someone sleeping and then they ride their chest and they the breath right out of your lungs sucking up your strength, your spirit, your sense of who you are. And you wake up in the morning and you're exhausted and you're bruised on the inside. nightmares that you can't quite remember, but that leave you so terrified that you are reluctant to fall asleep again. Some of the older folks say that if she likes your skin enough, she'll wear it during the day. And that's the terrifying part because you never know if the neighbor you see smiling and waving at you is really them. Look just like somebody that you know, but you don't really know if something else is wearing their skin.

[00:18:42]She keeps coming back until you start forgetting the salt or until you stop painting the ceiling or until you start doubting the old ways. That's the worst thing that can happen. says she keeps all these traditions up because the Boohag and the Hannes only need one bad night for you to forget who you are, for you to let them in so that they can convince you to do all the work to destroy yourself. This is because of one shape shifter story that her own great granny told Eda happened to her. So Eda's great granny, and by the way, great granny is the term that she used to describe her. I'm not just like putting my own spin on this here. Um, her own great granny was still sharecropping the fields that her own grandparents had been enslaved on. There was a root doctor who lived next door and for whatever reason he felt like her great granny's family had wronged him some way and a shape shifter came for them. But it wasn't spirit haint. It was a person who wore the skin of someone that they loved. So her great granny's mother opened the door one night and on the porch stood her own dead husband who was smiling sweetly whispering her name and telling her that her own children would be better off without her. She fought it off with the haint blue and salt, but the exhaustion stayed and day after day she would wake up more tired than the day before and she developed a cough. And the other locals and the other old folks in the area described her as being hagridden. She was so tired she couldn't think straight and they ended up finding her floating down the Ashley River with rice grains still clutched in her fist as if she had been counting them to keep away the boohag.

[00:20:05]But she had lost. says it then skipped a generation and one afternoon her granddaddy let one of the bottle trees fall over in a storm. Didn't fix it right away. But then one night saw his own dead brother standing on his porch waving to him to come outside and talk about the old days. His own brother had been dead for 10 years at that point.

[00:20:23]But he followed anyway and they found him the next morning halfway to the river with his eyes rolled back in his head still alive but talking nonsense to no one. It says that he lived but he was never quite the same. he was never right again and spent the rest of his life painting the ceilings four times a year and checking the salt lines across the thresholds at night like it was his full-time job. But his own mom told her that the hat doesn't kill you outright.

[00:20:46]It just makes you do the killing yourself. Slow and deliberate and one bad decision at a time until you're so twisted up you can't tell the voice in your head from your own. And Eda says she's the one who carries it now. says she's 43 and she keeps everything very exact with the salt lines on the threshold, the rice on the porch, the bottle trees in the yard, and the ceilings hang blue. She says for the last 2 years, things have felt like something has shifted. Her oldest went off to school and the house felt very quiet because it was just her and her other daughter in the house. She was working overnights at the hospital, but on other nights when she was home and off work, she started waking up around 3:00 in the morning. The weight on her chest that felt like a grown man standing on it. And she said she knew immediately what this was. And the voices started because she said that she heard her own mother's voice and her mother passed three years ago. But she heard her mother's voice from the other room say, "Eta, are you sure you mixed the blue right this year?" And the first time she heard it, she got up and checked and she made sure that the blue was fine. Said it was perfect, actually.

[00:21:38]But the doubt stayed and she started questioning, "Is it the right shade of blue?" That's how she says she knows that it's already inside of her. says she thinks it's in her youngest daughter, too, because just two months ago, she got home from work and her younger daughter was sitting on the front porch and she said, "We really have to paint the ceilings blue this year. If we just let it peel, that's easier." Says she checked the salt lines and noticed that it was broken like her daughter had dragged her foot through it. Said I could feel it testing the edges of what I am willing to believe through my daughter, but I know better than to let it win. Said she keeps redoing the entire house, but she knows that it's there waiting for her to slip.

[00:22:12]She said, "That's what eight generations have taught me. It doesn't need to break in. It just needs me to slip up and stop believing that the old ways work." Says her own daughters know about why they put up bottle trees and why they paint the ceilings blue. But she said she's sharing this because maybe somebody else out there needs to understand why their mother checked the ceilings at 3:00 a.m.

[00:22:30]They need to understand that she's not crazy. She's holding the line. also added a very nice note at the end of her email and she wanted to thank you all for listening, for letting her tell her story and for keeping an open mind. You have a spooky scary story time, one that you think nobody would believe or that makes you question your own sanity, especially if it's a generational one, we would love to hear it.

[00:22:52]on the beach at Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. And I actually came here to tell you a story that was submitted by a listener about her great-grandfather's ring that was thrown into this ocean and supposedly still washes up on this beach. And he swore that ring was cursed until the day he died. This spooky scary story time submission came from Claire and she said she's never told anyone this outside of her family, but there's a first time for everything. And she says that her great-grandfather, his name was Harlen, he was from Charleston, South Carolina, and he was also a World War II vet. And in 1944 during the push up the Italian peninsula, he bought a heavy gold ring with a deep red stone from a street vendor in Naples, Italy.

[00:23:29]And he brought it back to Charleston in 1946. Back at my hotel. I'm going to film the rest of the story here because it was too windy out there and I didn't bring a mic. But in 1946, Harland returned to South Carolina and he brought the ring with him to give to his wife as a gift for their anniversary.

[00:23:43]But within two weeks of putting it on, she had passed. He had been otherwise healthy. But one afternoon sitting on the porch, she started to get very pale.

[00:23:50]And that night, she passed in her sleep beside him. Her lips were blue in the morning and the doctors chocked it up to exhaustion. Couldn't bear to look at the ring after that and put it in a box until his oldest daughter got married.

[00:24:01]And on her wedding day, he slipped it onto her finger and she wore it during the ceremony at St. Phillips. 2 weeks after her wedding, her new husband found her dead in their marital bed. And it was the same thing. She was pale as a ghost. Her lips were blue and the doctors deemed it congenital weakness.

[00:24:15]But Harlon apparently knew better. After the death of his oldest daughter, Harlon could not bear to keep the ring in his possession any longer and he walked it down to a pawn shop on King Street that was sandwiched between an oyster house and a tailor. He gave it to the pond broker and the pond broker gave him $30.

[00:24:29]Felt a weight lift off his shoulders as he passed it on and he thought that that was the end of it. Late 1970s, Harland had left his family home and moved across the river and was now living near Sullivan's Island. And every night he would walk the beach. liked it because it was very close to the fort where he had once stood watch after the war. Long after he picked up this habit of walking the beach one hazy dusk, uh he was walking the beach and a woman stepped out of the water and she was wearing a white dress. She was no older than 25, soaking wet with dark curly hair that swept across her face and she slowly walked toward him, stopped a few feet from Harland and slowly opened her palm and in her palm was the heavy gold ring with a blood red stone. Without a word, she picked it up with her other hand and pressed it into his palm and he described her fingers as being ice cold.

[00:25:10]She leaned in close and whispered, "It always finds the one who spilled blood for it." Turned and walked back into the tide. And he screamed for her to stop, but she disappeared under the water.

[00:25:18]Second, he saw her white dress floating in the waves, and the next second it was gone. Curled the ring as far as he could throw it back into the water. He watched the sun glint off the gold before it disappeared beneath the surface. Thing was, Clare says it never stayed gone. A week later, he was walking the beach after a particularly bad storm when he looked down and saw a glint of something shiny in the sand. He looked down and right below his boot was the ring.

[00:25:40]Thought it must have been a fluke and he carried it home and buried it deep into the earth underneath a live oak in his backyard. The next morning the earth where he had buried it was disturbed and the ring sat on the ground to the tree with bits of sand still caught in the setting glinting underneath the sun. He thought an animal must have dug it up.

[00:25:56]So desperate, he drove to the middle of the Cooper River Bridge at midnight and dropped it into the water. Two weeks later, Claire's father was fishing off of the same pier when he caught a fish and took it home to clean it. When he cleaned it in the kitchen sink, the ring tumbled out of the fish's stomach.

[00:26:10]Caught the guard on the drain and it was still warm. Says for the rest of his life, Harland tried to break the curse.

[00:26:16]He confessed fragments of the truth to three different Italian priests and often sent money to various Italian war relief charities. Really before his death, he actually flew back to Naples for a week and spent a week wandering the old neighborhoods asking anyone who would listen about Estraga's ring and a widow who passed in 1944. But nobody knew who or what he was talking about.

[00:26:36]It wasn't until his passing on his deathbed that he confessed how he had actually come into possession of this ring. He had never bought the ring from any vendor. In a bombed out village just outside of Naples, he came across a young widow and her infant son. Wore the ring on her finger and offered it to him in exchange for her life. She told him that Estraga, her grandmother, who was an Italian witch, had placed a blessing on the ring to protect her family.

[00:26:58]Harland took the ring and put a single bullet in her chest. Anyway, one of her last breaths, the dying woman apparently whispered some kind of curse on him, telling him that the ring would return again and again to members of his family until the debt was paid in full. Passed that night and they buried him without the ring, but it still didn't stay gone.

[00:27:17]Claire says all of this happened before she was born. This is just sort of the legend in her family and she only believed it as something half true, like an old ghost story. Few months ago, she was walking the beach on Sullivan's Island when she saw a woman in a white dress who was soaking wet walking across the beach. She thought the woman was heading toward her. Instead, she approached a man and she watched the woman lean in and revealed something in the palm of her hand. He whispered something to the man and turned and walked into the water before disappearing underneath the surface entirely. Watched the man watch the woman disappear into the water as well, and he just looked shocked, but after a moment, he looked down at his hand and she saw him slip a ring onto his finger.

[00:27:52]said, "I didn't see it up close, but I could tell it was gold from the way the sun caught it." Watched him turn and walk off in the opposite direction down the beach. And she said she didn't know him. She doesn't think he's part of her family. She doesn't know what happened to the ring, but she wonders if that debt is still being paid somewhere by someone else. Been combing the beach looking for this ring since I've been out here, but I don't think this ring is meant for me.

[00:28:17]Vampires on Florida Space Coast. That was a subject line of an email I received from someone who said that there have been a number of victims who have turned up along Florida space coast over the years and these deaths have been ruled suspicious by investigators.

[00:28:29]A lot of these cases are still open. And the person who sent this message said that he moved there in 2013 and had a very unsettling experience of his own late at night on the beach. And I'm going to tell you his experience, but he also pointed out a number of cases that he said that I should look at because he believes that these cases being clustered so close together point at something more sinister going on in the area. Whether it's vampires or not, I'm not going to speculate. Okay? I'm just going to present the information and then I'm going to tell you what he said.

[00:28:54]Person who sent this story says that he lives just south of Canaveral where they launched the rockets and he can actually see the rocket launches from his driveway. He's just east of Melbourne.

[00:29:02]North of Patrick Space Force Base is Cocoa Beach, which is very touristy.

[00:29:06]South of the base are smaller communities that are quiet. Everything shuts down by like 900 p.m. In this general area, there have been a string of unexplained deaths that have left investigators and locals with the same haunting questions. In September of 2023, Kathleen Stewart's body was found in a wooded brush area of Pelican Beach Park in Satellite Beach. Been reported missing and endangered a few weeks earlier in August of 2023. And when they found her, they realized that she had been deceased for several days, but there were no obvious trauma signs to her body. Despite no obvious signs of trauma, her death was initially treated as suspicious because they found her in an isolated area after she had been reported missing and endangered. Autopsy and toxicology reports were performed and her death was treated as no foul play. Although I did find some statements online from her family who says that they still don't have answers.

[00:29:53]A few weeks later, skeletal remains belonging to Cassandra Janelle Blackman were found in an area known as the compound. And this is a 12mi stretch that's wildly overgrown. It's considered abandoned private property in Palm Bay, but her remains were sun bleached, indicating that they had been there for a few weeks. No bicycle or vehicle was found nearby. She had not been reported missing, but this area is kind of known as a dumping ground for criminal activity. She was actually the fifth death in that area in under a year.

[00:30:22]Bombay police treated it as suspicious as well. And they said that they were questioning how she got there, when she got there, and why she was there. And her remains were sent for autopsy, but from what I could find, it's still under investigation today. Coming back a little further, Katherine Gadget Luby's remains were found in Satellite Beach in a sandy area behind a construction site of a partially finished beach house and construction workers were actually the ones that found her. Her clothing was partially removed and her death was also initially treated as suspicious. Body was in an unusual isolated location.

[00:30:54]There was no clear cause of death. This was initially treated as a potential homicide, though later the case was closed with no foul play suspected. The initial suspicious classification stem directly from the unusual circumstances from which she was found. There are many other victims who have turned up in this general area which sort of hint at a broader pattern of unsolved cold cases.

[00:31:14]What stands out is that the circumstances of the deaths don't exactly line up and seem off-putting at first. The person who sent this story in said that his experience took place about a week before they found this body behind this unfinished beach house in 2015. He had been in this habit of taking his bicycle out in the middle of the night and going for rides up along the beach because he just had trouble sleeping. Only about a half mile from the beach. And he said the area where he lives is pretty unique in that there's no condos built up to the water. Long time ago, the land owners had set up land grants to keep most of this area undeveloped. In fact, the area is actually unusually well protected during hurricane watches because natural dunes act as a barrier because they haven't been disturbed for construction. With that in mind, on a sleepless night, he was out riding his bike. It was about 1:00 in the morning and he stopped and he changed his bike in a parking lot and walked down to the water. Oh, this particular beach park where he stopped is relatively small, it's also unusually dark because they keep the lighting low as to not disturb the nesting sea turtles. Even though Highway A1A is only a few hundred yards away from these dunes. And as he walked down to the water, he was completely alone. He realized when he locked up his bike that there were no other cars in the lot. and as far as he could see down the coast north and south there were no other people. He said he was sort of lost in his own thoughts as he walked onto the water and let his feet sink into the sand. And as he's sitting on the shoreline after a few minutes he had this sensation of being watched. So he turned around and he saw a man standing behind him. He said this man was so close that he was only about an arm's length away and the man stood tall in a black suit and he said he was wearing black wing tip shoes. startled obviously. First of all, because this man is standing so close to him, but then also because this man is dressed in completely formal attire when the normal beach uniform is cut off shorts and flip-flops. All this man said to him was, "Quiet night, no moon." Pointed at the sky and the person who sent this story said that he followed his gesture and he looked up and he realized that there wasn't a moon or that it wasn't visible. He was unnerved but thought it was just a weirdo on the beach. But after a few seconds, he turned back and the man was gone. said it couldn't have been more than 10 or 20 seconds and there was nowhere for that man to have disappeared to so fast. He looked up and down the beach and back toward the parking lot, but there was no signs of life. He stood up from where he sat in the sand and looked for hard sold footprints in the sand because he had noticed the man's shoes, but noticed there weren't any. Beach was smooth other than his own footprints that he had made just a few minutes earlier. But he headed back toward his bike. He said that he half expected to see the man standing in the parking lot, but parking lot was still deserted. He hopped on his bike and said he had a creeping feeling the entire time he was riding back to his house, looking back over his shoulder the entire time. Says he doesn't know who or what he encountered that night, but it was less than a week later when the body was found behind the construction site less than a mile up the beach. Says he's not sure if it's related or not, but he can't shake the feeling that his feet being in the water that night saved him from a more sinister fate. This is Spooky Scary Story Time. The series where we share listeners allegedly true stories about the creepiest or most unsettling things that they've ever experienced. If you have a story, please send it in. We would love to hear it.

[00:34:20]What' y'all think? What was your favorite story? Do you live in a location that you think is especially haunted or like there's something weird going on there? Let me know. You can submit stories uh whether it's related to this episode or just something else entirely, something that you have been too afraid to share or that feels too heavy to carry alone. You can submit stories on do goodsdaybad.com. That's my website. There's also a merch store there if you want to help support the channel. And you can also become a patron of the channel if you'd like to help in another way. This scrolling list next to my head is all of the people who already support the channel and our patrons. And I appreciate you guys all so much. Um I could not do this without you and you help me bring you more and more stories every week. So, thank you so much and thank you to everyone who just checks in and listens. I know I see a lot of the same people in the comments week after week and I just think you are the greatest community on the internet.

[00:35:05]So, thank you so much. And I'm going to try to film a bunch this week and get another episode out before the week ends of all new stories. So, um, keep an eye out for that. And in the meantime, stay spooky, question everything. I'll cut you guys.