Episode Details

A continuation of the Hallowed Ground series by The Vesper's Bell.TranscriptGood evening, it's Spooky Boo coming to you from the lighthouse in Sandcastle, California. I'm your nighttime DJ at the KSND radio station. Tonight I have for you part 3 of Hallowed Ground by The Vesper's Bell.This podcast would not be possible without the listeners and the Patreon members including madjoe, P.A. Nightmares, Ivy Iverson, John Newby, Patrick, and 933TheVolt.com. Find out how you can support the show at www.scarystorytime.com/support.Watch Creature Features and chat with me on Saturday nights in the YouTube chat room. We'll watch horror host Vincent Van Dahl interview fun guests while Mr. Livingston puts up with Tangella's shinanigans. Poor Handrew. Find out your showtime at www.creaturefeatures.tv.Now let's begin...Hallowed Ground Part 3The Vesper's BellAs you’ve probably noticed by now, I’m typically a fairly anxious person, and moving out to an abandoned, haunted cemetery and living off the grid miles from town was not a decision that I made lightly. I worried about everything that could possibly go wrong, and probably quite a few things that couldn’t actually go wrong, but no matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it I could not break my own resolve. I couldn’t leave the cemetery and its secrets to rot. No matter the challenges or risks, I would make it my own.I wasn’t foolhardy about it either, though. I did a lot of research and preparation for it, and before I was willing to fully commit by buying a camper trailer, I decided I needed to spend at least one full night in the cemetery to make sure I wouldn't be in any danger from the spirits that dwelt just on the other side of the weakened Veil. Otherworldly things do tend to be more active at night, when the Veil is a little weaker and mortals tend to be either sleepy or fearful. The man had been squatting there for at least several weeks, but I was unsure what precautions, if any, he had taken to ensure his safety.The cemetery itself sits in the middle of a municipal forest called Harrowick Woods, a little under ten miles past the city limits. It’s around a mile wide by four miles long, with a country lane named Harrowick Mile Road slicing through the center. The cemetery is a five-acre plot of land in the middle, just to the north of the lane. With the exception of the entry arch, the graveyard itself is almost entirely obscured by the tree line, and the path leading into it is easy to overlook. Harrowick Mile isn’t that heavily used either, so even if it wasn’t hexed, the cemetery is pretty inconspicuous.Since I couldn’t find anything about a cemetery in Harrowick Woods online, I combed through records at the public library and town hall, and still came up empty. Ever since the man’s ancestor made it hallowed ground, information about the cemetery and anything in it just fade from mortal memory.If I stayed long enough, I’d probably be forgotten too.I am at least pretty sure that the existence of the cemetery is perfectly natural, since it makes sense that back in the days before motor vehicles the local farming community would have wanted a closer graveyard than the one in town.My research wasn’t entirely fruitless, however, since the Harrowick Woods has long held a reputation of being haunted. Over the past two centuries there’s been at least dozens of sightings and encounters of spirits and fairies, a legend about a horned Green Man that still protects the woods from development, a handful of other minor cryptids, and even one account of the Harrowick Mile becoming an infinite loop during certain times, just to name a few. Aside from the will-of-the-wisps, I had yet to experience any of these things during my time in the cemetery.While there wasn’t a lot of consistency between the various alleged encounters and folklore, I did manage to find multiple incidents of hikers wandering off the trails and experiencing missing time, which is exactly what would happen if a non-cl