Are you looking for your next spooky themed podcast? Well, Rattled and Shook is a weekly podcast featuring true horror stories sent in by real people. We have guests, themed episodes, and immersive sound design so you can really feel the hairs on the back of your next stand. Oh, and we've got a touch of that nostalgic old-timey radio show charm. Join us. Rattled and shook is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Before we jump into our Halloween episode, a huge thanks to our latest Patreon members, Ryan, Shmeasy, and Rogerna Sone, Sarah, Mikaela, Jay Perk, Lisa, Instant Dumbass, and Jared, you put the spirit in spirit Halloween. Our Patreon members get early access to episodes and bonus content, so consider joining to get caught up on a back catalog of tons of exclusive spooky stories. Other ways you can support the podcast is by leaving us a five-star rating and a review. Another way you can support us is by coming to our live show on November 2nd. If you are listening to this on Halloween, when the episode comes out, we have our first ever live show in two days. We will be sharing ghost stories from historic A Schwab on World Famous Feel Street. Tickets are linked on our website and in the show notes. We'd love to see you there. I'm Melissa Sweeney and I'm Nate Reisman and this is You Can See Me In The Dark. It's our 2025 Super-sized Halloween episode. We have five stories from four storytellers, Dusty, Blue Fire Raging, Patreon member treasure, and Danielle. So turn off the lights and settle in. First up is Dusty, a former tour guide from one of the oldest and most haunted places in the United States.

St. Augustine, Florida.

Dusty takes it from here.

Hi, I'm Dusty. I live in currently in Jacksonville, Florida, but I went to Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, which is one of the top 10 most haunted cities in the US. Absolutely gorgeous.

It's the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States.

So it has a lot of history where it switched hands from the Spanish, the British,

Spanish again, and just a lot of a lot of battles, a lot of war, a lot of death, disease, yellow fever, ran rampant at some point, in the 1800s. It was a nice kind of like area in the middle for like trade and a lot of ships would come in and it was really good. So they had a lot of histories and pirates, I don't know if you've ever seen any of the pirate history there, but definitely a lot of death, a lot of dark, dark history as well, and from like the 1500s. So it has a lot going on for it. And there's, I can't think of any place there that somebody isn't like, all that place is haunted. My best friend, her name is Renee, she ended up she started working at the same company that I did. We went, we actually both went to Flagler for the same program and we didn't really know each other at school until she started working with me actually if you asked her she didn't like me at first. But we started working at the same ghost tour company. And we, I remember two, our boss got these dousing rods. And I was like, man these are really cool. I'm gonna start using them on my ghost tour. And I did. So I introduced them at the very end of one of my tours. And I kind of let people use them too. And dousing rods, they're like this, they're copper usually. And historically they were used to search for ground water. You need to walk around and if you came over some water they would cross. So you hold them parallel and they would cross and then you could like dig and find water historically. Now a lot of people use them for paranormal investigative reasons. You ask questions. So you hold them parallel and you would ask a question, you know, yes or no. And if it's yes, they would cross and that would be your yes answer. And if they're no, they really don't do much or they would like just kind of open up again. I still have my pair. But we I introduced that at the end of the tour and everybody loved it. So it became more popular to do and my boss ended up like asking us to do it more and more and then we ended up having paranormal investigations. So we ended up with EMF readers, spirit boxes, something called boobair. That was terrifying. It's like this stuffed bear and it has a recorded voice that asks questions like every minute or 40 seconds for EVP purposes like if you're like recording it'll just ask random questions and it's supposed to appeal to I guess children's periods Which we had a few of But it's it's creepy. It's kind of like how a doll is creepy because it would just be like, do you want to play and it's like a kid voice and just while sitting there trying to investigate. And sometimes I like to tell myself, sometimes people forgot to turn it off. When I came in the next day and it's like 6 a.m. and it's dark still on the only one in the building. What's spookier about it is that if something touched Boo bear it would say I like hugs Or if the temperature changed like sometimes it would drop it'd be like it got cold in here And it was those two things were I think the two things hated to hear from the bear. I walked in once and it was like across the room and it just went, I like hugs and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go set outside. But anyway, so it became something that we would do. We would do investigations and my friend Renee, I didn't know this at first, but I guess she could kind of see things. She was really good at it. And me being the person I am, I love ghosts and paranormal, anything, but I'm also like really skeptical, I guess, because I was like, okay, sure. We would have people come on tours that were like, they'd be like, I'm psychic and we're like, you look cool. And then this probably isn't like nice, but I remember once Renee made up a story and just to see if like the person was actually you a psychic and they definitely ran with it. And so we were like, all right. You know, that, okay. But that's just kind of how I start off thinking about things. I'm like, yeah, I guess I'll believe it when I see it. But there was this one group that came on one of our tours and I don't remember all of their names, but I remember her name was Jill and she was awesome and there was that's her and like three other ladies and they loved us together because you know we're funny so she asked it our boss if she could do a paranormal lock-in of our building from like midnight to 4 a.m. and it was it was a lot of fun. We hosted it me and Renee. At some point Renee started just this is the first time I saw her like do this with somebody where I was like wow she that was cool. She started trying to you know what the dowsing rods trying to talk to some of our resident ghosts that we were privy to, that we spoke into a bunch. She's randomly kind of just goes, David, who's David? I was like, I don't know who's David. She's like, I don't know, I keep hearing David. Well, I don't know whatever. And so she keeps going with the rods trying to talk to Edward or any of the kids, any of the ghosts that we know. And then she ran out and she stops again. And she's like, okay, I have to, I don't know who David is, but David, I keep seeing David or hearing David. and I'm seeing flowers and like It's kind of like a medical hospital bed, I guess I don't know And then one of the ladies finally steps up as she's like did you say David? She was like yes, do you know a David and this woman was like I I have to go for a minute and just like stepped outside and she, you know, she came back in, she was tearing, she cried. And she was like, okay, so David is essentially basically like a father figure to me. You know, his name was David and he got really sick and I was taking care of him. And I don't remember the career she had at the time that she was taking care of him. She wanted to work, I think, in floral flowers. But it was one of those where I'm going to leave a really good job to go do a passion. She was having a hard time with it, but he really supported me and he ended up passing. It was really, really hard. And Renee was like, well, he keeps saying, you know, whatever it is you want to do, he keeps saying, if you're happy, I'm happy. And she, she sobbed right there because she said that that was something he always said to her like, hey, if you're happy, I'm happy, you know, and basically just to do what it is she wanted to do. And that was really, really cool because I was like, there's, we don't know these people. There's literally no way she would have known a phrase he said to her, the

flowers. She was taking care of him when he was really, really ill and they had the medical setup. So I was like, man, that was really, really cool. She's like, yeah, I don't know, sometimes see things. She brushed it off. She was real nonchalant about it. There was a different time where I was giving a tour and sometimes we would do, we would all do tours on the same night but they would be spaced out just a little bit so like one tour would leave and then like 30 minutes later another tour would leave. So we'd probably see each other in passing at some point and then at the end of her tour or my tour, if it ended first, we would just like hang out at the building and wait for the other person to finish. We would just hop on the end of their tour just for fun. And so it was her tour ended and she was waiting for mine at the building because at the building we would do the little investigation at the end. It was great. That building was so haunted. But she hopped on my tour. And this, I remember this whole tour. It was great. It was really packed. But there was this, specifically this one couple. And the woman was having a great time. She was in love with the stories, she was spooked out the whole time. The husband, like this six-two, six-four man, big burly dude, rolling his eyes the entire tour, did not believe in anything that I said was very skeptical, which happens, you know, that he went for his wife and that's okay, it was still. It was still a lot of fun. Even if no one believed in the ghost, the history was still fun to listen to. But, you know, they're standing, it was to my left. They were standing right to my left. And I'm telling my stories. And Renee literally interrupted me. She was like, hold on a second. Sorry. Do you like chocolate cake? To this rant, like this man standing to my left, I was like, okay. And he was like, yeah, you know, just kind of shrugged, like yeah. And then she was like, okay, sorry, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Dusty. I was like, okay. And then I kept telling my story and she stopped me again. She was like, hold on, I'm sorry. I just, because I keep seeing it, I have to. I keep seeing, and she looks at this man again. And she says, I keep seeing a baby in a high chair and it's like a party. there's chocolate cake, like a little chocolate cake. This older man is there watching the baby in his chocolate cake. She's like, and then I see kind of the same thing, but it's two babies with high chairs and chocolate cake and you're there like you and this dude also broke down He, like she had to take him outside to finish telling him. So one, I could finish my stories, but two, you know, he needed a minute also and he stepped outside. And I remember listening at the end too, he said, so it is a tradition in my family. I think it was like a German chocolate cake. It, you know, on our first birthday, we get a little chocolate cake and we just get to eat it. And, you know, it's just what we do. I have a chocolate cake when I turned one and my sons just had their birthday and they had their chocolate cakes. And he was really sad because his dad passed away before he could see his sons have their birthday. And Renee said, no, no, I saw him there. And I think he was telling me, he wants you to know that he was there. Like he saw them have their birthday and eat their cake. And that 6264 man cried. And it's just, it was really cool to see her do that. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like, how do you do that? And she was just so like, yeah, I just see things, you know, again, just like that. And then I just have to tell people. But I think the craziest time in my opinion is when she did it to me. In my head, I don't have anybody close to me that's ever passed away. I mean, I have family members, but when I was really, really young, I didn't really know them very well. They've passed away. But I've never had experiences where I'm like, I feel like I'm haunted. I don't know. But there's this one time where we were in my apartment. I think I was having a really hard day. I was crying, you know, and I'm just like telling her, real dramatic, emotional, whatever. And she just stops me and she dussy, dussy, stop. And she like came and sat next to me and like took my hand, which is weird because if you ever know Renee, she's not touchy-feely, you know? She's very, it's funny.

But she like took my hand and she said,

there's a man in the corner of the room.

And I was like, what are you talking about? Stop crying immediately. I was like, there's no man, what man? And she was like, no, there's like, there's a man standing in the corner of your room.

I don't know who it is.

And then she proceeds and she says,

it's an older man.

He's got kind of longish, longish,

silvery hair. I see like a yellow shirt. And then she said he got really mad and like, I guess, you know, what she said, scream debtor. Because I don't think he wanted to be known that he was there. You know, she's like, I've never seen him before,

but I think, you know, I was getting really emotional

about my personal life.

She's like, and he disappeared. I don't know. If that's normal. She's like, who is it? And I was like, no, I don't know. I don't know anybody that's died, really. especially a man, you know, my great aunt, I think, when I was like four. But she kept going. She said,

I keep seeing a pink room and I see like a little girl wearing, I don't know like a really long kind of gray-ish nightgown falling asleep like this. And she like showed me how the kid was sleeping and this man is sitting on the edge

of the bed. She's like, and dusty. If that's you, he's been with you since you were a child.

And I'm like, that's wild. I don't know who that is.

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