The Glory, the Priest, and the Pirates (part 1)
Holy Ghost Stories
Justin Gerhardt
4.9 • 553 Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Eli's watch, his corrupt sons take the Ark of the Covenant into battle with disastrous consequences.
Text: 1 Samuel 4
Players:
- Yahweh
- Eli
- Phineas & Hophni
- Phineas's wife
- The Ark of the Covenant
What's Spooky:
- Mass death in battle
- Rotting corpses
- Death by blunt trauma
- Death in childbirth
Credits:
Research, Writing, Narration, Sound Editing: Justin Gerhardt
Manuscript Editing: JL Gerhardt
Production: Hazefire Studios
Links:
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Can we control him? |
| 0:06.7 | This God who comes in cloud and fire, |
| 0:10.3 | who rattles mountains and severs seas, |
| 0:14.3 | will he bend to our will? |
| 0:18.4 | Run at our cadence, heed our invocations, is prayer effective? |
| 0:27.0 | Or is it more complicated than that? |
| 0:32.3 | This is a story about assumptions, about regrets. |
| 0:37.2 | It's a story about the collision of one set of values with another, |
| 0:41.0 | about upended expectations, dashed hopes. And it's a story about the incendiary presence of a |
| 0:51.5 | God who does not read scripts, but writes them. |
| 0:57.7 | I'm Justin Gerhardt. Welcome to Holy Ghost Stories. The |
| 1:13.6 | The It is nucleus, thrumming epicenter of orbit. |
| 1:36.7 | It is pulpit, locus of a ceaseless sermon on grace. |
| 1:42.6 | It is ship carrying tribes to a distant shore. |
| 1:48.5 | It is torch, dark slayer, wayfinder. |
| 1:53.4 | It is envelope cradling the words of a lover. |
| 1:56.9 | It is volcano, mass of steam and magma. And now it waits for him in the darkness. |
| 2:11.1 | He trembles as he stands before the veil, stripped of his usual ornamentation, clothed in simple white linen. |
| 2:20.5 | From one of his fingers hangs a sensor, its coals glowing red in the soft light. |
| 2:26.2 | In his upturned hands, two piles of incense beaten into a fine powder. |
| 2:32.3 | He points his elbow toward the curtain and pulls one panel aside, rustling |
| 2:37.4 | the wings of the embroidered cherubim. Aaron, brother of Moses, newly christened high priest |
... |
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