 Hey guys, so we're gonna do something a little bit different today. This will be the first time that I'm gonna do something like this, so if it doesn't go well, it might be the last. However, when I released the episode about the Low Country Witch Doctor, that's the Low Country of Georgia, I did talk a lot about my personal heritage. My mother's family is from the Low Country of South Carolina, and I admitted to you guys that I was born in South Carolina, was not born in Georgia. Well, I got a lot of messages from you guys. You wanted me to tell you some of the folklore and some of the ghost stories that I heard growing up as a child spending my summers in the Low Country of South Carolina. So we're gonna start a new topic today, and we're gonna call this story time. A lot of YouTube content creators do story times on their channel, and so we're gonna try it on this channel too. I didn't really think I was gonna do this, but you guys asked, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give. Alright, now before we get started, you know what to do, hit that subscribe button, hit the like button, and ring the bell if you want to be notified when new videos come out. Welcome to SOTaric Atlanta, my name is Bryce, and today I'm gonna tell you about the first ghost story I ever heard. Like I said, from the Low Country of South Carolina, Bryce is my mother's maiden name. My first name, her last name before she married my father, this apparently is a very common thing to do in the southeast. The Bryce family is a big family in South Carolina. I showed you guys in the Low Country video that the Williams Bryce Stadium is at the University of South Carolina. They're a huge medical family. We go back generations of doctors, and maybe in a future story time, I can show you guys some of the old equipment my ancestors had. Like I believe one of my aunts has one of my great, great whatever grandfathers old cutter, where they used to cut people to drain the blood when they thought that would help get rid of a disease. We know better now, but it's interesting to look at this old equipment that the doctors used way back when. So my grandfather, my grandfather was a man by the name of Boy Stafford Bryce. Again, he was a doctor. He was the middle child of three boys. His older brother was my great uncle, Joseph, or we call him Dodie, and his younger brother is my great uncle Larry. We called him Boogie. My grandfather's father, so my great grandfather was a man named Joseph Bryce, Dr. Joseph Bryce. I actually share his birthday. I never knew him, but we do share a birthday. And my great grandmother, my grandfather's mother was a woman named Alice Stafford. Now Alice was from Philadelphia. Her father, Henry Stafford, is straight up from the north. He's Philadelphia, and his wife, my great, great grandmother, was from London, England. She has a very interesting story herself. I'm not going to get into that. I don't know much about the Staffords though, because my grandfather used to say that his mother was a Yankee. So we didn't learn much about the Staffords of Philadelphia. So if you're a Stafford in Philadelphia, we might be cousins. But anyway, so my great grandfather, Joseph, went up to Philadelphia for residency where he met my great grandmother, Alice, married her, and brought her back down to the low country of South Carolina. Their house was actually in Southern living from time to time, I think more than once. But anyway, they died long before I was born. Now my grandmother, my mother's mother, her name was Maxine Strom. And as I said in the Low Country video, her cousin was the late Strom Thurman. They're both late now, my grandmother is no longer with us either. Strom Thurman is our longest running senator in the United States. And again, he was from South Carolina. My grandmother was the middle child as well of three girls. Her oldest sister, my great aunt B.J., moved up to Pennsylvania. And I think some of my second cousins watch this channel. So hi, you guys. And then her little sister, my great aunt Peggy, I believe spent her life in South Carolina as well. So for us, for my cousins and me and my mom and her sisters, they moved away from South Carolina. Now my grandparents both died relatively young. My grandfather died in his late 50s of cancer. And my grandmother died, ended up dying in her early 60s of cancer. So my mother and her sisters, there were four girls, actually did a really good job. They kept us all together. And I feel like with my cousins on my mom's side, I feel like they're my brothers and sisters. I don't know if they feel that way, but I do feel like my cousins on my mom's side that I have more of a sibling relationship with some of them than a cousin relationship. Which is a testament to my mom and her sisters. Now I did say back in the Low Country video that my grandparents, my mom's parents are buried in Georgia. However, growing up, our South Carolinian heritage was very important to them. Now my mother and her sisters, the four girls, they each had two children. So there's eight of us grand children. And I am the second oldest. So we would get a house, usually in Lichfield, South Carolina. Lichfield is right beside Paulie's Island, South Carolina, where our ghost story comes from today. Or we would go to Hilton Head or somewhere in the Low Country. We would get a house in the summertime and we would all live in the house together. Cue the picture of my cousin Sarah and me on the dock of our South Carolinian home for that summer. I am wondering off with my baby dogs. I guess I had better things to do. Now this South Carolinian coastal heritage was so important to my grandparents that my grandfather was very skeptical of people who didn't like seafood. Some of the most famous dishes in South Carolina are seafood dishes like sheet crab soup. Now I think my grandfather would probably be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew that I was actually a vegetarian. Now before I tell this story, I do have to emphasize that my family, they're good Christian people. I grew up Presbyterian. We always went to church. However, when you live or spend a lot of time in the Deep South, there's just this acceptance that there are things that we don't understand. The air breathes down here. There's been a lot of tragedy down here. And so for us ghost stories are a normal part of our coming of age, our growing up. And my mother was actually the first person to tell me a ghost story when I was a child. Now just to backtrack a little bit, I told you guys in the Gola video that my mother was born in Charleston, South Carolina. My grandfather ended up moving his family to Georgia for a medical job. And their first stop was Atlanta. My mother was a small child and again there were four girls. So my funny story, my grandmother was probably in her mid to late 20s at this time and she had these four small children that she was taking care of every day. My grandfather was off at the hospital all the time. And my mother used to tell me that one of her first fears as a child was the church ladies. And she said that when they first moved to Atlanta. Now for those who aren't from the South or don't remember this back in the day, when you moved into a new neighborhood, the church ladies, the ladies of the nearby neighborhood church would get together and make cast roles and come visit your family almost like a welcoming committee. Now my grandmother and my grandfather, both children of the low country, had just moved to not only a new city but a new state. So they didn't have any friends yet or really any footprints in the state of Georgia. Well my grandmother one day, my mom said that my grandmother who again was probably in her mid to late 20s at the time yelled at all the little girls, her four children, y'all get under the bed. We need to hide. The church ladies are coming. And so my mom and her sisters and my grandmother all proceeded to get under the bed to hide from the church ladies. Now bless my grandmother's heart. She was probably exhausted. She had all these small children. Again, she was in an unfamiliar city. And the last thing she wanted was these ladies in her home. She doesn't fear the church ladies anymore. In fact, I think that she kind of became a church lady at one point herself. So my mom and her sisters also spent a lot of their time in South Carolina during holidays and breaks. And so the ghost story my mother told me came from her family. I don't know if she's seen this ghost because she won't talk about it that much. One day we were sitting in our house in the low country and we always had a house right on the beach. And for those who know the low country, the Atlantic coast, the Atlantic ocean can be very temperamental. Our high tides can be very rough. Many a times I remember waking up and the dock leading out over the sand dunes would be like gone in the morning because we had had a rough high tide. And for those who are familiar with the low country, you know that all the houses in the low country are built up on stilts. To me that's normal. I'm used to seeing houses on stilts, but as I've gotten older I realize not many people realize that that is how they're built there. And a lot of that is because of the way the Atlantic ocean has a temperament of its own. So I was sitting in the living room looking out onto the veranda that faced the ocean. This was dusk and the rocking chairs out on the veranda started to move with the wind. And my mother made a comment and she goes, oh, I wonder if we're going to see the gray man. Well, who's the gray man? We end up learning that the gray man is this spirit. This ghost that haunts the South Carolinian low country, specifically Paulie's Island and the adjacent Lichfield. Now the story I heard growing up was that this man was coming from Charleston where he lived. Charleston is about 73 miles from Paulie's Island and he was traveling to Paulie's Island to see his fiance. Now believe it or not while he was on the way up to Paulie's Island his horse got stuck in quicksand and he died. Well, when the fiance found out that her lost love died in quicksand she went a little bit crazy and she started to walk up and down the beach searching for her fiance. Well, her parents got really worried about her and so they took her and they brought her down to Charleston to visit a doctor. Well, as soon as they left Paulie's Island to head down to Charleston a huge hurricane hit the island killing almost all of its inhabitants except his fiance's house, family house, was never, wasn't touched. It remained totally intact. So for 200 years now the residents of Paulie's Island and Lichfield know that if they see the gray man or if the gray man knocks on their door he is giving them a warning that a hurricane is coming and they need to get themselves into safety. Now the first spotting of the gray man was in 1822. Now there's no archival evidence that proves the story of this man being a person from Charleston and dying coming up to see his fiance that's just the legend. Not saying it's not true but we just don't have any archival proof. So other people have tried to put together other stories of who this gray man is or was in life. He's obviously somebody who loves the island and wants to protect its inhabitants. So Paulie's Island is actually, it's a very small island. In a 2010 census there were only about 100 residents living on the island. Now it started off as an island for people to have vacation homes back in the 1800s so they can get off their plantations and this island in particular would give them some relief from mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are horrible down here but because of the way the wind caught the island mosquitoes were not as prevalent in Paulie's Island as more inland on the plantations. So our first suspect is Percival Paulie who is the person that Paulie's Island is named after. Many people think that he is actually the gray man. Percival Paulie. The next suspect we have is Plowden Charles, Jean Rhett Weston. Percival, Plowden, Archibald. We need to step up our naming game in modern times because back then they knew how to name people. But anyway, this Plowden Weston, he was a man that built a summer house on the island. He had a plantation that was inland and he built this house for his family. Now the house is still standing today. It's one of the oldest houses on the island and it's pretty much in its original form. Of course it's been updated over the years and at this point the house is now a bed and breakfast called the Pelican Inn. Plowden, he was in the United States Civil War and he ended up dying of tuberculosis. People do say at the Pelican Inn that they do see his ghost dressed in his Confederate uniform walking around as well as his wife Emily. They smell her perfume a lot. So people do believe that the ghost who is haunting the Pelican Inn also takes on the form of the gray man to warn people about incoming hurricanes. Now Pelican Inn is interesting because Pelican Inn has never been taken down by a hurricane and there have been plenty in South Carolina. The way Pelican Inn was built, it was built behind some sand dunes that gave it kind of a natural protection from these hurricanes. So the fact that this man had already taken all of this in consideration while building his house gives people reason to suspect that he is the gray man we see today. One final suspect that people often think is the gray man is Blackbeard and for those who don't know, Blackbeard roamed up and down the eastern coast and there are a lot of ghost stories in Charleston revolving around Blackbeard and his pirates and maybe in a future story time video I'll tell you some of those ghost stories I know but for me I actually don't think the ghost is Blackbeard. Blackbeard, he wasn't really for the people he was a pirate so I don't understand why in death he is trying to warn people and protect people about oncoming hurricanes unless he's paying some penance for his sins as a human I don't know but I really don't believe that Blackbeard is a reasonable suspect for the island. I can see it being Percival or Plowden and I also cling pretty closely to the original legend that it was a guy from Charleston. However, as I said, we don't have any evidence of who this guy actually was. So for 200 years the gray man has been one of the most famous residents of the low country. However, it appears that only people in the low country knew who he was. The first public acknowledgement of the gray man was in 1956 when a book was released called Georgetown Ghost. Now, Polly's Island is in the Georgetown County and Georgetown is a city very close to Polly's Island. Then again in 1989 on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries the gray man got his first public TV appearance when a couple named Jim and Clara Moore were interviewed about their encounter with the gray man. If you can remember, in 1989 we had Hurricane Hugo. I remember Hurricane Hugo, it devastated the low country and for this couple living on Polly's Island the gray man knocked on their door and then walked away and it prepared them and saved them from the devastation of the hurricane. The last time the gray man was spotted was pretty recently in 2018 when Hurricane Florence hit the South Carolina low country. People reported seeing him walking the beach knocking on people's door right before that hurricane. So if you're ever in the South Carolina low country and you see the gray man on the beach or if he happens to knock on your door don't be afraid, he's a good ghost. He's there to protect you and to warn you. Alright thank you guys, that's the very first ghost story I heard as a child. Again it was from my mother. She's the one that first told me about the gray man and again if this is something you guys like I will continue to tell you even more stories that I heard growing up. I even went to a haunted school here in Georgia so maybe I can do some research and get into those hauntings as well for you all. Now a little bit of housekeeping for this channel. For us this is a labor of love. We don't at this point make any money off of this channel and it will probably be a while until we're eligible for AdSense. Some of our videos I know will not ever be monetized because we talk about taboo stuff. So with that being said what happens with a lot of these channels that disqualify for monetization because of topics they cover they will receive paid sponsorship. So what this means is that companies will reach out to them and ask them to advertise products on their channel. For us we are absolutely open to taking paid sponsorships to do these videos takes a lot of time. We take a lot of time to research I always want to make sure I'm getting information as accurate as possible and then to plan out how we want to tell the story. I don't script this but I do have an outline of how I want to deliver the story to you and then not to mention how long it takes to film. For me to film a 20 to 30 minute video can sometimes take all day just from cutting and restarting and bloopers and going back and having to re-film plus all the editing that comes with it. For now we don't mind doing this for free we love what we do and we love being able to bring stories and information to you guys especially about businesses we really we are all small business owners ourselves and so we really want to support small businesses small businesses are the backbone of our country. With that being said today we got offered our first paid sponsorship which I declined. If somebody wants to send us a product if it's a product we like and we believe in then I have no problem using this platform to advertise that product. However the email we got today was from a group of people wanting to pay me to lie to you guys to tell you some disinformation. I will not do that. I have something called integrity. In fact my grandfather used to tell us all the time they can take away your job they can take away your money they can take away your house they can take your life from you but the one thing they cannot take from you is your character. So I am going to use this moment to give you guys a bit of a heads up. Obviously my channel is very very very small or very new channel. So if I am getting offers like that then these bigger channels are obviously getting offers like that too. Now I don't blame people who are taking the offers we are in a very peculiar situation right now a lot of us are losing our jobs and I understand that people need money. However I am going to warn you guys be careful what you are hearing in the media be careful what you are hearing on these YouTube channels if I am getting offered money to lie to you to flat out lie to you then other people are being offered that as well. I really want to encourage you to practice critical thinking and discernment I really want to encourage you to do your own research when it comes to hot topics. I never want this channel to be political at all. You are all my countrymen if you are born in America I don't care whether you are a democrat or a republican or a libertarian I don't care what race you are I don't care what your sexuality is you are my countryman you are one of me we are Americans and I will not betray you and I will not lie to you. My soul cannot be bought. So as you can tell getting that email this morning really pissed me off. To me lying to the American public blatantly handing a script to someone and saying that you will pay them to say this that's treason in my eyes and I will not commit treason. I do have the email I'm not going to share it at this moment we are already in such an emotional state right now I don't think sharing the email right now would be positive but that doesn't mean I don't plan on sharing it in the future. So anyway I love you guys I want everybody to stay safe and to lead a happy and purposeful life you have the right to pursue happiness that is granted to us in this country I am proud to be an American I am proud of you as my fellow Americans and for anybody watching this from other countries we love you too and as human beings we are all in this together. Alright you guys thanks for coming to that TED Talk but anyway thanks for watching remember to hit that subscribe button hit that like button tell your friends if you have any businesses that you want me to cover send us a message on our Instagram account we're on Instagram at esotericatlanta again thank you to Josh McKay for writing and singing and performing our music to Todd Roderick for helping me edit and to you my viewers I couldn't do this if you weren't watching so thank you so much to my mama for telling me that story back when I was a little girl and to the great man himself keep on rockin' buddy you're saving lives alright you guys I'll see you soon bye