Drums & Shadows South Carolina

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“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

– Old African Proverb

The Bush Family, who, through many family names, were the first settlers of today’s South Carolina, built up Hilton Head from the 18th century, and as people, stretched across the state with names like Fripp, Pope, Stanyarne, Ladson, Hugenin, Chaplin, Wright, Lawton, Mosse, Peeples, Oswald, Norton, others. Their family reads like The Who’s Who of South Carolina with estate names like Tombee Plantation Seaside, Raphraim, and Sam’s Plantation. A now 90 year old descendant, Betty Bush, challenged Shannon Scott to build her an outing with her family that would explore as much of the landscape of that in one day around Beaufort County & Colleton County with particular interest to see their once great homestead, Tombee Plantation that preservationist Jim Williams lovingly restored at Land’s End. It would prove tricky but unphased, Shannon would secure visits there through generous owners, along with Seaside Plantation & an exclusive peek at the McPhersonville Presbyterian Church (“Forrest Gump”), along with exclusive touring of root doctor graves and ancestral plots of their family along the route. While Shannon Scott already visits a number of these locations on his Drums & Shadows Tour, this was very much an expanded, one-off version for very special people, and they were beyond thrilled, especially the matriarch, Betty Bush. None of this would’ve been fulfilled without the extended help of researchers, Megan Morgan and Alissa Nicholson, who pulled at least one all-nighter, as they prepared extensive books, maps, genealogy diagrams, many hand-rendered, creating original materials both useful as tools for the outing and keepsakes for the family. Both Shannon Scott & Megan Morgan acted in a narration capacity while Alissa Nicholson filmed, photographed, and edited the footage within the video as a record of this important gathering. A special note of thanks goes to Mr. Green of The Gullah Grub Cafe in Frogmore, SC, for his delicious food and hospitality. We also appreciate Elayne Scott for her tour of Tombee House and Joe Roney for his fabulous tour of Sam’s Plantation. www.drumsandshadows.com

5 Nights of Halloween 2023 – Evolution, Full Moons & More (Part Two)

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“For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

I’m not a particularly scare-fest person but I like a good cemetery. I’ve celebrated them for as long as I can remember. My “dark side” was shaped by being an introspective child who never craved scary experiences. I preferred reading about others who were famed for plumbing darker subjects. But I recall being fascinated, if not thrilled by Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Three Detectives” to the point of obsession. I found a kind of lust for the novel and film, “Escape To Witch Mountain,” and was delighted by “Return To Witch Mountain” and finally “Beyond Witch Mountain” I recall some sort of gothic esthetic was born in me, a strange passionate sensation that shaped my sense of life beyond explanation upon discovering the film “From The Mixed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler.” That one somewhat terrified me as much as it intrigued same time and think it was a mistake to watch it alone on a Saturday in my basement. Throw in “Something Wicked Way This Comes,” along with endless episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, and every Hardy Boys’ book with just a touch of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, and there’s not much more that one needs to understand who I was made into well before high school. In fact, if you’d told me by age 13 that there was nothing else past some Chronicles of Narnia and a few Stephen King books to come along and at that moment I’d been given the option of being locked in a room with just all of those things for the rest of my life, I’d 100% snatched that key from the offering hand to never be heard from again! But as no such opportunity or framing of the world was presented as such, I drifted on to become the artsy goth kid who eventually took a job in a Victorian cemetery in my hometown. And the rest is his-story so to say. I became The Cemetery Man of my own design.