The Blake Cunningham Delirium
Don’t be serious, let’s gets delirious🫨
The Blake Cunningham Delirium
EP 23 PODCAST OF HORROR
Ever feel most at home when the world tilts a little? That’s the spark for our Halloween special—an honest love letter to spooky rituals, the offbeat comfort of Treehouse of Horror, and the strange relief of embracing what doesn’t quite fit. I talk about why the uncanny feels welcoming when you’ve always felt slightly out of place and why October gives permission to be odd.
We travel back to Camp Dagget for a ghost story that refuses to behave. Picture a classic summer camp: sailing by day, an initiation in the woods, a rec hall that doubles as a rumor mill. A counselor who calls himself a ghost hunter hints at a legend—the 1950s rec director, a slap, a fall, and a restless spirit above the rafters. After a night of stargazing and debating aliens, two of us choose curiosity over comfort and step into the rec hall with glow sticks and nerves. An electrical box pops, then the room answers: ball pit balls tumble from the ceiling opening, curtains begin to part on the small stage, and instinct takes over. We run, and by morning, denial replaces explanation.
Was it a prank with perfect timing or a moment when the ordinary world cracked? I walk through the logistics, the doubt, and the ache of not knowing, and why that ambiguity still haunts me in the best way. The episode threads together Halloween nostalgia, the psychology of feeling out of place, and the kind of campfire tale that leans you forward. If you’re drawn to eerie stories, folklore, and the feeling that the edges of reality might be frayed, you’ll find a home here.
Listen, share with a friend who loves a good scare, and tell me: prank or paranormal? If the story grabs you, subscribe, leave a review, and spread the word so more curious minds can join us.
Hello and welcome to the show. This is the first ever Halloween episode of the Blake Cunningham Delirium. This episode is a Halloween episode. So that means that we'll have many spooky tales and we'll have ghoulish ghouls and we'll have candy and jack lanterns and everything appropriate for the season. So I bet you're wondering. What does this episode entail? Well, to start this off, I watched the um you know, I've been a long time fan of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes. The like Halloween episodes that uh occur once a year. There were like Halloween episodes. And I watched them. I've I've I basically watched them my whole life since like sixth grade. I got kind of hooked. Like every Halloween, there's like always a Halloween episode on Halloween, and you kind of are you're you're almost invited to watch it. Like you're almost you you you do dare to watch it, but and it's at your own peril. But so I I kind of fell in love with the idea of like I love personally, I love like Halloween episodes, okay. Like I love the idea of like something spooky or like it it's more or less more just like something out of the ordinary really is like my ideal kind of like I I I just love like something out of the ordinary. Like any I like I I'm such an idiot for I'm like I'm I'm like I for like stuff that's like out of the ordinary and stuff that's like I I love like crossover episodes. Like I I at my core, I'm really just like this terrible, like I have a terrible ineptitude for like consumerism and th things of that nature, but like Halloween episodes really just like grab me. Like they're the thing that get me the most because I just First of all I love Halloween. Second of all, I like Halloween episodes. I like spooky, I like dark, I like dreary, I like something that almost feels wrong, I like like most Let me just be a real Let me just be real honest with you guys. I just like something that feels out of place because newsflash I feel out of place Have you figured that out Have you figured that one out yet? I feel like it speaks to something in my in my psyche where I like I feel out of place and I like the out of placeness of a Halloween episode. It makes me feel at home. And maybe maybe I'm not the only one in this vast deep complex world that feels like there's something out of place whether it's it it's them individually or maybe it's just the whole the construct of the whole thing that we call a universe but there's something I like about a Halloween episode, and this is a Halloween episode. So where do we start? Do we have any ghost stories? I mean, I have a ghost story. I have eleven percent. If this isn't the scariest thing of this whole episode, is I have eleven percent on my MacBook and I'm too lazy to get up and plug it in. So if this episode ends prematurely, it's because the MacBook has failed to uh execute its duties as a MacBook and do the one thing that I ask it to do, which is stay alive. Maybe I can turn the brightness down. That would kinda mitigate the the battery life thing. So I I mean I can think of I I can think of many times not too many, but I can think of more than one time in my life that I felt out of place or maybe I felt some kind of uncanny feeling, but I will give you and I I might have told this before, but I will give you my most spookiest story. My spookiest story is the story of when I went to summer camp. Oh, well, it didn't peak, but that was probably pretty loud. Of when I went to summer camp and I had a paranormal experience with the supernatural realm. Now, my first this was truly and this this might not be the best reimagining of the story, but my first encounter with the supernatural was at the summer camp, and I so I mean I can really I can preface I can prefa let me just take a drink here, guys. How about we just take a moment and I take a drink and I can preface this off because if I tell the story right, it'll actually make it a lot better than if if I tell this story wrong. So I'm not sure the exact age. I'd have to guess somewhere between ten and thirteen. Maybe even nine. No. Ten and thirteen, that's that's the exact age range. Okay? Now this camp, I'll I'll give you the name of the camp because I don't give a fuck. And if they try to fucking sue me, I'll fucking sue them back for every fucking penny that they're fucking worth because I don't give a fuck. Cause this fucking summer camp is built on fucking Indian burial grounds. And if that isn't scary enough for ya, well then this scary story might be, okay? So the camp in question is called Camp Dagget. Camp Dagget. Like dagger. Like literally like dagger. So Camp Dagget is a camp where you send your like it's honestly it's like a camp. Honestly, I'm not gonna lie. It's for middle to upper class people, and I did not. There's not a single bone in my body that belonged at the summer camp, okay? Like, if I'm being totally honest, there's not a single fucking part of me that belonged at this camp. But I was there, okay. I was there and I was I was honestly, I I might have been 10 or 13, but I was like, I was looking good. Like I was good, I was like acting like totally gangster. Like I had like the whole vibe. Like everybody else was just kind of there, but I I I I liter I like I literally had like a vibe about me, like maybe even a little mysterious or different, but I I I didn't give I didn't give a I didn't give a rat platoon about my appearance because I was just kind of doing my own thing and everybody else was on kind of like this like they were on like a f they were like followers and I was sort of like the leader. Alright. Like I'm not like not directly, like I wasn't like giving orders, but like just in terms of like social ineptitude, like I was kind of calling the shots. I'm not gonna lie. I was kinda calling the shots because like for I'm I'm not even joking, like for a week straight, like I went commando and nobody knows. Like I did not like almost the whole there's two things while while I was at summer camp. There's two things I didn't do. I did not wear underwear and I did not take a shit the entire time I was at summer camp. So I was kind of just like on boss level mode, like the entire time, like I kind of just was doing my own thing. Like you you cannot you cannot associate with somebody who has not taken a shit in nearly one work week and also is not wearing underwear, like that takes a level. That takes a level of like determination and like dedication that like these other kids they're just not gonna latch on to it like on their first day. They're not gonna latch on to that shit on our first day. So I I actually I don't think this was even I I went to that camp like three or four times. I don't even think this was the same time. But so we had a camp counselor. Let me turn the mic towards me. We had a camp counselor. His name was his name was something like Mac Matt? No, let me think, Zach. It will come to me. Let's just say his name was Mac. I know that his name was not Mac, but it was something like that. So Mac, my camp my camp counselor, was like a ghost hunter, okay? Like, take with that what you will, of course. But he was a ghost hunter that was like not his profession, but more of like a hobby that he claimed to be involved in. So Mac I will remember his name. I'm trying to remember, I can't remember. He was a ghost hunter, it and he claimed to have been ghost hunting for quite a while, honestly. Now, Mac, he he was a cool guy. We talked about like Super Smash Brothers for all for all my gamers out there. Can we get a can we get a hell yeah from all the gamers out there? I just I honestly this is like a music thing, but I want to relate to all the gamers out there because all of the gamers the gamers make the world go round. Okay. The gamers make the world go round, and you wanna know how I know that? It's because I'm a gamer too.
unknown:Okay. I'm a gamer too.
SPEAKER_00:So Mac the camp counselor, there's just it's just a placeholder of a name. I don't actually know his name. Mac sort of um he alluded to the whole ghost hunter thing, he kind of told us about it, whatever. So normally during this whole campdag experience, you would kind of I you would play some games and you'd do the rec haul. The recall was like gym. You could literally just call it gym. It was recreation, it was like gym. And um there was sailing and you would get away with you wouldn't get away, but you'd kind of go sailing, and there's a nature portion where you kind of walk through the woods and examine specimens of all different shapes and sizes in the realm of nature, and you you'd kind of have your free time to do what you'd want, and you'd do some swimming activities, of course. It would it was your run of mills, it was your run-of-the-mill summer camp, and you would kind of do all sorts of activities, but there was one uh activity, it wasn't entirely an activity, it was more of a ritual, honestly, if you ask me, where there was the ritual of the inauguration, uh not inauguration, but initiation. It was called initiation, where if you were a new camper, they would blindfold you and they would take you into the woods. Okay. Sound they would they'd do it to everyone, not just like on an individual basis. They would blindfold you and they would take you into the woods, and they would I this sounds like the most bullshit ever. Like this this was let me be honest, this was before the whole woke thing. Like this was back when everything was like good. This was like back when like things functioned and like everybody wasn't like a crazy piece of shit. Like this was back this is the olden golden days, like this was the end of the 2010s, this was like when things were simpler, this was before cell phones and Twitter and woke culture. This was like this was the time to be alive, and the fact that I was at a summer camp instead of in front of a computer, let me tell you what that did to my psyche. I am such like a more well-balanced person because of this. Like, I don't think I would have any I don't think I would have any well-being without experiencing this really. Because like I I wasn't like fully engrossed in technology at this time, but I I mean I had my leg in the door as as I'm sure the rest of us did. But let me cut to the chase, because this is a Halloween episode, and I know you want to get to your Halloween shit. Okay, I know you want to get back to your trigger treating and all that. So let me cut to the chase. So we had uh we had the inauguration ritual, and we completed it. You basically just walked blindflo no you walk blindfolded through the woods, and you the they say the the the spirit of Camp Daggett has uh done some stuff and they they bought Camp Daggett for ten dollars one hundred years ago because inflation and somebody shoots a flaming tiki torch into the lake in in uh Native American face and you kinda go in your merry way, so of course our you know we're like hey this is it was the last night of camp. So to our ghost hunting, to our ghost hunting camp counselor, we're like, hey, can you maybe take us ghost hunting? That seems like pretty appropriate because you kind of like cheesed at it honestly throughout the week. And he's like, you know, sure, yeah, we can go ghost hunting later. And we're all like, what, okay, we'll go later, I guess. So I am the worst storyteller ever. So earlier in the week, we had talked to the sailing instructor, a female, and she had told us about kind of like these weird paranormal experiences that she had had in the wreck hall. I mentioned the I mentioned the rec hall earlier, kind of like a gym. Just picture it like gym in middle or high school, just kind of like a place she played dodgeball, soccer, like floor hockey, that kind of thing. And she had mentioned some weird paranormal experiences, and she she literally like she started crying and left, and we're like, okay, that's weird. So now flash forward uh after the initiation and the um the conversation about if we can go ghost hunting, we're kind of just looking at the stars with our hand counter, sort of like, whoa, like and we're having like this sort of philosophical conversation about like uh about uh aliens and the existence of that, and we basically came ignore the micronoise. We came to like a sort of a an unanimous decision that yeah, alien uh alien life probably exists, and you know the drill, and I don't know if you don't think that I don't know why you're listening to this. And after that we we w Oh by golly, we made it to the ghost hunting portion of the night, and the camp counselor said, Okay, anybody that's not cool with this ghost hunting thing, well you can go back to the cabin. So like a number literally like my fri basically all my friends went back to the cabin, and me and an equ I call him acquaintance acquaintance, he's really a friend now, especially after the experience, but at this time we weren't super close. Me and him chose to take the plunge and go ghost hunting. So we make our way into the wreck hall, and we get into the wreck hall, and the camp counselor is telling us well, about this story about the the rec the previous like the 1950s rec director. The rec director is sort of the person like who would organize, like if we were gonna play saw uh soccer, that would be the rec director's decision. It was like um, you know, he was like basically like the gym teacher, but he was a rec director. I mean it was summer camp, so you can't say gym teacher, but you get the picture. Um so the rec director was like he was like pretty abusive to the campers, and basically there's these rafters. Rafters, and in the rafters, the kids were like playing in the rafters, and there's this one kid who just had a mouth on him. He had a pretty bad mouth on him, and the rec director chose to This was in the 1950s, he slapped him in the face, he fell off the rafters and died. So basically the legend goes this this this kid was this kid was uh haunting the rec place because he died because of the abusive rec director. So we're in this rec directory or in the rec building that the rec director resided at and we're doing a seance of tour with glow sticks, we're cracking glow sticks, we're saying the ghost hunter guy's saying like if anybody if there's any spirits here make yourself known or whatever. And there's like an electrical Oh, sorry. There's like an electrical box that like made a noise and we're like, whoa, that's weird. And we're kind of sitting there, we're just kind of saying, like, if there's any noise This is where it starts to sound fake, but I'm really not making this up and I wish I uh honestly I wish I was, because it's like one of the scariest things. This is basically the scariest thing that ever happened to me. He's like if there's anybody known. If there's anybody here, make yourself known. And there's like a hole in the ceiling where the rafters are, and a bunch I'm not even joking. A bunch of ball pit balls fall through the ceiling. Yes, I I I know it sounds insane. And then there's like sort of this stage up up above where we are, and there's curtains, and they start to open. And my consort goes, Run, run back to the cabin. We all run back to the cabin. We knock on the door, we force ourselves in, all the other campers in my cabin, like, what went on? We explained the story. Then the next day, like right before our parents pick us up, we're like Will this sounds like an episode of Goosebumps. I know this literally sounds like an episode of Goosebumps. We ask our our counselor, like, what happened? And he's like, Oh, I don't even what are you talking about? And then we just went home. And that's my most paranormal stor that's my most paranormal story, and I don't know what to think about it because it could be some kind of elaborate prank, and I do believe that maybe that's true, but just too many variables were right, and just uh it was just too odd. Like So there was somebody above the rafters and somebody pulling the curtains and like those would have to be camp counselors and what were where were all their where were all their uh campers? Like I don't know, there's too many variables. I I just have to believe that something supernatural went on. Honestly. And that's why this is the first ever podcast of horror. Check out my music, people like Cunningham, on Spotify, B L A K E C U N N I N G H A M. Thank you, and good night.