Travels in Tuscany and the Ghosts We Carry

Experiences of wine, loss, and a haunting night in Tuscany

Photo by Jakob Ryce

Something transforms us when we travel. The familiar falls away, and suddenly we’re open — not just to new cultures and cuisines, but to energies and events we’d never perceive in ordinary life.

This is the story of how my journey through Italy in 2010 moved beyond the expected pleasures of wine and Renaissance art and became an unexpected confrontation with raw grief, a UFO, and the strange spaces between worlds.

We started in Rome, swept up in the chaos and wonder of the city. My cousin Andrew — always a man on a mission — hustled us through every landmark, like a caffeinated real estate agent racing to the next showing. “Let’s go, go, go,” he ordered, checking his watch every few minutes. We shuffled along behind him, trading amused looks that said, okay, someone’s on a mission.

We walked the halls of the Vatican Museums, lined with gilded treasures and ancient sculptures that whispered stories of empires long gone. And the Vatican? For me, it’s… creepy. Beautiful, but creepy. You can feel the centuries pressing in on you — the whispers of secret histories, dark corners, stories of children getting lost, and the weight of all those unsettling conspiracies and thick Catholicism hanging in the air…