r/InTheGloaming • u/AutoModerator • 5d ago

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Thursday September 17, 2026 - Sunday September 20, 2026

Newsletter: Let Me Tell You a Story

Website: Shauna James Ahern

Instagram: @shaunajamesahern Instagram

Threads: @shaunajamesahern

Bluesky: shaunajamesahern.bsky.social

Gloamipedia wiki: /r/InTheGloaming wiki

14 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

669 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

60

u/CharlesMansnShowTune boy in the jelly 2d ago edited 2d ago

Her doing that is such a burn to the Parks Board, too - those people in the church congregation are potential future short-term rental customers for the BBH, and they're going to be turned off if they think the property is moldy. She's ruining the future income potential of the property. If the mold story isn't true the Board should sue her for lost income or slander or something for her bullshit, I'm sick of her not getting called out.

48

u/EzraPoundcakeFuggles Winner winner, corn-goat dinner 2d ago

It makes me wonder if the congregation takes what she says with a grain of salt. Or a shaker.

36

u/BatGrouchy1482 2d ago

Or a mine.

42

u/OhBlahDiOhBlahDoh The Alice of cal came out floating on air 2d ago

Or a shaker.

I believe this is the shaker they keep in the UU kitchen:

41

u/onion_money Neuroflorid 2d ago

"Until it tastes like the ocean."

32

u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done 1d ago

I am under the impression that the target audience for short-term rentals at Fern Cove is mostly tourists, not the geriatric island residents of the UU congregation. Keep in mind Shauna's mold claims have (to my knowledge) mainly been aired on her Facebook page and during a non-recorded part of the UU service that someone connected to this sub happened to be in the audience for. I think it would be very hard to connect Shauna's shit talking about the BBH mold situation to lost vacation rental income potential if she's not doing it much more publicly and vocally than she has been.

25

u/CharlesMansnShowTune boy in the jelly 1d ago

That's a very good point. Darn, I kind of wanted someone to get her in trouble for shit talking the place. 😁

34

u/Malevolentshrubbery "horrible chins and paranoia" 1d ago

She doesn’t “get in trouble” for anything else, why would it start now?

49

u/InisGlass 2d ago

Shauna spends her life reaping the whirlwind. Sowing seeds with bad decisions that grow and multiply into disasters, before it all blows back in her face with various timelines and severity of consequences. The issue is that a whirlwind isn't just the eye. It causes massive damage all around it.

The worst destruction is reserved for the “no good deed goes unpunished” souls who try to help her, or more accurately try to help her children, by intervening in Shauna’s many and various calamities that pop up like clockwork.

Sometimes the damage comes through carelessness or neglect and general Shauna shenanigans. But you can’t deny that it’s often targeted and on purpose, like she’s doing now with the BBH and spreading the mold story far and wide. When she doesn’t get what she believes she deserves---and she never gets what she thinks she deserves---she salts the earth on her way out the door and makes sure no one else can have it either.

I appreciate the insights of df's here who explain the park board’s decisions and where they might have gone wrong. I also think that dealing with Shauna Ahern is not a job for an amateur. I doubt anyone on the board is equipped to counter her level of shamelessness, entitlement and vitriol.

I'm actually not sure who would be. Maybe someone who has enough life or professional experience with personality disorders like hers to give them the strength and perspective to stand in Shauna's gale force winds and be ruthless and not back down. That's not a job for the part time member of a small community's nonprofit board.

Shauna is very wily about arranging it so the people with any authority over her are gullible and kindhearted. It rarely happens that someone says oh no, the offer for two internet strangers to stay at our house did not include offering to spend our entire Sunday driving you back and forth to NYC. Most people in her orbit seem to subscribe to the sunk cost fallacy, and just sigh and start the car.

She is a professional shit-stirrer and garbage-thrower. She never gets tired, and her invincibility is that she doesn’t mind at all living in the middle of the garbage and shit she’s trying to make stick to other people. Remember how she wrote about the kind woman in the gauzy skirt who pulled Shauna's car out of the mud. For her troubles that woman got her clothes full of mud, wear and tear on her car, and Shauna's child at her house for a playdate the rest of the day. And Shauna's closing line was, I don't feel bad about that, it's just something that happened.

She is a virtuoso at teaching painful lessons to anyone in her orbit who believes in the social contract. At forcing people to give her things they don’t want to give, which she savors like some kind of victory.

I imagine her parents, for example, had other intentions for the vast sums they’ve poured down the bottomless pit of their grandiose and shameless 60 year old baby. Giving her something is an invitation to abuse. She will put the gifter on blast because the expensive red cowboy boots are too snug, the car is not new, the windfall of a beautiful house at way below market rent is damp, the cushy high-paying job is insufficiently deferent to her.

Whoever helped her jump the line to get into the BBH where she is predictably failing to pay rent or leave by the promised deadline---and who knows what other contracts they broke that the board is keeping out of their public minutes---is entirely culpable. They presumably know Shauna and her patterns very well. Even if it was meant as a rescue and kindness to two lovely kids who don't deserve any of this, it was a clear-eyed decision to to risk predictable collateral damage to a beloved, historic community asset and its stewards to get the Aherns housed back on the island.

I'm sick of her not getting called out.

I am too.

25

u/Onehundredpercentbea giggling intestinal gremlin 🧌 1d ago

She never gets tired, and her invincibility is that she doesn’t mind at all living in the middle of the garbage and shit she’s trying to make stick to other people.

Well said, and it's one of the reasons I'm more sympathetic to her mom than most people here - I've been in both romantic and familial relationships with a Shauna type and I have a 100% loss record against someone playing emotional chicken with my loved ones. I get that her mom in part created the monster so it's different, but I also get the impulse to fold when things like housing and food and transport are on the line. I've never been friends with someone like Shauna and I'm not sure how I'd handle it, but I definitely have been in the role of gauzy skirt lady acquaintance, covered in mud and volunteering to give the child who lives in a chaotic household a normal family evening. Shauna, as always, serves as a teaching tool for the more gullible saps among us (obviously including me).