Spooked - Big Man

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

When the Big Guy shows up, you keep your mouth shut. Be afraid… Thank you to our storyteller for sharing his experiences. Original score by Yari Bundy, produced by Anne Ford, artwork by Teo Ducot Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I carved her name into the tree. The tree grew sick and died after her name into my hearts. Now, I'm barely alive. There are communities where you will never experience the divine unless you first pour libations. Not bread, not meat, not prayers, not offerings. It must pour the liquid. nothing else will call the God.

And with other groups, the ritual must begin and end with fire. There is no substitution. If there is no fire, there will be no God. And as whole peoples are wiped from the planet, whole traditions swallow. We've lost so much knowledge, so much access. But I know this. Several cultures have revered gods that only answer to the thump of a communal drum as I was reminded just the other day walking through my neighborhood

and happening upon a drum circle, this pounding incantation, this rhythmic plea for the God to appear. You can't do this alone. There'll be no answer to one person playing in solitude, only the rhythm of a collective will wake certain powers. On the rhythms sparring, beats joining together, breaking off the joust of drums and sound and thin as the beat builds to a frantic staccato. A woman leaps into the center of the circle. She dances, thrashes with the fury transformed as if inhabited by someone, something of power controlling her as one.

something, a power, controlling her as one would a marionette. The drummers, they welcome this new visitor with reverence, joy, with rhythm. They play in celebration of the God's presence amongst them. Even now, with all we've lost, not everything is forgotten. Not yet. Spookstar. When you make a call to the person, powers that be.

Perhaps it's not a God that hears your cry. Our storyteller is a member of the Pawnee Nation and he knows better than to go looking for trouble, but sometimes trouble finds him. My cousin called me up and he told me, let's go

singing. He picked me up and we drove six, seven miles deep into the mountains. They had a Sundance Arena up there. The Sundance, it's a spiritual gathering, if you have somebody who's sick or anything like that, you go and you pray for them. It cleanses your body.

It helps people. We were there in the evening time. There's no lights, no electricity. The lights that they did have were from headlights. So we'd pull up into this field. You could see shadows and outlines of people dancing and singing. It's in a big circle. The only ones that are allowed in the circle are the dancers.

There must have been about maybe. seven to eight singers there already. They were sitting there singing and you can hear their whistles. They have whistles that they blow. We walked up and we joined in a circle. We start singing with the drum.

Singing constantly for hours on end with two to five minute breaks in between songs, get something to drink and continue to sing again. Everybody has that notion, you know, of a Hollywood Indian that ha, yeah, hi-ya, ha, yeah. It's not like that. It's not like that.

It's your heartbeat. Every time you hear a bump in your heart, you hit the drum. This is the rhythm of everything. This is the main rhythm of life, you know. I'm having a good time. And you're sitting there singing. You're with friends, you're with family.

Talking, laughing. And everybody got quiet. I could smell something bad. I was like, what is that? Just a wet dog, mildew smell, stagnant water, all these different smells mixed into one.

Some of the old folks, you could see them kind of whispering around to one another. Everybody's straightened up. Like when a principal walks in the room. I turned, and when I turned, I seen this big figure standing behind us between 8 to 10 foot tall. He was big, tall, and furry.

He was walking toward the entrance of the Sundance. I couldn't see his face. I just saw the outline of them. I knew it wasn't a bear. I've seen bears before, and bears don't walk like that. They'll walk on their hind legs, but they kind of stumble around. This thing, I walk like a man. I knew what it was immediately.

This Bigfoot, when I was little, you know, everybody to tell stories. Don't be going outside at night. Don't whistle at night. Don't run at night. Don't be looking out the windows. Bigfoot be looking in. Every tribe has a different name for him. Sasquatch, Bigfoot. A lot of them call him BF or big guy.

Other people, they kind of look at him as a messenger of death. We've got scared and froze. The elderly people, they come walking over to keep singing. Keep singing. Don't stop. It kind of goes back to don't run from a dog. Just stay calm, just relax. So we powered through it.

We kept singing. But everybody kept looking over the shoulders to see, you know, where he's at. He'd come up to the entrance. And he looked at everything, looked at everybody, and everybody just kind of spread apart, you know, made way for him. It was terrifying. Nobody bothered him. Nobody said anything to him.

I kept thinking, I can't believe what I'm seeing right now. I just kind of just stood there and stared at him. As quick as he walked into the arena, he turned around and walked off. And he was gone. His odor kept lingering. He really stinks. We finished the song, and after the song,

we all took like a five-minute break. Everybody was in shock and awe. Did we just do what we saw? The old folks, they came around, you guys did good, you did real good. Everything's fine. You're okay. He's gone.

You're okay. Don't be telling everybody on the news about this. We just kind of laughed about it and just enjoy singing again. I wasn't really dying to tell anybody. Years ago, our community had a really large problem with people looking for Bigfoot. People would go on private property and they would ask questions they shouldn't be asking. They would go into areas that weren't allowed to anybody other than tribal members. Nothing was off limits to them.

I don't care whose field I go through, whose house I go to. I'm going to get my evidence. That's why we don't speak on it that much. But anyway, I thought that was the only time I was going to run into him. Fast forward years later, I was working at a truck stop around 12 miles outside of town. Me and my coworker were working. It was just us too. Late at night, you know, it really dies down.

The gas station had put in new pumps outside, and they had brighter lights in the parking lot so you could see everything. There's nobody really much out there. We're sitting there, and we're just kind of waiting for time to drag on. I'm sitting there talking to my co-worker, and I look out the window. The window's black. You can't see anything. I was like, why are the lights out?

He's like, I don't know. Maybe the lights blew out. So we started flipping the switches, and we couldn't figure out what was the matter, you know, what were all the lights? And so both of us had her hands cupped, looking out the window. All of a sudden, the night starts to move. We're like, what? And so we kind of back up and look. We realized what we were looking at.

He was so wide, he took up this big bay window. That bay window is probably about seven and a half foot, and he was well above that. He backed up, and he bent down and looked at it. us. The only thing that separated us was a little paint of glass. You can't really see nothing, but the reflection of his eyes. Brown, big eyes, looking back at you and it scared us. I was scared about him breaking the window and reaching in. We start screaming. I locked the front door, and he just stared at us through the window. We didn't know what to do.

We climbed over the counter and we looked at him for maybe 15 seconds. All of a sudden he just walked off to the side. I walked out of the way of the window. You could see the lights behind him after that. As fast as he was there, as fast as he was gone. It took us a good minute to figure out what we wanted to do. I was like, you're going to open those doors and keep going? We looked at each other and at the same time, nope, we're closed.

We counted our tail fast And we were out of that place In under five minutes Both of us were scared running to our car Trying to figure out where he was at In case he was right around in the area still You're going to watch me when I go to my car Yeah, you watch me

Make sure we get to my car okay When I was flying down the road to my boss's house I was like, I can't believe this is happening again I went back to the elder telling me you're fine And I kept saying that going down the road I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm fine, I'm okay. We pulled up to the boss's house, and she was like, what's going on? And we told her what happened.

She said, you did the right thing, good call. It took a lot of convincing to get my coworker to come back to work, to work nights after that. Years later, they built on a casino next door to that truck stop. I worked there as a cashier. I just came into work. And a friend of mine, he was a surveillance officer. He said, come here, come here, come here, come and look at this. Come look at this.

You got to come see this. They had cameras all over that place, inside and out. So I go in the little surveillance room, and he pulls up the video. Right behind the casino, they have a big dumpster back there, eight, ten foot tall. Next door, the gas station, they make hot food, chicken, corn dogs, burritos, things like that. At the end of the night, when they don't, sell anything, they throw it in a trash in the back in the dumpster. I'm sitting there watching the video, and you could see him at the corner of that video.

It was dark, but the one big huge outside light in the corner of the parking lot, so you could see his silhouette of it real clearly. He was really furry. He's dark. He was tall. Reached in, no problem. Like he'd done it several times, he just grabs a bag out and he walks off. My friend looks at me and says, you know what that is.

I was like, man, that is crazy. My coworker is like, yep, that is. He reached over and hit delete. They had an unwritten rule. If you see anything on the cameras like this, delete it. They don't want evidence because it goes back to people wanting to see this thing and act a fool, you know.

My personal opinion, when people go looking for them, they're looking for them for the notoriety, the fame, they need that validation. The ones that don't have an agenda, they always tend to run into them. The luck of the draw, I just falls in your lap. I'd rather avoid him on all costs. But you never know.

I've seen him twice. Nothing bad has happened, but I'm not going to press my luck. So much to our storyteller for sharing his experience, the original score for that piece was by Yari Bundy, by Ann Ford. You may know that there are places that the GPS still can't map. places where things can still hide in both the shadow and in the light. And I know, because you write and you email, I know that a lot of you are intrepid. You travel off the beaten path, and I wonder if in the woods, the jungle, the desert,

if you've ever stumbled across a creature that by all rights shouldn't be there. If you've seen something, you're afraid to tell someone else, well, you know, we're all friends. here, tell me. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. I promise. I only reveal your story to the legions of spooksters walking the path of the shadow. Let me know.

Spoof at snapjudgment.org. Because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooks is brought to you by the team that thinks Bigfoot would rather be left alone. Of course, from Mark Ristich, he's out in these woods trying to take him

or her a cast. Roll. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Fridno, Ann Ford, Ergyanya's, Teo de Katt, Marissa Dodge, Leon Morimoto, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creeky, Elizabeth Z. Pardu, Adity Matu, and Lulu Jemima. Spook theme songs by Pat Massey Miller. My name is the Washington. I've come to suspect that every person must find their own key to the mystery. that what works for me might not work for someone else. But knowing this is a solitary journey does not mean there are no universal truth. Because no matter who you are,

and no matter the path you travel, one piece of wisdom always holds true.