Spooked - Bull Boy

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

While Dan is at the compound of good friends and prominent members of the Blackfeet Traditional Medicine community, the Heavyrunner family, he learns just how important it is to practice good medicine.Thanks to Dan SaSuweh Jones for sharing your story with us! Learn more about Dan.Produced by Chris Hambrick, original score by Leon Morimoto, 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.

A friend in need is a needy friend. But if he wraps upon my door again, then maybe I'll have one less friend that no one ever sees again. You're listening to spooked. Stay. So many ancient texts tells us plainly that in the beginning was the word.

Before everything was the word. And even those that don't know they know this thing. know this, that simple words alone have a power. Peace be to you. Walk in the light, you have my blessing, you are forgiven. These are powerful words, but this is a two-sided coin. When wronged, when humiliated, when threatened, when needing that final revenge, people reach for the last weapon left to them.

Cursing a person. caused upon the most ancient of powers and the more purpose we give our words, the more likely the universe will bend around them. We begin in the early 1980s where Dan Sasseway Jones, he's living in a scenic national park in Montana.

It's also Blackfeet Indian land. He's a member of the Ponica Nation, but he's about to get an education in the ways of Blackfeet Medicine Society. One day I was visiting a friend of mine in East Glacier. Mr. Bird, he was kind of a collector of American Indian arts. At the time I was doing writing and also my artwork. And he invited me in, and I just happened to notice across the room there was an Indian man,

Tiny Man Heavy Runner. I was introduced to Tiny Man, and we shook hands. I just knew that there was a connection, between him and I. Tiny man was just a striking human being, long black hair, but he had one spot on the top of his forehead that grew white to full length of his hair.

He had this very baritone voice. It controlled the room, really. I started finding out more and more about him. I realized what a powerhouse he was, especially around his own people. The heavy runner family are an interesting, part of the Blackfeet Medicine Society and kept a knowledge of the history of the tribe and also a knowledge of their spiritual ways. There is all this mystique about this family.

Well, it wasn't long after my girlfriend and I had met Tyne Man at we had met his grandparents. The grandfather, everyone lovingly referred to him as old man and his wife Agnes. I quickly learned that they were actual healers, medicine people of the tribe. And Tiny Man was actually an apprentice of his grandfather, and he was learning the medicine ways of his people. They lived in an area called Heart Butte, Montana, Big Badger Creek, which is still a part of the Blackfeet Reservation. Winter was coming.

I really wasn't prepared for Glacier and National Park Winter. I mean, they get 20-foot snowfalls. I was living in a teepee at the time. And Tiny Man says, you know, you really need to get out of these mountains here and come down into the valley area where they live to the family's home. I personally wanted to be around Tiny Man for the knowledge that he had. So we took him up on his offer. I lived on their property, but I had set up some distance from their main house.

Tiny man lived right in the home with old man and Agnes. But part of their family lived on the property, and they had their own little shack. So it was kind of a compound of people. They lived a pretty bare life existence-wise. They gave everything that they had of material away other than the clothes they wore, and they kept an old truck. No running water. They had a well, and all the water was.

hauled to the house. Several cars that they had sitting up on blocks around the property, they'd become chicken houses and stuff like that. They had a few horses. They had a few head of cattle. And that was the extent of their farm.

When we first got to the compound, we just had that tradition of jumping in and trying to help out where we could. You don't have to wait for somebody to ask you. If you're not bringing in wood, then you don't have wood. And it's always being consumed in volumes.

So chopping wood was a constant thing. Each week there was some folks that were coming to see the old man and Agnes. Both O'Man and Agnes were elders in the medicine community. Younger medicine people were coming to them to ask them, advice, sending them patients or people that maybe they couldn't deal with. There was a lot of people there all the time.

So there were people coming and going. The old man just carried this happiness about him all the time. You know, big smile on his face. And that's why he was, you know, such a good healer. A lot of that was his attitude. He was filled with love. It was in the late fall after our hunting expedition. The old man would spend a lot of time in the house

and well, I'd noticed that he was out. It was out quite a bit, pacing. I hadn't seen him out unless he was working on something, but in this case, he wasn't really working on anything. He walked from the corral to the back of the house, circle the house, and then, you know, back to the corral and do pretty much nothing other than look up toward the north. It seemed like he was expecting something.

I was thinking, you know, something to do with the weather, maybe. He's watching the north because of the weather. changing or something. I had I really had no idea what was going on. A couple of days later, I'm having breakfast and finishing my coffee in the teepee. And I hear

this vehicle coming rather fast. More so than normal. When you live in a teepee, it's very similar to living inside of a megaphone that's turned upside down on the earth. So any sounds that are

around you or vibrating through the skin. But I stuck my head outside, and I noticed there was this red pickup truck, and it was zipping down the road. That thing was doing 90, if not more. And when it got to the old man's turnoff, he pulled up our road, which is dirt. The dust was coming, billowing behind them as they were coming toward the house. They pulled up into the front yard. Old man was standing there waiting.

He knew why they were there. He had a look on his face, as kind of dread. Zay got in a better position to view. These two big gentlemen unfolded from the truck. In the back of the truck, they began to unload this meat that they had brought in. They were hindquarters of moose,

which are huge. Each one of them took one of the hindquarters, and threw over their shoulders. You're talking 100 or more pounds. The old man watched them as they unloaded the meat from the truck. They immediately greeted the old man. These guys looked like they were desperate. They're anxious to be there,

and they had brought gifts that were beyond, I would say, what I normally saw people bring for payment for healing. I felt a level of anxiety. I have no idea what it is or what it could be, but I know it's something that's an emergency and that it's probably dangerous. They moved inside and still not a smile from the old man. When the gentleman left, Tiny Man came directly to my lodge

and proceeded to tell me exactly why they were there and what was going on. Tiny Man said that these older gentlemen, Cree gentlemen, were the older brothers of this young boy that was afflicted. This boy, a young boy, and couldn't be older than 17, had basically ran off with the daughter of a very powerful medicine man from Canada. And they had gone to a powwow and spent a couple of days before she finally went home. It was a big deal to the father. I had everybody looking for her.

He was just fraught with fear and anger. Tiny man told me that the man had cursed the boy. Every night for the past few days, when the sun went down, the boy would go down on his all fours, and he'd billow like an animal. He'd make these growling sounds, and they said his face would contort and eyes totally bloodshot. The boy would basically turn into a boy. bull running headfirst into the walls like a bull would do, tearing their home up. Tiny man said it took about four of them to hold this 17-year-old boy down when he would make this

transformation. They'd have to tie him up with sheets. He would just be slobbering and billowing all through the night until morning he would come out of it. The real concern they had was that he was going to kill himself or hurt somebody else. As Tiny Man, and his grandfather, as they all understood it, there was an entity that was inside of this boy that needed to be removed. Tiny man was concerned. He knew because of the old man's age that he would be the primary healer that was going to have to work on this boy.

He was worried about it. It scared me once I realized that this is a real thing this was coming here. Then I was concerned for, my girlfriend's safety, my safety. I felt like I'd jump in and help restrain him if necessary. So I had no fear of being able to hold a boy. What I was afraid of was whatever was doing it to him.

Did it have the ability to shift, to go into and move into other people? I'd asked Tommy Man, what should we do? He said, just don't go around the house. Don't circle the house. and you've got something that strong of energy going on you don't want to put your energy around it in any way

just stay away from it and they've got everything handled this is what they were trained to do later in the afternoon they show up with this boy and at two vehicles this time there's more of the family there nine ten people

I kind of moved off to the chopping block you know start chopping wood that gave me a better view of the front of the house. It wasn't nothing special about the boy, young Western clean cut. He's kind of a scrawny kid. He wasn't, you know, anything that you would think that would be much of a threat. The family was immediately taken into, you know,

one of the back houses that was prepared for that. So I'm standing there, stacking wood, cutting a few more pieces. You get that little feeling that something is near, I turn around and it's the boy. He's standing, you know, right behind me. Kind of frighten me. I didn't know exactly how to deal with this.

So I'm like, oh, hello, and trying to, you know, calm my own fear about what I know. I'm kind of a big handshaking kind of a guy. But I didn't shake his hand. didn't want any physical contact with the young guy. The first thing he asked was, is that your TP? I know I was responding. Yeah, it's where I live.

It's my home. There wasn't much, said. The boy was very quiet. He did have a look of concern. But I don't think he knew what was going on either. After a few minutes, one of these older brothers came out and got him and they laughed, so I wandered back to my lodge.

My girlfriend is, she's there, and we're all advised. All of the other families are in now. The sun's going down. Right at sunset, these winds started coming. All of a sudden, we heard calls for tiny men from the house. It was beginning. I hear Agnes singing.

It's atop of her lungs singing. I hear the old man. He's raised his voice in prayer. It just seemed more intense this night than any before. Somebody was drumming. It was a slower tempo, which in my tribe would be what we call a prayer song. The wind. It seemed like it was coming from every direction.

The tepee was just being slammed from each. way. It was getting cold, so I just built up a fire. We started hearing from the house moaning like an animal, like a call of a bull. This loud rumble, these guttural grunts. I remember hearing a lion in a zoo once roaring, and it's the most loudest thing you've ever heard, and this was a lot like that. I could hear loud thumping almost like this. I could hear loud thumping almost like shaking a vibration that would set up through the tepee from the house. Sounds like people were being thrown around like rag dolls. And at one point, the old man's screaming.

I'm really concerned. Surely there's enough men there, but what if there isn't? What if something's brought it to the head that this force becomes so powerful that all the men that are in there can't control it? I was afraid. This went on for hours into the night, singing the different songs, the old man at times praying rather loudly.

There'd be long periods of silence. And then the sounds would begin again, loud thumping. They'd hear hollering. We didn't have much conversation between my girlfriend and I because we wanted to hear what was going on from there. When would this break and how would it break? We didn't sleep at all. Didn't even try to sleep.

I'd burn some cedar. We were praying individually. Times we'd pray together, mostly praying to ourselves. All night it had been very windy, though, and cold. And then it kind of broke right before sunrise. It almost felt like it warmed up. It's that special time when the old people say that the night, is fighting the light to stay.

There'd been a long period of calm. We knew that something definitely had changed. We're drinking coffee, and I hear the knock at the teepee and yelled, you know, a hoke. Come in, and it was tiny man. He looked completely beat up. He looked like he had been through the fist fight. and one that he'd probably lost.

We had him a cup of coffee, and I wanted to know how the boy was, first of all. He said, it's done, it's gone. This thing has left the boy. He won't be bothered with it again. It was just such a relief to hear that from Tiny Man. We came out of the teepee that morning, and the sun was coming up as we walked toward the corral. The old man was walking in the front yard.

And the first time in a few days, he's got a big smile on his face. He looked tired, but happy. Then in a few minutes, the brothers came out with their younger brother, between them. We started walking over toward him. First thing, I noticed how different the boy looked. I mean, his eyes were alive. He didn't have the same look that he'd had before. He looked more.

just completely at peace, I'd say. The family was relieved and happy. Very thankful to Agnes and to the old man. I mean, they were hugging them and they were talking in Blackfeet. I still had a lot of questions. You know, what was this thing? How did it come to be? Tiny man told us that in these kinds of exorcisms,

they look for tokens or items that might be connected in some way. to the situation. They found a carved bull. The boy was wearing, and he immediately removed it. Tiny Man's assumption was the medicine man had given it to his daughter and made the suggestion

that it became a gift to the boy. I'd ask Tiny Man, what do you do with it? And he said, he'd destroyed it. So he'd burn it. After being there for a couple of years, as I think back on it, I have a very minimal understanding and a greater appreciation of the medicine people, just knowing how long they study their practice and how dedicated they are to it.

Medicine men provide different services. Healing's not the only thing that they provide. If you lose someone or something, you can go to a medicine man. They find things that you've lost. And then there's others that deal in revenge. How do you do something like that to another person? So we're dealing with a medicine man that's ethics or a little askew, not balance maybe,

but still handling a lot of power. All as I can tell you was the evil medicine man's medicine represented hate and fear. Old man's medicine is good. It is filled with love. And in the end, love is stronger than hate. Dan Sassouet Jones for sharing your story with the spout. If you want to know more about Dan, you can check out our show notes.

That original score was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Chris Head is On This Dark Path, Secrets, Hidden Truth, credible people, incredible stories, spooked. We have to ask a question. because some say that the fay, the fairy, the folk, the shadow people, they say that they are in retreat, that this world is losing those not born of Eve. And the others say that this is nonsense. That what we are losing is not the fay, but the ability to see them. So I'm asking if you can see them, interact with them, dance with them, play cards with them. Would you please, please?

Tell me about it. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spoof listener. Spook at snapjudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, you can get the amazing, stupendous sister podcast. It's called Snap Judgment, and it is storytelling with a beat. Spook was brought to you by the team that always keeps their eyes peeled, except for Mark Wisditch.

Now Mark, he wears his sunglasses at night. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hamburg, Leon Morimoto, Taylor de Kott, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Ferigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanyas, Cody Harjo, Lola Abrera, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy,

Doug Stewart, the spooked theme songs by Pat Masini Miller. My name is in Washington. And did you know that there's such a thing as twinned particles? Where the actions upon one instantly affect what happens to the other, even across vast distances,

not just one side of the earth to the other, or even one side of the galaxy. I'm talking. One side of the universe to the other. These particles are linked. What force, what power is responsible for this? The physicists will use a lot of words and equations to tell you they have no idea,

not a clue. As to what binds this to that, no answers, no theories, no concepts. Just the same folk, the same people will tell you that our investigation of the shadows lies in conflict with science. It does not. Because we too, we're on a search for what links this to that. All we know is that this energy, this force, this power, as enormous, monumental and gigantic as it is, it still is constrained by rules. Rules we can invoke.

For strain, for protection, and first amongst these is simply this. Never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, ever, never, ever. The lights.