Spooked - Dancing Shadows

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Isaac Murdoch is from Serpent River First Nation and is Ojibwe, belonging to the Fish Clan. When picking rice as a young man, he encounters a fierce storm that blends the boundary between this world and the next.Thank you, Isaac, for sharing your story with us! If you want more stories from Isaac and to learn about his art and his activism, check out his Instagram.Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Lalin St. Juste, 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.

Jack's brat could eat no fat. His wife was super mean. So when they baked the baker, wow. Spooked, right after this short break. After his life ended, the old man emerged wet from the water to find himself in the middle of a large glade. A bearded figure placed a yellow rubber duck into the pool from which he had just emerged. As the man. Don't you remember?

That's exactly what you asked last time. The man thought about it, but his head felt mussy, his thoughts like smoke. What do I do now? You pick another pool. The man looked around, and as far as I could see in all directions waded pools of water. Some opaque, others clear. A few seem very deep, while some held almost no water at all. The man turned to step toward a pool.

No, not that one. The man stepped back. Why? You've already been there. Look, every pool with a duck you've traveled before. The man gaped around a maze as yellow rubber ducks bobbed on top of hundreds and hundreds of pools. All wrecked. Then the man shifted his gaze slightly to the right, and he saw how vast the glade was.

So many, many pools. bigger than the suddenly sharp eyes could even comprehend. How many pools are there and fell to the grass, thunderstruck? All of them. Every single life? How many pools will eye all of them? You will step into each and every pool, shook his head and breathe deeply. He said there are bad and very.

bad people, I will do terrible things. Yes, but there are saints as well. Yes. Who else comes to this space? Just you. But you know this now, said the figure who looked exactly like the old man. Maybe. Maybe then, between earth and sky, wind and rain, and we're about to meet Isaac Murdoch. Isaac is a gibway of the fish clan from the Serpent River First nation. He's a traditional knowledge holder, and he certainly knows the importance of respecting the boundary between this world and the next. He also understands that walls sometimes crumble. I'm going to hear a story about an encounter Isaac had when he was just 20 years old. Take it away. It's always custom that we introduce ourselves in our own way before we tell a story.

So, oh, I need a boucho, and didn't we ma'am I'm going to do. So the place that we're talking to go in Abeenikaze. Gini be a good Shibigawat in Dunchpac, no one of them. Ah, nishna be Ninhu and Dao. I'mki, Ojbikong, ninda. Ah, no. So the place that we're talking about is Meymouth Lake.

It's a northern Canada. It's a very beautiful place. Lots of islands, lots of fish and moose and ducks. Lots of beaver. And lots of monoman, wild rice. So to get to Mamud Lake, you have to paddle back around this point. There's a cabin there. Years ago when I was younger, like when I was in my late teens,

me and my bro David, we used to travel in the bush. We'd go hunting or we'd go pick medicines. And oftentimes we'd stop by at this old cabin, where this old man lived. The cabin is built like in the ground. and so there's four-foot walls that are dirt and then four-foot walls above that he had a dirt floor and the windows were made out of

Mazai-Wean which is a certain type of a fish skin and there was this canoe dugout where they put the birch-bar canoe inside there there's no other cabins around and it was just beautiful with jet back pines. And the ground was all mossy with gray moss, red moss,

green moss. And you can see these tiny little red mushrooms on the ground that were just sprinkled all over the place. Just like something put them there on purpose to make art. That's how beautiful this place looked.

Just north of his cabin door is where his grave is. It was just a mound of dirt. You know, we'd put some same a tobacco down there. Because we knew inherently that it was like a holy place, a place of reverence. Because this man had spent his entire life living on the land, living in accordance to the sacred laws on how to live here. I was in my late teens at the time when I first started to learn about this cabin. I was fascinated by it. and it was probably two, two and a half years.

I'm working, picking wild rice. We had a boss that would hire, hire us because he could only hire Indian people because he couldn't find any white people to go there in the bush that knew how to survive out there. I have this friend named Alex, real good bush Indian.

You know, really knows the bush good. He grew up in the north all his life. It comes from a very special place called Black Bear Island. We got along quite well. So we went out there together. So the cabin that we're staying at, it's not too far from that cabin from where that man lived. It's made out of black spruce logs.

It's not a big cabin. There's a room for a bunk bed, another bed on the other side of the cabin. It was right on the edge of the lake beside a creek. You could hear the water or trickling all the time. And there's also this little woodshed off to the side. And of course a woodpile. It was just a very beautiful place.

So when we're not working or hunting, me and Alex are always playing crib. We play cards in the candlelight and, you know, at nighttime. To see who's the crib master. I mean, shoot the bull. I was only 20 years old. So I was, like, madly in love. So I'd talk about this young woman

and he'd talk about this other young woman and when we get back, we're going to be together and all this stuff. I was cooking a beaver. We were going to have beaver for supper. So I'm boiling beaver on the fire outside. And the beaver's head is bobbing up. And I have a stick and I'm trying to push the beaver's head down. All of a sudden the sky was black,

but they weren't regular storm clouds, like thunder clouds or whatever. There's these great big bubbles underneath hanging down from the sky off this great big cloud. And there's lots and lots of bubbles all over. You can see tiny little flashes of light inside these bubbles that are hanging below the clouds. One over here and one over here,

one over there and then another flash over here. The clouds, they came swooping right down, way down, very close to Earth. Like way lower than normal. These clouds are hanging. Like maybe a little taller than the trees. We know a storm was coming, so we're dragging the canoes on shore, tying things up that are on the dock. that's when all of a sudden this smell

just smacks me right in the face the smell was a smell of death of something bad I had to cover my mouth because of this powerful smell even the leaves on the trees were going upside down because of the smell I'm saying

why does this smell like death and he's like I don't know I don't know going to Kekandazin, he says, I don't know why it smells like that. My heart is pounding. I'm starting to sweat. This is not just a regular storm. Something else is going on.

There's lots of Atsukanan, sacred stories about our people, and how clouds had come down, and they fought with us, or they gave us gifts or presents, or they'd take us up and we'd never be seen again. I never worried about that before because I've only heard these in our sacred teachings and our ceremonies but you'd never think that it would happen to you

so I'm scared that they're going to come down and take us so we both agreed to go into the cabin I shut the curtains because I don't want to look at those bubbles we start playing cards just so that we can distract our stuff. from what's really happening. It was getting dark fast. And I can hear the whistling of the wind

coming into the little spots in the cabin where maybe there's no moss. You can hear all these little whistles and peeps and the trees are going back and forth and all of a sudden that's when I hear the wood chopping outside. So I have an ax out at the woodshed. It's a red handle. It's a red-handled axe, razor sharp.

And I can hear this axe just chopping wood 10 feet from the door. It's an unmistakable sound. It cannot be anything else. I'm too scared to look out the window. We're so far in the bush, so isolated. Nobody would be there. Nobody would be there. I know that whatever's out there,

the reason why they were chopping wood was to let us know that they were there. If it was a real man out there, I'd go out there and kick his ass. No problem. Or give him a good goal, at least. But this thing I know I can't defeat. My breathing starts to get faster.

And Alex was trying to. to be calm about it. But I can tell that he was scared than I was. I could see his hands were shaking a little bit. All of a sudden, there's this loud thrashing thunder that's so powerful and so thick. We can feel it all the way through our bones. As the lightning strikes,

and I'm looking at the shadows inside the cabin walls, I can see three other human figures besides me and Alex sitting at our table. I'm so stunned. They were a little bit bigger than us. And they were a little bit more pronounced. They're more darker. I turned away.

I didn't want to look anymore. I said, whatever it is, it's now, it's in the house. I told Alex, go underneath the bed and cover up, I said. and then I did the same. I can feel my heartbeat racing and I can feel this constant pressure of fear and doom. I'm just, I'm praying.

I'm calling upon old people that I knew a long time ago to come and to be with us. I'm underneath the bed and I'm just kind of peeking out. I can still see shadows that are not, supposed to be there. Alex is the one that's saying we gotta go. We have to get out of here. Like we need to go right now. I said if we go, I said, you know, we're gonna end up in those clouds. We can't stay here, he said. There's ghosts in here.

So we get out. We just run out of there with nothing. It's cold, it's windy, it's smelly, like a dead body. You got to cover your nose and your face because it's so stinky. I tried to keep my eyes away from that woodpile. I didn't want to look at nothing. All I wanted to see was my own feet walking. We go down to the lake and we jump in the canoe. And I'm like paddling hard.

I tell Alex, you got to paddle hard. I'm panicked. Because every time I look back at the cabin, I can see the shadows dancing through the window. I want to get out of there. I want to be bye-bye. So there we are. We're paddling. Trying our best. The only thing on my mind was survival.

My adrenaline is pumping. I am paddling so hard and so fierce. But the waves are coming up in the canoe. This is not even barely moving. That wind is too strong. There's nothing we can do. There was the thought that a cloud would come down and take it. The canoe.

And that's when I said, let's go back to the cabin. The cabin was the safer place, even though there were shadows in there that weren't ours. So I grabbed onto the front of the canoe, and I drag it up on shore. And we went right into the house. Alex goes into his bunk bed and I go into my bunk bed

and we put the blankets over top of our faces as the lightning and the thunder rumbles the house you can hear things scraping you can hear things shifting around inside the house in the cabin but we don't dare look I was so scared that something was going to rip that blanket off me or grab my leg and pull me off that bed

and I start to pray. I was always raised in an Indian way. But I prayed to everything, every God I ever heard about. The storm calms down after and the smell was gone. It seemed like at least inside the cabin we felt safer.

Early in the morning you can hear the birds start to sing. I'm going to guess it's like 6 o'clock in the morning. I'm half asleep, half awake. Alex says, hey, there's somebody at the table. And my heart just jumped, and I look. I lift up the blanket and I looked at the table and there's an old man sitting there playing solitary. And I know he's playing solitary

because I can see him the way that he's slipping the cards over. He was wearing a button-up shirt, like an old style button-up shirt, like maybe from the 30s. And he's got a hat on, like an old style Indian hat. He's got moccans on. His hands are big and old.

And I knew in my heart that it was the old man that lived at that cabin. I felt a sense of relief that somehow we were protected by this person. But at the same time, there's a ghost at the freaking table. And so that's scary. That's scary.

And so I put the blankets over my head again. I just start praying more. And then I can hear a shuffle, and then the cards go on the table. And when I look again, he's not there. And I said, Alex, let's go. We got to go.

You know, we go outside, and there's a whole bunch of wood chopped out there. Like, almost that whole pile was chopped. We start paddling across the lake, winds at our back. There's something going on in the back of my head. So it feels like there's something's walking in my hair. And I keep scratching, I keep scratching it. But it keeps being there.

We got to that portage, and then we paddled across that other lake. And we stopped and we gave offerings at that old man's cabin. It's a custom. Every single time when we go by a place where there's a place of spiritual significance, we have to go there and offer food and tobacco. So despite the fact that we had this very ghostly encounter, there is no way that we could go by that cabin and not leave an offering. We get to the main road when we hitchhiked back to civilization.

So I go to my uncle's. My uncle's house doesn't look too different than the cabin that we were staying in. And so I'm there for a couple of days. I keep scratching like I have nits, bugs. I tell my uncle, I got this itch. I think I got a bug or something in my hair. He goes, let me check your hair. So I sat down there and he checked my hair.

And he says, you know, that's probably not a bug. That's probably a jibai. That's a spirit that's stuck in your hair. It's tangled in there. Sometimes a spirit, a jibai, can get stuck in your hair or go in your pocket, and we'll stay there for a while. And try to get nourishment from your body so it can get energy to travel to where it needs to go next. He goes, you know, I've seen an old man in the garden,

cleaning up everything, getting things straightened out. It just disappeared. He knew it was somebody from the other side. He goes, where you were, was there an old man there? I said, yes. He says, that's probably that old man that's been in the garden. My uncle grew up in the bush. Of course, he went to residential school,

but he spent the rest of his life in the bush. And he also knew how to deal with the spirits because when you live in the bush, you're always dealing with things like that all the time. You know what to do. So my uncle did this beautiful ceremony where he sent the old man back to the spirit world. It took him one day to prepare

and get all the things that he needed from the forest. It's a very private ceremony that's done that I can't actually describe, but there's nothing in my hair after. that. I got educated that night. This world is not a resource. This world is a spirit. It's our mother. Maybe we got tough love that night. During that storm, I think the old man was there to protect us from nothing that went through. And that the old man stayed with us. And as we got away, it traveled in my hair. I always treated that old man's spirit with respect.

by making those offerings and by paying tribute, maybe we received great medicine from above. We received something special that saved our lives. So I just want to give a traditional farewell to you that are listening. So, I'm getting in and I, ma'am, y'amani, you know, mewa. me go torigo. No, one more people,

I'm going to him. You're sharing your story with Spoot. If you want to hear more stories from Isaac, knowing about his art and his activism, head over to our show notes,

we have got you covered. That story was scored. Pelene St. Juist was produced by Zoe Frigno. You know here it's spooked. We've learned that some people they know some things that they are not supposed to know.

names, places, languages, histories they've never been exposed to. And I wonder, I wonder if you know something that you're not supposed to. If so, please tell me about it, spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org.

Spook just brought to you by the team that is absolutely certain they've been here before. Except for Mark Ristich, everyone's pretty sure it's his first time through. Now there's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yannias, Teo de Kott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creeky, Elizabeth Z. Pardieu, Adityamatu, Lidiumatou, Lulu, the spook theme song is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is in Washington. And a long while ago, my son asked me, What is a story, Daddy? Because he was curious.

He was serious when he asked. I thought about it for a long while. And finally, I told him, I think stories are life. Still, he nodded. He said his thanks and he ran off to play with his friends. And over the years, I thought a lot about that answer. A lot.

And I don't think it's wrong. In fact, I think it's more right band wrong, but I believe stories are meant to be more than just that. They're a map. They're a guide. They're a trail of breadcrumbs. Stories tell us which way the wolf lurks where the queen hides her honey. And most of all, stories are a reminder to never, never, ever, never, never, never, not ever, never, never, ever.