Spooked - Kokogi - The Crossroads

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Nothing gets between a party and a group of teenagers… except the Kokogi. A night of fun takes a dark turn in Algonquin territory.Thank you Kristen and Hayden for letting Spooked visit Kitigan Zibi, and for sharing your stories with Spooked.Scouted and produced by Elliot Lightfoot, original score by Lalin St. Juste.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A monster mad a monster and they went to the ball. They ate up all the people and drank the alcohol. You've almost arrived at the crossroad from Spoot. Stayed my clothes with lead. The day I turned seven. For your protection, he said. Teaching me to slouch, to mumble, to hide, to grovel. I never missed the mother I didn't have, but I did miss the brother.

I'd never met. He was a good boy, my father said. Sometimes at night, after he told me stories from faraway places, he was a good boy. The forest, my playground, my father raised me in the mountains, just the two of us away from the world. For your protection, he'd say. Watching me through the veil, he made me wear, even in our isolation, the world is not ready. I thought he meant my disease, how people reacted when they saw me, the way birds followed me home, how wolves rolled onto their backs when I passed. And flowers bloomed out of season in my footsteps. You are special, father said.

Waiting my clothes, teaching me to slouch, to mumble, to hide. They must never know. When I turned 17, a hunter lost in storm, knocked on our door. Father was away, gathering supplies. I answered for getting my veil, the hunter, dropped to his knees, praying from rapture. He said, I was an angel. He said I had been blessed. When Father finally returned, the man had been kneeling for six hours, knees bleeding through his pants.

He shook, smiling, crying, refusing to move. Please! He begged, Father, let me stay. The hunter was faster. He returned with others. They built a shrine in the woods, left offerings. We escaped again that seven villages. Once a priest caught my reflection in stained glass,

he denounced his God and said he found a new lord. Children following me in the street silent, hypnotized, until parents dragged them away screaming, What's wrong with me? I asked father, everything is right. Happens when someone achieves perfection. Who was my mother? Asked him for the thousandth time.

He smiled at me again. And again remained silent. Last week, a man calling himself a scholar came to town. Old feeble, but somehow immune to whatever I was. He heard my voice and went rigid. That pitch! He said, 4 to 8.5 hertz exactly.

their frequency of addictive responses in the human brain. Who made you? Made me. He laughed. Child. Every measurement of your voice is calculated. Your pheromone signature, perfect. Fibonacci sequences in your speech pattern, golden ratios in your breathing.

You are unnatural. There was once a person from Geneva, the scholar continued, who thought to elevate himself above his maker. But he made monsters. The man looked at my father. His name was Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, I relaxed then. The name torn from children's scary stories.

This supposed scholar whispered to my father. But you knew that. Didn't you? The broke then. Sadness would relieve I could not say. Sure. Sure you're risk. Obediently like a trained dog.

My father rolled up his sleeves, scars. Circular, perfect, Scala grinned. Victor Frankenstein's first creation had boats. I couldn't breathe them. The monster, you? Victor made me first, father said. He made me crude, he made me ugly. I begged him for a companion, but he refused.

And after we fought, then I hit away. Teller? Made me from what? For myself? Was him? Monsters monster. Made from the monster. For some reason, I wanted to laugh.

You. Who killed Victor's family? Called to me then. Hiding in the forest, all those years, running, fleeing, afraid of them, I was done. The veil from my face. I let the weights fall. I stood radiant, towering myself finally. My true height made him tiny.

You should have realized what you were. My voice hit those exact frequencies he designed and he crumpled, paralyzed by his own creation. I stepped over him and walked outside, unveiled, radiant monsters, and I heard them. People keening. Let them worship, 2011. And Chrissy is just 16 years old. She's from Kittaganzibi, the largest Algonquin, Reserve in Canada.

Located in North Quebec, she recently moved with her mom to a nearby town for high school. But every weekend, she drives back home to the Reserve to be with her family. Kivirang Zibi, this is a deeply spiritual place. Where encounters the supernatural are not unusual, but what happened here? It stands out. It's one of the most unforgettable chapters in the Reserve's history. And for this story, we sent our own spook producer, Elliot Lightfoot, to get it on Zibi to find out what Chrissy and those around her experienced

and why it still haunts them to this day. So it was a Friday evening after, you know, a long week at school, we're driving and my mom and I are just chit-chatting and she's asking me how my week went, what plans I had for the weekend. And I told her, well, I don't know what's going on, but just as I was saying that, my friend texted me, letting me know that there was a party that was going to be happening

at our friend's cottage. So I, ran that by her and she was like, okay, but like, you know, your dad and your brother miss you. So just hang out with us for a little and then, you know, you can go to that party. We get home and we walk and my dad is sitting at the kitchen table with my cousin Justin and they're both cops on the reserve and they're drinking a couple beers and usually that means it's been a particularly rough week. But we gave our hugs, you know, did our greetings. 20 minutes go by or so, and my dad asked me if I have any plans. And I tell them about the party at my friend's cottage.

My cousin Justin looked over at my dad and his eyebrows went up and his eyes were like, do we, do we tell her? They're just kind of squinting at each other and kind of going back and forth and like, well, who's going to start? But my dad kind of, you know, he takes a deep breath and he turns over to me. His hands are clasped together and he's like, basically the res is haunted. And I'm just like, okay, why? Like, what happened?

And they start telling me about a series of calls they were getting throughout the week. The first call came in late Monday evening. It was from a woman saying that she kept hearing knocking. all around her house. So Chrissy's dad went to go check it out. He went over. He looked around the home, went into the woods with his flashlight, but there was nothing, no evidence of anybody being around. They just brushed it off and they were like, okay, like weird. I guess there's kids playing pranks. We'll keep an eye out, I guess. That's all they couldn't really do. Two days later, Chrissy's dad was on the night shift when he got a call from the same woman,

complaining about the same thing. But this story, time, she said the knocking was louder and was at every window. She's adamant that it must have been like six different kids at one time. She's saying, like, come right now, and he's there within a minute. And again, nothing is there. And this time, it had been raining a lot. So he was like, okay, at least this time I'll get there and I'll see mud on the ground. I'll be able to see footprints of some kind.

But again, there's no footprints anywhere around, even in the mud. So they're out there talking outside her home. And the neighbor next door comes out. His name is Shane. His hands are shaking. He's visibly terrified. And he just walks up to them and says, is this about the knocking? And my dad was like, yeah, what do you know about that?

He was like, I don't know, man, if I tell you, like, I'm going to seem crazy. And my dad was like, try me. That night, Shane had stepped outside for a cigarette. But as he lit up, he heard these loud, sharp knuckle knocks coming from somewhere in the darkness. But he doesn't know where it's coming from. So he's looking around all over, happens to look over to his neighbor's home

and sees this black shadow figure. It looks to be about five feet tall. It's just, it looks like a shadow. And then it runs around the house, like so fast, It's a blur knocking on every single window around the house. And it does that about three times before running across the street and hides behind a tree. Shane is incomplete shock.

He doesn't know what he's looking at, but he's still staring at that tree knowing it's right behind the tree. And then it peeks its head out and it looks directly at him and it smiles at him. The teeth were very small and sharp, and he described it as having these yellow glowing eyes that were reflective like an animal. He freaks out, he runs inside,

slams the door, his girlfriend is inside, like, what did you see? A couple seconds after that, that's when my dad pulls up to follow up on that call that the lady just gave, and then he sees them talking, so then he goes out and he tells him what he saw. My dad just looks at me and he's like, are you sure you still want to go to this party?

And I'm 16. I'm going to a party. Like, there's no stopping me. So Chrissy sent a text to her friends to come pick her up, and a few minutes later, they were off. They drove deeper and deeper into the woods until they pulled up to her friend's cottage, an old wooden cabin overlooking a lake.

She walked in to find all of her friends. hanging out in the sunroom, a room off the patio that was walled in on all sides by windows. It's where they'd usually hang out and take in the view, but that night it was too dark to see anything outside. It's only nine of us. We're just sitting around talking, and everyone's just having good time until one person brings up, did you hear what happened the other day? Like, did you hear what Shane saw? And multiple people there heard the story firsthand, like not through the cops, just from Shane himself.

Like, everybody had a little thing to say. One of my friend's house was getting knocked on. She said, like, hey, there's people knocking on my windows. I don't know what it is. I look outside and there's no one there. And then there was one friend whose grandmother walked to go throughout some garbage, but she just had this feeling that she was being watched. She looks back, and there are these glowing yellow eyes staring at her from the tree,

Everyone was just saying it. No one really knew what to describe it. The monster somewhere saying, but the name that stuck was Kukaji. That means like monster in Algonquin. The language is called an is Shnabemun. Everyone at this point was inside the sunroom. Some of us are very serious and getting very scared. And then you have these other couple guys who are acting really tough.

Oh, it can show. show up and I wouldn't give the shit. Like I could punch it in the face. Like, it can come here right now and I wouldn't even be scared. And my friends and I are exchanging glances because you don't speak badly on a bad spirit. The spirit knows when you're talking about it. And it's going to come to you. We were young, so we weren't like going to say anything to those guys. But I was like, okay, I'm out of here. I leave with my friend. We're just in the living room trying to focus on happier things, but we're just feet from the sunroom, really, so we still hear what they're saying. Those guys are still trying to be tough, daring it to come to us.

That's when I catch movement in the corner of my eye, and I looked over to the patio right beside the sunroom, and I see the rocking chair moving back and forth. It wasn't just the wind blowing it, because in this case, it was going all the way back, all the way forward, as if somebody was on it, I couldn't see anything. The back of the rocking chair was all I saw. I had a bad feeling in my body right then and there. Like I had chills, shivers. And then I looked over at my friend Hayden,

who was inside the sunroom, and his face was, like, super serious. That's when I seen, like, a figure sitting on the chair. Its knees were up and its feet were, kind of like a gargoyle, like posed. was like leaning in looking, making eye contact with me. I'll never forget the eyes. It's like the eyes lit up.

And I have a lot of hunting experience. You know, I know people's eyes don't do that. Felt wrong to make eye contact with it. Like you're not supposed to see it. And then it just leaned forward from where it was perched onto the chair. And I can't say it ran or it jumped, but as soon as like its legs touched the floor, it was gone like 30 feet in a second.

It was really quick. I had just enough time to take it in. I stepped back from the window and there was another person beside me and I kind of looked over at them and they were white like a ghost and shaking. That's when I hear my friend Yan just let out this blood-curdling scream.

My first thought is like, shit like it's here. Our head snapped towards the side. and we see her just running across the sunroom. My other friend Hayden running opposite directions at the same time. There's a sliding glass door that leads onto the patio. He busts through it and is gone running onto the porch. Right away, I walk into the sunroom.

Jan, she crumples into a couch and she's just crying hysterically, shaking, she can't speak, she's hyperventilating, gasping for air. I mouth to my friend who was rubbing her back. Like, what happened? And he just looked at me in mouth like, she saw something. At that point, I'm like, okay, well, Hayden took off running outside. So now if she saw something, I'm worried about him. Because to me, you don't go looking for things like that.

I go outside, but it's completely pitch black. But then I do see him, and he's standing in the lawn between these two. two trees and he's just staring into the forest. I was like, Aiden? Hayden? And he just like snapped out of it and looked at me. He was like, get everybody inside. I was just like, okay, that's my mission.

And I turn around and just like, you know, teenagers spilling out into the patio. And like, this is when the phrase, come at me, bro, is gaining popularity. So they're out on the porch and they're like, come at me, bro. I just start saying, get back inside. Everyone just get back inside. And finally they're inside. And then Hayden comes in and he just tells everyone, like, start packing up, like clean up.

Just let's get out of here as soon as we can. So we all start cleaning up. I go into the sunroom with Hayden. And then I hear a little knock, like, directly behind Hayden. We heard something banging on. windows, one knock, two knocks, and then several, like, in different places. And it's louder this time. That's when more knocking happens.

Then we hear a scream coming from inside the cottage. My friend Gavin, who was in the bathroom on the complete other side of the cottage, he comes running out of the bathroom like, who the hell is knocking on the window outside? That's not funny. It's in the living room. It's in the kitchen. It's happening all over the house. Teenagers start freaking out.

What's going on? Like, is it outside? Those two tough guys, they were crying at that point. One of them ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife and was standing at the windows. And I was like, great, you're protecting all of us. Like, yeah, good job. Jan at this point just has her hands on her ears

and she's just catatonic, just staring into nothing, just trying to pretend she's not there. I was just chaos, but Hayden just says... Grab your stuff, stay together, hold a person in front of you, if you have to, look at your feet, everyone's going out together. We were like, okay, and I just remember doing that. Like, I refused to look up. I looked at my feet, and we just all, like, single file, went to the cars.

Then Hayden just shoves me, like, right into... to the truck, slams the door behind me, hops in the front seat, and he just peels out of there, and you just drive out. Chrissy and her two friends, Jan and Moni, decided to sleep over at Chrissy's parents' house. None of them wanted to be alone. But once Hayden dropped them off and they got inside, no one said a word. No one wanted to talk about what just happened. And for the rest of the weekend, it stayed like that.

But when Chrissy left the reserve to go to school the following Monday, it was all she could think about. I was like, I'm going to go talk to Hayden about everything and get all the information out of him, which I did. I was like, hey, you need to tell me, like, what did you see? And that's when he's like, it followed us, man. When we got back to my house, me and my younger cousin, we were pretty shook up, and then we hear something knocking on this house. It was the same thing, but it was more aggressive. You can hear it going around the house like laps faster than anyone can run around or an animal can run and bang on things and the dogs weren't aware of what was going on and it felt like a really heavy like dark feeling. It was just taunting me. I grabbed the shotgun, load up, got close to the

window and then wait. I thought if I seen it, I'd shoot through it and break my wall. But then it would just leave me alone because it knew, you know, I'm not scared. I grew up knowing, you know, like bad spirits feed off of negative energy and fear. And I wasn't going to allow myself to give in to that. But that night, nothing came from it. You know, nothing happened. It didn't make itself visible. So I end up falling asleep on the couch with the lights on.

The following day, I'm on the couch and still had... the shotgun, my father came down and he's like, what's going on? Told him everything that happened. My father's like me, you know, very brave and doesn't let stuff bother him too much. But after hearing what I told him, word got out quick and he was kind of more on edge. And we start putting up cedar in the doorways over the windows. After that, though, it was just little rumors around the res. Like, every weekend I would come back and I would go to a family dinner.

like my aunt would have a story, and then my dad would tell us something about, like, the police station. Her dad told her, cops on the night shift kept getting calls from different people in the community, all complaining about the knocking. And meanwhile, some of the officers started hearing strange noises coming from inside the station. One officer even said he came face to face with the Kukaji in the stairwell and then saw it glide through the walls towards the evidence room. For a while, I kept... feeling like I was going to see it. Just everywhere I went, I was very scared. If it was nighttime, I couldn't even look towards the woods,

and we were surrounded by woods, so I was really just staring at my feet if it was past sunset. But eventually, stories about the Kukagi grew less and less, until finally, worried around the community was that the monster had moved north to an area of Quebec called Lavalandrie. And that's north of our reserve, still Algonquin territory,

but it's, it's a ways. We didn't get much stories after that. But I spent a lot of time thinking about how everything went down, theorizing on what it was or why it was visiting me certain people because there's this belief that certain things you do in your life can attract these kinds of bad spirits. But for it to be really bothering Hayden and my friend Yan, like I didn't understand why.

As the time passed, she could tell, though, that they were both still processing the encounter, both bothered by it, just in different ways. With Hayden, he won't admit that he was scared, but I, like, I knew him around that time, and I think he was a bit different afterward. We'd be at a party, and all of a sudden he would just get up and take off into the woods.

And I'd be like, where are you going? And he'd be like, just go ahead and Kukagi hunting. I'm like, what do you mean you're going Kukkii hunting? We'd go in the bush. The windows are down, the truck lights are on, and slowly kind of creeping through the bush, trying to listen and use our senses to guide us. At that point, I just was fed up.

Kind of just like, hey, I ain't going to be chased, I'll be the chase early. He would go, like, every couple parties he was going kukagji hunting. And I would say, like, why are you doing that? He would stress me out, because to me, you don't go looking for things like that. he'd come back and, well, he'd just shrug his shoulders. And I'd be like, give me information. Like, did you see something?

Was it out there? But he was very, like, mysterious about it. With Jan, it was even harder for Chrissy to understand what was going on. It wasn't only that she didn't speak about the night at the cabin, but she withdrew from the friend group almost entirely. She stopped hanging out. She stopped going to parties. It wasn't until many years later,

when they were both in Mexico for a wedding, that Jan finally decided to share what went down that night. There was one night we're both just hanging out in the pool. And I was like, okay, I know you said years ago you didn't want to talk about this, but can we talk about it? She's just like, you know what, we're far enough away that I feel safe enough to talk about it. But the second we go back to Canada, we're never talking about this again. She went back to when we were at the cottage.

and she said that she was sitting in the corner of the sunroom when she happened to look at Hayden and see his face, and his face was like super serious. He looked like he was glaring at something. That's when she turned her head and saw it right behind her, like full crouch. I asked her for more detail on how it looked. She, you know, she saw that.

the glowing yellow eyes, the sharp little teeth in a smile. But she saw big antlers. And I was like, well, wait, wait, antlers? Nobody else described it having antlers. Why do you think that you saw antlers and no one else did? And she was like, I know. I have all the same questions you do. Like, so she had gone to see some elders. That's when they suggested that what she saw was not just a bad spirit but was something more than that and they suggested that it was a Windigo. I was in complete shock because we think of Windigo, we think big antlers,

we think like skinny, scrawny, pale, creepy guy, but we don't typically hear this description of it and then also having it appear differently to different people. But the elders said that that's normal, that Windigo is a shapeshifter. He can appear to you however he wants, but for some reason, it chose to reveal its true identity to her and her alone.

So that terrified her. Like, why is it only showing itself to me? She thought maybe because we were teenagers out late at night, we should have been home. So she took it as like she needs to be taking her life more seriously and that she just needs to be doing better and going on a better path in her life. So she valedictorian straight-ays, but I don't know, it still doesn't make sense to me. Hayden, on the other hand, still had no idea of really why the kukagyi revealed itself to him.

Unlike Yan, he didn't have such a clear theory. Instead, he kept looking for it, chasing after it. Nearly every week, he'd go on these late-night jogs into the woods by himself until one Friday night. He was about halfway home from his friend's house. I start getting that feeling again. There's somebody else there. It's 4 a.m., like it was pitch black. I'm looking, but there's only so much I could see.

And the further I go, the more heavy to feeling God on me, that you're not alone. Something's not right. I just felt like something was above me just over me, keeping me really suppressed. I got to like this point where it just didn't feel right to keep looking around for this thing that I feel is with me. So I just put my head down. I'm almost home. I'm walking.

Just before I could see my driveway, there's the big hills. I made it halfway on the hill. and I just had such a heavy feeling where I had to just stop, hit the ground. I can't let this thing touch me. I felt scared to look up. And I started shaking and trying to move, but I can't move. It's as if I wasn't in my body.

I did manage to sit up, take out my phone. I have like 3% battery. And I'm like, okay, text my dad. I'm like, there's something out here that's not letting me continue, you know? I'm stuck. If you're seeing this, like, I need help. Send. Phone dies.

And I'm just on the road laying there. And I remember, like, yelling at myself to get up. Like, you need to get up, help. Maybe 10 minutes later, like, I heard a vehicle coming, and then the lights were on me, and it was my dad. I felt like, I don't know, as if, like, my soul, like, or something came back and there was nothing to fight.

I was safe. I was making my way back to the car and it was quiet for a while. And it was the last times that I've had that type of experience. I'm a very strong-willed and brave person. And, you know, I went on to be a cop afterwards. And that was the only time I've ever said, and he'd help. I spent a lot of time thinking about how everything went down. Because at first, Hayden was staring it down.

Like he challenged it in a way. In Hayden's perspective, he's just protecting us, right? But if you're looking at it and what kind of energy you're giving, he's facing it, challenging it, and then running after it, spending energy trying to find it. So even if he wasn't like depressed and going through all these things, I think that's probably why it targeted him. Sometimes I feel like it was trying to humble him in a way. because he never wants to admit that he's afraid, like, ever. You know, I wasn't scared. I was more defensive or ready to have conflict with it.

I kind of understood that of being, like, the reason maybe why it followed me here. And, you know, it was attached to me. But I don't believe it's totally gone or done, but it's not around you now. Thank you, Kristen and Hayden, for letting Spook visit Tippaganziby and for sharing your stories. The original score for that piece by Laleen St. Juist was scouted and produced by Elliot Lightfoot. If you have seen lights where there's supposed to be darkness. If you've seen darkness where there is supposed to be light, let me know. Spooked at SnapJgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener.

Spook at snapjudgment.org Spook dwells at the crossroads between light and shadow deep beneath KQED in San Francisco we've got the special incantation from Spook legal reading No, Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning

or AI systems without prior written permission the crossroads is brought to you by the spook team who will always catch a tiger by the toe except for Mr. Mark Einy, Meeny, Mighty Mo, Wristich on Team Scoot. The Union represented

producers, artists, editors, engineers, are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Working of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51, and there's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Yannes, Theo DeKat, Marissa Dodge,

Miles Lassie, Elliot Lightfoot, Suey Chu, Evan Stern, Eve's Jeffcoat, Eishel Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart,

the spook theme song is by Pat Messina Miller. My name is in Washington, and I've seen shadowy figures, masked. Come to snatch my neighbor from their sleep,

leave motherless children in their wake. I turn on the TV. To watch them, laughing at the terror unleashed monsters, I know if I do not resist. If I do not hold out my hands and say no, stop a monster too. I do not wish to be a monster.

But screaming children do not care what I wish to be. They want their mommies and their daddies back. And if I close my door, shut out my windows, offer hopes and prayers and turn the TV up louder, I am worse than the boogeyman. It happens when the monsters. The ghouls of vampires are no longer caved in the books. No. Except in the story, I'm not. Except in the story, Stories. There are candles to follow. There are windows to guide. There are torches that are lit. I'm looking for them now. Asking you chapter.