Spooked - Medicine People

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Amelia’s trapped in a bad marriage. Her dad has a secret to get her out. This story contains themes of domestic abuse. Please take care while listening. Thanks, Amelia, for sharing your story with us. Produced by Anne Ford, original score by Yari Bundy. Special thanks to Cody Harjo and Ezra Vazquez-D'Amico. 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.

As now I lay me down to sleep, my soul, I vow. I'll not sell cheap. I'll haggle for the highest price. And always throw with weighted dice. You're listening to Spooked. Okay, so sitting in church as a kid, a lot of things aren't adding up. Like, if God made everything and God is good, where all the bad come from? And what was going on before in the beginning?

And pastor says that dogs don't have souls and don't have an afterlife. What? My dog's got more soul than James Brown. What's up with that? So many questions. So I go to the answer, man. My pops. I say, pops, why would God put his secrets in a book that everybody's just going to argue about?

And what are you going to make dinosaurs for just to kill him off? And how come he needs our money? Well, son, God. God didn't need our money. He just wants us to learn to give it to him. Huh? You got to understand that God has a plan. What is it?

Boy. And the more answers pops hands down, the more questions I have. What's on the other side of the end of everything? And who went in the fight? God or Jesus? And finally he's like, son, you can't even think about that

because it will blow your mind. What? Blow my mind. Danger, Will Robinson. The thoughts. I think will blow my mind. So I try not to think certain thoughts, but the more I think thoughts about not thinking,

the more I think the thoughts I'm not supposed to think. And I know it's just a matter of time before the brain explosion leaves bits of gray jelly splattered all over my bedroom and I'm scared. And I try to stop it with a deep breathing and ice chips. My mind goes into a fevered dream overtime and says to me, listen, listen, it ain't the blowing up your mind you got to worry about.

Would you say mine? I said, don't be afraid of your mind blowing up. Be afraid of it shrinking. Spookstar. She is a member of Chickasaw Nation, an indigenous people based in Oklahoma. Now when Amelia was growing up in her small town, it wasn't cool to be native.

Even her parents didn't want to stand out, so Amelia was not raised with traditional Chickasaw beliefs. Instead, the family went to a Christian church. Instead of listeners should know, this story does touch on themes of domestic abuse. We'll let Amelia take it from here. Afternoon after Sunday school, a group of us kids decided we wanted to go swimming at the nearest swimming hole. We were all loading up in the back of one of our friends' pickup trucks. And one of my friends said, hey, have you ever heard of the lights?

I said, what do you mean lights? And they said, oh, yeah. If you're out here in the dark, you can see out in the fields, these bright lights that just float around within the tree line. It looks like balls of lights that glow when they change color. There are our ancestor spirits, and they come back and roam around at night to check on us. I thought, you're just making this up.

And they said, no, really. after we went home, I said, Dad, have you ever heard of any lights down there at the church? And he said, well, yeah, but we don't talk about that. That's not in the Bible. That's dark and evil. That's the devil. I knew not to ask again, because once he got to that tone of voice,

you knew if you asked again, you'd probably get in trouble. Going through school, I dated white guys. But my great-grandmother, she said, you need to marry your own kind. You need to continue the bloodline. Finally, I did date someone that was Chickasaw. He had muscles. He was a handsome guy.

He drove a nice car. He was really charming. but he wasn't the same after we got married. I was so naive. I didn't realize that he was involved in drugs. He would be in and out of jobs. I had my two kids, and I would be the one that would have to work all the time

and pay bills, take care of the kids, everything. I was totally stressed out because I was doing all this by myself. At one point, we didn't even really have a place to stay, My mom and my dad had split up at that time, and they were going through their own issues. So I didn't have anybody to go and talk to. I finally got a mobile home, and we had an option to find some property to put it on. Well, his mom and dad were saying they want us to move next to their home on their property, ganging up on me saying, this is what you need to do.

We're giving you this. You don't have to pay for it. So I finally just gave in and said, okay. I really did want to get out of this marriage. One of the first times that I thought about it, I told him I wanted to leave, and he wouldn't let me take my car. He told me, well, you're just going to have to walk.

I got about two miles down on the gravel road, and this pickup truck starts driving down the road. It was my father-in-law. He asked me what I was doing. And I told him, I'm not happy. This is time for me to leave. He said, go ahead and get in. I thought he met.

He was going to take me to my mom's or something. He gets me in the pickup and drives me right back to that house. And so I just walked right back into the house, and there's my husband sitting on the recliner, and he just has this smirk. That's when I realized that this whole entire family, they're holding me as a prisoner here. They knew I was trying to leave. They knew it.

They were afraid they were going to lose the grandkids. I couldn't go anywhere without someone wanting to know how long I was going to be. Every time I made a move, there was always someone right there trying to listen to my conversations. They wouldn't even let my family come see me. I felt like I was trapped all the time. One evening, in the middle of the night, I woke up to go to the bathroom. I smelt tobacco. I thought, well, who's, you know, I didn't remember any of them smoking.

And I could hear talking in the living room a really low conversation. I got up out of the bed and started tippy-towing down the hall. but once I did, I could hear them stop talking. That's when I heard my husband say, What are you doing, go back to bed? Just really hateful. And once I got back to bed, then I can hear them talking again. I just couldn't figure out what was going on.

Within a few weeks after that, I began getting really a bad abdominal pain. My stomach would be cramping like someone was poking me with a stick or something. Cramps constantly nauseous. And it just kept getting worse and worse. I couldn't keep weight on. I couldn't hold food down. My hair began to fall out. My face was sunk in.

The doctors couldn't figure out why. Around 3 o'clock in the morning. I told my husband, hey, I'm passing blood. I need to go to the hospital. He wouldn't even get up and take me. I had to drive myself to the ER. Next thing I know, I was in the hospital bed.

I was scared and I wanted my dad. I called him and asked if he would come. Once he got there, I just started crying. He was the first face I'd seen from my side of the family for many, many months. He pulled up a chair and sat next to me. He starts crying as well. He said, you got to get out of there. I know, Dad, I've been trying.

Every time I try to leave, something happens, and they make sure that I can't. He asked me, have they been doing anything odd around you? I said, well, one night I smelled tobacco. And he goes, hmm, like he's thinking. A lot of native people use tobacco. The smoke or the tobacco itself will be blessed. And then they would pray. A lot of Native people believe the smoke itself is a way to send a prayer to the creator.

My dad said, I think I know what's going on with you. He said, I think they're doing some medicine. I said, medicine. Medicine is something that I don't want to say magic, because it's not really what it is. I guess it's a spiritualism. There's people out there that have the power to see and do things that we can't see. They call them Indian doctors or medicine men. These people are gifted to be able to heal,

not only physical healing, but they also provide spiritual healing. A lot of people go to them to have them do a blessing or to fight off any negativity that may be harming that person. But there's others that just do harm because they don't have no love. They don't have any life. They don't have any goodness. They can make you sick physically.

I had never heard anybody in my family talk about medicine. My parents have been taught that traditional practices and spiritual beliefs was going against God and Christianity. And so you don't talk about it. I just couldn't believe it. I was like, so have. Have your guys been lying to me all this time?

You said this wasn't what we did. He said, I know, but you weren't old enough to understand. I didn't want you to have to worry about this unspoken, unseen world. A lot of our traditional beliefs were under the table. No one talks about that openly to each other because we don't want to lose that knowledge. if too many people find out that it's still being done. It would be probably misinterpreted from people that don't understand

what our tradition and beliefs are. When he explained it to me, I understood. He just kind of patting me on my leg and said, you just get well and we'll get this taken care of. When I was in the hospital, my husband had the nerve to call me and get mad at me for me. being in the hospital. He says, well, when are you going to get out?

And I didn't tell him. So when I did get released, I went to my grandma's house. I couldn't even take my kids. So I had to leave with the clothes on my back just so I could get away. I was just so devastated. My dad said, okay, you remember what we talked about when you're in the hospital? I said, yeah. We wanted to take you to someone, but you have to be.

Make that choice. I said, Dad, I am willing to do anything. I need to be out of this marriage. I need to get my kids back. We're going to have to do this if I want to get better. We're going to have to fight fire with fire. So him and my granny took me out up towards Oklahoma City. We ended up driving on these gravel roads for, I don't know how long,

until we got to this old worn-down shotgun house. If you could picture the cabin that the clampets lived in on the Beverly Hillbillies, that's what this looked like. We pull up and this little bitty-granny lady, she was only like five-foot tall, comes out to the porch. She goes straight to me and she said, You don't worry, baby. we're going to get those babies back.

I know who they're using to hurt you. They're keeping you sick. But you don't worry, you do as I say, and we'll get this taken care of. We go on into her little house. It was basically a two-room shack. You go through the front door. You're in the living room slash her bedroom.

There was some shell. that had plants, jars, old metal tobacco containers. And then to the left was a doorway, and that was where the kitchen was. She says, okay, I'll be back here a little bit. She just went straight out into the woods. She was gone for maybe an hour. We sat there in complete silence the whole time that she was gone.

All three of us were kind of, nervous. Everything is serious. Everything is out of respect for her. You don't speak until you're spoken to. When she come back, she went straight into her kitchen. We could hear her mixing and clanging, putting stuff together. She finally come out, and she had a pack of cigarettes

and this little canister that had this kind of salve stuff in it. She said, this is what I want you to do. She said, the next three days, I want you to get up and when the sun's coming up, you need to take the cigarettes and you smoke and pray to the creator to ask for his protection, for you and your family. After you do that, you take a shower. You use the salve And you wash from head to toe Start from the top from head And everything washes down

And it washes down the drain This will wash away All that that's on you That's harming you After that, you drink this water And she had These three mason jars That had, I swear,

I look like pond water It was brown looking There was these little chunks of stuff floating around in each one of them. And she said, I had to drink the entire jar. Then I have to purge that up. She said, you have to do it exactly, as I say, for three days. And then you'll get your babies.

I was looking at those jars, and I'm thinking, how am I going to drink all that? How am I going to smoke these cigarettes when I've never smoked in my life? Is this even going to work? My grandma said, yes, you've got to do everything she told you. Because if you don't have the faith, you're going to lose this battle. So I had to start trying to make myself say, okay, this is going to work. This will work.

The first morning, my grandmother comes in and wakes me up and said, okay, you need to face the east. Buck your cigarette. I said, Grandma, I'm scared because I don't smoke. She said, well, just do what you can. Just take it slow. If you choke or start coughing, that's fine. As long as you get it in your body, I kind of thought, okay.

So at least if I start coughing, Grandma's not going to laugh at me. I sat outside on the porch, and I've got these cigarettes in my hand, and I'm looking at him. They were in the Marlboro pack, the red and white soft pack. I take one of those out of the pack, and I try to light it, and of course I wasn't very good at it,

so it took me a few tries to finally get that going. And then when I finally did it, of course, when I inhaled, I did start coughing. And she said, now you need to ask the curator for his blessings and his prayer's protection. So I smoked and I said, I thank you for all of the continued protection and blessings that you're giving me. From all the negative and dark things that are out there that are trying to harm me and my babies, I believe in you.

I don't know if I inhaled every time, but I did manage to get the cigarette all used up and then, then I took it and threw it over across the road. I was really nauseous for a little bit after that. After that, took my shower, had the salve. It was white, greasy-looking stuff. Didn't have a smell, really. I scooped out some, and then I put it on top of my head, and I would just kind of go rub down from the scalp, down,

to my face, and then I'd go down on my neck, and then down my body all the way to my feet. After I got my entire body covered, then I rinsed off really good. I asked my grandma if it was okay if I'd go ahead and use shampoo and stuff after. And she said, oh, yeah, I should be okay. After I got out of the shower and dried off,

we went into the dining room area, and my grandma had the first jar sitting there. I could see all those chunks of sticks and floaties in there. It smelled like rotten eggs. Just looking at it, I was like, oh my gosh, this is awful. What is this? What's in here? I had to just quit looking at it because I knew if I kept looking,

I'd probably find some dead bug or something in there. I said, Grandma, I want to do this. And she said, well, just hold your nose. I held my nose with one hand and they had the jar in the other and I just start drinking it had a icky, fishy taste to it. I did get a few chunks of stuff in my mouth.

I'd pull out a stick or two out of my mouth so I wasn't about to swallow those. Once I finished it, I had to go into the bathroom and make myself throw it back up. Having to have it come back out It was even harder, but I did it. I'm a gagger anyway, so it don't take much. On the second day, it was awful.

I did all of these things for three days. I was a pro at it, unfortunately. I was able to smoke a cigarette and not choke up on it. But I was afraid I didn't do everything right. I thought, what if I messed up on this? did I forget something? I was afraid it wasn't going to work. The fourth day, I was in bed when my grandma said,

I got the phone call, and it's my mother-in-law. Oh, no, what does she want? Why is she calling me? I could feel my throat start tightening up. I was expecting her just to be griping at me on the phone. I expected her to say, you need to come home and take care of your house. I had to take in a deep breath and get myself prepared. I got the phone and said, hello.

She says in a hateful way. You better come and get these kids because I can't take care of them. I don't know where their dad is, but I've got them over here and I just can't do it. I have too much stuff I got it. You need to come get him now. And then she hung up on me. I stood there frozen in shock because I just could not believe that this just happened. What happened?

Grandma said, what's you saying? I said, well, I guess it worked. She told me to come get the kids. And she said, see, didn't she tell you she would help you? My dad took me. We went down to my mother-in-law's house. She was like, OK, well, kids are in here. Here's their bag.

The kids were so glad to. glad to see me. They were crying. They were like, okay, mom, let's go. They were ready to get out of there, too. I cried all the way back to my grandmas. I couldn't believe that, you know, what just happened, we didn't really say a lot. I just asked them if they were okay and that I loved it and I was glad to see him. From that point on, I wasn't sick anymore. When I was, I was sick anymore. When I was, I was I was going through my divorce. I became insistent upon him and his family was to, you know, expect them to try again. And if I even had some kind of inkling of symptoms of getting sick again,

then it was time for me to go back and renew my protection. Whenever I get sick and the regular doctor doesn't work, or as my dad calls the white man's doctor, I go to one medicine woman, they'll give me stuff to drink that'll stop it. I'm so much happier. I've got a great job. I have great friends, supportive, family.

I can't be more blessed. And I know how to smoke now. But I'm not a smoker. We are so happy to hear that Amelia and her kids are doing just fine these days. Thanks Amelia for sharing. your story. Special thanks as well to Cody Harjo and Ezra Vasquez D'Amico. The original score for that piece was by Yari Bundy. It was produced by Ann Ford. When I look at a person, I see a person. Eyes, ears, nose, other people, they claim to be able to see a whole lot more.

Thoughts, past, future, secrets, lies simply by gazing at the person in front of them. If you can do this, Or if you know someone who can, please tell me all about it. You have to know there's nothing better than a spook story from a spute listener. Snap Judgment.org. If you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing stupendious sister podcast, Snap Judgment. It's storytime with the beat. Brought to you by the team that feels comfortable looking you straight in the eye.

So of course for Mark Ristich. I will never look him in the eyes again. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hamburg, Leon Morimoto, Teo de Cotte, Maristadage, Zoe Ferrigna, Ann Ford, Yari Bundy, Miles Lassie, Eric Yannes, Cody Harjo, Lola Abrera, and Doug Stewart. The spook theme song is by Pat Vasini Miller. My name is in Washington, and for some reason,

against technology when nothing could be further from the truth. I love my computer. my cell phone, the GPS system in my ride, I love it all. I just don't pretend that the satellite navigation system can tell me where I am or that their 5G communication network and connect me to everyone dear to my heart. At older systems, ancient technologies continually prove to be far more useful than the beep and flash of their latest gadget, like the chef of the deck, the throw of the dice, the spin of the wheel.

These things have a power far beyond your latest app. And I don't know of a single algorithm that can surpass the oldest piece of advice that I know to give, which is never, never.