Spooked - Stomping Ground

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Malachi and his husband Jeremiah are heading to the Green Corn Ceremony: an ancestral Native American gathering filled with food and dance. It’s also a night when spirits come near, delivering messages to those ready to hear. Thank you Malachi and Jeremiah for sharing your story with Spooked! Produced by Erick Yáñez, original score by Sandra Lawson-Ndu, scouted by Ixchel López. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mary snuck round a mulberry bush Pretending to be gleeful He wondered if he was a good boy Nope he was evil You've crossed over to spooked Stay too much Ever since I can remember I've been black, right?

Unlike most black Americans, there's other stuff mixed in Auntie say we've got Native American roots on both sides. Blackfoot for my fathers, chippewa for my mamas, I don't know anything about that. But back when I'm in college in Ann Arbor, I hear they're about to have the biggest

Native American powwow in the country. And I figure why not? So the next morning, my girlfriend and I fumble around the dark trying not to wake up my roommate. Whoever else is laid out in the living room.

My roommate is from Ohio, this will come up later. I grab a shirt, jeans, a sweatshirt, and we're out. Get to the enormous Chrysler Arena, and it is incredible. Storytellers, music, food, this sea of smiles. Thousands of people that all seem to know each other. The brightest lights are dancing competitions between various groups and families and tribes,

dozens of dancers rocking colors and feathers and bells, and they dance. What would they dance? Choreographed, rhythmic, hypnotic, powered by teams of drummers, beautiful, athletic, intimidating. I watch and not. I don't feel like I'm going home or something. It feels like the opposite of that.

I don't know anything and I don't want to mess it up. Every so often, the announcer is OG. Gray hair, braided back in two braids, takes the mic and everyone. It's time for. for the all-dance. The pros are out of the way.

The grandmothers and teenagers and babies and students and old men take the floor. People dance together in rhythm and community. It's hypnotic, it's glorious and I feel it. But I stay

where I think I belong. Right at the edge of the action. Watching, watching, the announcer puts down this microphone motions to me since, hey, you want to dance? Go on. Dance.

So I go off to the floor. So I try to fall into rhythm behind the hundreds of people next to me. And one thing about my family is we can dance. And I'm getting it. And I'm getting it. I'm dancing. Old lady's smile. Young dudes laugh.

Yeah, I'm doing it up. It's physical. Start to get hot. I've got this. Take off my sweatshirt, tight around my waist. It flaps behind me like a tail. I look toward the side and see my girlfriend, frantically waved me over, trying to get me off the floor. I'm like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, no, no, no.

Not, no, darling. Can't you see I'm feeling it? She runs over, wave me off the dance floor. Who died? What? She points at my shirt, I look down. Stop. Because emblazing on my chest is horrible.

Bug-eyed, buck-truth, grinning bright red racist caricature of Native Americans, the old Cleveland Indians baseball team chief Wahoo in the middle of a several thousand person powwow. It's like, put on a clan hood at a black church barbecue. And this isn't even my shirt. I'm Detroit Tigers, but my roommate is from Ohio. Somehow in the dark. Trying not to wake anybody up, I must have to grab this stuff.

It's like I've summoned darkness. Every single person in the entire arena turns around in slow motion to point at me to stare, a thousand pairs of angry eyes. At least that's what it feels like. Me scrambling to pull my hoodie up. I run off the dance floor. Look at he split toward the exit. The announcer he sees me.

He's seen the whole sari display and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This dance is not over. I'm scared to look around and see. Once friendly faces filled with hate, but when I lift my eyes, there's no anger. Surprise, surprise. This story, like most stories, isn't about me. It was just trying to get it to the rhythm of the drum, trying to show each other love. So I try to dance, to dance, to move my feet, stomping, step and stomping, stepping, stomping,

trying to dance over it, to through it, to bury it, to bury it, that grinning thing burning on my chest. That old American demon. Still smiling. His husband Jeremiah, they have a very special plan for this weekend. They're heading deep into the woods of Oklahoma. It's one of the most important stomp dances of the year, the Green Corn Ceremony. See, Jeremiah is chair. keep my blood.

And they makes this dance deeply personal. For Jeremiah's husband Malachi, it's a first. To the car, we start driving past the city of Tulsa, start taking some back roads. I suddenly start to see tall grass surrounding us as we're driving. I don't see any buildings. Oh my gosh, where am I going? Where is this man taking me?

This is the first time my husband and I are both going to the ceremonial grounds. But I have been going there since I was able to breathe outside of the womb. This was the last stomp dance of the year. They call it the green corn ceremony. They've gotten all of the stuff harvested. There's going to be like a feast and everything. It's kind of like going to church. You're going home and you're there to.

to worship together, essentially. This is just an exciting thing in my head. I'm currently trying to just calm my heart, because it's racing. I just don't know why I'm so anxious. First of all, there's going to be a lot of people that I had never met before. And then I'm a gay dude, and I don't know how they would react being around gay people. Also, I'm quite embarrassed because I have Cherokee Native American blood in me. But I hardly know anything about my own tribe.

And so when he told me about the stomp dance, I was like, okay, well, I need to learn about those traditions. After about an hour and a half, we're literally out in the middle of nowhere. And we enter into this clearing. I see tents, just camping tents, camping trailers, kids playing, some adults just sitting in their lawn chairs talking, drinking coffee. We parked right next to his auntie's campground setup. I step out of the car. Jeremiah comes around the car and he takes me to meet. his auntie.

She gives me hug. She says, Hi, Malachi, welcome. There was chairs and tables. There was a kitchen. Without anybody asking me, like, I just start tidying up the place. I don't know.

Like, I start kind of setting the table, like putting napkins and forks and stuff. I feel a tap on my shoulder. And it's Jeremiah, and he's laughing at me. He's like, okay, babe, I know you just, like, want to help and be helpful, but the men have to go outside.

You need to leave. I'm like, oh, okay, got it. So we're outside. There's two of the other guys that have been chosen for the day's dance. I introduced them to my husband. I start feeling very nervous because I don't know any of them. Eventually, there was 50, 60 people. standing outside, socializing very, very quietly with each other.

They're wearing these ceremonial ribbon shirts. It's a short sleeve button-up shirt. And then on the back of their shirts, there's colorful ribbons lining across their shoulders. There's silk pink, silk red, silk blue ribbons. And it was just beautiful. All of a sudden, We get called in to dinner.

I sit down at this very, very long picnic table. The table was covered in food. There were bowls of vegetables, chunks of cooked meat, almost like a roast. It had the most wonderful flavor I had ever had before. After probably an hour, the sun finally goes down. We get to the ceremonial stump dance ground. There's probably a hundred people there of men and women and children sitting on these benches in a circle. The men were wearing their ribbon shirts.

The women had these beautiful shaws over their shoulders. I started going towards where. where they were sitting, and I was stopped. Jeremiah said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't sit there. That's not for us to sit. They get to sit there. We get to sit behind them. They said, oh.

And so we sat in these lawn chairs behind this gentleman, which is the chief. The men and the women who got chosen for the day's dance take their seat next to the chief. They're sitting in front of us. And everything just goes quiet. A fire starts to be built in the middle of the circle. I can see the fire getting bigger and bigger and bigger, almost like 10 feet tall. The chief stands up.

The fire is blazing right in front of him. One man starts chanting. Mielaco and Mielaco. Come on out. Come on out. This woman stands up. She started tapping her way over to the fire. The women followed.

Then the men stand up. There's one person singing... People start tapping their feet, and they start moving around the fire. Jeremiah said they'll do five of these prayers and then they'll allow everybody else to come in and said, okay. As they're doing the first initial thanks and prayers and chants,

I can feel the warmth and the heat of the fire even from where we were sitting. And all of a sudden, I don't know what happens, but I could not keep my eyes off the fire. The fire was so hypnotizing, and then I suddenly start to see different shapes and figures in the flickers of the flames. I could see what looked like animals

kind of moving around, the more I focused in, the more vivid these figures were in the fire. I could see chickens, cattle, deer. They were just black silhouettes dancing and moving about the flames. I was just second-guessing myself. Like, are you really seeing what you think you're seeing Malachi? Like, I don't know. But then I see.

I see people moving in that fire, and I could see them plain as day. They were shadows, they were silhouettes, but I could tell they were men and women. I was scared at first seeing these figures in the fire, but then I realized, like, you know, this is beautiful. I'm just so hypnotized, and I do not want this moment to end. I don't want to break focus. All of a sudden, everything just went quiet. I kind of jolt or wake up or whatever you call it. And next thing I know, everyone is sitting back down around the fire.

Jeremiah said, that was just an introduction. Now, we'll sit here, and then when the time comes, we'll be called, and we can enter in and join in the dance. after the main dances are done one of the men stands up and mialico and melecoe at that point everybody's welcome my two aunts my great aunt

everybody just kind of stands up and then we're all able to go Jeremiah was leaning over to me saying if you want to come in and join you can but I I said you know not hang on I just want to observe a little little bit more. I just want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I jump in. So Jeremiah stands up and joins the dance. I was sitting behind. I was trying to get back into the fire and

try to see those figures again. But as I was just trying to focus something caught my eye, I looked just off to the corner and on the right side of the stump ground was this man. He was by himself kind of back in the trees and the shadows. He's very tall and he has a spear in his hand that was wooden

with feathers at the top. His face is rugged and sharp. He's very muscular. And he's just standing there. But I was pretty frightened because he's staring just straight at me. With such intensity,

his eyes were so piercing, yellowish, gold. And I hear him say, what is your purpose for being here? I really felt terrified. I cannot hear his voice vocally. It's in my mind. It just made me shudder.

It made me have this instant respect. And when that happened, everything just goes silent. The chanting ends. I break focus from him. And I was just kind of like, did I really just experience that? We were walking back over to the lawn chairs where Maliki was. Malachi just seemed like something wasn't sitting right with him.

But I could tell that he was experiencing what was behind the veil, you know, seeing things or experiencing things. I looked over at him and I was like, hey, it's, it's time to go. Like, come on, let's go dance together. I'm like, okay, I guess. I trusted him. I got up. I followed him.

And I get into the stump ground. I see an opening. I kind of put myself in. I couldn't think or focus on anything but the challenge. chanting and the deafening sound of the shell shakers. I just start kind of moving my feet and doing the best I can. It was almost like the music was speaking to me. Left, right, go, breathe.

Next thing I know, I'm stump dancing in unison with everybody else. I had goosebumps. Just this feeling of euphoria. Like, I feel like I'm kind of flying. And it was so spiritual. I felt connected to the people around me, to the music, to the fire. I was just a part of that. After that first dance, I go and sit down in the chair,

and I was like, that was amazing. I don't know where Jeremiah goes at this point, but it's just me sitting in the chair. and I'm just kind of watching what's happening around me. All of a sudden, something big just kind of brushes past me. My chair even kind of moved a little bit. And I see very quickly it was this smoky figure of a black four-legged dog or something. And it was big, it was massive.

It jumped over the log in front of me and then kind of glided into the fire. I just saw these sparks and these embers just kind of, whoa. I'm like, what the hell? Jeremiah came back from wherever he was, and I said, Black figure, four legs, jumped into the fire? And he's like, well, yeah, that's a little bit. a wolf. I was walking back to the chair at that time. And I saw like a shadow kind of go over into the fire. And I literally looked at him like, you saw my totem, which is the wolf. I was like a wolf. Are you

serious? He said, yes. When we come and gather in moments like this, our spirits will come and join. They're here. We're not alone. It was about 3.30 in the morning. I was getting so tired. Jeremiah said like, hey, you want to start heading back. The dance still continues until sunrise. And I said, it might be time to call it a night.

We gave our thanks and we started walking back towards where a car was. Jeremiah, he had gone to get our supplies and stuff that we brought to bring it back to the car. I was just kind of standing there on my own, and that's when I started to feel that tingle in my body. Something is here, and I'm not alone. I look out to the corner of my eye, there he was again, the same thing. man from earlier in the night, staring right at me. It's probably a good 20 feet away from me, kind of by some trees. My heart starts racing again.

I start breathing heavy. Like, I don't want to look at him, but I'm looking at him. Again, our eyes connect. This time, he was more relaxed and he was more relaxed and he, he's. He had more of like a friendly, kind of a gaze. And I could sense approval in his face. I was able to just relax, take a deep breath. And I just started feeling good.

I don't know how long exactly it was, but eventually I hear behind me, all right, let's go. You ready? I got the keys. As we were driving, Jeremiah, he kind of broke the ice. He was just like, babe, I'm really glad that you got to go there with me. I've wanted you to do that since we got married.

When all of us are together, our tribe is together. I feel like the veil is lifted. There is something else that's out there. There's something that's happening all around us at all times. and for him to have experienced that and to see the wolf brushing past him seeing that person, whether that be like a protector of the land

or somebody from the family from way back, for me personally, I think it really solidified that he's accepted. You are meant to be my life partner. I might cry. That was the full-circle moment for me. I no longer would just be a bystander.

And he said, now you've met the whole family. And I was like, thank you Malachi and Jeremiah for sharing your story of the spooked original score was by Sandra Lawson Ndu. The scouting for this was done by Ishael Lopez and was produced by Eric Yannes.

Now, a quick question. In many, many traditions around the world, there's a reference to a shadow self, to an entity that is related to you, but that is not you. In Ireland, this presence is called a fetch. In Norway, Avadagor is a per spirit, a pre-spirit, a forerunner spirit. It arrives before you do. People hear your footsteps, your voice, your keys in the door, your body moving through the house, and then minutes later, the real you arrives and does the same thing. In Japan,

Enikiro, leaves a person's body and acts elsewhere, often during intense emotion, jealousy, rage, grief, longing. And so, if you, dear listener, if you have a shadow self, I would sure love to know about it.

I only tell a million and so of the best people on earth, spooked at snapjudgment.org. because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Spook Studios lie directly beneath hope and despair between monsters and angels deep beneath KQD in San Francisco. Don't seek to find it. That's it seek to find you.

If you see someone sneaking around with video cameras mounted to their cyber truck, run up, tell them, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permits. mission on Team Spout. The union represented producers, artists, editors, engineers, are members of the National

Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL, CIA, Local 51, Spook just brought to you by the sexy team that knows its way around the dance floor. Except for Mark Ristich. Mark, post move with the beat. Not against it. There's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Yannias, Mercer Dodge, Virginia. Napaedio, Miles Lassie, Tatee, Cot, Sui, Chu, Evan Stern, Eves Jeffcoat, Ischelle Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the spook theme song. It's by Pat Massini Miller.

My name was from Washington. My traditions were broken, stolen away by the middle passage by loss and features and distance and indifference. And this has been both a curse and a gift. because absent a tradition I've got to make my own for myself, for my kids, because traditions are connectors, to place, to time and without them, without ritual. You can feel lost.

And so many, so many of us feel lost. Knowing full well there is more but unable to find our way home and this loss this bewilderment can lead us down dark roads struggling for the very connection that should be ours by birth

that should be yours by birth and if you're looking for a ceremony practice a ritual metaphor to affirm your place your connection to everything that is one place I know to begin this journey

is to never ever never I'm sorry.