Spooked - 'Till Death Do Us Part

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

It’s the 1970s in Beverly, a small town in Jamaica where everyone knows everything about each other and gossip travels fast. Fifteen-year-old Claudia thinks she’s heard it all… But nothing can prepare her for the stories that start to spread after one of her neighbors passes away. Thank you, Claudia, for sharing your story and your energy with our show!  Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Nicholas Marks, scouted by Paulina Creque, 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 I lay me down to sleep, I pray that all the things that creep, bife, and suck and scream and jail will disappear. When I awake, you've crossed over the spoot. Stay. First, you must understand that I loved him. Love, love him. I love him no matter what lies, they say. No matter what you think I did, Peter loved with his words.

John with his eyes. Thomas loved his doubts. Matthew only loved himself with my whole being. I watched in awe and respect to learn the mystery of it. The magics, the spells, the bread, the fishes, the wine. We both knew. that miracles are never free. It all takes coin, and for the coin, for the things that matter,

there were never 12 disciples now. Now there was only one disciple, me, the only one he trusted, me. Me, me, one deserving to stand at his right hand. He read my intentions, my secrets, as easily as he read the scripture. I could sooner flap my arms and fly into the sun than deceive one such as he. But yes, yes. I argued. I fought.

I begged him not to do this on bended knees. I begged him. But in the end, I did take the 30 pieces of silver as he commanded. Do you imagine he did not know? When I knelt before him at the final meal trembling, calling him rabbi, master kissing his cheek. He smiled at me then, embraced me. As the soldiers waited, he held me. He pressed a vial into my hand, whispered to me as I wept, give this to the woman at the end. And she would become as God, and even as I seized him, beat him, wrapped him in chains. He asked my

forgiveness. My forgiveness. Sometimes I think he knew he charged me with the more difficult path. I could not stay in the city. I cannot witness their glee, the savage joy of those who had once called him. Lord,

Lord, I should have stayed with him. Besides him, my sin, my real treachery was to flee as he commanded. It isn't as final as he might think. Texas to admit it's in 1970s and our storyteller Claudia is just 15 years old.

Claudia. We live in a little town. It's an area where there's no electricity. At nighttime, we use oil lamps and the moon. Up on the hill where we live, we have a little stream. We call it a gully. You'd either go to the gully and wash up. Just go out there and wash up your, you know, arms, legs. feet. Or we'd go out and we'd fill up our basins with water and leave it in the sun to warm up, right,

so we can have a bath at nighttime. Everybody knows everybody's business, especially over in our area, because it's so small. And, like, everybody has kids, so all us kids all hang out together so you know what was going on in everybody's house, whether you want to or not. Claudia's closest neighbors were an older couple,

whom all the kids in town called Uncle Pam and Aunt Sil. Everybody loved Aunt Sil. She was such a sweet woman. On Sundays, she'd make fried dumpling and fish, codfish and acci, and then after church you'd bring it to the church for the kids and for people who will not be having a Sunday meal. You could smell it coming, you could just smell that thing.

Oh my God, every time you smell it coming, your belly start rolling, because, you know, it's going. to be good. But Uncle Palm was not a very nice man. One day we're playing marbles, for example. One roll right under his fence and he's right there and he look straight in the face and he says, you know you're not getting that back right. The man walk right towards us and pick up that marble and put it in his pocket and walk away. He was mean and he was mean to the neighborhood. So a lot of people did not like Uncle Palm. Sometimes the kids would spook his donkey. But I didn't do that.

You know, he was a grumpy old man and I accepted that he's a grumpy old man. So I got along with him. It was about dusk. It's about 6 o'clock in the evening. It's still bright, but it's getting, you know, dark because there's no electricity for miles and miles. I'm sitting on the rock washing my foot

and I can hear the donkey coming, right? So I turn my head and I see Uncle Palm. he's going home on his donkey. So I said, hey, Uncle Palm, and he says, hi, Joyce. In Jamaica, everybody's got a pet name, right? They never call you by your real name. There's got to be a name. So mine was string bean, because I'm tall, or Joyce.

So he says, hi, Joyce, and I said, good night, Uncle Palm, and he says, good night. Wash up, went back in, we ate dinner, and go to bed. Around 9 o'clock that night, right? I'm laying in my bed half asleep, and I hear this wailing coming, like, People just crying. The crying sounded like it was coming from Aunt Sill and Uncle Pam's house.

To hear screaming like that, you know something bad happened. And I'm like, okay, we got to go find out what's going on. Claudia, her younger sister Sharon and their grandmother, whom they called Mama, got dressed and walked down to Aunt Sill and Uncle Pams. By the time they got to the house, most of the neighborhood was already there. people were crowded around Aunt Sil, consoling her. Uncle Palm was dead. Apparently Uncle Pam hadn't come home from work that day, so a group of the men from town had gone looking for him.

They found him at his farm, dead from a heart attack, and it seemed like he'd been dead for a while. Because he was cold and a piece of his lip was bitten off from rats. One of the rats bit a piece of his lip off. And I'm like, but Mama, Uncle Palm couldn't have died. I saw him. And they look at me and like, but you couldn't have seen him. I said, I saw him.

He was going home on his donkey, and he said hi and I said hi, and that's it. And then Mama was standing there, and I just put my head on Mama's chest. I just started crying because I could see him. I could see this man going home, and I didn't want to see it. So I'm just bawling my face off and say, Mama, he's not dead. He says hi to me. he's not dead. And she's like, Jais, he's dead.

They have his body. He's dead. The evening of Uncle Pam's Nine Night rolled around. When you die in Jamaica, we have a thing nine days after that they call Nine Night. A Nine Night is like a celebration of your life. But in my memory, it's a celebration of eating. Everybody eats. They come for night night.

And it's a celebration, they party, they eat. They drink. There's music. People are singing, people are dancing. His wife, she was out there. My grandmother, everybody, the neighbors, everybody was out there. You know, the neighborhood and extended neighborhoods. You see some of the church sisters in the neighborhood,

even though he was not religious. But church sisters always come. They wear the long white robe and they have a wrap on their head, which is white. And they bang their tambourine, and they just sing and dance. We're just chilling, running around with the other neighbor's kids, just mind our own business. So as we're running around, right, I look over towards my left,

and there was Uncle Pung. He was standing right on this palm tree, just staring in our direction. He was wearing a black tie, and he had a felt hat on his head, right? Yeah, he was just looking at the party, just leaning up against the tree. And I stop. And I said, there's Uncle Palm. There's Uncle Pam. Everybody just stop and look

in the direction that I'm pointing because I pointed right to the tree. And nobody saw Uncle Palm. And I said, he's standing onto the coconut tree right there. And I told him exactly what he was wearing. One of the people that were there, she says, that was what he was buried in. That's what he went to wear.

That's what him burying her. That's it. I doubt him I wear. This lady said, she must have seen him because only children see Duppie and she said what he's wearing, she must have seen him. People talk about Doppies in Jamaica,

that's what they call ghosts, right? And that freaked me up because me don't want us in a Duppie. The hair is on the back of my neck, stood up. I look around there's Mama, I just run to Mama and start crying and I put my head on her chest. And she's like, come, come. She took me and Sharon. and walk us halfway up the path, right?

Then we went home. I couldn't sleep. I was terrified. I was sitting there thinking that this dead man came back. I just saw a Dupy. I just kept saying it over. I just saw Dupy. I just saw Dupy.

Uncle Pam came back. So I just sat there freaking out because I can't believe I just saw a dead person. And that's the second time I'm seeing him. A few days later, Claudia and Sharon were home alone, waiting on the porch for Mama to get back from town. I think we're probably more than likely playing marbles, because that's what we did,

who we had nothing better to do with our days. My mama comes back and she said, Ansel is not well. Oh, and she said the dog isn't well. How come them sick at the same time? She says, well, you know, them tinks say, Uncle Pama play with our food. What?

They said Uncle Pomm is play with our food. I said, Uncle Pomm is play with our food. I said, Uncle Pomm can't play. play with her food, Mama, Uncle Pam is dead. That's what them say. The word around town was that Uncle Pam wanted his wife and his dog with him on the other side. And he'd do whatever it took to make that happen, even if it meant poisoning their food. Every single person, every single person is saying, that's why they're sick.

Within five days, the dog was dead, and then Ansel was taken to hospital. Thankfully, Aunt Sil started to get better. But then one of her daughters, Fay, went to visit her. And suddenly, Aunt Sil got worse. So then they believed that he followed Fay. They told us, like, you can't go visit her straight. Don't go straight. So in order to visit her, you'd go here, there, and everywhere.

Then you'd go visit. Because they're saying that Uncle Pam is going to follow you. if you go straight. So at first, what Faye used to do was she'd go to work first, and then from her work, she'd go visit her mother after. She was doing good. She was doing much better. So because she was doing better, right,

Faye figured it's okay, so she just got up and decided she's going to go visit her mother first, then go to work, because she had the time. So she went straight to visit her mom. And all of a sudden, Ansela got sick, like seriously sick. Within 24 hours, Ansel was dead. The day of Aunt Sill's funeral, the little Pentecostal church in town was packed full of people who wanted to pay their respects. The sisters are wearing their white robes and their white wrap around their heads.

The family all sits up front. In Jamaica at the time, it was common for people to be buried at home. So after the service, everyone made their way back to Aunt Sill's house. The pallbearers, they took the coffin from the hearse. They're all grown men, young fit men in their 20s. Everybody gets ready. The sisters all stand behind the coffin, and we all start singing because taking it to the grave, you've got to sing.

Shall we gather by the river, the beautiful, beautiful river? They were comfortably carrying her, and then all of a sudden their arms were breaking. As we're getting closer to the grave, the coffin starts dropping lower and lower. This coffin, that weighed a feather, just became an elephant. They were sweating. No way should six grown men be groaning.

and, ugh, oh, carrying this little wee lady. The distance that you were taking her from is not that far that you should be even breaking a sweat. And I'm telling you, no lie, that coffin was almost touching the ground. These men, their arms are stretched to the max

trying to move this coffin. And now people are freaking. She don't want to bear it beside him. She don't want to be buried beside him. God Jesus, look. So then they finally get the coffin to the grave and they used the ropes to lower it, but that coffin did not want to go there.

It did not want to go. After the funeral, I couldn't sleep for days, right? I was terrified. I thought Uncle Palm was going to come and get me. Claudia was so scared that eventually her grandmother went to a healer in town for help, who told her how to cast a spell for protection. So my grandmother end up giving me a bath.

She puts in there a dime, skellion, frankincense and myrrh, a product called blue. They use it to whiteen clothes. So you just put in your water and you just dissolve. And she puts me in this water, and she read a chapter from the Bible in Psalms while she made me sit in this nasty bathtub of nastiness It was gross

But I felt good After it was all done I never had any more problems And I felt good I don't know if it's because What my grandmother did worked Or maybe because he came for his dog And he came for his wife

And he got what he wanted And he didn't come back I never saw him again But as the years went on, she would think about him sometimes and wonder why Uncle Pam had chosen her out of everybody in the neighborhood to reveal himself to. I never harassed him or his donkey. That's probably why he showed himself to me.

I just let him be. For sharing your story, your energy with our show. And I want to let you know that sadly Claudia passed away recently. The entire spook team wants to extend their deepest condolences to her family and Claudia. If you are listening, we wish you all the peace and all the joy on the other side. That story was scouted by Paulina Creaky. The original score was by Nicholas Marks was produced by Zoe Frignao. I could not witness their glee.

The savage joy of those who had once called him Lord. Lord, I should have stayed with him. Beside him, my sin, my real treachery, was to flee. So I ran through the night, his vial, his promise, tucked tightly under my tunic, alone down the dark road, alone in this task again. I was his only disciple, charged to give away what by right should be mine. Running, walking, tripling, stumbling, crawling, and from that darkness I beheld an inn, looked up to see her, barefoot, a village woman, barely more than a girl, clutching a candle,

shimmering golden light, I wanted to laugh, to weep. She said, you have arrived. As if all I had done, all I had seen, had suffered, had sacrificed, was but a road leading to an audience with her. She extended her hand. Motion for me to follow a gesture for a dog, but still, even here, even now, I obeyed.

Through a warrant of twist and turns, she led me through the dim. We passed to either side, lovely, bedecked women in multicolored feathers, drools, painted skins, feline. The men, their silent partners decked with gold and silver, all wore patches of bright claw where their eyes had once been. They move with such grace that watching them felt lowly.

Perhaps this was the hell he had spoken of, or maybe the heaven. Then the sightless began to sing. To scream in harmony, mouths open, arms outstretched. The woman stopped then, sat on a chair. and listen, until their voices grew silent. She folded her hands in her lap, waiting the vile thrummed next to my breast, feeling suddenly alive. It waited too to remake the world, wanted to betray everything I had suffered to build.

Still, still, I reached to gifted to her as he had commanded. but then she leaned toward me. Eyes, eager, fingers spayed to receive my gifts. She smiled and I stopped. How dare he? How dare he pour the power of creation into her dirty hands? Casting aside his true servant, me. Me, I would not.

The sightless danced around us now, swaying to the same rhythm as the hungry vial, next to my breast. She answered my unspoken why. She said, they dance to remember. You'll dance to forget. She looks down as if ashamed of the gleaming knife clutched in her hands. We must sacrifice. We must all sacrifice. I remember his eyes then. His words when he embraced me, whispered in To my ear, yours, he promised, will be the most difficult path. And I felt a shock. Like ice water, I looked down and saw that she had stabbed me with her blade, her eyes wet with apology.

Then I thought the same sharp sting from behind. I gasped anew as another blade protrude from my abdomen. As I scream, the shadow dancers each stab through my body in their turn. They stab and stabbed and stabbed with steely knives as if I were a beast. But I did not die. I did not fall. No, I did not bleed. I opened my eyes in wonder to stare at them staring at me.

I drew. Each blade in turn from my flesh and tossed it to the, ground, the skin beneath my tunic glistened, unbroken, whole. The vial burned. It would not let me die, task unfulfilled. They bowed blind heads to me. I turned and fled. Back past the grasping hands, past the shadow, past the maze, I ran for the door,

desperate to find the passage back crashing through shadow, through darkness, Back to the road, and I ran and I ran a thousand years. I ran forever young. Unbroken face, staring back in the mirror 2,000 years. Around me, the world ages. Crumbles, rebuilds, crumbles again through plague, empire, cathedrals, kings. Sometimes I awake. Back in the master's chambers unchanged.

He chose death for himself, but cursed me with eternal life. Again and again she waits. Again and again I flee running, still clutching tight the vial that should be mine. In the quiet, I hear the master laughing. He knew even then. He asked the one thing I could never give. He knew me better than I knew myself, and I hate him. as the girl whispered smiling.

Run away. For it is mine to receive. Depart any time you like, but some of us, for lack of a better term, were given tasks. Things that we have to do before we depart this place. And a very small few from extremely early age know exactly what those tasks are. If you, or someone you know, was given a chance, task, but sure like to know about it.

I want to know who gave it to you. I want to know what you're charged with, and I need to know what the cost, both for you and the rest of us is if you fail. Please let me know. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook Studios flows through a raging river of infinity underneath KQED in San Francisco. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing,

or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Spooked. The Union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, are members of the National Association of Broadcast, Employees, and Technicians, communications workers of America, AFL, CIL, Local 51, and Spooked is brought to you about the team that knows to separate the sacred from the profane, except, of course, for Mark Ristage. Because he believes profane is sacred.

There's David Kim. Zoe Frigno, Eric Yanyas, Mercedage, Regina Berriaco, Miles Lassie, Teo de Cot, Paulina Creeke, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Rithiamatu, Leru Jemima, Nicholas Marks. The Spook theme song is by Pat McCabe Miller. My name is from Washington. And recently, in a home-turned museum in downtown Manhattan, The owners took a second look and there, built into the hallway, sat a dresser.

When they pulled away the heavy bottom drawer of this dresser, they discovered a rectangular opening, painstakingly cut into the floorboards. Curious, they followed this mystery downward through the hidden bowels of the home, and there they found neatly preserved, enclosed space. just two feet by two feet, tiny, tiny, almost impossible to detect beneath that, a ladder, leading down to the earth. In this case, leading down to freedom, because what they had uncovered was a very secret stop on the Underground Railroad, hidden in plain sight that someone, probably a man named Joseph Brewster, had purposely built into his, his family home in direct defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 with demanded harsh punishment

for anyone daring to give aid, assistance, or passage to an escape enslaved person. Consequence defied. It makes me think. What I do then, slave catches roaming, terrorizing, armed with the full weight and sanction of the federal government. More importantly, what am I building now to ward off this darkness gathering? Outside my own door. Never, ever. Never, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Never.

Never. Turn out.