Tales from the Smokehouse - Classic

Cursed cat bones. Dead dogs. A haunted pond. Master storyteller Todd Narron is our tour guide as we explore the mysterious, spooky American South.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Glynn Washington?

  There are people for whom stuff just happens. They are there when the house bursts into flame. They witness the robbery, lightning strikes, their tractor. The very moment they step away. Just like the unfolding stories know that they need a witness. And they wait for certain people before they even begin to occur. From Snap Judgment's Underground Layer. My name is Glynn Washington. If the story's gonna happen, remember the details. Spook starts now.

• 0:51Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters, you have spoken. We want more spook, you said. We want to support the show, you said. And can we please, for the love of all that is holy, please get rid of those ads? Well, prayers answered. Spooked Plus has risen. Ad-free spook. The entire library, no interruptions. Just you and whatever's lurking in the shadows. Exclusive bonus stories every month. Fresh nightmares you won't hear anywhere else. The Spooked Plus community, listen together. Chat in real time because no one should face the darkness alone. And, and, ask me anything for yours truly.

• 1:36Glynn Washington?

  If you've got questions, I've got answers. Maybe. And we're just getting started. Spooksters, we are a small team chasing down the big mystery. Your support keeps this flame burning, so come on in. The door is open. Spooked.supercast.com. That's Spooked.supercast.com. Spooked Plus. Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:50Glynn Washington?

  Now you know when you're out in the woods at night, sitting around a campfire, poking at the coals, folk are telling scary stories, right? Well, you know the one person in your group that just has a knack for telling the best stories? What kind of storyteller can make you scream, jump out your seat, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? Well, spooksters, be afraid, we found a master storyteller. His name is Todd Narron, and if you're not already around a campfire, may I suggest that you dim the lights and get real cozy. Spooked.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  My name's Todd Narron, Todd Curtis Narron. I'm from North Carolina, and I sure would enjoy telling you a couple of these stories today. Little Barbara Nichols was just, was a little girl I knew when I went to grade school in Corinth holders. We were both in the first grade together, and she had, she was beautiful. And, uh, well, all the boys thought she was beautiful, but I knew I did, but I didn't ever tell nobody. But, um, every day I tried to get a little closer to her. She really didn't show me a lot of attention. I'd, I'd guess she'd think she was my first love. She was just beautiful. Well, like I said, me and Barbara, uh, she came to my little grade school in Corinth holders, and we were in the first grade together.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  And I also rode the same bus to and from school. Her mom and daddy didn't have much money. She lived on an old path, uh, in a, it was actually a little shack back then that nobody had lived in, but some of the old farmer had rented it to them, and they made a pretty, pretty good piece out of it.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  One day, when she got off the bus, see, I didn't think she thought nothing of me. But when she got off the bus and started walking down the path, there was a great big mud hole and she walked around it. She turned around right when she got out, I threw her over the mud hole and she turned around and she waved right directly at me. That's when I decided that I was gonna love little Barbara and let the whole world know it. At least that's what I hoped for, but it wasn't meant to be. Because on her walk home down that long mile path, she had to pass a little pond about an acre and a half big, and this is where the sadness and the horror begins. You see, Barbara didn't make it home that day, and her parents went looking for her

• 5:27Speaker 01

  and couldn't find her. So they went down to the road and stopped people that were riding and asked them for their help. It was just amazing how many people just jumped in to it and tried to find that little girl. They screamed, they walked every inch, every mile around that house. About nine o'clock the next morning, she was found by the banks of the little pond, now called Barbara Nichols Pond, and it's still there to this day. Back where Barbara lived, about a mile off the road, there was a bunch of wild dogs back there that people had just let go and abandoned. Enough people did this that the

• 6:09Speaker 01

  dogs kinda banded together, and to survive, they kinda had to be like a pack. And they would mostly kill just chickens and little goats and stuff like that. If you went by them on a motorcycle or something like that, they'd chase you. But I reckon if they ever got you, they got you. It seems those wild dogs were seen that day lying around their pond, and from Barbara's tracks and them dogs' tracks, it seems she must have been running to the water by them killer dogs to escape them from biting on her, and instead, my little Barbara drowned.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I never did like them dogs, but I especially hated them after that.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Well, everybody was really shocked. We just couldn't believe what was going on. I mean, this was really our first introduction to death. It scared us. We were all scared. We all were hurt. And we started seeing strange things happen around their pond.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  We began finding dead dogs floating on or lying on the banks of it. They'd be swollen or rotting with bite marks where the turtles and catfish buzzards and were tearing into them. People would take their dogs hunting around their pond. When you called the dogs back in, at least one dog was missing. And you would like go around and try to holler for the dog for the next couple of days. And nothing else left. You'd go to Barbara Nichols' pond and that dog would be there, dead. And people just wouldn't hunt around there anymore. And they just left it alone. Everybody told their little boys and girls not to ever go around their pond. We all thought, you know, that Barbara Nichols had something to do with them dead dogs, but I mean,

• 7:51Speaker 01

  we never saw anything happen. We just found the dead dogs dead in there. I mean, we all kind of knew, being country folks, that I guess since Barbara Nichols had to die in there, they did too.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  It had to be a good 12 years. I had graduated from high school and was still working on the farm. Well, I had Uncle Hugh, and he stayed in Wake County. And he wanted to go frog gigan. That's where you catch the frogs and eat the frog and skim and eat the meat off the legs. Well, he wanted to come to Johnston County. He wanted me to show him the ponds around Johnston County and go frog gigan. So I said, yeah. And he promised a good time, which by this time I was a teenager and that mean, you know, having some beer and stuff. Oh frog gigging, that's one of the funniest things you could ever do. Take a little john boat, which is a little lightweight boat. You have a frog gig. Some people use a 22 gun, but he had a frog gig.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Slowly go around the pond edge with a spotlight, I mean a real strong spotlight. And you put it in the frog's eyes. And he'll stand just as still as he can be. And what you do is you've got a gig, which is like a tiny little tripod for Neptune or something like that would use. And what you would do is you stick the frog, bring him in the boat, and you would kill the frog right off the bat so he wouldn't suffer. Then you would cut his legs off and put him back into the water, kind of like the circle of life kind of thing. So we go to all the ponds and everything and nothing was happening, nothing was happening. Probably seven or eight ponds. I mean, it was getting really embarrassing because we weren't getting nothing.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And I told them that we would be getting something. So we didn't even have enough frogs for one person to have a meal out of. I'd say, I got one more pond we can go to. And I really didn't want to go to that pond. I didn't feel good about it. And I didn't even feel like I'd want to be a part of it, but I was kind of embarrassed that we didn't have nothing. I don't think I would have done it by myself. Well, I know I would have never done it by myself. But just having another person there gives you some kind of courage.

• 10:16Glynn Washington?

  Remember when you wanted that special something? But mom and dad said, wait for the holidays. Well, guess what? It's the holidays. Because with Mint Mobile right now, all of their plans are just 15 bucks a month. And given how expensive everything from gas to food to walking around minding your own business is, it's great to know that a service I depend upon, that I trust, is just 15 bucks a month. High-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

• 10:47Glynn Washington?

  So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for 15 bucks a month? Go to mintmobile.com/spooked. That's mintmobile.com/spooked. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/spooked. Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six month, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays?

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs?

• 11:34Speaker 03

  My tree has tons of 5-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Okay, what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over?

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Ready to go with extra bedding and towels.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust. Wayfair delivers.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  It was real hard to get to. Real marshy.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  And carrying a 300-pound boat, just the two of us, it was real heavy. You were doing all you could do just to get into the pond. And when you got in the pond, I had a lot of feelings about it. I just thought it's not the place to be.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  And we started going around the pond edge real, real easy. And we were catching frogs. And we got to the backside of the pond, and we heard a dog yapping.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  This wasn't barking. This was like yapping in just trees. Like he was getting beat.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  We took a spotlight and we shined up there and took the sides of the bank, and we saw a dog coming, yapping.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  He wasn't looking at us. He was looking at something behind him. Like he was just getting beat from behind and running through the water.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  But as fast as he was going, he hit that water out wide open. And he started swimming for the boat for all it was worth. We picked up the frog egg in the oar and we thought, well, we don't know if he's got rabies or what he's got, but we can't let him in his boat with us. But that dog kept going faster and faster and coming nearer and nearer to us. But he was still looking behind him. And right when he got in our boat,

• 13:34Speaker 01

  something sucked that dog in the water and my dog just don't drown like that. Uncle Hugh looked at me like he had never seen nothing like that in his life. And I know I had never seen anything like that in my life.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  That wasn't an ordinary thing. We knew, I knew something was up right then, so we were scared to death.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  I feared it must be little Barbara Nichols that got that dog. And she was running and she was getting revenge on them dogs and she got a lot of revenge. I think Barbara Nichols was chasing that dog. I think she chased all them dogs.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I wish, I wished that little Barbara would have went on to heaven or passed on somewhere. And I hate that she was down there running after the dog. The fastest we could, we put that boat back on the truck and got out of there and I ain't been back since. It's been called little Barbara's nickel pond and, and she can have it, I reckon.

• 14:40Glynn Washington?

  Now, don't think for one moment that we're done with Todd Narron listeners. No, no. He's got another true terrifying tale to share and this one? This one's about a curse. Dark home-cooked magic. Spooked.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  My grandfather had a brother named Uncle Frank, and he was mean in everything he did.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  He was so mean that um, that nobody around there would hire him or even talk to him or have any business to with him himself. There was a rich moonshiner in the area. And Uncle Frank worked for him. That's the only job he could get.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  He would either whoop you. If he couldn't whoop you with a knife or a hatchet or something, he'd throw a spell on you, and you'd be dead in less than a week.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Okay, now Grandma told me the spell went like this, but she wouldn't tell me all of it because she didn't want me or Walker Jr. doing it.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  She said you had to get a cat, a dead cat. You couldn't go out and kill a cat, or anything like that.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And you take that cat, and you put him in a pot, outside of course, and you boil it until all the meat and the hair and everything's gone. There's nothing but the bones left.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  You take those bones, and you have to take it to a river, or a little creek, somewhere where there was running water. And you toss the bones into the running water.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And then, there's one cat bone and a cat that'll float. The other one's a sink in that running water, but with the other one afloat, and that's the one you're gonna be needing is that floating bone. You take that float bone, and you got you a dead man on the way.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So, if you get the floating cat bone, and take it back to whoever your enemy is, or whoever you want to get, you put it under his rug, and when that man stepped out on that rug, they would step on that cat bone, and the death spell would be all over them.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  But that's all she would tell us about the spell because she did, she knew that Uncle Frank was in us too. His blood was in us and she didn't want us to turn out like Uncle Frank.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  One morning, he got up, slicked back his hair, cussed a little bit and walked out the back door and stepped on the rug. And he felt a little lump and me and you might not worry about what the little lump was, but we'd just keep going. But Uncle Frank knew what that was. So he, he picked up the rug and there it was, a floating cat bone.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Somebody had finally gotten Uncle Frank and he was sure mad about it. So he had had a spell all over him. And he knew right then, sure enough that he was dead. But he was gonna do everything in his power to make sure he found out who it was that killed him.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  So, somebody told him about a witch. So that's where Uncle Frank went. And she told him there wasn't nothing that she could do for him. That in less than a week, and probably a couple of days, he'd be dead. She said, but there is one thing that she could do.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  She said, just as soon as you die, you're probably gonna go straight to the hell. You're going to see the devil and you can make a deal with the devil. He would kill the man that killed Uncle Frank, but if you did this and made the deal with the devil, you would burn hot, twice as hot as a regular center. But Uncle Frank, he figured hot was hot. So who cares about being twice as hot? So he made that deal with the witch and the devil.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  And then he went back to my grandmama and he told her, he said, just as soon as I die, wait for the next person in the community to die and that'll be the one that killed me.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  It didn't take me just a few days and he fell dead as a doornail. Just as healthy as he could be and he was a cussin', then he just fell dead right in front of smokehouse. And about thirty minutes after Uncle Frank died, Grandma sat there and she listened. You know, and after a while they come in that the preacher had died and she was, she was kinda surprised that it was the preacher. And when they went through his pockets, they found three other floating cat bones. So, we don't know how many people he killed, but he sure killed a bunch of sinners.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  He was planning on killing a lot more sinners with them floating cat bones. They say all the youngins got to get up and put Frank up and brought him back in the house in the living room and washed him and cleaned him up and everything. So, I mean, we didn't do no autopsy or nothing like that back then. We just grabbed him up, cleaned him up and tried to get him ready for burial. And they called a funeral man, but the funeral man said they weren't gonna come and work on Uncle Frank. He was just, just too mean. Well, they laid him out in the living room and hoping with somebody, you know, some of his friends or somebody would come by, but Uncle Frank didn't have no friends. So, they didn't know what to do with him.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  They called a churchyard and they said, uh, can we bury Frank in the churchyard? And the church people said, no, because we can't sell the lawns beside him. Nobody wants to be beside Uncle Frank. And they, they couldn't find nowhere to put Uncle Frank. So, my granddaddy went down to the back of the farm and started digging, but it was red clay. He couldn't get by the foot down in the ground. So, they had a neighbor and we all called her Aunt Ruth, but I don't really know what her real name was. And they went and asked her. She said she could, they could go way down in the bottom, in the bottom of the farm, but it just had to be far enough away from her house because she didn't want Frank close to her. So, that's what he did. He went way down in the bottom of the farm, of her farm. She dug a hole and buried him.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And he couldn't afford a stone, so he just got a white azalea bush and put it on top of Uncle Frank.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Aunt Rue, yeah, we went to her house quite often, me and my brother. She was real, real, real old by the time me and Walker Junior came along.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  But she always had sugar cookies and cola and everything, anything we wanted to do, she would do it. She was one of the sweetest persons I'd ever known.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  But what if everyone's plus-one brings a plus-one?

• 22:01Speaker 03

  We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Okay, what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over?

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Ready to go with extra bedding and towels.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust, Wayfair delivers.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  One weekend, I was just too sick. I was down in the throat, couldn't hardly swallow. And it was our weekend to go to our grandma and granddaddy's. Well, Walker Junior knew that he'd be kind of bored with nobody his age to play with. Walker Junior's my brother, so he carried his best friend, Ben O'Neil, down there to play. So Walker Junior and Ben O'Neil were looking around, trying to find something to do. Because back in the seventies wasn't much to do. I mean, even if you looked TV, you had to watch what the grown folks watched, and that wasn't no fun.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  They found some fishing poles. Well, they went and they knocked on Aunt Rue's door. They asked, could they go fishing? And she said, of course they could. Did they have any worms? And they said, no. She said, well, go down there about a tobacco field, dig up some worms. They ended up going a little bit farther than they should. They started digging worms, right up under a white azalea bush. But this is about 40 years later, after Uncle Frank had died. And sure enough, they had hit something. And they looked real hard at it, and it was a skull. And it was worms, great big worms, just crawling everywhere, in and out of the holes of his eyes and his nose and everywhere else. So they thought they hit the jackpot, but

• 23:42Speaker 01

  they were just scared of the skull. Ben O'Neill took the skull and he took it out of the hole and he started chasing my brother, ain't like he was gonna bite his ear off or something. Cause Walker Jr. wouldn't touch no skull or nothing like that. Finally, Walker Jr. told him to take it back, but Ben O'Neill was a little bit lazy, so he just put it down inside his stomach and kept going. But anyway, they went fishing and them worms were something tough, because every time they tried to put them on the hook, he could swear they would run. And they threw the worms into the pond with the hook and the cane pole, and it seemed like every fish in the pond would go to the other side of the pond, so there wasn't much fish caught that day. And they walked back to granddaddy's house, and they didn't

• 24:25Speaker 01

  tell nobody nothing about finding their skull. So they thought, well, what else can we do fun now? So they said, let's spend the night in the, um, smokehouse, camping out. So they camped, they got their quilts and their Coca Colas and all the candies they could get, or grandma would give them, and they went out and they laid out in the, um, smokehouse. They played and laughing and stuff. And it got kinda late, so they started laying down to, um, go to sleep. When they did, something started crawling on their toes and went up to their ankles and went up to their legs and just went all over them. They started itching all over. And we didn't know if they had the triggers or what was wrong, but they

• 25:06Speaker 01

  went busting through grandma's bedroom door, saying that something was eating them up. And what they did, she said, what'd y'all get into? You know, like she didn't know if they got into something they were allergic to or something. So they finally told her about the skull. Well, she knew exactly who the skull was. So she said, she put on her clothes and she said, take me to the skull. So that's what they did. In the middle of the drive, they walked down there with a flashlight and they found the skull beside his stump. Ben O'Neill picked it up and they told her to go put it back in the hole. When they did, they put it back in the hole, the worms just come from everywhere and crawled all over that skull. But the itching went away, just went away, like somebody put a

• 25:50Speaker 01

  salve or something on it, it just kinda disappeared. When they put their skull back where it's supposed to be.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And they walked home that night. They said, nobody said a word, but they just come home and telling me they'd found a school. I said, no, you're lying. Ain't no way in the world. He said, I did. I was real jealous. Well, I actually wanted to see the school, but he never would take me back there. But yeah, I'm kind of glad I went there because Walker Junior and Ben O'Neal were two good little boys. They were real good. They didn't do no harm to nobody. But when they dug up that school, Uncle Frank, them boys seemed like they changed. My brother got a little wilder, doing things he wasn't supposed to. My brother

• 26:36Speaker 01

  was in another town, a town he shouldn't have been in, and the cops saw him. Well, the cops got behind him and Walker Junior made a bad choice and decided to run. And they were running him down. And he overcorrected in a curve and it flipped him out of the car and it flipped on top of him and he killed him. I was 13. He was 19. Ben O'Neal, I thought the world of him. Everybody did. He was a sweet boy, but after that, after he touched that school, he took his own way. Because Ben O'Neal turned out to be a little meaner than Uncle Frank, really. He joined up with a motorcycle gang, a club, motorcycle

• 27:20Speaker 01

  club, to get that right. And I mean, all motorcycle clubs ain't bad, but this particular club was bad. And after he'd been there a while, he just got to be too bad. And I guess that he got so bad that the rest of them got scared. And two of them held him down and they cut his head off and they put it somewhere out in the woods. So, we don't know where his head is. We know where his body is, but we don't know where his head is. It's somewhere in Johnson County.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  I hope it ain't Uncle Frank that did all that to my brother and to Ben, but I don't, I can't say he didn't. I guess you could say I was kinda blessed that I ate his sore throat that day, that weekend, because I didn't get to see what they saw. If I had of, maybe Uncle Frank would've jumped on me. There's no telling how he can be here right now, talking to you. You never know about evil. It's just got a way of following you around.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Once you get into it. And, uh, sometimes you just can't shake evil.

• 28:39Glynn Washington?

  Loving light to Todd Narron for sharing his stories with Spooked. Thank you, Todd, for giving us those heebie-jeebies. Now, Todd asks us to give a shout out to the good Lord Jesus Christ, to Todd's family, and to Miss Anna Sussman for taking a chance on him. If you want more stories from Todd Naren, not to worry, because Todd has a book. It's called Country Stories of Ghosts and Bad Men. That's Country Stories of Ghosts and Bad Men.

• 29:14Glynn Washington?

  Now then, let the people understand. Tell your friends, tell your enemies that you know where monsters dwell. The magical, the scary, the dark. Spook Podcast, where this season, we spare no expense in search of the truth behind the veil. And if you like your stories told in the bright light of day, check out our sister podcast, it's called Snap Judgment. Set in a sound, movies of the mind, storytelling with a beat. Spook is brought to you by The Crackling Fire and Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick. Our original soundscape by Renzo Gorio. The Spook theme song was by Pat Lassini Miller.

• 29:59Glynn Washington?

  And remember, always listen to the storytellers, always. And know this, without fail, every single storyteller worth their salt, every single one will always advise you to never, ever, never, ever, ever.

• 30:18Glynn Washington?

  Turn out the lights.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  So you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays?

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Why would I be? Wayfair had everything I needed to get the house holiday ready.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  What if Mike brings his cheerful dogs?

• 30:42Speaker 03

  My tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  But what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one?

• 30:48Speaker 03

  We'll see how extendable this extendable table really is. And extra chairs are on the way.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  OK, what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Ready to go with extra bedding and towels.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  From guest-ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust, Wayfair delivers.