Night Dancers

In a quiet Ugandan village, Jocelyn waits for her older siblings to sneak back from a forbidden disco, only to hear a sinister night dancer casting enchantments outside her home. When illness strikes her brother, Jocelyn’s family decides to take matters into their own hands. This story comes to us from our evil-twin, Spooked https://www.kqed.org/spooked. You can listen to Spooked on any podcast platform! If you want more supernatural fun, check out Spooked on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@spookedpodcast/videos. Thank you so much, Jocelyn, for sharing your family’s story. Produced by Anne Ford, original score by Clay Xavier, scouted and narrated by Lulu Jemimah, artwork by Teo Ducot. Season 16 - Episode 17 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 2:14Glynn Washington?

  Welcome to Snap Judgment in West Clinton, Washington. And today, we're featuring stories from our evil twin podcast, Spooked.

• 2:24Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts now.

• 2:54Glynn Washington?

  Now, sometimes, the shadow passes you by, and sometimes, it does not.

• 3:04Glynn Washington?

  We begin in Uganda, only a few dozen miles from the big city of Kampala. There lies a village. In that village, there's a particular legend. From our storyteller, Jocelyn, that legend became very, very real.

• 3:23Glynn Washington?

  Spooked.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It is a big village, not very far from the city.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  The houses, they're mad houses. We usually have a main house, which is the big house. Then for the boys that have grown and have married, they build their houses around the main house.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  In the compound, we have dogs, we have cats, we have chicken, we have goat. Besides that, we have this garden where we plant spinach.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Jocelyn grew up in the village as the youngest of 20 children. Her family's house was small, with one bedroom for the boys, another for the girls, and a third for her dad and stepmom. Her own mother wasn't around.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  My father cared for us. He would provide for us. He was loving, but it was hard love.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I remember my brother, he says, "I am tired of school." When he said that, my father, he tells him, "Now that you're tired, I'm also tired of you in my house. Leave. Go and look for where to stay. I can't have uneducated people in my house. You do what he says, or you go."

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Joslyn and her siblings obeyed their father, mostly.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Every once in a while, they found some trouble to get into, especially around the holidays, when Joslyn was a teenager.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It was Christmas time. My three brothers told me they were going out for disco.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  They were not supposed to go because discos was for spoiled people.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  So, yeah, they were sneaking out. They tell you, "Joslyn, we are going out. You'll stay up and open for us. Do not sleep." Because our doors were wooden doors with a bolt. Knocking would wake up dad. When they come, they tap on the bedroom window. Then they promise you something they're going to buy for you, and you don't tell on them after. So I had to sit on my bed and wait all night long.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Sitting, waiting.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Then I heard footsteps.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I thought it were my brothers that had come. So I sat and waited for them to knock on the window.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  But they were singing as they move around the house.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I don't know what they are singing. And you know when someone is dancing, the sounds they make?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That is when I realized it was a night dancer. Singing enchantments to get people sick.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  In certain parts of Uganda, some people believe in a phenomenon called night dancing. A night dancer is an ordinary person who's been possessed by bad spirits. The spirits make the person do whatever they want. Horrible things like dig up corpses and eat their flesh. But the most common thing the spirit makes a night dancer do is take off their clothes and dance naked outside their neighbors' homes after dark. While they dance, the spirits make them cast magic spells on their neighbors. Spells so powerful that they can cause physical illness.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I was scared and heard about them from my sisters and brothers. I didn't go to the window. I got off the bed. I sat down on the floor. I kind of froze.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  I hear them pass the door. They go around, then they come and pass again, then they go around like that. For like fifteen minutes.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Then it stops.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  They've gone to another house. But I kept thinking, maybe he's coming back. So I stayed in one position for over thirty minutes.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Then my brothers tap on the bedroom window.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  The way they tap, no, it is them.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I told my brother, the night dancer has passed. I think tomorrow I'm going to fall ill.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Then he said, you can't fall ill if the position was not for you. It could have been for someone else. We see tomorrow.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  In the morning, my sister, is the one that fell ill. She got a high fever and then throw up.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Jazlin's sister got better eventually. But every four nights or so, the night dancer came back, always after dark.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Jazlin and her family were too scared to go outside and see who was putting the curse on them. They had heard that bad things happen to people who confront night dancers.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  You might become one yourself.

• 10:06Glynn Washington?

  Oh, there's more. The Snap Touch returns. We sing and we dance. And something strange this way comes. Stay tuned.

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• 12:28Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the hello from the other side episode. My name is Glenn Washington and today we're featuring stories from our sister podcast, Spooked. And when last we left, we're in a rural Ugandan village as Joslin faces an entity she has never experienced before. Spooked.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  One night months later, Joslin heard a sound outside. But this time the sound was different and it was coming from above her head.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  I wake my system like someone is sweeping the roof.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  They make that sound of shh, shh, shh.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Leaves were falling off on the ground outside.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Then she tells me that is the night dancer.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I was like, how do they even get up there? What if they fall inside?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  We were all scared. We thought we were going to come face to face with a night dancer.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  What would you do? Would you run?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  He swept and swept and swept and swept.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Shh, shh, shh.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  I just sat and held my head until when it stopped.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  The next morning, I asked my father, why would someone sweep our roof?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  He told me, when they sweep the roof, the illness is a serious. The spirit, it wants to take blood.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  That same morning, Joslin's brother Elvis started having trouble breathing. Elvis had asthma, so the family was used to his attacks. But this time was different.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  His temperature was high and he was feverish and all that. He stayed sick for over a week. By the time they came to take him to the hospital, he died in the house.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  We lost him unfortunately.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Everyone in the family was devastated, especially Joslin's father.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  He loved my brother. He was his favorite.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  He kept saying, "This can't be. I have to know the person that took my son." So, he set out on a mission. He kept saying, "He's going to look for that night dancer. We have to know who it is."

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Other people started giving him advice.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  The advice he got? "If you're going to confront a night dancer, get a mortar and pistol, and keep watch."

• 15:47Speaker 01

  When the night dancer comes, you hit the mortar with a peto. The person is going to freeze until the next day.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  They don't talk, they don't move. They stay in the same position until morning. You also have to hold on it in the same position until morning. You don't remove your hands, and no one else is supposed to come and help you.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  When you do that, the night dancer stays outside until other people wake up.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  We all see him, you know who it is. Then he leaves our village.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  So, he got the mortar and the peto. My stepmother, she kept telling him, "Don't do it. We're all against it." Because you would not know whether it will go well or bad. But he tells you, "I have to catch him. If I hear him, I'll come out of my bedroom and do the thing."

• 16:59Speaker 01

  We went to sleep. We left him sitting in the living room. He had a chair that he would sit and stay there and then sleep off. So, we were optimistic. It is never going to happen. He will sleep there in the chair, and it will pass.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  In the morning, when we wake up, we find him still in the chair. We all sat down and looked at him. I greeted him, he was not answering me. He was just there, quiet.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  I'm like, what happened, what happened?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Then my sister tells me, he was paralyzed, none of his body parts were moving.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  No words were coming out of him.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  I was like, this cannot be possible.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  We knew what had happened.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  The night dancer had him and he cast a spell on him.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  The night dancer was stronger than him.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Then my uncles came in. I remember my uncle kept saying, if you could tell us who did this, we're sure you saw the face.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  But he could not say anything.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  There was nothing like a doctor. They took him in the family shrine.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  The next morning, you ask Mama, is Daddy okay? And she's like, no, nothing has changed.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  That was in February, March, April, May, June, July. Nothing kept changing.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Now, the night dancer kept coming, but no one was willing to go and face him, seeing what had happened.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I was at school. My brother came and picked me up around lunchtime.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  He's kind of a playful guy, but he was not in his usual playful mode.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I asked him what is happening. He tells me, "Get in the car." Then he tells me, "Tata has burst on."

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I just kept quiet. And tears started coming from my eyes.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  When someone dies in the village, people gather very fast. So when I got to home, everyone is outside. Some woman asked, "Who is she?"

• 20:10Speaker 01

  They told her, "She's one of the orphans."

• 20:15Speaker 01

  They are calling me an orphan already.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  I was just crying.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  In my mind, I'm like, "This night dancer did this."

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Joslin couldn't grieve her father privately. He had been an important man, a clan leader, and the whole village came to his funeral. Joslin and her family were expected to greet them all.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  We have a family graveyard. It is just right behind the main house. That is where we buried him the next day.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I was with my other two sisters to go and welcome the people. There were about 500 people.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  At the moment of the burial, I had hatred in me for the people that were around me. Because when a person dies because of a night dancer, the night dancer also has to come and bury. He has to be on that burial, or the spirit of that dead person is going to come for him.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  The night dancer responsible for his death was with us that very night.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  That was the most stressful part, I think, of my life.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  They say it is a spirit, they are not responsible for the things happening to them.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  I'm like, but how can a spirit make you enjoy someone's pain? I think that was the time I cried most.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Then they did the final rituals for him.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  After her father's death, Joslin had had enough. She decided to escape the night dancer by moving to the big city.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I had a brother who was in Kampala. I told him, I want to leave this village because it kept eating me up. How someone can kill you and come and be with your people? They greet you, they talk to you. But then in your head, you're like, these people are evil.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  So since that time, I've not slept there again. I have a son.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  When I go to the village, I'm kind of protective. I only want him to mingle with my family. I just tell him, stay here.

• 23:14Glynn Washington?

  Thank you so much, Joslin, for sharing your story. Our heart goes out to your family. Now, this story was narrated by Lulu Jemima. It was scored by Clay Xavier and was produced by Ann Ford.

• 23:36Glynn Washington?

  And know this, not only is the Spooked podcast available each and every week, wherever you get your podcasts. Now you can see the magic yourself. Get spooked on YouTube and peek behind the shadow. The mystical, magical, monstrous Spooked podcast.