The Hexxed

A man visits prominent members of the Blackfeet Traditional Medicine community. After witnessing an unexplainable force, he learns just how important it is to practice good medicine. And a girl growing up in Mumbai knows money doesn’t grow on trees. But when times get tough, her family house begins to reveal its secrets. This story comes to us from our evil-twin, Spooked https://www.kqed.org/spooked! You can listen to Spooked on any podcast platform, episodes drop weekly. STORIES Bull Boy While Dan is at the compound of good friends and prominent members of the Blackfeet Traditional Medicine community, the Heavyrunner family, he learns just how important it is to practice good medicine. Thanks to Dan SaSuweh Jones for sharing your story with us! Learn more aboutDan https://sasuweh.com/. Produced by Chris Hambrick, original score by Leon Morimoto. Hiding Spot Growing up in Mumbai, Rashi knew money didn't grow on trees. But when times got really tough and the family was on the brink, their house began to reveal its secrets. Thank you Rashi for sharing your story with Spooked! Rashi is a radio DJ on BIG FM India https://bigfmindia.com/. You can also follow her on Instagram: @rjrashiofficial @biglive @bigfm.jharkhand Produced by Erick Yáñez. Original score by Lauryn Newson. Scouted by Aditya Mattoo. Season 16 - Episode 50 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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• 0:53Glynn Washington?

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• 1:32Glynn Washington?

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• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  The start of so many ancient texts tells us plainly that in the beginning was the word. Before everything was the word. And even those that don't know they know this. They know this. That simple words alone have a power. Peace be to you. Walk in the light, you have my blessing. You are forgiven. These are powerful words, but this is a two-sided coin. When wronged, when humiliated, when threatened, when needing that final revenge, people reach for the last weapon left to them. The word.

• 2:59Glynn Washington?

  I hate you. Damn you.

• 3:05Glynn Washington?

  Cursing a person calls upon the most ancient of powers. And the more purpose we give our words,

• 3:13Glynn Washington?

  the more likely the universe will bend around them.

• 3:21Glynn Washington?

  Spook Starts.

• 3:25Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 3:55Glynn Washington?

  Curses, curses, curses. We begin in the early 1980s, where Dan Sassoey Jones, he's living in a scenic national park in Montana. It's also Blackfeet Indian land. He's a member of the Ponaka Nation, but he's about to get an education in the ways of Blackfeet Medicine Society. Spook.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  One day, I was visiting a friend of mine in East Glacier. Mr. Byrd. He was kind of a collector of American Indian arts. At the time, I was doing writing and also my artwork.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  And he invited me in, and I just happened to notice across the room, there was an Indian man.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Tiny Man Heavy Runner. I was introduced to Tiny Man, and we shook hands.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  I just knew that there was a connection between him and I.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Tiny Man was a striking human being, long, black hair. But he had one spot on the top of his forehead that grew white the full length of his hair.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  He had this very baritone voice. It controlled the room, really. I started finding out more and more about him. I realized what a powerhouse he was, especially around his own people.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  The Heavy Runner family are an intricate part of the Blackfeet Medicine Society, and kept a knowledge of the history of the tribe, and also a knowledge of their spiritual ways. There is all this mystique about this family.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't long after my girlfriend and I had met Tiny Man that we had met his grandparents.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  The grandfather, everyone lovingly referred to him as Old Man, and his wife, Agnes. I quickly learned that they were actual healers, medicine people of the tribe. And Tiny Man was, you know, actually an apprentice of his grandfather, and he was learning the medicine ways of these people.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  They lived in an area called Hartbutte, Montana. Big Badger Creek, which is still a part of the Blackfeet Reservation.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Winter was coming. I really wasn't prepared for Glacier National Park winter. I mean, they get 20-foot snowfalls.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I was living in a teepee at the time. And Tiny Man says, "You know, you really need to get out of these mountains here and come down into the valley area where they live," to the family's home.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  I personally wanted to be around Tiny Man for what the knowledge that he had.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  So we took him up on his offer.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Tiny Man lived right in the home with Old Man and Agnes. But part of their family lived on the property and they had their own little shack. So it was kind of a compound of people. They lived a pretty bare life. No running water. They had a well and all the water was hauled to the house. They gave everything that they had of material away, other than the clothes they wore and cars that they had sitting up on blocks around the property. They'd become chicken houses and stuff like that. They had a few horses. They had a few head of cattle. And that was the extent of their farm.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  When we first got to the compound, we just had that tradition of jumping in and trying to help out where we could. Chopping wood was a constant thing. If you're not bringing in wood, then you don't have wood.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Each week, there was some folks that were coming to see the Old Man and Agnes. Both Old Man and Agnes were elders in the medicine community. Younger medicine people were coming to them to ask them adv- Ice, sending them patients or people that maybe they couldn't deal with. There was a lot of people there all the time. So there were people coming and going. The old man just carried this happiness about him all the time, you know, big smile on his face. And it's why he was, you know, such a good healer. A lot of that was his attitude. He was filled with love.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  It was in the late fall after our hunting expedition. The old man would spend a lot of time in the house and well, I'd noticed that he was out, he was out quite a bit, pacing. I hadn't seen him out unless he was working on something, but in this case, he wasn't really working on anything.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  He'd walk from the corral to the back of the house, circle the house, and then, you know, back to the corral and, and do pretty much nothing other than look up toward the north. It seemed like he was expecting something.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Couple of days later, I'm having breakfast and finishing my coffee in a teepee.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  And I hear this vehicle coming rather fast, more so than normal.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  When you live in a teepee, it's very similar to living inside of a megaphone that's turned upside down on the earth. So any sounds that are around you are vibrating through the skin. But I stuck my head outside and I noticed there was this red pickup truck and it was zipping down the road. That thing was doing ninety, if not more. And when it got to the old man's turnoff, he pulled up our road, which is dirt. The dust was coming, billowing behind them as they were coming toward the house.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  They pulled up into the front yard. Old man was standing there waiting. He knew why they were there. He had a look on his face of kind of dread.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  These two big gentlemen unfolded from the truck.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  In the back of the truck, they began to unload this meat that they had brought.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  They were hindquarters of moose, which are huge.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Each one of them took one of the hindquarters and threw over their shoulders. You're talking a hundred or more pounds. They immediately greeted the old man. These guys looked like they were desperate. They're anxious to be there. And they had brought gifts that were beyond, I would say, what I normally saw people bring for payment for healing. I felt a level of anxiety. I have no idea what it is, or what it could be, but I know it's something that's an emergency and that it's probably dangerous.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  They moved inside, and still not a smile from the old man.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  When the gentlemen left, Tiny Man came directly to my lodge and proceeded to tell me exactly why they were there and what was going on. Tiny Man said that these older gentlemen were the older brothers of this young boy that was afflicted. This boy, a young boy, and couldn't be older than seventeen, had basically ran off with the daughter of a very powerful medicine man from Canada. And they had gone to a powwow and spent a couple of days before she finally went home.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  It was a big deal to the father. I had everybody looking for her. He was just fraught with fear and anger.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Tiny Man told me that the man had cursed the boy.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Every night for the past few days, when the sun went down, the boy would go down on his all fours and he'd billow like an animal.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  He'd make these growling sounds and they said his face would contort and eyes totally bloodshot.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  This boy would basically turn into a bull, running headfirst into the walls like a bull would do, tearing their home up.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Tiny Man said it took about four of them to hold this 17-year-old boy down when he would make this transformation.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  They'd have to tie him up with sheets. He would just be slobbering and billowing all through the night until morning, he would come out of it. The real concern they had was that he was gonna kill himself or hurt somebody else.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  As Tiny Man and his grandfather, as they all understood it, there was an entity that was inside of this boy that needed to be removed. Tiny Man was concerned. He knew because of the old man's age that he would be the primary healer that was gonna have to work on this boy. He was worried about it.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  It scared me once I realized that this is a real thing, this was coming here. Then I was concerned for my girlfriend's safety, my safety. I felt like I'd jump in and help restrain him if necessary. So I had no fear of being able to hold the boy. What I was afraid of was whatever was doing it to him. Did it have the ability to shift, to go into and move into other people?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I'd asked Tiny Man, "What should we do?" And he said, "Just don't go around the house. Don't circle the house." "You've got something that strong of energy going on. You don't want to put your energy around it in any way. Just stay away from it." And they've got everything handled. This is what they were trained to do.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Later in the afternoon, they show up with this boy.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  And they had two vehicles this time. There's more of the family there. Nine, 10 people. I kind of moved off to the chopping block, you know, start chopping wood.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  There wasn't nothing special about the boy. Young, western, clean-cut. He was kind of a scrawny kid. He wasn't, you know, anything that you would think that would be much of a threat. The family was immediately taken into, you know, one of the back houses that was prepared for that.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So I'm standing there stacking the wood, cutting a few more pieces. You get that little feeling that something is near. I turn around and it's the boy.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  He's standing, you know, right behind me. Kind of frightened me. I didn't know exactly how to deal with this. So I'm like, "Oh, hello," and trying to, you know, calm my own fear about what I know. I'm kind of a big handshake-ing kind of a guy. But I didn't shake his hand. Didn't want any physical contact with the young guy.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  The first thing he asked was, "Is that your TP?" And I was responding and... Yeah, it's where I live, it's my home. There wasn't much said. The boy was very quiet. He did have a look of concern. But I don't think he knew what was going on either.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  After a few minutes, one of his older brothers came out and... And got him and they laughed, so I wandered back to the, my lodge. The sun's going down. Right at sunset, these winds started coming.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, we heard calls for tiny men from the house.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  It was beginning.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  I hear Agnes singing, at the top of her lungs, singing.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And I hear the old man, he's raised his voice in prayer.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  It just seemed more intense this night than any before.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Somebody was drumming. It was a slower tempo, which in my tribe would be what we call a prayer song.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  The wind. It seemed like it was coming from every direction. The teepee was just getting slammed from each way. It was getting cold, so I just built up a fire.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  We started hearing from the house, moaning like an animal, like a call of a bull.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  This loud rumble.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  These guttural grunts.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I remember hearing a lion in a zoo once roaring, and it's the most loudest thing you've ever heard. And this was a lot like that.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  I could hear loud thumping, almost like the shaking, a vibration that would set up through the teepee from the house. Sounds like people were being thrown around, like rag dolls. And at one point, the old man screaming. I'm really concerned. Surely, there's enough men there, but what if there isn't? What if something's brought it to the head, that this force becomes so powerful that all the men that are in there can't control it? I was afraid.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  This went on for hours into the night, singing the different songs. The old man at times praying rather loudly.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  There'd be long periods of silence, and then the sounds would begin again. Loud thumping.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Then you'd hear hollering.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  We didn't have much conversation between my girlfriend and I, because we wanted to hear what was going on from there. When would this break, and how would it break?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  We didn't sleep at all. Didn't even try to sleep.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I'd burn some cedar. We were praying individually. At times, we'd pray together, mostly praying to ourselves.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  All night, it had been very windy, though, and cold. And then it kind of broke.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Right before sunrise, it almost felt like it... It warmed up.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  It's that special time when the old people say that the night is fighting the light to stay.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  There'd been a long period of calm.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  We knew that something definitely had changed.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  We're drinking coffee and then I hear the knock at the teepee and yelled, you know, "Aho, come in." And it was Tiny Man.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  He looked completely beat up. He looked like he had been through a fistfight, and one that he'd probably lost.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  We handed him a cup of coffee and I wanted to know how the boy was, first of all.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  He said, "It's done. It's gone. This thing has left the boy. He won't be bothered with it again."

• 23:00Speaker 01

  It was just such a relief to hear that from Tiny Man.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  We came out of the teepee that morning and the sun was coming up as we walked towards the corral. The old man was walking in the front yard and the first time in a few days, he's got a big smile on his face. He looked tired, but happy.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Then in a few minutes, the brothers came out with their younger brother between them. We started walking over toward them. First thing I noticed, how different the boy looked. I mean, his eyes were alive. He didn't have the same look that he'd had before. He looked more, just completely at peace, I'd say.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  The family was relieved and happy. Very thankful to Agnes and to the old man. I mean, they were hugging them and they were talking in blackfeet.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  I still had a lot of questions. You know, what was this thing? How did it come to be?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Tiny Man told us that in these kinds of exorcisms, they look for tokens or items that might be connected in some way to the situation.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  They found a carved bull that the boy was wearing, and he immediately removed it.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Tiny Man's assumption was the medicine man had given it to his daughter and made the suggestion that it became a gift to the boy.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Medicine men provide different services. Healing's not the only thing that they provide. If you lose someone or something, you can go to a medicine man. They find things that you've lost. And then there's others that deal in revenge. How do you do something like that to another person? So we're dealing with a medicine man that's ethics are a little askew, not balanced maybe, but still handling a lot of power.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  All as I can tell you was the evil medicine man's medicine represented hate and fear.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Old man's medicine is good. It is filled with love.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And in the end, love is stronger than hate.

• 26:00Glynn Washington?

  Big thanks to Dan Sassoey Jones for sharing your story with the Spook. If you want to know more about Dan, check out our show notes. That original score was by Leon Warimoto. It was produced by Chris Hambrick.

• 26:21Glynn Washington?

  When Snap returns, we're gonna find out someone's hiding spot. Stay tuned.

• 26:32Glynn Washington?

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• 27:15Glynn Washington?

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• 28:41Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the heck special. Celebrating the brand new season of Snap's Supernatural Sister Podcast, Spooked. And yes, the new Spooked season, The Crossroads, is available everywhere podcasts are available. Get spooked! But now, now we're gonna take you to India to meet Rashi. Rashi's a teenager and she lives in Mumbai. She's just graduated and wants to throw a party to celebrate. Naturally, Rashi has just one small problem. Spooked.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  One day, all of his cousins, we've gathered at this Mumbai house. And we're planning to do this amazing huge party that we have never had before in our household. We just had our major results in school. Some of us are growing up and going to college. So we plan to get some booze, of course. Then we have to buy some paper hats and some decoration. So me being the eldest child in the family, I decide that I should be contributing more money. But I had no money.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  So my mom's in the kitchen and I go to her and I very sweetly start to wash the utensils. So she knows that I've come there to ask her for something. She stops me and she's like, "Just tell me what you want already, don't try to act sweet." I look into her eyes and I'm like, "Mom, please, can you give me some more money? Because we're planning a party." And then there was silence for about 20 seconds. She just smiled and she said, "Okay, fine, but have you had your breakfast?" And in my head, I'm like, "She's changing the topic. I know I'm not getting money for that party."

• 30:49Speaker 02

  I used to have chocolate cereal for breakfast. So I walk to the cabinet in the other dining area. Take out the box. And while I'm pouring the cereal out, there's a whole lot of cash that just falls out on the table.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Five rupees, ten rupees, fifty rupees.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  In my head, I'm like, hmm, I have no idea where this money is come from. But now I don't need to ask my mother, which was so great.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  My mother comes to me in the evening, she said, the two hundred rupees that you took, what are you gonna buy from it?

• 31:34Speaker 02

  I go like, oh, so it was you who put that money in that box in the first place? She said, no, it's magic, it can appear from anywhere in the house. If you ever find money again in the house, you have to tell me, you cannot just steal it without telling me.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  I suddenly realized that, oh, my mother hides money around the house.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  And when I think about it, my dad is a spendthrift, so it actually made sense that my mom hid money around the house.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  The party was a blast. And I remember the next morning, none of us were sober enough to go home.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  One night, I was waiting for my parents to come back from this doctor's appointment. My parents had regularly started going to the doctors because my mother started feeling sick. She constantly had pain and aches.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  I was standing in the balcony and I saw the car approach and I just ran downstairs to greet my mom.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  And I see her come out of the car and she has this, you know, expression about her that she's going to cry.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  She runs up the stairs, goes to the bed, lies down,

• 33:03Speaker 02

  and she just puts her head between her hands and she bursts out crying. Never in my life, my mother had cried like that. Not even when she lost her best friend.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So I kept asking her, "What happened? What happened? Why are you crying?"

• 33:21Speaker 02

  And she just looked at me and she said, "I'm gonna lose all my hair."

• 33:27Speaker 02

  My mom had this luscious, long hair which went right down to her knees.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  And she loved her hair so much.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  I asked her if there's something wrong or why would it happen?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  And in between her sobs and crying, she just somehow told me, "I have cancer."

• 33:53Speaker 02

  I couldn't speak for the next, I think, thirty, forty minutes.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  My head just straight away went to what would happen if we lose our mom?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  So after my mother's diagnosis for the next two years, we had to regularly visit the hospital. And each treatment was quite expensive. So it was getting difficult for us money-wise.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  She started teaching us different things as a family. She would give us instructions on how to take care of the garden, what who likes to eat, how do you go about a set routine, how do you not spend too much?

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Initially, I thought my mother was teaching us those things because she couldn't do them herself. But eventually, I realized that maybe she was trying to teach us the ways of life because she knew she's not going to live with us for very long.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  On the thirty first of August, we were at home. My mum felt just fine. She was doing good. But towards the evening later on, she started to feel sick.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  She suddenly started to have a lot of pain in her back.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  She started to feel breathless.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  And I think a couple of hours later in the morning at four o'clock, she just went silent.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  We just knew that my mother had gone. She was no more with us.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  The next few months were very difficult. For every small thing, we used to miss our mother a lot.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  None of us knew how to cook properly. We couldn't find our clothes in place. There was no routine in the house. Everything was chaotic. And financially, we did not have enough. I was very depressed. So my grandmum, she gives me this metal bangle, which is like a bracelet. And she puts it on my left hand.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  And I'm thinking, okay, maybe, you know, it's for good luck or maybe it's to calm me down.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Somewhere, there's this belief that if you wear something metal, it keeps you calm and protected. So I just put it on and I never took it off.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Obviously, we couldn't tend to ourselves, so forget about tending to the garden or the plants. This particular plant, it started to die eventually.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  It was one of our very favorite plants. It was a money plant that climbed all the way up to my window, grill in my bedroom, and almost covered half of it.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  It had nice, beautiful, round leaves.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  But it suddenly started to wilt.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  After a week, it was completely dead.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  We try everything we know and we can to save it. Make another cutting from it, prune it, grow another plant from it, nothing works.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  It almost felt like the plants knew that my mom was not around to take care of them anymore, that she was gone.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  After, almost an year after my mom passed away, I was sitting in my living room and my dad comes to me and says, "Why do you keep waking up at 3am?"

• 37:42Speaker 02

  And I immediately looked at him confused and I said, "I was not up at 3am, what happened?" And he said, "I woke up to get some water and I passed by your room and I saw that you were sitting in your bed."

• 37:58Speaker 02

  I was like, "Oh, maybe I would have just woken up randomly."

• 38:04Speaker 02

  After two, three days, my grandmom told me the same thing. She said, "You do wake up at 3am, why do you keep sitting in your bed, is something wrong?"

• 38:17Speaker 02

  The first thing that went into my head was, "Maybe I'm still not used to the fact that my mother is not around anymore, maybe I'm depressed and maybe my brain is making me do things." Sometimes people also go into sleepwalking problems because of stress and all of that. So we went to the doctor.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  The doctor said that it could be just stress and I don't think there's something serious that you need to worry about but if you think you're waking up at the same time and if your family is saying it's the same time, put an alarm clock just to see how you respond to it, you will know if you've been sleepwalking.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  So we come back and my father puts an alarm clock for I think 3:15am and I just dozed off to sleep.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Next thing I remember is the alarm clock started ringing. So I wake up and

• 39:23Speaker 02

  I realise that I'm sitting up.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And I'm staring at that plant.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  The plant that was already dead in my window.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  I'm thinking, oh, I have been actually sitting up and doing this.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  But also, what are these little green things coming out of the plant?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  There are three new branches that are sprouting out.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  It had small leaves. It was almost as if it was a fresh new plant.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  I was just plain confused. Because the same plant had been dead for almost a year. It was impossible to revive.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  So in my head, I'm thinking, you know, maybe I'm just imagining it. And I went back to sleep.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  The next night, I go to sleep. And then once again, I wake up at 3am.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  I'm sitting up. And I'm staring at that plant.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  The plant had grown a little more.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  One of its branches had actually coiled around the grill. It's almost like it's coming alive right in front of me at that moment.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And this goes on for about 20 days.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  In the span of 20 days, it came back to life. And there's no bloody explanation for it.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  I remember thinking that maybe this is something supernatural.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Maybe there is some sort of energies passing or something that has remained of my mother, which she's come to tell us through the plant.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  A couple of times, the thought did cross my head, but I never took it seriously.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  One night, I go to sleep on my usual time.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  In the middle of the night, I remember feeling a soft touch on my head.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Like somebody caressing my hair, somebody massaging my eyes. And the touch is very, very peculiar because it's just like my mum's. She would usually massage our eyes, massage our heads before waking us up.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  And that touch is so strong that I open my eyes. And I look to the right side of my bed and I see my mum standing there.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  She's wearing a sari and she's wearing her hair in a braid, a long braid. She just looks like she's there in person, alive. She's smiling and I'm confused.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  I want to ask her out aloud, "Mum, if it's you and if you've come back", but I can't get myself to speak.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  She's not saying anything, she's just pointing at me. And she's pointing towards the other room where my father's asleep.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  I get down from the bed and I follow her to that room.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  I enter the room and I see my father sleeping very peacefully. And my mother's standing there. And she just constantly is pointing at the bed. I'm looking at the bed and the very next thing I remember is I wake up.

• 43:33Glynn Washington?

  Spook continues right after the break. Stay tuned.

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• 44:23Glynn Washington?

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• 45:50Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the heck special, a dark celebration of the return of our supernatural sister podcast, Spooked. The brand new season is caught the crossroads and it is waiting everywhere you get your podcasts. When last we left, Rashi had just been visited by the spirit of her mother during the middle of the night before waking alone in her bed. Spooked.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I'm in my bed and I see my father, my grandmother and a couple of other family members sitting in my room, looking at me. Something is probably wrong because I'm also feeling very heavy, I'm exhausted, I have a body ache. My family has this weird expression on their face and I realize that I have woken up almost five hours later than I would usually wake up at. So I instantly ask my father, what's, what's happening? And the first thing he asks me is, do you remember anything? And I tell him no, and I also tell him that I'm extremely tired.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Then my father tells me, he says, uh, do you remember seeing a lot of money? I instantly ask him, I said, what do you mean by a lot of money? Then my grandmom says, do you remember waking up last night? I think you woke up, didn't you? Think hard. I said, no, of course I don't remember. At this point, I sort of snap at them and I said, can you guys just please tell me what's happening because it's really irritating me. And that's when my father says, you woke up in the night, you came to my room. And you first lifted me.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  You put me on the floor and you pulled the mattress off the bed.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  And I'm wondering how are you picking that mattress up because it's very heavy.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  At this point, I'm legit thinking that my family is just, you know, they're just joking around with me.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  I said, maybe I was sleepwalking, maybe I was doing something out in my sleep.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  He said, the moment you lifted that mattress, it was so scary to look at and we did not have the courage to come and touch you.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  We called out your name a couple of times, but you did not respond.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  And then my father says, underneath the mattress, there were four compartments.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  One of the compartments had a secret locker that none of us knew about. No one in our family knew that these locker existed.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  You opened the locker and then you pulled out this plastic bags with a lot of cash and jewelry. And you pulled them out one by one. You just took everything out. And you just put it on the floor. And then you closed the compartment and you put the mattress back. And then you went back to your room.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  My family is scared. They sound like they don't know who I am or who I was last night.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  And while my father is saying this, my grandmom comes from behind. She takes me to the room. And I see there on the floor,

• 49:34Speaker 02

  five or six big cloth bags with jewelry in them. Wads of fifty rupees, hundred rupees.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  I have never seen this amount of cash or jewelry before in my life.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  I was so pissed at my own family. You know, it almost felt like, like my family wanted to prove that I'm mentally unstable, that I've gone mad.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  I straight off told my father, if this is a joke, it's a very cruel joke to pull on anybody. And my dad said, listen, you're my daughter and I have no reason to put you through this.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  We found the jewellery that I thought had gotten stolen. The jewellery that was there was stolen long ago, even before I was born.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  And we found it at a time when we actually needed this cash. And then he tells me that my grandmum was due for a surgery. She had a hole in her heart and she was due for a surgery for which we really needed money first.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  After being angry, I felt that sense of relief.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Like, something was lifted off my shoulder and it just, everything just made sense. It almost felt like my mum was still trying to protect us from the afterlife by trying to keep the plants alive, by trying to make sure that we had enough money to get us by in our rainy days when we actually needed it the most. Maybe it was my mother coming to see us for one last time and ensuring our well-being.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  My grandmum's treatment was started.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  I was already in college, so I had a huge college fee to pay. All of that was paid off. My brother's tuition fee was paid off.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Some of the jewellery we still have for my brother's, uh, would-be wife.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  And after about a week, I went to the seaside and I sat there for some time, trying to recollect everything that had happened.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  That metal bangle was still in my hand. And whenever I looked at the bangle or that bracelet, it reminded me that it was given to me right, right on the next day of my mother's passing. And I wanted to move on in life and I was ready to let go.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  I put the bangle in the water, saying this to my mother.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  If it was you who had come back,

• 52:33Speaker 02

  I hope I've done whatever it is that you wanted me to do. I've fulfilled your last wish. And I love you more than anything else in this world.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  As I let go of that bangle, I saw it disappear and then slowly sink into the water.

• 53:32Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Rashi, for sharing your story with the Spoot. We are so glad you and your family are in a much better place now. Rashi's a DJ for Big FM, one of India's largest radio networks. You can check her out on bigfmindia.com.

• 53:50Glynn Washington?

  That story, scouted by Aditya Matu. Original score by Lauren Newsom. It was produced by Eric Yanez.

• 54:07Glynn Washington?

  Oh yes, there are more Spooked Journeys available. The brand new season of Spooked: The Crossroads just dropped with Spooked episodes leading you through the heart of the Shadowlands. Available right now, wherever you get your podcasts. Spooked. Spooked is brought to you by the team that goes by the motto, "Leave no trace." Except of course for Mark Ristich, who always leaves a trace of peanut butter. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Fregno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor DeCopp, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Kriki, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Aditya Matu, and Lulu Jamima.

• 54:50Glynn Washington?

  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-CIO Local 51. The Spooked theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is from Washington. Right now, my promise is to never, ever turn out blunts.