Dancing Shadows

Isaac Murdoch is from Serpent River First Nation and is Ojibwe, belonging to the Fish Clan. When picking rice as a young man, he encounters a fierce storm that blends the boundary between this world and the next.

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

• 0:02Glynn Washington?

  Jack's brat could eat no fat. His wife was super mean. So when they baked the baker, wow. They made a perfect team. Spooked right after this short break. Stay tuned. Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. And sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive.

• 0:45Glynn Washington?

  You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you, along with 24/7 claim support and great customer service. So when you think about it, that's like four great decisions that more than makes up for the TV debacle. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all? Well, you've never heard it like this. Radio Rental is a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Then the narrow light turns on, and then the narrow light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long, she looked shriveled, partially decayed.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with them to just please let me out.

• 1:55Speaker 05

  Dee's eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it.

• 2:02Speaker 06

  Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:21Glynn Washington?

  After his life ended, the old man emerged, wet from the water, to find himself in the middle of a large glade. A bearded figure placed a yellow rubber duck into the pool from which he had just emerged.

• 2:36Glynn Washington?

  "Am I dead?" Asked the man.

• 2:41Glynn Washington?

  "Don't you remember?" "That's exactly what you asked last time." "Last time." The man thought about it, but his head felt muzzy, his thoughts like smoke.

• 2:55Glynn Washington?

  "Well, what do I do now?" "You pick another pool."

• 3:01Glynn Washington?

  The man looked around, and as far as his eye could see in all directions waited pools of water. Some opaque, others clear. A few seemed very deep. While some held almost no water at all.

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  The man turned to step toward a pool. "No, not that one."

• 3:25Glynn Washington?

  The man stepped back. "Why?" "You've already been there. Look, every pool with a duck, you've traveled before." The man gaped around amazed as yellow rubber ducks bobbed on top of hundreds and hundreds of pools.

• 3:43Glynn Washington?

  "I've already..." "Yes." Then the man shifted his gaze slightly to the right, and he saw how vast the glade was. So many, many pools, bigger than his suddenly sharp eyes could even comprehend. How many pools are there?

• 4:04Glynn Washington?

  "All of them."

• 4:07Glynn Washington?

  The man fell to the grass, thunderstruck. "All of them." "Every single life?" "How many pools will I..." "All of them."

• 4:20Glynn Washington?

  "You will step into each and every pool."

• 4:25Glynn Washington?

  The man shook his head and breathed deeply. He said, "There are bad people, yes." "I am very bad people. I will do terrible things, yes."

• 4:44Glynn Washington?

  But there are saints as well. Yes. Who else comes to this space? Just you.

• 4:54Glynn Washington?

  But you know this now.

• 4:58Glynn Washington?

  What happens after I emerge from the final pool?

• 5:05Glynn Washington?

  Well, said the figure who looked exactly like the old man. Maybe, maybe then you'll be ready.

• 5:20Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts now.

• 6:08Glynn Washington?

  Now, we imagine boundaries between here and there, between earth and sky, wind and rain. And we're about to meet Isaac Murdoch. Isaac is a jibway of the Fish Clan from the Serpent River First Nation. He's a traditional knowledge holder, and he certainly knows the importance of respecting the boundary between this world and the next. He also understands that walls sometimes crumble. We're gonna hear a story about an encounter Isaac had when he was just 20 years old. Isaac, take it away.

• 7:03Speaker 07

  It's always custom that we introduce ourselves in our own way before we tell a story. So, "Ani bojoo", "Nde mwe mawgana duk", "Ha, mazanapken gue go na be indishnekaz", "Gnebe gok shubigajwat ndunchpak, noje endodem", "Ha, nishna be neni endaw, nimki ajsbekang ninda",

• 7:25Speaker 07

  "Ha, na ha".

• 7:32Speaker 07

  So, the place that we're talking about is Meemoot Lake. It's in northern Canada, it's a very beautiful place. Lots of islands, lots of fish and moose and ducks, lots of beaver, and lots of manomen, wild rice.

• 7:50Speaker 07

  So, to get to Meemoot Lake, you have to paddle back around this, this point. There's a cabin there.

• 8:00Speaker 07

  Years ago, when I was younger, like when I was in my late teens, me and my bro David, we used to travel in the bush. We'd go hunting, or we'd go pick medicines. And oftentimes, we'd stop by at this old cabin, where this old man lived.

• 8:20Speaker 07

  The cabin is built like in the ground. And so, there's four-foot walls that are dirt, and then four-foot walls above that. He had a dirt floor. And the windows were made out of mazaiwean, which is a certain type of a fish skin.

• 8:40Speaker 07

  And there was this canoe dugout, where they put the birch bar canoe inside there.

• 8:47Speaker 07

  There is no other cabins around. And it was just beautiful with jackpines. And the ground was all mossy with gray moss, red moss, green moss. And you could see these tiny little red mushrooms on the ground that were just sprinkled all over the place. Just like something put them there on purpose to make art. That's how beautiful this place looked.

• 9:17Speaker 07

  Just north of his cabin door is where his grave is.

• 9:27Speaker 07

  It was just a mound of dirt.

• 9:31Speaker 07

  You know, we'd put some Semah tobacco down there because we knew inherently that it was like a holy place, a place of reverence.

• 9:42Speaker 07

  Because this man had spent his entire life living on the land, living in accordance to the sacred laws on how to live here.

• 9:57Speaker 07

  I was in my late teens at the time when I first started to learn about this cabin. I was fascinated by it. And it was probably two, two and a half years. I'm working, picking wild rice. We had a boss that would hire, hire us because he could only hire Indian people because he couldn't find any white people to go there in the bush that knew how to survive out there.

• 10:24Speaker 07

  I have this friend named Alex, real good bush Indian, you know, really knows the bush good. He grew up in the north all his life. Comes from a very special place called Black Bear Island. We got along quite well.

• 10:42Speaker 07

  So we went out there together.

• 10:46Speaker 07

  So the cabin that we're staying at, it's not too far from that cabin from where that man lived. It's made out of black spruce logs. It's not a big cabin. There's a room for a bunk bed, another bed on the other side of the cabin.

• 11:07Speaker 07

  It is right on the edge of the lake beside a creek. You could hear the water trickling all the time. And there's also this little wood shed off to the side and of course, a wood pile.

• 11:22Speaker 07

  It was just a very beautiful place.

• 11:44Speaker 07

  So when we're not working or hunting, me and Alex are always playing crib. We play cards in the candlelight and, you know, at nighttime to see who's the crib master. And shoot the bull. I was only 20 years old. So I was like madly in love. So I'd talk about this young woman and he'd talk about this other young woman. And when we get back, we're gonna be together and all this stuff.

• 12:23Speaker 07

  I was cooking a beaver. We were gonna have beaver for supper. So I'm boiling beaver on the fire outside. And the beaver's head is bobbing up. And I have a stick and I'm trying to push the beaver's head down. All of a sudden, the sky was black. But they weren't regular storm clouds, like thunder clouds or whatever. There's these great big bubbles underneath, hanging down from the sky off this great big cloud. And there's lots and lots of bubbles all over. You can see tiny little flashes of light inside these bubbles

• 13:08Speaker 07

  that are hanging below the clouds. One over here and one over there, and then another flash over here. The clouds, they came swooping right down, way down, very close to earth. Like way lower than normal. These clouds are hanging. Like maybe a little taller than the trees.

• 13:38Speaker 07

  We knew a storm was coming, so we're dragging the canoes on shore, tying things up that are on the dock. That's when all of a sudden this smell just smacks me right in the face. The smell was a smell of death, of something bad. I had to cover my mouth because of this powerful smell. Even the leaves on the trees were growing upside down because of the smell. I'm saying, "Why does this smell like death?" And he's like, "I don't know, I don't know." "Goinkikendizin," he says, "I don't know why it smells like that." My heart is pounding.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  I'm starting to sweat. This is not just a regular storm. Something else is going on. There is lots of Atsukanan, sacred stories about our people, and how clouds had come down and they fought with us, or they gave us gifts or presents, or they'd take us up and we'd never be seen again. I never worried about that before because I've only heard these in our sacred teachings and our ceremonies. But you'd never think that it would happen to you.

• 15:05Speaker 07

  So I'm scared that they're gonna come down and take us. So we both agreed to go into the cabin. I shut the curtains because I don't want to look at those bubbles. We started playing cards, just so that we can distract ourselves from what's really happening. It was getting dark fast. And I can hear the whistling of the wind coming into the little spots in the cabin where maybe there's no moss.

• 15:47Speaker 07

  You can hear all these little whistles and peeps. And the trees are going back and forth. And all of a sudden, that's when I hear the wood chopping outside.

• 16:01Speaker 07

  So I have an axe out at the woodshed. It's a red-handled axe. Razor-sharp.

• 16:10Speaker 07

  And I can hear this axe just chopping wood ten feet from the, from the door. It's an unmistakable sound. It cannot be anything else.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  I'm too scared to look out the window.

• 16:30Speaker 07

  We're so far in the bush. So isolated. Nobody would be there. Nobody would be there.

• 16:42Speaker 07

  I know that whatever's out there, the reason why they were chopping wood was to let us know that they were there.

• 16:53Speaker 07

  If it was a real man out there, I'd go out there and kick his ass.

• 16:58Speaker 07

  No problem. Or give him, give him a good go. At least. But this thing I know I can't defeat.

• 17:08Speaker 07

  My breathing starts to get faster.

• 17:12Speaker 07

  And Alex was trying to be calm about it. But I can tell that he was scarier than I was. I could see his, his hands were shaking a little bit.

• 17:25Speaker 07

  All of a sudden, there's this

• 17:29Speaker 07

  loud thrashing thunder that's so powerful and so thick, we can feel it all the way through our bones.

• 17:41Speaker 07

  As the lightning strikes and I'm looking at the shadows inside the, the cabin walls, I can see three other human figures besides me and Alex sitting at our table.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  I'm so stunned.

• 18:01Speaker 07

  They were a little bit bigger than us.

• 18:06Speaker 07

  And they were a little bit more pronounced, they're more darker.

• 18:12Speaker 07

  I turned away, I didn't want to look anymore.

• 18:18Speaker 07

  I said, "Whatever it is, it's now it's in the house."

• 18:22Speaker 07

  I told Alex, "Go underneath the bed and cover up," I said. And then I did the same.

• 18:32Speaker 07

  I can feel my heartbeat racing and I can feel this constant pressure of, of fear and doom.

• 18:45Speaker 07

  I'm just, I'm praying.

• 18:48Speaker 07

  I'm calling upon old people that I knew a long time ago to come in, to be with us.

• 18:57Speaker 07

  I'm underneath the bed and I'm just kind of peeking out. I can still see shadows that are not supposed to be there.

• 19:07Speaker 07

  Alex is the one that's saying, "We gotta go. We have to get out of here, like, we need to go right now."

• 19:15Speaker 07

  I said, "If we go," I said, "you know, we're gonna end up in those clouds."

• 19:21Speaker 07

  "We can't stay here," he said, "there's ghosts in here." So we get out.

• 19:29Speaker 07

  We just run out of there with nothing.

• 19:32Speaker 07

  It's cold, it's windy, it's smelly, like a dead body. You gotta cover your nose and your face because it's so stinky.

• 19:45Speaker 07

  I tried to, to keep my eyes away from that woodpile.

• 19:51Speaker 07

  I didn't want to look at nothing, all I wanted to see was my own feet walking.

• 19:58Speaker 07

  We go down to the lake and we jump in the canoe. And I'm like paddling hard. I tell Alex, "You gotta paddle hard." I'm panicked because every time I look back at the cabin, I can see the shadows dancing through the window. I want to get out of there. I want to be bye-bye. So there we are, we're paddling, trying our best. The only thing on my mind was survival. My adrenaline is pumping. I am paddling so hard and so fierce.

• 20:43Speaker 07

  But the waves are coming up in the canoe. This is not even barely moving. That wind is too strong. There's nothing we can do. There was the thought that a cloud would come down and take it, the canoe. And that's when I said, "Let's go back to the cabin." The cabin was the safer place, even though there were shadows in there that weren't ours. So I grab onto the front of the canoe and I drag it up on shore.

• 21:27Speaker 07

  And we went right into the house. Alex goes into his bunk bed and I go into my bunk bed. And we put the blankets over top of our faces. As the lightning and the thunder rumbles the house, you can hear things scraping.

• 21:52Speaker 07

  You can hear things shifting around inside the house in the cabin. But we don't dare look.

• 22:03Speaker 07

  I was so scared that something was gonna rip that blanket off me or grab my leg and pull me off that bed.

• 22:12Speaker 07

  And I start to pray.

• 22:42Speaker 07

  I was always raised in the Indian way. But I prayed to everything, every god I ever heard about.

• 22:55Speaker 07

  The storm calms down after and the smell was gone. It seemed like, at least inside the cabin, we felt safer.

• 23:08Speaker 07

  Early in the morning, you can hear the birds start to sing.

• 23:13Speaker 07

  I'm gonna guess it's like 6 o'clock in the morning. I'm half asleep, half awake. Alex says, "Hey, there's somebody at the table."

• 23:24Speaker 07

  And my heart just jumped and I look. I lift up the blanket and I looked at the table and there's an old man sitting there playing Solitary.

• 23:34Speaker 07

  And I know he's playing Solitary because I can see him, the way that he's flipping the cards over. He was wearing a button-up shirt. Like an old-style button-up shirt, like maybe from the 30s. And he's got a hat on. Like an old-style Indian hat.

• 23:55Speaker 07

  He's got moccasins on. His hands are big and old.

• 24:02Speaker 07

  And I knew in my heart that it was the old man that lived at that cabin.

• 24:09Speaker 07

  I felt a sense of relief that somehow we were protected by this person. But at the same time, there's a ghost at the frickin' table. And so that's scary. That's scary. And so I put the blankets over my head again.

• 24:29Speaker 07

  I just start praying more.

• 24:34Speaker 07

  And then I can hear a shuffle, and then the cards go on the table.

• 24:40Speaker 07

  And when I look again, he's not there.

• 24:46Speaker 07

  And I said, "Alex, let's go. We gotta go." You know, we go outside and there's a whole bunch of wood chopped out there.

• 24:55Speaker 07

  Like, almost that whole pile was chopped.

• 25:00Speaker 07

  We start paddling across the lake.

• 25:04Speaker 07

  Winds at our back.

• 25:07Speaker 07

  There's something going on in the back of my head.

• 25:12Speaker 07

  So it feels like there's... something's walking in my hair. And I keep scratching. I keep scratching it. But it keeps being there.

• 25:27Speaker 07

  We got to that portage, and then we paddled across that other lake. And we stopped and we gave offerings at at that old man's cabin.

• 25:41Speaker 07

  It's a custom.

• 25:44Speaker 07

  Every single time when we go by a place where there's a place of spiritual significance, we have to go there and offer food and tobacco.

• 25:56Speaker 07

  So despite the fact that we had this very ghostly encounter, there is no way that we could go by that cabin and not leave an offering.

• 26:10Speaker 07

  We get to the main road, and we hitchhiked

• 26:14Speaker 07

  back to civilization.

• 26:21Speaker 07

  So I go to my uncle's. My uncle's house doesn't look too different than the cabin that we were staying in.

• 26:30Speaker 07

  And so I'm there for a couple of days. I keep scratching like I have nits, bugs. I tell my uncle, "I got this itch. I think I got a bug or something in my hair."

• 26:44Speaker 07

  He goes, "Let me check your hair." So I sat down there and he checked my hair. And he says, "You know, that's probably not a bug. That's probably a jipai. That's a spirit that's stuck in your hair. It's tangled in there."

• 27:02Speaker 07

  Sometimes a spirit, a jipai, can get stuck in your hair or go in your pocket and will stay there for a while and try to get nourishment from your body so it can get energy to travel to where it needs to go next.

• 27:21Speaker 07

  He goes, "You know, I seen an old man in the garden, cleaning up everything, getting things straightened out. I just disappeared."

• 27:34Speaker 07

  He knew it was somebody from the other side.

• 27:39Speaker 07

  He goes, "Where you were, was there an old man there?" I said, "Yes."

• 27:45Speaker 07

  He says, "That's probably that old man that's been in the garden."

• 27:51Speaker 07

  My uncle grew up in the bush. Of course, he went to residential school, but he spent the rest of his life in the bush. And he also knew how to deal with the spirits because when you live in the bush, you're always dealing with things like that all the time.

• 28:10Speaker 07

  He knew what to do.

• 28:15Speaker 07

  So my uncle did this beautiful ceremony where he sent the old man back to the spirit world. It took him one day to prepare and get all the things that he needed from the forest. It's a very private ceremony that's done that I can't actually describe, but there's nothing in my hair after that.

• 28:43Speaker 07

  I got educated that night. This world is not a resource. This world is a spirit, it's our mother. Maybe we got tough love that night. During that storm, I think the old man was there to protect us from that thing that went through. And that the old man stayed with us. And as we got away, it traveled in my hair. I always treated that old man's spirit with respect. By making those offerings and by paying tribute, maybe we received great medicine from above.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  We received something special that saved our lives. So I just want to give a traditional farewell to yous that are listening. So, "Anke chinandam yaya maan pi, giga nonen gok jiba yagok. Inomiewe, amigwetrago, nao, ba ma pi gwaabnenem."

• 30:06Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Isaac, for sharing your story with Spooked. If you want to hear more stories from Isaac, know more about his art and his activism, head over to our show notes, we have got you covered. That story was scored by Laleen St. Juiced, was produced by Zoe Frigno. Now, you know here at Spooked, we've learned that some people, they know some things that they are not supposed to know. Names, places, languages, histories, they've never been exposed to. And I wonder, I wonder if you know something that you're not supposed to.

• 30:51Glynn Washington?

  If so, please tell me about it, [email protected], because there is nothing better than a Spooked story from a Spooked listener. [email protected]. Spooked is brought to you by the team that is absolutely certain they've been here before.

• 31:10Glynn Washington?

  Except for Mark Ristich, everyone's pretty sure it's his first time through. Now, there's Davy Kim, Zoe Fergino, Ann Ford, Eric Yáñez, Teo Taccott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Kriki, Elizabeth Z. Pardew, Aditya Mathu, Lulu Jemima. The spook theme song is by Pat Messini Miller. My name is Glen Washington.

• 31:36Glynn Washington?

  And a long while ago, my son asked me, "What is a story daddy?" And because he was curious, he was serious when he asked, I thought about it for a long while. And finally, I told him, "I think stories are life." Still, he nodded. He said his thanks and he ran off to play with his friends. And over the years, I thought a lot about that answer. A lot. A lot.

• 32:14Glynn Washington?

  And I don't think it's wrong.

• 32:17Glynn Washington?

  In fact, I think it's more right than wrong. But I believe stories are meant to be more than just that. They're a map. They're a guide. They're a trail of breadcrumbs. Stories tell us which way the wolf lurks, where the queen hides her honey.

• 32:34Glynn Washington?

  And most of all, stories are a reminder

• 32:41Glynn Washington?

  to never, ever, never, ever, never, never, never, not ever, never, ever, ever

• 32:52Glynn Washington?

  turn out

• 32:55Glynn Washington?

  the lights.