'Till Death Do Us Part

It’s the 1970s in Beverly, a small town in Jamaica where everyone knows everything about each other and gossip travels fast. Fifteen-year-old Claudia thinks she’s heard it all… But nothing can prepare her for the stories that start to spread after one of her neighbors passes away.

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

• 0:07Glynn Washington?

  As I lay me down to sleep,

• 0:11Glynn Washington?

  I pray that all the things that creep, bite and suck and scream and jail will disappear when I awake.

• 0:27Glynn Washington?

  You've crossed over to Spoot. Stay tuned.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 1:42Glynn Washington?

  First, you must understand that I loved him. Loved, loved him.

• 1:51Glynn Washington?

  I love him no matter what lies they say. No matter what you think I did. Peter loved, with his words. John, with his eyes. Thomas loved his doubts. Matthew only loved himself.

• 2:11Glynn Washington?

  I loved with my whole being. I watched in awe and respect to learn the mystery of it. The magics, the spells, the bread, the fishes, the wine. We both knew

• 2:27Glynn Washington?

  that miracles are never free. It all takes coin, and for the coin, for the things that matter, there were never twelve disciples. Now, now there was only one disciple, me, the only one. He trusted me. Me.

• 2:51Glynn Washington?

  Me, one deserving to stand at his right hand. He read my intentions, my secrets as easily as he read the scriptures. I could sooner flap my arms and fly into the sun than deceive one such as he. But yes, yes. I argued. I fought. I begged him not to do this on bended knees. I begged him, but in the end,

• 3:24Glynn Washington?

  I did take the thirty pieces of silver as he commanded. Do you imagine he did not know? When I knelt before him at the final meal trembling, calling him rabbi, master, kissing his cheek, he smiled at me then, embraced me. As the soldiers waited, he held me.

• 3:46Glynn Washington?

  He pressed the vial into my hand, whispered to me as I wept, "Give this to the woman at the end,

• 3:55Glynn Washington?

  and she becomes God."

• 4:03Glynn Washington?

  And even as I seized him,

• 4:06Glynn Washington?

  beat him, wrapped him in chains, he asked my forgiveness, my forgiveness.

• 4:15Glynn Washington?

  Sometimes I think he knew he charged me with the more difficult path.

• 4:22Glynn Washington?

  I could not stay in the city. I could not witness their glee, the savage joy of those who had once called him Lord, Lord. I should have stayed with him.

• 4:34Glynn Washington?

  Besides him, my sin, my real treachery was to flee

• 4:43Glynn Washington?

  as he commanded.

• 4:49Glynn Washington?

  Slu Star. Now.

• 5:37Glynn Washington?

  Know this. Sometimes the final journey, it isn't as final as you might think.

• 5:48Glynn Washington?

  Our next story takes us to Jamaica. It's the 1970s and our storyteller Claudia is just 15 years old.

• 5:57Glynn Washington?

  Claudia, take it away.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  We live in a little town called Beverly. It's an area where there's no electricity. At nighttime, we use oil lamps and the moon.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Up on the hill where we live, we have a little stream. We call it a gully. You'd either go to the gully and wash up. Just go out there and wash up your, you know, arms, legs, feet. Or we'd go out and we'd fill up our basins with water and leave it in the sun to warm up, right, so we can have a bath at nighttime.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Everybody knows everybody's business, especially over in our area, because it's so small. And like, everybody has kids, so all us kids all hang out together so you know what was going on in everybody's house, whether you want to or not.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Claudia's closest neighbors were an older couple, whom all the kids in town called Uncle Pam and Aunt Sill. Everybody loved Aunt Sill.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  She was such a sweet woman. On Sundays, she'd make fried dumpling and fish, codfish and aki. And then after church, she'd bring it to the church for the kids and for people who will not be having a Sunday meal.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  You could smell it coming. You could just smell that thing. Oh, my God. Every time you smell it coming, your belly start rolling because you know it's going to be good.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  But Uncle Pam was not a very nice man.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  One day, we're playing marbles, for example. One roll right under his fence, and he's right there. And he looks straight in the face, and he says, "You know you're not getting that back, right?"

• 8:31Speaker 03

  The man walked right towards us and picked up that marble, and put it in his pocket, and walked away.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  He was mean, and he was mean to the neighborhood. So, a lot of people did not like Uncle Pam. Sometimes the kids would spook his donkey. But I didn't do that. You know, he was a grumpy old man, and I accepted that he's a grumpy old man. So, I got along with him.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  It was about dusk. It's about 6 o'clock in the evening. It's still bright, but it's getting, you know, dark because there's no electricity for miles and miles. I'm sitting on the rock washing my foot, and I can hear the donkey coming, right? So I turn my head, and I see Uncle Pam.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  He's going home on his donkey. So I said, "Hey, Uncle Pam." And he says, "Hi, Joyce." In Jamaica, everybody's got a pet name, right? They never call you by your real name. There's gotta be a name. So mine was String Bean, because I'm tall, or Joyce. So he says, "Hi, Joyce." And I said, "Good night, Uncle Pam." And he says, "Good night." Wash up, went back in, we ate dinner, and go to bed.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Around 9 o'clock that night, right? I'm laying in my bed, half asleep, and I hear this wailing coming, like people just crying.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  The crying sounded like it was coming from Aunt Sill and Uncle Pam's house.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  To hear screaming like that, you know something bad happened. And I'm like, "Okay, we gotta go fight out what's going on."

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Claudia, her younger sister Sharon, and their grandmother, whom they called Mama, got dressed and walked down to Aunt Sill and Uncle Pam's. By the time they got to the house, most of the neighborhood was already there. People were crowded around Aunt Sill, consoling her.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Uncle Pam was dead.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  Apparently Uncle Pam hadn't come home from work that day. So a group of the men from town had gone looking for him. They found him at his farm, dead from a heart attack. And it seemed like he'd been dead for a while.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Because he was cold. And a piece of his lip was bitten off from rats. One of the rats bit a piece of his lip off.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  And I'm like, but Mama, Uncle Pam couldn't have died. I saw him. And they look at me and like, but you couldn't have seen him. I said, I saw him. He was going home on his donkey and he said hi and I said hi and that's it. And then Mama was standing there and I just put my head on Mama's chest. I just started crying because I could see him. I could see this man going home and I didn't want to see it. So I'm just bawling my face off saying, Mama, he's not dead. He says hi to me. He's not dead. And she's like, Jai's, he's dead. They, they have his body, he's dead.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  The evening of Uncle Pam's nine night rolled around.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  When you die in Jamaica, we have a thing nine days after that they call Nine Night. And Nine Night is like a celebration of your life. But in my memory, it's the celebration of eating. Everybody eats. They come for Nine Night. And it's a celebration. They party, they eat, they drink. There's music. People are singing, people are dancing. His wife, she was out there. My grandmother, everybody, the neighbors, everybody was out there. You know, the neighborhood and extended neighborhoods.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  You see some of the church sisters in the neighborhood, even though he was not religious.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  But church sisters always come.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  They wear the long white robe and they have a wrap on their head, which is white. And they bang their tambourine and they just sing and dance.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  We're just chilling, running around with the other neighbors' kids, just minding our own business.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  So as we're running around, right, I look over towards my left, and there was Uncle Pam.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  He was standing right on this palm tree, just staring in our direction.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  He was wearing a black tie and he had a felt hat on his head, right?

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was just looking at the party, just leaning up against the tree.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  And I stop, and I said, "There's Uncle Pam. There's Uncle Pam." And everybody just stop and look in the direction that I'm pointing, because I pointed right to the tree. And nobody saw Uncle Pam.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  And I said, "He's standing under the coconut tree right there." And I told him exactly what he was wearing.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  One of the people that were there, she says, "That was what he was buried in." "That's what he wanna wear. That's what he burying. That's it. I doubt him a wear."

• 14:39Speaker 03

  This lady said, "She must have seen him, because only children see dumpy, and she said what he's wearing. She must have seen him."

• 14:48Speaker 03

  People talk about duppies in Jamaica, that's what they call ghosts, right?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  And that freaked me out, because me don't wanna listen to dumpy. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I look around, there's Mama. I just run to Mama and start crying, and I put my head on her chest. And she's like, "Come, come." She took me and Sharon and walked us halfway up the path, right? Then we went home.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  I couldn't sleep. I was terrified.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  I was sitting there thinking that this dead man came back. I just saw a dumpy. I just kept saying it over. "I just saw a dumpy. I just saw a dumpy. Uncle Pam came back."

• 15:30Speaker 03

  So I just sat there freaking out, because I can't believe I just saw a dead person.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  And that's the second time I'm seeing him.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  A few days later, Claudia and Sharon were home alone, waiting on the porch for Mama to get back from town.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  I think we're probably more than likely playing marbles, because that's what we did, or we had nothing better to do with our days.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  My Mama comes back and she said, "Uncle is not well."

• 16:03Speaker 03

  "Oh," and she said, "The dog isn't well."

• 16:07Speaker 03

  "How come them sick at the same time?"

• 16:10Speaker 03

  She says, "Well, you know, them thinks it, Uncle Pam a play with our food."

• 16:17Speaker 03

  "What?" "They said Uncle Pam is play with our food." I said, "Uncle Pam can't play with our food, Mama. Uncle Pam is dead." "That's what them say."

• 16:32Speaker 04

  The word around town was that Uncle Pam wanted his wife and his dog with him on the other side. And he'd do whatever it took to make that happen. Even if it meant poisoning their food.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Every single person, every single person is saying that's why they're sick. Within five days, the dog was dead. And then Aunt Sil was taken to hospital.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Thankfully Aunt Sil started to get better. But then one of her daughters, Fay, went to visit her. And suddenly Aunt Sil got worse.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  So then they believed that he followed Fay. They told us, like, you can't go visit her straight. Don't go straight. So in order to visit her, you'd go here, there, and everywhere. Then you would go visit. Because they're saying that Uncle Pam is gonna follow you if you go straight. So at first, what Fay used to do was she'd go to work first, and then from her work, she'd go visit her mother after. She was doing good. She was doing much better. So because she was doing better, right, Fay figured it's okay. So she just got up and decided she's gonna go visit her mother first, then go to work because she had the time.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  So she went straight to visit her mom. And all of a sudden Aunt Sil got sick, like seriously sick. Within 24 hours, Aunt Sil was dead.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  The day of Aunt Syl's funeral, the little Pentecostal church in town was packed full of people who wanted to pay their respects.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  The sisters are wearing their white robes and their white wrap around their heads. The family all sits up front.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  In Jamaica at the time, it was common for people to be buried at home. So after the service, everyone made their way back to Aunt Syl's house.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  The pallbearers, they took the coffin from the hearse. They're all grown men, young, fit men in their twenties. Everybody gets ready. The sisters all stand behind the coffin and we all start singing because taking it to the grave, you gotta sing. Shall we gather by the river? The beautiful, beautiful river.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  They were comfortably carrying her. And then, all of a sudden, their arms were breaking.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  As we're getting closer to the grave, the coffin starts dropping lower and lower.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  This coffin, that weighed a feather, just became an elephant. They were sweating. No way should six grown men be groaning, "Ugh, ugh, ugh", carrying this little wee lady. The distance that they were taking her from is not that far that you should be even breaking a sweat.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  And I'm telling you no lie, that coffin was almost touching the ground.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  These men, their arms are stretched to the max, trying to move this coffin.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  And now people are freaking.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  She don't want to be buried beside him. She don't want to be buried beside him. Lord Jesus, look.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  So then they finally get the coffin to the grave and they use the ropes to lower it. But that coffin did not want to go there. It did not want to go.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  After the funeral, I couldn't sleep for days, right? I was terrified. I thought Uncle Pam was gonna come and get me.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  Claudia was so scared that eventually her grandmother went to a healer in town for help, who told her how to cast a spell for protection.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  So my grandmother ended up giving me a bath. And she puts in there a dime, scallion, frankincense and myrrh, a product called blue. They use it to whiten clothes. So you just put it in your water and it just dissolves.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  And she puts me in this water and she read a chapter from the Bible in Psalms while she made me sit in this nasty bathtub of nastiness. It was gross.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  But I felt good after it was all done. I had never had any more problems and I felt good.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's because what my grandmother did worked, or maybe because he came for his dog and he came for his wife and he got what he wanted and he didn't come back. I never saw him again.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  But as the years went on, she would think about him sometimes and wonder why Uncle Pam had chosen her, out of everybody in the neighborhood, to reveal himself to.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  I never harassed him or his donkey. That's probably why he showed himself to me.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  I just let him be.

• 22:48Glynn Washington?

  We want to thank you. Thank you Claudia for sharing your story, your energy with our show. And I want to let you know that sadly Claudia passed away recently. And the entire Spook team wants to extend their deepest condolences to her family and Claudia. If you are listening, we wish you all the peace and all the joy on the other side. That story was scouted by Paulina Kriki. The original score was by Nicholas Marks. It was produced by Zoe Fregno.

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• 24:20Speaker 05

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• 24:53Glynn Washington?

  I could not witness their glee. The savage joy of those who had once called him "Lord, Lord", I should have stayed with him, beside him. My sin, my real treachery, was to flee. So I ran through the night, his vile, his promise tucked tightly under my tunic, alone down the dark road, alone in this task, again. I was his only disciple, charged to give away what by right should be mine. Running, walking, tripping, stumbling, crawling, and from that darkness I beheld an inn.

• 25:39Glynn Washington?

  Looked up to see her, barefoot.

• 25:44Glynn Washington?

  A village woman, barely more than a girl, clutching a candle, shimmering golden light. I wanted to laugh, to weep.

• 25:55Glynn Washington?

  She said, "You have arrived."

• 25:58Glynn Washington?

  As if all I had done, all I had seen, had suffered, had sacrificed, was but a road leading to an audience with her.

• 26:09Glynn Washington?

  She extended her hand, motioned for me to follow a gesture for a dog, but still, even here, even now, I obeyed.

• 26:22Glynn Washington?

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

• 26:56Glynn Washington?

  Perhaps this was the hell he had spoken of, or maybe the heaven.

• 27:05Glynn Washington?

  Then the sightless began to sing, to scream in harmony, mouths open, arms outstretched. The woman stopped then, sat on a chair and listened, till their voices grew silent.

• 27:24Glynn Washington?

  She folded her hands in her lap, waiting. The vial thrummed next to my breast, feeling suddenly alive. It waited too, to remake the world, wanted to betray everything I had suffered to build. Still, still, I reached to gift it to her, as he had commanded.

• 27:49Glynn Washington?

  But then she leaned toward me, eyes eager, fingers splayed to receive my gift. She smiled, and I stopped. How dare he? How dare he pour the power of creation into her dirty hands, casting aside his true servant, me? Me, I would not.

• 28:15Glynn Washington?

  I will not.

• 28:18Glynn Washington?

  The sightless danced around us now, swaying to the same rhythm as the hungry vial beating next to my breast. She answered my unspoken "why."

• 28:29Glynn Washington?

  She said,

• 28:31Glynn Washington?

  "They dance to remember. You'll dance to forget."

• 28:42Glynn Washington?

  Madness. She looks down, as if ashamed of the gleaming knife clutched in her hands. "We must sacrifice. We must all sacrifice."

• 28:55Glynn Washington?

  I remember his eyes then, his words, when he embraced me, whispered into my ear, "Yours," he promised, "will be the most difficult path."

• 29:11Glynn Washington?

  And I felt a shock, like ice water. I looked down and saw that she had stabbed me with her blade, her eyes wet with apology.

• 29:24Glynn Washington?

  Then I felt the same sharp sting from behind. I gasped anew as another blade protrude from my abdomen. As I screamed, the shadow dancers each stabbed through my body in their turn. They stabbed and stabbed and stabbed with steely knives, as if I were a beast. But I did not die.

• 29:51Glynn Washington?

  I did not fall, no, I did not bleed. I opened my eyes in wonder, to stare at them staring at me. I drew each blade and turned from my flesh and tossed it to the ground. The skin beneath my tunic glistened, unbroken, whole.

• 30:15Glynn Washington?

  The vial burned, it would not let me die, task unfulfilled. They bowed blind heads to me. I turned and fled.

• 30:30Glynn Washington?

  Back past the grasping hands, past the shadow, past the maze, I ran for the door, desperate to find the passage back, crashing through shadow, through darkness, back to the road. And I ran and I ran a thousand years. I ran.

• 30:49Glynn Washington?

  Forever young, unbroken face staring back in the mirror. Two thousand years, around me the world ages, crumbles, rebuilds, crumbles again through plague, empire, cathedrals, kings. Sometimes, I awake, back in the master's chambers, unchanged.

• 31:16Glynn Washington?

  He chose death for himself,

• 31:20Glynn Washington?

  but cursed me with eternal life. Again and again she waits, again and again I flee, running, still clutching tight the vial that should be mine. In the quiet, I hear the master laughing,

• 31:41Glynn Washington?

  mocking. He knew even then, he asked the one thing I could never give. He knew me better than I knew myself, and I hate him.

• 31:54Glynn Washington?

  I hate him.

• 31:58Glynn Washington?

  I hate him.

• 32:05Glynn Washington?

  "Yes," the girl whispers, smiling.

• 32:09Glynn Washington?

  "Run away,

• 32:11Glynn Washington?

  for it is mine to receive.

• 32:15Glynn Washington?

  Depart any time you like, but

• 32:19Glynn Washington?

  you will never leave."

• 33:06Glynn Washington?

  Now, some of us, for lack of a better term, are given tasks.

• 33:13Glynn Washington?

  Things that we have to do before we depart this place. And a very small few, from extremely early age, know exactly what those tasks are. If you, or someone you know, was given a task, ah, I would sure like to know about it. I wanna know who gave it to you. I wanna know what you're charged with. And I need to know what the cost, both for you and the rest of us, is if you fail.

• 33:43Glynn Washington?

  Please let me know, [email protected], because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook Studios flows through a raging river of infinity underneath KQED in San Francisco. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Spooked. The union-represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIL, Local 51, and...

• 34:21Glynn Washington?

  Spooked is brought to you by the team that knows to separate the sacred from the profane, except of course, for Mark Ristich, because he believes profane is sacred.

• 34:37Glynn Washington?

  There's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Yanias, Marissa Dodge, Regina Berriaco, Miles Lassie, Theo de Cott, Paulina Kriki, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Rithia Matu, Lulu Jemima, Nicholas Marks. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name's from Washington.

• 34:59Glynn Washington?

  And recently, in a home-turned-museum in downtown Manhattan, the owners took a second look, and there, built into the hallway, sat a dresser. When they pulled away the heavy-bottom drawer of this dresser, they discovered a rectangular opening painstakingly cut into the floorboards. Curious, they followed this mystery downward, through the hidden bowels of the home, and there, they found neatly preserved, enclosed space, just two feet by two feet, tiny, tiny, almost impossible to detect.

• 35:41Glynn Washington?

  Beneath that, a ladder, leading down to the earth, in this case, leading down to freedom.

• 35:55Glynn Washington?

  Because what they had uncovered was a very secret stop on the Underground Railroad, hidden in plain sight that someone, probably a man named Joseph Brewster, had purposely built into his family home in direct defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, with demanded harsh punishment for anyone daring to give aid, assistance, or passage to an escaped enslaved person.

• 36:28Glynn Washington?

  Consequence, defy, makes me think. What I do, then? Slave catches roaming, terrorizing, armed with the full weight and sanction of the federal government. More importantly, what am I building now? To ward off this darkness gathering outside my own door?

• 36:58Glynn Washington?

  Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, never, turn out the lights.