Stomping Ground

Malachi and his husband Jeremiah are heading to the Green Corn Ceremony: an ancestral Native American gathering filled with food and dance. It’s also a night when spirits come near, delivering messages to those ready to hear.

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

• 0:06Glynn Washington?

  Berry snuck round the mulberry bush, Pretending to be gleeful. He wondered if he was a good boy. Nope, he was evil.

• 0:24Glynn Washington?

  You've crossed over to Spooked.

• 0:27Glynn Washington?

  Stay tuned.

• 0:35Speaker 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:18Glynn Washington?

  Okay. Ever since I can remember, I've been black, right? And like most black Americans, there's other stuff mixed in. Auntie say we've got Native American roots on both sides. Blackfoot from my father's, Tipewa from my mama's. I don't know anything about that.

• 1:39Glynn Washington?

  But back when I'm in college in the An Arbor, I hear they're about to have the biggest Native American powwow in the country. And I figure, why not? So the next morning, my girlfriend and I fumble around the dark, trying not to wake up my roommate.

• 1:56Glynn Washington?

  Whoever else is laid out in the living room.

• 1:59Glynn Washington?

  My roommate is from Ohio. This will come up later. I grab a shirt, jeans, a sweatshirt, and we're out.

• 2:07Glynn Washington?

  Get to the enormous Chrysler Arena, and it is incredible. Storytellers, music, food, this sea of smiles.

• 2:17Glynn Washington?

  Thousands of people that all seem to know each other.

• 2:21Glynn Washington?

  The brightest lights are dancing competitions between various groups and families and tribes. Dozens of dancers rocking colors and feathers and bells, and they dance.

• 2:33Glynn Washington?

  What do they dance? Choreographed, rhythmic, hypnotic, powered by teams of drummers, beautiful, athletic, intimidating. I watch and nah.

• 2:43Glynn Washington?

  I don't feel like I'm going home or something. It feels like the opposite of that.

• 2:52Glynn Washington?

  I don't know anything and I don't want to mess it up. Every so often, the announcer, this OG, gray hair, braided back in two braids, takes the mic and everyone, "It's time for the all dance." The pros are out of the way.

• 3:12Glynn Washington?

  The grandmothers and teenagers and babies and students and old men take the floor. People dance together in rhythm and community. It's hypnotic, it's glorious, and I feel it. But I stay where I think I belong, right at the edge of the action. Watching, watching, the announcer puts down his microphone, motions to me, says, "Hey, you want to dance? Go on, dance."

• 3:42Glynn Washington?

  So I go over to the floor, start trying to fall into rhythm behind the hundreds of people next to me. And one thing about my family is we can dance. And I'm getting it, and I'm getting it, I'm dancing. Old ladies smile, young dudes laugh. Yeah, I'm doing it up, it's physical. Start to get hot, I've got this. Take off my sweatshirt tied around my waist, it flaps behind me like a tail. I look toward the side and see my girlfriend frantically wave me over, trying to get me off the floor. And I'm like, "Nah, nah nah nah nah nah, nah nah darling, can't you see I'm feeling it?" She runs over, waved me off the dance floor. Who died? What?

• 4:26Glynn Washington?

  She points at my shirt. I look down. And time stops.

• 4:35Glynn Washington?

  Cause emblazoned on my chest is this horrible, bug-eyed, buck-toothed, grinning, bright red racist caricature of Native Americans. The old Cleveland Indians baseball team chief, Wahoo, in the middle of a several thousand person powwow.

• 4:53Glynn Washington?

  It's like pulling on a Klan hood at a black church barbecue. And it's not even my shirt. I'm Detroit Tigers. My roommate is from Ohio. Somehow in the dark, trying not to wake anybody up, I must have grabbed this stuff. And it's like I've summoned darkness.

• 5:16Glynn Washington?

  Every single person in the entire arena turns around in slow motion and point at me to stare. Thousand pairs of angry eyes.

• 5:26Glynn Washington?

  At least that's what it feels like. Me scrambling to pull my hoodie up. I run off the dance floor, looking to split toward the exit. The announcer, he sees me. He's seen the whole sorry display and he's like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. This dance is not over."

• 5:46Glynn Washington?

  I'm scared to look around and see once friendly faces filled with hate, but when I lift my eyes, there's no anger.

• 5:56Glynn Washington?

  Surprise, surprise. This story, like most stories, isn't about me. Everyone's just trying to get it to the rhythm of the drum, trying to show each other love. So I try to dance, to dance, to move my feet, stomping, stepping, stomping, stepping, trying to dance over it, through it, to bury it, to bury it, that grinning thing burning on my chest.

• 6:25Glynn Washington?

  That old American demon, still smiling.

• 6:34Glynn Washington?

  It's a good start. Now.

• 7:21Glynn Washington?

  Now, Malachi and his husband Jeremiah, they have a very special plan for this weekend. They're heading deep into the woods of Oklahoma for one of the most important stomp dances of the year, the green corn ceremony. See, Jeremiah is Cherokee by blood, and that makes this dance deeply personal. For Jeremiah's husband Malachi, it's a first.

• 7:49Glynn Washington?

  Slute.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  We get into the car. We start driving past the city of Tulsa, start taking some backroads.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  I suddenly start to see tall grass surrounding us as we're driving. I don't see any buildings. Oh my gosh, where am I going? Where is this man taking me?

• 8:28Speaker 03

  This is the first time my husband and I are both going to the ceremonial grounds. But I have been going there since I was able to breathe outside of the womb.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  This was the last stomp dance of the year. They call it the green corn ceremony. They've gotten all of the stuff harvested. There's gonna be like a feast and everything. It's kind of like going to church. You're going home and you're there to worship together, essentially. This is just an exciting thing in my head.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  I'm currently trying to just calm my heart because it's racing. I just don't know why I'm so anxious. First of all, there's gonna be a lot of people that I had never met before. And then I'm a gay dude and I don't know how they would react being around gay people. Also, I'm quite embarrassed because I have Cherokee Native American blood in me. But I hardly know anything about my own tribe. And so when he told me about the stomp dance, I was like, okay, well, I need to learn about those traditions.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  After about an hour and a half, we're literally out in the middle of nowhere.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  And we enter into this clearing. I see tents, just camping tents, camping trailers, kids playing. Some adults just sitting in their lawn chairs, talking, drinking coffee.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  We parked right next to his auntie's campground setup. I step out of the car. Jeremiah comes around the car and he takes me to meet his auntie. She gives me hugs. She says, "Hi, Malachi. Welcome."

• 11:05Speaker 02

  There was chairs and tables. There was a kitchen. Without anybody asking me, like, I just start tidying up the place. I don't know. Like, I start kind of setting the table, like, putting napkins and forks and stuff. I feel a tap on my shoulder and it's Jeremiah and he's laughing at me. He's like, "Okay, babe. I know you just like wanna help and be helpful, but the men have to go outside. You need to leave." I'm like, "Oh, okay. Got it."

• 11:39Speaker 03

  So, we're outside. There's two of the other guys that have been chosen for the day's dance. I introduce them to my husband.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  I start feeling very nervous because I don't know any of them.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Eventually, there was fifty, sixty people standing outside, socializing very, very quietly with each other. They're wearing these ceremonial ribbon shirts. It's a short-sleeve, button-up shirt. And then, on the back of their shirts, there's colorful ribbons lining across their shoulders. There's silk pink, silk red, silk blue ribbons. And it was just beautiful.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, we get called in to dinner. I sit down at this very, very long picnic table. The table was covered in food.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  There were bowls of vegetables, chunks of cooked meat, almost like a roast. It had the most wonderful flavor I had ever had before.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  After probably an hour, the sun finally goes down.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  We get to the ceremonial stomp dance ground. There's probably 100 people there of men and women and children sitting on these benches in a circle. The men were wearing their ribbon shirts. The women had these beautiful shawls over their shoulders.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  I started going towards where they were sitting and I was stopped. Jeremiah said, "No, no, no, no, no, you can't sit there. That's not for us to sit." They get to sit there. We get to sit behind them. I said, "Oh."

• 13:50Speaker 03

  And so we sat in these lantheurs behind this gentleman, which is the chief.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  The men and the women who got chosen for the day's dance take their seat next to the chief. They're sitting in front of us.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And everything just goes quiet.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  A fire starts to be built in the middle of the circle.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  I can see the fire getting bigger and bigger and bigger, almost like 10 feet tall.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  The chief stands up. The fire is blazing right in front of him.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  One man starts chanting.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  "Mielako, mielako."

• 14:39Speaker 02

  "Come on out, come on out."

• 14:46Speaker 02

  This woman stands up.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  She started tapping her way over to the fire.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  The women followed. Then the men stand up.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  There's one person singing.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  People start tapping their feet and they start moving around the fire.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Jeremiah said they'll do five of these prayers and then they'll allow everybody else to come in. I said, "Okay."

• 15:47Speaker 02

  As they're doing the first initial thanks and prayers and chants, I can feel the warmth and the heat of the fire even from where we were sitting.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, I don't know what happens, but I could not keep my eyes off the fire.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  The fire was so hypnotizing.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  And then I suddenly start to see

• 16:25Speaker 02

  different shapes and figures in the flickers of the flames.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  I could see what looked like animals kind of moving around.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  The more I focused in, the more vivid these figures were in the fire.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  I could see chickens, cattle, deer.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  They were just black silhouettes dancing and moving about the flames.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  I was just second guessing myself, like, "Are you really seeing what you think you're seeing, Malachi?" Like, I don't know.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  But then I see people moving in that fire and I could see them plain as day.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  They were shadows, they were silhouettes, but I could tell they were men and women.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  I was scared at first seeing these figures in the fire, but then I realized, like, you know, this is beautiful.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  I'm just so hypnotized and I do not want this moment to end. I don't want to break focus.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  All of a sudden,

• 17:57Speaker 02

  everything just went quiet.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  I kind of jolt or wake up or whatever you call it. And next thing I know, everyone is sitting back down around the fire.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Jeremiah said, "That was just the introduction. Now, we'll sit here and then when the time comes, we'll be called and we can enter in and join in the dance."

• 18:28Speaker 03

  After the main dances are done, one of the men stands up and "Miala ko, miala ko." At that point, everybody's welcome. My two aunts, my great aunt. Everybody just kind of stands up and then we're all able to go.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Jeremiah was leaning over to me saying, "If you want to come in and join, you can." But I, I said, "You know what? Not, hang on. I just want to observe a little bit more. I just want to make sure I know what I'm doing before I jump in." So Jeremiah stands up and joins the dance.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  I was sitting behind. I was trying to get back into the fire and try to see those figures again. But as I was just trying to focus,

• 19:31Speaker 02

  something caught my eye.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  I looked just off to the corner and on the right side of the stump ground was this man.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  He was by himself, kind of back in the trees and the shadows.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  He's very tall and he has a spear in his hand that was wooden with feathers at the top. His face is rugged and sharp. He's very muscular. And he's just standing there, but I was pretty frightened because he's staring just straight at me with such intensity. His eyes were so piercing, yellowish, gold.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  And I hear him say,

• 20:39Speaker 02

  "What is your purpose for being here?"

• 20:44Speaker 02

  I really felt terrified. I cannot hear his voice vocally. It's in my mind. It just made me shudder.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  It made me have this instant respect.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  And when that happened, everything just goes silent.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  The chanting ends. I break focus from him and I was just kind of like, did I really just experience that?

• 21:46Speaker 03

  We were walking back over to the long chairs where Malachi was. Malachi just seemed like something wasn't sitting right with him. But I could tell that he was experiencing what was behind the veil, you know, seeing, seeing things or experiencing things.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  I looked over at him and I was like, "Hey, it's, it's, it's time to go. Like, come on, let's, let's go dance together."

• 22:13Speaker 02

  And I'm like, "Okay, I guess." I, I trusted him.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  I got up, I followed him. And I get into the stomp ground.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I see an opening. I kind of put myself in.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  I couldn't think or focus on anything but the chanting and the deafening sound of the shell shakers.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  I just start kind of moving my feet and doing the best I can.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  It was almost like the music was speaking to me. Left, right, go, breathe.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Next thing I know, I'm, I'm stomp dancing in unison with everybody else.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  I had goosebumps. Just this feeling of euphoria, like, I feel like I'm kind of flying.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  And it was so spiritual. I felt connected to the people around me, to the music, to the fire. I was just a part of that.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  After that first dance, I go and sit down in the chair and I was like, that was amazing.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  I don't know where Jeremiah goes at this point, but it is just me sitting in the chair and I'm just kinda watching what's happening around me.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, something big just kinda brushes past me. My chair even kinda moved a little bit. And I see very quickly, it was this smoky figure of a black, four-legged dog. Or something. And it was big, it was massive.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  It jumped over the log in front of me and then kinda glided into the fire.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  I just saw these sparks and these embers just kinda...

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Whoa!

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I'm like, what the hell?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Jeremiah came back from wherever he was and I said, "Black figure, four legs, jumped into the fire?"

• 25:09Speaker 02

  And he's like, "Yeah, that's a wolf."

• 25:14Speaker 03

  I was walking back to the chair at that time and I saw like a shadow kinda go over into the fire. And I literally looked at him like, "You saw my totem, which is the wolf."

• 25:30Speaker 02

  I was like, "A wolf? Are you serious?" He said, "Yes." "When we come and gather in moments like this, our spirits will come and join. They're here, we're not alone."

• 25:51Speaker 02

  It was about 3:30 in the morning. I was getting so tired. Jeremiah said, like, hey, you wanna start heading back? The dance still continues until sunrise. And I said, might be time to call it a night. We gave our thanks and we started walking back towards where our car was. Jeremiah, he had gone to get our supplies and stuff that we brought to bring it back to the car. I was just kind of standing there on my own.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And that's when I started to feel that tingle in my body. Something is here and I'm not alone. I look out to the corner of my eye. There he was again, the same man from earlier in the night staring right at me. He's probably a good 20 feet away from me, kind of by some trees. My heart starts racing again. I start breathing heavy, like, I don't wanna look at him, but I'm looking at him. Again, our eyes connect.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  This time, he was more relaxed and he had more of like a friendly kind of a gaze. And I could sense approval in his face. I was able to just relax, take a deep breath. And I just started feeling good.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  I don't know how long exactly it was, but eventually I hear behind me, "All right, let's go. You ready? I got the keys."

• 28:01Speaker 02

  As we were driving, Jeremiah, he kind of broke the ice. He was just like, "Babe, I'm really glad that you got to go there with me. I've wanted you to do that since we got married."

• 28:19Speaker 03

  When all of us are together, our tribe is together, I feel like the veil is lifted.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  There is something else that's out there. There's something that's happening all around us at all times.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  And for him to have experienced that and to see the wolf brushing past him, seeing that person, whether that be like a protector of the land or somebody from the family from way back.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  For me personally, I think it really solidified that he's accepted. You are meant to be my life partner.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  I might cry.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  That was the full circle moment for me. I no longer would just be a bystander.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  And he said, "Now, you've met the whole family."

• 29:17Speaker 02

  And I was like, "Ah."

• 29:28Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Malachi and Jeremiah, for sharing your story bespoke. Original score was by Sandra Lawson-Indu. The scouting for this was done by Yishel Lopez. It was produced by Eric Yanez.

• 29:51Glynn Washington?

  Now, a query. In many, many traditions around the world, there's a reference to a shadow self, to an entity that is related to you, but that is not you. In Ireland, this presence is called a fetch. In Norway, a vartigor is a pre-spirit, a pre-spirit, a forerunner spirit. It arrives before you do. People hear your footsteps, your voice, your keys in the door, your body moving through the house. And then minutes later, the real you arrives and does the same thing. In Japan, an ikirou leaves a person's body and acts elsewhere,

• 30:34Glynn Washington?

  often during intense emotion, jealousy, rage, grief, longing. And so, if you, dear listener, if you have a shadow self, I would sure love to know about it. I only tell a million or so of the best people on earth spooked at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook Studios lie directly beneath hope and despair, between monsters and angels, deep beneath KQD in San Francisco. Don't seek to find it, lest it seek to find you. If you see someone sneaking around

• 31:17Glynn Washington?

  with video cameras mounted to their cyber truck, run up, tell them, "Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay." 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, engineers, are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications of America, AFL-CIA Local 51. Spooked is brought to you by the sexy team that knows its way around the damn floor. From Mark Ristich. Mark, post-move with the B. Not against it. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Yanez, Marissa Dodge, Regina Periaco, Miles Lassie, Taylor Decot,

• 32:01Glynn Washington?

  Su Yichu, Evan Stern, Eves Jeffcoat, Isshell Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name's from Washington.

• 32:17Glynn Washington?

  And my traditions were broken, stolen away by the middle passage, by loss and features and distance and indifference.

• 32:27Glynn Washington?

  And this has been both a curse and a gift.

• 32:31Glynn Washington?

  Because absent a tradition,

• 32:34Glynn Washington?

  I've got to make my own. For myself, for my kids, because traditions are connectors to place, to time, and without them, without ritual, you can feel lost. And so many, so many of us feel lost,

• 32:55Glynn Washington?

  unmoored, knowing full well there is more, but unable to find our way home. And this loss, this bewilderment, can lead us down dark roads, struggling for the very connection that should be ours by birth, that should be yours by birth. And if you're looking for a ceremony, a practice, a ritual, a metaphor to affirm your place, your connection to everything that is, one place I know to begin this journey

• 33:31Glynn Washington?

  is to never, ever, ever, never, ever

• 33:39Glynn Washington?

  turn out the lights.