Night Dancers
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Pattycake, Pattycake, the baker ran after Jack found his wife with the baker man. And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put the baker back together again. Spooked. Right after this very short break, stay tuned.

My grandfather was soft. He'd get real mad because I broke the lamp, because I set fire to the porch with a magnifying glass.

And this Saturday afternoon, he catches me throwing rocks at the neighbor's windows. "Boy, have you lost your mind? Go get me my belt so I can beat your behind for you." I laugh, run to his closet, find his thick, old leather belt with the notches, the big buckle, hand it to him, smile on my face, here it is. He snatches it up, now bend over, raises the belt over his head for the blow,

Then granddaddy is teary-eyed. All right, now, I'm going to give you one more chance to do right. You hear me? Yes, sir. Don't let me have to tell you again. My granddaddy ain't going to hit me with no belt. I run right back to doing bad stuff with a quickness. But then, a few minutes later, I sense my grandmother's footfalls on the back porch and granny, granny don't play.

I hear that soft, icy voice, her whisper voice, and I know good times is over. Boy, Miss Wilson from next door told me she saw you throwing rocks at a window. Throwing rocks at windows? Now I want you to go to that tree right there, and I want you to get me a switch, and it better be a thick one so I can beat Joe behind. But Granddaddy, Granddaddy already gave me a licking. He whipped me real good with his belt.

Granny's all suspicious. "Lewis? Lewis?" Granddaddy stomps up from the basement. "Lewis, you beat these boys behind for that window." I look at granddaddy. Granddaddy looks at me. "Please, please, please, please, please. Moment of truth, life or death, everything's on the line." Yup, I told he's raggedy behind up. He ain't never throwing rocks no more, I know that. Hmm, he better not.

Relief washes over me. All these many years later, I remember that twinkle in my grandfather's eye when he looks at me. It's our little secret. I can't believe it took me this long to understand that she knew. She knew full well he didn't hit me. Couldn't hit me. Wouldn't hit me. It's not his nature. My stay of execution wasn't her gift to me. No, no.

It was her gift to him. Spook starts. Now, sometimes the shadow passes you by and sometimes it does not. We begin in Uganda, only a few dozen miles from the big city of Kampala. There lies a village. In that village lives a particular legend. From her storyteller Jocelyn, that legend became very, very real.

It is a big village, not very far from the city. The houses, they are mud houses. We usually have a main house, which is the big house. Then for the boys that have grown and have married, they build their houses around the main house. In the compound, we have dogs, we have cats, we have chicken, we have goats.

Besides that, there are these gardens where we plant spinach. Joslyn grew up in the village as the youngest of 20 children. Her family's house was small, with one bedroom for the boys, another for the girls, and a third for her dad and stepmom. Her own mother wasn't around. My father cared for us. He would provide for us. He was loving, but it was hard love.

Chazlyn and her siblings obeyed their father, mostly.

Every once in a while, they found some trouble to get into, especially around the holidays when Joseline was a teenager. It was Christmas time. My three brothers told me they were going out for disco. They were not supposed to go because discos was for spoiled people. So yeah, they were sneaking out. They tell you, Joseline, we are going out. You'll stay up and open for us.

Do not sleep. Because our doors were wooden doors with a bolt. No king would wake up dead. When they come, they tap on the bedroom window. Then they promise you something they're going to buy for you. And you don't tell on them after. So I had to sit on my bed and wait all night long. Sitting, waiting. Then I had footsteps.

I thought it were my brothers that had come. So I sat and waited for them to knock on the window. But they were singing as they move around the house. I don't know what they're singing. And you know when someone is dancing, the sounds they make, that is when I realized it was a night dancer singing enchantments to get people sick.

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In certain parts of Uganda, some people believe in a phenomenon called night dancing. A night dancer is an ordinary person who has been possessed by bad spirits. The spirits make the person do whatever they want, horrible things like dig up corpses and eat their flesh. But the most common thing the spirit makes a night dancer do is take off their clothes and dance naked outside their neighbor's homes after dark.

While they dance, the spirits make them cast magic spells on their neighbors. Spells so powerful that they can cause physical illness. I was scared. I'd heard about them from my sisters and brothers. I didn't go to the window. I got off the bed. I sat down on the floor. I kind of froze. I hear them pass the door. They go around, then they come and pass again, then they go around like that for like 15 minutes.

Then it stops. They've gone to another house. But I kept thinking, maybe he's coming back. So I stayed in one position for over 30 minutes. Then my brothers tap on the bedroom window. The way they tap, no, it is them. I told my brother, the night dancer has passed. I think tomorrow I'm going to fall ill. Then he said, you can't fall ill if the position was not for you. It could have been for someone else.

Joseline's sister got better, eventually. But every four nights or so, the night dancer came back, always after dark. Joseline and her family were too scared to go outside and see who was putting the curse on them. They had heard that bad things happen to people who confront night dancers. You might become one yourself.

One night, months later, Joslyn had a sound outside. But this time the sound was different, and it was coming from above her head. I wake my sister, I'm like, someone is sweeping on the roof. They make that sound of... Leaves were falling off on the ground outside. When she tells me that it's the night dancers, I was like, how do they even get up there? What if they fall inside? We're all scared.

We thought we were going to come face to face with a night dancer. What would you do? Would you run? He swept and swept and swept and swept. I just sat and held my head until when it stopped. The next morning, I asked my father, why would someone sweep our roof? He told me, when they sweep the roof, the illnesses are serious. The spirit, it wants to take blood.

That same morning, Joseline's brother Elvis started having trouble breathing. Elvis had asthma, so the family was used to his attacks. But this time was different. His temperature was high and he was feverish and all that. He stayed sick for over a week. By the time they came to take him to the hospital, he died in the house. We lost him, unfortunately. Everyone in the family was devastated, especially Joseline's father.

He loved my brother. He was his favorite. He kept saying, this can't be, I have to know the person that took my son. So he set out on a mission. He kept saying he's going to look for that night dancer. We have to know who it is. Other people started giving him a device. The advice he got? If you're going to confront a night dancer, get a motor and pistol and keep watch.

When the night dancer comes, you hit the motor with a pedal. The person is going to freeze until the next day. They don't talk, they don't move. They stay in the same position until morning. You also have to hold on it in the same position until morning. You don't remove your hands and no one else is supposed to come and help you. When you do that, the night dancer stays outside until other people wake up.

We all see him. You know who it is. Then he leaves our village. So he got the motor and the pedal. My stepmother, she kept telling him, don't do it. We're all against it because you would not know whether it will go well or bad. But he tells you, I have to catch him. If I hear him, I'll come out of my bedroom and do the thing. We went to sleep. We left him sitting in the living room.

He had a chair that he would sit and stay there and then sleep off. So we were optimistic it is never going to happen. He will sleep there in the chair and it will pass. In the morning, when we wake up, we find him still in the chair. We all sat down and looked at him. I greeted him. He was not answering me. He was just there, quiet. I'm like, what happened? What happened?

Then my sister tells me he was paralyzed. None of his body parts were moving. No words were coming out of him. I was like, this cannot be possible. We knew what had happened. The night dancer had him and he cast a spell on him. The night dancer was stronger than him. Then my uncles came in. I remember my uncle kept saying, if you could tell us who did this.

We're sure you saw the face, but he could not say anything. There was nothing like a doctor. They took him in the family shrine. The next morning you ask, Mama, was there any wound? Is Daddy okay? And she's like, no, nothing has changed. That was in February, March, April, May, June, July. Nothing kept changing. Now the night answer kept coming.

But no one was willing to go and face him, seeing what had happened. I was at school. My brother came and picked me up around lunchtime. He's kind of a playful guy, but he was not in his usual playful mode. I asked him, "What is happening?" He tells me, "Get in the car." Then he tells me, "Tata has passed on." I just kept quiet, and tears started coming from my eyes.

When someone dies in the village, people gather very fast. So when I go to home, everyone is outside. Some woman asked, who is she? They told her, she's one of the orphans. They are calling me an orphan already. I was just crying. In my mind, I'm like, this night dancer did this. Joslyn couldn't grieve her father privately.

He had been an important man, a clan leader, and the whole village came to his funeral. Joslyn and her family were expected to greet them all. We have a family graveyard. It is just right behind the main house. That is where we buried him. The next day, I was with my other two sisters to go and welcome the people. There were about 500 people.

At the moment of the burial, I had hatred in me for the people that were around me. Because when a person dies because of a night dancer, the night dancer also has to come and bury. He has to be on that burial. All the spirit of that dead person is going to come for him. The night dancer responsible for his death was with us that very night. That was the most stressful part, I think, of my life.

They say it is a spirit. They are not responsible for the things happening to them. I'm like, but how can a spirit make you enjoy in someone's pain? I think that was the time I cried most. Then they did the final rituals for him. After her father's death, Joseline had had enough. She decided to escape the night dancer by moving to the big city. I had a brother who was in Kampala.

I told him, I want to leave this village because it kept eating me up how someone can kill you and come and be with your people. They greet you, they talk to you, but then in your head you're like, these people are evil. So since that time, I've not slept there again. I have a son. When I go to the village, I'm kind of protective. I only want him to mingle with my family. I just tell him,

Stay here. Thank you so much, Jocelyn, for sharing your story. A heart goes out to your family. Now, this story was narrated by Lulu Jemima, was scored by Clay Xavier, and was produced by Ann Ford. Now then, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's an awakening happening right now. Things that people were reluctant to utter just a few years ago, a few months ago.

are now finding a receptive audience. Like we're starting to collectively realize that there exists far more than meets the eye. And if you have a story, an encounter, an ability that you think the world needs to know about, you are right. The world does need to know. We need to know. Let me know, spook at stampjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener.

We want to hear it. We want to share it with the spooked world. Spooked is brought to you by the team that loves to first warm their hands by the fire. Except for Mark Ristich. He likes to first warm his other side. Now there's Davey Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Tao Ducat, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Kreekie,

Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Aditya Matu, Lulu Jemima. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massidi-Miller. My name is Gunn Washington, and I went to yoga class. And the beautiful yoga instructor told me to stand up straight, then reach down without bending my knees and put my hands under my feet. What?

I'm lucky to touch my knees, much less my toes. And I felt hot shame as everyone looked at me and laughed. And I try again the next day and the next, and I noticed something. My toes aren't getting any closer now. But I look around and no one's laughing. Not my beautiful teacher, not the beautiful people. No, they're smiling. They never laugh. This is all in my head.

Like when I stop drinking for a while and I think people will see and point and ask me what's wrong, what's going on. But people don't care. And if they do, they don't call me out. They give me love like the monster opened its maw and it grins. Blessings sometimes wear a shadow as their disguise. And I wonder how many I've missed. How many blessings I've rejected because of my fear.

cannot afford to waste blessings. So my strategy going forward from here on out will never, ever, ever, never, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever,