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Hey, it's Glenn. And if you dig spook storytelling and I know you dig spook storytelling, even more spook awaits tales of the dark side right now only on luminary visit luminary podcasts, dotcom right now before it's too late. Luminary podcast Dotcom Cahit and start your free trial. Not available in all markets and terms apply.

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SNAP Judgment Studio. Once upon a midnight, scary demons, ghouls, ghosts and fairies gathered round the sacred tree. I saw them. They saw me. At first I thought to steal the right word was their sacrifice. You've passed over to spirit. Stay tuned. From luminary, you've crossed over to Stuart. OK, so I'm 12 years old, Sirtex, my little brother in church. Worked itself up to a head of steam, wipes away the mop of his brow, blondish hair waves his hand for the congregation.

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By the you think you know the story of the flood?

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Not a day. I tell you, the secret history, the truth that's been hidden from you. No secret history, huh? The Lord sees the evildoers inhabiting his land, and he tells Noah, the only good man he can find to build a Monak nor banks takes Noah 100 years of hard labor.

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But he does. It got to me, all the animals and all the world start filing into the boat to by to like some slither, crawl, hop and pass right past all the wickedness onto this strange vessel erected miles from any water.

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And no one with the three sons and their wives follow the animals inside and the Lord who's shut the door behind them and then vomit when the rains come for 40 days before the nights the skies open up, washed away. Every single soul can't find it. The Lord Almighty and Noah's Ark floats above their wretched corpses. A cleansing of sin. Brett, Noah and his children, the chance for a New Eden after sailing for a full year, they walk off the ark onto a reborn world on tanks, on solid.

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No one dances in joy at the good Lord Grace, whooping and hollering before collapsing into a deep sleep. But then great, then the unthinkable happens here, of course, in a sleep. This good man is defined violent, sodomized by one of his own sons. And since we interest the world and raised the Lord Almighty, he's smart. Snow was offended Sandhamn with the curse, rather a curse so powerful we still see the stain, the Mark Burnett, the skin of Ham's descendants today.

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Do you wonder where Negroid skin came from, brother? From that evil deed perpetrated by no one's own child. Make no mistake, from that day forward, he and all his children and our children's children, the African race or curse by the very hand of God. I look down at my skin. And I don't feel, Chris. I feel angry, I feel furious, certain that, you know, he's lying about that book or that book is full of lies either or.

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Coast. I know the beauty of my grandmother's online ebony skin, I sit hours under the summertime sun hoping to darken my tone to match hers curse. And I wonder, as I snatch my little brother's hand and pulling down the aisle out of the door, past the people pretending very, very hard not to see us. I wonder. Why are they so afraid? Many of the Washington lies are curses and curses are lies.

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Spok starts. So here's the deal he started making spoofed those many years ago. I want to find one certain kind of story I want to tell you about Skinwalkers Indigenous Warlock's, which is shapeshifters. I've heard whispers around campfires around that. We'll start conversation. And I told my producers, we've got to nail this down. We have to, but sometimes. These stories are hard to find, we scoured the country, the globe, our community, the Internet, and it seemed like we'd never find someone willing to tell us their story, because sometimes you're speaking about this kind of magic, this sacred mystery.

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It's it's forbidden. And that's why I am so excited to introduce you to our storyteller. Lee, you probably want to hold on to a loved one's hand right about now. Spiffed. So she would tell us stories that scare the crap out of us, to be honest. There be a fire going. We turn the TV off and of course, already full from dinner and we're having other snacks, as any natives say, their grandmother makes the best fried bread.

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Well, guess what? My grandmother did make the best fried bread. And I would ask her to tell us true ghost stories. And her reply is, they're all true. When I asked. About more of what a skinwalker was, my my grandma would tell me stories of my grandfather, one in particular was when he was out in the mountains. Up in the hills, not too far from. Where we were currently at that time. My great grandfather, he was a sheepherder, and there was always somebody that was willing to buy that wool, it was a way to survive where to live at this time.

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He did have an issue with one of his neighbors down the way.

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I don't know how it started, but there were sheep that were either missing or that were killed. And my great grandfather would take his sheep out to the mountains to graze. And it was evening he was getting ready to head home. Something caught his attention. It was a noise almost like I could trumpet somebody chanting or singing. So he crawled up over this hill and he was able to see that there was a fire. He saw one person sitting next to the fire.

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My grandfather recognized him right away. A neighbor down the road. I think there are accusations of stealing sheep. And things like that. I think as he went over the bridge and he saw his neighbor naked sitting around a fire, I don't know if he understood the words that were being said, but he knew in his head that it was it was bad. And no, it wasn't it was not a common sight to see that. But he knew that his neighbor was what we call a witch.

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Although my grandfather never saw him, shapeshifting, never saw anything supernatural, you would say he knew that his neighbor was involved in that black magic. How he came up with that conclusion, I don't know, but his head, his neighbor had something to do with sheep. He left pretty quick, hoping that he wasn't seen. He was worried that his neighbor would be getting him first somehow, so he was scared, he was scared because he knew the the the power or the abilities that his neighbor had.

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But I guess he felt empowered because he had that knowledge of what he was doing later on confront him, which he he did.

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And so my grandfather approached this neighbor and he said to him, I know what you do. And as he did that, his neighbor's eyes, his crew just huge.

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He was scared because he knew that my grandfather knew that he was involved in black magic.

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And so his neighbor was very surprised, very scared, because it is said that if somebody knows who you are, we've also known what you've done, because in order to be a skinwalker, apparently you have to kill somebody close to you. This neighbor asked my grandfather, begged my grandfather, please don't tell anybody, I will give you sheep, I will give you this. I will give you what I have. My grandfather just I don't know why he made this decision, but he told people.

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Told neighbors he told his wife, my grandma, he told people in the community. And according to my grandmother, that neighbor who got very sick right after that. And the Senate passing away. Well, I think every culture has what they consider the boogeyman, I would hear different things from different people, but one thing that was always consistent was that they are real. That there were people that used black magic. And for me, that was scarier than a ghost, because Ghost, I was always told, couldn't hurt me, whereas Skinwalker could actually physically hurt.

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After dinner, we're pulling our mattresses out, we would like and have our mattresses set up on trampoline and make it as comfortable as possible because you can be out there all night. Although it was summertime, it would get cold sometimes, so you made sure you had your blankets, your sleeping bag. And you're just laying there and it's silent, there's no traffic, there's no train, there's no airplanes that you hear.

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Oh. Just the big back sky and tons of stars, more stars I've seen in my entire life. It's perfect seeing a perfect spot to tell ghost stories. My dad would come out and he lay down with us. My dad told us about one of his experience that happened to him when he was 19 years old. And he was in the Midwest, actually, it was not even on a reservation. He was serving a church mission and he was there in the wintertime in the snow.

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My dad goes on to tell the story. He was driving from one town to another and his companion, his partner was asleep and I was actually in the middle of day. He said it was cold, it was gloomy, and as he was driving, he recalls having this feeling of just fear and dread that something was wrong.

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At that moment, he said from the right side of the road, he saw a man. Jump over the fence on the side of the road and run right to the middle of the road. I got slammed on the brake, slid. Stopped right where this man was. And this man who he describes have been covered in fur and he's put his hands right on the hood and looked at my dad right in the eyes. My dad said that he looked very sad, very tired.

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You just in the moments of looking eye to eye, you could tell that that man was not a normal man. The man, after looking at my dad in the eye, ran away and jumped over the fence and took off. And he didn't know what to think of that, but he said it really messed him up because it wasn't just some bomb that was in the middle of road. He said there are in the middle of nowhere. So my dad finishes telling us about his experience and of course, we're scared because my dad telling us we believe every word that he says and we ask, is there anything else?

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Has anything? Have you seen anything else? And so he goes into telling his dad story. Grandpa story. He goes on to tell us that our grandpa, when he was younger, Pryor's early teens, when he's about to perform a ceremony, a ritual, a rite of passage for a young man to become a man.

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My grandfather was outside of what we call a Khiva made out of Adobe, and it has big ladder coming out the top where you enter and exit, and he was going to perform the ceremony in there. For some reason, he was outside of it. All of a sudden, he feels this same feeling that my dad describes to us just overwhelming sense of a fear and dread. He didn't know what it was, but he felt this feeling that something was wrong.

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And that's where this man just came out of nowhere. Who was dressed in height, animal fur?

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He approached my grandfather and this man was tall, he was very dark, he his hair was very messed up, he was dirty or what he describes that I still think about when he tells me this is the man's eyes and his face, how just looking at him, you could tell this man was miserable.

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He was sad. He said something in my grandpa's language about wanting to die. The exchange looks at my grandfather left. He ran away. I don't know what happened after that because my dad but it did change my my grandfather because he knew that person was, in his words, he was evil and he felt like he was a witch and he felt that he needed to get out of there as soon as possible. What scares me the most about hearing my grandpa story is my dad is his belief that it was not just somebody that looked like the man that he saw, but that my dad in his head, he believes that it was the same person.

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But how is that possible from somebody from the early 90s, hundreds to meet my dad across the country in the 70s? He told us that story because he was wondering if something like that would happen to us. What I've always been told is stay clear of them. Meaning don't try to conjure them or call them by whistling at night, don't walk alone at night on the reservation, don't drive at night alone on the reservation, because if you do, Skinwalker will make itself known.

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It'll chase you, it'll follow you home, stay as far as you can away from anybody that you think may be working in black magic. A couple summers later, I was 14 years old this summer, I spent with my grandma helping her around the yard, planting things, watering her plants. Ernie would be the one working the hardest, he was a neighbor, when I say a neighbor, he lived about three or four or five miles away.

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My grandma would always pay him to to do things around the house. Grandma would call out, hey, can you take Ernie home, and of course, I didn't have a license, I have a permit. However, I did have experience.

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So I step inside and I grabbed the keys, loaded up. My dog jumps back with Ernie, the bed of the truck. My brother's right there in the front seat with me.

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Off we went and. So it was getting dark, it wasn't dark yet, but the sun was going to be setting soon. So we dropped him off. I take a different route home, one that would be faster, and we're on the dirt road, very covered in washboards. I mean, nobody really maintain those roads, but perfect weather, 75 degrees, just enjoying the evening windows rolled down, put my hand out, enjoying the air. And I you're driving and you put your hand out the window and just the wind in your hair.

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Grandma's old truck and listening to the only radio station that comes in from Holbrook, Arizona. And a lot of that be playing oldies. My brother was next to me. He was just enjoying the same thing as well. My dog in the back, although it was most traveled road, that area, there was nobody else out. And as we were driving, I recall seeing something on the side of the road that caught my attention, possibly a sheep, because I thought there there's a lot of different sheep, a lot of free roaming.

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It's better to be safe than sorry and slow down and not hit a sheep. And so I do slow down. All of a sudden, I feel this feeling of dread, it just. I don't know how else to explain it, just dark, empty feeling that something was wrong. When I look in the mirror, I see what I thought was a sheep.

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So it was like almost like a curling, crouching, stretched out and just stand up straight.

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It was tall and it was very thin and it had a long arms, had long legs, they had fur on its shoulder, had four on its arms, had a front, its legs. And I see whatever this was running towards us is running towards truck. And I'm already going 30 miles an hour and I see its arms swinging, its long arms and long legs taking big strides at this point, I was speeding up.

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I was going to the point where I was like 65 miles an hour on a dirt washboard road, so I was fishtailing and this thing is keeping up. This thing is has the pace so, so strong, so long that it's able to keep up. And I was thinking that I could see it come into view every once in a while because I was fishtailing, trying to keep control of the truck. I've never been so scared in my life where so many things going through my head.

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And thinking, is this real, I'm thinking, is this really happening, is this is this thing going to kill us? My dad dogs barking I've never heard my dog barking the way that the pitch in his in his bark. I can tell he was scared or he was angry.

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He was he was everything. My brother also is crying and he's saying it's coming up on your side. I looked in the mirror and it was very close. And I didn't know what I was going to happen at. And I went as fast as I could and that old truck. At that moment, we were going around a bend car was coming towards us and had his lights on. As we passed each other, I felt this just instant relief I Cruijff.

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Like, I could breathe again. Like, whatever was chasing us was gone. I don't know if it was fiddlehead. I don't know if it went to go chase after the other vehicle. I have no idea. I just know that I didn't see it in my mirror. And I felt just this this relief that it was gone. I'm still speeding towards grandma's house because I knew I had to get home. I couldn't be out there. There was whatever was out there was out there still.

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We drove back to my grandma's house as fast as we could, and I told my brother, as soon as we park, you run out and get into the house. Jump out, slam the door shut.

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Past work into the house, and so we all go inside and slam the door shut, locked it measures was locked, double checked. It closed the windows.

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And as we get back, my grandmother there, she's tending to the fire, she saw how scared we were and she said what's what's wrong? What happened? We told her briefly what had happened, and grandma said, yeah, stuff like that happens around here. My brother and I looked at each other like, oh, my gosh, this is real.

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So all those stories that we heard growing out of the boogie man or skinwalkers, for us, it became a reality. And it it messed me up for a bit, I'll be I'll be honest, I was scared to go back out there, see Grandma so scared to to just step foot outside at night. We used to sleep on the trampoline at night with the dogs out there. Those days were over. It was four or five years later, my dad came home.

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I'm already in bed.

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I am laying down, but my room is next to the living room, so I hear everything. And something was wrong. He was talking to my mom. And trying. And telling her about what had happened to him as he was coming back from Phoenix. That he was driving on Interstate 17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, and it was right when he got to the pine tree, so he had made it up higher altitude. And he saw on his right side, up on a little ledge or a hill, the same man that he saw when he was a missionary.

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He said it almost made them fresh. He described them as being the exact same and will see him with enough light in his in his headlights that will know that wearing the same animal skins or hides, having no shoes, being tall, dark and dirty. But one thing he did mention, he mentioned those eyes when he mentioned about how tired they looked and how sad they look. And that's how he knew it was the same person by by looking in his eyes and to hear your dad crying in another room.

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It scared me. I didn't go out there, I didn't know what to do. It was a new experience hearing my dad cry and thinking how your dad is his big, tough guy and has gone through a lot. You don't ever see him cry. And for him to be crying, I didn't want to see that. I didn't know how to react to it. I don't know how what I could do to help him.

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So I just stayed there in my room. I wonder if it is the same person. If it is the same thing. If what I saw. What my dad saw twice. And what my grandpa saw. I wonder if it's the same person. There is a trend here, not a good one. I have three sons. I wonder if or when they'll have their experience of. Big banks and big love for storytelling and thanks to your grandma and your grandfather and your dad and your great grandfather for sharing your story, just to stay safe out there, drop us a line if anybody ever comes back.

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The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. Was produced by Annie when? Yes, yes, yes, you've heard from other folk, but if you have a personal story that spooked you, what you just forced a power of being that was not supposed to be there when you have a relationship with police. Send us your story SPOOT and snap judgment that there is nothing better than a Spook's spooks doing this, but don't tell everybody Sago's. Yet if you have a story with a snow storm, snap judgment, not the best way to listen to speak isn't just with all the lights on, it's about wearing spooked gear.

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Head over to snap judgment against shop to get you some spooky merchandise. And if you like the storytelling and the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing SNAP Judgment podcast because it might just change your life. Spook was brought to you by the amazing team that never assumes a shape that is not their own, except, of course, for Mark Ristic. Many forms, there's an assessment, a chief spokesperson, Lysa Smith, Chris Hambrick, Intuit or Nwosu, Morimoto, Lindale, Gloria Talika, Marissa Dodge, Aleah Yates, Lori Ferrigno, Greta Weber, Jacob Winning, snarky to leave and for ducks to Fernando Hernandez and Flo Wiley, the theme song by Patsy Miller.

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My name is Kim Washington. Follow me on the Twitter Instagram for a whole different type of story. And yes, people come in different shapes and sizes. There is no foolproof method for keeping the dark side at bay, but you don't need to throw out the welcome mat either. My advice, my recommendation is simple. Goes like this here. Never, ever, never, never, never, never, never, never, ever turn out the lights.

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This episode of Spooked was some in the dark of night by luminary.

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If you need more storytelling this Halloween, we've got more spook you can hide in the barn and well in the middle of the Deep Dark Forest, 22, all new episodes of SPOOT await your listening pleasure only on Luminary, a subscription podcast network with original shows you won't find anywhere else to start your free trial and to be free.

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Visit Luminary Podcast.

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Dotcom, not available in all markets terms, apply for all the newest episodes of Spooked.

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Go to Luminary podcast Dotcom or download the Luminary mobile app.