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- [00:08]
A
Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go. What's in the pot? Whatever she caught, it's best that we don't know. Listen. Spooked. Stay tuned. Okay, so after the sound of the call to prayer fades outside a tiny village, I'm walking down this. This path to either side is jungle. Critters bark overhead. It's hot. It's lush. I do not know this place. Rural Indonesia. It's just me by myself. Till I see a kid, maybe 11 or 12. He's grinning. He says he says something. Then he starts walking into the jungle. Motions me to follow him, trail behind a strange boy in the woods. I trip after him, over stumps, over branches. Why? I'm about to turn back when I hear voices, music. We turn left, right. And now I understand where all the village men folk went. Cut out of the foliage emerges a whole secret world. Dudes squatting around circles, pressing fistfuls of cash from one person's hand to the next. Smoking, eating, laughing. All of it framed by rows and rows of wicker cages. Inside each cage, beautiful multicolored roosters stare back out, occasionally tipping their heads back to scream. These are our gladiators. They will fight to the death in the middle of that circle. And the boy will. He's talking to me again. He's pointing me, saying that I should pick one of the birds. No, no. He's saying I should pick this bird. His bird, I'm guessing one he raised. And a man, maybe his father, nods. Behind him, I kneel down to peer inside the cage at the most glorious animal I've ever seen. Proud, his plumage an explosion of black, red, green. His feathers burn translucent. Blinks back at me. Eyes brilliant, alien, fierce. A winner. The boy knows absolutely. He has me. He smiles. He holds out his hand. I shove money into it. I turn back toward the cage, transfixed. Because soon, very, very soon, the fight will begin. This book starts. Sam. Oh, yes. It is on. We are here at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles. A full covenant of spooksters wait in the shadows, not knowing who will take this stage and share their tale. They're gonna be delighted, because I've got a secret. See, I am about to introduce spooked royalty. A voice you know and you love. Dear friend of mine. Get ready. Dr. Raymond Christian. Spooked live.
- [05:47]
B
I was about 12 years old, and it was one of the hottest days I could remember. Just hanging out with the boys. A group of six or seven of us, the combination of which changed frequently. A hot, oppressive day, just hanging outside when we were out of school. The heat radiating from the pavement, tar sticking to our shoes. But there was one sanctuary for us from the heat, and that was the air conditioned funeral home that was located on the corner between the two blocks where we played. You'd go inside that funeral home and that air conditioning with our skin all moist, and you'd be cooled off instantly and refreshed. Now, in our community, it was not unusual for people to come to the funeral home to view bodies of people they didn't even know. They did so out of curiosity. They did so to verify, is that the man who was killed trying to rob somebody, is that the kid who was killed on the bicycle? Now, the people who worked in the funeral home, they knew that on occasion us kids would come inside just to cool off. And they would allow this on occasion. But they had just one rule, you must sit in the viewing room. Which meant we had to look at the bodies. Not something we wanted to do, but all of us knew the rules of the game. And we would sit there and close our eyes for the 15 minutes or so that we were allowed to be inside. One day we're outside and we're playing kickball and I kicked this ball all the way across the street, and it's about to sail over this fence where this vicious dog stayed inside. And every time people got close to that fence or near it, he would snarl and snap and try to attack it. And as the ball was about to head over the fence, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this kid shows up and dives and just slaps the ball down and saves the day. Now, none of us knew who this kid was. How is it that he seemed so familiar? He was like one of us, but yet he was none of us. And that's the first time we met him. And he went inside the funeral home like he had done it many times before. After that, he started to show up all the time, but none of us could ever recall him ever being there. When we started a game, it always seemed as if we'd be playing and running and going around the corner on our bikes, and all of a sudden he would just appear. There was always one more of us. Now, the fact that he didn't speak, wouldn't answer our questions, was not so unusual to us. We lived in a community where there were lots of people who came from rural areas, we said, the country who had disabilities, both adults and children alike. In fact, I probably knew a half a dozen kids who didn't speak just like this. He was a skinny kid, had a small afro, about 2 inches. He wore a shirt that he didn't button up, cut off pants, tennis shoes with no socks. He was a different kind of kid. One day I'm outside and I'm looking at pigeons flying around the funeral home, And I'm out with the kid. And without speaking, it seemed as if he said to me, I like pigeons. I like pigeons. Which was shocking to me. So I took him to my house, to my backyard, where I raised pigeons. And like a lot of poor kids, I made my pigeon coop out of discarded lumber, pieces of cardboard, and a couple of old TVs that I had gutted out. The kid was in my backyard, and I could tell the way he looked at the pigeons, the way he touched them, the way he cooed, coo, coo. To calm them down. I knew that this kid, he loved pigeons. Well. For me, I had been raising pigeons since I was about 8 years old. And probably what I enjoyed about them the most was, I don't know, the weird way that they used to move around, the way they pecked at the ground. But probably more than anything, it was the fact that you could let them go and they would fly away and come back to the home that you made for them. That's where the magic was. But the kind of pigeons that we were really interested in was a type of pigeon that almost stopped in mid flight and flipped. We'd call this rolling. And some of the better pigeons, they would flip and flip and flip and flip till they'd almost hit the ground and fly right back up. And us kids, we would be so, so excited by this. And every time we got exposed to someone who had rollers or somehow was connected to rollers, and we'd see them in the sky, we would all get together and we'd stand out in the streets and we would holler and scream to excite the birds, to get them to roll even more. Come on, come on, come on. And we would scream and we would call her, come on, come on. But unfortunately, none of us ever acquired rollers. They had to be passed on. And for us poor kids, rollers were pretty much out of our financial reach. And after this, me and the kids started hanging around together all summer. Well, one day, me and the kid were taking a walk through one of the back alleys. And as was the habit in our neighborhood, big old vicious dogs would always seem to take over an alley, and they would chase you until they get to the end of the alley. And they would stop. And that's how it was. This day we're walking through the alley and a big old dog take after us and. And we run and run and run and run and running. And we finally, we get out to the end of the alley and woo hoo hoo. We made it. We made it. I'm so excited. We just did something together. We boys now. We experience this crazy thing. I know you got something to say. And I bend over and I'm coughing and I'm laughing and I look around to see what he thinks about this crazy thing we just went through. And he's not there. Now I'm starting to feel funny about this kid. He shows up the next day. Now I've got to ask, man, where'd you go? What happened to you yesterday? What happened to you in the alley? How could you have gotten away? There was no way to go. What happened? And he gives me nothing. Sometime later we're taking a walk, but this walk is different. He's taking me to a place that I think he's trying to guide me to. We walk four or five blocks and I think maybe he lives around here somewhere. And we wind up in front of this old house. The house had been burned and abandoned for several years. And as we standing there in front of the house, I remember this is the house that that kid got killed in a fire a couple of years ago. Now I'm starting to feel scared and I look over at the kid and he's just staring at the house. And I say, you ain't that kid that got killed in the fire. I'm not believing this, but I feel like I can't move. And the kid is just staring at the house and I feel like he's telling me without speaking, coincide the house. I walk toward the house. I start up the stairs. When I reach the top of the stairs where the roof has collapsed over in the corner, illuminated by the light coming in through a piece of broken glass, I see in the corner.
- [17:17]
A
Pigeons.
- [17:19]
B
There are pigeons in the corner. Wait a minute. This is a pair of pigeons and they got squabs. Baby pigeons. And these aren't just any pigeons, they are rollers. These are rollers. They are rollers up here. And so I reach up to them and I grab them and I put them inside my arm. And they're all excited and flapping around. And so I start to coo to calm them down. Coo, coo. And they relax and I'm happy and I'm not scared anymore. I've got them in my arms. I want to get outside. I want to show the kid these rollers. How amazing is this? And I get outside and he isn't there. Now I know he knew I loved rollers and I know and I believe he wanted me to have those rollers. And when his babies were ready to pass on, he was ready to pass on. And I raised another six or seven generations of rollers right up until I joined the army and I passed them on to another kid, which was the tradition.
- [19:06]
A
Thank you, Dr. Raymond Christian. Check out Ray's podcast what's Ray Saying? And to find out all things Ray, check out our show notes. And I want to thank the LAS team for welcoming Spooked John Cone, Rebecca Stumay, Christian Payne or Fiumtin. What a glorious. What a beautiful theater. Ryan Davis and Sarah Rose Leonard at kqed. The original live score was written and performed by Doug Stewart and Brigeen Murphy. Recording was mixed by Miles Lassie. Now have you ever turned a knob, turned a page, turned a key, turned towards something, or turned away from that which should not be? If so, I want to hear from you. Let me know. Spooked@snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spooked@snapjudgment.org at KQD Studios there is a floor that has no elevator. You must first walk the stairs. From the stairs there's a turn. From the turn there's a door. From the door there's a gate. Go back. Do not venture there, for that is where Spook dwells. Run away, because if you seek to find spooked, spook may seek to find you. Spook just brought to you by the team that makes sure all the exits are clearly marked. Except for Mark Ristage. He locks everything so that whatever happens, no one's going nowheres. There's Davey Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Eric Ganez, Elliot Lightfoot, Marissa Dodds, Teo Da Cott, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mesiti Miller. Special incantation from Spook Legal reads that no SNAP Studios content may be used for training, testing or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. Hunting Spooked the union representative, producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of the national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications workers of America, AFL CIO Local 51. My name is Glenn Washington, and when you explore ancient cultures, one thing emerges again and again and again. From Central America to Central Africa from the Mediterranean to the Magic Isles. We have been and we remain, envious. Jealous of birds and their sacred ability to fly the ship. The seers. They often ride falcons, ride eagles. Not just to explore the now, but to glimpse the future. We covet their vision for our own. We seek to own what we can never own. How dare they extend wings to fly away leaving us behind? They can chase the sun itself so that the world never grows dark. The best we can do, the very best we can do Is to never ever, never ever, never, never, ever, never turn out the light.