There was a book of shadow once it's paid to show the way so travelers through the secret lands could not be let astray. They burned the book of shadow because the mystery hates the light and those who ventured after kept unguarded through the night. Until now, this is your invitation, the sput, field guide for shadow, stay true. When I was little, my bedroom had laminated wood paneling with the swirls and the rings like a real piece of wood and if I squinted at this fake wood paneling in just such a way, I could make out eyes, the line there, a nose, I could almost see faces and a kind of smile along stare and when I died a man just right, I heard voices, not words exactly, not full thoughts, voices, voices talking, I don't know exactly but they or it understood. I was there listening. I knew, of course, to keep this my own little secret and later, and I saw shades, shadows surrounding certain people, certain places, I kept silent about that as well, but sometimes those voices grew loud, loud enough to wake me from a deep sleep, loud enough for me to marvel that the whole house didn't hear, the whole neighborhood, I wanted it to stop so I pretended that I didn't hear anything at all, that it wasn't real, that there was nothing to see that my parents and my pastor and my teachers were right, what are you looking at, they said, "What is wrong with you?" they said, "What is wrong with me?" I wanted as well, until I hated me too, first for my mind playing tricks on me, then for pretending, for lying, I didn't see what I saw, didn't hear what I heard, couldn't feel what I felt, so you have to understand, this day I'm leading a shuffling man into my grandmother's house through the living room, the kitchen out onto the back stoop like she told me and she sees me then, staring, not at him, but at the shadow around him, the swirl of darkness buzzing about him, devouring him, she whispers to me, you see it don't you, don't you, and it feels like a slab, like a betrayal, hot rage, fury at her, since staring at the swirls on the wood paneling I told myself it was not real, told myself I was crazy, was broken, was foolish, and now here all this time later casually, casually, she says, "I'm not, I never talked back to my grandmother, never, ever, never, but now finally I scream, why, why didn't you tell me, why, why, her eyes are yellow, she looks back at me with her yellow eyes and her eyes, baby, I didn't know you were lost, and so many of you of us out there have wandered alone, questioning yourself, pretending what you know to be true is a lie, and what you know to be a lie is the truth, no more, we proudly present the spooked field guide to the shadow, a map, a path, breadcrumbs through the void, for those of us lost facing monsters, we pretend not to see, chapter 1, the spooked field guide to the shadow, stop, now, (upbeat music) - We begin an Eastern Kentucky, and this is hollow ground. Literally, starting in the late 1800s, the mountains in Eastern Kentucky were dug up and carved out for coal mines. For a lot of people who are from Eastern Kentucky, mining is part of their story. It's how they put down roots, so they support their families. There is a pride here. It's also a cost because to dig out these mines, layers of protective rock and soil must be removed and for a while, the scientists, the climate activists have been trying to warn those in power about how mining has left the land vulnerable to weather to flooding. In 2022, their worst predictions came true. The flooding that swept through the region caused massive destruction in Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, 45 people lost their lives. Our story begins in the days directly after the flood. Yes, members of the community come together in incredible ways to care for each other. Spooned. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) My name's Bo Morgan and I'm a paramedic. I've been doing disaster relief work on and off since 2016. I was living here in Knoxville. I went up like the day after the floods hit to try and make contact with a co-workers family that had gone missing. I left around seven or eight in the morning and with the left earlier, but it was so stormy. I brought clean drinking water. I brought a ton of medical supplies, baby diapers, but formula, I ended up getting a bunch of oxygen tanks from some national guardsmen to get up to the old man.
minors who have like emphysema and black lung and you know they rely on oxygen tanks to get by on the way up there I saw not very many cars coming in the other direction and I felt a bit on edge because I've driven into other disaster zones before where it's a bad sign if people aren't able to flee I started seeing some of the smaller mud slides along the side of the highway and where some of the tops of the mountains had come down through the forest and there were almost like little snaking paths where the mud had cut you can see the houses washed out and smashed into each other down in the gullies a lot of those mines up there you know they don't get filled in properly and they don't replant trees or anything to hold the ground in place so they were just tons of mud slides and water coming down off the mountains and it kind of just filled up eastern Kentucky like a bowl and it was still raining so hard my wipers were going as fast as they could I've been driving on this road for a while and the rain had finally led up but the roads were bad and so I'd been kind of driving slow and I think I see something on the side of the road I'm really looking at this thing this little pile and it's kind of taking shape it looks like flesh it looks you know it's got identifiable limbs and you know my brain's just automatically like this it's a kid like this a little toddler in the ditch I just feel immediately like I need to bear witness I guess to whatever it is because it's you know clearly not alive but it's something that could have been so I pulled over real quick and got out of the truck and I looked at this thing in the ditch about I don't know maybe like a foot and a half a little bigger not very big had these like huge ears and these like long fingers they're so long and skinny and it's legs are real skinny it kind of had like a bib thing on like a baby bed but it was kind of leathery you know my like hair stands on end and I'm starting to feel a little freaked out because I had never seen anything like that before I did have the thought of like this looks like I'm not a big Harry Potter fan like I don't care about that but I was like this looks just like Dolby from Harry Potter and it really did like it had little hairs in its big ears but I don't really believe in stuff like that and so I was really trying to rationalize it maybe it's like a baby deer that got mangled up in the in the floods I was also just kind of in that emergency mindset where you gray tag someone that has a non-survivable injury and you move on to the next situation and try and be of service there and so I decide like I'm not gonna mess with this you know I need to keep going I was just drawn to getting to the folks that I was trying to help but it was just too too strange to stop thinking about I was just like don't lose your shit before you even get to the spot driving into downtown hazard there's just debris everywhere I'm like metal scraps there's a mobile home that's been mangled and is pushed up against the side of a riverbank I also saw a Ford like F-150 like a very large pickup truck you know turned on its side seeing those things it created such a a deep bodily reaction for me of just kind of terror realizing that the water came so fast that it could push an entire home off its foundation or move a truck as though it was like a leaf and just the force of that and how scary that is I just had this real just this ache people died people were dead people lost everything and these places that were so familiar to me where I'd driven through you know countless times were unrecognizable I'm Laura Smith I grew up in southeastern Kentucky I grew up in a place called Whitley County where my dad's side of the family has been for I think over 200 years I know I was the seventh generation to be born in that county I was working in hazard Kentucky for a local community foundation so you know would stop in and see folks and everybody was playing different roles so we had partners who were feeding people to helping people connect to shelter to providing childcare to working on you know mutual aid networks to get people food cleaning supplies you know basic necessities water many of the communities didn't have water at that point still it was really really really bad then two weeks after the flood happened there was already an event planned in Knoxville Tennessee it's this big gathering of artists and cultural bearers and arts and culture organizations throughout Central Appalachia and they were having their annual convening so I went with folks from hazard and it was a nice break from being inside the disaster it also is just very jarring you know when you've been in this like really intense kind of go-go-go urgency overwhelming situation and the organizers of the event acknowledging what was happening in eastern Kentucky put together this quiet room and I go in and lay down I have a friend who's in there there was soft music playing they had a water sculpture that had like there was sound of running water there was just like all of these different plants around really soothing environment like a soft kind of low light I'm laying down with my head on a pillow and have pulled a blanket over myself and I'm just kind of quieting my mind my friend is laying near me and out of kind of nowhere says to me so have you heard about these goblins?
My first thought when she asked that is that I must have misheard what she said. I lift up my head and look at her. I'm just like, "What?" She says, "People have been seeing goblins." And she says, "My neighbors saw some on the side of the road while they were out checking on people." I am completely hooked now. I'm not quite still registry. What she's saying or what she's talking about. But I just wanted to know everything. She said they were driving down US-15. They were out checking on people in the days after the flood. And they saw these two small figures that they think are toddlers on the side of the road. One was standing up and wearing what they call a "kilt" that looked homemade. One was sitting down and kind of rocking with its hands on its head, like looking very distressed. And so they slowed down because it wasn't out of the question that there were two children that could have gotten separated from their parents, right? And we're on the side of the road looking for help. So they slowed the truck down and as they approached, they saw that these two figures that they thought were maybe toddlers that they described as two to three feet tall were not human and were what they said were goblins. So they were kind of grayish and skin tone. Very large kind of roundish black eyes, pointy ears. And that couple just really confused and kind of just in shock of what they were seeing then sped up and sped off. I immediately believe that this is a real experience that someone had. But I'm not necessarily convinced or believe that goblins exist. I'm just like, oh my gosh, what is this? Is this some kind of real phenomenon of something or is this like something that's arising out of the trauma everyone has just been into? Like my head is kind of spinning. I leave the quiet room and I go back to the convening and kind of moving around outside there are different workshops happening at that point. And I run into my friend, Gwen. That's someone that I very much look up to. She is a community organizer, an artist, a culture bearer that does really great work in her community. She's just one of those Appalachian women that gets stuff done. And I said, Gwen, I just heard that people are maybe starting to see these goblins after the flood. And she looked at me just straight in the face and said, I've seen them. I rolled up into my driveway one night and I was really stressed out. We were doing flavor relief efforts at our community center. And I was trying to cook meals with no, we didn't have run of water. And so we were having to carry water from the best sources that we had in order to cook and clean and take care of the vulnerable population. And so I was so preoccupied with the doubts of all that that I wasn't really thinking about nothing much except that I was dog tired and I was going to go home for a few hours and try to sleep. My driveway was washed out, so I was driving through probably a foot of water. And we often hear, if you see flood waters, don't drive through them, you know, that sort of thing. But I just clapped around and threw it because I was determined to get out to the house. When I drove on up, it was twilight. I've got a woodpile right beside my front steps. And I saw this little band squatted down behind the woodpile. I was like, oh shit, what is this? He's maybe three feet tall. At the most, he had big eyes and pointed ears. And he had on a little, we call it a turtle hat. It's one of the first protective hats that miners wore and they were made out leather. And then they had a little brim on them where a carbide lamp would see it. And he had one of those on. What the heck does this thing want with me and why is it here? So I had the chills, I had the rice and heartbeat, because I didn't know what his intention was. I didn't feel it was a physical threat. Like I would if it was a coyote or a bear. He was looking at me like he was curious. But there was such a feeling of doom around the whole community at the time that I didn't feel like I could encounter anything else Earth-shaking. I had things in the car I was going to carry in but I didn't carry them in. I just exited my car at like I didn't seem I had to climb up on my porch. And so I averting my eyes and said I'm ignoring you kind of like I do my ex-husband. And then I went up them steps at a pretty brisk pace. I went in the house as fast as I could, locked the door and then I immediately started looking out the window to see if I could get a better look at him. But he was not there. He was gone. That night, every bump, every knock, every creek in my old house, I felt like it was him. I was just trying not to even think about him but I couldn't quit thinking about him. And yeah, sleep didn't come. A few days later I was driving a woman had called and I went and got her to come and get supplies. So she lives in a mine community that's within about a mile of us. And I had taken her back home with her supplies and we downloaded them. And so I had come around her little street and was cutting back down to the main road. And I saw him again. And I was just like out of my peripheral vision and I'm like, was that him? And then I looked in the rear view mirror and it was and he was there. He was squatted down again in the corner of a fence, just kind of observing. way he was looking at me.
at my house curious he was dressed the same had on that same hat those ears sticking up let's be go eyes yeah it was him there was the car coming and I hit the brake at that stop sign and when I look back up he was gone I'm like you know here he is he showed he showed up again maybe he'll come regularly and maybe I'll figure out what he wants but I didn't tell anybody what I'd seen for one thing they were all dealing with their own processes and the other thing is I feel like they says crazy and then you know I go to this conference and I encountered Laura Smith and lo and behold Laura Smith says Gwen I need to talk to you and I said what about I know I was just wrapped just completely captivated by Gwen telling the story my curiosity just then just kind of went into overdrive of wanting to understand if other people had seen these things what they meant and what they could mean and so I really just started talking to people about it and asking if anybody knew anything about it the organization that I was working for at the time has an office downtown and we had so many volunteers there when I would just bring it up with them people would be like what and then occasionally people would be like oh my gosh I know someone who saw something and told me this crazy story and you should talk to them I got put in touch with someone that had gotten off the main road and we're on a smaller kind of one lane little road and there is a being that's standing next to a tree kind of on the slope going up the mountain side very large black eyes was wearing like some kind of covering almost like an apron another one similar story driving out to check on neighbors saw a figure about three and a half feet tall with large black eyes that was kind of standing next to the tree and then quickly disappeared behind the tree as he drove by in his truck I didn't think that people were like pulling my leg or like telling me a story to tell me a story trying to get one over on me but there were definitely moments to this where I was like this cannot be real one day I was in the office and a reporter from a local community radio station was in our office doing some interviews they were doing great reporting local reporting about the flood the aftermath how communities were responding and also getting out a lot of good information about resources that were available for folks a couple other people were standing around including some co-workers my friend bailin was there and my friend Stacy who I work with and there was also a reporter from the BBC bailin and Stacy already knew about the goblins and I said something about them and these two reporters were there like we would and so I said yeah like people are seeing these goblins and we're like on the search you know for them we're trying to find them that's when the local reporter said oh my friend Bo had a story I think it's like a day or two later I'd gotten a text message and it was from the woman who had called me originally to try and locate her family she had made contact with them and they were all right and I just felt like so relieved for her but it was also like I didn't have any time to enjoy that relief I was like I gotta keep doing what I was doing I'd just been delivering oxygen and like running around medical supplies food checking on folks and like there's a lot of families so you know you check on one person then you go check on their cousin and then their cousin needs you go check on their sister's boyfriend so you're running all over Eastern Kentucky so I'd been doing that all day and I was trying to find like a place to stay and my friend Katie who's a reporter in the area was crashing on one of their friends couches kind of like just a little bit out of town upon a hillside instead I could come and stay there with them and their friends I'm kind of a lone wolf a bit so I was planning to just kind of park in their driveway and sleep in my truck I went to I think it was like at Ingalls grocery store or something it was like half flooded and stinky but the beer section was open so I got a beer and a big thing of peanuts and random like a block of cheese or something just to like snack on and headed back to this person's house you kind of go up this dirt road a little bit and then there's this big white farmhouse with a big old wrap around porch and there's a tree line right off to the right side of the house maybe like a hundred yards at most away from where I parked it's probably like nine thirty or ten so it's pretty dark but the porch lights on and it's kind of illuminating the front yard a bit I'm sitting in my truck in the driveway I'm a truck sitter like I think that's probably not a California thing but if you have a truck you got to sit and think about stuff I just had such a long day like talking to this lady she'd been on her roof for a couple days during the flood and she was like my son was in the top of that tree his body was just there for the past couple days and we just now were able to get him down and so I was truck sitting just thinking about like we're completely fucked like this is so bad I was feeling really tense my like shoulders hurt like it's a lot to hold in your body and I'm not a big drinker by any means I was definitely excited to have a beer I'm so tense I think I had on some local radio thing and I'm staring at the woodline and then this thing starts to kind of materialize into the foreground like right on the periphery of where the light ends and like the forest begins it really just slowly materialized starting like at the chest and then it just became like this whole being I'm just staring at it and it kind of moves more out of the tree line into the light just a little bit and it looks kind of like the little mangled pile I've
in the side of the road, it's maybe like a foot bigger and its skin is like this kind of grayish color and it's got these huge eyes and those big ears. It wasn't moving or anything, it was just kind of there, staring in my direction. I felt surprised by the initial like recognition that there was something there. But then feeling that tension of the day kind of fade away. It was like a very somatic feeling of release and just like my shoulders felt relaxed. I didn't have my tongue like jamming into the roof of my mouth. It almost felt like I was receiving encouragement not to be fearful of what was happening. And then my radio starts going crazy. Not just interference, you know like when you drive out a zone or whatever with your radio and it changes. It was like making crazy noises. I'm staring at this thing and I'm trying to text my friend Katie who's in the house and I'm like there's something out here and she comes out but it's like almost like it out sucked back into the wood line. It just kind of was gone. And I was like there was this thing with like these huge ears in the wood line. She was like yeah it's crazy up here. Don't get all crazy about it. After you know we had that brief interaction we just kind of like hung out we didn't even really talk about it more. We just started talking about like what parts of the county we were gonna try and get into the next day and stuff like that. She was like you can totally come inside and the people she was staying with were super nice and they had made the couch up or something and had food and stuff. I was kind of feeling like I just won't be alone and so I was like I'm gonna stay in my truck. I ended up actually just going and driving around for a while because I had to move on from trucks in to truck you know driving around thinking. I really feel like I wouldn't have had these sightings if I hadn't been responding to the floods. I think that the sightings occurred because the goblins were directly impacted by the flooding. I really feel like they live in the mines. I don't know it makes sense you know it's pretty like climate controlled down there and there's even sometimes like underground little rivers with fish and they probably got washed out of their caves. I would say that at this point in time I believe that people really had these experiences and really saw these things. The stories are too convincing and also too eerily similar. I think I just started thinking about like is there anything like this that I've ever heard of you know that's what led me to think about stories about Tommy knockers in the mines. The story is that miners have reported hearing knocks like that they can't explain mysterious knocking on the mine walls often before a disaster happens where part of the mine collapses. I did make a connection between the way that Tommy knockers were maybe there to warn people about a pending disaster and the fact that these goblins suddenly showed up. We're seeing a series of climate disasters and so I did kind of take them as a sign that we need to reimagine some things. I asked this guy who was also a co-owner. He and his wife and I were hanging out one evening at the community center and I said tell me have you ever encountered anything in the coal mines that you didn't know what it was and he said yeah everywhere I ever worked. He was very candid about it he said yeah they're always in there. I think in times across this maybe the veil gets a little thin. I had never been in such a struggle before trying to serve the folks that were in need so I don't know if if that helped me see him maybe he did but I feel like somehow the veil was a little thinner than maybe it was thinner for everybody or maybe it was just thinner for me I don't know. I don't really have many regrets but I do regret not going into the woods that time it just felt like there was some sort of need not being met that maybe I potentially could have helped with and maybe I went a little wing nutty but I keep a little goblin I call it my goblin first aid kit in my car now in case I ever see another one. It's just in a little like half gallon zip lock bag. I put like a non irritating cleansing wipe instead of alcohol pads because I don't want to like burn their skin or something. A couple different sizes of gauze there's some band aids in there and then there's a couple sterile Q tips and I cut like one of those neon yellow index cards I cut one and half and wrote goblin use only with a black cross like the first aid symbol cross and then I put my name in that I can offer confidential care because they probably don't want you know everyone up in their business but I'm down to help big thanks to Laura Smith to Bow Morgan and Gwen Johnson for sharing your stories with us Spooksters if you want to know more about the goblins of Eastern Kentucky Laura wrote a wonderful piece about them for Oxford American find it in our show notes the original score for this piece is by Doug Stewart was scouted and produced by Zoe Fregno this the air spookster is but the first chapter the revelation continues as we uncover a new volume each and every week before all hallowed e and if you yourself experience a vision that must be noted in the spook field guide to the shadow please let me know
[email protected] because there's nothing better than a foretelling the spook listener KQED in San Francisco carefully very carefully sets the wards every night around the spook catacombs please please please please I beg you don't seek to find it let's it seek to find you tell the robots to their face that no staff studios can't to maybe use for training testing or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on team spook the union represented producers artists editors and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians
Communications Work of America, AFL, CIO, local, FJ1, and. Spook just brought to you, by the team that treats every kind of creature with love and respect, even those with gray skin and pointy ears. Especially Mark Ristich, because he knows what it's like to have gray skin and pointy ears. Please recognize Davey Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Yanyas, Mr. Dodge, Regina Barriaco, Miles Lassie, Taylor Decott, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the Spook theme song, is by Pat Masini Miller. My name is Tom Washington. And by piecing together, the ancient main fragments, the notations, the references of the book of shadow, we built this field guide. We know the first text chronicle, the monsters that dwell amongst us in elaborate detail as a warning. It also notes a holy different type of creature, a being that lies without compunction, a being that takes that sneers, that names its own evil good, and calls that which is good, evil. Such a being delights and horrors and thicket on others, but the book of shadows notes dismissively such creatures are not monsters. They are weak, unworthy of notice and beneath contempt. No, it says the true monsters are those that follow them. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, turn out the light. [Music]
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