When the demons name their king, the angels all rebel to sing and all the dark they bathed in light. So half is day and half is night. You listen to spooked, stay tuned. You've crossed over to spooked. So back in the day, for a few years I just kind of wandered all over the world. Doing part time jobs, sleeping on friends, coaches I didn't know what I was looking for. Didn't have a lot of money for lunch or the train fare, whatever. But still, I always allowed myself one splurge. Books, I love books, I do the smell, the bindings, the stories and knowledge. I've purchased Buddhist texts in Korea, books on flower arranging. Stacks, stacks of classic science fiction and fantasy about books in Braille. And I can see just fine, I just like touching them. New books, old books, whole collections from a Japanese flea market. A secret for bitten book chronicling the political history of Malaysia. Collected notes of Charles Darwin slave journals in Taiwan. I find an Egypt Chinese volume detailing the acupuncture meridians of the body in extraordinary detail. It was last printed over a hundred years ago. And because I don't have a home or whatever, I pack these treasures away. I send them to my modest place in Grand Rapids, Michigan for safekeeping, hundreds of books. Each one with their own story of how they were bought, bartered, bet or traded for. And they're packed away as gifts to an older me because I have a vision for I am content, happy, gray-haired, wandering through a library of my own creation. Reading sometimes by myself, sometimes I lie out to my loved ones and I see this place. I see this clearly as I see my own hands, I know that someday I want my children. My children's children, their children, in turn to know they can walk through many worlds. They can press through time and space if they learn to love these books as much as I do. And one day I'm sitting eating an apple, mine in my own business when I get a cough from my mama. She's a deeply religious woman. "Sign. Me and the ladies, we got to divine it." And the church things I hear in the background clapping and praying, divine it. That's right. He sends the devil, the devil up my house. The devil, huh? Really? That's right. He could devil in my home, I could rob out of my clean kitchen floor. He's followed his clothing who's right through the house over rug down the stairs to see from with the evil spring. And you know what we discovered right on top of your pile of papers? Mama, mother, satanic verses. Satanic verses. How you gonna bring the verses of the devil into my Christian home? Mama, um, satanic verses is not what you think it is. It's a book by Simon Rusty and he wrote, "I know what the verses of Satan are, boy." And those satanic verses are gonna burn just like the rest of these books. Mama, mama, mama, leave your books alone. You can have satanic verses, take it. I don't even like that book, but just leave everything else alone. It's got the same tape. It's gonna burn the same Holy Five. I just thought I'd next you know. Leave my books alone. My son, mother, mother, mama, mother. I call back. I call back again and again and then it's like I'm standing. I'm sitting in the middle of this vision of my beautiful library as it burst into flame. I feel the heat on my skin, the smoke burns my eyes. I don't call her anymore. I don't wonder if she did it. I could almost hear her Satan laughing. Laughing. And then, after a good long while, I start laughing too. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now, our story, it comes to us from the other side of the world, Durvin, South Africa. Her Austin, Francis and his dad, they're close, they're tight. And Austin's dad, he's the real adventurous type. Not afraid of anything. Austin wants to be just like him. But he's about to learn how much there is to be scared of in this world. ♪ ♪ My dad was basically a very strong man. He was an oak. He was the strength of our family. ♪ ♪ He loved birds. He loved wild birds of South Africa. And he used to go out collecting birds. In the sense trapping them, swapping them out with these friends in the bird club, that was his passion, his birds. ♪ ♪ He built himself a massive aviary. It was in the backyard a massive walk through aviary. ♪ ♪ And he used to go out like 4 a.m. Just to catch the first flock of birds that's coming in to feed on a grassland or on a farmer's patch. I only went to do this with my dad one time. I think I must have been 10 or 11 years old. ♪ ♪ It was cool going with my dad out in the dark and not knowing where we were going. I knew we were going to catch birds, but I never knew the destination. ♪ ♪ He knew exactly where the park, which fence to cross, how far in into the field he would go and patch, wait, set up his bird cages. ♪ ♪ He was just running back and forth, removing the birds from the workshop, putting them in a nut cage and we waited. And it went on until we had about two cages full of wild yellow-eyed fences. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It was an adventure for me. It was a little boy's adventure. We out here in the countryside and we're doing cowboy stuff, I think. You know? ♪ ♪ It was cool. I enjoyed it. I was enjoying the darkness and I loved the stars. ♪ ♪ It was amazing until first light. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And then I realized I was in someone's form. ♪ ♪ It was a ginger farm and when you dug your hands into the ground, you could pick up ginger roots and when at first light, I realized that we were illegally on someone's form.
I am catching birds. Nope, so that was my dad. He'd go all out for his bird. He would cross the river just to set up his trap cages to catch birds. That's how he was. When I was about 23, my dad used to have these nightmares. And our house is basically silent, nobody is snored. And it was a quiet house. And then my dad was screamed, "Yow!" And that, you know, shake the house up and we were like, "Oh, my God, what's wrong with you?" And that, you know, shake the house up and we were like, "What's wrong with you?" And then my dad was screamed, "Yow!" And that, you know, shake the house up and we'd all jump out a bit to see what's going on. And he'd be yelling in the sleep. It scared both myself and my sibling. They were like, "Hard to fight." "What's wrong with your dad?" "Is he ill or why is he screaming like this?" And it went on for a while. And he never spoke of it. It sort of bugged me as I needed to know what the hell was going on. The fact that I wanted to know, it lingered in my mind all the time. But in an Indian household, it was just taboo for kids to ask the adult question, you know? Friday's that reason Sunday's were leisure days for me, myself and my friend. We'd go out clubbing, we used to club a lot. The one night, I came home just after one in the morning. I fell asleep. And I heard my dad yelling. He started screaming and yelling. His screams were fearful as if he was being armed or he was afraid of something. I sensed that something was terribly wrong. It was not just a bad dream, something was disturbing. And I thought I should stand up for him. I usually sleep with a pocket Bible on my bed. My hand reached instinctively for the Bible. And it was like here I go, I'm on this mission to confront whatever or whoever was hurting my dad. It's like I knew what I needed to do without thinking about it. My step out of my room, what caught my eye was a green luminous light that was coming from the lounge. I take two steps into the living room and I'm alright, clutched within the light. Was this creature? He was a big guy. He was a big muscular guy. He had the body to man, but his face was that of a beast. Pointy years, yet pointy years, yellowish teeth sharp teeth. His eyes were yellowish with red outlining. Yet he had green scaries skin, you could clearly see his scaries skin. He had long dusty nails and he had a goldish bracelet on from his shoulder to his elbow, a full long bracelet. It had some kind of engraving on it. There were little twirly kind of stuff that was on that bracelet which I could not identify. I could see his breath if the lounge was so cold. It was a summer night, the house were not cold. We didn't have any air conditioning, the lounge was cold because of him. And when I stepped into that living room, I caught his attention and he stared me down from head to toe and looked at me. I had the Bible clutched in my right hand to my side. And then he looked at the direction of where my dad was sleeping. Through the wall that divided the living room from my dad bedroom. And when he stared in that direction, my dad began to yell and scream. In my normal state of mind, I would have brought the house down, you know, I would have sworn to choose languages my mom would hate. But that night felt different. I was so cool, collective and knew that I had to do this. In order for me to get away, I had to pass a couch that was between us, a long couch, and I walked around the couch to approach where he was. He stopped and looked at me. And he started snoring. I promised the much way a wild animal that was cornered by hunters or something, would snore to threaten you as if I'd hurt you or kill you or I would attract you. I stopped halfway. He probably thought that I'm no threat to him and he continued to stare to his left at the wall where my dad was sleeping. This was as though he could see my dad through that wall and when he did that, my dad instantly yelled all over again. The thing that something like this was effected my dad, my hero, you know, I was upset, I was livid. I had to take that thing on. I continued towards him and I walked around the couch, no crumbs about it, I walked straight up to him. I looked in the street behind. It snoreed at me as if in a threatening manner and showed me his ugly teeth and I didn't care. Because I was willing to sacrifice myself for my dad. I just stated I plead the blood of Jesus and I touched him on his side with the Bible. You know what a sin is, you know much where you take a hot iron and mock a cow or something and it's sinned. And it helped as if in pain and the lights gradually closed in on him. Sucked him in. I was shocked. That was it. He was gone. But I stopped screaming. I was gone.
to my dad's room and he was quiet and I placed the Bible on his side pedestal and I just touched his forehead and to see if he was okay my dad slapped soundly he was he was fine. I felt immediate change in our lives because if my dad is fine everything is good we we are good and I wait off tomorrow I slapped like a baby. And woke up the next morning in shock like what just happened. My dad was having breakfast around 9 am or so and I walked up to him and said okay I said yeah what happened this morning last night and then he says son every night there's this green guy that's sitting on my chest and squeezing my throat and I finished off his statement and said green guy, pointy ears, cold bracelet on his arm and my dad's jaw dropped and he said what and I said dad I confronted him this morning and he left his breakfast he said let's go to my room he said get me my diary from the from the books then he opened his diary and he said this guy and I said here that's him. And my dad has been making sketches of him every time he had a confrontation or nightmares he would sketch him at first there were rough sketches my dad was just trying to remember what what this demon looked like and he would sketch you know make wild sketches I was in awe and I looked at the sketches rather in depth. He did a sketch of the demon with a bird on the left hand side flying away flying off and then this like three more or four more sketches of the demon and the sketches were getting closer each day until his final sketch the final sketch of the demon was like sort of a bust version just the shoulders and chest you could see it pointy ears sharp teeth and his and his eyes the demonic looking eyes and I kept my finger on this diary and I said that's him he said just that's him that was him and my dad was he stood there in shock you know in total shock you never thought that I or anyone else would have experienced this thing. And I said that he won't be bothering you anymore I was quite confident in myself and it was a really good feeling the next day my mom decided to call the pastor over to shed some light on the incident and gave him the entire rundown and he listened carefully and his conclusion was that that the Holy Spirit came over me to protect my dad which explains why I was so calm and I did not freak out in any way and why I clutched the Bible it sounded a bit corny to me it wasn't what I wanted to hear his explanation didn't quite gel with me this was something that I was I was waiting for you know all this while that my dad was having the night earth it grew on me it stayed on my mind that I need to know what is bothering my dad and and I wanted to get to the bottom of it however he said this in closing when it's my time the same demon would come for me when I'm at my weak point or when it's time when it's my time to go crossover of demon would be there to take me that was it and he prayed for my dad and he prayed for the family and he was gone the demon it never came back my dad totally subscribing and he was a piece afterwards I know it never worried my dad again but I feel that although that he didn't return he may have had a dire effect my dad was soon after diagnosed with cancer and it was in the last stages and it was too late for treatment and he soon passed on afterwards I was raised Catholic but my grandparents my dad's mom and dad were Hindu the tradition in Hindu culture is whereby the priest would do an exorcism on someone that that's possessed or remove demons from homes and release the demon into the rivers away from basically civilization from houses and stuff like they would go off to a far river and release the demons into the river and my dad used to those were his places to catch his wild birds and I would assume that this is where this thing latched on to my dad perhaps the demon knew that my dad had a weakness I decided to attack him because he probably knew that my dad was dying my dad never knew this we never knew this until he got really sick I acquired a job out of the province and I had to move I was in my own place he was too much later and I went back to the house after my dad's passing I was hurting inside because they were empty spaces in that house because he was not there and it felt hollow it felt quiet and I stood into his bedroom and just realized that you know he's not around anymore I walked to the lounge and I think secretly I I called out to that demon you know as if are you still around are you hiding from me did I defeat you did you take my dad I still go to the house and I spend some nights in the lounge you know but one can knock out sometimes just to see to get in touch or know I think that's my one wish is to face him here on again if I were to see him experience him of sense him in some way I would definitely check him on I promise you that
Thank you, Austin, for sharing your story with the spooked, visual score for that piece by Liam Rimocha was produced by Zoe Furrell Bell. If you have a story of your own battle against the darkness, I need to know it. I need to know it right away quick in a hurry email us,
[email protected]. There is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Let us know
[email protected]. Yes, you can get spooked gear at snapjudgment.org and remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing, the stupendous, the snap judgment podcast, you might just change your life, it's storytelling with a beat. The book was created by the team that would never burn a book except, except for maybe Mark Wistich. Because he knows Marshmallows over flaming library books he does, I've seen him do it, there's an assessment, Eliza Smith, their chief spooked, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Dodge, Zoe Fricknell, Tiffany Liesa, Anne Ford, and Doug Stewart.
[email protected]. Neither do you have to explain why you do what you do, let them understand that in your house, you will never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, ever, turn out the life.
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