Muse

Nine years old, sitting in this church, angry, and my parents angry at these brethren, this place. And now their preacher, all puffed up, red face, bug eyed, steps to the podium, commands us to open your Bible to Exodus 32. Here, brethren, Moses climbs the mountain to see God. Do the people wait patient? They do not. Instead, they work with their foragers, their ovens, with wickedness in their hearts with evil. Then look right here, look here, look here, look here. They pull a golden calf from the flame. What do they do then? The very worst thing you can do. They call this thing, this abomination, a god. Who needs that other god? When this one gleams golden. Then they bow their heads before it blasts me. But know this, brethren. There's no sure way to summon the Lord Than to mock him The God that delivered them From slavery under Pharaoh Stretches out his mighty hand And smites with fire and horror and pain For their betrayal Remember that If you want to see God face to face You remember that Later Anger has an idea I snatch two hangers from the hall closet Bring them back to my bedroom Strip the wires from the hangers Bend them, fashion them Work it just so Then I cover it Not with gold I don't have any of that Instead I wrap sheet after sheet of aluminum foil around it pinch and shape it into a face, into horns, the body of a calf. I admire it for a moment. Beautiful. My own graven image. Then I went for a lull, and the ever-present noise of my household peeked outside my bedroom, down the hall, pushed the front door open, quiet, quiet, quiet. Pad down the front steps of our trailer. Aluminum calf wrapped tight with my jacket that I run.

Out to the middle of the woods, my secret fast, fast run, run until I reach the spot reverently. Set the calf down on a patch of hard earth, but doubt stops me. Fear. Then the anger returns. The fury. I have asked, begged their God to reveal itself as many ways as I know. Still, it judges me unworthy of even a word, even a whisper. Answer me. This is all I have left. So I steal myself. Look to the sky one last chance. Answer me. Then I drop to my knees, bow my head, and I pray to my own graven image. Today, on Snap Judgment, we proudly present something sacred. My name is from Washington. All that glitters is not aluminum when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

Thank you.

we begin headed out to sea to meet jordan now jordan is fresh out of boot camp and doing his very first unit with the coast guard on board a ship patrolling the waters off the east coast i'm gonna let jordan take it from here

it's half past midnight i'm out here by myself on the catwalk standing my watch doing my lookout. This is a famous class cutter, bow to stern, 270 feet long, white with the famous U.S. Coast Guard, orange racing stripe on the front. At this point, the ship is off the coast of New England. Even being late spring, it's still pretty cold. The wind is blowing. I'm bundled up in what we call a float coat, essentially a rain jacket with a life jacket built into it. It's a pretty dark night. It's very starry out, but the moon had very little illumination this particular night. So I'm using night vision goggles, and I'm looking for hazards, essentially. Things floating in the water, other ships that we might not see on radar. are. At this point, I'm about an hour and a half into my watch. It's been a pretty quiet night. I'm doing a scan with my night vision, just looking towards the front of the ship. And I see there's a person standing at the forward most point of the bow, about 70 feet away from me with his arms outstretched. It's the middle of the night. There aren't very many people awake at this point. And for someone to be out there in the pitch black darkness, standing on the front of the ship, that rings alarm bells in my head. I'm concerned about the worst case scenario that this person is out there with the intent to jump off. Right away, I have to look again. You know, did I actually just see that? I pick up my NVGs again and look out, and it's very clearly a person standing there. Just the silhouette of a person. i can tell that it's a man he's got a military style haircut and i can tell that they're wearing the coast guard uniform not by any color just by the sort of silhouette of it

i'm yelling hey what are you doing out there you know hey just trying to get their attention The OOD, the officer of the deck, the person in charge of navigation of the ship, she's inside the bridge. This OOD has heard me screaming. She's my boss as a seaman, and she has come out to see what the deal is. she's short probably 5'2 blonde woman with big like porthole glasses just these big round glasses that you you practically can't see past when you're talking to her so i hand her my night vision goggles i say there's someone standing on the bow and i think the exact words would her out of her mouth were oh because at this point now she's reached the same initial conclusion that I have of somebody's on the front of the boat and they might be getting ready to jump over the side. So immediately she calls to the bosun's mate of the watch, their only roving watchstander on the bridge and tells him to go down there. I can hear him open the door It's a very distinct, like, creak and slam sound, a very heavy door. And I can see his flashlight as he comes out. He's got a life jacket on himself, and he's got another life jacket in his hand in case he has to reach out and grab this person and throw him in a life jacket to prevent him from hurting themselves. So the OD, she sends the bosun's mate of the watch down, and a couple minutes later, he comes up on the radio, and he says, there's no one up here. Right away, my heart sank. My immediate thought was that this person had jumped over the side or fallen over the side, and we didn't see it happen. I expected that we're going to be looking for a man overboard throughout the night, but I immediately pick up the night vision, and I see right away that the person is there still. I hand him to her. She can still see him there, so now I'm thinking that the BMO probably had to walk through, like, a lit-up space to get out there, and so his natural night vision just isn't adjusted enough to see this person. we're on the radio I'm yelling we're trying to guide him to where this person is standing we can see him shining his flashlight right in the spot where the shadow is and we see the BMO walk up

right where this person is standing we're telling him the whole time he's right there he's right there He's right in front of you. How do you not see him? And then he walks right through the person. And is still saying that there's nothing there. My blood runs cold. I'm dumbfounded. I don't know how I could be even seeing what I'm seeing. I just watched a man walk through another man. And the OOD and I are trying to figure out what it is we're looking at. Maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but we can both see that it's not. It's not any of those things we try to rationalize. The OOD goes back into the bridge. She didn't have much to say after that. I think she was pretty well shaken up and in her own head at that point. I continue standing my watch. Every time I looked down, it was still there. And at this point, I've pretty well understood that he's going to be there. I get off my watch and make my way through the ship. And at this point, I'm just so exhausted that I'm ready to go to sleep. And I pass out pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow. so the next day i'm sitting on the mastek between meals kind of just wasting some time but at the same time i'm thinking about this shadow that i saw last night ghost stories are very common on these boats i've always been a sort of what I would call maybe a loose believer. But I've never seen one, so how can I possibly say one way or the other? And then the OOD from that night comes up and sits down. That's abnormal behavior. Officers don't sit on the enlisted mess deck. They have their own sort of eating area cloistered from the rest of the ship. And traditionally, officers aren't supposed to sit there unless they ask you. And so for her to come over here and sit down, she clearly has something on her mind. Really, before I had a chance to say anything, she said, I saw it again. After I got off watch, I went to my room, and it was standing in the hallway.

She just described it as just a black, man-shaped figure. Right away, I just got chills. My hairs on my arms stood up. It wasn't just this figure that stood on an unreachable part of the ship, you know, 70 feet away from me. It's now something that I could turn the corner and see at any given moment. Within the next few days, you know, I start hearing stories about I went out on the fantail to smoke in the night and I saw someone standing there and raised my phone up to their face to see who it was and there just wasn't anybody there or about seeing a shadow of a man while they were making their their rounds before they went to watch, that they were in the gym and saw just this shadow of a person. At this point, I felt pretty afraid that I was going to now run into this thing anywhere that I went. It's capable of moving around the ship. What else is it capable of? What is it going to do the next time I run into it. About a week after that initial incident, we're having what we call quarters, where we all get together and the executive officer and the commanding officer discuss our upcoming plans, they make announcements. The executive officer stands up and he goes oh and we've got a burial at sea that we need volunteers for i'm thinking what what what are you talking about burial at sea like nobody's dead nobody died on this boat come to find out since we left florida on our way back up to new england we have been carrying this urn on board, and it's been tucked away in one of the officers' staterooms for safekeeping. And the urn belonged to a former electrician's mate in the Coast Guard. The electrician's mate had been in the Coast Guard in the 80s, on board this particular ship, responding to search and rescue. What he requested was to be buried at sea in the vicinity of where his first SAR case was. At this point, it starts to make sense. This was probably the man that was walking around the boat. Anytime you run into an old veteran, one of the first things they want to do is take a look at the ship that they used to be on,

see what's changed and see who's working and how things are going. I think he was just trying to get his bearings and see what's changed, see what stayed the same, reminisce in a way. This guy who was on this ship that stood where I stood, did the mission that I do, and now we're honoring his final request. That felt very moving to me and I was very quick to volunteer to be a part of this ceremony. The day of the ceremony comes and I have volunteered to be an urn bearer. You have three riflemen to do the gun salute, we have someone with a trumpet to play taps, a couple people to hold the American flag as we do the interment. This particular urn is a small plastic box. Myself and the chief, we bring it over to the rail and put it over the side and let go. When we drop the urn in the water, I sort of say a little bit of a prayer to myself, just thinking about the implications of what we've just done and what it means to the man and his family. And after that, the sightings stop. The shadow just feels like another shipmate now. That being said, a shipmate that I still don't want to run into in the dark in the middle of the night, but it's just someone else who lived part of their life on this boat. Recently, I was underway on the ship that I'm on now, and I knew that the ship that I used to be on was in a port that we were pulling into. I went over to the ship they were right across the pier and salute the watchstander go on the brow and salute the flag as is custom in the Coast Guard and step on and immediately that smell every cutter has its own smell and just the memories of the time I was there just filled my head as I took in that smell. And I kind of feel like maybe that's what that electrician's mate was doing as well, just taking in the memories.

Jordan, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your story that spooked. The original score for that piece was by Lauren Newsom. It was produced by Zoe Ferrigno. When Snap Doctor returns, we wake up the gods. Stay tuned.

this is ira glass of this american life do you know our show okay well either way i'm going to tell you about it we make stories old-fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening that's right i'm talking about stories to make you disappointments and ignore your loved ones this american life every week wherever you get your podcasts you know i often think about that younger me the guy who

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Thank you.

welcome back to snap judgment the something sacred episode featuring amazing stories from snap's evil twin podcast spooked our question how do you wake the god our next story begins on the spring night in 1986 thousands of people have gathered in hilo hawaii not just from around the islands from the four corners of the earth to witness the largest the most prestigious hula competition in the world as the sun sets over Hilo. Rollers pack even Kanaka Ole Stadium. The rafters air taste rich with the smell of Kahlua pork and the sound of ancient drums. And in the distance, dark clouds roll in. Snap Dutchman.

Good evening and welcome to the 23rd annual Merry Monarch Festival Hula Competition. We are here live in Hilo.

Tonight, the Kahiko Competition where 30 Halaos will be sharing the ancient dances of Hawaii.

Leanne Durant is backstage with the other dancers in her Halao, or hula school. After nine months of practice and preparation, they're about to take the stage and perform their rendition of the three windstorms of Hina.

The women's chant, Kimo, speaks of the goddess Hina from Moloka'i and her three devastating winds that were able to bruise skins and devastate lands.

And so we should get from these dancers, male and female, very strong, emotional Kahiko ancient dances. Should be very interesting this evening.

And we were all ready to go and we're standing in a circle And then all of a sudden, the lights went out. It's pitch black. The storm is going crazy. That's when the dread really comes. I had bad feelings from the very beginning of learning the dance. I was like, okay, what do we do to stop this?

Leigh-Anne has been dancing hula for almost as long as she can remember. As a girl growing up in Honolulu, she learned to dance a version of hula called hula awana. It's an instrumental style of hula that became popular after the Hawaiian language was banned in the islands.

I grew up in the generation where Hawaiian language hula was not accepted. During the overthrow of our monarchy, we were illegally taken by the United States. And once that happened, as a people, we weren't allowed to speak our language. Ancient hula was underground because we were not allowed to dance it. And then when I came home from college in 1977, there were things happening here in Hawaii, which they called the first renaissance of things Hawaiian. And it all started with the hula.

All over the islands, young Hawaiians were reviving hula kahiko and bringing back those traditional dances and chants.

It looked exciting, so I asked my neighbor if she was dancing hula anywhere, and she said she was. So I went down with her to a hula class with Kumuhula Mapuana de Silva. She was teaching kahiko, which is the ancient hula. Those chants go back way back. It tells those stories of our ancestors. What kind of beauty did they see in a flower? What kind of beauty did they see in a rock? What did they do if things weren't right? What kind of battles did they have? And I just fell in love with it.

One day not long after she started studying Hulakihiko, Leanne remembers overhearing her kumu, or teacher, Mapuana da Silva, talking about entering the Merry Monarch Festival.

I was like, what is that? That's how out of touch I was. I didn't even know about the festival. They started it as a little competition with a few halal. And over the years, it just, by word of mouth, by, you know, more, the Renaissance was bringing more and more halal into being. And it just became one of the biggest things ever. And that's kind of like our big gold star, you know, in the spring, is going to Mary Monarch.

The first time Leigh-Anne went to Mary Monarch, it was 1981. She was in her 20s and having the time of her life, preparing for the festival with her hula sisters. Her halal didn't win that year.

But it was just really a fun time. It was a really bonding time. Each halal would have their own fundraiser with their own little signature to it. And because even though we were in competition, we would support each other. We would go to each other's fundraisers. We would help them. They would help us. It was like a huge, huge family. But it was a lot of work. We'd make our own costumes. We'd make our own lei. We have to raise money to get there and be able to pay for our hotels, our vans.

Not to mention the hours each week spent practicing the dances they were going to perform.

They would have a dance of your choice, and then whoever the committee was would choose a dance where every Halal danced the same, but each kubo brought their own spirit to it.

They'd start rehearsing their dances in September and work on them all the way through to the competition in the spring. But for Leigh-Anne and the other dancers in Halau, Mohala, Yulima, the point of all this hard work wasn't just to win. Although, in her first five years with the group, they did win, three times.

What we would strive for was to share our hula and our interpretation with everyone.

And then came 1986 and the three windstorms of Hina.

It was about the goddess Hina. She's one of the oldest goddesses in Hawaii. And she was the female that could generate force in Hawaiian cosmology. And she was kind of a protector of the land, too. She had this gourd. And if the people wouldn't take care of the land, she would open her gourd just a little bit. When she opened that gourd just a little bit, the rain got stronger, the wind started to pick up. And it was kind of like a warning to the people that you better take care of business. And so as the chant goes on, the people still don't heed her call or, you know, pay attention. So she opens her gourd a little more. That's when you start getting lightning, thunder, the rain gets harder, the winds start whipping up. And on the third time, when she opens the gourd, it's the destruction of man.

Leigh-Anne was a really experienced dancer at this point. And she was a mentor to some of the newer Hula sisters. But when she got into the studio to start practicing this one...

Something was just weird. I remember going to Hula and we learned the second verse. I all of a sudden just felt, I don't know how to explain it. I was a little frightened. I couldn't really explain why, but it was just a feeling I had in my na'au, in my gut. And that feeling carried through the whole, what I call the marimonic season, starting in September.

Leanne hoped that with time, she'd get more comfortable with the routine, and the feeling would fade. But it didn't. When the spring rolled around, that uneasy feeling in her gut was still there whenever she practiced. She didn't mention it to her kumu or anyone else in her halau. She just kept pushing, trying to get it right.

But I just couldn't get it. I couldn't get the dance. I couldn't get the chant. I made mistakes all the time. It just didn't feel comfortable to me. I never had struggles like that, learning a hula.

Finally, the week of Mary Monarch arrived. Leanne and her hula sisters flew to Hilo and checked in to the Nani Loa Hotel. That night, they sat in the audience in Edith Kanaka'ole Stadium and watched the Miss Aloha competition. The next day, it was their turn to compete. Kahiko night. Leigh-Anne remembers waking up that morning to perfect Hilo weather blue skies with a cool mist coming off the ocean the dancers spent the day rehearsing on the hotel lawn before heading over to the stadium when they got there they had some time to kill before they had to get ready and most of the dancers were wanted to watch the first groups perform. But Leanne decided that she needed some time alone and fresh air to clear her head. So she made her way back outside.

I was super nervous because I had a hard time with the chant. I needed to calm my nerves. So I remember going down. I sat on the sidewalk kind of along the fence. I would just keep kind of just taking a deep breath. I would always just tell myself, just let it go. Just let it go once you get on that stage. You're going to forget all your worldly worries.

The Snap Judgment Something Sacred episode continues right after the break. Stay tuned.

This is Ira Glass. On This American Life, one thing we like is a good mystery. Sometimes about really big things, things you hear in the news. But most times, the little mysteries are the best.

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Welcome back to Snap Judgment. The Something Sacred Episode. Featuring amazing stories from Snap's evil twin podcast, Spooked. Snap Judgment.

As she sat there, breathing in and out, Leanne could hear the first women's group take the stage inside the stadium and start to perform Hina's chant.

We welcome you, the people, throughout the state of Hawaii, from all of the Hawaiian islands. And now, from Las Vegas, Nevada, under the direction of Kumuhula, Wayne Panoke. Kula halau o kaho'one.

This is our first opportunity to see the Wahine competition chant, which will always be performed first. And then as I could hear the chanting on the stage, it started to rain. It came so fast, pretty soon it was pouring rain. At first I didn't think anything because Hilo is unpredictable. It always does things like that, you know. So I went in and I started dressing. And then my Hula sisters came. We dressed under the bleachers so we could hear what was going on on the stage. Making their first appearance at the Merry Monarch Festival, another opportunity to see Hina and her devastating winds. As I was dressing my hula sisters, I kept watching the rain, and I was noticing, like, the gutters of the tennis stadium was, the water was just gushing out, and it was coming really quickly. All of a sudden, I just felt like this is the story. the rain kept coming and the rain kept coming it seemed like every time I heard the chant the rain got worse and worse and worse I was just like observing and thinking wow this is like the first storm clouds were really dark and heavy and I could hear the chanting and I'd see lightning or hear the thunder and then I went to this is like the second storm we're dancing about the story and the story is coming

true. Everybody's on stage, like they're chanting and their energy is there and they're bringing this to life. So I felt very uncomfortable and I did not want to go on that stage. What if we were the ones that she decided then and there, Let's open the gourd the third time and it would be destruction of man. And the stadium was full of man. So I really felt dreadful. But I was not going to disappoint my Kumu or my Hula sisters. like I didn't want to be the one that was like I don't want to do this you know because not performing on Kahiko night automatically disqualified us from the competition and we've worked so hard you've sacrificed you know we've had girls sacrifice being in sports going to proms you know doing all the things that you do as young people because we loved it so much and what if I was wrong? So I talked myself back into it. It's just like, okay, you're here. This is a commitment. You can do it. Intermission was ending. People were going back to their seats.

Welcome back to Hiluhale'i in the beautiful Edith Kanaka'ole tennis stadium.

We're about to go on, my stomach is in knots, we were all ready to go and we're standing in a circle, and then all of a sudden, the lights went out. You hear the audience say, whoa, and then there was silence. pitch black and the storm is going crazy I start to kind of panic because I felt like the lights were the warning and I just kept thinking in my mind we need to break the cycle we have to do something to stop to stop the momentum of this And the only way I knew how to break the cycle would be to not dance. And then one of my Hula sisters that was standing next to me, she told me that she was afraid and she didn't want to go out and dance. And several other people came up and told me that I went into care-nurturing mode. mode. So I said, okay, I'll go talk to Kumu and see what happens. So I left the circle and I went up to her and I said, Mopu, I have to tell you something. We don't feel good about dancing. there was no anger she just said okay so she came to the group and she talked to us and said do you not want to dance you know of course everybody's kind of like what should I say and then I just said well I don't want to and then the majority of the girls were like yeah we don't want to we don't want to

meanwhile out in the audience somebody had started to sing i don't remember what song but

just to take the tension off i think someone started to sing and then everyone was singing

so despite the festive mood it was haunting if not coincidental to think that the night's intense lightning and thunderstorm literally shook edith kanaka ole indoor tennis stadium the storm caused the 40-minute blackout.

Eventually, the lights went on.

With the storm raging against the black sky, the announcer got on the mic.

He says, I'd like to announce our next halau, halau mo, hala'i'i'ma, under the direction of Mapuana de Silva. She comes up, goes up the ramp by herself, goes to a mic in the middle of the stage. and nobody knew what she was going to say.

But then she said, we have decided that our girls will not be performing this evening. My concern and care is first for my ladies. Thank you. Then everybody was clapping. I think they were clapping because she made her students number one it mattered what we felt mattered to her and that we were willing to be disqualified so this Mapuana came back from being on stage and making that announcement the rain just stopped as we were undressing and putting our costumes away and taking care of everything it went back to being a light mist with a little breeze and it was no rain for the rest of the competition I don't know what would have happened if we went up There were a whole bunch of halal after us. They danced, no problem. But I felt it's not meant to be danced by us. It didn't matter that we missed this competition, that we got disqualified, none of that mattered. Because I feel that we broke the cycle.

Thank you, thank you, Leanne, for sharing your story. Leanne told us that even though her group was disqualified from the 1986 competition the next night, they did have another chance to dance, and after all the ups and downs of the festival, they rocked the stage with one of the best performances ever. And Spooks, as you should know, the next Mary Monarch Festival is just days away. There'll be a link in our show notes where you can learn more. This piece was scouted by Isha Lopez. The original score was by Clay Xavier. It was produced by Zoe Ferrigno. If you dug this journey through the Shadowlands, Know that spook stories drop each and every week amazing stories from people who can scarcely believe it happened themselves. The Spook Podcast, never miss a moment. And, and, Snap Plus is now available. Finally, you can subscribe for bonus Snap episodes heard nowhere else and special Snap meetups, Snap stuff, Snap community, and more. Snap Plus, snapjudgment.org. now for just a moment let's talk about babies tiny little bundles of joy fat cheeks that smell that baby smell the other baby smell makes your heart grow three sizes too big but long time listeners to this show know that it often starts at the beginning and if you know an infant or a small child that demonstrates knowledge, powers understandings or memories that they didn't learn at nursery school, tell me about it. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spooked Studios stands centered between this world and the next, cloaked by KQED in San Francisco. Don't seek to find it. Let's it seek to find you. No Snap Studio content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Spooked. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51. And Spook is brought to you by the team that loves to hula dance, except for Mark Ristich.

No, Mark prefers to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight. There's David Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Eric Yanez, Marissa Dodge, Gina Bediaco, Miles Lassie. Dale Ducat, Sue Yee-Chu, Even Stern, Eve Jeffcoat, Ishael Lopez, Jack Darrow, Doug Stewart, Nicholas March. The spook theme song is by Pat Messini-Miller. My name is from Washington. And you know, I'm going to my auntie's house. My auntie's place. I'm contemplating my little quest for the divine. A search I know she would think was silly. my auntie she always wanted kids of her own I think she did I think I think that she did but it never happened that way for her so I believe this was my personal stroke of good fortune because when I was in the crazy at my house she could sometimes be the escape the respite the hug the hot meal The field trip fee The couch to sleep on The kind word The new kicks The gas money The good book The screaming from the stands at the graduation The address to write down When I didn't have an address The emergency contact When I didn't have an emergency contact All these little things I think about this Walking to her tiny apartment Busy searching for the divine but here the divine is shining bright in front of me and now the divine is cussing me out flitting all that cold air inside leaving her door wide open never ever ever ever

ever

never turn off the light

Thank you. Thank you.