In Sierra Leone there has been some mighty fine witchery going on. It all seems to have started when a local evangelist named "Mama Paris" as a witch and Lamin, a local herbalist was called in to deal with the problem. The headline pretty much guarantees you are in for a wild ride: "Over 5,000 witches disempowered as Herbalist says 'Misbehaving corpse was underworld Queen'" and the story doesn't disappoint, in fact it may be the best witchcraft story of recent years, it is certainly up there with the Thai tampon story (both of which recall The Boxer's Omen, more on that below the fold):

Lamin aka Otogu said “I told her that there are demons in their house, one is at the door; the other is at the entrance gate.” He went on “I told her if you want to prove it let them get me a pick-axe to dig up and remove it.” He said he used the pick axe and cracked open the cement on the ground by the gate and there was a pipe there. When they removed the pipe the first demon which came out had 38 teeth. It had hands and feet and a tail and can also talk. The one near the door looked like a ball and it had horns and all kinds of cowrie shells (jegae) fastened on it.

The attention turned to Mama Paris' daughter:

“I told her that if we are able to remove the witch pot then we are going to be able to get rid of the witch. Seven of us then left for where her daughter is staying at Steward Street including the mother, the younger brother and his wife.”

He went on “inside the house we started hearing the sound of a cat. It was as if it was running inside the ceiling. When I slap the wall the cat will scream in the other direction. The daughter then asked whether it is a cat that is screaming and where is it screaming from. I said don’t ask me you know you are the cat, and if you refuse to give it up to me you are going to go die with it. I told the delegation let’s return. We then returned to Campbell Street the resident of Mrs Paris I told her to get some items for me to perform a rite so that I can get easy access to the pot. I told Madam Paris that after the rite the person who is the witch will become sick and is going to confess and die.”

He went on “Mama Paris disclosed to me that her daughter often sends food for her, and I instructed her not to eat the food that she was sending. The old woman called me on my mobile to tell me that the daughter had sent salad for her and I told her to throw it away and not eat it. This apparently angered the younger brother who said he wanted to know why I was telling their mother not to eat the food that their sister prepared for her. I told them that they should follow my instructions and wait and see. Three days after performing the ceremony the old woman called to say that her daughter is sick and she was being taken to the hospital and I told them not to go there and not to visit her. After three days,” he went on “I was called again that she had started confessing at Connaught hospital and she was saying ‘I come in oh yes oh go tell mama say yes oh’ and she was begging for me to remove the pot. I told them the only way to remove the pot is after her death, they asked if she is going to die. I said yes; in the next two days, and indeed two days later she died.”

Blimey. However, this is only the start, because we all know death is not going to stop the more troublesome elements:

He explained “I told the family that after death her corpse is going to be trouble. I instructed them not to see or touch the corpse. On the day she was being buried I told them now we can go and remove the pot.”

Questioned what happened at the Columbia Davies, Lamin said though they failed to expose the secret to the public “when the corpse started performing they went to the relatives and asked them to collect their corpse earlier than the arranged time. They complained that the body was causing problem.” He questioned “if the Columbia Davies people are telling the truth why did they go to the old woman to tell them to go and collect their corpse? He said that it was not true that she was smoking but she definitely got up. He said they laid her with her head resting on one side but when they came the face was turned straight up and the eyes were open. All of that was happening because the pot was still in the house” he said.

Yep, not all the witchery has been rooted out yet and the solution isn't something you'd see in The Exorcist (although it has a feel of Father Ted about it):

So on the day of the funeral he said he told Mama Paris to get police officers to accompany him to remove the pot at Steward Street. He said 7 police officers from Adelaide street Police station accompanied him to the residence together with Mama Paris. “Before we entered the house I removed all my clothes and stood naked and I told them to take note that I was not holding anything and i did not have any charms on me -then I went in with the Police. I asked them if they saw anything and they said no. So I performed a ceremony and removed the (witchcraft) darkness that was hiding the pot. Then they saw the pot swinging violently on the chain.” Laughing, Lamin said the police officers broke down the door in their fight to run out of the house after seeing the pot. He said the pot was tied with chains similar to those used on dogs and inside the pot there was a cat with its face turned downwards and the tail hanging out. This he explained signified the underworld.

There were people’s heart, arms and legs inside. These he said were people who had been captured and enslaved through witchcraft.

This enslavement seems to have been widespread:

This was when Lamin revealed that as a teacher the deceased had initiated a good number of students in her school into witchcraft, and after he destroyed the pot these kids will seem as if they are waking up to discover their true selves again.

He said the deceased lady was the Queen of the underworld and over five thousand witches were looking up to her and had got their powers to witch through her. “That is why you people saw such a large crowd they were now all people there were a lot of witches among the crowd who knew what was happening and had come to see. Lamin said it was a serious fight to remove that pot and the deceased had been able to maintain her position by drinking human blood, washing with blood and swimming in it. Lamin said she controlled thousands of witches and her demise was like the falling down of a big cotton tree. He said that was why witchcraft activity in the country had experienced a lull since he destroyed the pot.

If you are having similar problems he can be hired (although I suspect not for children's parties or bar mitzvahs):

Lamin Kalokoh said he was one of 124 people in the world who had been certified to do this kind of work and he had been doing it since he was 11 years old. He said those who wanted his services should go to no. 6 King Williams street Krootown road that is where he attends to people.

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Looks like things got fun at the weekend:

A bizarre debate is raging at a revered Hindu temple in India's northeastern state of Assam with a French man and a German woman joining hundreds of mystics and seers making claims of performing wonders with their miraculous supernatural powers.

"One cannot deny miracles and the existence of mystical powers in this world. My blessings help childless couples conceive, besides treating patients with chronic ailments," Giri Baba told IANS even as he smoked a hookah filled with marijuana.

Anyone spot a teensy problem?

Seems all these holy men are coming together for a big miracle festival at a temple dedicated to Kamakhya (a mother goddess linked with Kali, apparently it is on the site where Sati's... yoni fell when her corpse was cut into pieces, gotta love those ancient myths):

More than 500,000 devotees, including thousands of monks, have converged here for the ritual. The festival is being held to mark the menstruation period of the goddess during which the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine remains closed to worshippers.

...

The Kamakhya temple has long been considered the highest seat of tantricism, a sort of black magic that has been an integral part of India's folklore for centuries.

"Performing wonders is not difficult at all... I can make a childless couple conceive, find a distressed loner a spouse, or even cast an evil spell on others," boasted another mystic who identified himself as Kala Baba, a frail looking man sporting a flowing unkempt beard as he prepared for a fire ritual at the Kamakhya.

For many of the seers, the Ambubachi Mela is a meeting ground and an occasion to exhibit their psychic powers - from standing on one leg for hours to another burying his head in a pit and standing upright.

People are coming from all over the world, although some seem to have baser motives:

"There is something paranormal here at Kamakhya where most of the sadhus (seers) are capable of performing miracles... though most people would like to dismiss such claims as rubbish," said Pagala Baba, known as one of the most sought after mystics among devotees from far and wide.

...

"A vast majority of the people come here to catch hold of a seer to harm their foes. It is possible to cast evil spells on adversaries, but then only a few would agree to do so," said Pagala Baba.

Sounds great and I'd love to go but I'd imagine it'd be difficult explaining to friends and family that you are planning on visiting a goddess' disembodied lady parts to take parts in miracles.

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Some videos below the fold

As we've seen this year is already looking like a real return to form with wild designs appearing in the fields of Britain. A strange design even appeared below a white horse and Greg Bishop suggests it has some kind of "sigil" feel to it. Now we have another impressive example:

Is there a "message" in those crescents around the cap? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

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What strikes me is that when you look at the latest crop circles (below the fold) a number of them appear to have a similar theme (nature: plants and animals) and style (the mushroom, jellyfish and dragonfly have a wide "head" and long "tail", they seem to have potentially significant patterns and/or some kind of crescent design in the "tail"). Are they being created by the same... "agency"? If so then someone is on an amazing role and must be devoting a vast amount of time to these:

The question of the strange interconnectedness of twins is something that many of us have pondered and there are many tales which suggest something odd is going on (macro-level quantum entanglement in the womb??). This report from China gets excited about this:

When twin sisters got the same scores on this year's national college entrance examination, villagers in Shaoxing, east China's Zhejiang Province started to wonder if the girls read one another's minds, according to a story on Zjol.com.

The twin sisters, Zang Jiahuan and Zang Jiale, took the annual college entrance exams at the beginning of this June. When they received the results showing they both scored 644 points, they were shocked.

"We never expected it," the girls said in unison, telling a reporter who asked if anything like this had ever happened before, "this is the only case."

The reporter became even more curious when he found the pair repeatedly finished one another's sentences.

Wondering if the twins could have telepathy, the reporter conducted an experiment on them. When asked questions about their lives, the sisters always answered in one voice, which stunned the onlookers and made the reporter conclude that telepathy did exist between the sisters.

This seems a little weak, people who know each other very well can often finish their sentences (I used to finish my A Level Geography teacher's, but he did have a stutter and it helped keep the class moving) and others are sceptical:

However, Xu Yi, a doctor in Zhejiang No. 1 Hospital denied the conjecture. He said it was not unusual for twins to get the same or similar scores on tests because identical twins are born with the same genes, which decide their personality, intelligence and ways of thinking.

Xu added that the twins also have the same family and education background; therefore, they would find the same solutions to solve problems in the exams.

However,it is still a topic that deserves further study. How it works give a good overview, which illustrates how important well-thought experiments are, and we should be wary of coincidence and overly anecdotal evidence. That said Guy Lyon Playfair has written a whole book on this and done experiments (OK it was done for Richard and Judy but still...) which might suggest... what? Twin empathy?

Anyone know of any good experiments? Whether the results are for and against.

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JerryB posted this on the forum but I thought it was too good to not blog, especially as we seem to be caught up in one of the busiest crop circle seasons in quite a while:

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.

She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.

"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," he added.

And I thought the hedgehog theory of crop circles was odd!!

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