Of Bizarre Happenings Defying Human Logic
It may sound stranger than fiction yet it is true.
It is what would make for a rich plot in one of Nollywood or Bongowood movie
that had witchcraft or elements of mysticism as a central theme. Yet these
happenings, and rare sightings, bordering from weird to bizarre, and defying
human or science logic, have from time to time been reported with the
authentication of the same proving a hard sell.
Not long ago
in a Nakuru County village, a woman was sent packing by unseen forces believed
to have been sent by her co-wife. She happened to be the first wife of a now
deceased prosperous businessman. He had built her a house on a small acreage of
land compared to his second wife. He and the latter were living on a vast track
of land in an imposing bungalow. As is known that no woman can stand the sight
of the other one sharing her husband, the first wife believed the second one,
younger to be her own daughter, had taken her husband away.
This first
wife would complain her share or property, especially the land, was small and
didn’t befit her status as the first wife. She had several children compared to
the’ interloper’. She camped in the home of the second wife and took charge of
the land as hers. The husband kept warning her to desist and return to her home
or she would ‘see’. Sadly, he died before he could make any peace deal between
his two wives.
After the
burial, the fist wife continued with business as usual. But one day, while
tilling the garden, two human hands appeared from the ground, scooped loose
soil and hurled it into her eyes. Her screams attracted scores of curious
neighbours who dismissed her tale with some speculating that she may have
struck on an object with hoe which sent soil flying into her eyes.
A few days
later, she was back to the same garden and while stooped down working, the same
hands appeared again this time violently hurling the soil to her eyes almost
rendering her blind. She claimed a voice, reportedly that of the deceased
husband, told her to clear out of the compound for her own good.
Sometimes
back, also in a Nakuru County village, a former civil servant lay on his
deathbed at his house. From time to time, he would scream pleading for mercy
from an invisible assailant whom he would call by name. Each time this
tormentor made visitations, he would be left with discernible marks of a
physical assault that confounded many. At first, it was easier to dismiss the
tale as a case of aggravated delirium owing to the nature of his terminal
illness. But his naming the assailant and the crime he did against her raised
questions than it answered about the state of his mind.
According to
an area resident, the man was said to have done worse things to an employee in
his heydays as a civil servant who later vowed revenge after being spurned and
dismissed. But she died in inexplicable circumstances and it was claimed her
ghost had come to haunt him on his deathbed.
Following
his burial, strange happenings began to be seen. Residents claim a thick black
snake emerges from his homestead and scares away passers-by at evenings. At
daytimes, it spreads itself lengthwise across the road and makes for the hedges
with the approach of any passer-by.
An elderly
area resident said he was going home sometimes back around 7p.m when the sound
of a bleating sheep attracted him. Believing some animals were strangling the
sheep, he edged to the hedge to have a peep inside. To his shock, it was this
snake making the bleating noise and shot out as he approached. It is hard to
authenticate his story, and others, as many had adopted a hush-hush approach to
the issue owing to fear.
And a man
was forced demolish his home, sell his land and relocate back to his advanced
parent’s home. This was to escape the wrath of his departed wife who was said
to be making it to the dinning table in an apparition form asking why she
hadn’t been factored in the meals. It’s reported she was against his desire for
remarriage, that he ended sending his second wife away.
Even
relocating to his parent’s home didn’t ease his woes. The spiritual form of
this wife stalks him everywhere. A former church member, he had now sunk to
depression and had taken to alcoholism. But even in drinking dens, the phantom
of his wife confronts him there that at times, he screams dunking under the
tables pleading with her to leave him. And it happens in his sound state of
mind even before he is intoxicated. Patrons says some of his drinks are spilled
off mysteriously even when put on a stable table.
An elderly
villager says the man may have offended ancestral spirits and had been courting
such misfortunes. According to some traditional Kikuyu beliefs, offending the
spirits would result to a condition known as thahu (uncleanliness). To purify oneself, one needed to appease the
angry spirits with animal sacrifices. And in the situation of this man, he
should have demolished his house and constructed a new one. But this ‘solution’
doesn’t hold sway anymore as many beliefs had been swept under the carpet with
modernism.
During the height of Kenya's electoral violence in 2007, a man hailing from western Kenya and working as a farmhand for a wealthy Nakuru family, was attacked by members of a proscribed sect as he was fleeing Nakuru for the safety of his native home county. His bloodstained shirt, it was alleged, was taken to a witch doctor operating in western Kenya and, bizarrely, anyone who participated in shedding his blood began dying one after the other in mysterious circumstances. Within two years, none of the gang of about eleven members was alive.
Curiously, a mganga mashuhuri (witch doctor), who
claims to be a ‘demon buster’, says the ‘ghosts’ many people claim to see are
actually demons. In the three cases highlighted above, the demons were involved
in executing the will of aggrieved parties.
The
‘doctor’, who purports to hail from Ukambani and operates at Free Area township
on outskirts of Nakuru town, proclaims himself an expert in strange fields
including preventing lightning sent by an enemy from striking one if his
signage is to be believed. Though he’s guarded about his trade, he says demons
wears the face of someone one is familiar with in order to torment the living.
This is what makes one to ‘see’ ghost of somebody they know.
His claims
can be authenticated by the testimony of D.D Kaniaki, who in his book, Snatched from Satan’s Claws, reveals
the depth he went into Satanism and how he would employ demons to afflict the
living.
The author
claims that at his birth, a demon wearing the face of a dead uncle went into
his parent’s room during his birth and demanded that he be named after that
late uncle. This uncle, he says, was involved in deep occultism and it was
weird how he ‘resurrected’, gave instructions, and returned to the dead.
The mganga
says what feeds the demonic is the negative words or remarks one makes against
another. These evil powers will ensure harm is effected against the individual
or the person the words, which acts as a curse, are directed towards. Thus, if
one volubly says he or she will kill self, the demons will chance upon these
words to push that person to suicide. Kaniaki supports these observations in
his writings. The mganga further says the nature of attack on an individual;
their homes and families depend on the operative demonic powers in a place.
They can vary from mild tempered to violent ones that leaves destruction,
sicknesses and curses in their wake. This explains why certain misfortunes
afflict some places, people or homes.
But a pastor,
whose name would rather be anonymous, terms the mganga’s views as rubbish. He
notes the waganga have never meant good to a society’s wellbeing, and where
there are wagangas, poverty and
hardships afflict the places. His take is the waganga’s are themselves
conveyors of evil through the dark powers they employ and lives large thanks on
the fear of their gullible customers.
He says
demons are bodiless entities that need a vessel like a human body to possess.
He wonders what those who claim to see them in their true manifested forms as
ghosts were either suffering from or had consumed.
“There is a
possibility those who claims to see them are either undergoing psychosomatic
ailments or high on substances,” he says.
He adds no
departed soul can influence any happenings on the physical realms other than
dark spiritual operative powers in places. This reinforces the argument of the
mganga and the man of cloth too admits words spoken have power on them. They
can bring either blessings or curses or influence the state of mind of an
individual.
The spirits,
he notes, preys on fears of an individual and other loopholes to gain access.
“Just as one leaves a house door open and a thief gains access, even the
operative forces will seek a loophole in order to attack, occupy or destroy an
individual or their homes. There is nothing like a departed soul avenging
itself on the living,” he says.
Some
situations, however, are hard to countenance. Examples abounds like women being
raped, men sodomized or things being banged in houses, food hurled from cooking
stoves or even rocks being hurled on house rooftops, and by, you guess, these
strange forces!
Image: credit
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