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Can witch doctors, hex, or bewitch their enemies to death?

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What really killed this man in Oklahoma City?

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His death certificate says he died of asthma, but his doctor believes the real cause was

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more sinister.

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Was he killed by a curse?

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Literally scared to death?

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Mistress from the files of Arthur C. Clarke, scientist, writer, and visionary, the scientist

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who invented the communication satellite, the author of 2010, and now in retreat in

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Sri Lanka, the visionary who ponders the riddles of this and other worlds.

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These are devil dancers from Sri Lanka, which you will find in many other parts of the world.

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Their rituals were designed centuries ago to drive out demons and overcome spells.

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Although devil dancing is a popular tourist attraction, it would be a mistake to regard

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it as a quaint survival from a superstitious past.

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Millions still believe in it.

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In the jungle in Sri Lanka, belief in the magic that kills is very much alive.

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The sinister spells are cast in a mountain cave.

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With drumbeat and fire, the devil dancer calls on a demon to help him lay a curse on his

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enemy.

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To make sure the victim dies, the spell demands a human skull, freshly dug from the village

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graveyard.

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If this bait works, the dancer is possessed by the demon, which demands mesmerized cockerels

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as a sacrifice.

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When the rites are over, ashes from the ceremonial fire must be hidden near the enemy's home.

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There they'll be left to work their murderous magic.

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Taking an evil spell calls for equally elaborate ceremonies.

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This woman believes she has been bewitched.

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Paralyzed with fear, she's brought for exorcism.

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The devil dancer's job is to entice the demon from the woman's body.

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Then the senior sorcerer, or Katadia, catches the demon on a thread and imprisons it in

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a bottle.

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He promises that the spell will be lifted when the bottles consigned to the depths of

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the Indian Ocean.

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In Burma in World War II, West African troops amazed their officers with stories of the

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power of the juju.

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One officer, a captain, remembers a case that ended as predicted in death, Alf Lewis.

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A soldier had gone to see the colonel, asked for an interview, and asked to be sent back

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to West Africa next day.

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He had to be in his village in West Africa next day because a juju was going there, and

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he had to be in his hut when he came.

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The colonel said it was impossible, he couldn't be gone back to West Africa at that time.

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The man said, if I no go to juju, juju go down to me, I go die.

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The man had said to someone, one of his friends, that he would die next day, at midday.

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He was in the admissions tent, and he was lying on a stretch of bed.

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Young champ, perfectly fair to partner, just lying there, eyes open, looking at the tent

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ceiling, the roof.

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The major said, what do you think about him?

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Well, I'd had some experience in the RMC before I was commissioned in the military hospital,

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and so I had a look at him, and his pulse was normal, respiration, breathing was all right,

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temperature, no temperature.

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Just lying there quietly, looking at, wouldn't answer any questions, wouldn't talk.

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The following day, about half past twelve, so the phone rang, and I picked it up, and

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it was the major from the field ambulance.

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He said, do you remember that chap we saw yesterday?

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I said yes, he said, well, he's slipped away on time, stuffed as well as long.

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Died, closed his eyes, died.

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He apparently just stopped breathing, closed his eyes, and died.

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It sounds fantastic, yet there is chilling evidence, gathered by doctors and psychiatrists,

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and published in respected medical journals, that magic does work sometimes.

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Spells can bring illness, and even death.

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And this happens not only in the East, or the lands of Voodoo, but throughout the world.

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In America, for instance, this family drug store is well-stocked with the weird potions

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and powders, prescribed by the local form of Voodoo.

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Plenty of products to ward off evil spirits, at least amongst the goods for sale over the

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counter.

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In this part of the world, Voodoo is called root medicine, because the people believe that

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some plants have magical power in their roots.

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The city's doctors have to take root medicine seriously.

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Dr. Ramsey Millett Jr.

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If I wanted someone to really suffer and die, and I knew this person believed in this, then

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I would knowingly put in a black root bag a mixture of different things, which will

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ensure that this person will suffer and die.

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The first thing I would do would be to put a root in there, then the next thing I would

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do is write that person's name down, down nine times, on virgin parchment paper, with

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dragon blood ink, put it in there along with the root.

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Then I would get some graveyard dust from a grave of some dude or dootess who has committed

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horrendous crimes.

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In other words, this has to be a very bad person, whom some people say is like a devil.

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And again, you put this in the root bag.

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That's the essential ingredient in that.

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If possible, again put hair from the intended victim.

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They're hair.

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Again their fingernails.

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Again some feathers, if possible from a buzzard.

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A vulture there.

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If you want to make them suffer, in addition to just dying slowly, if you want to make

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them have sharp pains, it's best to cut a undershirt, a part of the undershirt, right

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over the heart.

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And this will give them pains in the heart.

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Put a needle in it.

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Put it inside the root bag.

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And again tie up this root bag and plant it someplace on the person's property or as

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close to that person as you possibly can get.

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Root medicine flourishes, especially on the island south of Charleston.

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Traditionally, people who believe they've been hexed come to this graveyard and ask

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the spirits of the dead to help lift the spell.

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Caretaker Ben Parker knows the ritual.

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The spirit must be paid with half a pint of whiskey and nine cents.

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If I got a bad spell, I come right here.

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I dig a hole in it.

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And I'll call it.

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You can see the name on it.

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So you call them by the name.

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Lydia Brown.

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Then you say Lydia Brown.

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I have a bad spell on you.

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I want you to take it off.

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I'm paying you.

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I don't want you to do it for nothing.

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I'm paying you to do this for me.

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Then you dig a hole.

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Pour half a pint of whiskey and nine cents in there and cover it back up.

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After a lifetime on Edisto Island, Ben Parker knows the recipes of Root medicine and sometimes

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his neighbors consult him.

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What other things would they use for a death spell?

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You can take a rattlesnake, kill a rattlesnake and drag it through your yard and I can kill

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it all of your people in your house.

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And that would be like a very evil spell.

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Yeah, that's a death spell.

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Ben specializes in protecting houses against harmful influences.

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He shares Nora Estevez how to use household ammonia to ward off the magic of evil roots.

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When you put this around, I just want to make sure what will you be protecting me from.

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When you put this around, this will protect you from people putting anything around here

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for you to pick up and if anything here, it'll eat it up.

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Here in South Carolina Root medicine creates serious difficulties for conventional doctors.

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Psychiatrist Mike Lampkin works on the islands.

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He's expert at spotting the signs.

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For example, I hear.

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Now you notice this house over here that's got the dark blue trim around the windows

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and around the door and how the posts are painted up along the front porch.

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That blue protects the dwellers of that home from the evil spirits or from a root being

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applied to them.

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Dr. Lampkin regularly has to sort out the consequences of root medicine.

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Today he's been called to a patient who's convinced she's under an evil spell.

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Lampkin has learned from experience that he must pretend to be a root doctor himself

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to have any chance of success.

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I have to transform myself from the pseudo sophisticated psychiatrist into the very,

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very omnipotent and all-knowing root doctor.

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The de-hexing session has all the trappings of root medicine.

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Do you know the name of the person who has placed the root on you?

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I don't wish to know the name.

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He gives her harmless drugs which cause hot flushes and tomorrow will turn her urine bright

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green, signs that the evil spirits are leaving her body.

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With this elaborate ceremonial, Lampkin hopes to convince the woman that he is a very powerful

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root doctor.

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When I draw near unto the sick man, when I examine the muscles of the sick man, when

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I compose his limbs, when I sprinkle the water of awe on the sick man, when I subdue the

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sick man.

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Both Lampkin and his patient wear blue glasses, the traditional protection against evil spirits.

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You have three scents from your husband, four from you.

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And you place the three scents from your husband on this side of the plate and the four from

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you on that side.

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Finally, when he's convinced the patient believes in his powers, Mike Lampkin gets her to help

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him cast out the spell.

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Though he says it's all a charade, Lampkin's de-hexing usually works.

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You must tell no one what has taken place here.

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You may tell your husband that the problems have been taken care of.

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I want you to keep this jar with you hidden for three days.

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On the third day, find a creek or river, toss this into it on the outgoing tide, toss it

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over your left shoulder.

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That will complete the process.

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But can roots affect even skeptical people?

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G. Gatti Dowling is a rational man.

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He's one of South Carolina's leading lawyers.

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OK.

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Thank you.

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And bake me three copies of that too.

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Thank you.

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Yet he's convinced that an evil spell was put on his family.

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It all began the day he sacked the maid.

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The daytime cook had gone in to clean up the room that Lucille, who had been our maid,

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had left and had found something in there that she called a root made up of two needles

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going one way and one the other and wrapped around with black thread and stuck into the

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head of the mattress where Lucille had been sleeping.

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And I pulled it up.

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And when I did, I walked back towards the kitchen and Liza saw me with a root in my

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hand and she went hysterical again and ran out into the yard again.

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Soon it seemed that the evil magic of the islands had invaded his home.

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My older son stopped breathing and was in a life-threatening situation.

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I was in a very life-threatening situation with a rupture of appendix.

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My small son came down with a double dose of measles and chickenpox.

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And my wife, she had this adult case of chickenpox.

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Let's say that the evidence adds up.

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I was thinking in terms of whether a jury would decide that I had had the root put on

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me and I would really have to conclude that they would.

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There's no doubt that people can lose the will to live, often through sheer fright induced

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by spells, despite the best efforts of the doctors to save them.

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In 1965, the British Medical Journal reported several well-authenticated cases of this amazing

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phenomenon.

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The members of the British Medical Association who wrote the letters still dine out on the

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stories.

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I have seen people in South London who were under the influence of a hex, the practice

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witchcraft, and they knew that they had been hexed.

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And they would show evidence of psychosomatic illnesses like asthma or skin irritations and

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so on.

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I had an extraordinary experience at the end of the war because a woman came into hospital

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and I was asked to see her.

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And she said she had been, I forget whether it was hex or the witch, and that she was

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going to die.

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And she did die.

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She sat up in bed staring ahead, eating nothing, nothing happening.

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She was literally frozen with fright.

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And she died in three days.

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When I was a house surgeon and one of the teaching hospitals in Montreal in 1935, I had a patient

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who had had an operation on her kidney.

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She had a perfectly reasonable post-operative course.

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About a week after the operation, the nurse came in one evening and said, would you like

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to look at the menu for breakfast in order what you would like?

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She said, oh, no, it's no use.

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She said, I'll be dead before breakfast time.

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Well, I was sent for.

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And she was so certain of this that I did something I had never done before and didn't

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do after.

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I sent for the head of the department who came in and he met the professor of medicine on

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the steps and he brought him in too.

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And they both checked this woman all over as thoroughly as they could.

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They reassured us all.

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And we all went to bed reasonably happy, I think.

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The next morning, the nurse woke this patient up, washed her as usual, gave her the breakfast

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menu, went out of the room for four or five minutes, came back and found her lying dead.

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I think most of us can understand someone becoming really quite sick because of fear

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or anxiety or a conviction that they've had a spell put on them.

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But the actual process of dying is difficult to understand.

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And the patients who did die, the ones that I looked into, there was no cause of death,

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no real identifiable cause of death.

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But psychiatrist Dr. Roland Littlewood has studied Vuru and believes there may be a medical

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explanation for these strange deaths.

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We have some evidence which comes from post mortems carried out in West Africa on people

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who died after having been cursed.

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The adrenal glands, which are two little glands near your kidney, produce adrenaline, which

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is necessary to keep your blood pressure up a whole lot of other things in your body.

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Now you get a surge of adrenaline into your bloodstream at crises, at times when you have

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to fight, times when you have to run away.

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Now it seems that in these particular individuals, after they've been cursed, the adrenal glands

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are completely drained of adrenaline, as if it had all been used up in one surge.

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As it was used up, the blood pressure then drops dramatically and the person dies.

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Is that what happened in Oklahoma?

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Here in the Odd Fellows Cemetery lies businessman Finis P. Ernest.

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He died at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Oklahoma City, in 1960.

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It's a long way from the lands of Rudu, yet Ernest's doctor, James Mathis, believes his

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patient was killed by a curse and that his death certificate gives only part of the story.

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Mathis suffered from asthma and visits to his mother seemed to trigger the attacks, as

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Mathis realized after lying him out of hospital one weekend.

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This was the first hint that we had that perhaps we were dealing with something a little bit

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more than just ordinary asthma.

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So a week later on August the 17th, we gave him the same sort of pass, but this time with

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some different instructions.

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We said, please do not visit your mother.

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Go in the opposite direction.

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Go to a motel and if I recall correctly, he actually went back to the place where he

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was born, a little town west of here about 150 miles.

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Came back at late Sunday evening with a story from his wife, Perkley, no wheezing, not a

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shred of difficulty.

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Well, this sort of trinket we thought and in his own mind he began to see that something

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was wrong, but perhaps he didn't get the physiology exactly correct.

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He said, it looks like I'm allergic to my mother, unquote.

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Phineas Ernest had been running a busy nightclub in downtown Ponca City, but by 1960 he was

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bored and decided to sell up.

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His mother was the partner in the business and she was furious.

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This man's mother was looked upon by him as infallible.

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He pointed out to me time and time again that mother had never been wrong.

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Sometimes she had predicted something, it came true.

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For example, she had predicted that his first marriage would fail.

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It failed.

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She predicted his second marriage would fail.

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It failed.

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She predicted his third marriage would be successful.

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It was successful.

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The business was the key.

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When he mentioned selling it, sometimes about a year or a year and a half before the final

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outcome, she adamantly said no in no way.

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And her words, according to him, were, something dire will happen to you.

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The memory of their last weekend together is cherished by his widow, Josephine.

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This last weekend that I had with him at the downtown Ponca in the motel, and we just had

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a marvelous time.

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And he just seemed like he could never be ill again.

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He, until he decided that maybe we'd better go by and see his mother.

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We did.

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After we went by to see his mother, it wasn't, but a few minutes till he started having

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this breathlessness, and I knew it was a Simon attack.

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And I had to hurriedly call the hospital and tell him that I was afraid that he was having

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another attack, and we'd be bringing him in.

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Once over the attack, Ernest told Mathis he was going ahead with the nightclub sale.

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After our session at 5.30, he called his mother and said, in essence, the doctor and I have

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talked this over, and I have decided to reinvest my money.

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And he was going to reinvest this money in a business that did not need money.

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And he said, we will not need your advice.

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She listened to him politely, apparently, and said, son, have I ever been wrong?

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And he said, no.

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And she said, what did I tell you?

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And he said, you said something dire would happen to me.

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She said, it will.

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It will.

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When the hour finished, Ernest was dead.

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I really believe that that last call, telephone call, conversation with his mother contributed

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directly to his death.

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Autopsy showed no heart attack, no stroke, no usual causes of death.

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That's why we call it a sophisticated version of voodoo death.

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These stories prove the extraordinary, even fatal, power that the mind can have over the

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body.

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After listening to the doctors, I'm convinced that people can be literally scared to death.

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Yet I don't believe that spells work unless the victim knows that he's a target.

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For what kills is not any occult power of the witch doctor, but the victim's own belief

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that he is doomed.

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This destructive influence of the mind over the body could become a power for good.

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Doctors have always known what a crucial role a patient's psychological state has on the

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progress of his disease.

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These dark tales of fear and death could lead to new techniques for harnessing the mind

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not to kill, but to cure.

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Magic and mind over matter.