This is actually a really horrible story. A vervet monkey was killed and burned in South Africa by a mob who was convinced it was a witch. Bonus awful points – the police helped out by shooting at the monkey.

It reported that the monkey wandered into the settlement last week Monday, May 23, and was pelted with stones, shot at by police, and then burnt to death.

Moswetsi was woken up by friends on Monday morning and told about the monkey. They said it was going around Kagiso “talking to people”.

Hopefully this is not foreshadowing for the monkeys if they ever actually do develop the ability to speak.

[Times Live]

I am not even really sure where to start with this one. Apparently, the Holmavik Museum of Scocery and Witchcraft in Iceland contains a gruesome exhibit called the necropants. Let us just cut to the chase – these are pants made from the skin of the lower half of a dead person. When worn, these pants would produce money as long as a coin stolen from a poor widow (!) was placed in the scrotum.

It was believed that the necropants would spontaneously produce money when worn, as long as the donor corpse had been stolen from a graveyard at the dead of night and a magic rune and a coin stolen from a poor widow were placed in the dead man’s scrotum.

Another source claims that you must first gain permission from the man before he dies. Once that is done, just follow these steps:

After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation the owner has to convince someone else to overtake the pants and step into each leg as soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the money-gathering nature for generations.

The museum website is mostly in Icelandic and Google translate is really sketchy, but you can also learn all about the Icelandic witch trials of the 17th century. Side note: the witches from Iceland had farting runes (Fretrúnir) that they used against their enemies.

[Tywkiwdbi and Mental Floss]

You know, we tend to lionize our cultural demon hunters: Van Helsing, Simon Belmont, Buffy Summers.

But you want to know when we don’t celebrate those who locate paranormal evil and vanquish it? When the acts of holy vengence look strangely like encouraging a populace to scar and murder their children because they cry too much.

Enter Helen Ukpabio, she is a Nigerian Pentacostal preacher who has made a reputation the world over for identifying children whose souls have been corrupted by Satan. She makes movies like the one you see above and her work is partly to blame for the trend in certain Nigerian villages to identify, beat, torture and sometimes murder children who are thought to be possessed by Satan.

And she’s here in America!

“Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh.

Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.

Such a screwed up story…

[New York Times]

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: “The Blair Witch Project”

Now that there’s an entire nation of teenagers axe murdering message board bandwidth with their rabid insanity for the low-budget POV horror flick “Paranormal Activity,” it seems appropriate to revisit the first popular “recovered footage” film.

William Castle (1914-1977), Filmmaker, Entrepreneur

Known for rigging joy buzzers to theater seats, employing live props and offering life insurance certificates in case a viewer died from fright, Castle would appreciate “Witch Project”’s straight-faced assertion that the movie is actually found footage. He’d probably also suggest supplementing it with some kind of scream-activated sprinkler filled with fake blood, or whoopee cushions that sound like Dracula laughing.

Virginia Dare (1587-unknown), First child born in America to English parents

Dare, by virtue of America’s unhealthy fetishization of babies, is the most famous of the ill-fated Roanoke colony’s vanished inhabitants. This is a no-brainer. She has a culturally ingrained fear of witches and firsthand experience with disappearing into the American wilderness. It’s like showing “Halloween” to Jason.

Ruggero Deodato (1939- ), Filmmaker

Though “Blair Witch” is often regarded as the first recovered footage horror film, two other movies – 1998’s “The Last Broadcast” and 1980’s “Cannibal Holocaust” – preceded it. Deodato directed the latter, which focused on a group of ethnologists setting out to film a cannibalistic tribe. Seeing as his movie was so convincing that it got him arrested for allegedly filming actual murders, he’d probably rank “Blair Witch Project” somewhere between chamomile and Ambien, but who doesn’t love a good nap?

Albert Maysle (1926- ), Documentarian

Albert Maysle and his late brother David helmed some of the 20th century’s most candid and affecting documentaries (“Grey Gardens,” “Gimme Shelter”). Given that the protagonists of “Witch Project” are introduced as documentarians in training, it seems fitting to have a seasoned professional grade them on their concept, execution and ability to cope in the field. I’m betting they lose points for all that running and screaming.

Gerald Gardner (1884-1964), Occultist

Inspired by pagan history and egged on by the infamous Aleister Crowley, Gardner founded the Wiccan religion. As such, he’s the go-to source for determining whether all the Blair Witch’s twig art and tent shaking were ritual necessities or superfluous theatrics. And I need to learn that spell that makes your neighbor’s cow sad.

Sure, they are evil but I doesn’t mean you couldn’t learn a thing or two from them. Matt Finley investigates The Upside of Evil.

The witches in the movie “The Witches” are conspiring to contaminate chocolate bars with a magic potion that turns people into mice, and then distribute the candy to children all over the world. And it’s not like the kids keyed the witches’ cars or prank called them and addressed them as “sizzle chest.” The witches just really hate kids. There is, however, a certain elegance in the way these wicked women conduct their evil work, and perhaps even some lessons to be learned.

Public Decorum Counts

The witches are hawk-nosed, rotten-toothed hags with bad skin and old lady hands. But, when they go out in public, they wear wigs and masks and admirably pass for zombie MILFs or obsolete cougars. They don’t don the disguises for themselves; they do it for the people around them, who don’t want to eyeball their gross witchiness. Everyone should try this. Wear clothes that are large enough to cover your back fat. Conceal your missing eye with a patch. If you have a prosthesis, wear it. Especially if you’re going to a restaurant. The only people who care about how you look are everyone around you.

Spread the Wealth

The free market only functions when everyone making money is also spending it. The witches seem to have untold quantities of ill-gotten dollars and conjured hex pennies, which they could potentially amass and horde while surviving on food and blouse spells, and holding their big meetings in a buried pagan temple or haunted coffee shop. Instead, they take the whole coven to a resort hotel, where they eat lavish meals and rent out conference space. Let’s all take a cue from these horrible crones and shovel some cash into the flaming drunk driving accident that used be the economy.

Enjoy your Work

There are plenty of hateful SOBs who run around smacking kids and shaking babies, but it never seems like their hearts are really in it. Meanwhile, these witches invested time and money in advanced thaumatological chemistry to concoct a magic poison. To see the witches’ smiling faces as they dose unwitting children with their liquid mojo, and then realize, “hey, those c-words are at work right now.” is both joyful and refreshing. Try to channel their enthusiasm into your own work. Or, at the very least, into a song about your work. The song could be called “I’m Likin’ This Work!”

You thought the Catholic Church was done persecuting witches. Well, they are at it again, this time in Stockport, UK.

High Priestess Amethyst Selmeselene (also known as Sandra Davis, grandmother of 11) attempted to rent out “Our Lady’s Social Club” for her group’s annual Witch’s Ball. When she went to pay for the venue she had secured, she was turned away and told that the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the facility, had blocked her from renting the center.

Her goal was to attract a crowd of people to do obscene and ungodly things like have a buffet dinner and dance to an ABBA tribute band.
Though we can fault High Priestess Selmeselene for her taste in music, we can’t fault her for wanting to get down and have a good time with her women’s group.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Shewsbury told Ananova News that “Parish centers under our auspices let their premises on the understanding users and their organisations are compatible with the ethos and teachings of the Catholic church.” And apparently that means a no go for pagan partying.

When will the Catholics leave those poor witches alone? When will they finally be free to dance to bad eighties music while talking shop around a bubbling cauldron? I guess the Church decided that if they can’t burn them, they should at least be able to ban them from their rec. center.

A Witch’s Bottle is a 17th century device believed to absorb and retain evil. Of course it was not the bottle itself that attracted evil, it was the witch’s potion held within it. When British researchers uncovered the most intact bottle ever discovered, they were sure to do a CT scan to identify its contents.

It seems British witches of 400 years ago liked to concoct a golden Witch’s brew. As was revealed by the CT scan, the contents were: pins, nails and urine. Hooray! This gives contemporary witches and wizards historical precedent for using human urine in their homemade potions today. MSBNC reported lead researcher Alan Massey as saying:

“the objects found in witch bottles verify the authenticity of contemporary recipes given for anti-witchcraft devices, which might otherwise have been dismissed by us as being too ridiculous and outrageous to believe.”

Score one for all you witchcraft urine masters out there!

The tribal village of Siadimal, India has emptied out in recent days. No, it’s not Diwali yet, the villagers of Siadimal have fled because of a witch’s curse. A witch’s curse that they claim has caused a mysterious disease to infect several people. The Times of India reports:

“More than 10 villagers have been suffering from an unknown fever for the past two months. There is no sign of improvement despite medical treatment,” said a villager on condition of anonymity. “In the past, alleged witchcraft has claimed many lives in our locality. We suspect this may as well be the act of a witch,” he added. The villager said the women are putting up with relatives in other villages. “The men are now in search of a powerful tantrik, who can counter the evil spell and also punish the culprit,” he said.

Ten bucks says, that if they are looking to pay a tantrik to confirm their suspicions, they will find a witch real fast.

Superstition abounds in rural India, often ill-understood illnesses are attributed to witchcraft and sorcery. Those determined to find a witch are going to find a witch, and local authorities are concerned that yet another innocent person is going to be murdered in the region by superstitious villagers. In 2007, three women and a man were beheaded in the nearby village of Pratappur after they were accused of sorcery.

-For more on North India witch hunts and murders see the documentary “Indian Witch-Hunt” by author and journalist Sohaila Kapoor.

Image Credit: Twinmama

Not one, but two paranormal conventions took place this last week in Salem, MA. The above photo shows serious paranormal enthusiasts and convention goers enjoying each others company (not really). Both Ghostock 7 and Witch School International’s “Three days of Wicca, Witchcraft and High Ritual” wrapped up a week long bout of investigating, speaking and witching it up. The town of Salem, which usually has no paranormal convention going on at any given time, had a perfect storm of conventions and doubled its paranormal population for the week.