"Murder by representatives of black magic", "Sorcerers-killers", "Wild manners of the Papuans" - such headlines were full of Australian newspapers after the murder of a young man named David Wade in Papua New Guinea.
For two years now, his mother has been unsuccessfully knocking the police doors in the hope of finding out the true cause of her son's death and the names of his killers. However, the official documents read: "David Wade was killed through evil witchcraft by shamans from a local ethnic sect." A more ridiculous official document is hard to imagine. But it should be noted that not everyone in Papua New Guinea is perplexed by it.
Wade was found in his apartment, in the bathroom, with a sheet tied around his neck like that. according to medical experts, in no way was the cause of his death. Wade was not strangled, and the secret of his death is not clear even to pathologists. As the police admit and what the Prosecutor of East Sepik Province is convinced of. Wade became another victim of an action by members of the Sangum religious-ethnic group.
The Sanguma are one of the four main ethnic groups practicing witchcraft, black magic and shamanism. It is distinguished by its strict discipline and strong influence on its members by the oldest shaman. But the main thing is that the sanguma was repeatedly noticed in the killing of people, both for reward and during the performance of their secret rituals.
This state of affairs frightens the public. Papua remains a country where most of the indigenous population trusts local sorcerers more than doctors, police and authorities. Until today, fresh graves are being destroyed here in some areas. Goal? Ritual eating of the dead at secret night witchcraft ceremonies. And the authorities are forced to admit their powerlessness.
There is nothing strange in this, because until the beginning of the 50s of the XX century, the people inhabiting this island (New Guinea) were a motley mass of tribes, clans and families, many of which lived according to only they knew the laws, professing various religions and communicating in different languages. At first, the island, or rather its southeastern part, belonged to Britain (since 1884), then to Germany.
In 1920, it came under the jurisdiction of Australia, and in 1975 it received full independence. Just at this time, doctors, teachers and specialists from all branches of agriculture and industry began to be invited to the country in order to help the young state get on its feet and join the world civilization. Most of the volunteers were Australian.
23-year-old teacher John Mumford enthusiastically responded to the invitation to help the Papuans in their primary education, not even suspecting what awaits him in this country. When he first entered the classroom, he was struck by a huge poster on the wall: "It is strictly forbidden to spoil teachers." After reading this, Mumford realized that he was in a very strange world. A few days later, he himself had to write a huge poster forbidding children in the courtyard to throw spears at each other and shoot bows during breaks.
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On that day, one of the children pierced an eight-year-old student through and through. The boy died right there on the playground. Mumford was most surprised by the fact that the culprit was never found. The children flatly refused to give his name, and the parents of the deceased reassured the teacher, saying that the shaman knew the name of the killer. Later he learned that as "compensation" the guilty party gave the parents of the deceased boy four goats and two piglets! This ended the incident.
Mumford was given a dwelling - an ordinary reed hut, where it was impossible to walk barefoot due to the abundance of huge stag beetles and snakes that penetrated through the windows and cracks in the floor.
But the teacher Mumford received a real "baptism of fire" on the day when he decided to play football with high school students. "Attaching" wholeheartedly to the ball, John thought he broke his foot. The ball seemed to him just stone. He began to play more accurately. But then he could not resist and took the ball in his hands to examine. Within a moment, the students were carrying the insensible body of their teacher to the bench. When Mumford came to his senses, they confirmed to him that he really played football with a human head.
The head belonged to a man who broke local "rules of conduct" and was beheaded at night in the forest by the decision of the tribal sorcerers council. His brain and some parts of his body were eaten by sorcerers immediately after the execution, and the remains were thrown into a vacant lot, where they were found by schoolchildren and their heads were adapted for playing football.
Later, Mumford heard about the kidnapping of people by shamans and sorcerers for various violations. A violation could mean theft, deception, non-observance of religious canons, etc. If the violation was recognized by the sorcerers as significant, then the guilty one was sentenced to death. Mumford recalls an incident when the father of one of his students disappeared one evening.
In the morning he crawled home, but soon died of blood poisoning and kidney failure. Before his death, he admitted that some people for several hours in a row pierced his body with the finest wood needles, pre-moistening them in some kind of liquid, and chanted spells over him. There is no doubt that "some people" were shamans, but the poor fellow was afraid to give their names. However, not a single injection or scratch was found on the peasant's body.
The following incident brought Mumford into a state of complete prostration. One day he came to school and found one of his students in a very strange form at the school desk. A 14-year-old boy had a human skull around his neck. His arms and forearms were adorned with bracelets made from human vertebrae. Behind his belt was a bone-bladed knife. Apparently, the student was pleased with the effect he had on the pale-faced teacher. And Mumford's face became even paler when he learned that the skull, vertebrae and all other bone "decorations" belonged (or rather belonged) to the student's mother, who had died the day before.
According to local customs, the meat of the deceased was eaten by her closest relatives, and the bones were taken for good luck by the son as talismans. He made himself a knife from his mother's rib. The pupil's talismans did not surprise anyone except the teacher. John Mumford, on reflection, decided that the child was probably zombified by sorcerers, otherwise his behavior could not be explained.
He did not know that cannibalism plays a significant role in traditions and especially in the magical rituals of the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea. Sorcerers are sure that by eating a person's flesh, they take possession of his vital forces, receive his wisdom, and in addition, make his spirit more kind. Strange, however, eating corpses does not cause visible damage to the health of the Papuans.
After this incident, John Mumford stayed in Papua for another year and a half, but then returned to Melbourne, where he wrote a book about his stay in the country of evil sorcerers and ferocious cannibal shamans, on which he became rich. But based on the fact of the death of the unfortunate David Wade, we can safely assume that sorcerers and shamans in Papua New Guinea have not yet died out.
Roman Aleev