Inexplicable forces that help or harm us - we can only make assumptions about their natures, thank the former for the help and, as far as possible, resist the latter. It is to these latter that the tokoloshi belongs - the African demon, whom an indiscriminate person can call to his service and set on any victim.
Something in the night
“Late at night I was sleeping in my room and suddenly woke up. Someone was sitting on me, pressing my body into the mattress, says Schepo Ngubane, a resident of Great Britain (Somerset county), an emigrant from South Africa. - I could not raise my head or move, it was difficult to breathe. Then I felt three sharp claws painfully dig into my buttocks. I was terrified, did not understand what was happening. And this "something" began to scratch and bite …
Since then, nights have become hell for me - every time I woke up from pressing heaviness and felt that someone invisible was having sex with me, but I could not do anything. I didn’t tell my husband about this, I was too ashamed. But soon after the first night attack, my husband himself stopped wanting me, stopped touching and kissing. When we went to South Africa for the weekend, he went to another woman."
Child-loving demon
In order not to torment the reader, let us say right away that Shchepo Ngubane fell victim to the African demon tokoloshi. According to legends, tokoloshi is not tall - less than a meter, covered with brown hair, he has one buttock and such a long male organ that the demon carries it over his shoulder. The tokolosha's face is senile, with small blood-red eyes, and a narrow bone crest sticks out on the head. The demon is extremely strong, few can overcome him. Taking a magic stone in his mouth, he becomes invisible. Only an experienced sangoma (medicine man) is able to see the tokoloshi, unless he himself wants to appear. But for some reason, this evil spirits do not hide from children. Fortunately, these demons are usually baby-friendly. Even being "on a combat mission", tokoloshi may disobey the "customer" and refuse to harm the child.
Promotional video:
Seeing a demon is almost as dangerous as surviving its attack. “If at night tokoloshi just catches your eye, you will be very ill,” assures the healer Tandi Ndolovu from South Africa. “And the doctors will not help you, they will not even understand what the matter is. The only person who can improve your condition is the sangoma."
The word "tokoloshi" is from the language of the Kosa tribe, but is used by all peoples of South Africa. Initially, tokoloshi was a spirit of water, but now it is considered a household demon in the household of witches and sorcerers. These highly sexually gifted creatures are responsible for making love with the mistress witches. For this, the demons are given milk and food. Witches say: in order for tokoloshi not to lose their sexual power, salt should not be added to their food. And to make them obedient, they cut off their bangs. By themselves, tokoloshi are almost harmless, and they commit evil only under the influence of human witchcraft.
Take revenge on your rival
It is not known exactly where the tokoloshi come from, there are several versions. Keketso Motale, a sangoma from South Africa, is sure that demons are molded from river mud and breathe life into them with the help of dregs - a witchcraft. There is another version: the sorcerer digs up a fresh corpse, rips out his eyes and tongue, and after a special ceremony drives a red-hot iron rod into the dead man's skull. The corpse from this procedure shrinks and turns into tokoloshi.
Most witch doctors, however, believe that a sorcerer cannot create tokoloshi. but is only able to call them for help.
Busiswe, a sangoma from KwaZulu-Natal, says: “Tokoloshi have existed around us for a long time, and if you call them, they will take something from you as payment for the service. But the sorcerer does not know in advance what the tokoloshi wants and how he will have to pay him. The more desires from the demon who called him, the higher the payment will be - up to the death of a close relative within a year.
Sometimes it seems to a person that he can find a way out of a difficult life situation only by turning to otherworldly forces. For example, women often go to a sorcerer to take revenge on a rival. And he gives them a special ointment for the body. Having smeared with it, a woman should sleep with her lover who betrayed her. Arriving home, he will love his new wife and thus "mark" her. Now the tokoloshi will know exactly who to attack, who to torture at night.
There are many signs that show that a person has become a victim of tokoloshi. Money, food and clothes suddenly start to disappear in the house, doors open and close themselves, strange sounds are heard and disgusting smells arise. People constantly feel the presence of someone else, sometimes angry laughter and a disgusting gnashing voice are heard. Tokoloshi hit people, scratch and even … bite off the victims' toes. In South Africa, in order to protect themselves from the attack of demons, women put bricks under the legs of the beds: it is believed that tokoloshi will not be able to climb on a high bed.
Even in parliament …
In 1999, K. Manyika, the head of the security service of the Zimbabwe parliament, publicly announced that he was attacked by several tokoloshi sent by his subordinates offended!..
Another case hit the pages of the Sunday Times on January 30, 2000. Journalists inform that the African Sejake family became victims of tokoloshi. In her house, someone scattered dishes, left threatening graffiti on the walls, family members received spanking, and curses were heard from nowhere. Only the son of Sejake saw the culprit of the outrage. Tokoloshi "helped" him in his studies with a kind of hooliganism, constantly destroying notebooks and textbooks. After that, the lazy boy calmly told the teachers that he could not do his homework because of the tokolosha. In the morning, family members often found that someone had pulled them out of the hut while they were sleeping or smeared them from head to toe with some kind of rubbish.
White South Africans are also attacked by tokoloshi. Diana Williams, a white native of Johannesburg, says: “At the Christmas party, I felt someone looking at me. The whole evening the unfamiliar woman did not take her evil eyes off me. I felt uneasy.
Returning home, I felt that I was being watched. There were shadows everywhere, and they moved.
At home I went to bed, but I could not sleep - the cabinet door creaked in the hallway. At first I thought it was due to the draft - a window was open in the kitchen. I got up to close the door. And in the closet I saw a tokoloshi, which immediately disappeared. I thought that I had dreamed this abomination. I returned to bed, and then my thighs began to itch so that I combed them in blood until the morning."
Exorcism
You can drive out tokoloshi if you find the strength to hit him. Then the demon will return to its sorcerer master and do with him what he had to do with the victim. However, only a few are capable of hitting the monster. Another way out is to go to the sangoma, so that he, with the help of dregs or a cleansing ritual, breaks the ties between the victim and the demon. Shchepo Ngubane from Somerset did the same when she returned to South Africa.
Sangoma told Shchepo that the woman sent the tokoloshi to whom her husband had gone. The ritual performed by the sangoma worked, and Shchepo's life changed for the better - she got married again, had two children and still lives in the UK, but still scatters magic powder around the house, not wanting to meet with the tokoloshi again.
An even safer way to get rid of tokoloshi is to use a dreg made from the body of a dead demon. The witch doctor sprinkles a magical substance on the path of the monster, and it, stepping on the murk, becomes visible and immovable - it can be easily killed.
Sleep paralysis
Scientists believe that demons appear in a person's imagination when he is in sleep paralysis. This is a state when, falling asleep or waking up, a person is unable to move. Paralysis is usually accompanied by a feeling of horror and difficulty breathing, a feeling of pressure on the chest and the presence of someone else in the room, hallucinations - auditory, visual, tactile, up to the illusion of sexual intercourse. According to various estimates, sleep paralysis occurs in 20-40% of the world's population. It only happens with natural awakening. If a person wakes up under the influence of external factors (bright light, alarm clock ringing), paralysis does not occur. In Russia, this state was explained as follows: they say, the brownie presses a person on the chest. In England it is believed that this is an old witch.
Well, with sleep paralysis everything is clear. However, how to explain the marks on the bodies of tokoloshi victims? Could the imagination of a motionless, hallucinating person leave scratches and bite marks on their skin? A number of parapsychologists believe it can. Indeed, with a poltergeist, the same traces appear on their own, even on those parts of the body where the victim does not reach. If such a phenomenon as a poltergeist is also caused by the subconscious of a person, the similarity of the mechanisms of influence becomes obvious. But still - how did sorcerers and witches learn to control these processes, starting and stopping them at will ?! The answer to this question has not yet been found …
Mikhail Gershtein. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" № 30 2010