Attack of the sex goblins

Because I'm tired of doing what we've done here lately, viz. looking at horrible scary things that could wipe out the human race if we don't for pity's sake do something, today I'd like to consider:

Sex goblins.

I mean, maybe they want to wipe out the human race, too, but all things considered, it sounds like a more pleasant way to go than coronavirus, climate change, a supernova, or a death asteroid.

The ball got rolling in this case because of an article sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia that started me thinking about why paranormal creatures always seem to show up amongst people who already believe in them.

Odd, isn't it?  And I'm not talking about cryptids, per se -- creatures that, if they exist, might be expected to have a native range just like any other animal.  I'm talking about real supernatural entities -- and I use the word "real" with some trepidation -- like the Jinn (who, strangely enough, are never seen outside of the Middle East), Trolls (more or less limited to Scandinavia), and the Tokoloshe (ditto South Africa).

It's a funny thing.  I mean, if they really are powerful, and can appear wherever they want to, I would think that on the whole it would be more effective for some of these creatures to show up in front of complete non-believers.  Like, at a meeting of the U. S. Senate, or something.   Can you imagine? Especially if it was the Tokoloshe, a grotesque being that is supposed to run around naked, and to have an enormous penis and only one buttock.

I don't know about you, but I would love to see the look on Mitch McConnell's face.

But it never happens that way.  The big, dramatic appearances are always around people who already are convinced such things exist.  Usually while they're alone.

I wonder why that is.

In any case, the article was about an incident at a school in Zimbabwe a while back, wherein Headmaster Peter Moyo was accused of terrorizing his students with goblins that were under his command.  Why Mr. Moyo would do such a thing isn't clear, and the specific accusations are peculiar, to say the least:

Villagers in Dongamuzi area under Chief Gumede in Lupane are demanding the transfer of Ekuphakameni Secondary School headmaster Mr Peter Moyo, whom they accuse of owning goblins that have been terrorising pupils and teaching staff at the school. Last term lessons at the school were disrupted for almost two weeks after teachers abandoned the school following several nights of sexual abuse by the alleged goblins... 

Female teachers at the school claimed that during the night they would dream making love to someone and woke up the next morning with signs that they would have actually had sex during the night. 

Some male teachers also claimed that they woke up every morning wearing female panties whose origin they did not know. 

Villagers have called for the transfer of the school head whom they say was fingered during a recent cleansing ceremony held at the school.

My first reaction is that given the nature of the accusations, they could have chosen their wording better than to say that Mr. Moyo was "fingered" at the cleansing ceremony.

Be that as it may, the ceremony appears to have helped:

A cleansing ceremony dubbed Wafawafa, was held at the school on 5 March this year by the International Healers’ Association, during which the villagers say Mr Moyo was exposed after an assortment of paraphernalia associated with witchcraft was recovered from his bedroom. 

A village head from the area, Mr Emmanuel Chasokela Maseko, said normalcy had returned to the school since the cleansing ceremony was held but insisted that Mr Moyo should be transferred from the school as he was a risk to the community.

So... Mr. Moyo was exposed, was he?  Okay, that's it; you need to repeat the journalism class in "Avoiding Double Entendres."

But anyway, what strikes me about all of this is that (1) the appearance of panties and the "signs of having had sex" could both be accounted for by the people in question actually having had sex, and then not wanting to admit it; and (2) the goblins seem like a convenient way to get rid of the headmaster, especially if he knew about the nighttime shenanigans and was trying to put a stop to them.  Only a supposition, but this seems more likely to me than there being a real Pack of Sex Goblins under Mr. Moyo's command.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Armandeo64, Goblin by armandeo64, CC BY-SA 4.0]

But since the authorities obviously believe in goblins who visit at night to have their wicked way with you, it appears that poor Mr. Moyo is out of a job.

So that's our excursion into the regional nature of supernatural entities.  It's a pity, really.  I'd love it if a Frost Giant showed up up at one of Donald Trump's pandemic press briefings/free Re-Elect Donald Trump campaign commercials.  Can you imagine?  Especially if the Frost Giant took it upon himself to smack the absolute shit out of Trump every time he lies.

That might make them actually worth watching.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is brand new -- only published three weeks ago.  Neil Shubin, who became famous for his wonderful book on human evolution Your Inner Fish, has a fantastic new book out -- Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA.

Shubin's lucid prose makes for fascinating reading, as he takes you down the four-billion-year path from the first simple cells to the biodiversity of the modern Earth, wrapping in not only what we've discovered from the fossil record but the most recent innovations in DNA analysis that demonstrate our common ancestry with every other life form on the planet.  It's a wonderful survey of our current state of knowledge of evolutionary science, and will engage both scientist and layperson alike.  Get Shubin's latest -- and fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride through time.

Attack of the sex goblins

It strikes me as kind of curious that paranormal creatures always seem to show up amongst people who already believe in them.

Odd, isn't it?  And I'm not talking about cryptids, per se -- creatures that, if they exist, might be expected to have a native range just like any other animal.  I'm talking about real supernatural entities like the Jinn (who, strangely enough, are never seen outside of the Middle East), Trolls (more or less limited to Scandinavia), and the Tokoloshe (ditto South Africa).

It's a funny thing.  I mean, if they really are powerful, and can appear wherever they want to, I would think that on the whole it would be more effective for some of these creatures to show up in front of complete non-believers.  Like, at a stockholder's meeting, or something.  Can you imagine?  Especially if it was the Tokoloshe, a grotesque being that is supposed to run around naked, and to have an enormous penis and only one buttock?

I don't know about you, but I would love to see the look on Donald Trump's face.

But it never happens that way.  The big, dramatic appearances are always around people who already are convinced such things exist.  Usually while they're alone.

I wonder why that is.

The question comes up because of an incident at a school in Zimbabwe last week, wherein Headmaster Peter Moyo has been accused of terrorizing his students with goblins that are under his command.  Why Mr. Moyo would do such a thing isn't clear; and the specific accusations are peculiar, to say the least:

Villagers in Dongamuzi area under Chief Gumede in Lupane are demanding the transfer of Ekuphakameni Secondary School headmaster Mr Peter Moyo, whom they accuse of owning goblins that have been terrorising pupils and teaching staff at the school.  Last term lessons at the school were disrupted for almost two weeks after teachers abandoned the school following several nights of sexual abuse by the alleged goblins...

Female teachers at the school claimed that during the night they would dream making love to someone and woke up the next morning with signs that they would have actually had sex during the night.

Some male teachers also claimed that they woke up every morning wearing female panties whose origin they did not know.

Villagers have called for the transfer of the school head whom they say was fingered during a recent cleansing ceremony held at the school.

Notwithstanding the fact that given the nature of the accusations, they could have chosen their wording better than to say that Mr. Moyo was "fingered" at the cleansing ceremony.

Be that as it may, the ceremony appears to have helped:

A cleansing ceremony dubbed Wafawafa, was held at the school on 5 March this year by the International Healers’ Association, during which the villagers say Mr Moyo was exposed after an assortment of paraphernalia associated with witchcraft was recovered from his bedroom.

A village head from the area, Mr Emmanuel Chasokela Maseko, said normalcy had returned to the school since the cleansing ceremony was held but insisted that Mr Moyo should be transferred from the school as he was a risk to the community.

So... Mr. Moyo was exposed, was he?  Okay, that's it; you need to repeat the journalism class in "Avoiding Double Entendres."

But anyway, what strikes me about all of this is that (1) the appearance of panties and the "signs of having had sex" could both be accounted for by the people in question actually having had sex, and then not wanting to admit it; and (2) the goblins seem like a convenient way to get rid of the headmaster, especially if he knew about the nighttime shenanigans and was trying to put a stop to it.  Only a supposition, but this seems more likely to me than there being a real Pack of Sex Goblins under Mr. Moyo's command.

But since the authorities obviously believe in goblins who visit at night to have their wicked way with you, it appears that poor Mr. Moyo is out of a job.

[The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781: image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So that's our excursion into the regional nature of supernatural entities.  It's a pity, really.  I'd love it if a Frost Giant showed up up at my school.  We've had the right kind of winter for it; and it might cut down on misbehavior.  "Okay, that's the third homework assignment you've missed this week.  Into the cave with the Frost Giant."

But you never get that kind of break when you need it.

End of the week wrap-up

Well, it's Friday, and TGIF, which I am allowed to say even though technically, I don't believe in G.  Be that as it may, we're going to end the work week with three stories we're carefully following here at Skeptophilia's main offices, nestled in the lovely hills of upstate New York.

The first story comes from the nearby state of West Virginia, where a Pentecostal pastor famous for handling poisonous snakes during his sermons as evidence that god was looking over him has died from a bite from a poisonous snake.  (Source)

Pastor Mark Wolford, 44, was a popular preacher on the revival circuit, drawing large crowds to his outdoor services.  Shortly before what was to be his last Hallelujah, Wolford posted on his Facebook page, "I am looking for a great time this Sunday.  It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good 'ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers."

Wolford's trademark was handling live rattlesnakes during his sermons, because of Mark 16:17-18:  "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

"Anybody can do it that believes it," Wolford said, in an interview in The Washington Post in 2011. "Jesus said, 'These signs shall follow them which believe.' This is a sign to show people that God has the power."

Well, I'm thinking that the rattlesnake might have had a say in the matter, too, because at a service last week, he put one of his snakes down, and it bit him on the leg.  Recalling the part about "they shall recover" from the bible passage quoted above, Wolford refused medical treatment, but was taken to a family member's house, where he died shortly afterwards.

Interestingly, Wolford's father, who was also a Pentecostal preacher, died at the age of 39 of snakebite in exactly the same circumstances.

"(H)e died for what he believed in," the younger Wolford said about his father's death in the interview in The Washington Post.  "I know it's real; it is the power of God.  If I didn't do it, if I'd never gotten back involved, it'd be the same as denying the power and saying it was not real."

Mmmm, okay.  We'll just leave that last statement as is, and move on to our next story.


We next have a story from far-away Zimbabwe, where two witches failed at flying their brooms under the radar.  (Source)

In Shackleton compound, a small mining village near Chinhoyi, a ruckus was raised when two women, Rosemary Kamanga and Esnath Madoza, were found dancing around naked after informing a neighbor that they needed some human flesh for a ritual.

The neighbor, Eneresi Mufunga, was awakened at 4 AM from a sound sleep, and got up to investigate.  She found Kamanga and Madoza running about without any clothes on, and (according to the article) "quizzed them on their mission."

I suspect this latter is just a quaint Zimbabwean way of saying, "what the hell is wrong with you two?", or some stronger variant, but in any case Kamanga and Madoza informed them that they were trying to find some human flesh, and wondered if Mufunga might have any she'd be willing to part with.  "It's a subtle, cunning approach," they were heard to say, earlier.  "It might just work!"

Understandably, Mufunga informed them that, as missions go, this one was a non-starter, and proceeded to raise the camp.  A crowd gathered, including the two unsuccessful witches' husbands, who "whisked them away home" where they were later found by the police.  At that point, they had decided to put on clothes, but they did confess to being witches, so they were then whisked away to a different place, namely jail, and charged with breaking Section 98, Chapter 9:23 of the Zimbabwean Criminal Law Code, wherein it is declared that it is illegal to practice witchcraft, caper about naked, and ask your neighbors for some human flesh.


Our last story hails from New Brunswick, where a farmer named Werner Bock has been charged with animal neglect after losing nearly 250 cattle over the past ten years.  (Source)

Police claim that Bock failed to feed the cattle, so they died of the effects of malnutrition.  Bock, on the other hand, says that the cattle were killed by "alien death rays."

"At least 250 head of cattle have died from what we call a death beam," Bock said on a YouTube video posted in May 2011. "Where the atmospheric air is manipulated into a death beam, focused on the noses of the animals."  The animals "breathe in the death beam" and then slowly die.

Veterinarians in the case have said that there are no signs of burns on the cattle, but that Bock might have been a little more successful with his ranching enterprise had he taken the step of providing his livestock with food.  Bock, who intends to be his own legal defense in the case, has already subpoenaed three veterinarians and one police officer to provide evidence.

Besides the general rule of "animals need to be fed," someone might want to explain to Bock about the concept that a subpoena for the defense only works if the people being subpoenaed can actually provide information that supports the accused's claims.  All three veterinarians have stated that they saw no evidence of "death beams," and the police officer, who was supposed to verify Bock's claims of seeing UFOs hovering over the farm, has said that he knows about no such thing.

So Bock might want to reconsider his legal strategy.  And also find a new career that doesn't involve anything that's alive.


And that's our end-of-the-week wrap-up, here at Skeptophilia.  We'll wish you a lovely Friday, and hope that your weekend is pleasant, and free from snakebite, naked witches after your flesh, or alien cow-killing death beams.  Because all three of those could put a damper on things.

Peopling the world with pyromaniac goblins

In many cases, the woo-woo view of the world seems to me to come from a sort of fantasy-land style wishful thinking.  Wouldn't it be lovely if our lives were ruled by the stars?  Isn't it a nice thought that our deceased loved ones could communicate comforting messages to us through the voice of a medium?  Wouldn't it be grand if deep down, there was a pattern, that all of the craziness and chaos we see around us actually meant something?

It seems, however, that there are (at least) two other motivations for espousing a counterfactual view of the world.  One comes from a kind of free-floating paranoia, and that's what gives rise to your conspiracy theorists, the sort of people who think that HAARP (the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) caused the Japanese tsunami last year.  A third cause of woo-woo-ism, however, consists of jumping to a wild explanation because the rational, logical alternatives nearer at hand are simply too awful to contemplate.

Consider the recent goblin attacks in Zimbabwe.  (Source)

The news outlet that reported the story, ZimDiaspora, tells of the homestead inhabited by the Sithole and Muyambo families, which had been plagued by "mysterious occurrences."  Stones were thrown at family members by an unseen hand.  Dirt was put into cooking pots, ruining the meals.  And now, four buildings in the homestead have been burned to the ground, leaving the families "sleep(ing) in the open, while the few belongings they managed to salvage from the raging fire are heaped outside."

And what, pray tell, could wreak all of this havoc upon this poor family?  The answer, of course, is:  goblins.

Or a magic spell.  Something like that.  One of the household's members, 52-year-old Sarah Muyambo, said that magic was definitely a possibility, because a "traditional healer" had told her that her son, Enoch (29) had "laid his hands on some money-making magical charms and things are now backfiring."  Of course, another member of the homestead said he had seen "snake-like creatures wearing sunglasses, a suit and a pair of shoes" near the houses, so maybe it could be that.

Or, maybe not.

Let's quote another bit of the news story:  "Whenever one young male member of the family, Taso Sithole (16) entered each of the huts and as soon as he came out, that hut would unexpectedly go up in smoke and this happened on all the four structures that were burnt at the homestead."

So, what do you think is the most likely explanation here, for the tragic burning of the buildings in the homestead?

1)  Goblins did it.
2)  It was because a money-making magic charm backfired.
3)  A snake-like creature wearing shoes and sunglasses set the fires.
4)  It was a teenage boy, who amazingly enough was on the scene every time it happened.

Okay, I've been a teacher for 25 years, and I've known a lot of teenage boys -- I even helped to raise two of them.  And one thing that seems universal is that teenage boys like to set things on fire.  That a teenage boy would burn down four houses in his own homestead does seem pretty extreme, even by ordinary teenage-boy-standards -- honestly, it seems to point to a dangerous pyromania, something considerably beyond the ordinary enjoyment of watching stuff burn up.  And I suppose that on some level you can understand why Taso Sithole's family isn't all that eager to consider this possibility.  But seriously -- goblins?  Snakes wearing shoes?  Magic spells?

It can't be easy to realize that someone in your family is deranged.  But it seems like, just for safety's sake, it is better to confront the painful truth than it is to make stuff up, peopling the world with pyromaniac goblins so that you don't have to face reality.  To quote Carl Sagan:  "Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy."