Tortured, branded, burned alive: Inside the land where lynch mobs still hunt witches and men guard graveyards to stop sorcerers feasting on the dead

-Women damned as 'witches' burned alive by chanting mob

-Scenes out of 15th century in Papua New Guinea highlands

-Tribes blame 'witches' for deaths and torture with hot irons

-Primitive beliefs in sorcery survive amid gold mining boom

-Gravediggers guard against 'witches who come to eat corpses'

-Drug and booze fuelled witch hunts in Pacific's most dangerous region

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2556469/Witch-burnings-Papua-New-Guinea.html

4 sisters kill themselves over dowry

MULTAN: Four sisters killed themselves after a row with their father who could not afford dowries for them to get married, officials said on Friday. The women threw themselves into a canal after arguing with their father in Mailsi, a town in the rural southern part of Punjab. A fifth sister was pulled alive from the water. “A poor farmer, Bashir Ahmed Rajput, could not marry his five daughters because he had no money to offer dowry,” Malik Daud Hasnain, a senior police official told AFP. “After an argument on the issue on Thursday, his daughters became desperate and jumped together into a water canal.” The women were aged 45, 43, 38, 35 and 31. “We have rescued the youngest sister Fatima and also discovered dead bodies of two others. The search for the remaining bodies is on,” Hasnain said. Dowry for weddings is a serious issue for poor families in the subcontinent and many women are unable to marry because their relatives cannot afford the gifts and money demanded by grooms’ families. In Pakistan, the usual age for a woman to get married is between 18 and 28 and anyone older faces difficulties finding a match.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C09%5C21%5Cstory_21-9-2013_pg7_16

23 dead in initiation rites in South Africa

Twenty-three youths have died in the past nine days at initiation ceremonies that include circumcisions and survival tests, South African police said on Friday. Police have opened 22 murder cases in the deaths in the northeastern province of Mpumalanga, according to spokesman Lt. Col. Leonard Hlathi. He said an inquest is being held into the 23rd death, of a youth who complained of stomach pains and vomited. Initiation ceremonies are common in South Africa, where youths partake in various activities as a rite of passage into adulthood, usually over the course of three weeks. Some 30,000 youths signed up for initiation this year. In addition to being circumcised, the boys and young men are put through a series of survival tests which sometimes include exposure to South Africa's chilly winter conditions with skimpy clothing. Their faces are painted with red clay and they also are given herbal concoctions to drink.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Africa/23-dead-in-initiation-rites-in-South-Africa/Article1-1061679.aspx

Tibetan Ritual Skull

Ghastly Winter Demons Run Wild in the Alps

Halloween spooks are for wimps compared to the grisly Christmastime traditions of Europe's Alps, where demonic creatures come out to punish naughty children or to drive winter away each year. A gorgeous new photography book explores the many guises of these wild monsters, whose traditional rumpus harkens back to pagan rites.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/krampus-and-company-winter-demons-come-out-for-christmas-in-the-alps-a-863593.html

Zimbabwean 'taken to village court for failing to give husband best chicken pieces'

Nomusa Sibanda, 24, gave her husband the gizzard, wings and one drumstick and ate the chicken breast and second drumstick herself, according to local newspaper, The Sunday News. Jabulani Ncube, 40 was incensed and beat up his wife who fled to her grandmother's house. The next day, he forced her to attend the village court where he complained to the traditional leaders in the Nkayi Communal Land, 100 miles north east of Zimbabwe's second city Bulawayo, that his wife was "uncultured and disrespectful". He warned that he would seek a divorce if she again failed to give him the drumsticks and breast which in traditional culture are due to the man of the house. Mrs Sibanda was unrepentant and told the court: "How long shall I slaughter chickens and not taste the back portion?" She was found guilty of ignoring custom and fined a chicken, as was her grandmother Gogo MaDawu for failing to teach her granddaughter "how to treat her husband and dish out meals".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/9609535/Zimbabwean-taken-to-village-court-for-failing-to-give-husband-best-chicken-pieces.html

Mummies get dressed up as part of Ma'nene ritual in Indonesia

The dead get all dolled up during the traditional Ma'nene ritual in Indonesia, where family members dig up their deceased loved ones and dress them up in a brand new set of clothing. Held once every three years, the traditional ceremony is a chance for relatives to honor the spirits of their mummified ancestors. Sweet, or creepy? You be the judge.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/mummies-new-wardrobe-part-ma-nene-ritual-indonesia-gallery-1.1143923#pmSlide=0

Police arrest 29 members of cannibal cult in Papa New Guinea who murdered 'sorcerers' and ate their brains raw and made soup from their genitals

Members of a cannibal cult in Papua New Guinea have been charged with the murders of seven suspected witch doctors. The 29 people, including a 13-year-old boy, butchered five men and two women believed to practice ‘black magic’, allegedly ate their brains raw and made soup from their genitalia in the remote jungle region around the town of Madang. The cult members also drank their victims' blood believing they would attain supernatural powers and become bullet proof, a police spokesman said.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173216/Police-arrest-29-members-cannibal-cult-New-Guinea-murdered-victims-ate-brains-genitals.html

The Wang Saen Suk Hell Garden

Wang Saen Suk, 90 minutes outside of Bangkok on the way to Pattaya, is a garden full of statues depicting what is supposed to be Buddhist hell.

While the garden attracts plenty of families, there are gruesome scenes depicted there. After passing a "Welcome to Hell!" sign, visitors encounter sinners boiled in copper cauldrons, sinners being torn apart by hell's dogs, and emaciated sinners with protruding ribs. "If you meet the Devil in this life, don't postpone merit-making which will help you to defeat him in the next life," a sign in the garden reads. "Donate a little each day and you'll have a happy life."

According to the "Traibhumi Phra Ruang," when a Buddhist dies, he or she goes before four celestial beings who check the dead's record of good and bad deeds. If your good deeds outweigh the bad, you will go to heaven; if your bad deeds outweigh the good, you will be punished.

Punishment in Buddhist hell varies depending on the sins committed, but every form of punishment is a torture, and many of those are depicted in the garden. Hell has 136 pits, but individuals are able to be reborn from each. Loganta, a special pit reserved for those who have hurt their parents or monks physically, is the only cold pit and those sent there are said to remain until a new Buddha is born.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-wang-saen-suk-hell-garden

Parents who force their children into marriage to face up to five years in jail in new crackdown

Families who coerce their children into a forced marriage could face up to five years in jail under legislation to be announced by the Prime Minister this week.

The new law will criminalise the practice, which occurs in some ethnic communities. Forcing someone into wedlock would become a criminal offence in its own right under the proposals.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153768/Parents-force-children-marriage-face-years-jail-new-crackdown.html

Burma's Punk Scene Fights Repression Underground

Despite signs of greater openness, Burma's government continues to wield an iron fist. Among its targets is the punk scene, whose bands are forced to play and practice in secret to avoid harsh punishments. Here, punk isn't a lifestyle. It is an act of genuine rebellion.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,817185,00.html

Mondo Cane (1962)

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IMDb

Nokhur Cemetery

Cemetery with goat-horn bedecked gravestones

http://atlasobscura.com/place/nokhur-cemetery

Day of the Skull celebrations see Bolivians venerate the heads of dead strangers

Spiritual Bolivians have upset church ministers by taking human skulls of dead strangers from cemeteries to celebrate an annual pagan tradition.

Residents in the country's capital, La Paz, use the human remains for the macabre Day of the Skull celebration, a bizarre mix of Andean pre-Hispanic beliefs and Roman Catholicism.

Those who take part in the morbid ritual even dress the skulls up in military hats, put cigarettes in their mouths and adorn them with flowers as part of the ghoulish display.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059230/Day-Skulls-2011-celebrations-Bolivians-venerate-heads-dead-strangers.html

Qenqo (Labyrinth) Temple

Death rituals and sacrifice inside a Peruvian megalith

http://atlasobscura.com/place/temple-of-qenqo

Inakadate Tanbo Art

Giant art made in Japanese rice fields

http://atlasobscura.com/place/inakadate

Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate may be one of Cryptozoology's strangest, yet best-documented, ancient crypids. This two and a half millennium old depiction is so unusual that many treat it as a chimera, an impossible combination of animals that could never have existed in nature. But the people of ancient Babylon knew and accepted the 'dragon' as real, as real as the bulls and lions that also share the walls.

The Ishtar Gate itself was one of eight entrances to the ancient city of Babylon. Built during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) and dedicated to the goddess Ishtar it was the main entrance to the city until the final fall of Babylon sometime in the 1st or 2nd century AD. (King Nebuchadnezzar also constructed one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a marvel filled with exotic plants and animals.)

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'Devil' jumps over group of newborn babies in Spain as part of religious ceremony

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