Black Magic. Hoodoo. Curses.
Growing up in a Muslim family, I was taught to always be wary for signs of Black Magic and its ilk. Despite there being no tangible proof of its existence, I was made to treat it as if it’s as real as the air we breathe.
To this day, this belief in the supernatural is still firmly entrenched in me.
Being able to influence somebody through the use of supernatural means is a tremendously scary prospect. Growing up, my family had connections (through my grandfather) to somebody who claimed he was able to do so.
I’m not going to mention his real name, but so let’s call him Tok X.
I was young and he passed when I was in my teens but I still remember visits to his place with my family. We’d go there sometimes to get ‘air jampi’, water that’s been blessed by the man by his reading of holy verses from the Quran over them.
Sometimes it was for other reasons, like when my aunt had mysterious pains or was allegedly the victim of a curse once.
That’s why when I read something from It Must Be The Hantu Facebook group, I found the person’s experience eerily similar to what my aunt went through back in the 90s.
It’s not a total match mind you.
My aunt never claimed to be able to see what the person who put the hoodoo on her was going or see through his eyes but she was bombarded with dreams and thoughts about a man she claimed she knew only as a distant acquaintance (a friend of a friend sort of thing).
I guess it’s easy to pass it off as being lovesick but it actually took a great toll physically on my aunt. She lost weight, her personality changed…she actually was a different person during that time.
I have no idea what Tok X did to ward off the curse and nobody in my family would tell me at the time but it worked. After a couple of months, the dreams and unwanted thoughts lessened (and eventually vanished) and my aunt got back to normal.
Tok X passed a few years later and my family gradually drifted apart from his. I never did find out about what actually happened and my family won’t even talk about that part of our history when I ask.
The bottom line is Black Magic might not be real for most of us, but keeping an open mind is always a good thing.