Real Black Magic Stories: from Mayong

I have always loved real black magic stories, but I never expected to hear one like this from a man I think of as an elder brother. His name is Bobby. He is a Nigerian from West Africa, a cheerful, friendly man who has lived in Al Nahda 2 in Sharjah, UAE, for more than twenty-five years and runs a business there. I live in Al Nahda 1, on the Dubai side, so our homes are very close, just across the Dubai–Sharjah border from each other.

A Night at the Dubai–Sharjah Border

One evening in December, Bobby and I were sitting at a quiet spot near the border. The weather was lovely, the wind was fresh, and there was no crowd noise. It is the perfect setting when you are sitting beside a brother you respect and the story is about African black magic. I could not stop listening. I was spellbound by Bobby’s tales of mysterious Nigerian black magic when I finally asked him, “Brother, is black magic real? Do all these things really happen?”

Bobby smiled and said, “Give me your right hand.” I held it out. He took it and said, “Now close your eyes, and keep them closed.” About two minutes later he said, “Now open your eyes.” Then he asked me about the Sahara Centre, the huge shopping mall that stands right at the Dubai–Sharjah border. It had been in front of us all evening. Now it was gone.

I searched around. Everything else was in its place, but the mall was simply not there. I had never imagined I would have an experience like this, and I was scared. Bobby noticed and put his hand on my shoulder. “Relax,” he said. “This is an illusion, a magic of the eyes. Nothing to fear. Close your eyes and look again, and everything will be fine.” He was still holding my hand. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and the Sahara Centre was right there in front of me. It was one of the strangest moments of my life.

“So are you some kind of native doctor?” I asked. “You can think of me as a small one,” he said. I told him that an illusion like that did not sound small to me. He laughed and said it was very basic magic, nothing compared with what he knew.

Then he told me something I had not known. In Nigeria and other African countries, he said, there are four ranks of native doctors, or sorcerers. The fourth rank is called Tinel. They usually perform magic shows in villages, know a few small spells, and solve minor problems. The third rank is called Omni. They run social and religious ceremonies, many of which involve black magic such as voodoo and the Gungun festival, and they can solve many problems too. The second rank is called Puna. They are very experienced and perform terrifying black magic, such as killing people with spells or capturing fearsome spirits and forcing them to work. The first rank is called Noa. They are the masters, the chiefs of their clans’ native doctors, and they practise the highest forms of black magic: trapping souls, trapping spirits in mirrors, bringing back a soul or a qareen, working black magic on jinn, even red magic. Among the Noa there are ordinary ones and highly experienced ones, and the tribal elders are usually the experienced kind.

Bobby told me he had been a fourth-rank native doctor. He had wanted to become a great one, but something happened to him, and after that he gave up magic completely and moved to this country. I told him that if he shared his story, I would write it and send it to a popular Bangladeshi horror platform. He agreed.

From December until February, Bobby told me many things about African black magic. I made short notes so I would not forget. I do not know where to begin, but I will try to put it together in order, as best I can.

A quick note first. I asked Bobby’s permission before telling any of this, and I told him this is only a platform for entertainment and true scary stories. Nothing here is meant to make any country or people look small. Bobby said there was no problem. The world used to be full of superstition, he said, and a lot has changed, though some things still go on in some places. What you tell people about our country is history, he said, and nobody can change history. If anything here offends anyone, I apologise in advance.

Nigeria has more than three hundred ethnic groups, big and small. The three main ones are the Hausa, the Yoruba and the Igbo. Bobby is Igbo and a Christian. According to him, the Hausa are about 31 percent of the population, the Yoruba about 16 percent, and the Igbo about 15 percent. The Hausa are the majority in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east. Bobby’s home is in the west, where the Yoruba are the majority and the Igbo are a minority. For good reasons I will not name the place. Even inside these groups there are Muslims, Christians and followers of traditional faiths, with different customs and old disputes. Nigeria had a civil war in 1967, and ethnic conflict was one of its main causes. In many areas, Bobby said, the majority group looks down on the minority, and though it has eased, you can still find traces of it today.

He also told me that black magic is practised widely in Nigeria. Many people use it for good jobs, for love, for peace at home. Bobby said that even some famous footballers have gone to native doctors at different times. Apart from devout Roman Catholics and practising Muslims, he said, most people are involved in it in one way or another.

He described the Gungun festival too. Once a year, on a special day, one person is dressed in long, colourful robes and walks from house to house. People believe the spirits of their ancestors come back that day. Everyone must keep a good distance from this person. If someone touches the one in the Gungun costume, both of them die together, as if they had been struck by electricity. Bobby said that in his own area, two people died this way at one festival. He saw it with his own eyes.

Today’s story is about the black magic war between two of these peoples, the Yoruba and the Igbo.

The Goat, the Contract, and the Blood Curse

Bobby worked out his own age and said the start of this story was in the late 1980s, as far as he knew. The two peoples had been in conflict for hundreds of years, and he could not tell me every old black magic incident, but he could describe this period in detail. The Igbo were facing heavy discrimination from the Yoruba. They decided to do something the Yoruba would remember for the rest of their lives. They could not match the Yoruba in numbers, so they decided to use black magic on the Yoruba who hated the Igbo most.

To make the story easier to follow, I will use pseudonyms. Let us call the head native doctor of Bobby’s Igbo clan Kevin. He was a Noa, a master. The Igbo of that area all went to him and said, “Kevin, do something. We cannot take any more of the Yoruba’s cruelty. Teach them a lesson.” Kevin said, “All right, I will deal with the Yoruba. But give me one day to think about what magic to use.”

The next day Kevin called all the Igbo leaders and said, “I will send blood-drinking spirits, a kind of pishach jinn, against them. They will drink all the blood from their bodies, and they will die with no blood left.” The work was done through a ritual.

On the day of the ritual, Kevin put on a special robe. After dusk, he and his twelve disciples began in the courtyard of his house. In the middle of the courtyard Kevin brought a goat, whispered spells over it, and blew on it. He placed three plates in front of the goat. On one plate there was red powder. On another there was a glass bottle full of water, and what kind of water it was, nobody ever found out. The third plate was empty. The disciples formed a circle around the goat and began a strange dance, stepping and bouncing on both feet as they circled it. Kevin took the red powder, whispered spells, and smeared it on the goat. Now and then he took water from the bottle into his mouth and sprayed it at the goat, so that drops scattered over its body. This went on for about ten minutes.

Then Kevin brought a long, sharp machete, and the disciples began beating wooden instruments, round like a bowl but played like a drum. They danced around the goat, chanting one phrase over and over. It meant “Come, come, come.” Kevin meanwhile waved the machete at the goat in front of it. You would think he was about to sacrifice the goat to send a jinn against his enemies. I thought so too. But that was not the plan. Bobby explained that the ritual was meant to trap a powerful, evil spirit, force it into the goat’s body, and then kill the spirit inside the goat.

They kept dancing and chanting for some time. Then the goat began to roar. Everyone knows how a goat sounds, but this sound was nothing like that. It sounded like some terrifying beast. When they heard it, everyone knew the spirit was now trapped in the goat, and they cheered with joy. Think about that. They were celebrating because a terrifying spirit had been trapped in front of them. If this happened in our country and we knew a dangerous spirit was inside the goat in front of us, how would we feel? To them, this was an everyday thing.

Strangely, although the goat was roaring with rage, it did not move from its spot. It was as if something unseen was holding it down. It only looked from side to side. I asked Bobby, “Everyone danced around it, played drums, smeared it, sprayed water at it, and it just stood there? It did not even try to run?” He smiled and said, “Little brother, that is black magic. The goat had been completely bound.”

Then Kevin swung the machete and cut the goat’s head off with one blow. At that moment the goat let out such a scream that the whole house shook. That scream was the spirit inside the goat. Kevin placed the severed head on the empty third plate. One of his disciples brought a clay pot and collected the blood. Kevin took the head and the pot of blood into his small ritual hut. African native doctors keep a separate room where they carry out their work.

It came out later that, the night before, when the Igbo had given Kevin the names of the Yoruba to be cursed, Kevin had spoken with a powerful pishach jinn. This was a contract magic. In contract magic, the native doctor makes a deal with a jinn to get work done. First he decides what he wants. Then he calls a jinn that can do that task. Some jinn can drink a man’s blood. Some can drive a man mad.

Kevin had decided he would drain the blood of the most hostile Yoruba, so that nobody would easily understand what had killed them. The jinn that answered his call asked, “What work do you want?” Kevin said, “I will give you names. Drink their blood.” The jinn said, “I do like human blood, that is true. But I want two things from you.” Among humans there is enmity, and among jinn too. The jinn said, “Just as you want to kill your enemies, I want to kill one of mine through you.” Kevin said, “I will kill your enemy. What is the second thing?” The jinn said, “I want to drink the fresh blood of my enemy, and I want to chew his head.” Kevin agreed. The spirit trapped in the goat that night was that jinn’s enemy.

That is how the Igbo chief native doctor made a deal with a jinn and cursed the Yoruba. After that, they say, many Yoruba died of loss of blood. The Yoruba did not understand at first. Then they found out that the Igbo had done it, and they retaliated with their own black magic. Bobby said no side is weaker than the other in this field. The Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba all have their own books of black magic.

The Yoruba’s revenge was a terrifying curse called suicidal black magic. The person it is used on kills himself. They say more than ten Igbo took their own lives at once. Nobody believed this was natural. The Igbo understood what was happening. I am sorry, I could not find out how this curse is performed, because Bobby could not tell me. But he did tell me how it was broken.

When the Igbo began taking their own lives, Kevin realised the Yoruba had sent terrifying jinn to control people and push them to suicide. The only solution was to kill those jinn. On the day he did it, Kevin and his twelve disciples gathered at dusk. Kevin brought about twenty wooden dolls. He placed one doll in the middle of the courtyard and arranged the rest in a circle around it. The disciples scattered flower petals over each doll’s head, with a few extra on the middle one. Then Kevin told everyone, “Go home now. Tomorrow everything will be fine. Nobody will kill himself again.” He went to his small hut with his disciples, and the dolls stayed in the courtyard.

I asked Bobby what Kevin did in there. He said Kevin sat inside and called some terrifying jinn with chants and spells. Late that night, they say, a number of lights came and entered the dolls in the courtyard one by one. Then the dolls began to walk like humans, and after a while they vanished into the air. A neighbour of Bobby’s saw this and told everyone later. Bobby could not tell me what jinn they were or how exactly they stopped the suicides and killed the Yoruba’s jinn. But that ritual broke the curse. The suicides stopped.

Some people will wonder if there is more. There is a lot more. Both sides used terrifying magic on each other many times, and Bobby told me about much of it, but I am leaving most of it out. I will tell you the most terrifying one.

The Dream That Killed in the Night

One morning, Kevin suddenly began vomiting blood. People ran to his house. When they arrived, there was blood everywhere, from inside the house to the whole courtyard. The strangest thing was that Kevin kept vomiting fresh blood, yet nobody went near him. They just stood and watched. When some of them stepped forward to hold him, Kevin said, “Stay away from me. You cannot save me. I am about to die.” They asked, “Kevin, how did this happen?” He said, “The Yoruba did it. This time, none of us will survive.”

Even though Kevin told them not to, they grabbed him and set off for the hospital. He died on the way. A shadow of grief fell over the whole Igbo community, because Kevin had been their chief native doctor. He was buried according to his religion.

Two days after Kevin died, three young Igbo men died in the same way, vomiting blood. Before they died, they said that in the night they had eaten something in a dream. All three had had the same dream. In it, they had gone to a feast together and eaten their fill of meat. Then they woke up with pain in their stomachs. The pain grew sharper and sharper until the vomiting of blood began.

With four dead, fear spread among the Igbo. They knew the Yoruba had done something terrifying again. In desperation, they ran to the big Igbo native doctors. The day after the three young men died, they brought in a well-known Igbo native doctor from a neighbouring area. He was a master and very experienced. I will call him Henry, again a pseudonym.

They told Henry everything, how Kevin and the three others died. Henry said, “Let me first see what kind of black magic the Yoruba have used on you.” He sat down on a mat, closed his eyes, and murmured something. After a while it looked as if he had fallen asleep sitting there. Then he opened his eyes and stood up.

“The Yoruba have taken a terrible revenge on you,” Henry said. “They brought an experienced tribal Yoruba native doctor, a very powerful Noa, to destroy your whole clan with black magic. This chief told the Yoruba, ‘A solar eclipse will happen in a few days. If one of you is willing to be sacrificed of his own free will, I can use that sacrifice to put a curse on the Igbo that they will never be able to remove.’ One of the Yoruba agreed. On the day of the eclipse, the Yoruba native doctor sacrificed him and performed a ritual. Through it, he sent three powerful sorcerer jinn against you.

“These three jinn know Adama magic. With it, they can make their bodies completely non-existent for a while, so that not even other jinn can find them. Air exists too, but you cannot see it, though you can feel it. This is stranger. The moment a jinn uses Adama magic, it makes its body vanish completely, even right in front of another. That is why the Yoruba chief knows these three cannot be killed. If a stronger jinn comes to catch or kill them, they use Adama magic, disappear, and run, and nobody ever finds them again. Worst of all, these three are nomadic jinn. They live apart from jinn society, in the jungle. Jinn have a society, too, just like humans, but these three are outside it.”

The story of Adama, as Bobby told it, goes like this. She was born around the 1700s somewhere in West Africa. Bobby could not tell me exactly where. People call her Princess Adama. Some say she was born into a royal family, others say into a poor, ordinary one. All agree she was clever and a beautiful young African woman. She worked on social causes, especially women’s rights, and that made her many enemies. To protect herself from them, and to teach them a lesson, she began to practise terrifying black magic. How she learned it, nobody knows. But she became so powerful that she could make herself non-existent in front of any force, visible or invisible. Some admired her. Many of her time disliked her. Some said she practised witchcraft. Bobby said this is as close as he could get to the origin of this kind of magic.

Henry said that the three jinn learned the art of hiding from Adama. Adama had controlled them and made them do her work. After she died, they were set free. Someone in the crowd asked, “If they are free, why are they working for the Yoruba chief?” “Because it is a contract,” Henry said. Under the contract, the three jinn promised the Yoruba chief native doctor that they would kill all the Igbo. The Yoruba were angriest at Kevin, so they asked their native doctor to kill him first. That was the first death.

On the night Kevin was killed, he was shown the same dream, a feast and plenty of meat, then stomach pain, then vomiting blood and death. The three jinn feed their victims a kind of raw meat in the dream. Henry said that from now on, three of the Igbo would eat it in their dreams every day, and once they ate it, there was no way to survive. Slowly they would kill everyone.

“There is only one solution,” he said. “We must kill those three nomadic jinn. That will be very hard for me. Give me a little time. I will go now and come back tomorrow. Let me see if I can find a way tonight. And one more thing. Tonight, nobody should sleep. If you sleep, three more will be killed in their dreams. If you stay awake, this might not happen.”

That night, nobody dared to sleep. But before dawn, three more young men began vomiting blood. They died, and before dying they said that at some point they felt someone come to them and force raw meat into their mouths. They tried to scream but could not. They had no strength to move. Seven lives were gone now, and the whole clan was in mourning. They called Henry again. He came, saw the state of things, and was deeply sorry. “I thought that staying awake would help,” he said. “But this is worse than I imagined.” Everyone begged him, “Henry, do something, or none of us will live.”

The Magic of Four Ancestors

Henry said that, through his own magic the night before, he had learned that there was a way, but it was very difficult. “What is it?” they asked. “The magic of four ancestors,” he said.

He explained. A famous native doctor once lived in Africa, named Gou. He was called the emperor of native doctors, because he knew how to break every kind of black magic. Henry had found out through a night of meditation that the solution lay only with Gou. In Africa, a native doctor’s son becomes a native doctor too, and so Gou came from a line of them. But Gou had practised things that other native doctors are afraid even to think about, such as capturing the souls of the dead and making them work for him. The problem was that Gou had died long ago. His son and the next three generations were dead too. His living descendant was far away, and getting him here overnight was impossible. Besides, it was doubtful he had Gou’s experience. So Henry had decided to perform the magic of four ancestors. He would bring back Gou’s soul and ask it for the answer.

It would not be easy. To bring back Gou’s soul, he first had to bring back the soul of Gou’s grandson’s son. Then, riding on that soul, he would bring back Gou’s grandson. Riding on that one, Gou’s son. And on that one, Gou himself. This is called the Magic of Four Ancestors.

Before I describe what happened, I need to say something, because this may start an argument and I do not want to cause one. I am a Muslim, and most of the people who read these stories are Muslims. We believe that when a person dies, the soul goes to the life of Barzakh, and there is no way for it to come back. We also know that every one of us has a qareen jinn attached to us from birth. Even when we die, the qareen lives on. For how long, I do not know. We have heard of many incidents in which a qareen has been summoned or has been made to work for someone. Through certain methods a qareen can be called and made to do things. What we call a qareen, Africans and people in many other countries call a spirit.

I have also noticed something about Bobby. When he opens a soft drink, he pours four small drops onto the ground before he drinks. When I asked why, he told me he believes his four ancestors are still in this world, always around him.

Now to the main part. That day Henry left for a while and came back with five experienced native doctors. He brought some things with him, four pigeons, bird feathers, four human skulls, coloured powders, candles and a few other items. Henry said, “When the sun is directly overhead, at high noon, my five colleagues and I will begin the ritual. I need an empty space where nobody else can come. Please make sure of that.” As Henry asked, Kevin’s house was left to him, and everyone watched from far away.

When the sun was straight overhead, Henry cut the throats of the four pigeons and kept the blood of each one separately. Then he took out the four skulls and poured the blood of one pigeon over each. In the heat of the sun, the blood on the skulls dried. Then Henry burned some feathers to ash, mixed the ash with colour and a little water, and made a kind of ink. With his finger he began to write something on the blood-stained skulls. When he finished all four, he dried them in the sun again.

When the skulls had dried, Henry and the other native doctors carried the four skulls into Kevin’s ritual hut and began a ceremony there. Bobby said the six of them lit a fire in a clay pot, placed the four skulls beside it, and chanted spells and displayed all the magic they knew. From noon to dusk the six of them performed the ritual. They say it gave the souls of the four ancestors their full strength. I should say that these four skulls were those of the four ancestors of one of the native doctors, his father, his father’s father, and so on up. For this magic, you need exactly four skulls of four ancestors.

At dusk, Henry and the others came outside. He called us together and said, “Please, nobody leave your houses. When the sun sets, I will begin my real work, the magic to bring back the four ancestors. The weather outside may seem like a terrible storm. Please do not be afraid. And never come near this courtyard. If anyone does, it will be at their own risk, because they could suffer terrible harm.” We promised him that nobody would come.

After sunset, the main work began. Bobby said they watched from a hidden place. Henry told us everything afterwards, so I will tell it in order. In the middle of the courtyard Henry spread a cloth and placed the four skulls on it. In front of each skull he drew a straight line, scattered some colour on the lines, and set candles on them, arranged like a school assembly. He lit the candles, and Henry and the others sat in one line facing the skulls and began to chant. For hours they chanted. After some time a storm rose all around, as if it would tear everything apart. Strangely, the candles kept burning in all that wind.

Then the first row of candles went out. A few seconds later a light came and entered the first skull. As soon as it entered, all the native doctors stood and sang a line in a melodious voice. Its meaning was “Bring your father.” After they sang for a while, the light left the skull and went away. A few minutes later the second row of candles went out, a light entered the second skull, and they sang the same song, and again the light left. The same thing happened with the third. Then the air became even more terrifying, with a wild wind blowing. The fourth row of candles went out, and four lights, one after another, entered the four skulls.

The moment the lights entered the skulls, the native doctors stood again and said together, “O great one, save us. Save us.” After a while the four skulls began to speak like humans. They said, “How dare you disturb us?” Henry said, “Forgive us. We are so helpless. We had no other way. We were forced to call you.” Then Henry talked with the four ancestors for a long time and finally managed to calm them. At one point the fourth skull, the one that held Gou’s spirit, said, “Why did you call us? Tell me.”

Henry told him everything, how the Yoruba had cursed the Igbo, and asked what the solution was. After he listened, Gou said, “The solution is mirror magic.” He taught Henry how to perform it. Gou also said, “Tonight three young men will die. If you want to save them, you must put them in water. The magic of these jinn does not work in water. Let them spend the whole night in water, and they will live. Then tomorrow you will use the mirror magic. You will trap the three jinn inside mirrors and kill them.” Gou showed Henry the whole process. After that, four lights rose from the four skulls and flew away. That was the end of the Magic of Four Ancestors.

When it was over, Henry called everyone again. He told us all that had happened and said that three young men who would otherwise die that night should spend the night in a pond. As Henry said, the three young men stayed in the pond water all night, and they survived.

The next afternoon Henry came alone, carrying three mirrors. As soon as we saw him, we all went to him. He asked if there had been any problems. We said no, nothing had happened that day. From that afternoon Henry began a ritual in Kevin’s courtyard. It was mostly worship and prayers, which I will not describe, for good reasons.

After sunset, Henry drew a circle and sat inside it, with the three mirrors in front of him, and began to chant. After a while three lights came together and entered the three mirrors. Then Henry took a knife and struck one of the mirrors. The moment he struck, a terrible scream came out. Bobby said it was as loud as lightning striking very close, and everyone’s eardrums nearly burst. One after another, Henry struck all three mirrors with the knife, and every time the same scream came.

When it was over, Henry called us all. “The problem is solved,” he said. “From today, you are free of the Yoruba’s black magic.”

That is how Henry ended one terrifying curse. Even after that, the Yoruba and the Igbo fought many more times with black magic. Both sides used terrifying spells on each other.