Two people are in custody after police found more than a half dozen dismembered dogs in a home in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
The police also found items related to witchcraft and the occult.
During the mid-eighties Don Rimer managed to establish himself as an internationally known authority on ‘Ritual Crime and the Occult.’
Unfortunately, his work contributed to the ‘Satanic Panic’ hysteria of that time.
Of course it isn’t all that unusual for a pastor to claim healing powers. Witness the blow-dried televangelists of America and elsewhere, who often advertise their dramatic healing powers in infomercials.
But in western Kenya the belief in the supernatural is far deeper, and the line between Christianity and the occult is thin at best.
So far, 130 healers, including Fadkin, have passed the service’s voluntary testing program, which promoters in the government say can determine whether someone has the inherent ability to cure. The program is limited to Moscow, but a Russian lawmaker is pushing to extend it nationwide and make it mandatory.
Skeptics scoff at the notion that such testing is meaningful and criticize the government for lending credibility to people who claim paranormal powers.
Harshbarger’s tale begins at home in Indiana, where a lack of religious guidance combined with his parents’ divorce led him to become a bitter, disaffected teen with an appetite for the sensational, including tales of supernatural phenomena.
While in college, he befriended a co-worker at his day job who was already a Satanist. The two made plans to form their own cult and set about recruiting members.
The advert on DD-India channel in Hindi said that Pandit Bharatraj Shastri was an expert in “palmistry, birth kundali (horoscopes), vastu expert, marriage issues, troubles in business, dissatisfaction at work, warding off affects of black magic, family problems”.
EU Commission research indicates that 52 percent of Europeans believe astrology has a scientific basis compared to a more skeptical United States and Britain, at about 31 percent each.
More than half of Britons believe in psychic powers such as mind-reading and premonitions, a survey suggests. Of 1,006 adults polled for Readers Digest Magazine, 43% reported reading others’ thoughts or having theirs read. More than half had had a dream or premonition of an event before it happened and 26% said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble. A fifth said they had seen a ghost and 29% believed near-death experiences were evidence there was an afterlife. Of those questioned, 43% claimed to have tapped into other people’s thoughts or to have had their own
HEET, Iraq – The wrinkled old man sprays perfume around the sparse, dingy room, then holds out his hands and feet and instructs one of his visitors to tie him up, knot the cloth three times and blow on it. The lights die. Water splashes from a bowl. The ”genies” have arrived, and the questions begin. Will Saddam Hussein be found? A ”genie” answers in the old man’s voice: “Yes.” Dead or alive? “Dead.” And the $25 million question: Where is he? ”Dhuluaiyah,” the genie says, referring to a village 55 miles north of Baghdad. Thousands of magicians, fortunetellers and
The Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 6, 2003 http://www.csmonitor.com/ By James Hider | Special to The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD – As US forces rolled into Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, the Ace of Spades in the US Army’s deck of cards of wanted Iraqis, did a spectacular vanishing act. Many Iraqis believe their former leader, a lifelong dabbler in the occult, will never be found by coalition troops scouring the country. His trick, they say, is a magic stone that protects him from harm. Mr. Hussein and his inner circle were obsessed with the dark arts: his son Uday even advertised on