Woman abducted by voodoo practitioners - Florida authorities are investigating the abduction and beating of a woman who said she was forced to participate in a voodoo ritual. Michelle Wood, 42, was found lying beside a road in St. Augustine with a piece of nylon rope around her right wrist...24-Sep-08

New Master in Haitian Voodoo

Report Claims Angelina Jolie Now Studying

Voodoo in New Orleans

By Brenda Davis
Mar 5, 2007

From Staff Reports

Police are investigating whether an apparent voodoo shrine found 200 yards from the bodies of a missing couple has anything to do with their deaths. Click the link below for the full story.

http://www.khou.com/news/state/stories/khou070208_ac_voodoo.6208fb0e.html

My trade is suffering from a voodoo curse

02 February 2007

Marc Mullen

A SHOP whose former tenant fled the police - and the country - is cursed, according to the new woman in charge.

Adriana Lopes opened up Du Arte boutique on Heath Street last July without knowing the premises were previously the offices of Greenfields estate agents.

Malcolm Green, who ran the estate agency, was extradited last week from Switzerland to face charges of stealing £420,000 in cash and jewelry.

Police had been searching for him since May when he failed to turn up at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

And while he has been overseas bailiffs have called on Ms Lopes' shop, the electricity and water companies have tried to turn off the supplies and she has been getting 10 threatening-looking letters a week addressed to Mr Green.

Ms Lopes said: "The bailiffs from the electricity company came round and were really very aggressive.

"Then the water company came around. I nearly had to have a fight with them to get them to stop, but I didn't mind - I am from Brazil.

"We have had bailiffs from art dealers and for copyrights turning up. I am still receiving all sorts of letters like credit card bills which I just take to the post office to return to sender. It's unbelievable."

When Ms Lopes moved into the shop she found that lights had been ripped from the ceiling, the floor of the shop had been vandalised and the sink and toilet in the rear of the shop were blocked up.

And she now thinks the shop has a macumba on it - a Brazilian voodoo curse.

She said: "I was so excited when I found the shop. I saw it when I was coming back from Notting Hill where a shop I'd put all my effort into fell through, because they sold it at auction.

"I thought that place was cursed, but now I think this one has a macumba on it."

Mr Green was arrested in Switzerland two weeks ago. Last week he was extradited and he appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday.

He was remanded in custody to return to court on February 23.

When he was due in court last May, he was expected to plead not guilty to 18 separate criminal charges, to do with the theft of £420,000 of cash, shares and jewels from clients of his estate agents.

marc.mullen@hamhigh.co.uk

Man seeks to jinx Bush visit with magic

AP, BOGOR, INDONESIA
Friday, Nov 17, 2006, Page 5

An Indonesian man claiming magic powers drank freshly slaughtered animal and snake blood yesterday as part of a ritual he said would jinx the upcoming visit of US President George W. Bush.

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, mixed their blood with herbs before drinking the potion and smearing it on his face.

"I don't hate Americans, but I don't like Bush," said Pamungkas, adding he believed the ritual would succeed because ``the devil is with me today.''

Bush is scheduled to visit the world's most populous Muslim nation for several hours on Monday for talks with the Indonesian president and civic leaders at a palace in the hill town of Bogor.

Bush is unpopular in Indonesia because of the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Muslim and nationalist groups are calling on the government to cancel the trip.

Pamungkas said he believed the ritual -- performed around 1km from the palace -- would cause Secret Service personnel guarding Bush to fall into a trance and believe the US leader was under attack, causing chaos. Sorcery is banned under Islam, but many Indonesians still believe in the practice,  which predates Islam's arrival in the archipelago.               

Picture: Ki Gendeng Pamungkas drinks sheep's blood during a rally against President George W.  Bush at thepresidential palace, Bogor, Indonesia.

Source:  

Tapei Times http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/11/17/2003336694

Posted 08/15/2006 16:29

Psychologists at Princeton and Harvard have conducted experiments showing that people sometimes claim magical powers — personal responsibility for events they couldn't possibly have controlled. For instance, people who have evil thoughts about someone feel responsible

when their enemy falls ill, and people who cheer for their favorite team feel responsible when their team wins.

While most people would report believing that thoughts alone cannot cause external events, in these experiments people claimed responsibility for events that they had only willed to occur. For example, one experiment gauged whether people thought they had harmed another person

when they stuck pins in a voodoo doll named after that person. Subjects in the experiment did believe in the power of their voodoo hexes, but only if they had first generated evil thoughts about their victim.

The researchers have written an article about the experiments, titled "Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence," which will appear in the forthcoming Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and was

co-authored by Emily Pronin, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, Sylvia Rodriguez '06, and Daniel Wegner and Kimberly McCarthy of Harvard University. The experiments reveal erroneous magical thinking

even among ordinary people.

For the voodoo experiment, subjects were led to think evil thoughts about another person who they believed was also a subject in the experiment (but who actually worked for the researchers). In a control condition, they were not led to think such thoughts. Each subject

then stuck pins in a voodoo doll representing the alleged victim, who was seated at the table across from them. When the "victim" then faked having a headache, those who had harbored evil thoughts were more likely than their peers in a control condition to believe they had

caused it.

In addition to experiments with voodoo hexes, the researchers also studied fans watching sports. In one study, subjects watched as a basketball player shot baskets. Spectators were more likely to perceive that they had caused his success if they had first been asked to visualize his success ("Imagine the ball falling through the hoop"). In another experiment conducted at a live basketball game (Princeton vs. Harvard), some spectators were given a task before the start of the game to think about it by reviewing the potential of the starting players. Other audience members were not given this assignment. At halftime, those who had thought about the players' performance reported personally having had more of an impact on the game than those in the control condition. In another study, people watching the NFL Super Bowl on television felt more responsible for that game's outcome the more they thought about the game while watching.

This belief in magical powers may explain why individuals sometimes feel it is so important to "support our team." Just by rooting, people feel they can help their team win, even if they just jump up and down in front of a television, for example. Individuals' beliefs in magical

powers might also explain why, if a person has to step away from a television during an important game, they would rather not have someone who will cheer for the other team stay and watch in their absence.

The researchers found that people subscribe to magical beliefs despite the fact that these beliefs defy any rational scientific analysis. The feeling of mental power arises because people perceive an association between their thoughts about an external event and the occurrence

of that event.

Pronin and her co-authors noted, "This research suggests that magical beliefs are commonplace and that a bit of magical thinking appears even in ordinary people and circumstances."

Source: http://www.princeton.edu/webannounce/WWS_Headlines/Archived/2006/AUG_Text.html

Voodoo doll latest weapon to topple Taiwan president

Source: The Raw Story http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Voodoo_doll_latest_weapon_to_topple_09092006.html

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Published: Saturday September 9, 2006

Taipei- Opponents of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian have found a new weapon to try to bring about his downfall - voodoo dolls, a newspaper reported Sunday. Since opposition parties launched the campaign to oust Chen over alleged corruption scandals four months ago, they have tried all manner of gambits to pressure and shame him into resigning.

The opposition has tried articles, slogans, rhymes, jokes, anti- Chen T-shirts, balloons, rallies and sit-ins, but Chen has refused to step down.

Now, a couple named Lin has created Chen Shui-bian voodoo dolls, which are selling like hot cakes, the United Daily News (UDN) said.

"We hit upon the idea because we found all the anti-Chen commodities were not cute, so we began to make Chen Shui-bian voodoo doll with hemp thread," Mr Lin said.

On Saturday, the first day of offering the dolls for sale, the couple took 7,000 Chen Shui-bian voodoo dolls to an anti-Chen mass rally, and the voodoo dolls were snapped up within a few hours.

Each doll sells for 180 Taiwan dollars (6 US dollars).

Voodoo dolls originated in Africa and the Caribbean, growing out of the practise of traditional religions. Believers with a grudge against someone will write the name of their enemy on a voodoo doll, poke it with needles and place a curse on the doll.

© 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur

The Voodoo That J. Lo Do?

Ex-hubby: Lopez cast spells on Puffy, other former consorts

JUNE 30--Jennifer Lopez's first husband has agreed to an injunction barring him from publishing a tell-all book about their brief marriage and the couple's sex life. The order, signed yesterday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, was sought by Lopez, who contends that Ojani Noa, whom she married in February 1997, is prohibited from discussing her private affairs by the terms of a 2005 legal agreement. That settlement bars Noa from disclosing "for monetary gain any private or intimate details about either Jennifer Lopez or his relationship with Ms. Lopez." But after signing the agreement and receiving $150,000, Lopez charges, Noa tried to peddle stories about her to tabloids, has circulated a book proposal about their time together, and sought an extra $5 million in hush money. During a June 5 deposition, Noa, who was married to Lopez for about 11 months, gave an indication of the kind of material Lopez does not want published. Responding to a question from the actress's attorney, Noa (who remained friendly with his ex following their split) testified that Lopez "was doing voodoo when we weren't married. She was doing bad things to a lot of people when we were friends. And I knew all this time, because we did personally, me and her, to this particular lady." Noa added that Lopez did voodoo and "all this religious bullshit" to former lovers, including Sean "Puffy" Combs. The purported voodoo practices apparently stem from Lopez's religious devotion and the influence over her by a "Madrina," which is often described as a spiritual mentor for Santeria practitioners. Asked in a June 1 deposition why he thought he could keep selling stories about Lopez despite signing the six-figure settlement agreement, Noa said, "I mean, I live a free country. No? I can express myself. I can talk and say whatever I want to. No?" 

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0630061jlo1.html

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