Speaker 1: One of the most continually surprising aspects of spiritual belief
Speaker 1: is just how many common features are shared by religions
Speaker 1: separated by vast distances language and cultural mores. Before it
Speaker 1: was possible for the average person to engage in intercontinental travel,
Speaker 1: and well before the advent of instant communication, faith was
Speaker 1: restricted to whatever was passed down within one's own immediate environment.
Speaker 1: And yet, despite some obvious differences, there are certain aspects
Speaker 1: which are shared by virtually all of the world's religions.
Speaker 1: Each employees designated sites of worship, whether it be something
Speaker 1: rudimentary like a tree or an altar stone, to more
Speaker 1: sophisticated structures like synagogues and mosques. Many have a fit
Speaker 1: bigger who stands for the ultimate personification of good, as
Speaker 1: well as a corresponding evil force that must be fought
Speaker 1: against or resisted in order to achieve salvation, and each
Speaker 1: of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and the Abrahamic traditions at least
Speaker 1: involve the story of a messianic figure with special fealty
Speaker 1: to whatever supreme being the respective religions advocate worshiping. Perhaps
Speaker 1: one of the most insidious common features shared by every
Speaker 1: major religion is the idea that we are vulnerable to
Speaker 1: possession by evil. From the sukimono of Japanese Shinto to
Speaker 1: the jin of Islam, the notion of the malevolent, otherworldly
Speaker 1: papeteer has been present in our understanding of the universe
Speaker 1: for millennia. Very often these are supposed phantoms motivated by
Speaker 1: vengeance or a will to power, who seek to conduct
Speaker 1: their business using people as their vessels. Like parasites, they
Speaker 1: feed on the negative emotions of their host and use
Speaker 1: up all of their resources until their charges life force
Speaker 1: is spent, or else they seek to compel their host
Speaker 1: to commit a terrible sin, thereby condemning their soul to
Speaker 1: damnation for all eternity. In Christianity, the most well known
Speaker 1: biblical example of demonic possession features in Mark five, Matthew eight,
Speaker 1: and Lucate of the New Testament, where Jesus is depicted
Speaker 1: forcing a collective malignant entity calling itself Legion, from the
Speaker 1: body of a man and into a herd of pigs.
Speaker 1: It is a troubling story. Then Jesus asked him, what
Speaker 1: is your name? My name is Legion, he replied, for
Speaker 1: we are many, And he begged Jesus again and again
Speaker 1: not to send them out. A large herd of pigs
Speaker 1: was seen feeding on a nearby hillside, so the demons
Speaker 1: begged Jesus send us among the pigs, allow us to
Speaker 1: go into them. He gave them permission, and the impure
Speaker 1: spirits came out and went into the pigs. Moments later,
Speaker 1: the herd, about two thousand in number, rushed straight down
Speaker 1: the steep bank and into a nearby lake, where they
Speaker 1: all drown. For many who are religiously minded, the Universes
Speaker 1: dictated by a Venetian style dualism, in which the forces
Speaker 1: of light and dark, good versus evil are continually in battle.
Speaker 1: For them, religion offers a safeguard against this darkness. The
Speaker 1: great fear, however, is that should they at any point
Speaker 1: let their guard down, evil is always lurking, ready to
Speaker 1: pounce and worm its way inside them. In Maori culture,
Speaker 1: this belief is a little more nuanced. The idea of
Speaker 1: possession doesn't take the form of a demon invading the body. Rather,
Speaker 1: it's understood through something called marcutu, a kind of spiritual pollution,
Speaker 1: a curse that seeps into the world when the balance
Speaker 1: between people, ancestors and the land is broken. It isn't
Speaker 1: about good and evil in a dualistic sense. It's about
Speaker 1: harmony and disruption. To be afflicted by marcutu is to
Speaker 1: be caught in a web of unseen forces, ancestral wrongs,
Speaker 1: broke can tarpou, the sacred laws that keep the world
Speaker 1: in spiritual balance, and the lingering residue of guilt or shame. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: a tohunga, a ritual expert, would lift the markutu with karakia,
Speaker 1: incantations and chants and water to help restore order to
Speaker 1: the world. It's a ritual of reconciliation, not combat, meant
Speaker 1: to heal a relationship with the unseen world, rather than
Speaker 1: to drive out an evil being. It's a powerful idea,
Speaker 1: to say the least. In the case of one family
Speaker 1: living on the outskirts of Wellington, New Zealand, it was
Speaker 1: one that for a brief period in October two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, became terrifyingly real. You're listening to Unexplained and
Speaker 1: I'm Richard McLean Smith. One unusually stormy evening on Saturday
Speaker 1: sixth of October two thousand and seven, twenty two year
Speaker 1: ould Janet Moses was slumped in an arm chair in
Speaker 1: the front bar of the Palliser Hotel. The suburb of
Speaker 1: Wainoia Marta was sleepy and close knit, and family engagements
Speaker 1: like this one were a regular occurrence. Though she'd been
Speaker 1: feeling tired, Janet felt it was important to make an
Speaker 1: appearance because her beloved sister was finally turning twenty one.
Speaker 1: To Janet, the age gap of a year may as
Speaker 1: well have been decades. Unlike her sister, who was still
Speaker 1: relatively carefree and unburdened by the adult world, Janet was
Speaker 1: more or less a single mother to two young girls.
Speaker 1: Her long term partner, Shane, who she'd been with for
Speaker 1: nine years, was almost never at home. Janet had even
Speaker 1: heard whispers about a possible infidelity, but she felt so
Speaker 1: tired of it all she couldn't find the strength to
Speaker 1: confront him about it. On this night, however, she tried
Speaker 1: to put on a show for her sister. The whole
Speaker 1: family was in attendance, and they would notice if she
Speaker 1: was feeling down. They did everything together, often eating and
Speaker 1: spending time together. They even had their own sports team,
Speaker 1: with the family emblem of a white lion emblazoned on
Speaker 1: their crest, Janet sipped at her glass of beer and
Speaker 1: eventually allowed it to go flat and warm. She couldn't
Speaker 1: stop thinking about her maternal grandmother, who'd recently passed away,
Speaker 1: how much she would have loved to have been there
Speaker 1: with everyone that night. Nearby, Janet's uncle John was concerned.
Speaker 1: He'd spotted Janet from across the room staring blankly at
Speaker 1: the wall. When he asked her what was wrong, Janet
Speaker 1: explained that she wasn't feeling great and asked John if
Speaker 1: he'd seen her aunt, Glennis anywhere, who'd promised to give
Speaker 1: her a lift home. When Glennis eventually caught up with her,
Speaker 1: she was shocked at just how drawn out Janet looked.
Speaker 1: She could have passed for a woman in her fifties,
Speaker 1: she thought, instead of the dynamic young woman of twenty
Speaker 1: two she knew her to be. Without a second thought,
Speaker 1: Glennis suggested that Janet and her kids crash at her
Speaker 1: house for the night, where she could keep an eye
Speaker 1: on her and help with the kids while Janet tried
Speaker 1: to get some rest. With any luck, she thought Janet
Speaker 1: would be back to her usual self in no time.
Speaker 1: The following morning, Glennis awoke to what seemed like the
Speaker 1: distant sound of chattering on the street outside her bedroom window.
Speaker 1: When she checked on Janet's girls next door, she found
Speaker 1: them snoring under the first rays of sun that were
Speaker 1: now streaming through the curtains. But when she went into
Speaker 1: Janet's bedroom, she was puzzled to find the bed neatly made,
Speaker 1: with no sign of her niece having slept in it
Speaker 1: at all. Janet, she called out, there was only a
Speaker 1: deafening silence in reply. At the front of the house,
Speaker 1: the main door gaped open, the thin mesh of the
Speaker 1: screen door drawn across the frame. She reached out, unhooked it,
Speaker 1: and stepped out onto the lawn of her front garden
Speaker 1: into the balmy heat of what was shaping up to
Speaker 1: be a scorching day. When Glennis walked to the edge
Speaker 1: of her pathway, she saw a figure in a billowing
Speaker 1: white robe up ahead in the middle distance. It was Janet,
Speaker 1: still wearing her pajamas, walking confusedly up the middle of
Speaker 1: the road in bare feet. As Glennis drew closer to her,
Speaker 1: she could hear her muttering something under her breath. What's that,
Speaker 1: Glennis asked softly. Janet's facial expression didn't change, and she
Speaker 1: seemed not to notice Glennis at all. Instead, her eyes
Speaker 1: remained fixed on the hills that rose above the estate
Speaker 1: as she continued muttering the same apparent phrase over and
Speaker 1: over again. It sounded like a prayer. Janet, please come inside.
Speaker 1: You're going to hurt yourself out here. Just then Janet
Speaker 1: stopped and fixed Glennys with a blank stare. To Glennis,
Speaker 1: it seemed as though her irises had disappeared, leaving her
Speaker 1: eyes appearing almost entirely all consumingly black. The young woman
Speaker 1: opened her mouth to speak, but the words that Janet
Speaker 1: croaked out did not seem to be coming from her
Speaker 1: own vocal chords at all. They're coming, she said to
Speaker 1: her aunt, with a gaze that seemed then to Glennis
Speaker 1: to be not of this world. They're coming. It was
Speaker 1: just after one pm when Glennis arrived with Janet and
Speaker 1: the girls in tow. Uncle John had been expecting them,
Speaker 1: and not just because Sunday was normally when the family
Speaker 1: sat down for their weekly meeting. Glennis had phoned John
Speaker 1: first thing and explained everything that was going on. He
Speaker 1: couldn't help feeling that his poor young niece had finally
Speaker 1: been driven to the brink by the demands of parenting
Speaker 1: and her bad relationship, John resolved to sort it out
Speaker 1: once and for all. Since his mother had died, he'd
Speaker 1: taken on his role as head of the family with Gusto,
Speaker 1: and it both heartened and terrified him to be looked
Speaker 1: upon with so much responsibility. By then, other family members
Speaker 1: had already arrived and were all around the living room
Speaker 1: drinking coffee. Over the course of the next few hours,
Speaker 1: members of Janet's family took it in turns to reassure
Speaker 1: her that they loved her, perhaps hoping that that might
Speaker 1: be enough to bring her out of her stupor. All
Speaker 1: the while, despite the heat, Janet simply sat stock still
Speaker 1: in her jacket and remained silently staring at the ground.
Speaker 1: When the family meeting was over, Glennis took Janet to
Speaker 1: convalesce at the former home of her grandmother, where her
Speaker 1: mother now lived, who was waiting for her. When she arrived,
Speaker 1: Janet seemed exhausted. A bed was set up for her
Speaker 1: in a spare room next to a large stone statue
Speaker 1: of a lion. The lion had been acquired a few
Speaker 1: weeks before by her sister from the grounds at the
Speaker 1: Gray Town hotel located about an hour's drive away. Because
Speaker 1: the lion was seen as a natural talisman of the family,
Speaker 1: her sister thought it would bring good ffe fortune to
Speaker 1: their house. It was around one o'clock the following morning
Speaker 1: when a horrific scream ripped through the silence of the house.
Speaker 1: Janet's mother rushed into Janet's room to find her daughter
Speaker 1: in hysterics, claiming that the spirit of the statue was
Speaker 1: tormenting her and scratching her from the inside out. She
Speaker 1: was sweating so much from her forehead it looked as
Speaker 1: though she'd just come out of the shower. Janet's mother
Speaker 1: did her best to calm her down and soothed her
Speaker 1: back to sleep, but the following day her mood seemed
Speaker 1: to have grown worse. Things only deteriorated further from there.
Speaker 1: It wasn't clear who said it first, but soon the
Speaker 1: family began to wonder if Janet was succumbing to mark utu.
Speaker 1: Barely able to lift herself from bed with an ever
Speaker 1: growing sense of paranoia, it was clear that Janet was
Speaker 1: in severe trouble and it was time to seek help.
Speaker 1: It was early on the morning of Monday, eighth of
Speaker 1: October when Timmy Rahi arrived at Janet's mother's home. In
Speaker 1: his back was a leather bound copy of the Bible
Speaker 1: and a bottle of holy water. Timmy was renowned within
Speaker 1: the local married community as a cowmatur or spiritual adviser,
Speaker 1: and had even worked as a cultural attache to New
Speaker 1: Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark on matters pertaining to native spirituality.
Speaker 1: From Timmy's perspective, human beings were composed of both physical
Speaker 1: and spiritual elements, and it was his belief that the
Speaker 1: spiritual was vulnerable to influence from both good and bad
Speaker 1: other worldly beings. On his arrival, John quickly ushered Timmy
Speaker 1: into the house where countless other members of Janet's extended
Speaker 1: family were also gathered, and in the middle of them
Speaker 1: all was a completely unresponsive Janet. Timmy couldn't help being
Speaker 1: deeply concerned by Janet's exhausted state and the distant look
Speaker 1: in her eyes, though he couldn't be sure what was
Speaker 1: wrong exactly. After reciting some prayers but getting nothing in response,
Speaker 1: he suggested the best option would be to conduct the
Speaker 1: mark Utu lifting as ceremony to rid any potentially disruptive
Speaker 1: energies in case things got worse. At this stage, it
Speaker 1: merely involved blessing Janet with water and saying special cohens
Speaker 1: paradoxical riddles designed to break patterns of thought over her
Speaker 1: prone body in an effort to ward off the perceived evil.
Speaker 1: But as the afternoon progressed, something strange occurred. Timmy claimed
Speaker 1: to have a vision of three claws ripping into Janet.
Speaker 1: It was the stone Lion from the hotel, he said.
Speaker 1: The implication was clear. It wasn't a negative, essays that
Speaker 1: Janet was struggling with some kind of malignant demonic entity
Speaker 1: had got into her. As it turned out, the stone
Speaker 1: and statue was actually part of a pair. The way
Speaker 1: Timmy saw it, the pair had been together for over
Speaker 1: one hundred years, so when Janet's sister stole one of them,
Speaker 1: the other's protective spirits had become angry and placed a
Speaker 1: curse on Janet's family. A shudder of fear passed between
Speaker 1: all those present. Were they all in danger nowt they wondered,
Speaker 1: Not wanting to take any chances, Janet's uncle John immediately
Speaker 1: sprang into action and ordered the statue to be taken
Speaker 1: back to the hotel without delay, the statue was dragged
Speaker 1: from the house and placed in the back of a
Speaker 1: truck and driven away from the house at speed. A
Speaker 1: convoy of eight further vehicles containing nearly forty members of
Speaker 1: Janet's family, many who'd called off sick from work a school,
Speaker 1: art the statue back to the Gray Town Hotel. Inside
Speaker 1: one of the cars, Janet became restless, seeming to suddenly
Speaker 1: snap out of her otherwise placid state. She began to
Speaker 1: spit and rail at the people around her, and even
Speaker 1: threatened to kill her paternal grandmother when she tried to
Speaker 1: calm her down. With no time to spare, the family
Speaker 1: finally arrived at the hotel, Several people jumped out and
Speaker 1: hurriedly pulled the heavy stone lion from the back of
Speaker 1: the truck, then dragged it back to the exact spot
Speaker 1: from where it had been taken. Once back in place,
Speaker 1: the relief among them all was palpable to be sure
Speaker 1: it had done the trick. Timmy Rahi conducted a short
Speaker 1: service to formalize the statue's return and pray for forgiveness.
Speaker 1: Back at Janet's mother's house, the family had dinner together, then,
Speaker 1: on the advice of Timmy Rahi, now hopeful that all
Speaker 1: would soon return to normal. Janet was ordered to try
Speaker 1: and get some rest, but Rahi was unsettled despite everything,
Speaker 1: Returning the statue had not fixed the problem. As he
Speaker 1: explained to John, the lion's return had only removed two
Speaker 1: of the claws from his vision. He could still see
Speaker 1: one clinging on to Janet. The mark utu was still there,
Speaker 1: and it was now somehow linked to Janet's partner Shane.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, tenth of October, the family gathered again at
Speaker 1: Janet's mother's home. Though he didn't know exactly how it
Speaker 1: was done, Uncle John decided to continue the markutu lifting.
Speaker 1: He began by ordering the family to surround Janet. Just
Speaker 1: then someone pointed out the bone necklace around her neck,
Speaker 1: a gift for Shane. It was promptly cut off and
Speaker 1: thrown away. Then together, under John's guidance, the family began
Speaker 1: to chant blessings as they passed around a cup of water,
Speaker 1: taking it in turns to sip from it. They began
Speaker 1: to stomp in unison as though they might somehow stamp
Speaker 1: the markoutu out of her. Outside, unsettled neighbors listened with
Speaker 1: increasing concern to the deafening sounds of chanting and stomping
Speaker 1: coming from inside the property. While inside, as the temperature
Speaker 1: rose ever higher, hitting forty degrees celsius, the family took
Speaker 1: to splashing themselves with cupfuls of water to help cool
Speaker 1: down as they continued to stamp and shout for the
Speaker 1: Markoutu to leave Janet. At some point, Janet's paternal relatives
Speaker 1: began to wonder if she might be better off going
Speaker 1: to hospital, but their concerns were waved away. Instead, with
Speaker 1: nothing seeming to work, Janet was poured into the shower,
Speaker 1: fully clothed and sprayed with cold water, in the belief
Speaker 1: that subjecting her to cold temperatures would make the mark
Speaker 1: utu that still clung to her uncomfortable. When this also
Speaker 1: didn't work, Janet was led back to the living room,
Speaker 1: where the lifting continued with ever more gusto. By Thursday,
Speaker 1: eleventh of October, the heat which enveloped Wellington had become
Speaker 1: virtually unbearable. That morning, Janet's mother, along with some younger
Speaker 1: members of the family, arrived at the house where Janet
Speaker 1: was being kept. What they found there shocked them to
Speaker 1: the core. Numerous members of the family sat about in
Speaker 1: various states of lucidity. Clearly having been up all night,
Speaker 1: Uncle John hadn't changed his clothes for days, and he
Speaker 1: was babbling incoherently about something evil in Janet's eyes, while
Speaker 1: all about the house was completely flooded. Worst of all, Janet,
Speaker 1: who veered from restless sleep to lugubrious bouts of wakefulness,
Speaker 1: was no better than the last time her mother had
Speaker 1: seen her. With her mother's arrival and Janet seemingly subdued
Speaker 1: for the moment, John took the opportunity to try and
Speaker 1: get some rest, but no sooner had he closed his eyes,
Speaker 1: Janet started screaming, They're coming. She growled, They're coming. Several
Speaker 1: family members shot up and began shadow boxing around her,
Speaker 1: as if they were fighting off invisible entities. At some point,
Speaker 1: John noticed that some of the children had begun to
Speaker 1: act strangely too. Some were staring blankly off into the distance,
Speaker 1: seemingly in a trance, while others seemed to be muttering
Speaker 1: incoherently to themselves. It was the thing they'd feared the most,
Speaker 1: the Markkutu was spreading hurriedly. The children were all made
Speaker 1: to vomit in order to purge any evil that was
Speaker 1: thought to be inside them. Anything solid that came up
Speaker 1: was swiftly stamped on by the others in an effort
Speaker 1: to obliterate any evil spirit that it might contain. From
Speaker 1: that point on, everyone was banned from looking Janet in
Speaker 1: the eyes lest they also succumbed to the malignant curse.
Speaker 1: At some point, perhaps growing increasingly terrified by the ritual's
Speaker 1: inability to expunge the mark Utu from Janet, the family
Speaker 1: decided to take things up a notch, believing the purifying
Speaker 1: qualities of water held the key to her salvation. Janet
Speaker 1: was held down while water was poured into her eyes
Speaker 1: and her mouth in the hope it might finally purge
Speaker 1: the evil from her. When she closed her eyes to
Speaker 1: shield them from the deluge, others reached out and pride
Speaker 1: them open. Some believed when they did so they could
Speaker 1: see the demons swimming about inside them. When Janet closed
Speaker 1: her mouth, unable to hold any more water in her throat,
Speaker 1: again came the frantic hands to pull her mouth apart.
Speaker 1: As Janet's eyes grew progressively scratched and red, and she
Speaker 1: struggled for breath under the onslaught the young woman grew
Speaker 1: increasingly distressed. Clearly the family thought it was finally working.
Speaker 1: Janet's struggling, they reasoned, was simply her struggling to free
Speaker 1: herself from the demon possessing her, and so, despite her
Speaker 1: increasingly desperate protestantatients, the family held firm and continued the treatment.
Speaker 1: When Janet's jaw locked, nobody present understood that she was
Speaker 1: in fact drowning. Moments later, she was unresponsive, with no
Speaker 1: desire to call the authorities and no one on hand
Speaker 1: able to perform CPR. It was sometime around eight a m.
Speaker 1: On Friday, October twelfth when Janet's heart stopped beating, and
Speaker 1: yet even then the markouto lifting was not complete. Janet
Speaker 1: now dead, it seemed to many present that whatever had
Speaker 1: been stalking her had somehow wormed its way into her
Speaker 1: fourteen year old niece. She too, was held down and
Speaker 1: dowsed with water. Fingers clawed at her eyes to keep
Speaker 1: them open, as the supposedly purifying liquid was repeatedly thrown
Speaker 1: onto her face, until eventually she passed out. Just then
Speaker 1: a neighbor appeared at the front door. He told everyone
Speaker 1: to stop immediately. He claimed he'd received a message in
Speaker 1: a dream from Janet's deceased grandmother that the demon was
Speaker 1: now gone, and that with Janet's death, the evil had
Speaker 1: been dispersed. He said that the grandmother's spirit was angry
Speaker 1: that the younger family members had been subjected to all
Speaker 1: the madness. Then he blessed Janet's body and advised that
Speaker 1: the emergency services be called the lifting was over. In
Speaker 1: the days following Janet Moses's death, numerous members of her
Speaker 1: family were taken into custody and quizzed about their involvement.
Speaker 1: In the end, nine people were charged with manslaughter and
Speaker 1: cruelty to a child. No intoxicants were found in any
Speaker 1: of the participants of the ritual, while several experts in
Speaker 1: Maori culture testified that they had never heard of an
Speaker 1: exorcism being conducted with water. As it turned out, the
Speaker 1: lion ornaments that had apparently been revealed to spiritual adviser
Speaker 1: Timmy Rahi in a vision to be over one hundred
Speaker 1: years old were in fact nothing of the sort. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were simply mundane objects purchased recently from an everyday
Speaker 1: garden center. In June two thousand and nine, five of
Speaker 1: the nine family members were found guilty of manslaughter, including
Speaker 1: Janet's uncle John and four of her aunts. However, not
Speaker 1: one received a jail sentence, but were instead sentenced to
Speaker 1: community service and to undertake cultural sensitivity training, which may
Speaker 1: seem odd given the severity of the crime, because here's
Speaker 1: the thing, whether or not Janet was ever truly possessed,
Speaker 1: there is absolutely no denying that her family were only
Speaker 1: acting with the very best of intentions according to how
Speaker 1: they saw the world, despite their abstract beliefs, leading to
Speaker 1: the very real physical consequence of Janet's death. It feels
Speaker 1: almost cruel to condemn them for it, given the sincerity,
Speaker 1: even purity, of their conviction. It is perhaps a little
Speaker 1: hollow given the tragic consequences of their actions, But this
Speaker 1: single detail raises some vital and uncomfortable notions about the
Speaker 1: world we share with each other. In China Meaval's novel
Speaker 1: The City and the City, the plot unfolds effectively in
Speaker 1: two locations, the cities of Betzel and ol Coma, that,
Speaker 1: in a remarkable and brilliant conceit, in fact occupy the
Speaker 1: same physical space. Their inhabitants have been conditioned from birth
Speaker 1: to unsee and unhear one another, thereby enabling them to
Speaker 1: live side by side despite inhabiting entirely separate perceptual realities.
Speaker 1: Each population moves through the same streets and buildings, but
Speaker 1: perceives only its own city's architecture, people, and culture. Mentally
Speaker 1: erasing anything belonging to the other. To notice or acknowledge
Speaker 1: the other side is a crime called breach, punishable by
Speaker 1: a mysterious quasi supernatural force. Mieval uses this strange surreal
Speaker 1: set up to explore how societies construct and maintain invisible
Speaker 1: boundaries political, cultural, psychological, and how they allow people to
Speaker 1: coexist in the same reality while living entirely separate lives.
Speaker 1: But crucially, for the most part, those who have to
Speaker 1: live in this reality do not do so out of
Speaker 1: animosity or hatred to the others outside. It is simply
Speaker 1: a consequence of their innocently and organically acquired beliefs. And
Speaker 1: that is a complicated truth at the center of all this,
Speaker 1: and one that bears repeating that whatever others may believe,
Speaker 1: and however wrong we might think those beliefs to be,
Speaker 1: it is often not hatred or a calculated rejection of
Speaker 1: our beliefs that drives them. Janet Moses' family did what
Speaker 1: they thought was right. They believed they were trying to
Speaker 1: save her, and yes, that ill informed belief killed her.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It might be easy for some
Speaker 1: to look at Janet's family and see some things strange, alien,
Speaker 1: even a relic perhaps of less enlightened and more superstitious times.
Speaker 1: But the truth is we all live like this. Each
Speaker 1: of us are court inside abstract systems of belief, be
Speaker 1: they political, cultural, spiritual, that tell us who we are,
Speaker 1: what is right, and who to fear. A lot of
Speaker 1: the time those beliefs rub quietly against each other, but
Speaker 1: often they collide in devastating ways, and when they do,
Speaker 1: we're reminded how fragile our sense of the world really is.
Speaker 1: In truth, our world has never been one thing. It
Speaker 1: has always been a series of overlapping realities, each coexisting
Speaker 1: with the other, sometimes helpfully, other times less so. But
Speaker 1: the danger, in many ways comes not from belief itself,
Speaker 1: but from the moment we stop looking across the divide,
Speaker 1: the moment we no longer see the other city, because
Speaker 1: that's when belief hardens into something colder, and that is
Speaker 1: how the world fractures, not for the most part through malice,
Speaker 1: but through conviction through the seductive fallacy that only one
Speaker 1: version of the world is correct or indeed is needed.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith and James
Speaker 1: Connor Patterson. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is
Speaker 1: an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story
Speaker 1: of your own you'd like to share. You can find
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