The Kenyan Witch Trials
More than half of the 25,000 homeless children in Kinshasa, Kenya are believed to be on the streets because their parents have disowned them as suspected ""witches.""
""They said I ate my father,"" said
one 10-year-old. ""But I didn't.""
—Los Angeles Times
Night of the living dead
Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia still celebrate a lunar-calendar oddity termed the ""hungry ghost"" month. During this time, the gates of hell supposedly open, creating widespread fear. Many Buddhists try to appease the ghosts and acquire lucky lottery numbers by offering them food and paper models of items they can use when they resume dead.
—Reuters
That's some deadly love
In rural Jiangsu province, some still believe that a well-attended funeral leads to a successful afterlife. Sadly, police have recently cracked down on the practice of hiring strippers to punch up attendance.
—Reuters
If hiring strippers seemed bizarre, some families of dead bachelors go as far as buying corpses of unmarried females and bury them with their sons in posthumanous ""weddings."" Families of these dead women are able to command high ""dowries.""
—The New York Times
La femme feral
Australia's Channel 4 produced a documentary featuring a Ukrainian woman, now 23, who had been ""forgot(ten)"" by her parents and raised by dogs until discovered at age eight. Oxana Malaya has the mental age of six, stilled speech and an uncoordinated gait. To this day, she buries any gifts she receives and runs into the woods when she is upset. Malaya can still bark, run on all fours, pant with her tongue and dry herself off by shaking. Malaya is one of 100 known feral children.
—Daily Telegraph
