The world is on edge this weekend like never before, as people everywhere fret over the closest Planet Earth and Humankind have been brought to nuclear obliteration, most wondering whether World War III will start in the Middle East, or Europe.
But while Caribbean governments ponder on the consequences of worst possibilities, populations also include many citizens more concerned with domestic issues (like crime and violence, health and housing) and less about local implications of the horrific global events dominating the news.
Many prefer to avoid looking beyond the horizon and instead look out for the next public entertainment event, whether Carnival and Calypso contests, major annual sporting encounters (Cricket or Soccer), or simply the next National Holiday or religious Holy Day (like Corpus Christi, last Thursday, June 19).
In Saint Lucia, following the island’s most-successful annual Jazz and Arts Festival in May, more citizens are flocking to calypso tents this month, while also preparing for Carnival 2K25 in July, to be followed by Emancipation Month activities throughout August.
But, approaching two weeks since a sensational online recording highlighted the surprising depth and width of popular belief in — and fear of — Superstition and indigenous brands of Occultism, continues to be the Number One topic on islanders’ minds and tongues, at home and abroad.
However, this seemingly strange but ages-old reality only underlines the universal fact that people everywhere always harbour natural attractions for illusions.
Take the following shining examples…
According to AI Overview, ‘In 1983, David Copperfield staged a live television illusion where the Statue of Liberty appeared to vanish. He did not actually make the statue disappear, but instead, used a combination of stagecraft and misdirection to create the illusion. The audience was seated on a rotating platform, and the statue was hidden behind one of the stage towers as the platform rotated…’
All of 42 years later, it’s still believed Copperfield actually made the statue disappear.
Likewise, the successive generations of Caribbean citizens who grew-up with scary stories about ‘witches’ flying on brooms and ‘sorcerers’ being ‘exorcized’ by Christians after being caught in bodies other than theirs.
Earlier fears of the unknown in the Caribbean were related to secret societies like Masonic lodges, but also included imported variations of ‘spiritual healers’, ‘medicinal masseurs’ and ‘fortune tellers’ – all adapted to local conditions and folkloric traditions.
There’s also the gravitational pull generated by the natural human craving for exploring the unknown — like the recent launch of Space Tourism and plans to inhabit Mars.
Yet, superstition transcends classes and religion, including believers in the unbelievable always naturally gravitating to entities that offer succor through scary pleasure, in the name of ‘thrilling’ entertainment.
Today’s generation of new Caribbean elders grew-up flocking to cinemas to watch ‘Midnight Shows’ featuring ‘Horror Movies’ starring the likes of ancient actors (also feared in real life) like Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Boris Karloff, also including sensational thrillers from early directors like Alfred Hitchcock.
They mainly featured cinematic creations of absolutely horrible images of unimaginable Euro-visions of continental versions of traditional witchcraft and sorcery, blood-sucking vampires and turning humans into animals.
The last quarter of the 20th Century welcomed new and more-direct appeals to a wider range of natural fears of the unknown, mixing suspense with horror and terror through a new brand of suspense-filled top-box-office hit movies.
These included series like: Stephen Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’, ‘Freddie Kruger’ (played by Robert Englund in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’), ‘Hannibal Lecter’ (played by Anthony Hopkins in ‘Silence of the Lambs’), ‘Jason Voorhees’ (in the ‘Friday 13th’ series) ‘Michael Myers’ (in ‘Halloween’), plus others like ‘Leatherface’, ‘Ghostface’, ‘Pennywise’, ‘Pinhead’ — and ‘Chucky’.
J.K. Rowling’s highly popular ‘Harry Potter’ series is the latest living proof of the extent to which beliefs in superstition are both global and sanitized through fictitious characters made to look good, even if doing impossible things.
Fine storytelling explores all possible angles of attraction to unimaginable unfolding before audiences in ways that make them actually feel part of it.
Information Technology (IT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and today’s robotic sciences augment illusions of reality in ways that progressively change images of ancient characters with Time.
For example, today’s 21st Century version of ‘Count Barnabas Collins’ of ‘The Dark Shadows’ series (that came with the advent of TV to Saint Lucia in the mid-1960) has been transcended to show the castled and ageless fanged count metamorphose to now using IT devices as part of his vast armory of ultra-modern tools of his blood-sucking trade.
Today’s flurry of AI-generated Caribbean versions of sorcerers also depict Euro-images of witches and vampires, increasingly adapted to suit place and purpose.
This is worsened by an evident intersection between today’s continuing beliefs in superstition and occultism and use of IT to promote profits from playing on human fears and anxieties around mysticism and miracles, tales and fables in Century 21.
The recent online audio revelations by a lady claiming to have ‘confessed’ to several deadly actions propelled by the spirits that ‘possessed’ her has also brought to light some other real heart-rending realities hiding in plain sight.
For example: How will the police gather the medical and scientific evidence necessary to prosecute the hapless lady for the alleged crimes she supposedly voluntarily and secretly confessed to?
Was the recording obtained and aired with the lady’s consent?
It’s a veritable maelstrom of mind-boggling bother for solicitors and other legal minds, but try telling that to the families of the countless deceased persons specifically named from identified locations, who now wonder whether to believe the Causes of Death described in official Death Certificates.
It’s also a reflection of the fact that implications are always more than people care to think about in circumstances where beliefs in and fears of the unknown override interest in the true consequences of blindly believing the unbelievable.