Girls in Orissa fainting, waking up and acting like cats

August 6, 2004

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Feline spirits force Orissa school to close

Dolagobind, Orissa | August 05, 2004 7:58:00 PM IST

In a bizarre incident, a girl's school here has been closed after its students started behaving abnormally.

Teachers claim that at least a dozen girls have taken ill under mysterious circumstances in the past two weeks, all fainting without a cause, only to wake up and start behaving like cats.

Dolagobind, a remote hamlet in Orissa, has since been affected by so many incidents that necromancers have been called in to remove these so called evil spirits.

According to the teachers, all the affected girls are aged between eight to twelve. They were seen clawing their own faces and shrieking like felines. Some even fainted, leaving the management with no option but to shut the school.

"First three girls fell down when they came to school. We thought they hadn't had food so we gave them something to eat but after that also they were not normal and behaved strangely," said school headmistress Manjubala Pande.

"Next day again some six-seven girls started crying, fell down on the floor making sounds like that of a cat. We immediately informed others in the village but after the faintings and behaviour repeated, we were forced to shut the school," he added.

The children have been shifted to an ashram or hermitage run by a local sage where they are being made to recite Vedic mantras and fire rituals are being performed to drive the spirits away.

Parents say the girls have shown some improvement but are unable to recall exactly what went wrong with them. (ANI)