TOWN OF WEIRD WONDERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LX, Issue 9723, 5 June 1924, Page 7

TOWN OF WEIRD WONDERS.

BURMESE WIZARDS’ UNCANNY POWERS.

There is a town in lower Burma which is surely tbe most weird and uncanny place on the map. Few Europeans Have ever penetrated to it, but Indians who have been there declare it to be inhabited by wizards and necromancers who wield strange powers. Visitors who enter this town of .Kale Thnungtot are said to bo doomed. A native who went there found a terrible silence brooding over the place. His bearers would not go near the place, declaring that the marshes which almost encircle it are the abode of beings neither human nor supernatural, but possessing the characteristics of both man and demon.

The woods are entirely devoid of bird life, but extraordinary and grotesque noises are heard coming from tiw deeper parts of the forest. The night is made hideous with the sound of gongs and the wild chanting of wizards invoking the spirits of the dead to reappear. . Strange are the stories of miracles told about this town. A trader saw a fowl taken out of a bag, its head cut off and then put on again, after which the bird, when placed .on the ground, walked away. V Another traveller in Burma has averred that he saw a necromancer expand himself by some means into the size of a small balloon, collapse, and disappear to the sound of an explosion! . There are wizards who believe they can transform themselves into the shape of wild animals, and they strike terror into the hearts of tho superstitious "Women who have been rubbed witn oil enchanted by a wizard are said to lose their reason and to flee away into the woods, says a writer in the Occult Review. They retain their human shape Tor seven days, and if within that period a man shall submit himself to the same process of" being anointed with tho magic ointment, and shall follow the woman to the woods and strike her on the head with.a heavy bar,- she shall recover her reason and return home cured.. If, however, this is not done, at the end'of the seven days she is transformed into a tigress.