By Tim Binnall
A man in Zimbabwe says that his life has been torn asunder due to a cursed grinding mill that has a sinister spirit attached to it. According to a local media report, the bizarre case began two years ago when Phillip Mafemera purchased the device from his neighbors in the town of Nyanga. Shortly after buying the machine, the man claims, it began "causing mysterious things at my home." Specifically, he chillingly recalled that "every night, I would see the shadow of a man at the grinding mill." This entity, Mafemera laments, seems to be guarding the device and would occasionally chase him around his house until ultimately it caused an incident wherein the residence burned to the ground.
Amazingly, Mafemera actually made all of these assertions in court as he recently found himself in trouble with the law when he was busted performing a ritual outside of his neighbors' home in an attempt to eradicate the spirit. Speaking to a judge about the matter, the beleaguered man detailed his two-year-long ordeal and pointed the finger squarely at the family who sold him the grinding mill in the first place. Mafemera testified that he had tried on multiple occasions to simply give the cursed object back to them, but they refused to accept it. This, in turn, led the man to enlist 'spiritual healers' to help him solve the problem of the possessed grinding mill.
The self-proclaimed sorcerers subsequently informed him that "there was a shadow watching me ever since I bought the grinding mill" and that the only way to rid himself of the dark spirit was by performing a ritual and then handing it over to its original owners, lest someone in his family die. As evidenced by his legal woes, the proverbial paranormal prescription proved to be problematic and when his neighbors rebuffed his last attempt to return the damned device, the fed up man simply dumped it in some bushes in the hopes of finally being rid of its ghostly guard.
It would seem that the fantastic story held some sway with the judge as, taking the entire tale into account, he ordered the original owners of the grinding mill to reimburse the man three cattle which he had originally traded for the machine two years ago. That said, Mafemera did not wind up coming out ahead via the verdict as the court also fined him "six beasts" for performing the ritual on his neighbors' property. What ultimately became of the machine at the center of the case is uncertain, though one hopes that it was not simply stumbled upon by some unsuspecting individual who thought they had found a free grinding mill and didn't realize that it actually came with an evil entity.