VOODOO IN THE SUBURBS

You just don't ever expect to come home and find a voodoo offering not far you're your own front door! But that's exactly what happened to me 5 years ago.

I had just returned home from work, when my neighbor, Dan, approached me and asked me if I had seen anything unusual in the neighborhood that day. I had been at work since the early morning, so I replied that I hadn't. My curiosity piqued, I asked him, why? He said, "You have got to see this", in a tone that he only reserved for the most unusual of situations like when he got his car stuck in his backyard, hauling wood as if it were a dump truck. I could tell he was excited.

He then had me follow him a few hundred feet down the road. He and I live on a cul-de-sac, in a fairly typical suburban development. Dan's house is the last before the end of the pavement. While the pavement ends there is a dirt road, not much more than a trail really, that continues from there a few hundred feet further into the woods. Just where the pavement ends and the dirt trail begins, was one of the most unusual things I had ever seen in my life.

The first things I noticed were two goats' heads sticking out from under a black cloth of some sort. The cloth had been folded over into a triangular shape. It appeared to have been blown back or folded back to reveal the goat's heads. On top of the material was a bunch of grass. I was so shocked and amazed that I could barely take it all in. It was something out of a bad TV movie. In addition to the goat's heads, there was some sort of symbol, like a pentagram, drawn on the pavement in chalk. There was also an opened small, "nipper", bottle of rum, half full, and a cigar partially burnt, resting on a rock. These items were obviously strategically, even carefully, placed there. I was speechless.

When I was able to something else other than "what the!?", I asked Dan if he had called the police. He said that he hadn't, that he had only just discovered it himself, a few minutes before. He said that his five year old daughter had been playing in the front yard and she had spotted the…the whatever it was. She reported to her father that she had found a "teddy bear" in the road.

Dan got on his cell phone to call the police. As he did so, I took a closer look at the situation. I carefully lifted up the black material with the tip of a pen. Underneath, I could see that there were several coconuts. This just got stranger and stranger. The material that covered the spectacle had a pattern imprinted in it; spider webs, like something from a Halloween decoration.

While Dan talked with the police, I ran to get my camera. When I returned Dan was just staring down at what I could only describe as a ritual offering. Since we had nothing left to do but wait for the police, I was able to look at the objects more closely. I noticed that one of the goat's heads was white and the other was black. One was facing north and the other facing south. They appeared to have been kids, young goats.

The cigar was to the east and the bottle of rum to the west. Obviously there was a lot of symbolism here. Clearly whoever did this knew what they were doing. This was too carefully laid out to be the neighborhood kids fooling around.

I spent quite a while looking at the pentagram. It was a circle with dissecting lines. I had seen various occult symbols before, having been interested in the subject as a teenager, but had never seen anything like this. It appeared to have been drawn with chalk, but what looked like a fragment of the material left to draw the symbol had been left behind, and it appeared to be a shell of some kind. As opposed to the arrangement with the goat's heads, which was precisely laid out with care, the symbol appeared to have been hastily drawn.

The police soon came and they kept on coming. In short order there were half a dozen police cars and nearly a dozen cops from different departments and jurisdictions including the state police. The news spread fast I guess. They began to investigate the "crime scene". One officer went off down the trail to see if there was anything unusual there, while the officer in charge carefully lifted up the black material.

Underneath, there were nine coconuts, arranged in a triangle. The goat's heads sat in the middle, carefully propped up. Each coconut had been drilled out and each cut with bisecting lines forming the sign of the cross. The coconuts in the corners had been painted; red on one side and black on the other. One of the coconuts had been cut deep and some sort of sand or dirt was spilling out of it. I later learned that this was probably cemetery dirt.

One of the officers commented, "looks like the work of kids". He then looked down to notice that he was standing on the pentagram; so much for a careful examination of the scene. As he stepped back, he looked at the pentagram as if seeing it for the first time and said "devil worship." I said, 'I don think it's either kids, or devil worship. It looks like, well, like voodoo."

The officer in charge began to disassemble the array, joking as he did. He held up one of the goat's heads by its tiny little horn and said to his colleague nearby, "hey, I got your lunch here". They were clearly amused about the whole thing and it was obviously a highlight of their day, if not their year or even their career.

There were two plain clothes detectives in the group. They seemed somewhat impatient with the banter of their uniformed colleagues and they stepped forward to investigate in earnest. One detective was looking intently at one of the goats. He pulled out his notebook and noted that each goats head had an ear tag with some sort of identifying number. He remarked that he was hopeful that they might be able to get some information from that.

In turn he picked up each item and put in into an evidence bag with the others. I felt a little sad when there was nothing left but the pentagram, because the arrangement was so unusual, that I felt that there was more we could have gleaned from it; more than what met the eye.

The policeman who went into the woods returned empty handed. All the police then left, all but the two detectives, who stayed to question Dan and me. As we were wrapping things up, a truck pulled up bearing the logo of a local television station. I thought to myself, "Jeez, here we go", this could begin to get out of control. Visions of paparazzi storming my quiet neighborhood filled me with dread. Two guys got out of the truck. You could tell that one was the cameraman, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, and the other guy was the "talent" dressed in suit and tie, but with the tie loosely fastened.

The reporter tried unsuccessfully to question the detectives who were clearly used to this sort of thing and who adroitly turned aside the questioning. Dan on the other hand was eager to talk and was soon getting into painstaking detail about the discovery. Having been misrepresented by the media before and shy about a repeat performance, I had no interest in being interviewed on camera and I quietly slipped away.

You just don't quickly forget something such as this and I was eager to look up information on the internet. In a search engine, I used all the elements of the offering, goats' heads', coconuts, cigar, etc, as key words. After sifting through several hours of information, I concluded that the offering was probably Santeria; a type of voodoo.

Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean religious tradition, similar to voodoo, derived from traditional beliefs of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. From what I could discern from my internet readings, this was probably an offering to Legba or Ellugua, principle spirits in this form of worship. The colors on the coconuts signified the evocation of these spirits and the pentagram was actually a "veve", a religious symbol. People evoke the spirits to help them open and close the doors of the spiritual realm and to help facilitate conversation with even higher spirits. One of the things I noticed in my research is that the offering was left on Ascension Day; the day in the catholic church, 40 days after Easter, when Christ is supposed to have entered Heaven. Santeria and the related beliefs have assimilated Christian ideas over time.

Later that night Dan was on the 11 O'clock news. It showed him pointing to the area where the offering had been and there was an interview with his wife sitting on their porch discussing what happened. They also shared the photos that Dan had taken with his cell phone. The next day a friend of ours on the road to Montana called to say that they read about the event in USA Today! It had made the state by state news.

Over the next few days, I continued to do research. Dan too had done his own research. Dan is Puerto Rican and he was concerned that the ritual was aimed at him. He was rightly concerned because the offering was found outside his house, after all. Further, while our neighborhood as a variety of nationalities, my community is decidedly suburban and periodically some racist group comes around in the dead of the night dropping of hate material in everyone's mailbox. Dan thought this was aimed at him too.

After consulting elder members of his family, Dan was sent to see a Bruja, a witch, who lived in a nearby city. The Bruja told Dan that the offering was targeting him and that someone was jealous of him. Thus, they were summoning the spirits to harm Dan in some way; bring him down a peg or two. Dan was talked into buying several magical candles and some wolf urine that he was supposed to mix with his own urine and then sprinkle around the parameter of his property. I didn't ask where this urine came from, nor did I ask Dan if he performed this ceremony.

My wife's reaction was not much different. She was not home when the whole thing went down, so she didn't get to see the offering, only the pentagram. When I told her what happened she was more shocked them I was. She quickly grabbed a bottle of Holy Water ( she is catholic ) and went out to sprinkle the area where the offering had been. Later on she had Saint Christopher medals blessed at church and gave one to me and each of Dan's family.

I certainly didn't know what this ritual had been about, but there was nothing overtly negative about it, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Dan and I met daily to compare notes on what we had heard, leaning over the fence at night gossiping like two old men. We couldn't help but keep asking ourselves, why here? What does this mean?

Since Dan had been the one to call the police, they were keeping him appraised. It turned out that the goats had been purchased legally from a farm market in Pennsylvania and the police were hopeful of getting more information. Further, Dan was informed that a self proclaimed "expert" in unique religions had approached the police and offered their help. At this point the police were considering it.

For several days both Dan and I kept a closer eye on the neighborhood. I noticed the police around more as well and once saw the detectives sitting in their car just down the road.

About a week after the discovery, I came home from work to find Dan in the street talking to the detectives. I nearly ran over to them lest I miss out on something. As I walked up the police were in the process of telling Dan that they were closing out the investigation. The police were at a dead end with the goats heads and had no more information other than they had been legally purchased at a farmers market. The main reason for closing down the investigation was that really no crime had been committed as far as they could tell. The most they could arrest someone for was disturbing the peace or littering. They had more important things to do so they were letting it go.

They did have some good news for Dan, however. They had spoken to the expert and they were told that the offering was not something to be feared. According to the expert the offering was probably either left to help ease someone's transition into the after life or to petition the spirits to help keep such a person in this life, someone who was deathly ill. They reported that the cul-de-sac had been chosen because of its symbolic importance; a dead end and that was probably the only reason. It was not a hex put on anyone. Obviously I had no knowledge one way or the other, but what the police reported had the ring of truth to it, given all the symbolism in the offering and what I had learned about Santeria.

Since that day several years ago now, there has been no repeat performance. In the end, it's a great story to tell. People are fascinated by it, as I am. To this day, it intrigues me and I wonder about the person or persons who did this. I think it speaks to the changing demographics in my community. Obviously whoever did this believed in the power of what they were doing and such rituals, bizarre to us, are probably common place in their culture. Its certainly a lot more interesting than the garbage I often find dumped at the end of my street. I feel that I am somehow better off for having been a part of this. I have learned about something which is interesting and unique and I have come to better appreciate another culture I would not have otherwise known. I just hope that the offering had its desired effect.