Hello and welcome back to the Most Amazing Channel on the internet – I am your host
Rebecca Felgate and today we are talking the Top 10 Ethiopian Urban Legends – this one
has been really hard to do for you as the Ethiopian people have suffered through a lot
of war and political upheaval in recent history, meaning their time was mainly spent trying
to survive persecution, rather than making up modern day spook and ghost stories… none
the less, I have done some digging…
10 - The Evil Eye
Belief in the evil eye is wide spread throughout Ethiopia and beyond, and here it is called
Buda.
The Evil eye is a curse cast by a malevolent glare, given to a person when they aren’t
looking.
If an evil eye is cast on you, you are susceptible to injury or misfortune.
To protect yourself from the evil eye, usually people carry a talisman with an eye on it
– these look pretty freaky, but they’re there to stare down any evil.
There is a belief in Ethiopia that the evil eye is able to transform into a Hyena and
come at you.
Lets talk more about those Hyena’s at number 9
The Hyenas of Ethiopia have a very dark history and have been at the centre of myths and legends
for many hundreds of years.
Throughout the 1970s when Ethiopia’s military dictatorship deployed Red Terror across the
country, bodies of those killed in mass genocide were dumped on the outskirts of capital city,
Addis Ababa…where the Hyenas would dispose of them.
These days, urban legend has it that those who sleep in the streets are dragged away
by hyenas, or at the very least lose a finger, a toe or more.
There are also tales of the dogs stealing babies from mothers arms or setting upon civillians
in packs.
For this reason, you don’t want to venture out of the city alone at night…
Demons and Exorcisms In Ethiopia, people don’t necessarily believe
in ghosts, but they certainly believe in demons.
A fear of demons has kept people living in fear for generations.
If a person falls ill and it can’t be cured by medicine, it is basically just assumed
that they have a demon in them and that they need to be exorcised.
Ethiopia has a heavy Christian population and they believe that demons can be exorcised
and sometimes engage in a widespread phenomenon of mass exorcisms.
There is one priest in the capital Addis Abada that is known to exorcize demons for the cost
of one months wages.
A Czech photographer took pictures of priest Memehir Girma Wedimu exorcising 150 people
in the streets near a church in the capital.
The people were sprayed with Holy Water and screamed as they swore the felt demons leave
them.
150 Exoticisms in one go must make Ethiopia’s capital a hotspot for demonic activity…orrr
hysteria.
The Ghost of Axum Youtuber Mixcatcom Pete uploaded a video in
2009 that claimed to pic up ghostly spirits in the Tomb of the King of Aksum in Northern
Ethiopia.
The city dates back to around 400 BCE, so its old!
It is unclear which of the King this Tomb belongs to in the video – the only thing
we know is that the creator thinks they saw and felt a ghost.
The tomb explored was looted, but its structure remained and Pete thinks his infared camera
picked up evidence that the spirit of the crypts resident is haunting the space.
Locals wont agree with you because they are more scared of demons that ghosts, but the
youtuber is adamant that the tomb is haunted.
The Little Boy Ghost In 2014, a Spanish tourist in Madrid was travelling
around Ethiopia when she captured the image of a little boy ghost.
Yes, this picture is of a little boy, sure, but next to him is a another child with his
hands and a different position looking straight into the camera.
Some paranormal experts believe the child to be the spirit of a child killed in the
village, who now acts as an invisible friend to the boy in the picture.
The Sugar Killers In Ethiopia, gossiping about sugar can get
you killed.
In 2017 it was said that simply the rumour of an illegal shipment of sugar got ten people
killed.
Sugar is now so sought after and expensive that people are willing to kill for it.
When word spread on social media that smuggled sugar was going to pass through the town of
Ambo, some youths in the town supposedly set up road blocks and threw stones at the trucks.
The police were drawn in to the frey and were said to have killed ten locals.
One teenager said: They were shooting at us with silencers on…One of the boys killed
was only 15.
They killed girls too – one was my friend.
A lot of my friends have died.”
The Cripples of the Foot Whipping The Derg were a Marxist regime of Ethiopia
in power from 1974 to 1987.
In this time, there were many rumours of torture and execution of prisoners and enemies of
the regime.
The full extent of the cruelty only emerged after the regime was toppled, but at the time
it was said that leader Mengistu Haile Mariam would use a rope he called necktie to slowly
strange confessions from people, and that something called Bastinado was used to torture
people.
This was where their feet were tied up and smashed to pieces – which is why there are
a large number of permanently crippled Ethiopians today.
What seemed like horrifying urban legends in the 70s and 80s turned out to be the horrifying
truth.
Lucy and the Baboon Bone In 1974, a 3.2 million year old skeleton absolutely
astonished archeologists digging in a remote area of Afar in Ethiopia.
The skeleton appeared to belong to a new species of human ancestor called Australopithecus
and was thought to a female.
Scientists named her Lucy.
Our species, the Homo Sapiens, appeared around 200,000 years ago, so Lucy really is an old
old old relative.
It is thought that human life began around the area of modern day Ethiopia and the discovery
of Lucy has played a really important role in our study of evolution and migration.
However, in 2015, the American Museum of Natural History spotted a baboon bone amongst her
displayed skeleton bones.
This of course sent evolution deniers into a frenzy, claiming that Lucy was fake news
made up by atheists trying to sabotage religion… but in reality mix ups like this happen….
As Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University said: The co-mingling of skeletons is quite
common in the archaeological record and it can often be difficult to separate out different
elements if multiple bodies are mixed together.”
Who knows though!
The New Ocean Rumour has it that the famously landlocked
nation of Ethiopia will one day see water lapping against its land.
The lack of ocean has been a bit of a contentious issue for the country, which does still have
a Navy of 1 ship.
Anyway, word has it that a new ocean is forming that will split Africa in two…and it turns
out that this urban legend is true…only it will take 10 million years for it to happen.
Geologists working in the Afar region of Ethiopia say they have seen amazing changes in the
earth over the past 5 years.
10 million years may sound like a lot of time for a new ocean, but change is still happening
quickly!
In 2006, a 60 kilometre stretch of land opened up by 8 mentres in just ten days.
It is though eventually, southern Ethiopia and Somalia will drift away creating a new
island.
1 - The Mysteries of Dallol Dallol in Ethiopia is the hottest place in
earth.
Situated north on the boarder with Eritrea and in the Great Rift Valley, Dallol is a
melting pot of volcanic rock, spurting sulfuric acid and burning salt. because of its crazy
scientific compounds and high temperatures, the place is insane to look at; the water
is green, the land is yellow and white.
Reaching consistent temperatures of nearing 50 degrees Celsius and being one of the lowest
place on earth at 125 metres below sea level, many locals literally consider Dallol to be
hell, or the gateway to it.
Unlike death valley in the USA and Aziziyah in Libya, Dallol is actually inhabited …sort
of.
It is technically a ghost town.
The place is hot as hell, the water is toxic…why anyone would ever have lived here, why a handful
of people still do, is the topic of constant discuss A lot of locals consider these people
to be agents
of the devil.
Comments New York City Urban Legends Part 2
NICKY LOL Wrote: Whoever is reading this I hope you find your true love soon.
Maybe you are your own true love.
Enn Hamato said: Road to 4 million.
Some of you guys pointed out Arron Burr of Hamilton the musical!
– his old house is
a restaurant.
Yaasss.