us, turned around, and went chasing off in the other direction. Our 
first encounter seemed to prove that he wasn’t serious. A little later 
the first man came chasing back up the mountain, then turned off the 
track and went after a man bigger than himself who ran away. (While 
writing to you I can hear the screams and yells from down the moun- 
tain where there is evidently another one of these cases.) As this 
young fellow came running back up the mountain, I stepped out to 
meet him. He seemed to be about 17 years of age. I called out to 
him and walked towards him; however, he didn’t seem to notice me 
and went racing off. 
These fits of madness come on when the people begin eating what 
they call mushrooms, but which to us are more like toadstools. They 
say that at some unpredictable time their eyes begin to swim, they 
go deaf and crazy and begin this chasing up and down the mountain. 
They seem to have an amazing amount of energy, as this proves. 
Young people as well as men and women are affected, the women danc- 
ing around, whistling and singing. The whistling is both in and out 
with every breath, they also giggle and laugh and let out snorts and 
loud yells. 
After dinner another one came by our house: he was a full-grown 
man. He seemed to slow up by our house and so I walked over to 
him calling out to him. Everybody else had fled. As I drew near so 
he turned to look at me. I’ve never seen crazy maniacal eyes before, 
but I’m sure that I saw them then. All of a sudden I got an uneasy 
feeling in my stomach. I realized that only as I was in the Lord and 
under His blood was I safe. However, trying not to show my feel- 
ings, | went right up to him. My dog Rex, his hair standing on end, 
growled at my side. Coming up to him I tried to take his spear and 
bow from him. He struggled a little and his glassy eyes kept swim- 
ming around in his head. After a while I let him go and he went off 
down the mountain, shortly to be followed by another of his kind. 
All of these men we know personally. 
Well, the question remained, “Is this demon possession or not?’ 
Actually the continual state of tension that these chaps were keeping 
us in was beginning to get on our nerves, so that we determined not 
to go out and look at just every wild man that rushed by my house 
but let things take their normal path. The fit seemed to last only a 
few hours, then the person concerned recovered and acted normally, 
that is as far as the men were concerned. The women would be 
affected with a type of drunkenness that lasted for a couple of days. 
Saturday afternoon a patrol officer from Minj, a Christian, came out 
to see us, and leaving Janet we went up the mountain to do some 
shooting. (Our game was ‘hawks’ which were killing all the fowls 
around here.) We returned at about 5:30 in time for tea. On return- 
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