There are literally billions of videos to choose from on Youtube. Although Youtube has strict policies concerning the appropriateness of video content, it is impossible for Youtube employees to sift through every video that is uploaded to the site. This means that it is not difficult to find videos on Youtube that feature less than savory content. Among the many types of disturbing videos that can be found on the popular video-sharing site, one particular video shows numerous cockroaches being removed from a man’s mouth by a supposed practitioner of black magic. The man explained this unfortunate incident by claiming that he had been cursed by a voodoo spell.
The Youtube footage showing the cockroaches being removed from the man’s mouth seems legitimate, as the cockroaches appear to be alive. This extremely unfortunate man is a 28 year old Cuban photographer from Havana named Pablo Moreira. According to Moreira, the voodoo curse prevented him from digesting foods. He also claimed that the curse “wreaked havoc on his house” while making him fall violently ill. The video was first captured in the Matanzas Province three years ago, but it appeared on Youtube for the first time this week. Moreira claims that, initially, he was not convinced that he had fallen victim to a voodoo curse. The stressful homelife that Moreira had been experiencing was initially regarded as the cause of his illness. However, the symptoms only intensified as he became progressively thinner on account of his indigestion.
Eventually, a friend of Moreira’s suggested that he had fallen under the spell of a voodoo curse, as his friend had seen such physical symptoms before in other curse victims. Out of desperation, Moreira took his friends advice by visiting a “healer” that specializes in lifting curses. Moreira claimed to not have remembered expelling the roaches from his mouth. It was only after he looked into a jar that he had seen what the witch doctor had extracted from his mouth. Some online commentators have praised Moreira for his bravery in dealing with the voodoo curse, while others have accused him of orchestrating a hoax in order to achieve internet fame. In addition to the many roaches taken from Moreira’s mouth, it has also been claimed that cicadas, worms, beetles and “rare wasps” were also extracted by the witch doctor.
Do you think that anything valuable about insects can be learned from the mythological treatment of insects?