The wife and I were sitting around watching the Science Channel show “Oddities” this past weekend. I enjoy watching the show for the same reason I enjoy any of these Pawn Stars/American Pickers-esque shows, the stuff being shown. It’s almost always very neat stuff to look at. (I’m not a fan of the absurd fake drama or annoying commercial break suspense in these shows. The tension doesn’t translate well into a Netflix based medium) This particular episode was from the 3rd season and the big item the owners are looking at and researching is this sinister looking cauldron with its lid sealed, covered in black feathers and very thick, padlocked chains.
Apparently the guy who brought it in does the Storage Wars thing and buys storage unit contents at auction (only for real, not like the show Storage Wars…). They guy bought the contents of a unit in New Jersey and found this in a box in it:
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| What I saw... |
Holy crap! That thing doesn’t look like it was built with “good” things in mind. They go about trying to do some more research into the object and bring it to a woman practitioner (who I’ve found out is not liked in the meta-physical community for a myriad of reasons) who wouldn’t let them bring it into her store and told them what it was. She called it an Nganga (pronounced: ing-gong-ga) and claimed that it was a vessel for holding an evil spirit and that the feathers were from all-black chickens that were sacrificed during its creation. She claimed that such a spirit could have the power to destroy the whole of 9th Ave in Manhattan (hmmmm… skeptic senses are tingling…), and that it originates with the practices of the Palo religion of the Kongo region.
The store owners then decide to go to an industrial imaging center to take a look inside without disturbing the vessel. They get X-Rays of various angles and take inventory of what they can see inside. It appeared that there were railroad spikes, bullets, an impenetrable to x-rays sphere, dirt, and possibly some type of liquid inside of it. They took it back to the store and returned it to the guy who brought it in and decided that they did not want to buy it, a rare thing for these two to do.
I was very interested in this object though. Not because I wanted it, the storytelling part of my brain kicked in immediately upon hearing the woman’s description of the vessel. A very sinister looking prison or vessel for a strong spirit was left abandoned in a random storage unit in New Jersey and bought by a random unlucky man. The only warnings he’s had is that it potentially has some powerful spirit in it, but the warning is from some woman who most people already have trouble believing and is maligned by her own community for being an attention whore and exploiter of her peers. He doesn’t want it, can’t sell it off, and doesn’t believe in the magic and other such nonsense people were warning him about. How many story hooks do you see in that for any modern fantasy story/setting? I see an entire campaign, comic book arc, or novel that could be written about this thing.
So because my curiosity was piqued and that female practitioner threw off the overdramatic “I’m doing this for attention” vibe, I did a little bit more research into the item in question. Apparently Nganga is a term for multiple things in African-descended slave religions. In multiple religions this is just the term for the Shaman/Witch-doctor. In Bantu it means Herbalist or Spiritual Healer. In others it is just the term used for a vessel to allow a priest/practictioner to have some type of control over the spirit connected to the vessel. These spirits (known as Nkishi/Nkisi) aren’t necessarily evil. The religions that these vessels originate from are based on spirit-worship, which means that they believe that spirits inhabit everything. They perform rituals to invoke the powers of the nature spirits, the spirits of the Dead, and the power of Man.
An Nganga vessel is typically going to be filled with some type of spiritually charged soil, sticks, bones, and other items that represent the spirit to be contained. This allows the practitioner to have control over the spirit. The vessel seen in the show appears to be of the Palo Mayombe sect/cult and is likely of Caribbean origin. If it is a vessel used to contain an evil spirit it could be used for evil or could wreak untold havoc if released, at least according to practitioners and dabblers on the internet. What kinds of awful things could be in store for the world when the uninitiated gets their hands on this powerful evil spirit? (The episode first Aired in Feb 2012 and Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012. Coincidence? Probably)
Who was the owner of the storage unit? Why was it up for auction? What spirit is contained within the nganga? What was it being used for? Why did the rent on the storage unit lapse? Why would you keep it in a storage unit? Is someone or something out there looking for it? Was it left for some poor sap to find there on purpose? Was the spirit released? So many questions, so many story possibilities!
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