Today, the village of Hattieville, sixteen miles from the metropolis, Belize City, and home to some 1,500 hardy souls, both transplants and descendants of those who first settled here thanks to the village’s namesake, Hurricane Hattie of 1961, seemed quiet, as usual.
PUP supporters were busy painting the square blue in advance of general elections. Police were hard at work keeping law and order, and residents went about their daily lives.
But for three days this week, that happy balance had been upset by a series of bizarre occurrences and traumatic events that scared the village’s government pre- and primary school – home to 423 children in total, ages 3 to 13.
Four of the students attending Hattieville Government School, three in their last year and one next-to-last, this week exhibited behavior so strange that their classmates exited the schoolyard in floods; it was deserted by mid-afternoon Wednesday.
Today, we arrived to see that the situation had not changed much. With 70% of students staying home today, and with only 111 students attending school today and mostly staying inside, the schoolyard seemed haunted by the events of Wednesday morning.
In the schoolyard, beginning Monday, three little girls and a boy exhibited evidence of what a village pastor called “demon possession.” Uncontrollable crying, stomach pain and hollowness, shouting, screaming and unusual strength all characterized their behaviors, as their classmates looked on in silent horror.
Some of those affected, we were told, threw themselves on the ground and writhed around in the drain, gripped by some strange force.
The Hattieville saga brought back unpleasant memories of a similar and longer-lasting panic in Big Falls Village, Toledo District, in May and June of last year, in which up to 15 children at the local Roman Catholic school were “possessed”, as well as two adults, eventually leading to at least ten of them requiring both modern and traditional treatments in Guatemala. The symptoms described then – trembling, stiffness, shouting and screaming, severe headaches – are the same as those affecting the four children at Hattieville.
The Hattieville students are home now, some helped by the ministrations of a pastor in Belmopan late Wednesday night, and earning some time off from school until Monday. But what then? How will they be received?
It was a question we put to school principal, Mrs. Cruzita Castillo. Mrs. Castillo, who appears to us a no-nonsense veteran in the government educational system, still looked shaken when we spoke with her at about 11:15 this morning.
Standard Six students, in particular, stayed away in droves today. We counted 13 all told this morning before lunch, in a class that we were told, normally seats 35 – and that’s just one class.
But Mrs. Castillo told us her staff are on top of the problem.
The students, she said, are being allowed to speak openly about the events of this week, and to seek understanding about what has happened from their teachers. A meeting with their parents is being planned for tomorrow night, Friday, in an attempt to return attendance to normal levels.
And when the troubled quartet – who, especially the girls, were described to Amandala as “quiet” and “almost never in the principal’s office for disciplinary action” – return to school on Monday, efforts will be made to ensure they do not become targets for taunting or subjects of isolation.
When two of the students complained about stomach pains from as early as Monday, it had been initially dismissed as “acting up.” But when a third child joined the group on Tuesday, and then a fourth yesterday, beleaguered school officials had no choice but to call in representatives from the Ministry of Education, who maintain the school, and they have promised to stay in touch.
Reports reaching Amandala tonight indicate that a similar attack has been reported in Calcutta Village in the Corozal District.
While not discounting the events, which he says were caused by a movie some of the children watched in Sunday School at the Hattieville Baptist Church, District Education Officer Jahmor Lopez, speaking with a local media house Wednesday night, nonetheless said it was safe for students to come back to school today, a call echoed by Mrs. Castillo and her staff.
But even if things return to normal on Monday, it may still take a while for the little ones to get over the events of this “week from hell” in Hattieville.
In March 2002, we carried the chilling story of a group of schoolgirls who had reportedly been possessed in Seine Bight. Prior incidences were reported in Placencia, Mango Creek, and Monkey River. The reports to us then were that the alleged possessions began after a man received a book of spells and a chain in 2000, and began taking instructions out of the book. One of the girls who had been affected – and wrote messages backwards for the ones she had claimed to be influencing – had said that she had to find someone to pass over the demon to, and that if she did not succeed, the demon, whom she identified as Satan, would destroy her.