[nomadscot]

Recently some people on the forum have expressed an interest in what I do. Last night I promised to tell kusadasi-babe a story.

Here it is. The first installment.

Do you believe in magic? Not the kind of magic that David Copperfield does on television, but the dark, scary kind of magic that you find deep in the jungle on a dark night?

Black Magic. Voodoo magic.

Do you believe in Voodoo? No? I don’t either.

But the tale I am about to tell you is absolutely true. No embellishments, no distortions. Just the plain unadulterated story of something very strange that happened in a small South American country. Mrs Nomadscot was beside me through all of this. She watched as it unfolded. She saw the tiger dance and she saw the fire, she held my hand and gave me strength throughout this strange chain of events, for there were stresses upon me that do not come through in the telling. She …no, let me tell you the story.

Sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin…..

The story unfolded in a small town in the Amazon Rain Forest, early in 2005. But it begins in another country, on the other side of the world. An African island in the Indian Ocean….

A few short years ago I was operating 8 casinos in that African country, and one morning I received a phone call at home. The caller asked me to come to **** Casino very quickly, because it had just been raided.

I leaped out of bed, and off I went, bleary eyed and apprehensive. On my arrival I learned that the security guards in the casino - which was closed at the time - had been overcome by 4 masked men, and the raiders had then used an acetylene torch to cut their way into the vault.

The details of this are not relevant to this tale but during the investigation suspicion fell upon a member of staff, one of the off-duty security guards who worked in the casino……

A few years later, sleeping soundly in my home in an Amazon Rain Forested country, for no explicable reason I woke up in the early hours of the morning. This is unusual for me, and I found myself lying quietly in bed, listening for any strange sounds from the house that might have been the cause of my untimely and unusual awakening.

All was still, all was quiet. I felt no sense of danger, but I did feel some unease.

I looked at my bedside clock, and now, some 2 years later, I still remember the time – 5.32 a.m.

Wide awake now, but with Mrs Nomadscot sleeping soundly and peacefully beside me, my mind started to drift…. Strangely, I found myself thinking of that incident in that African country some years previously.

I found myself thinking of the robbery, thinking of that security officer…. …

The bedside phone rang. The duty manager of one of the casinos in the town – lets call her Yvonne -came on the line.

“ Mr. Barclay” she sobbed into the phone, “Can you come to the casino please. We’ve been robbed by one of the security officers”….

To be continued….

[Mella]

To be continued….

Yikes... this is better than an episode of Eastenders. (although that's not difficult)

Don't leave us waiting too long Barclay you big tease, the suspense is killing me.

[nomadscot]

When I arrived at the casino, I gathered the security staff and management together, and Yvonne told me what had happened.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I told the security manager to show me all the cctv tapes of the incident.

A short while later I was sitting in the darkness of the surveillance room, watching the images on the monitor. I watched as the security officer walked into the cash desk. I watched as he walked behind the cashier into the vault, and I watched as he stuffed his rucksack with the money.

I watched him walk out of the cash desk with the rucksack, and as he did so my eyes were drawn to the time display on the recording.

05:32 a.m. The exact time I had woken up.

“Priorities, Nomadscot, priorities”, I thought, my mind racing wildly.

Now this South American country is not a large one, and it’s possible to do things in small South American countries that perhaps you couldn’t do elsewhere. I sealed off the country. Honest. Took me about two hours.

In truth, it’s not so difficult to do. And in truth it was unlikely that he was going to get out anyway, as he had dropped his passport as he made his escape, and it was now lying on the desk in front of me.

There’s only one flight a day out of the country, so just to be sure I called some contacts and alerted the airport. His name didn’t appear on the passenger list for that day, but they promised not to let him on the plane if he turned up.

Amazon Jungle is pretty impregnable. You don’t stroll through it. Unless you’re Indiana Jones you don’t hack your way through it either – really it’s impregnable for the most part. You can get into parts of the jungle, but only so far, and only by river, and only if you know what you’re doing.

Our boy was a city boy – he wouldn’t have lasted two days. Forget the jungle.

There are two roads which lead out the town. One goes to a (comparatively) civilised country with good border controls, and the other goes to a (comparatively) uncivilised country, with poor border controls.

Forget the civilised country – I’ve got his passport. That leaves the other one, and I learn that our man has family there…

Make a phone call.

Fortunately the guys I phone were at that time in a small town close to the border of this country, and within minutes they had spread out to all the possible crossing places. The official border crossing point is easy - my ‘friends’ have good contact there. Otherwise, if you know your way around, you can take ‘the backtrack’. We covered that too.

I send a couple of guys there by road with photographs of the fugitive, then I turn my attention back to the casino.

One of the security guards on duty had simply walked into the cash desk with a bright orange rucksack, took all the money from the vault and walked out again – with no-one questioning him!

Now security procedures are very tight in casinos, and this can’t happen. Really, it can’t happen.

I asked the cashier why she had allowed him to do this, and her reply was “I didn’t see him.”

I send security to search our man’s locker, and they come back a little while later with a small glass bottle containing a pink fluid with little lumps of meat floating in it.

“What the F*** is that?” I demand.

The answer is as unexpected as it is unbelieveable.

“It’s Voodoo, Mr. Barclay." came the reply. "This is what a witch doctor will rub on your body to make you invisible…..”

To be continued……

[nomadscot]

Days go by. The investigation continues but nothing of any great value comes to light. The police are involved. They search his home. They search his girlfriends home, they search his mother’ home. Nothing. No clues. Our man has disappeared.

I’m pretty sure he’s hiding in town somewhere, simply because there’s nowhere for him to go.

I find myself staking out his known haunts with a team of security officers, all of us looking very dodgy with our radio earpieces and dark sunglasses. Sitting in my car for hours on end. Days on end. Nothing.

I wait. I know I’ll get him. This is personal.

Weeks pass.

The phone on my desk rings.

“Mr. Barclay…” I recognise the voice of the chief security officer from the casino that was robbed. “…we have a problem here….”

Now casinos have many kinds of problems, especially casinos in small towns in the jungle. He got my attention immediately.

“.. a Wintie problem.” he said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “OK, no big deal”, I thought to myself. How wrong I was, as I was soon to find out.

Ever heard of a Wintie? A Wintie is a ghost, an evil spirit. Voodoo.

Winties enter the body of their victims and send them into fits. They take over the body and the victim thrashes around with an astonishing strength. I have witnessed four burly security guards struggling to control very slight Wintie possessed girls – and failing. I have seen it more than once in this South American Amazon Rain Forest country. It’s not a pleasant sight.

To you and me it looks very like an epileptic fit. VERY like an epileptic fit. EXACTLY like an epileptic fit.

Except, except…….

“OK”, I replied nonchalantly, “Call the company doctor, and then get her off home”. My usual response.

A pause. I could hear him breathing.

“Mr. Barclay” he continued hesitantly, it’s not just one…”

I jerked upright in my chair. “TWO WINTIES AT THE SAME TIME? NOT POSSIBLE!” I (almost) yelled into the phone.

“ No Mr. Barclay” he replied, and I could hear the fear in his voice.

“We have FOUR Winties in the casino!

To be continued.

[**claire**]

AAAGGGHH!!!

Carry on!!!!!!!!

[nomadscot]

At that time, my office was situated above another casino in the group, and as I run down the stairs I do some basic maths. “Four winties, 4 security officers per victim, total 16. Make it two per victim, still not enough security there to deal with the problem……” so as I run towards my car, I gather security officers from this casino.

“You! You! You!You!” I bark as I pass through on the run, “come with me..”

We pile into my car and head off towards the problem, I explain to my team as we go. They’re wide eyed. And scared.

My mobile phone rings.

“SIX” shouts a very nervous voice at the other end of the phone.

“Six” I say to the guys.

I hear a strangled croak from somewhere in the back of the car, and in my rear view mirror I see six white eyes rolling in the darkness. If they knew then what was coming, they would have bailed out there and then – even at 60 mph.

I screeched to a halt outside the casino, jumped out of the car with my very nervous security team, and was met by the casino manager who looked me square in the eye and said just one word.

“Eight” he said, quietly.

And eight it was.

To be continued….

[nomadscot]

It can’t happen. You can’t have eight people in the same casino having an epileptic fit at the same time.

But there they were. Inside the casino and out in the street. Everywhere you looked there was someone lying on the ground thrashing, or rushing around shaking and moaning, being held up by security officers, or being held down by security officers. For a long time I gawped in amazement….

Inside, there were a couple of members of staff who ‘know about Voodoo’, and one of them stripped off his shirt & tie, then with naked torso gleaming, grabbed a bottle of whisky from the bar.

He then started running around grabbing the Wintie victims. He would take a mouthful of whisky, throw his arms around the victim and give them a violent – extremely violent – bear hug, then throw his head back and with maximum force, spray the alcohol over his (or her) face.

Others were getting water thrown at them by other members of staff. Everywhere was extreme violence.

Outside, it got worse. There was a new shift arriving, and they were all milling around in the street, refusing to go inside the building.

And of course the crowd was gathering. I called Mrs Nomadscot on her mobile, and told her to forget about the anniversary dinner we had planned for that evening…..” Bit of trouble at the office…” I said lamely.

I tried to find the staff bus to get the victims away as fast as possible in order to reduce the spectacle, but of course the driver was nowhere to be found. So I told the manager to get them in taxis – send a couple of people with each of them. Just get them home. Taxi driver after taxi driver came, saw what was happening, and drove off.

We still had people wailing and writhing in the street. We still had the topless guy running around maniacally spraying whisky at people. A couple of victims were vomiting on the pavement. By now there must have been 200 people in the street, including the new shift who were still refusing to go inside.

While all this was going on, managers were coming up to me with reports, and the story was unfolding. This is what happened.

Remember the robbery? Remember that bottle with the pink liquid and the lumps of meat? Well, that was at the core of it. Turns out that as well as the bottle, this security officer who had robbed the casino had also left an old woman in his locker. Well, not actually an old woman – that would be silly - but the ghost of an old woman –her Wintie. She was put there to protect him while he robbed the casino. Apparently she now felt she had completed her allotted task, so had jumped out of the locker into a nearby cleaner, then from the cleaner into another member of staff, and another, and another…..

Back on the street the topless guy had somehow recovered the bottle from security (who were holding it as part of the investigation), and I watched as he threw it onto the pavement, smashing it.

He set fire to the liquid, got down on all fours, and started, well, behaving like a tiger. He growled at the small fire, made charges at it, stopped and backed away, moving his head in what can only be described as, well, tiger movements………….and all the while the vomiting and the screaming and the writhing and the whisky spraying and the water throwing was going on all around me…..

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“What ….what.……” mouthed a wide eyed Mrs Nomadscot, as she fumbled to open the camera on her mobile phone….


A security guard and a member of staff struggling with a Wintie victim...



Wintie victim being comforted in a chair, while chaos reigns on the street...




Wintie victim writhing on the sidewalk...




Wintie victim wailing on the sidewalk...


To be continued....]

[nomadscot]

Next morning we got a witch doctor in. Yes, during this period we had conversations amongst the management team which include such phrases as “What time did the Witch Doctor arrive?” Normal conversation.

The Witch Doctor came with a band round his arm. He went into the locker room explaining that if there was a spirit in there, the band would tighten around his arm.

As he walked in, it darn nearly took his arm off. (I know, I know…….) He said it’s a really, really bad spirit, but no problem, he can get rid of it.

After a bit of ceremony which included different coloured rags, bits of fruit, a cigar and a bottle of gin he announced that he was first going to pray to the ‘Big God’. That would be who most of us refer to as God. So he put himself into a trance and prayed for half an hour.

Then he got up, took a swig from his gin bottle, and started pushing the Wintie out of the room by spraying Gin at her from his mouth. He walked out of the locker room, right through the staff room, down the stairs and out the staff entrance, all the time spraying gin from his mouth. But he got her out, that Witch Doctor. He got her out.

And that was probably the best 80 dollars I ever spent.

Shortly after, our man was arrested. They found him. He had been in town all the time, and he was caught while walking brazenly past a team of detectives who had been searching for him all this time.

He couldn’t understand why they could see him – he believed he was invisible to the police.

Seems his luck had run out with the contents of that little pink bottle.

Do you believe in Magic? Maybe just a little bit?

[**claire**]

Thats really really Freaky Barclay!!

I believe in all that stuff anyway ... But Whoooh .. actually witnessing something so bizarre would really freak me out!!!

thanks for sharing with us .... just another day in NOMADSCOTS life!

[Mella]

Do you believe in Magic? Maybe just a little bit?

I do, I do. Oh my god Barclay, that was so gripping!

What an experience to have been through. That's definitely one to tell the grandkids when you're sitting in your rocking chair!!

Thanks for sharing it with us!