US exorcist finally drives Trinidad ‘buck’ away

(Trinidad Guardian) The buck mys­tery in Gas­par­il­lo has end­ed af­ter an Amer­i­can ex­or­cist in­ter­vened and chased away the “spir­it” which Kr­ish­na Mathu­ra says was tor­ment­ing his fam­i­ly over the past sev­en months.

Mathu­ra, from Hill­top Dri­ve, Gas­par­il­lo, vis­it­ed the T&T Guardian’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day to ex­tend his thanks, say­ing he and his fam­i­ly was now sleep­ing bet­ter since Er­ic Pugh, an Amer­i­can na­tion­al who is a trained as a se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant, vis­it­ed their home.

Mathu­ra said Pugh be­gan us­ing en­er­gy to cast away the spir­it, which took the form of a buck, on Thurs­day around 6 pm. He said from the mo­ment Pugh did his work the house felt bet­ter.

“Peo­ple all over call­ing me to say the buck is now by their home. They say they took away the spir­it but that is not so. What­ev­er Er­ic did I could feel the dif­fer­ence,” Mathu­ra said.

One man even made a blood sac­ri­fice to the crea­ture us­ing his own blood, but Mathu­ra said he was thank­ful to every­one who sym­pa­thised with them. He al­so de­nied that he had lied about the buck due to an on­go­ing land dis­pute with his rel­a­tive. He said 15 years ago, the land on which he lived was in dis­pute but this end­ed years ago and both he and the rel­a­tive in ques­tion now had their own deeds.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Pugh said he used en­er­gy to dri­ve the spir­it from the house.

“You have to track it and pin it. That’s what I did,” Pugh said.

“It was good that every­body tried to help that fam­i­ly. If peo­ple come it would not stay in the house. It was go­ing back in the back. I iso­lat­ed it and used en­er­gy so that I could make it talk. We were ac­tu­al­ly get­ting in­for­ma­tion from it. It is a spir­it which can trans­form from the spir­i­tu­al di­men­sion in­to the phys­i­cal.”

He added, “When I went there with my crew it was very strong. The spir­it went out of the house and ran up in­to the wood­ed area. I asked it who sent it and it told me.”

Pugh said he was hap­py the fam­i­ly was now sleep­ing well.

“I check on them to make sure there is no back­lash. I have ex­or­cised 1,400 demons. This one was not that hard, I dealt with it us­ing en­er­gy,” Pugh said.

He not­ed that the spir­it, when it trans­forms, would look small and this was why every­one be­lieved it was a buck. How­ev­er, Pugh said it was a spir­it and not a buck.

Mean­while, Caribbean folk­lorist Al Ram­sawak says de­pres­sion could have trig­gered the strange phe­nom­e­non of the Gas­par­il­lo Buck, which trend­ed for more than a week on main­stream and so­cial me­dia and sparked an avalanche of cre­ative ad­ver­tis­ing across T&T.

Ram­sawak, who in­ves­ti­gat­ed and doc­u­ment­ed sto­ries of the buck phe­nom­e­nons across var­i­ous parts of T&T dur­ing the 1980s, said he found it cu­ri­ous that chill­ing folk­lore sto­ries were again grip­ping the na­tion at a time when T&T was fac­ing ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, high crime and so­cial up­heaval, sim­i­lar to what oc­curred in the 1980s.

Dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Ram­sawak said some­time in the late 1980s, vil­lagers of Rousil­lac and Aripero re­port­ed that a crea­ture be­lieved to be a buck was al­so ter­ror­is­ing them. Ram­sawak, who was in­trigued by folk­lore, went to in­ves­ti­gate.

“The sto­ry was that the Buck­man, who was about 18 inch­es tall, had the mag­i­cal pow­er to make you rich. It was said that a man from Mon De­sir had a buck but when he died, his wife for­got to feed the buck and it start­ed to ter­rorise peo­ple,” Ram­sawak said.

Vil­lagers re­port­ed that the buck was bang­ing around in their homes, break­ing glass and steal­ing their food, the ex­act re­ports giv­en by Mathu­ra and his fam­i­ly in this re­cent case.

“At that time, peo­ple kept their gates and doors locked. They were ter­ri­fied that the buck would come in­side. Then one day it was re­port­ed that the buck had ap­peared at the Rousil­lac Pres­by­ter­ian school. The chil­dren ran to the edge of the school­yard. He stood there at the edge of the cliff with a blank smile on his face and then he dis­ap­peared. At that time when I was in­ves­ti­gat­ing I won­dered whether it was some sort of alien,” Ram­sawak said.

In ret­ro­spect, Ram­sawak said he was now con­vinced that de­pres­sion and stress caused by un­em­ploy­ment could have been a mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor in the strange hal­lu­ci­na­tions.

He added, “When you have a teenag­er in your house who is frus­trat­ed, he emits neg­a­tive en­er­gy. Some may say it may be a psy­chi­atric or psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lem. It could al­so be pos­si­ble that peo­ple who are bor­der­ing on sui­cide could trig­ger this type of neg­a­tive en­er­gy. Be­ing at home with­out em­ploy­ment is stress­ful.”

He not­ed that hal­lu­ci­na­tions are al­so linked to stress.

Ram­sawak, who is now 86, said he found it cu­ri­ous that so many peo­ple had gone to the Math­uras’ home to help rid them of the buck.

Asked whether he be­lieved bucks ex­ist­ed, Ram­swak said dur­ing the pe­ri­od of French coloni­sa­tion, a group of lit­tle men known as Buck­men worked the co­coa fields in Rousil­lac.

“They used to walk across the es­tate and go to a pond to drink wa­ter. They were strange men be­cause they were lit­tle. Maybe this is where the sto­ries of the Buck­man orig­i­nat­ed,” he said.

Ram­sawak added that the chaos of the buck ter­ror of the 1980s led to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Buck­man Bar in Rousil­lac. He al­so said he has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing strange phe­nom­e­non since the 1960s and he is yet to come across a spir­it.

“There are spir­its, good and bad. If you be­lieve in God, you will know that God is al­so a spir­it. There are bad spir­its and some­times peo­ple guide these bad spir­its to at­tack oth­ers. Most times it is a wispy sort of thing that you can­not see to­tal­ly,” he added.