(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.
