Terry Firma

There’s no cure for this kind of crazy.

A Sri Lankan man died Thursday after a bizarre and botched ritual to drive out what he thought were evil spirits from a house outside the capital, police said. The man sacrificed a cat and was then buried in a shallow grave after instructing onlookers to dig him out once he gave a signal of pushing a sword he was carrying through the ground, police said. “Even after three hours, there was no sign of the sword coming up from the grave,” a local police official told AFP. “That is when the onlookers decided to pull him out anyway, but he was unconscious,” the unnamed official said.

The 32-year-old man, identified by police as Maxi Castro, a local exorcist, was taken to hospital early Thursday morning but he had already died, the official said.

Pity. At least his survivors had a fresh grave all ready to go.

The man had been requested to drive out demons feared residing in the home of a school teacher at the village of Pelanwatte. “I saw him perform a ritual like this at a temple six months ago and invited him to check my property,” the teacher, Wasantha Bandara, told local radio station Shree FM. “He said I had bad luck because someone had sprinkled human ash at my house, but he could drive out evil spirits through this ritual.”

I do feel sorry for the cat.

Another fatal self-burial here: the victim-and-pepetrator thought it would bring “good luck.”