42 Dead Women Faces Were Staring at this House

But why?

April 27, 1997: A farmer in an Indonesian village, walking through a sugarcane field, stumbled across something. Underneath his feet, he found a soft layer of earth, with something buried under it. The farmer poked at it but did not want to unearth it, for it was not his property.

He went back to the village, collected some people, and together they dug the soft ground. The villagers were stunned at what was revealed under the soil:

A dead woman’s face.

The rest of her body was underneath the soil. She was buried in a vertical position, with land covering up to her neck. It was as if the woman was standing erect under the ground.

The authorities soon came out to investigate, and they identified the deceased. It was a girl named Dewi.

The Dewi story

Miss Dewi was missing for three days. Nobody knew where she vanished, but the word about the corpse had spread, and soon a rickshaw driver popped up. He claimed that Dewi had hired her rickshaw three days before.

“Where did you drop her off?” the officers enquired.

The driver replied that Dewi initially did not mention a destination; instead, she gave him specific directions on when to take a turn or go straight.

But with constant pestering from the driver, Dewi would eventually give up her intentions.

“I am going to meet a shaman,” she said.

Shaman(noun): 1: a priest or priestess who uses magic to cure the sick, divining the hidden and controlling events.

The mysterious Shaman

The police zeroed in on the Shaman- the slender, pale 45-year-old Ahmed Suradji. He initially denied any knowledge of Dewi, but the officers managed to recover Dewi’s dress and bracelet from his home.

Driven to the wall, Mr. Suradji confessed to killing Dewi.

However, Dewi was just the tip of the iceberg. He said he had killed several other women, who were all buried under the sugarcane field.

The officers dug the field inside out, and they found as many as dead bodies of 42 women! They were all buried in the same fashion- vertically, with the face protruding out of the earth and soil pulled over the face to cover it.

All those 42 dead faces were facing towards Suradji’s house!

The Shaman story

In 1986, Ahmed Suradji had a dream in which his father appeared and told him something that would turn him into a serial killer.

The father said if Suradji drank the saliva of 70 women, he would become more powerful, and his magic tricks, ever more potent.

Suradji did not brush aside his father’s words in a dream but instead took it upon himself to abide by those instructions.

However, his father in the dream had not explained how to extract the saliva. So, the eccentric Shaman would decide that killing 70 women is the fastest way to get there.

From that day onwards, the magic number 70 hung above him. And for Ahmad Suradji, this was going to be easier, as his potential victims lined up before him.

But how?

How did Suradji draw women?

Suradji was making a name for himself with his claims of shamanic powers, and women reached out to him for all sorts of services- healing, preserving their youth, eternal beauty, and what not! He offered these ‘tricks’ at a prize that was roughly around 300 US dollars.

Ahmad Suradji would then invite some interested parties for a secret ritual at night. He made it clear that if any information about the ceremony leaked, it was detrimental to the effectiveness of the ritual itself.

So, women took extra care not to spill the secret, as they sneaked out of their house at night to visit Suradji’s house- just like Dewi.

The modus operandi

Once Suradji had these vulnerable women at his disposal, he would ask them to dig a pit. The victims readily dug it, assuming it was a part of the ritual, not knowing they were digging their graves.

The Shaman made the girls stand inside this hole and covered them with neck-deep soil and dirt.

At this point, Suradji would strangle these innocent women to death. The helpless women could offer no resistance since every part of their body under the neck was now frozen under the weight of the soil.

In a matter of minutes, they would perish, and Suradji would take out the body and extract his potion-the saliva of the dead woman.

The bodies would then go back into the grave vertically, and Suradji would adjust their heads to make them look towards his house. He believed that their ‘dead-stare’ gave him extra power!

The tragedy of Dewi

Dewi was just another girl who couldn’t see through Suradji’s deception. She went to the Shaman at night, but the particulars of the ritual terrified her. She wasn’t comfortable letting herself into a hole.

So, Suradji used the smooth-talking skills of his wife to convince Dewi.

The wife’s presence and reassurance eventually led Dewi to enter the fake ritual-a mistake she soon realised.

What happened to Suradji and his wives?

Ahmad Suradji was found guilty by a three-judge panel and was sentenced to death. But it would take a decade before he was executed, and during this time, while Suradji was in prison, he had reportedly given up shamanism.

In 2008, Ahmad Suradji, the serial killer, was executed by the firing squad.

Ahmad Suradji had three wives(who were sisters), among which only one-Tumini was aware of his evil practices. She was the one who helped Suradji kill Dewi.

Tumini was charged as an accomplice to the crime and was imprisoned for life. The other wives walked free.

Before the execution, Ahmad Suradji’s last wish was to see Tumini. The request was granted, and he spoke with her one last time before the execution.

What did he tell her? I wonder…

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