the nurse<\/a> in Paramakatoi told Whitehead these victims had telltale signs of a kanaima attack: swollen tongues and faces, with distinctive bruise marks on their bodies. They suffered from fever, diarrhea, and, on closer inspection, their anus had been opened and the muscles stripped with the tail of an iguana, or an \u201carmadillo,\u201d so they would pass a \u201cblood-stained liquid.\u201d<\/p>\nThe nurse said she had seen between 20 and 25 such cases during her 30 years.<\/p>\n
This was intriguing to the anthropologist, who was planning to trek through the mountains for six to eight weeks to a village where he would catch another flight back to the capital. Nonetheless, he set out. Not far out of Paramakatoi, they hiked into a valley, which had a cave with what he suspected might be a burial urn.<\/p>\n
When they entered the cave, Whitehead was disappointed to find the burial vessel was too small to contain a full set of human remains. Near it was a small offering bowl. None of the local Patamunas in the group would touch the vessels. But Whitehead\u2019s Lokono companion, an archaeologist, moved them around so Whitehead could photograph it. The larger pot contained \u201chuman skeletal and tissue material,\u201d Whitehead later wrote, of which he took a sample.<\/p>\n
After they exited the cave, some of the group insisted they stop by the nearby home of a man to whom those pots belonged, who Whitehead refers to as \u201cPirai.\u201d When they called on him, he grew \u201cvery excited and upset.\u201d Although he didn\u2019t know the language, as they spoke, Whitehead heard the word \u201ckanaima\u201d <\/i>uttered several times. He later was told that Pirai was\u00a0 \u201cthe principal kanaima in Paramakatoi,\u201d and the bones were presumed to be from one of his victims.<\/p>\n
After that, the group returned to the village.<\/p>\n
That night, Whitehead was staying at a boarding school. A woman came to make dinner for him and his archaeologist companion. She spoke little English, but Whitehead heard her say the word \u201ckanaima,\u201d even though he hadn\u2019t mentioned it. The food she prepared, he wrote, was \u201cexecrable,\u201d and within a few minutes of eating, he felt ill, developed a high fever, and vomited all night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThinking that my illness was a reaction to some form of food poisoning,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI ignored my physical state as well as I could.\u201d The next day, however, someone told him letting the woman cook for them was \u201ca stupid thing to do.\u201d Then they asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you know she lives by Pirai?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
After that, Whitehead started to suspect poisoning of<\/i> his food, rather than by<\/i> it.<\/p>\n
Despite his illness, the group set out on their planned trek. Yet as the day went on, Whitehead got sicker and sicker, until he collapsed near the summit of a mountain with severe retching and stomach cramps and had to be carried the rest of the way up. The group had planned to be in the village of Taruka in one day and at Monkey Mountain (another 20 miles) in a day or two more. Now they were forced to camp and were nearly out of food. When they set Whitehead down, he wept.<\/p>\n
The next morning, they pressed on for Taruka. At one point, the group stopped at a creek to drink. Just then, Pirai and two young acolytes appeared on the trail behind them. The old man made eye contact with everyone, but didn\u2019t respond to either greetings or insults. Then he and his followers continued on the trail, walking ahead of the group.<\/p>\n
That evening, Whitehead and his companions made it to Taruka, but no one in the village would sell them food. That night, he had constant diarrhea and nausea and was barely able to walk. When he stumbled outside to relieve himself, he saw two figures low to the ground. At first he thought these were dogs, but realized they were anteaters.<\/p>\n
The next morning, the group managed to get a few eggs and some dried meat. They also located a horse, which Whitehead rode as they set off on the long journey to Monkey Mountain, arriving early the following morning. Once there, they were finally able to buy more food and find a place to stay.<\/p>\n
After they had settled in, Whitehead was resting when one of Pirai\u2019s followers they\u2019d encountered on the trail appeared in his doorway. At first he was silent, but eventually started speaking in Patamuna, which Whitehead could not understand. When his companions returned and shouted at the teen, the youth ran away.<\/p>\n
Whitehead began to worry that he was putting the whole group in danger, so they used a police radio to call a bush pilot, who landed and flew Whitehead and one friend out.<\/p>\n
Once in Georgetown, he wrote that he felt better, \u201cwith only intermittent fever, vomiting, and diarrhea.\u201d But a few days later he started urinating blood. His friend, who was Amerindian (the Guyanese term for Indigenous people), suggested he \u201cfight fire with fire.\u201d So Whitehead stepped out of the world he knew and into another. He found someone who knew bush medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI swallowed what I was given,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI stopped passing blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nKaieteur Falls in Kaieteur National Park, Guyana<\/span> (Photo: Neil Aldridge \/ Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI first heard mention<\/strong> of kanaima in 2011, when I went to Guyana with a group of travel writers and tour guides. We were there because the government was trying to promote eco-tourism. One day near the Brazilian border, we took an overnight trek into the Kanuku Mountains. Walking through the forest, we were surrounded by the eerie calls of bellbirds and the cries of screaming pihas. I had heard someone mention \u201ckanaima\u201d in this area. Our guide was a Makushi man from a nearby village named Guy Fredericks. He was large with an even larger personality. He was by turns irreverent and hilarious. But he also had a deep knowledge of the forest, so I asked him what it was. He grew serious.<\/p>\n\u201cKanaima will tear your stomach out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what are they?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people say they are the ones who ran away during the tribal wars,\u201d he added. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to meet them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what if you do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is some prayer an elder can say for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if they don\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can kill you. Or they will track you down and kill one of your family\u2014even your son or daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
The subject dropped, but I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about it. Was this kanaima a real thing, or just a story to keep kids from wandering into the forest? What did it mean to \u201ctear your stomach out?\u201d And why would they want to kill me or my family?<\/p>\n
By that point, I\u2019d spent much of my adult life, and my writing career, crossing the boundaries of the worlds that people weave around themselves. I was fascinated with how complete these can be, how iron-clad their logic and how compelling their stories. And I was struck, in some cases, by how devastating the consequences of living in them can be. I wrote a book about this in 2016, called The Geography of Madness<\/i>, which explored everything from magical penis theft in Nigeria, to \u201cwind sickness\u201d in Cambodia to communicable back pain in Germany.<\/p>\n
These all emerge from a set of stories and beliefs, and cannot be understood unless you know those narratives. But this world of the kanaima was one I couldn\u2019t quite wrap my mind around. What were the forces at work here? What were the rules? What were the stories? I couldn\u2019t begin to fathom a place from which such a figure might emerge.<\/p>\n
After I got home, I read everything I could find on kanaima. But aside from Neil Whitehead\u2019s book, Dark Shamans: Kanaima and the Poetics of Violent Death<\/i>, which had been published in 2002, I couldn\u2019t find much. Desrey Fox, a Guyanese linguist and former Minister of Education, had done her master\u2019s thesis on kanaima at the University of Kent. But I couldn\u2019t find it, and Fox had died in a car crash in 2009. The eminent anthropologist Audrey Butt Colson had written a chapter titled \u201cItoto (Kanaima) as Death and Anti-Structure,\u201d in a 2001 anthology which was co-edited by Whitehead, and in which he also had a chapter on kanaima. And there was a 2004 anthology Whitehead co-edited called In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia. <\/i>The collection mentioned kanaima in passing but didn\u2019t dwell on it.<\/p>\n
The literature, in other words, was not vast, and most of it was written by Whitehead, who lived and taught in Madison, Wisconsin. By the time I felt sufficiently prepared to interview him, I made an alarming discovery: he had died on March 22, 2012, at age 56.<\/p>\n
It was reported in obituaries that he died \u201cfollowing a bout with illness\u201d and \u201cfrom a sudden illness.\u201d But it later emerged that he had \u201ca rare form of renal cancer, which was not curable,\u201d and also that he died of \u201cliver cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever that illness was, Whitehead largely kept it a secret. Friends, students, and colleagues were shocked by the news. Later, I would find out why.<\/p>\n
I looked for other experts on kanaima, but couldn\u2019t find any. I did reach George Mentore, a Guyanese anthropologist who had known Whitehead. He told me most of the experts who\u2019d written about kanaima had died, which seemed slightly ominous. I wanted to know about going to research it myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it dangerous?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cIt is very dangerous. I mean Neil, as you read, got himself in a real pickle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dangerous or not, I knew that if I wanted to learn more about kanaima, I would have to go back to Guyana.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
The author on the road to Annai Village in Guyana’s interior<\/span> (Photo: Frank Bures)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA village in the Iwokrama rainforest, in Guyana\u2019s Region 8<\/span> (Photo: Frank Bures)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nIt was October<\/strong> of 2023 before I was finally able to return. By then, Guyana had changed. The first time I visited, the country had a shrinking population of around 750,000 people, with at least as many Guyanese living outside the country as in it. Crime was rife in the capital Georgetown (our previous group of travel writers watched a woman get beaten over a stolen bicycle), and the country\u2019s best-known export was Jonestown. In 2011, ecotourism and mining had seemed like its best bets.<\/p>\nThen in 2015, huge offshore oil reserves were discovered, followed by more in the subsequent years. The economy, which had historically been one of the most stagnant in the world, suddenly became one of the fastest-growing. This change was easy to see when I landed around midnight: the airport was now completely rebuilt and had functioning luggage carousels. I got a taxi, and on the drive into town, the darkened streets were jammed with trucks hauling in sand for Georgetown\u2019s construction boom. Along the way, my driver proudly pointed out a brand-new Ford dealership, and he informed me that 10,000 new cars were on the road every three months.<\/p>\n
Guyana wasn\u2019t quite Dubai yet. The British government still advised that \u201ccrime levels are significant, and police capacity is low\u201d in Guyana, while the U.S. Department of State in 2023 ranked Guyana at Level 3, meaning \u201cReconsider Travel.\u201d It added that \u201cViolent crime, including murder and armed robbery, is common, especially at night.\u201d One anthropologist I\u2019d spoken to had a switchblade pulled on him in broad daylight a few years earlier.<\/p>\n
So the morning after I arrived, I taxied over to the Walter Roth Museum, which was housed in a dilapidated, three-story home dating to the late 1800s. The building was covered in two different shades of beige paint and had several broken windows. In the heat and humidity, it exuded an air of lost Conradian grandeur. I was the only visitor.<\/p>\n
Inside, the museum was filled with static displays and hokey dioramas of headdresses, hair tubes, dugout canoes, blowpipes, and objects described as being of \u201cunknown lithic origin.\u201d When I climbed up to the second floor, a curator greeted me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want to do the tour?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
She proceeded to lead me around the room, explaining various aspects of Amerindian life. She pointed to a long mesh basket that was used to press cyanide out of cassava plants. Then we came to a glass case with a round clay pot. There was a coiled snake adorning the rim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis,\u201d she said, \u201cis the kanaima pot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s a kanaima?\u201d I asked, innocently.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you do something wrong in this Amerindian tribe,\u201d she explained, \u201cthe kanaima will judge you. They also have certain chants that will allow them to turn into any kind of animal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a jaguar?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it real?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, but I don\u2019t know if they still practice it like before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do they put in the pot?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEach [Amerindian] nation has their own way of chanting and doing their stuff. They would do a chant with whatever they would put inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what would they put inside?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you talk to an Indigenous person,\u201d she said, \u201cthey might be able to tell you more about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thanked her and left the museum. It was a glimpse into the world of kanaima, but only that. I couldn\u2019t tell if the curator didn\u2019t know, or didn\u2019t want to say, what would be placed in the pot. But I guessed it was the same thing Whitehead had removed from the cave: in Dark Shamans<\/i> he wrote, \u201cProfessor Henry Bunn examined the bone material, which he judged to be that of a female approximately 16 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nEgy Fredericks paddling at sunset on the Nappi Village reservoir near the Kanuku Mountains.<\/span> (Photo: Frank Bures)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIn 1995,<\/strong> Whitehead returned to Guyana. This time, he took \u201coral histories\u201d in Paramakatoi. He interviewed piaimen<\/i>, the healing shamans, about kanaima. He even claimed to have talked to \u201ca powerful kanaima.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe older kanaimas were much more intimidating,\u201d Whitehead wrote, \u201cless given to freely explaining their motives or procedures, and physically wasted in appearance.\u201d He also sought out alleged kanaimas elsewhere, though, he said, \u201cNone of these individuals would admit to any specific incidence of violence, but most were grimly keen to \u2018educate\u2019 me in generalities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Death by kanaima, according to his research (and corroborated by other accounts), was said to happen like this: During the night, either at your home or in the forest, you will hear the distinct whistle or call of the kanaima. Some say it sounds like a bat, others like a bird. But it also sounds like a person imitating those animals.<\/p>\n
If you hear this sound, it means you have been marked. On the side of the trail, you may see a leaf moving wildly on an otherwise still plant. Whitehead saw leaves moving twice.<\/p>\n
This is the \u201cperiod of stalking,\u201d which can last months or years. During this time, you can be attacked. In some cases, your shoulder will be dislocated by the assailant. In other cases, your finger bones will be broken. Your neck may also be injured. But you will live.<\/p>\n
Then, when the kanaima have deemed you to be ready, they will find you when you are alone and strike from behind.<\/p>\n
Either while you are unconscious or restrained, a snake fang will be used to pierce your tongue, causing it to swell. An armadillo tail, an iguana tail, or a forked stick will be inserted into your anus. Your intestines are then pulled out, tied in a knot, and pushed back inside with the leaves of a certain plant to help sweeten the body for what\u2019s to come. Occasionally, your genitals will be cut off.<\/p>\n
Once you regain consciousness, you will stumble back to the village with either no memory of the attack or no ability to tell anyone what happened due to your swollen tongue.<\/p>\n
For roughly three days, you will lie in a hammock. Then you will die.<\/p>\n
After the burial (usually another three days), when the kanaima judges your interred body has become sufficiently \u201csweet,\u201d he and his acolytes will come to the grave at night. They will insert a tube, or a stick, into your bloated stomach, from which they will extract a substance and consume it.<\/p>\n
The exact nature of this substance, and the reasons for consuming it, are secret and in dispute. Accounts differ, but many agree it has a powerful magical quality.<\/p>\n
As Whitehead went on conducting his interviews, things in the village grew tense.<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]he atmosphere in Paramakatoi,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbegan to intensify as more people learned that we had been \u2018troubling\u2019 kanaima and, worst of all, had recovered some ritual paraphernalia used by a killer\u2026As a result, I received a very alarming note from Waiking [Whitehead\u2019s main local contact] warning me off further investigation of the topic, and withdrawing his hitherto vital assistance and protection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitehead began to get warnings that he had \u201cgone too far.\u201d At the time, he was staying alone in a concrete building next to the clinic in Paramakatoi. It had locking shutters and a strong lock on the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach night,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI would clearly hear the approach of one person, maybe more, followed by the sound of a deliberate scratching at the doorframe and windows. I would call out, but receive no reply. Then, once again, I would hear scratching that moved in a circle around the building, ending back at the doorway each time. I might have taken this as a (not very funny) prank by the young men had it not been that on each occasion, I found afterward a yamali-wok<\/i> (coral snake) somewhere in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Word then reached the village that a powerful kanaima named Bishop had left his home five days earlier for Paramakatoi. The village chief warned Whitehead that \u201cbad things were happening.\u201d At night he started to get high fevers, which he felt was connected to the presence of Bishop. So he left and flew back to the U.S.<\/p>\n
The fevers continued for two months before doctors discovered he had contracted hepatitis C.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAn elevated home in Fair View village\/a village on the Essequibo River.<\/span> (Photo: Frank Bures)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe Guyanese capital<\/strong> of Georgetown sits on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, not far from the Caribbean. One evening, I climbed into a minibus that was going south to the interior. We drove through the night, into the forest, stopping only for fuel and police checkpoints. Early the next morning, we rolled onto a rickety ferry to cross the wide Essequibo River.<\/p>\nOn the other bank, I caught a ride to the nearby Iwokrama River Lodge and Research Centre. I had been here once before and remembered it fondly. It was founded in the mid-1990s as a rainforest preserve and an outpost to research sustainable forestry, tourism, and science.<\/p>\n
Today, it\u2019s half academic field station and half ecotourism hub. The grounds are immaculate. That evening, I went to the open-air dining hall that looked out on the river. Sitting on the veranda in the growing dark, I felt like I\u2019d stepped back in time 100 years.<\/p>\n
In the morning, I woke up to the roar of howler monkeys in the forest. Then I walked over to the main lodge to meet my guide for a \u201cnature walk.\u201d Since talking about kanaima can put a person at risk, I\u2019ll call him Simon. We walked across the compound together and passed through a small opening in the trees.<\/p>\n
The forest was thick and overwhelming. As we moved deeper into it, the sounds of the jungle grew louder. Simon stopped, bent down, and pointed to the dirt.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s the track of an agouti.\u201d<\/p>\n
We walked on and talked. Simon was a small man with a friendly demeanor. He came from a village deeper in the interior on the Rupununi River. We figured out that he had actually been working at his village ecolodge a decade earlier when I visited with the travel writers. (We drank all the beer they had.) This time, I broached my subject gently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last time I was here,\u201d I said, \u201cI heard about a man in the forest who can tear your stomach out? Do you know about that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, kanaima?\u201d Simon said. \u201cYes, they come mostly from the mountain people, in the north Pakaraimas. It\u2019s a tradition to them. They pass it on from generation to generation. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s fun for them, killing your own family, or what.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the side of the path, I saw a leaf moving violently back and forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey do that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s for real?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cIt\u2019s for real. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re walking on this trail just by yourself. And you will start to hear some noise, a noise you never heard before. That\u2019s how you know there are kanaimas around.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA specific noise?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, a whistling. These kanaimas would come within ten feet from you, but you wouldn\u2019t see them. You would only see, like, a small bush moving. That\u2019s how you know they marked you. Then you start to get fever, headache, diarrhea. And you now become very weak, and weak, and weak. And when they know you can\u2019t fight back, that is when they come. And then, done<\/i> with you.<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it dying out at all? Or is it still around?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still around! One week ago in my village, before I came back to work, they had a death. The kanaima people killed the person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon stopped suddenly. A branch lay across the path. He looked up into the trees. Then he kneeled down and looked at the branch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a sign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf kanaima?\u201d I felt a jolt of fear.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cI was here one hour ago with guests, and this trail was clean. If you look up, you don\u2019t see where a branch broke from the top of the tree. No break. That is how they start tricking you. My grandfather said if you move this, they are encouraging you to come back by yourself. He always told me to just leave it there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the purpose of their killing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say it is to strengthen them. If they kill a person, they will become more\u2026scientific, I would say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you have to be alone, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, you have to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
We walked on together.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe Essequibo River in Guyana<\/span> (Photo: Timothy Maxwell \/ Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nA few nights later<\/strong>, I was staying at a lodge further south when I woke up covered in sweat, shivering from cold. My mosquito net felt like a heat tent. Overhead, a ceiling fan circled, but I couldn\u2019t feel the wind. A wave of nausea washed over me. I ran to the bathroom and vomited. Then I felt a rumble in my bowels and sat on the toilet just in time.<\/p>\nBack in bed, I tried to be rational. It was probably just food poisoning.<\/p>\n
Neil Whitehead also thought he had food poisoning.<\/p>\n
I went over my meals. I thought I\u2019d been careful. Almost everything I\u2019d eaten had been at buffets with other people. It had all been pretty tasty\u2014nothing execrable. But the world of the kanaima was alive here. I could feel it pulling me in.<\/p>\n
The nausea came in waves, and so did the fear.<\/p>\n
This was new. In the past when I\u2019d crossed these kinds of borders, I knew I was just a visitor, an interloper. While part of me was drawn to the gravity of the stories, part of me remained firmly behind. I\u2019d felt the beginnings of fear, but only the beginnings. I\u2019d had glimmers of belief, but could still see the stories from a distance.<\/p>\n
This was different. The force was stronger. The world of the kanaima felt closer.<\/p>\n
Between trips to the bathroom, I drifted in and out of sleep. When I was awake, I thought about the leaf waving on the side of the path I walked with Simon.\u00a0 I thought about the branch lying on the trail.<\/p>\n
I thought of George Mentore\u2019s warning. I thought of the stories. My mind followed the threads and was drawn inexorably toward something dark. The fear was catching. The specter of kanaima loomed over me, like a voice whispering in my ear.\u00a0 It said: \u201cSomeone did this to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the morning, however, I felt a little better. All that day, I laid in my room recovering. I tried to eat once, but vomited again. By evening, I was clearly on the mend.<\/p>\n
The next day, feeling foolish, I packed my things and continued south.<\/p>\n
Whitehead returned<\/strong> to Guyana once more in 1997. He hoped to re-interview people he had talked to in 1995 since, \u201cthere were many aspects to kanaim\u00e0 magic and ritual that remained obscure.\u201d But he found that, \u201csupport for this had waned, and those who had previously supported the research were now quite hostile to me.\u201d Some even suspected Whitehead of trying to become a kanaima.<\/p>\n\u201cGiven these obstacles,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthe opportunity to interview kanaim\u00e0s further seemed unlikely, if not foolish.\u201d Instead, he spent his time researching another branch of Patamuna spirituality.<\/p>\n
After leaving the country for the last time, he was contacted by Terry Roopnaraine, a UK-born anthropologist whose family is from Guyana. The two had met in England before Whitehead\u2019s first visit and became friends. At the time, Roopnaraine was doing research into the social and economic implications of palm heart extraction in the far northwest. Whitehead asked him to make some inquiries about kanaima there, so he did.<\/p>\n
Roopnaraine was told stories about kanaima and their victims. But before long, things got spooky. He had identical nightmares three nights in a row. His hair would stand on end at random. Now and then, for no reason, he would burst into tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cI struggle with some aspects of it,\u201d Roopnaraine told me when I contacted him years later at his home in Spain, \u201cBut it\u2019s certainly a concept that can invade your head. You\u2019ve got your Western self pulling you in one direction, and the ethnographic reality around you pulling you in another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Something similar had happened to Whitehead. When he came back from Guyana, he told his wife there were kanaima in the U.S., and that they even worked at a local big box home-improvement store, according to an interview with his wife published in a 2025 anthology called Sorcery in Amazonia, A Comparative Exploration of Magical Assault<\/i>. She said that even back home, years later, he was still afraid of kanaima.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeil told me he felt he\u2019d been affected in some permanent way by his engagement with kanaima,\u201d Roopnaraine said, \u201cbut that was before he got sick. So when he died, I couldn\u2019t help but think of the story of the cave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitehead also thought of this. I talked to the anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson, who co-edited an anthology with Whitehead, and who remained a close friend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel comfortable,\u201d Ferguson told me, \u201cin saying that Neil believed that the physical illness he had was the result of kanaima doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried to interview several of Whitehead\u2019s close associates about this, but very few of them would talk to me. They would agree to an interview, then disappear, or simply never respond. Some, like his former graduate student, Tarryl Janik, didn\u2019t respond after questions were emailed, as requested.<\/p>\n
In various remembrances and profiles, he was described as charismatic, brilliant, a polymath, as well as being \u201ca transgressive figure,\u201d who wrote about \u201ccrossing borders and violating boundaries.\u201d\u00a0 But I\u2019ve never had so much trouble getting people to talk about someone, especially a person who they ostensibly liked and who\u2019d been dead more than a decade. Scrolling through the databases at a local university library, I did find Janik\u2019s Master\u2019s thesis, which included an interview he did with Whitehead in 2012.\u00a0 In it, Janik asked the anthropologist if he would do it all over again.<\/p>\n
Whitehead answered: \u201cNot if I had realized the way it always stays with you.\u2026They put something in me and I\u2019ve never been able to get it out. And I\u2019ve had long conversations with people in Guyana about what to do. Well, there\u2019s really nothing to be done\u2026I can\u2019t get back ever, to who I was before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks after that interview, he was dead.<\/p>\n
In Dark Shamans<\/i>, Whitehead wrote that, \u201cKanaima has become pervasive in part because it offers thanatology, a means of giving meaning to death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps even his own.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe Guyana rainforest<\/span> (Photo: Staffan Widstrand \/ Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOnce I had recovered<\/strong>, I packed my things and went out to the highway to catch a minibus south. I was heading to the town of Lethem, near the border of Brazil. I had managed to track down Guy Fredericks, the guide who had told me about kanaima all those years ago. He agreed to find a place for me to stay and to make some inquiries.<\/p>\nWe arrived in Lethem that afternoon. Most of the passengers had left by the time Guy arrived. After more than a decade, I almost didn\u2019t recognize him. I would learn that he\u2019d been through a lot since we last met: he\u2019d been elected as village chief, but then his wife had died of cancer, which sent him into a spiral of depression and drinking, from which he had only recently emerged. But I could see he was still funny, warm, and sharp.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomorrow,\u201d he told me, \u201cwe\u2019ll do some interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n
I climbed on the back of his motorcycle, and we rode out to his village in the shadow of the Kanuku Mountains. There we met his brother Egy, and we all went for an evening boat ride on a local reservoir. At sunset, huge flocks of red-bellied macaws circled the lake, then settled in the palm trees.<\/p>\n
Back at Guy\u2019s house, the village was quiet. The sun went down, and the mountains grew dark against the sky. We sat outside under a cashew tree, where we ate dinner and drank watery Brazilian beer.<\/p>\n
Guy said he\u2019d been asking around and had a few people in mind we could talk to. There were no true piaimen<\/i> (the healing shamans) left in the village. These \u201cleaf beating\u201d shamans were all gone. There were, however, a few elders who knew the sacred chants. They also knew how to deal with kanaimas.<\/p>\n
We talked about the particular plants that kanaima use to travel over vast distances. It was not unusual to find plants that were said to have magical qualities. Many of these plants were also believed to have souls. These were plants with power, called bina<\/i>. These were plants with agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually have plants that are guardians,\u201d Guy explained. \u201cMy granny used to raise certain key plants for security. But you have to feed them on a daily basis. If you do not take care of them, they will turn on you. They can even kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cOne day, Granny was taken by some unknown people. When her family went looking for her, she was way out in the yard, shouting for help. They said, \u2018What happened?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Some little men just pulled me outside.\u2019 These men\u2014these are the plants\u2014they took her and pushed leaves up her anus, because she was not feeding them properly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He paused to let the gravity of that sink in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power of plants,\u201d said Egy, shaking his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cBina plants are serious plants,\u201d Guy said.<\/p>\n
The next day<\/strong>, we climbed on Guy\u2019s motorcycle and rode across the village to meet an elder named Uncle Harry. After Guy was bitten by a rattlesnake on his toe, Uncle Harry used healing songs to cure him. (The hospital was out of antivenom.)<\/p>\nOutside Uncle Harry\u2019s mud house, under two towering mango trees, we sat on a wooden bench. He and Guy spoke in Makushi for a long time before I heard the word kanaima creep into the conversation.<\/p>\n
Many years earlier, Uncle Harry\u2019s eight-year-old son had been killed. It wasn\u2019t clear exactly how, but some, including Uncle Harry, believed it was kanaima. When Uncle Harry confronted the suspect, the two fought, after which Uncle Harry would see the kanaima and his friends following him through the forest. At night, he could hear them whistling. Then there would be a knock at his door. When he came out and shone his light, no one was there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes Uncle Harry know why kanaima kill people?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He put the question to the old man, then translated.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says the bina<\/i> they use\u2014it has created them to kill. So they will always want to kill. But there\u2019s a prayer you can use so you will not be harmed by the kanaima.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uncle Harry recited the prayer. He spoke in Makushi for a long time before he finished.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere did he learn that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe learned it from another elderly person. These prayers are passed on to generations who are interested. He used to do a lot of healing, but right now, he\u2019s sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHas he taught the prayers to any younger people?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody\u2019s interested in these things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes he think kanaima will die out?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
They talked for a little, then Guy translated.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says the practice might continue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our talk<\/strong> with Uncle Harry gave me a sense of just how far I\u2019d come. Not just to Guyana, or to the Kanuku mountains or to the Amazon. I had arrived at a place much further away than that.<\/p>\nI had crossed a border. With Uncle Harry\u2019s and the other stories, I could feel myself moving into this other world, where shamans could be light or dark (or both), where instant travel through space and time was not only possible but perfectly plausible, and where shapes could shift while souls could not.<\/p>\n
In this world, animals were not the only predators in the forest. In this world, plants were alive in every sense. As I understood it, they had not only awareness but agendas. They wanted things. They traded for them.<\/p>\n
I would learn more about this later. But at the time, I felt like I was getting my first real glimpse of this place: The world from which kanaima emerged. The world in which their motives and murders were starting to make a certain sense.<\/p>\n
This was the world into which Whitehead had unwittingly stumbled while looking for the city of gold. And while I didn\u2019t want to go as far into it as he had, I knew I had to go a little further.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nLooking northwest to the Pakaraima Mountains and toward the village of Paramakatoi where Neil Whitehead first arrived in 1992.<\/span> (Photo: Frank Bures)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe sun was<\/strong> nearing the horizon when we started out for the last place. It was for an interview that had been tricky to arrange. The man, who I\u2019ll call Raul, was dangerous. Some years earlier, he\u2019d been accused of a crime while Guy was serving as village chief. When Guy had come to confront him, Raul threatened to kill him, then fled the village.<\/p>\nAbout a year later, he returned and settled uneasily back into village life. But his crime and the death threats were not the most dangerous thing about him.<\/p>\n
Raul was Patamuna. He came from Monkey Mountain\u2014the same town from which Neil Whitehead had been evacuated in 1992. And whenever anyone mentioned kanaima around here, their thoughts immediately went to Raul.<\/p>\n
There were whispers in the village about he and his brother traveling instantly over vast distances\u2014a known kanaima power. And once Raul and Egy had a conversation about kanaima plants, and Raul had told him things he could only have known if he\u2019d used them.<\/p>\n
By the time Egy and I reached Raul\u2019s home, the sky was dark. The house was on the far outskirts of town, which is typical of kanaimas, who tend to be isolated. We greeted him, and he invited us to sit in plastic chairs on the concrete slab under a conical roof. A cool breeze washed off the savanna.<\/p>\n
Raul was thin and wiry, with veins that showed on his arms and legs. He wore a soccer jersey and had an air of restrained violence. We brought him cigarettes and rum. He accepted these, then poured a glass of rum for each of us and himself. We sat down and drank.<\/p>\n
Egy made small talk for a while, even though Raul already knew why we were here.<\/p>\n
After a lull, Raul spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo how we going to start it now?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhat kind of story you want to hear?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I said cautiously, \u201cI was talking to Egy about kanaima. He said maybe you had some stories about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raul was quiet for a minute, then began.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kanaima is a human being. It\u2019s no kind of animal. It\u2019s a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a spirit?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. Not a spirit. A human being, like us. But they have some strong bina<\/i> they use to turn kanaima. If you use it, you close your eyes and you go to Lethem. After five minutes, you\u2019ll feel your feet touching the ground. Then you open your eyes and you\u2019ll be over there. That\u2019s kanaima.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you try it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, no,\u201d he said. \u201cA man who did try it told me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo anybody could be a kanaima if they get the bina?\u201d Egy asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Raul said, \u201cthe plant<\/i> is kanaima. Not the person. If you use it, you will start to be kanaima. If you can\u2019t control it\u2014if you have a weak mind\u2014you will turn into kanaima.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you ever see it in the forest?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I see the bina. And it whistles.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plant whistles?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, the bina does whistle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ice clinked in my glass. I sipped my rum. Egy did too. Raul hadn\u2019t touched his.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know anyone killed by kanaima?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey killed my sister last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raul went on to tell the story about his sister. She left a bar late at night, and they found her the next day with bruising all along her back\u2014a sign of kanaima attack. He told us about how his grandfather had killed many kanaima. He explained how the kanaima \u201ckill you bad,\u201d by cutting off your penis and cutting out your tongue. Then they put \u201cwood in your belly.\u201d He told us about all the people kanaima were killing near Monkey Mountain\u2014old men, old ladies, little girls, big men.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can kill anybody,\u201d Raul said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what\u2019s all this killing for?\u201d Egy asked.<\/p>\n
Raul thought about it for a minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go drink rum,\u201d he said, \u201cyou feel nice. You talk. You run your head. You want to drink more. You want to dance up. When kanaima kill you, they go bury you under the earth. When you\u2019re rotten inside, they come and dig down and start sucking this thing that\u2019s inside. Then they get stoned till they are drunk and they feel nice. That\u2019s<\/i> kanaima.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sat in silence.<\/p>\n
Finally, Raul spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cKanaima story is a dangerous story,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople never believe it. People say you\u2019re lying. They say there\u2019s no kanaima. But kanaima is a human being, just like us.\u201d<\/p>\n
We finished our drinks. After we talked some more, it seemed like Raul had finished. So we bid him farewell, climbed on the motorcycle, and headed home.<\/p>\n
To the north, fires burned on the savannah. To the south, the Kanuku Mountains stood black against the sky.<\/p>\n
Racing through the night, the world around me felt beautiful and mysterious and terrifying, like the stories that stitched it together.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d come close enough to the world of the kanaima, maybe even to a kanaima himself. I knew if I stayed longer, it would only be a matter of time before I set my other foot inside. But as much as I loved hearing these stories, I realized that I didn\u2019t want to live them through to their end.<\/p>\n
It was time to take my own stories and go home.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published April 1, 2026 03:16AM In 1992, an anthropologist named Neil Whitehead arrived in the capital of Guyana, a small, heavily-forested country on the northern edge of South America. From there, he took another small plane from Georgetown to a village in the forest-covered Pakaraima mountains. At the time, Whitehead was researching the archeology of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wild-living"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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