[Dianichi]

- Thứ 7 Tháng 11 15, 2008 2:59 pm

The teenage boy revered by many as a reincarnation of Buddha sat silently in the jungle as he blessed his devotees Wednesday with a light tap on the head, which they consider the touch of the divine.
His face was still, his long hair spilled over his white robe, and he never said a word.
The followers of Ram Bahadur Bamjan, 18, believe he has been meditating without food and water since he was first spotted in the jungles of southern Nepal in 2005, when believers say he spent months without moving, sitting with his eyes closed beneath a tree.

Bamjan re-emerged this week to meet his followers, who have come by the thousands to see him in the jungles of Ratanpur, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Katmandu.
"I got a chance to see God today," Bishnu Maya Khadka, a housewife, said after receiving Bamjan's blessing Wednesday. "They say he is Buddha, but for me he is just God."
Bamjan was expected to address his followers on Nov. 18 and then retreat again into the jungle for meditation, said Kamal Tamang, a Buddhist priest.
Bamjan received the pilgrims from atop a podium covered in yellow cloth and placed before a massive tree. He looked healthy and strong and showed no signs of starvation or dehydration.

Buddhism, which has about 325 million followers, mostly in Asia, teaches that every soul is reincarnated after death in another bodily form.

But several Buddhist scholars have been skeptical of the claims that Bamjan is a reincarnation of Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in southwestern Nepal roughly 2,500 years ago and became revered as the Buddha, or Enlightened One.
"Being Buddha means the last birth and the highest level that can be achieved. There can be no reincarnation of Buddha, even though Buddhists believe in life after death," said Rakesh, a Buddhist scholar in Katmandu who goes by only one name.

buddhaboy.jpg

"Meditating without food does not prove that he is the reincarnation of Buddha," said Min Bahadur Shakya of the Nagarjuna Institute of Exact Methods, a Buddhist research center in Katmandu. "There is much study needed to be done."
Bamjan has never addressed the subject in any of his speeches.
The devotees who have flocked to visit him have fewer doubts. Colorful prayer flags fluttered and incense filled the air Wednesday as the pilgrims silently approached Bamjan, who was surrounded by a line of Buddhist monks.
"I have no doubt in my mind he is a God," said Meg Bahadur Lama, a local farmer. "He has been meditating without food and water and no human can achieve such a feat. I used to hear about such miracles in the past but now I got to see one."

What is your opinion?

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[Echo]

- Thứ 2 Tháng 11 17, 2008 3:45 am

View full true story at http://www.prairieghosts.com/winchester.html
I think that the Spirit had provided us a very convincing proof about their existence through the building of this extraordinary house.

".....But her new-found wealth could do nothing to ease her pain. Sarah grieved deeply, not only for her husband, but also for her lost child. A short time later, a friend suggested that Sarah might speak to a Spiritualist medium about her loss. "Your husband is here," the medium told her and then went on to provide a description of William Winchester. "He says for me to tell you that there is a curse on your family, which took the life of he and your child. It will soon take you too. It is a curse that has resulted from the terrible weapon created by the Winchester family. Thousands of persons have died because of it and their spirits are now seeking vengeance."...

....Sarah was then told that she must sell her property in New Haven and head towards the setting sun. She would be guided by her husband and when she found her new home in the west, she would recognize it. "You must start a new life," said the medium, "and build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon too. You can never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live. Stop and you will die."

[rain9811]

- Thứ 2 Tháng 11 17, 2008 10:38 am

What in God's Name?!
A New Film Examines a 1976 Exorcism, Asking What Possessed Those Involved
By Eric T. Hansen
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page N04

BERLIN -- The first person to recognize that Anneliese Michel was possessed by demons was an older woman accompanying the girl on a pilgrimage. She noticed that Anneliese would not walk past a certain image of Jesus, refused to drink water from a holy spring and smelled bad -- hellishly bad. An exorcist in a nearby town examined Michel and returned a diagnosis of demonic possession. The bishop issued permission to perform the rite of exorcism according to the Roman ritual of 1614.

Half a year and 67 rites of exorcism later, Michel was dead at 23.

Anneliese Michel did not die in the Middle Ages, but in 1976, in the small town of Klingenberg, in the heart of one of the most civilized and advanced countries in Europe: Germany.

On Friday, the story that shocked Germany is coming to the big screen. Though set in America in the present, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," which stars Tom Wilkinson as the priest who performed the exorcism and Laura Linney as his defense lawyer, is based on Michel's story and focuses not on the sensational exorcism itself but on the court case that followed.
Two years after Michel's death, a German court found her parents and the two priests involved guilty of negligent manslaughter and sentenced them to six months in prison, suspended with three years' probation.

What shocked Germany most was the fact that it could happen in a country that prides itself on being highly rational -- and highly secularized.

"The surprising thing was that the people connected to Michel were all completely convinced that she had really been possessed," says Franz Barthel, amazement still in his voice three decades after he covered the story for the regional daily paper Main-Post.
"Many years later, I visited the woman who first diagnosed the Devil," Barthel says. "She blessed my microphone with holy water because I was working for the radio then, and it was likely that the Devil was in control of the microphone."
Michel was raised in a strict Catholic family in Bavaria, which rejected the reforms of Vatican II and flirted with religious fringe groups. While other kids her age were rebelling against authority and experimenting with sex, she tried to atone for the sins of wayward priests and drug addicts by sleeping on a bare floor in the middle of winter.

According to court findings, she experienced her first epileptic attack in 1969, and by 1973 was suffering from depression and considering suicide. Soon she was seeing the faces of demons on the people and things around her, and voices told her she was damned.
Under the influence of her demons, Michel ripped the clothes off her body, compulsively performed up to 400 squats a day, crawled under a table and barked like a dog for two days, ate spiders and coal, bit the head off a dead bird and licked her own urine from the floor.
By 1975 Michel was asking for an exorcism. The Revs. Ernst Alt and Arnold Renz performed the rite 67 times over the first half of 1976. Some of the sessions took up to four hours. Forty-two sessions were recorded on tape.

Michel's recorded voice can still send shivers up your spine. It is the voice of a demon, growling, barking, inhuman -- and surprisingly like the voice of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist," which had been released in Germany two years earlier.

Sometimes the demons identified themselves -- as Cain, Nero, Judas, Lucifer, Hitler and others -- and even answered the exorcists' questions, explaining what was wrong with the church or why they were in Hell. "People are stupid as pigs," spat Hitler. "They think it's all over after death. It goes on." Judas said Hitler was nothing but a "big mouth" and had "no real say" in Hell.

Anyway, it wasn't the exorcism that killed Anneliese Michel.

At some point she began talking increasingly about dying to atone for the wayward youth of the day and the apostate priests of the modern church, and refused to eat. Though she had received treatment for epilepsy, by this time, at her own request, doctors were no longer being consulted.

She, her parents and the exorcists decided to rely completely on exorcism. By the time Michel died of starvation, she weighed only 68 pounds.

After her death, the Anneliese Michel trial also set reason against faith.

"I personally believe that this case was handled in such a way as to play down the reality of the Devil," says Norbert Baumert, Jesuit priest and chairman of the theological commission of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Germany, which cannot perform exorcism but practices "prayers for deliverance" from "demonic nuisance."

The trial went to the heart of faith: If the Bible is true, then the miracles must have really happened, and Satan must be real.
But it's not easy preaching the existence of the Devil to one of the most secularized countries in Europe. A study by research institute Infratest and published in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel last month showed that even among churchgoers, approximately a third of baptized Catholics and half of baptized Protestants do not believe in life after death.

"I understand the complaint that German theologians are too rational," says Klemens Richter, professor for liturgical science in Muenster. "But exorcism is all about helping the sick. In Anneliese Michel's case, the sickness was supported. When I go to a patient and support her in her delusion, she gets the impression that she really is possessed."

Exorcism is far more widespread today than most people imagine. According to Richter, there are about 70 practicing exorcists in France and just as many employed in Italy. In July this year, a congress in Poland was reportedly attended by about 350 practicing exorcists.
Germany is the major European exception. Here, there are only two or three practicing exorcists, and though they have the approval of their bishops, they operate in secret.

"Secularization has the church in its grip," says Ulrich Niemann, a Jesuit priest, medical doctor and psychiatrist who often has been called into exorcism cases by clergymen. "We do a lot for the Third World, but little for faith in a transcendent God. . . . The German church is far too cerebral."

Niemann doesn't consider himself an exorcist and doesn't perform the Roman ritual of 1614. "As a doctor, I say there is no such thing as possession," he says. "In my view, these patients are mentally ill. I pray with them, but that alone doesn't help. You have to deal with them as a psychiatrist. But at the same time, when the patient comes from Eastern Europe and believes that he's been impaired by evil, it would be a mistake to ignore his belief system."

After the Michel trial, German bishops and theologians formed a commission to review the exorcism rite, and in 1984 they petitioned Rome to change it.

The heart of the problem, they found, was the practice of speaking directly or "imperatively" to the Devil, that is, "I command thee, unclean spirit . . . " That part of the rite seemed to do the most damage, since it confirmed to the patient that he or she truly was possessed.
The Germans didn't get what they wanted.

"We were astonished when Rome issued a changed exorcism formula in 1999 which left open the possibility of speaking to the Devil directly," says Richter. "But you can't know for certain that a patient is truly possessed of the Devil."

Today, 30 years after Michel's death, with both exorcists and her father also dead (her mother couldn't be reached for this article), Michel is still revered by small groups of Catholics who believe she atoned for wayward priests and sinful youth, and honor her as an unofficial saint.
"Buses, often from Holland, I think, still come to Anneliese's grave," Barthel says. "The grave is a gathering point for religious outsiders. They write notes with requests and thanks for her help, and leave them on the grave. They pray, sing and travel on."

[jerm]

- Thứ 3 Tháng 11 18, 2008 7:17 am

This phenomena is nothing new. In the world and especially in Vietnam there are many people who has extraordinary psychic power, or extraordinary appearance or behavior and are mistakenly believed as Buddha or Boddhisattva or Saints. No one has yet go so far as to call the person on earth God or creator like the woman mentioned above in Nepal. This is grossly exaggerated by ignorant and superstitious people. In reality, it is customary for a god, usually local, to choose a body and perform miracles in order to prove the existence of the third World, to give faith and to help people in that locality, for a short period of time and the miracles would stop. Some religious groups then exploit the event to their advantage by circulating rumor about the person, calling him/her a Divinity to attract the crowd, and make money from it.

[Apollo]

- Thứ 5 Tháng 11 20, 2008 2:57 am

V: Tổng Thống Abraham Lincoln và những chuyện huyền bí

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States. He apparently had a psychic gift of his own and had an interest in SPIRITUALISM. He had paranormal experiences and dreamed of his own death.
After the death of his favorite son, Willie, he attended seances in an effort to contact Willie's spirit. In a letter to his friend, Lincoln observed that he had "always had a strong tendency to mysticism" and had often felt controlled "by some other power than my own will," which he felt came "from above."
Throughout his presidency, Lincoln have met with various mediums, of them Cora Maynard took credit for the emancipation proclamation, saying in her autobiography that Lincoln issued it at the direction of her spirits. Nettie Colburn also claimed credit, citing and hour-and-a-half trance during which she lectured Lincoln the war would not end until he freed the slaves.
During the fighting (Civil War), Lincoln became withdrawn and spent a great deal of time meditating and praying.
On one occasion, Lincoln visited the telegraph office os the War Department, looking for the latest news of a battle. Later that night, he returned in a state of panic, ordering a line through to his commanders. He seemed certain that Confederate forces were about to cut through Union forces. Asked how he knew that, he reportedly replied, "My God, man! I saw it."
Since Willie's death, Lincoln visited the crypt often and had the coffin opened so that he could gaze again on the face of his beloved son, he told his Secretary of the Treasury that he often felt Willie near him and spoke to him.

Until next time.... when I have time

[Apollo]

- Thứ 6 Tháng 11 21, 2008 5:39 am

Shortly before his election, Lincoln had seen a vision of himself in mirrors on several occasions. He saw two separate and distinct images of his face, one of which was deathly pale and vanished as he gazed at it. Ten days before his assasination, he had a dramatic and prophetic dream of his own death. He wrote in his journal:
I retired late, I soon began to dream. Their seem to be a death like stillness about me, than I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along.

It was light in all the rooms every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? ... Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room which I entered. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, who's face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers. "The president" was his answer. "He was killed by an assasin" Than came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; ...

The night before he was killed, Lincoln told a member of his cabinet that he had dreamed he would be assassinated. The day of his assissination, Lincoln confided to his bodyguard, W.H. Crook, that he had dreamed for three nights straight that he would be assassinated. Crook beseeched him not to go that night to Ford's Theatre, but Lincoln demurred saying he had promised his wife they would go. Perhaps he knew he would be shot that night, for when they departed for Ford's, Lincoln said "goodbye" to Crook instead of "good night."

Lincoln's premonitions did not save him, but a premonition may have saved the life of General Ulysses S. Grant, who, with his wife, Julia, as to be with Lincoln in the theater the night the president was shot. Julia awoke that morning with an oppressive sensations that something terrible was going to happen. She persuaded Grant to stay home. Later, it was revealed that Booth had planned to assassinate Grant as well that evening.
(Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits)

[Apollo]

- Thứ 6 Tháng 11 21, 2008 5:55 am

Lincoln's family home in Springfield, has been associated with haunting phenomena. Staff and visitors have reported apparitions of a tall, thin man sometimes accompanied by a small boy, believed to be Lincoln and his son Willie. A rocker rocks by itself, wind rushes in corridors, objects are moved, phantom piano music is played and voices are heard. People say they feel cold spots and are touched by invisible hands.
In the White House, staff reported ghostly footsteps attibuted to Lincoln. The first person to see his alleged ghost was Grace, wife of President Coolidge, who observed his silhouette standing at a window in the Oval Office, looking out over the Potomac. Since then, his ghost has been seen or sensed in this pose; the poet Carl Sandburg once said he felt (but did not see) Lincoln stand by him at the window. The haunting re-creates a real scene observed one night during Lincoln's presidency by Army Chaplain E.C. Bolles. Bolles had arrived in the Oval Office to meet with Lincoln; the president was gazing mournfully out the window. "I think I never saw so sad a face in my life, and I have looked into many a mourner's face," wrote Bolles of the episode.

Lincoln's bedroom, also is a site of hauntings. It is the quarters of visiting heads of states who report strange phenomena, from footsteps to visual hallucinations. When Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands visited President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she heard footsteps in the corridor outside and a knock at the door. When she opened the door, she was astonished to see Lincoln standing before her, dressed out in frock and top hat. The queen fainted. At least one other guest saw Lincoln sitting on the bed, putting on his boots.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt often sensed Lincoln's presence, usually late at night when she was writing. Sometimes the Roosevelt's dog, Fala, would bark excitedly for no apparent reason.

President Harry S. Truman also believed he heard Lincoln walking about. After Truman's presidency, the ghost seemed to disappear from the White House. President Ronald Regan's daughther reported seeing Lincoln's ghost in the Lincoln Room.

There were other hauntings at his gravesite such as ghostly footsteps and at Ford's Theatre: actors have tendency to forget lines, icy sensations at the center stage, phantom footsteps, strange laughers and voices, sounds of weeping, lights turning on and off by themselves.
(Enclyclopedia of Ghost and spirits - Rosemary E. Geily)

[rain9811]

- Thứ 3 Tháng 12 02, 2008 10:03 am

From “The Nomination of the Gods and Mysticism”, it says “The fortune-teller’s task may be small but they do indirectly guide people toward the right direction and reveal to them some secrets of the Spirits’ world. It also serves to predict the future for an individual or a family in order to help some of them while earning a living for the fortune-teller”.

This story’s jitong, a shaman who dispenses advice while supposedly possessed by a spirit, has a similar task to help and guide a small group of people.

As demand shrinks, shamans update their style
By Jonathan Adams, The New York Times Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Chang Yin, a shaman in Taiwan, said to be possessed by the
god Ji Gong, answering questions in her office in Taipei on Aug. 10.

shaman.jpg

After 10 minutes of drum-beating and incense-burning by her assistants, Chang Yin donned a black, spotted robe and pointed hat. She picked up a fan with her right hand and a silver flask of sorghum liquor with her left.
Then, she sat down on a chair before an altar piled with images of deities, fruit, cans of beer, snacks and joss sticks. She slipped into a trance. The session began.
Chang is a jitong - a shaman who dispenses advice while supposedly possessed by a spirit. Here, inside a modern office building next to Taipei's bustling main train station, she is carrying on a folk tradition that goes back hundreds of years in Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.
In the past, such shamans played a central role in rural village life. Based in local temples, they would channel spirits to help heal the sick, pick auspicious dates for important occasions and resolve community disputes.

Now, as the Taiwan economy has developed and its population urbanized, jitongs like Chang are changing with the times. With the tradition on the decline in the countryside, Chang is one of a small number who are maintaining the shamanistic practice, but adapting it to the needs of modern city-dwellers.

"People moved into cities, but they still have this kind of religious need," said Ting Jen-chieh, a specialist in Taiwan religion at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Ethnology in Taipei.

Forty years ago, shamanistic ceremonies were still a frequent feature of village temples, with jitongs playing an important public role. Now, Ting said, few young Taiwanese are interested in becoming a jitong. Many older ones who do carry on have switched to "private practice," often in urban settings - operating out of homes, storefronts or offices.

The problems they are called upon to solve have changed, too: fewer village-level quarrels; more marital disharmony or individual setbacks in the workplace.

In the southern Taiwan village Ting has been studying, there were eight jitong in the 1960s. Now there are none.

"Before, jitong were seen as performing a public service," Ting said. "But now, as people have become more educated, they've come to think the practice isn't scientific, that it's uncivilized."

But if jitongs are less visible, the underlying beliefs that prevailed when Taiwan was a predominantly poor, rural society are surprisingly resilient. Many Taiwanese pragmatically switch between Taoist, Buddhist, folk and other beliefs and practices, depending on the situation, Ting said. And at least 70 percent of Taiwanese still adhere to some traditional ways, like venerating local deities or casting divination blocks, he said.

"Taiwan has become more middle-class oriented, but we still keep our folk practices," Ting said.

Consulting a jitong is a case in point. The practice has not been totally abandoned, just updated. Chang Yin, for example, regularly sends out text messages via mobile phone to about 300 clients. That virtual network has replaced the tightly knit village setting of old.
One Sunday a month, she invites those contacts to her office for an open spirit medium session.

On this particular day, as she answered petitioners' questions, several elderly men lounged nearby on pillows and chairs, watching the proceedings. Children ran in and out of the room. Chang's assistants bustled around in the office and attached kitchen, lighting joss sticks, washing dishes, tending to accounts.

Her office door remained open, with about 15 waiting visitors and passers-by chatting and eating in the outside hallway.

As clients knelt on pillows before her and aired their troubles, Chang was by turns a marriage counselor, family therapist and psychotherapist.

"In the U.S. or the West, people go to a psychologist," said one 40-year-old man who works in financial services in Taipei, after he and his wife had finished their session. "The jitong plays the same role. In Taiwan, we think going to a psychologist feels a bit strange. A psychologist is just a person, but this is a god. I can say anything to a god, but I can't say everything to a psychologist."
Most often, Chang is possessed by Ji Gong, a maverick Buddhist monk who lived in China in the 12th century, and loved his meat and liquor. Thus the cans of beer as offerings on the altar and Chang's occasional hiccups and slurred speech as she channeled the tipsy monk.
Another popular god is Santaizi (literally, the "third prince") - the youngest son of a Tang Dynasty general who has a third eye and boundless energy.
But she says other spirits, including Jesus, can speak through her.

"I usually ask Ji Gong to answer peoples' questions," she said in an interview. "When I start the ritual, I need to dress in Ji Gong's clothes and drink alcohol, because Ji Gong likes it."

She says she does not remember anything that happens while possessed by the spirits.
"My assistant helps me, recording everything I say and telling me what I did," she said.

This time, a visibly relaxed "Ji Gong" was cracking jokes, sipping liquor, hiccupping, waving a fan, teasing questioners, scolding a child, and in general thoroughly enjoying "himself" and putting everyone at ease.

The questioners all listened calmly, letting Ji Gong do most of the talking.

Ji Gong assured one troubled woman who had recently lost a baby that the child was doing well on "the other side."

"Give me your heart, and I'll open it," Ji Gong told the woman, using a Chinese phrase for giving happiness.
The woman put her hand to her heart and then extended it to the shaman.
"That's not your heart, that's your hand," Ji Gong said, chuckling mischievously.
"I was just kidding - only you can open your heart," Ji Gong said. "If you want to open it, just open it. You think too much."
Another time, Ji Gong gave specific advice to a couple and their young son, repeat visitors. To the wife, he said, "Your husband's not gentle enough, as usual," and gently upbraided the father.
Then Ji Gong had another message.
"Your son wants to ask you for money, but he's afraid to," Ji Gong told the father. "He wants money for an online game - he's been trying so hard to overcome an obstacle, but he needs a weapon. Just give him 100 dollars or 200 dollars." (About $3 or $6.)
In the interview, Chang said that the spirits called her to be a jitong; she did not choose it.
"When I was 6, I asked my mother why there were people walking in the sky through the clouds," said Chang, who grew up in a suburb of Taipei. "They didn't blame me or think I was seeing things - they bought a book with pictures of holy beings and asked me which ones I'd seen."
At 12, a Taoist priest began teaching her the ways of a jitong during summer and winter school breaks. At 15, she said, she was capable of being possessed. She completed vocational school and held jobs in a hospital and in sales, but said the spirits kept pestering her to be a jitong and to deliver their messages. So she did so, starting in 2005.
If the profession has evolved in tandem with changes in society, it is not only the jitongs who have made adjustments.
Chang notes the gods are more likely to be consulted on thorny personal relationships these days than physical illness.
"So now they give a difference type of guidance," she said. "The gods have changed along with the times and kept up with the trends."
Yang Chia-nin contributed reporting.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/10/asia/shaman.php

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[rain9811]

- Thứ 4 Tháng 12 03, 2008 10:00 pm (Translated from Taiwan United Daily News, Dec. 1, 2008)

Founded in Taiwan in 1976, Acer ranks among the world's top five branded PC vendors. Mr. Cheng-Long Shih, the founder of the company, goes to worship the Chenghuang (the god of city and castle) Temple every time when he goes back to his hometown. He especially pays a respect to Infernal General Fan*.

The story goes all the way back to Mar. 18, 1984. The burglars went to Acer and used two small trucks to steal away 700,000 pieces IC (worth more than one million US dollars), which created a crisis for the company’s order delivery and finance. The police had done all the search efforts for a month but couldn’t make any progress.

Mr. Shih’s mother also worried about the burglary and suggested him to go to the temple to beg Infernal General Fan to help the case. Miraculously, the criminal case was cracked in 5 days.

The secretary of the temple recalled the case and said Infernal General Fan gave three approving divining cups (two clam-shaped pieces of wood) to agree to help the case and chose Apr. 16 to leave for the company location (the temple is in the center part of Taiwan and the company is in northern part of the Taiwan). The secretary also said the Infernal General Fan’s stature was very light when they first carried it. After they stepped out of the temple, they could barely hold it as it suddenly became so heavy. It seemed the statue got spirit in it.

They left the temple at 5:00am. In the afternoon of the same day, the police already got the key clue. The found the license plate of the truck and quickly located the truck next to a public building. Finally, 85% of the ICs were recovered and the company was saved.

In this August, there were serial shootings in central Taiwan. The police chief was under the pressure and was advised to go to worship Infernal General Fan for help. Within 5 days, the police successfully arrested two snipers. Later, the police chief got promoted to a higher position.

Infernal General Fan is famous for cracking the criminal case and is well respected as a “Divine Detective”.

* There are many tales regarding the origin of the Infernal Generals. Some scholars believe that they have close ties to the "Five Deities of Plague Control". As residents of Fujian tell it, the Infernal Generals are the bodyguards or lieutenant generals for the Five Deities of Plague Control who sweep away plagues troubling local residents. The five deities were once presented scholars before they were designated deities by the Jade Emperor - the ultimate God figure in Chinese culture. One night these scholars observed that the devil of plague was trying to poison the water in a well so that local residents who drank it would be poisoned. They sacrificed their own lives by jumping into the well to warn local residents that the water was poisoned. The Jade Emperor acknowledged their sacrifices and kindness in helping the people, by designating them the Five Deities of Plague Control. Since that time one of the most controversial of all folk tales has been the story that the Infernal Generals were sent by the Jade Emperor to assist the Five Deities of Plague Control in getting rid of plagues among the civilian population.
Another version holds that the Infernal Generals had been bandits before they became religious figures. Chenghuang, the god of cities and castles, forced them to turn over a new leaf and become his right-hand men. At the same time, in some provinces of China many people believe that the Infernal Generals are the religious figures of ancient policemen who are now worshipped as ambassadors from the underworld. In fact, many academic sources can be found to support this tale.