Show USE VICTIMS HEADS TO SCALP SPOOKS murder and sacrifice religious rite rife in burma the head hunting live tn in the mountain fastnesses fast nesses of upper burma apart from head hunting the are a gentle and industrious race tending their fields it Is a tribal crime to bruise a hower floter or kill a butterfly according to an explorer writing wilting in the london mall mail naga villages surrounded by impenetrable barricades of thorn thom and cactus and entered through a winding tunnel the floor of which bri bristles Atles with poisonous snakes set to kill unwary and unwanted strangers are joined to each other by groves of sacred trees huge huga gnarled boles tower to a root roof of branches so dense with leaf that not a gleam of sunshine penetrates to the gloom bolow below in sint sinister ster rows along these groves stand totem poles garishly daubed with brilliant and hideously carved A human skull Is impaled on the top of each pole when the head hunters return with their victims a dance Is held the captives are given a good meal and dressed in the best clothes the village can provide before their heads hands and feet are cut off the villagers apologize for tiny any inconvenience this rite may cause to the victims and point out that they will be honorably sacrificed to the barvest harv vest es t gods that their skulls will grace the sacred grove that their ghosts gh will share with the village army of other victims spooks shooks the honored job of scaring off the horde of binns and demons which lurk around the villages intent so the say on bringing plague and famine to the tribe follows an orgy orey of sacrifice opium eating and toddy drinking the victims heade hands and feet are paraded on poles through tho the opium and paddy fields as harvest thanksgiving tokens with solemn rites the skulls are added to the grim rows of ghostly sentinels but the skulls must be those of strangers tile lie believing that if the leads heads came from the shoulders of naga tribesmen the ghosts of the victims instead of staying in the grave by their skulls would hunt tho the villagers and wreak more spiteful damage than the very ery i binns and demons which they should dailve away |