I FED MY MONEY RITUAL RATS AND MY FAMILY DIED,I DIDN'T KNOW THAT EACH RAT REPRESENTED THEIR LIVES

I FED MY MONEY RITUAL RATS AND MY FAMILY DIED,I DIDN'T KNOW THAT EACH RAT REPRESENTED THEIR LIVES

I Went to a Sangoma for Wealth… And Every Rat I Fed Took Someone I Loved”

I went to a sangoma in Malawi, desperate for wealth and success. What he gave me seemed almost unreal: a small snake with eyes that glimmered in the dark, and a box full of rats that squeaked like they knew something I didn’t. He looked me in the eye and whispered, “Feed the snake one rat every six months, and your life will change. Wealth, success, power… all will follow you. But remember—everything has a price.”

Before I could take the snake home, he made me sleep with it—naked—in the same room. “See how harmless it is,” he said. That night, my heart pounded in terror. The snake lay still, its scales glinting under the faint moonlight. It didn’t touch me. It didn’t move. And yet, I could feel a strange presence, like it was studying me, waiting. By morning, I believed it. Harmless. Safe.

At home, the snake and rats had to stay in separate cages, in a locked room where no one else could enter. I obeyed. I followed every rule meticulously, though sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night to strange scratching and hissing sounds coming from their cages, as if they were whispering to each other in a language I could not understand.

Six months passed. I fed the snake its first rat. The next morning, I found my grandmother dead in her sleep. Shock froze me—but then my eyes caught a bag of money in the corner of her room. I told myself it must be her savings for her funeral… anything to make sense of it.

The second feeding came. The next morning, my mother was gone. And yet again, a bag of money appeared, untouched, almost glowing in the dim light of her room.

The third feeding took my elder sister. By then, I finally understood the truth—I was the reason this was happening. Every rat I fed came at a cost: a life I loved. The wealth I gained was soaked in blood, and the realization was almost unbearable.

The sangoma’s words echoed in my mind: *“The snake takes what you value most.”* I had never imagined it could go further.

I was pregnant. Carrying new life. The thought of the next feeding terrified me. Could the snake take me too? Could it take the child I carried—the very life growing inside me? Sometimes I would wake at night to find the snake staring at me through its cage, its tongue flickering in and out, as if sensing something I could not see.

Every sound in the house became a warning: the rustle of leaves outside, the creak of the floorboards, even the faint squeak of the rats in their cage. The ritual promised wealth, but it demanded sacrifices I could never have imagined. I counted the days until the next feeding, feeling the weight of dread in every step.

The wealth is real. The money, the success—they are all real. But each coin, each note, is soaked in the lives of those I loved most. And soon… the ultimate cost may be mine, and the child growing inside me.

I wanted prosperity, and I found it. But alongside it came a nightmare I cannot escape—a dark power that watches, waits, and will not stop. And the next life it desires…