After six students fell unconscious within a short time one day, triggering rumours of a ghost taking up residence in a tree next to a school building in south-western Bangladesh, children stopped attending classes, prompting the villagers of Hazipur in modern-day Patuakhali to decide to call in a witch doctor to chase the evil spirit away and set things right. The six say they have been visited by the demon, or “Ramayan” as is its name, who wants the 25-year-old hog plum tree to be chopped down and each to sacrifice a goat and distribute the meat among the locals to appease it. Doctors at Kalapara Upazila Health Complex who treated the six on the day of the fainting outbreak, term it a case of “mass hysteria”, that is manifestations of anxiety and hyperventilation.

read more Nothing To Do With Arbroath: Ghost that lives in hog plum tree is scaring children away from school.