Their confidence broken, Serbs are looking increasingly to the paranormal
for comfort. From the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
But in traumatized post-conflict Serbia, the "other side" does not mean NATO. The effects of war seem to have awakened a massive interest in the paranormal here. That interest is being met by a crop of new magazines,
books, and newspapers dedicated to the paranormal. They chronicle a world where alien creatures have control
over British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and in which the US Army deploys squads of witches and warlocks in a black-magic war against Serbia.
Magazines like Zona Sumraka (The Twilight Zone), Dosije X (X Files), Cudo (Miracle), Trece Oko (The Third Eye), and Fenomeni (Phenomena) have sprung up in the last two months, all offering solace to Serbs desperate to find an escape from their grim surroundings.
The magazines appear to be the descendants of local publications that, in better times, specialized in lonely-hearts advice columns and guides to romance. They seem to have progressed, via horoscopes and articles devoted to subjects like "How to match your wardrobe to your star sign," into guides to the occult and outlandish, propaganda-influenced explanations for the real-world events around Yugoslavia.
According to Geoffrey Scobie, senior psychologist at the University of Glasgow, such a fixation betrays serious emotional and identity problems in Serbian society. "People's belief in the paranormal increases when they lose confidence in material things," he says. "Traditional religious beliefs are not enough and so the paranormal is pursued to meet their need to believe in something."
Many articles try to find spiritual rationales for the troubles that have befallen Serbia in recent months. In a lengthy article for the monthly Cudo, for example, analyst Milan Vidojevic explains how the clandestine "Order of the Fourth Reich" is creating a new world order on behalf of Lucifer. Tellingly, the Order is being opposed only by the Chinese and Serbian governments.
Meanwhile, Dr. Todor Jovanovic tells readers of Dosije Xto beware the extraterrestrials who have recently arrived on Earth. They "radiate something diabolical, evil, poisonous ..." They control the minds of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, NATO's Javier Solana, and other NATO leaders, Jovanovic writes.
"If one were to switch off the impulses radiated at the US president by the extraterrestrials," Jovanovic says, "only a sax player would remain," while of Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright would be left "an elderly lady without ambitions."
Other stories seem to feed off the Serbian preoccupation with history and the traditional view that the country always has, and always will, stand alone against a host of enemies.
It seems the aliens are no mere arrivistes either. Parapsychologist Milorad Tomic (who claims to be a reincarnation of Nikola Tesla) says that aliens have been plotting for 50 years to conquer Serbia, signing a secret deal with former communist leader Josip Broz Tito. Tito, Tomic says, agreed to allow the aliens to set up shop on Yugoslav territory in 1945. Tomic says Kosovo has unusually strong "geomagnetic forces" which make the province perfect for aliens colonization.
According to Spasoje Vlajic, writing in Cudo, the Yugoslav army has set up a special squad -- the secretive parapsychology Unit 69 -- to confront the black magic forces deployed by the US Army. Vlajic, who says played a key role in Unit 69, warns his readers that "voodoo warriors and witches are already among US troops in Kosovo."
Vlajic cites an American magazine called The Military Review, and says US warlocks and witches trained at a secret base in Texas for their mission in Kosovo -- which is to draw out and defeat the Serbian anti-magic Unit 69. The commander of the American unit is one Mary Palmer, a member of the US Army military police, he adds authoritatively. (The real Military Review, makes no mention of such things.)
Since the war, dozens of self-described witches, clairvoyants, and paranormal experts have stepped forward to join these publications, ready to give guidance of a sort to their bewildered readers as they struggle to find their bearings after 72 days of NATO bombing.
Defeat for NATO features highly in many of the specialist publications now on sale in the Belgrade kiosks. The magazine Trece Oko predicts that domestic political conditions in Alliance member states will deteriorate steadily forcing NATO to withdraw "by the end of this year, or by June 2000 at the latest."
Many Serbs, influenced by the paranormal media and state propaganda, now expect the August 11 solar eclipse to herald new troubles for the non-Russian KFOR soldiers. Most troubling for NATO,according to the paranormal media, will be the appearance of a Danube version of the legendary Loch Ness Monster of
Scotland. They have dubbed the beast, which was reportedly spotted recently by fisherman Milan Savin swimming by the destroyed bridges at Novi Sad, "Danube Nessi."
Savin reports that Danube Nessi used to live in a tunnel below the Danube and the city's historic Varadin Fortress, but the NATO bombs forced it up to the surface. Now Nessi cruises the river looking for victims. NATO better beware.
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The exhausted citizenry of Serbia, bent double by war, poverty and isolation
and short on news they can trust, are hungry for stories from the "other side."
Bojan Toncic is an independent journalist from Belgrade.
http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/kosovo/paranormal.html
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