The dis­cov­ery in­side a for­eign pirogue ashore at Clarke Bay, Belle Gar­den, last Fri­day, af­ter it was adrift in the ocean, is not sit­ting well with vil­lagers in To­ba­go East.

The com­mon view is that the fif­teen peo­ple all found dead and de­com­pos­ing on­board were evil, trou­bled spir­its that will seek re­venge by tak­ing lives on the beach.

Res­i­dents are now call­ing for an ex­or­cism at the site.

Spir­i­tu­al leader Archdea­con of the To­ba­go An­gli­can Church, the Ven­er­a­ble Fa­ther Philip Isaac said a de­nom­i­na­tion­al spir­i­tu­al rit­u­al to re­move the spir­its is pos­si­ble if it will bring com­fort to res­i­dents.

One vil­lager’s voice note, warn­ing of im­mi­nent dan­ger be­cause the ves­sel is on the beach, went vi­ral on Sun­day.

The voice note was post­ed on a Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots’ (PDP) mem­bers What­sApp chat group. The vil­lager claims to have the first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing “bad spir­its” and “jumbie” at the bay, hav­ing worked there as a se­cu­ri­ty guard for years.

He said last week’s at­tempts by fish­er­men, po­lice, coast guard, and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, to drag the boat on the shore, con­firmed his be­liefs that bad things will oc­cur at the beach.

“While they try­ing to pull the boat with a rope, a strong, strong rope with a back­hoe, the first time I ever see that in my whole life, the rope buss. That is spir­it. That is vibes,” he said on the voice note.

The vil­lager gave a dire pre­dic­tion.

“ Next thing all you go find, when the beach and sea open, Belle Gar­den bay has a set of drown­ings,” he warned.

Archdea­con Isaac said we should not dis­count the vil­lager’s be­liefs.

“I would not cast it aside 100 per cent be­cause if you look at Scrip­ture, you will see that there were sit­u­a­tions where peo­ple who were sent by God were chal­lenged by ma­gi­cians and so forth. There is ev­i­dence of an­oth­er lay­er that we do not know any­thing about.”

He said the rit­u­al should in­clude dif­fer­ent spir­i­tu­al and re­li­gious lead­ers.

“Be­fore Je­sus left the earth, he gave au­thor­i­ty to the dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers in cer­tain ar­eas, and if these ar­eas are con­sid­ered, well it is quite ap­pro­pri­ate to per­form a rit­u­al in the area.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to PDP for com­ment on the is­sue.

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Faith B Yis­rael said the vil­lager has a “gen­uine” con­cern but urged the vil­lager and oth­ers to al­low the po­lice to con­duct their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the boat’s ori­gin and how the men, all dressed in track­suits and rain­coats, may have died.