One of the most unforgettable and scariest moments of my life occurred during my school days. It was a night when we were having an exam, and some of my housemates were outside chatting and joking while others, like me and my friend, were focused on our studies reading inside. Suddenly, we heard a loud noise that sounded like armed robbers. Everyone outside rushed inside our house passage, locked the main door, while I also locked my door from inside.
My friend from the other room came running to my door, scared, and I let her in. We asked the others that have rushed inside the passage what was happening, and they told us that cultists had come to the house next door. Initially, we thought it was armed robbers, but when they started speaking in their cult language, one of the boy in our house said they are cultist that is when we knew it was something more threatening. Fear gripped me as I have heard stories about cultists visiting people, but I had never experienced it before.
For almost an hour, no one dared to go out because we could still hear noises outside, and we had no idea what was happening. After everything had died down, the boys in my house went out and discovered that some indigene had intervened and chased the cultists away with charms and cutlasses.
It was later revealed that one of the cultists lived next door, and they had visited his house. What's surprising was that he seemed like a gentle and easy-going person, but no one knew about his involvement with cultism. He was not at home but they met his roommate at home and they attacked him and had his leg cut with a cutlass, but the indigene helped him by taking him to the hospital for treatment.
That night was the scariest night of my life in school, and it confirmed all the negative stories I had heard about cultists. I remembered a particular incident that I was told about a group of cultists who killed another member of a rival group. They caught him on sign-out day, cut and sliced him, and packed him in a sack sewn with thread at the mouth.
They went to the victim's town and bought alcohol from his mother's shop, because his mother sell alcohol, drinking to their satisfaction before leaving. After some minutes, the salesgirl realized the boys had forgotten their sack. When she checked, blood was dripping from it. Upon opening the sack, they found the boy's head and body inside. The mother fainted immediately upon seeing her son's remains.
The saddest part was that they always did harm to themselves or others close to or on their sign-out day, which was even more tragic because that day, we were also getting close to our final exams. It was a time that was supposed to be focused on studies and preparation for our future, but instead, it was marred by violence and fear.
Thankfully, we were in our last semester, because if not I would have considered changing houses if I had known about that guy earlier. I don't see any benefits in cultism, but it seems to attract many young minds. In my school, cultists would often display their involvement on sign-out days by wearing their colored berets – yellow, red, or black – making it easy to identify their groups.