The Incheon charcoal exorcism
On 18 September 2024 an 81-year-old shaman and six others tied her niece over burning charcoal in a Bupyeong restaurant for three hours to drive out a spirit; she died of burns.
2024 CE · 37.51, 126.72 · status: official
The account
The shaman said the spirit wanted to kill the victim's mother. Sentences moved from life for murder to seven years on appeal, then the Supreme Court sent the case back for retrial.
The sceptical view
A criminal case; the 'possession' existed only in the defendants' belief.
The researched reading
A killing, not a haunting: a debt-ridden shaman used the language of spirits to control and punish a niece who had broken away. Shared belief turned followers into accomplices.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A cultural story | 40% | Belief in spirit affliction and shamanic rites remains widespread in Korea, and six followers, including the victim’s mother, took part because they shared that frame; the ritual borrowed the form of a real tradition. |
| Undetermined | 25% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 17% | Group obedience to a charismatic leader explains why seven adults held a woman over charcoal for three hours; what the shaman called “abnormal behaviour” was the victim’s wish to leave. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 15% | Court records reported by JoongAng Daily show the shaman had for decades pretended to be possessed, extracted money from relatives and owed more than 1.6 billion won; the niece had escaped her control and taken over the restaurant’s finances, and the “evil spirit” was named after that. The possession claim worked as a pretext for coercion. |
| Something in the surroundings | 1% | Nothing in the surroundings is implicated beyond the charcoal that killed her. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 1% | The victim showed no illness that could be mistaken for possession. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 1% | No one but the defendants perceived any spirit. |
Official position: Korean courts treated it as a homicide; the Supreme Court sent the case back in 2026 so that intent to kill could be weighed.