By Tim Binnall
A teenager in Ghana nearly lost his finger after he put on a friend's purportedly magical ring and then found that the cursed object would not come off. According to a local media report, the strange case began last Friday in the community of Kasoa when Emmanuel Otabil was playing video games with a couple of companions and spotted the intriguing jewelry on a table. For reasons he can't explain, the young man immediately felt compelled to put the tempting piece on his finger. Alas, unbeknownst to him, the object was what is known in Ghana as a 'sakawa' ring in that it was made for "spiritual practices" and, as such, allegedly possessed some kind of supernatural characteristics.
Otabil came to realize the curious properties of the ring when he woke up the following morning and felt sick. Attributing the illness to the odd ring, the young man attempted to remove it, but found that it was firmly stuck on his finger. "My friend came and used a hacksaw blade and pliers but they were only able to cut a part of it," he recalled, "and the rest started entering my flesh." With the ring seemingly starting to consume the young man's finger, an understandable panic swept over the community as no one was able to figure out how to get the piece off and the original owner of the object explained that only the blood of a newborn baby would allow for the jewelry to be removed.
Fortunately, a spiritualist eventually arrived on the scene and solved the matter using unexplained some kind of sorcery. While Otabil recovered from his painful ordeal, his mother attempted to return the magical object to its original owner. However, as one might imagine, they were not too thrilled by the fact that their once pristine ring was badly damaged from the attempts at removing it from Otabil's finger and, as such, they demanded a new piece. Strangely enough, this is not the first such case of a magical ring getting stuck on a young man's finger in Ghana as an eerily similar incident unfolded there five years ago.