Curse of the Hidden Mirror

Relatives who suspect a family member needs a curse lifted should consult experts, a Wellington coroner has said.

Just saying, it does not require special cultural expertise to tell someone that "Your 'curse' is total bullshit that could only be taken seriously if you are less intelligent than topsoil."

-----------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Bonus Lion

A kaumatua said an evil spirit had possessed her and linked it to the theft of a concrete lion statue from the Greytown Hotel.
The elder believed the statue was a historic taonga but the jury would hear it was bought new at an auction in the 1990s.
A convoy of cars took the lion back and prayers were said upon its return.

[...]

The concrete lion statue at the centre of a demon possession claim looks less angry now than it did when it was at the Wainuiomata flat where Janet Moses died, a jury has heard.

Bonus Water Abuse
"During the ceremony, so much water was used that the carpet had become soaked, and so a small hole in the floor had to be made for drainage."

The moral here is that one should consult properly-qualified experts before following any advice gleaned from The Third Policeman.

On another occasion [de Selby] had to face the curious charge of hoarding water, the police testifying that every vessel in his house, from the bath down to a set of three ornamental egg-cups, was brimming with the liquid. Again a trumped-up charge of attempted suicide was preferred merely because the savant had accidentally half-drowned himself in a quest for some vital statistic of celestial aquatics.

It is clear from contemporary newspapers that his inquiries into water were accompanied by persecutions and legal pin-prickings unparalleled since the days of Galileo.

[...]

The story is one of a long succession of prosecutions for water wastage at the suit of the local authority. At one hearing it was shown that he had used 9,000 gallons in one day and on another occasion almost 80,000 gallons in the course of a week. The word ' used ' in this context is the important one. The local officials, having checked the volume of water entering the house daily from the street connection, had sufficient curiosity to watch the outlet sewer and made the astonishing discovery that none of the vast quantity of water drawn in ever left the house.

[...]

Hatchjaw (in his invaluable Conspectus of the de Selby Dialectic) has described [de Selby's] house as ' the most water-piped edifice in the world.' Even in the living-rooms there were upwards of ten rough farmyard taps, some with zinc troughs and some (as those projecting from the ceiling and from converted gas-brackets near the fireplace) directed at the unprotected floor. Even on the stairs a three-inch main may still be seen nailed along the rail of the balustrade with a tap at intervals of one foot, while under the stairs and in every conceivable hiding-place there were elaborate arrangements of cisterns and storage-tanks. Even the gas pipes were connected up with this water system and would gush strongly at any attempt to provide the light.