BIZARRE: meet Osun woman who was raised by her father's ghost and pregnanted by another ghost (photo)

The story narrated by a 20-year-old Taiyelolu

Abdulrahman can be used as a movie script, for

sure. According to her, she was raised by her

father’s ghost and was impregnated with her three

children by a man who should have passed away

long ago.

The Nigerian Tribune had an opportunity to

interview the young woman and to learn her story:

Before now, chilling stories had been told of

individuals who continued to experience life even

after their clear deaths. The Yoruba call them

Akudaaya. To the Hausa, they are Satalwa. Time

after time, there were stories of how the dead, who

were supposed to be six feet under the ground,

would still stick around on the surface of the earth

and lead lives as normal, regular human beings

albeit in faraway places where their chances of

bumping into either families or acquaintances who

had previously bade them goodbye from this world

are virtually zero.

Many have dismissed such stories as fictions,

hallucinations or fabrications, but the recent

experience of a 20-year-old Taiyelolu Abdulrahman,

whose father, who died almost 20 years ago,

nurtured till she was married to another dead or

“ghost” husband, is lending credence to such weird

developments.

It was a Herculean task getting Taiyelolu to grant

Saturday Tribune an interview because, according to

her, she had already spoken at length with a

popular Yoruba magazine which she claimed only

used her story for economic reasons. “Where is the

assistance they promised would come my way as a

result of the interview I granted them?”

Her father-in-law, Mr. Raufu Gbadamosi, also was

not favourably disposed to Taiyelolu granting

another press interview. He showed disapproval

when he shook his head, disappeared into his room

and then reappeared with a cap and just exited the

house.

When she finally opened up, it turned out that

nothing could be more bizarre than Taiyelolu’s

story. She and her twin brother, Kehinde, grew up

with their father in a flat at the Ajah area of Lagos.

They led a relatively comfortable life in the house

where they only depended on generator as the only

source of electricity. Although their father was not

engaged in any kind of work, he provided for them.

“My father was not working. He never left the house

except on a few occasions at night. But if I asked

for N50, 000, he gave it to me. We had no visitors

and we visited nobody,” she said.

All they had to do were sleep, eat and watch home

videos.

Asked about her mother, she said she and her twin

brother grew up to know only their father. They did

not see any woman with him. To go out of the

house, their father gave the twins a small gourd

each which they simply clasped to their palms and

then they burst out on the road and board vehicles

to the market to purchase food items like wheat,

semovita, macaroni, spaghetti and rice. They never

consumed amala (yam flour meal).

On a particular day, however, Taiyelolu forgot to

take her gourd and as she stepped out of the

house, what confronted her was a cemetery with a

lot of vaults and a bushy environment.

She screamed and dashed back inside. Then, her

father told her to pick the gourd, atona (guide) as it

was called. As she clasped the object to her palm

and then ventured out, this time, she found herself

on a busy tarred road.

Another incident which frightened her happened in

the night. “My father went out whenever he wanted

but it was always around 10.00 or 11.00 p.m. He

would not take anyone along with him. But there

was a day I begged him to take me out to where he

usually went and he obliged. When we got there,

something strange and fearful happened. It was like

a canteen and there, I saw a small cooking stand

with a big pot on it without firewood or fire and the

food was boiling. I asked my father how it was

possible for food to cook without firewood and fire

and the woman selling the food became angry and

slapped me. She asked my father who I was; that I

was not part of them but only wanted to expose

their secrets. My father begged her and we left the

place,” she remarked.

After the incident, her father refused to take her out

again so that she would not be privy to the secrets

and circumstances surrounding their true identities.

Since then, she refused to take food from her father,

but only cooked her own food.