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[av_heading heading=’Banate students freak out classmates again ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA and IAN PAUL CORDERO
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ILOILO – Something bizarre happened again at Banate National High School yesterday.
Students who were supposedly possessed by evil spirits Thursday last week acted strangely once again, stunning their teachers and classmates.
As the students were beginning to say a prayer after the flag-raising ceremony, some started getting ferocious once again, screaming uncontrollably.
“Pagsambit sang Panginoon, didto gid may nagwaras dayun,” said seminarian Dave Anthony Balsicas who was asked to lead the prayer. This was around 7:30 a.m.
Balsicas counted not less than 20 students behaving bizarrely.
“Some of these students said somebody had to die. They said they were seeking retribution for their houses that the school destroyed,” said Balsicas.
The students calmed down only after they were brought to Banate Parish Church and the priest prayed for them there, said the seminarian.
The school suspended classes yesterday due to the incident, just like last week.
The parish of Banate was in no position to conclude that what happened yesterday and on June 13 was a case of demonic possession. But it stressed the importance of prayer in the students’ lives.
In the Roman Catholic Church, priests can cast out demons by the rite of exorcism, but it requires special training that few priests have.
In a previous interview, school principal Glenn Peñaredondo said she was not discounting the possibility that what happened was not supernatural in origin. She said some of the students were emotionally distressed or went to school without eating breakfast.
Was it a case of mass hysteria?
In sociology and psychology, mass hysteria (also known as collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior) is a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear.
In medicine, the term is used to describe the spontaneous manifestation (production in chemicals in the body) of the same or similar hysterical physical symptoms by more than one person./PN
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