King of South Carolina
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer

SHELDON, S.C. -- In the courtyard of the royal palace,where peacocks strut beneath six huge statues of bare-breasted women, the priests are sacrificing a
goat to please the spirits of the king's ancestors.

But that ceremony is secret, off-limits to tourists, including the tormented truck driver who has come here to the Oyotunji African Village to find out if
somebody has cast a spell on him.

The trucker is scared. He's pretty sure that a girl he dated four decades ago gave him the evil eye. Now she's on his mind all the time, day and night, which
caused him to flip his truck three times recently for no earthly reason.

"It torments me," he says. "It really does."

He's 60 years old, with a deep North Carolina drawl. His bald pink pate oozes sweat as he sits in the hot sun with his wife, waiting for a voodoo priest to ease
his psychic pain. He doesn't want his name in the paper but he's eager to tell his story. His minister couldn't help him, he says. Neither could a psychiatrist. But a few days ago, a guy he met in a truck stop told him to go to Oyotunji, where the priests work powerful magic.

"All I want to know," he says, "is if it's evil and where it came from."

Chief Adenibi Ajamu saunters over to the trucker. Ajamu, 60, is a high priest in the Yoruba religion and the foreign minister of Oyotunji, a 10-acre village
near the southeastern town of Sheldon in Beaufort County whose residents consider it an independent nation, founded 30 years ago by a divine, polygamous
king. Ajamu is carrying a ceremonial cane and wearing a white tropical shirt and trousers.

He leads the trucker and his wife into an unlit room. They sit down to talk.

Inside the royal courtyard, priests are killing a second goat and presenting it to the spirits of the king's ancestors. Above, the sun shines brightly. But suddenly rain begins to fall. Thunder growls in the distance. The king's peacocks utter their honking cries.

After a half-hour, the trucker emerges from his consultation, smiling broadly, thrilled with Chief Ajamu. "He's real," he says. "He's real!"

Ajamu won't discuss his consultations--they're as secret as a Catholic confession, he says--but the trucker is eager to talk. He says Ajamu could see the spirits that are tormenting him. They're offering him his old girlfriend back if he'll cross over to the evil side. But if he takes the offer, his wife will die and so will his old girlfriend's husband.

Now that he knows what he's up against, the trucker figures he can fight it. He's a satisfied customer. Ajamu asked $50 for the consultation. The trucker left 60, and considered it a bargain.

"These people know how to deal with spirits," he says. "They really, really do."

Voodoo Vatican

The sign out on Highway 17 reads "African Village--As Seen on TV."

If that sounds enticing, you make a sharp turn down a dirt road rutted with holes so deep they can rip off a muffler. The road winds into thick woods for half a mile, then ends at the red concrete gates of Oyotunji. A weather-beaten sign delivers a message in English and Yoruba:

NOTICE
You Are Leaving the United States
You Are Entering Yoruba Kingdom

Oyotunji is a voodoo religious community, a pseudo-independent country and a roadside tourist trap. It was founded in 1970 by King Oseijeman Ofuntola Adefumni I and a few dozen of his followers, all of them African Americans, most of them from New York.

Dressed in African garb, Oyotunju residents dance with a man costumed as an ancestral spirit."