File:Ju-ju house.png

English: Ju-ju house

The Gold Coast and Ashantee War. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 29 November 1873.

"This Ju-ju house or chapel at Bonny, the interior of which is shown in the last of Mr. Harries' sketches, was a wattle-and-dab shed, oblong in form, and thirty or fourty feet in length. At the upper end was a kind of altar, with a canopy or eaves of mat, and with a concave recess at the back. Across the front, underneath the roof, were arranged in two rows, impaled together, a number of fleshless human skulls. Some of these were painted, or otherwise decorated; one had a black imitation beard, which was doubtless a copy from life. Between the two rows of human skulls was a line of goats' heads, also streaked with red and white. An old bar shot, used probably as a club to fell the victim, hung in a corner. Near the ground was fixed a horizontal board, or shelf, which was striped like the relics above. A sweep of loose thatch below this, like a fringe or valance, covered the base of the altar, but left a hole in the middle, where a round hole or basin, with a raised rim of clay, was made to receive libations and the blood of victims. There were spare rows of skulls, and others seperate, upon stakes planted against the walls about the room.

[We may refer to the book of Mr. Harries, 'Wanderings in Africa, from Liverpool to Fernando Po, by a F.R.G.S.,' published by Messrs. Tinsley.]" - Original description with this engraving

It should be noted that this is a Victorian description, written based on a book by a sensationalist author (other illustrations in this issue include a woman being sacrificed to Ju-ju by being tied to a post on the shore, and left until the tide came in, when the sharks could eat her). So take this with a grain of salt.