Indonesian Village Uses "Ghosts" To Scare People Into Staying Home

This is probably the oddest "sheltering at home" enforcement strategy I've ever read about.

Some communities around the world, including in the US, use law enforcement to warn their citizens to either stay at home, or follow the social distancing rules. There are even cases where the police have written tickets, or made arrests to those violating these orders.

In Indonesia, there's a neighborhood using a different approach:

A neighbourhood in Indonesia's central Java province has deployed local "ghosts"-- or "pocong" to patrol the streets and scare people into staying home in order to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

a reply to: shawmanfromny


While our governments just *scare* us with figures, that many times don't

even add up.

Have to wonder which is worse?

a reply to: shawmanfromny

I think it's a brilliant idea.

Polynesian folk are superstitious by nature, think of all their folklore of spirits and demons they fear, they would want to self isolate from the evil spirits that spook them.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

a reply to: shawmanfromny

the U.S did something like that during the Vietnam War. but they didn't wrap people up in a burial shroud.

It is the Vietnamese belief that the dead must be buried in their homeland, or their soul will wander aimlessly in pain and suffering. Vietnamese feel that if a person is improperly buried, then their soul wanders constantly. They can sometimes be contacted on the anniversary of their death and near where they died. Vietnamese honor these dead souls on a holiday when they return to the site where they died. The US used this to their advantage and tried to trick the Viet-Congs into leaving by playing the audio recording of their dead friends wandering around.[1]
Operation Wandering Soul (Vietnam War)