The Seeing, Believing and Making of Ghosts and Demons in Fiji Geir Henning Presterudstuen (Draft Paper) ABSTRACT: While most of my Fijian respondents were forthcoming in telling stories about malevolent ghosts and demons, very few were able or willing to answer my question of whether they believed in the existence of these creatures themselves. After a number of false analytical starts I came to the realisation that this was because they considered belief one of a number of particular, culturally specific practices that created the coŶditioŶs for deŵoŶs aŶd ghosts edžisteŶce. IŶ this cultural logic, belief is not merely a mental process but rather a formative act in the process of making demons and ghosts, and their workings, real. In this paper I use these ethnographic insights for to discuss two ŵaiŶ threads: first, I aŶalLJse how this ŵight force us to aŶalLJse ŵoŶsters as ethŶographicallLJ real. Second, I ask what can be gained theoretically from considering belief as a form of praxis. There are a number of activities you can be relatively certain will bring you into contact with Fijian teivoro, the western Fijian term derived from the English word demons, or other potentially malevolent spirit beings. Often it is a matter of just being in a particular place at the wrong time – uŶĐultiǀated ďush aƌeas aƌe, I ǁas told, geŶeƌallLJ so foƌ a ƌeasoŶ; that is theLJ ǁeƌe left unattended for the spirits to roam. Other places beyond the cultural control of humans, such as isolated creeks and rivers, are also to be shied away from – one particular two-faced temptress was rumoured to be particularly prone to lure young, foreign men into their death at a specified stretch of the Nadi River that I naturally did my best to avoid. There are also famous stories about ghosts that are known to roam in places of particular historical significance – such as the Fijian Parliament House in Suva; where a ghost even was caught on camera and made a significant interruption in national politics in the 199Ϭs, oƌ Leǀuka toǁŶ, Fijis fiƌst Đapital – as well as locations for tragic events of the past – a prominent one of those is the site of what used to be Nagaga village in the Nausori Highlands, 17 kilometres east of Lautoka town, where locals will attest that you, at night-time, can still hear the voices of around 200 villagers that got buried in a landslide in 1932. But evil spirits can also turn up within the confines of villages, compounds and houses; and then largely, I was explained, because people engaged in black magic or witchcraft. Early on in my fieldwork I spent a couple of weeks in a prominent village just outside Nadi town. One morning I woke up to a great furore and witnessed a group of youths in a village being disciplined for what I initially thought was spending the night away from the village or not getting back in time for their communal tasks. Later on at night I was told a more elaborate story as I sat down around the kava bowl with my friends. According to them, the transgression the youths were disciplined for was partaking in witchcraft together with people from other villages. While most of my interlocutors initially made their best efforts to brush off the issue as an example of youthful insolence and what they called stupid gaŵes rather than something more sinister, my persistent inquiries were met with obvious unease, silence and, eventually, elaborate efforts to change the subject. In the end, one of the more senior men in the company put an end to the discussion by saying it was nothing we should talk aďout ďeĐause ǁeƌe Ŷot the soƌt of ǀillage that ďelieǀe iŶ these thiŶgs…thats ǁhLJ theLJ got into so much trouble too…ǁheŶ theLJ staƌt doiŶg, seeiŶg aŶd ďelieǀiŶg these thiŶgs theLJ ǁill