From 12 Siblings to 7: The Deadly Pattern Haunting a Zimbabwean Family

The Nota family has watched seven siblings die since 2000, their marriages collapse one after another, and claim unseen forces are destroying their lives.

READ or SHARE: https://weirddarkness.com/nota-family-curse

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#WeirdDarkness #ZimbabweGoblins #NotaFamilyCurse #Tokoloshe #SupernaturalAttacks #AfricanFolklore #CursedFamily #ParanormalStories #UnexplainedDeaths #MysteriousPhenomena

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
In over Spill, a neighborhood in Epworth, just outside Zimbambwe's
capital city of Harare. The note of family members go
to bed each night not knowing if they'll wake up
the next morning. They don't know if their marriages will

(00:23):
survive another week. They don't know if invisible hands will
touch them while they sleep. For twenty five years, they've
watched their family shrink from twelve siblings to seven, their
children grow up fatherless or motherless, and their community whispered
that their homestead is cursed. I'm Darren Marler, and this

(00:43):
is weird dark news. The note of family's troubles trace
back to two thousand, when the family patriarch, Sakruru Fractionon
Noda died. His wife, Mabuya Manala Pengetti Noda, followed him
nineteen years later in twenty nineteen. The couple had original
come from Buma District in Malawi, crossing the border into
Zimbabwe to build a new life together. They raised twelve

(01:07):
children and eventually watched their family expand to include fifty
two grandchildren. After Mabua Manala's death in twenty nineteen, something
shifted the deaths that had been sporadic became relentless. Maya
Agnes Noda is fifty four now. She's one of the
seven siblings still alive. When she talks to reporters about

(01:28):
what has happened to her family, she describes watching five
of her brothers and sisters die since twenty nineteen. The
deaths happened during the same period each year, which has
turned what should be ordinary calendar months into a countdown
of dread for their surviving family members. Some of the
deceased fell sick briefly before dying. Others died suddenly, with

(01:50):
no warning, no time to say goodbye or understand what
was happening. The victims included both men and women, and
the deaths didn't stop with the nah siblings themselves. In
laws married into the family have also died, children have died,
grandchildren have died. Maya Agnes used a specific image when

(02:10):
describing what it feels like to watch her family disappear.
She said that they are dying as if they are
aunts being swept away, just small, helpless creatures caught in
something too powerful to resist or understand. The family now
lives with a mathematical certainty that feels like a death sentence.
Only seven of the original twelve siblings remain alive. That

(02:33):
means five have died since their mother passed away in
twenty nineteen. For a family with fifty two grandchildren, the
fear extends beyond just the immediate siblings. They were reopenly
about all of those grandchildren, about whether the same pattern
will continue into the next generation. Lovedness Noda is forty
one years old. She's been married five times, which is

(02:55):
the kindest statistic that sounds almost impossible until you hear
what happened to each husband. Three of them died, just
died gone. The other two left her, and she says
that she still doesn't fully understand why they walked away.
Maybe they sensed something, Maybe other people in the community
warned them. Because word has definitely spread through Epworth about

(03:19):
the deaths that seem to follow anybody who marries into
the Noda family, Men in the community now avoid her.
It's not subtle, it's not whispered. It's just openly acknowledged
that being involved with Loveness Noda or any of the
Noda women carries her risk nobody wants to take. She's
not alone in this experience. Her sisters face the same problem.

(03:40):
The family's daughters get divorced frequently, or they become widows
while still young. The sons watch their wives pack up
and leave, abandoning marriages for reasons that often are not
explained clearly. Extended family members have started accusing each other
of witchcraft, and relatives who used to support each other
now fight among themselves, each suspecting the other of somehow

(04:03):
causing or perpetuating whatever curse has settled over the family.
Fa Friday Noda, who is fifty five and one of
the surviving brothers, told reporters that no one in the
entire family maintains financial stability, nobody. He attributes this to
goblins that beat them and destroy their ability to keep
jobs or build any kind of prosperity. It's not just

(04:26):
unemployment in the traditional sense. It is a pattern where
family members get jobs and then lose them. They start
businesses that fail, They make money that somehow disappears or
gets spent on emergencies and medical bills. In futerals, the
pattern has created a social stigma that extends well beyond
the immediate family members. People throughout Epworth say the Noa

(04:49):
homestead has goblins. They say it openly, matter of factly,
the way somebody might warn you about a dangerous intersection
or a house with an aggressive dog. The fifty two
grand children are growing up knowing they carry a stigma.
They face the very real possibility of being unable to
marry or maintain relationships simply because of their last name

(05:10):
and their family connection. The financial problems and the deaths
and the collapsed marriages there would be enough, but there's more.
Family members report being physically beaten by forces that cannot see.
Women and girls in the household describe being sexually assaulted
by invisible beings. These are not vague complaints or metaphorical descriptions.

(05:31):
They are specific accounts of physical attacks happening at night
while family members sleep, leaving them traumatized and afraid to
stay in their own homes. The family can't keep jobs,
as while Friday mentioned, but it's not just because of
poor performance or bad luck. People lose jobs in ways
that don't make sense, getting fired for unclear reasons, or

(05:52):
finding their workplace suddenly hostile. They experience frequent car accidents
when they travel, not fender benders or a minor mushaps,
serious accidents that the family has come to expect as
an inevitable consequence of getting in a vehicle. Some family
members have stopped traveling altogether because the pattern of accidents
and misfortune on the road became too dangerous and too

(06:14):
predictable to ignore. Three weeks before the family spoke to
reporters in November twenty twenty five, they discovered something at
their father's grave. Someone had placed a pot on top
of the burial site. Inside the pot was a knife.
Alongside the knife or pieces of cloth in different colors,
arranged deliberately. No one in the family knew who put

(06:36):
it there. Nobody saw anybody approach the grave. The items
just appeared, and the family immediately understood them as a
message of continuation of whatever supernatural attack has been destroying
their lives. There was another detail from further back, from
the day Sakura fuctionon Noda was buried in two thousand.
During the funeral, someone through old copper coins onto w

(07:01):
but Friday mentioned this specifically when talking to reporters, saying
that from that exact moment forward, no one in the
family has been able to prosper financially. It's as if
the coins marked the beginning of their financial curse, a
physical act that bound the family to poverty and struggle.
He also mentioned that when their father was buried, money

(07:22):
and other items went missing from the family, though he
did not specify exactly what items or clarify whether they
disappeared during the funeral itself or in the days and
weeks afterward. The note of family's experience doesn't exist in
a vacuum. What they're describing fits into a specific cultural
framework that's common throughout Southern Africa, particularly in Zimbabwe and

(07:45):
South Africa. In traditional beliefs across this region, creatures called
takaloshi's or ondofa, as they are known in some Zimbabwean communities,
are supernatural entities that cause harm when sent by witches
or a vengeful people. These are not abstract concepts or
ancient myths that nobody really believes anymore. These are beings
that many people in Southern Africa consider absolutely real and

(08:09):
genuinely dangerous. Tuckaloshis are typically described as small, dwarf like
water spirits. They're associated with rivers, lakes, and swamps. According
to the traditional descriptions, these creatures can become invisible by
swallowing a stone or drinking water, which makes them nearly
impossible to defend against because you can't see them coming

(08:30):
and you can't see them when they attack. According to legend,
the only way to keep a togaloshi away at night
is to put bricks beneath each leg of one's bed.
This tradition of raising beds on bricks became so common
in South Africa that it was once nearly universal in
domestic workers quarters. You could walk into almost any home
with hired help and see the beds in the workers'

(08:52):
rooms elevated on bricks or concrete flocks. Many white South
African families assumed this was just a preference or a
cultural press that they didn't fully understand, but the workers
knew better. They were protecting themselves from tokeloshis that might
attack during the night. These creatures are believed to be
created by witches to harm their enemies, and are known

(09:13):
to rape women and bite off sleeping people's toes. The
sexual assault aspect is particularly prominent in tokeloshi accounts. It's
not a side detail or an occasional report. It is
central to how these beings are understood to operate. The
toe biting might sound almost comical if you don't know
the context, but it is part of a pattern of

(09:34):
physical violation and mutilation that makes Tokeloshi's objects of genuine terror.
Goblin attacks are reported with enough frequency in Zimbabwe that
in twenty twenty two, Majiji Primary School in Bubai District
was forced to shut down after teachers and students reported
being sexually harassed by invisible entities. Not a brief closure

(09:55):
for a day or two, the school stopped functioning entirely.
Teachers fled, students stopped attending, parents pulled their children out.
The community had to hold emergency meetings and call in
spiritual healers to try to address the problem before anybody
would return to the building. In the Kezi Kingdom, over
three hundred women in Ward three reported waking up with

(10:17):
no underwear and seeing signs of possible sexual assault, with
victims ranging from teenagers to women in our eighties. Three
hundred women in a single ward not scattered reports from
isolated individuals, but a mass phenomenon that affected an entire community.
The ages of the victims spanned six or seven decades,
from teenage girls to elderly grandmothers. One widow named Theodora

(10:41):
Nakube described feeling an invisible being getting intimate with her
every single night. Her daughter reported the same experiences. The
phenomenon is not limited to one region or one ethnic group.
In twenty nineteen, a local prophet claimed goblins were responsible
for the deaths of ten members of a Zingle family Indianga, Zimbabwe,

(11:02):
and in twenty eighteen, they were blamed for the deaths
of two children in Zigoweti village. That same year, goblins
were blamed for killing scores of livestock in the same area.
Animals slaughtered mysteriously their deaths attributed to the same invisible
forces that were attacking people. Traditional healers in Southern Africa
sometimes offer goblins for sale to people who want to

(11:24):
use them for their own purposes. This is an actual
business with actual prices and actual customers. One traditional healer
named Sukuru Kafura advertises goblins for twenty five hundred US dollars,
explaining that they are living things with specific rules attached,
including blood goblins that must be fed on blood and

(11:44):
vegetarian varieties. He describes himself as business minded and flamboyant,
and he operates openly advertising on Facebook and responding quickly
to inquiries on WhatsApp when someone expresses interest in buying
a goblin. Sakura Kafura explained the different types available. Blood
goblins require regular feeding with blood and are responsible for

(12:06):
much of the chaos and violence attributed to these creatures.
Vegetarian goblins are supposedly less dangerous but still powerful. He
mentioned mysteriously that several global presidents own such goblins, but
wouldn't specify which world leaders he was referring to. The
price is steep enough that most people can't afford it,
but Sakura Kafura maintains the goblins aren't for everyone anyway.

(12:29):
He calls his creature clean goblins and says that's why
he gets invited to appear on television and radio programs.
The Noa family faces their situation without the support network
that might help them understand or address what's happening. They
have no close relatives in Zimbabwe who might offer guidance
or protection. Their parents migrated from Malawi decades ago, which

(12:51):
means the family exists somewhat isolated in their adopted country,
vulnerable to accusations, and lacking the extended family connections that
often provide support in Southern African communities. Younger relatives within
the family have started accusing the older generation of practicing
witchcraft themselves. These accusations create divisions within an already fractured family,

(13:13):
with people who should be supporting each other instead turning
on one another, each suspecting the other a being the
source of their collective misery. Traditional leaders and church profits
in the Epworth area know about the family's situation. The
Nodahs aren't suffering in secret or keeping their troubles private.
They've reached out for help. They have appealed publicly for

(13:34):
spiritual or traditional intervention to end their suffering. Various practitioners
have been consulted over the years. Some have attempted rituals
or ceremonies. None of it has worked. As of November
twenty twenty five, the family continues to live in fear,
watching for the next death, the next divorce, the next
inexplicable disaster. Patrick Noda, one of the brothers, was killed

(13:57):
by unknown people in Rua in two thousand six. The
circumstances of his death remain unclear whether his murder connects
to the family's other troubles or whether it was a
separate tragedy that just added to their collective grief. Nobody
in the family seems certain the death happened during the
broader pattern of family deaths, but it was violent and
involved identified human killers rather than mysterious illness or sudden

(14:21):
explained death. The family found those strange, multicolored ribbons tied
to their father's grave three weeks before speaking to reporters.
These were not casual decorations or offerings from well meaning visitors.
The ribbons were tied deliberately, and the family interprets them
as evidence of ongoing supernatural attacks, proof that someone is

(14:42):
actively working against them, maintaining whatever curse or spell has
been destroying them for twenty five years. Some family members
have tried to flee the household to escape the invisible assaults.
They've gone to stay with relatives or friends. They've tried
to establish new lives in different places, but the problems
follow them. Employment remains scarce for anyone bearing the NOA name.

(15:05):
Jobs that seem secure suddenly disappear. Workplaces become hostile. Relatives
sometimes get expelled from jobs or housing for unclear reasons
that their employers or landlords struggle to articulate Maya, Agnes Va, Friday,
and Loviness all spoke to reporters, but they represent just
three of the seven surviving siblings. The others remain alive

(15:28):
but carry the same burden, the same fear, the same
social stigma. Together, these seven siblings watch their fifty two
nieces and nephews growing up under the shadow of early death,
failed marriages, and financial instability. They fear their grandchildren could
all perish because of whatever force has been systematically destroying

(15:48):
their family for the past quarter century. The grandchildren are
being raised knowing their family history, understanding that they might
inherit not just genetic traits and family stories, but also
whatever curse has claimed five of their aunts and uncles
and countless other relatives. The family describes their situation with
a sense of helplessness that comes through clearly in their interviews.

(16:11):
They're not just sad or grieving. They are terrified. They're
watching a pattern repeat itself year after year, and they
have no effective way to stop it or even slow
it down. Every year, when the death sets and approaches,
they wait to see who will be taken next. Every
marriage in the family carries the weight of all the
marriages that have failed before it. Every child born into

(16:34):
the family comes with the knowledge they might not reach adulthood,
or that if they do, they might watch their own
parents die young. Efforts to independently verify the family's claims
were unsuccessful at the time reporters published their accounts in
November twenty twenty five. The deaths themselves, however, are matters
of public record. Love Oness really has been married five times.

(16:55):
Three men really did die. The divorces happened, The widowings
are documented. Family members really have lost jobs and experienced
car accidents. The cause of these events, the explanation for
why this particular family has suffered so extensively, remains a
matter of belief and interpretation rather than verifiable fact. The

(17:16):
community in Networth has drawn its own conclusions. They say
that Note to Homestead has goblins. They warn people away
from marrying into the family. They talk about witchcraft and curses.
Whether these explanations are literally true or whether they represent
attempts to make sense of a tragic pattern of misfortune
depends entirely on your worldview and what you're willing to

(17:37):
accept as possible. The noa family is suffering. Seven siblings
remain alive out of twelve, fifty two grandchildren are growing
up in the shadow of inexplicable tragedy. Marriages, collapse, jobs disappear.
Fear is the dominant emotion in their household. After twenty
five years of this pattern, they're still looking for answers,

(18:00):
still seeking help, still trying to understand why their family
seems to be cursed in ways that defy rational explanation.
If you'd like to read this story for yourself or
share the article with a friend, you can read it
on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a link to
it in the episode description, and you can find more
stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange, and more, including

(18:22):
numerous stories that never make it to the podcast in
my Weird Darknews blog at Weird Darkness dot com slash
news