“Stranger danger - but make it 13th century and divine.”

🌙 Who Were the Thuggee?

Long before Netflix glamorised cults, India had the OG death cult.
And baby… they weren’t wearing white robes or passing the collection plate.
They were wrapping silk scarves around necks and calling it holy work.

For over 600 years, the Thuggee cult roamed the roads of India, posing as peaceful pilgrims or merchants.
But they weren’t here to trade spices.
They were here to kill.
Silently. Faithfully. And always in honour of their dark goddess - Kali.

🕯️ Devoted to Death

• The Thuggee believed that ritual murder fed Kali - the Hindu goddess of destruction and transformation.

• They didn’t see themselves as evil.
  They believed each kill was a sacred act - a service to the cosmic balance.

• Their method?
  Pure theatre:

  1. Befriend a group of travellers.

  2. Share meals. Earn trust.

  3. At the signal… silently strangle their victims with a rumāl (a silk scarf with a coin knotted at the end).

  4. Bury the bodies. Move on like nothing happened.

You’d be halfway through sharing snacks before you even realised you were next.

🩸 The Kill Count?

Historians estimate between 500,000 to 2 million deaths over centuries.

Let that sink in.

A cult of serial killers operated across generations, in plain sight, across an entire continent.
And no one could stop them - because they didn’t want to be stopped.

😱 How Did They Get Away With It?

Because they were masters of manipulation.
They used:

• False identities

• Religious disguise

• Strategic charm

• And brutal coordination that would make modern crime rings look like school plays.

They were so good at hiding, locals feared speaking their name - thinking it would summon them.

(The word “thug” actually comes from thag, their name - so yeah, it’s got deadly roots.)

⚖️ Enter the British Empire (Cue coloniser energy)

In the 1800s, the British East India Company got tired of losing caravans of people and profit.
So they launched a manhunt led by Major William Sleeman, who basically became the first true-crime obsessive in history.

• Thousands of Thugs were captured.

• Many were hanged.

• Others “disappeared.”

• But the legend never died.

Some say descendants of Thuggee still exist, operating in hidden sects, still offering the occasional throat to Kali in the dark corners of the world.

(So yeah - maybe don’t follow strangers into the woods.)

🔮 Witch’s Take:

This wasn’t horror fiction.
This was organised, generational devotion to death as a divine act.
It wasn’t chaos. It was ritual order.
Which is, honestly, even more terrifying.

They weren’t just killers.
They were believers.
And belief, babe, is the most dangerous weapon of all.