PANIC was created amongst the population of St. Winefride’s Secondary School, at Garnett and De Abreu Streets, Newtown, Georgetown, yesterday, when it was reported that some students, mostly females, were attacked by something unnatural. When the Guyana Chronicle visited, at 13:45 hrs, some parents were also in the compound as students were manifesting antics in the school building. Loud screams and tumbling of furniture could be heard from the roadway, emanating from the bottom flat where students were locked in.
Several people were, allegedly, conducting spiritual exercises with olive oil and Bibles to ascertain what was affecting the children.
But teachers refused to open the downstairs door until the Headteacher, Ms. Farrell started to restore order.
She instructed a male teacher to ring the school bell and dismiss classes but the affected students remained inside the lower flat, prevented, by a teacher, from leaving that section of the building, not even to seek medical attention.
Almost two hours after the commotion started, persons were overheard commenting that the hospital cannot deal with the occurrence as it was something spiritual.
When the headteacher was cautioned about the consequences of keeping the students at the school and failing to allow them to seek medical attention, she attempted to justify her action by saying, that minibuses would not have wanted to take them to hospital. This is despite the fact that, earlier, three students were in a minibus showing the same behaviour and two others lay on the ground.

DISPUTED
The headteacher said she called the Ambulance Service but did not get a favourable response, although that was disputed by the dispatcher who had been on duty since 10:30hrs up to 14:45hrs.
A woman, at the school, recalled that, last year, there was a similar occurrence.
This newspaper was informed that the phenomenon started at the school on Tuesday but efforts to contact the Principal Education Officer and the Education Minister proved futile.
In 2009, several schools across the country were affected by the phenomena, first in Linden, where female students manifested the same uncontrollable actions. Since then, there has been an annual occurrence at several schools.