It’s always exciting to find out strange new things, and today’s fascinating tidbit of weirdness comes from the South Seas:

Some Melanesians believe that their long-departed ancestors will return to them someday, bearing goods and riches which will secure the future of their communities. This in itself is not strange. What is strange is how this traditional Melanesian belief system has changed over the course of centuries through the arrival of explorers in the 18th century, colonial powers and missionaries in the 19th century, and soldiers and surveyors in the 20th. The periodic influx of Europeans and Americans, with their unfamiliar and seemingly limitless goods and riches (cargo), has given rise to "cargo cults" - strange mixtures of traditional beliefs, Christianity and commerce which center around self-proclaimed prophets and (possibly) mythical figures like the mysterious "John Frum".

The members of the John Frum cult believe that John Frum is a god who lives in a volcano on the island of Tana and who will someday emerge from the volcano with cargo for the islanders. When American soldiers arrived in Melansia with planes, ships and cargo during World War II, John Frum became equated with the American GIs. Ever since then, the islanders have held special rituals to draw their American god out of his volcano:

"The villagers have spent the last six decades dressing up in home-made US army uniforms, drilling with bamboo rifles and parading beneath the Stars and Stripes in the hope of enticing a delivery of cargo once again."

Truth is, as always, stranger than fiction.