The dark and dangerous world of faith healing

I’m sitting wrapped in a blanket with a fire lit directly underneath me, sweating heavily and trying not to panic as smoke rises around my legs inside a wooden hut in the middle of a forest on a small island in the Philippines.

Opposite me, a self-proclaimed faith healer called Noel is muttering prayers under his breath while rubbing oil onto my forehead. When I try to ask another question, he shushes me away impatiently.

As with all good Unreported World shoots, there comes a moment where you stop and think: “How exactly did I end up here?”

I had travelled to the island of Siquijor, known by many Filipinos for its mysticism and traditional healers.

Noel had been doing this for more than three decades, claiming he inherited his “gift” from generations before him. Serious, quietly intimidating, Noel carried himself with the confidence of a senior consultant on a hospital ward.

Mix of ‘black magic’ and religion

Inside his hut were shelves lined with herbal oils and remedies beside Catholic, Hindu and pagan statues and candles.

“You have to balance the black magic while channelling the healing power of the lord,” he told me.

The walls were covered in photos and testimonials from people Noel claimed to have healed. He proudly pointed out that the hut itself had been built by a German tourist so grateful after Noel supposedly cured his cancer.

Before wrapping me in the blanket and lighting the fire beneath me, Noel examined my palms intensely before delivering his diagnosis: I suffered from sleep problems.

This immediately fell apart because I sleep incredibly well.

Still, I nodded politely, conscious of how easily outsiders can dismiss traditions they don’t understand. So while sceptical, I arrived genuinely curious and open-minded.

“If someone gets bitten by a snake, and instead of sending them to a doctor you give them this and they die, do you not feel a sense of responsibility?” I asked him.

“You must believe,” he told me firmly. “It’s useless if you come to a healer and you don’t believe.”

When I pushed him further, he admitted his treatments didn’t work on everyone. Some people, he said, had died because they “didn’t believe hard enough”.

When I challenged him on the science behind his treatments, he simply shrugged it off. Science, he told me, didn’t have all the answers. Faith did.

At the back of the hut, Noel’s wife Juanita quietly prepared herbs gathered from the surrounding forest. What she was doing felt very different.

Lack of accessible care

She spoke passionately about generations of herbal knowledge passed down through families: which plants helped inflammation, which herbs eased pain, which oils were used for infections.

Juanita believed many of the herbs were more effective than modern medicine precisely because they were natural and had been used for generations. But she also admitted there were limits.

“For toothache, we go to the dentist,” she laughed, explaining that reaching one could still involve travelling for hours.

And that was the complexity at the heart of this film. The more people we met, the less straightforward everything became.

In rural parts of the Philippines, where healthcare can remain financially and physically out of reach, traditional healing is often far more accessible.

While healthcare in the Philippines is technically subsidised, access remains difficult and expensive for many rural communities facing shortages of medical staff and facilities.

‘For a brief moment, I understood’

Back in the hut, as Noel continued treating my non-existent sleep problem, he leaned in close, blew onto my neck while tracing symbols across my forehead and told me again that I had to believe fully for any of this to work.

And for a brief moment, I understood the logic completely.

If I was desperate enough, frightened enough, or convinced this was my last remaining option, I would probably want to believe too.

Five minutes later, the ritual was over. I was drenched in sweat, smelled strongly of smoke and, despite Noel’s best efforts, felt no spiritual transformation whatsoever.

But even if I remained unconvinced by the healing itself, I understood the comfort in sitting across from someone who seemed utterly certain they could help you.

And that taps into something deeply human: hope.

It can be powerful. But, as our film explores, when that hope replaces proper medical care, the consequences can be devastating.

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