No, this is not a video of a 'thing' that eats humans in Peshawar, Pakistan

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 2, 2019 at 11:00
2 min read
By Rachel YAN,

Multiple Facebook posts share a video which has been viewed tens of thousands of times alongside claims that it shows a “witch” or a “thing” that eats humans at night, with one post claiming this exists in Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan. The claims are false; the footage is actually from a 2014 American horror film ‘The Taking of Deborah Logan’.

The video can be seen in this March 26, 2019 Facebook post by Pakistani online news channel 72 News, which has more than 320,000 Facebook followers.

The 28-second video appears to show a woman eating a person’s head, with the sound of screaming heard in the background.

The post’s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “It is being said that this thing you can see is neither human nor animal. It exists in Peshawar and eats people at night. Don't leave your house unless you have to.”

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The same video has been shared in multiple Urdu-language Facebook posts, for example here and here, where it has been viewed tens of thousands of time.

The Urdu-language caption on these posts says: "Have you ever seen a witch that eats humans? If not then watch this video and share it".

Using keyframes from the misleading video, AFP conducted multiple reverse images searches on Google and found that the footage was actually from the 2014 American horror film “The Taking of Deborah Logan”.

Here is the film’s description on film site IMDb.

AFP compared images from the film, which can be seen here on IMDb, with sections of the video in the misleading Facebook posts.

Below are two pairs of comparison screenshots of the video in the misleading Facebook posts (l) with images on IMDb (r):

Two pairs of comparison screenshots of the video in the misleading Facebook posts (l) with images on IMDb (r)

Below is the film’s official trailer on the YouTube channel for Movieclips Trailers, a US based channel which regularly posts content from international films.

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