Wadi-us-Salaam

Wadi-us-Salaam, the 'Valley of Peace' near Najaf, is the largest cemetery on Earth, holding an estimated six million graves. Among the gravediggers who work its endless rows, stories persist of an entity locally nicknamed Tantal, Bzebza, or Ghreria, said to attack those who disturb certain graves. In 2019, gravedigger Haider al-Hatemi told journalists that an unseen shadow struck him from behind hard enough to injure him, leaving him convinced something still clung to his body afterward. Another worker, Murtaza Jwad Abo Sebi, described a 2013 incident in which, while lowering a woman's body into her tomb, a hand seemed to slap his face with such force that he was left shaking. Supervisors at the cemetery say the disturbances cluster around plots resold illegally on the black market, which workers believe angers the spirits tied to them.