A Saudi man is believed to have been gripped by jinn (ghosts) during a picnic with his friends in a valley which is reputed to be haunted. But he was later treated in an exorcist-style session by the Gulf Kingdom’s religious police.

The unnamed man and seven friends from the western town of Makkah were vacationing in the nearby Taif city when they decided to descend into Wadi Al-Amak (the deep abyss) despite warnings by local people.

After a short evening trip in the valley, the colour of the man’s began to change and his behavior became aggressive before he lost balance and fell down.

When his friends tried to talk to him, he shouted and pushed them away while his eyes were fixed at an area deep in the valley.

“Friends then overpowered him and washed his face with cold water…it was clear the man was haunted by a jinn,” Sabq Arabic language daily said.

“They then decided to carry him back to town…they were told that the valley is haunted and that there were two similar cases in the past.”

The paper said the man was taken to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential Islamic law-enforcement authority in the conservative Moslem Gulf nation.

“The Commission brought experts in such cases and subjected the man to a session of Koran recitation and incense burning until the jinn was forced to get out of the man through his hand…once the session was over, the man began to restore his strength…after a while he fully recovered and started to ask his friends why he was brought to that place.”