I

n his new book, published Friday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono admits that he and his family had almost fallen victim to witchcraft.

In the book, titled There is Always a Choice, Yudhoyono tells the story of  how he and First Lady Ani Yudhoyono had to fight dark clouds hovering inside their house in Cikeas, Bogor, West Java.

Yudhoyono wrote that during one Sunday morning prior to the 2009 election, his wife was reading a magazine in the living room while he was busy in the library.

"Suddenly, my wife screamed and called to me. I ran into the room to find out what happened. It turned out that there was this thick dark cloud hovering beneath the ceiling, trying to enter my bedroom," wrote Yudhoyono.

"I then asked everybody to pray to seek Allah's help. I closed the door to my room but left others wide open. The revolving clouds eventually headed out of my house."

"Alhamdulillah. Praise the Lord. My family was safe. The incident was like footage in a typical horror movie. But this really was happening. It was real," he said in a chapter titled "Threat to the President can reach the level of assassination".

Yudhoyono said that there were other incidents that he believed could not be explained logically, but he preferred to keep them closed to the public.