The headline sounds like something you'd read in one of those supermarket tabloids. But it actually happened two weeks ago to a couple in a jungle village in New Guinea.

The superstitious people who live in the tiny hamlet of Kilip in the western part of the country somehow became convinced that Nolan Yekum and her husband Paul used black magic to kill a neighbour.

The duo denied the ridiculous charge, but that wasn't good enough for some of the enraged residents. They rounded up the startled pair, strung two ropes over a tree and forced the terrified husband and wife into them. They then proceeded to hang both of them and left them there to die.

The pregnant Yekum was still about two months away from giving birth and the stress of the incident actually caused her to deliver the child prematurely, as she and her husband struggled to loosen the ties around their necks, breathe again and get free.

Both were somehow able to make it back to solid ground. "We managed to loosen the noose to get our feet on the ground ... we were able to free ourselves," Paul Yekum recounts from a hospital bed. "My wife, who was about seven months pregnant, delivered the baby while struggling to free herself. It was a painful experience for me and her."

The couple fled the area and hid out with friends in neighbouring villages for 14 days, fearing the lynch mob might return. They finally decided to seek help at a nearby hospital and were being treated for their injuries.

Amazingly, both the mother and her very premature baby seem to be doing fine, but the parents have no idea what put the idea of sorcery into the heads of those who tormented them.

Some of the more remote areas of the country still believe in black magic and there have been reports that women suspected of being witches have been hanged or burned at the stake.

There's no word on where the parents, who have two other children, will go after they're released from hospital, but it seems almost certain they'll never be able to return home.

See more on the story in local media here

Satellite picture of New Guinea courtesy: NASA