An Algerian man who had been missing for 26 years has been found in his neighbor’s house.

The man, is identified as Omar B who went missing at the age of 19 during the Algerian Civil War in 1998, and his family assumed he had been kidnapped or killed.

Now aged 45, he was discovered amid haystacks only about 200 meters away from his home in the city of Djelfa. Algerian media reported that the victim said he had been unable to call out for help “because of a spell that his captor had cast on him.