To decode these encounters or dreams about them, gamblers turned to (traditional illustrated dream books). If a person dreamed of a madman, they would not just wake up and forget it; they would look up the specific "No Togel Orang Gila" in these books. The visual nature of these guides was crucial:
For decades, many grassroots gamblers believed that individuals with severe mental illnesses—often referred to locally as orang gila or more respectfully now as ODGJ (Orang Dengan Gangguan Jiwa)—possessed unfiltered access to the spiritual world. Gamblers would seek them out for several reasons:
: These books feature grid-like illustrations where every object, animal, and human behavior corresponds to a specific two-, three-, or four-digit number.
While seeking numbers from vulnerable individuals was a documented historical practice in Indonesian underground gambling, society has shifted dramatically:
: In the digital age, physical booklets have been replaced by websites hosting high-resolution, full-image scans of these Erek-Erek charts. Gamblers search for these "Full Image Sites" to quickly zoom in on their mobile phones and find the visual match to their dream or encounter. 🧠 A Modern Psychological and Social Perspective
: Because these individuals were not functioning within normal societal greed, gamblers believed spirits would use them as pure, untainted vessels to channel winning numbers.
: It was believed that the random babblings or sudden gestures of a mentally ill person were actually coded numbers delivered by spirits.
: For example, seeing a madman in a dream might correspond to number 87 or similar digit combinations depending on the specific edition of the book.