Popobawa

Popobawa, also Popo Bawa, is the name of an evil spirit which is believed by residents to have first appeared on the Tanzanian island of Pemba. In 1995 it was the focus of a major outbreak of collective hysteria or panic which spread from Pemba to Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar archipelago, and across to Dar es Salaam and other urban centres on the East African coast.

Popobawa is a Swahili name which translates literally as "bat-wing" (from Swahili). This name is said to have originated as a description of the dark shadow cast by the spirit when it attacks at night: it does not refer to the actual form of the spirit, which is liable to change. Swahili speakers also use a plural form of the name - mapopobawa - to refer to multiple manifestations of the feared spirit.

Popobawa is a shapeshifter and described as taking different forms, not just that of a bat as its name implies. It can take either human or animal form, and metamorphose from one into the other. Popobawa typically visits homesteads at night, but can also be seen in the daytime and then he looks like a human with sharp fingers. It is sometimes associated with the presence of a pungent odor, but this is not always the case. Popobawa attacks men, women and children, and may attack all of the members of a household, before passing on to another house in the neighbourhood. Its nocturnal attacks can comprise simple physical assault and/or poltergeist-like phenomena; but most feared is sexual assault and the sodomising of adult men and women. Victims are often urged to tell others that they have been assaulted, and are threatened with repeat visits by Popobawa if they do not. During Popobawa panics many people try to guard against attack by spending the night awake outside of their houses, often huddled around an open fire with other family members and neighbours. Panics occur most often in Zanzibar, throughout the island of Pemba and in the north and west of Unguja island, including Zanzibar town. Episodes have also been reported in Dar es Salaam and other towns on the mainland coast of Tanzania.

As legendary creatures go, Popobawa is of fairly recent origin. A popular origin story of Popobawa proposes that in the 1970s an angry sheikh released a djinni to take vengeance on his neighbors. The sheik lost control of the djinni, who took to demonic ways. Reports of Popobawa attacks rise and fall with the election cycle in Zanzibar, first case of Popobawa attack was in 1972 on Pemba island. More cases happened in 80s, then 1995, 2000. and 2001. Attacks seemed to rise and fall with election cycles in Zanzibar like the 1972 attacks. They are followed the assassination of the country's president. Interestingly is that the recent attacks have come without any political turmoil.

Villagers maintain that Popobawa becomes enraged if his existence is denied. Popobawa spoke to a group of villagers on Pemba in 1971 through a girl possessed by the monster. The girl, called Fatuma, spoke in a man's deep voice and then villagers say they heard the sound of a car revving and rustling on a nearby roof. Many of those on the islands believe in exorcisms, and place charms at the base of fig trees or sacrifice goats.


Mjaka Hamad, one of a victims of the Popobawa’s attacks in 1995, has related his ordeal to the media. "I could feel it," Hamad said. "...something pressing on me. I couldn’t imagine what sort of thing was happening to me. You feel as if you are screaming with no voice. It was just like a dream but then I was thinking it was this Popobawa and he had come to do something terrible to me, something sexual. It is worse than what he does to women." Hamad claimed that he did not believe in the Popobawa or other spirits before the attack and suggests that is the reason he was attacked. "I don’t believe in spirits so maybe that’s why it attacked me. Maybe it will attack anybody who doesn’t believe."

The Popobawa appears to be an African version of the wide-spread Mara phenomenon. The Popobawa myth is similar with Medieval legends of succubi (female spirits) and incubi (male spirits) who sexually molested their victims in bed at night. In Newfoundland, an ugly old woman sexually molested men in a phenomenon known as Hagging. Other similar reports from around the world describe vampires, formless black blobs, and extraterrestrials among other bizarre entities.

Skeptics claim that these experiences are a result of a hypnogogic hallucination during a "waking dream". Paralysis, a sense of being weighted down, floating sensations, and encounters with otherworldly beings are often all unifying characteristics of the phenomenon.

originated from Wikipedia.