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Creature record / 1995

The Popobawa Panic, Zanzibar and the Tanzanian Coast

February 1995 · Pemba and Unguja (Zanzibar archipelago) and the Tanzanian coast, Tanzania
25Thinly documented Cryptid Creature 16 sources

February 1995. The first week of Ramadan. On Pemba Island, people began waking in the dark with something pressing down on them. They could not move. They tried to scream and made no sound. Some said it was a bat. Some said it was a very tall person. Most never saw it at all. The Swahili coast had a name for it. Popobawa. The bat wing. Over the next three months about 70 cases moved across the Zanzibar archipelago. Families slept outside around fires. Healers held exorcisms. And on the night of 3 April, in Zanzibar Town, a frenzied mob killed a visitor from the mainland they believed was the spirit in human form.

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Context

The Popobawa is older than 1995. It was first recorded on Pemba Island in 1965, and returned in 1970 and again in the 1980s. Its name joins two Swahili words, popo, bat, and bawa, wing. Martin Walsh, a social anthropologist living on Pemba at the time, called it "an evil spirit that descends on people in the night and casts a harmful shadow." That shadow changed form. A bat sometimes. A human-like form at others. A very tall person. In one account passed on by Walsh, "a spinning dog with a police siren on its head."

Sources (16, most influential first)

  1. Popobawa · Wikipedia · Wiki, blog, podcast · wiki
  2. Killing Popobawa: collective panic and violence in Zanzibar · ResearchGate (Martin Walsh) · Academic / paper of record · academic
  3. Killing Popobawa: collective panic and violence in Zanzibar · academia.edu (Martin Walsh) · Academic / paper of record · academic
  4. The Creepiest Ghost And Monster Stories From Around The World · NPR Code Switch· 2014-10-24 · Press, book, documentary · news
  5. The Politicisation of Popobawa: Changing Explanations of a Collective Panic in Zanzibar · Scribd (Martin Walsh) · Academic / paper of record · academic