African version of Fox Spirits

And interesting (failed) attempt to use koran to fight them off.
This fox spirit seems quite modern, like to drive a hot rod.

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BELIEF IN SEX-MAD DEMON TESTS NERVES
By William Maclean
Reuters
May 16, 2005

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=850370
7&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews

CHAKE CHAKE, TANZANIA – Mohammed Juma starts to sweat and fidget as he
recalls his rape by Popo Bawa, the most feared spirit-monster of the
Zanzibar spice islands.

“We believe reading the Koran is our only defense, nothing else,” says the
41-year-old driver and father of four. “But Popo Bawa is real, and well
prepared.”

Vacationers on the Indian Ocean islands tend to smile dismissively at
accounts in guidebooks of the bat-like ogre said to prey on men, women and
children. But for superstitious Zanzibaris a visit from the sodomizing
gremlin is no joke.

Although no one ever has seen it, belief in the monster and his unnatural
lust is so strong that entire villages will sleep out of doors for
protection: Popo Bawa (Swahili for Bat’s Wing) prefers to attack behind
closed doors at night.

In huts set amid rustling groves of jackfruit and mangoes on Zanzibar’s
Pemba island, victims told Reuters in interviews that they detected a bad
smell, became cold and went into a trance in the moments before they felt
the creature’s inhuman strength.

Some attacks were heralded by the sound of giant wings and claws rattling
and scraping on huts’ tin roofs. Others cringed in terror at what sounded
like a car engine ticking over.

“We heard a rustling on the roof,” recalls Asha Saleh, in her late 50s, in
Machomanne village near Pemba’s main town of Chake Chake. “I felt someone
fondling me. I felt very cold. I felt weak,” she said, recalling the attack
some 35 years ago.

LEGENDS

“I couldn’t call out for help to my husband who was lying asleep beside me.
Popo Bawa is strong: He really presses down on you. And it took such a long
time: One hour! Eventually I lost consciousness. And I was one of many who
were attacked.”

Successive waves of colonizers and traders — Arabs, Portuguese, Hindus,
Chinese, Britons, Persians and Africans — left behind a multinational array
of legends on Zanzibar.

Accordingly, many dismiss Popo Bawa as another of the satanic stories
swapped over the centuries by migratory Indian Ocean peoples as they moved
back and forth on the tides from Indonesia to the Comoros, from Madagascar
to the Maldives.

Zanzibar’s distinctive past as an Arab-run slave market prompted some
academics to speculate that the story of Popo Bawa emerged from a collective
race memory of the horrors of slavery.

But Popo Bawa is unlike the many goblins believed by the islanders to
populate the tall grasses that ring their huts.

Many on the islands are adept at exorcisms, placing charms at the base of
fig trees or sacrificing goats to avert evil or draw favor from the spirit
world.

So experienced are the isles’ traditional healers that they draw visitors
from the Gulf and east Africa, with the successful amassing riches and
prestige.

But no placatory offering or witch doctor can deflect Popo Bawa when he has
made his mind up to strike, islanders say.

The monster favors Pemba, the poorer and more backward of the archipelago’s
twin islands despite being home to the clove plantations that provide the
mainstay of Zanzibar’s economy.

He also becomes active at election time: a habit that is testing nerves
ahead of polls due in October.

His last major visitation was during elections in 1995, when Juma says he
endured his terrifying ordeal, although some reported his presence again in
2000 and in 2001.

“APOLITICAL”

Pemba’s population are staunch opposition supporters. Many accuse the ruling
party of Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa of neglecting the island since
1964, when Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika to form the United
Republic of Tanzania.

But Juma says Popo Bawa is apolitical even though electoral emotions seem to
summon him from the beyond. “He can strike even if the opposition wins the
elections,” he said.

The driver vows to do his utmost to avoid what happened to him back in 1995
as he sat alone late one evening.

“Many were afraid and were sleeping outside. But I was confident and was
alone in my room. I was reading the Koran for protection. After about 20
minutes I started feeling sleepy. I heard something falling on the roof. I
continued reciting. I started feeling something in the room.

“I felt my mouth becoming bigger and bigger. I started losing my ability to
form words. My feeling was that my lower lip had stretched to my lap. I felt
weak in my body. I became very sweaty. My experience was like that of a
neighbor of mine who said his head seemed to grow to an enormous size.”

Popo Bawa gets annoyed if villagers deny his existence — a fact to which
Khamis Juma Hamad says he can testify.

Hamad, a retired village chief now aged 75, said that in 1971 Popo Bawa
spoke to terrified villagers on Pemba through a girl possessed by the
monster.

“I am Popo Bawa,” said the girl, called Fatuma, speaking in the unnaturally
deep voice of a man. “You have challenged my existence so I have come to
prove I am here.”

Seconds later, he says, the villagers heard the sound of a car revving and a
rustle on a nearby roof — signs of Popo Bawa. “The people felt cold, almost
paralyzed. They were terrified.”