Zanzibar love demon

"Love" is admittedly a misnomer in this context.

It's just that my backlinks generator does not allow anything with "sex" in the title or description.

When going through postings on the paranormal, one can sometimes come across a story that is so bizarre it makes you question if you're reading it correctly.  Who am I kidding, it happens far more than "sometimes."  One such instance is the case I just came across, that of the Popobawa...or the "Zanzibar sex demon."

For what is said to be over forty years now, a strange creature has been terrorizing the main island of the Zanzibar archipelago off the coast of East Africa.  Although a shapeshifter and said to able to assume many forms, this cryptid is often described as being the size of a midget with a single, cyclops-like eye on its face, pointed ears, sharp talons, and bat wings stretching out from its back.

Even more disturbing than its appearance is the creature's purported behavior: it is a rapist.  The Popobawa (as the island populace calls it) appears to have a predilection of sodomizing women and men in their sleep...especially men who openly profess to not believe in the demon.  Here is one account posted on CSI's site from a farmer named Mjaka Hamad:

"   “I could feel it,” he 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.” He went on to say: “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.” "

Gender insensitive allegations aside, the people of the island take this threat seriously.  In 1995, the populace went into a full blown panic over a reported spate of Popobawa attacks.  It was reported that numerous people were treated in hospitals after being raped by the creature.  However, interviews conducted of the Zanzibar Medical Group did not find a single doctor claiming to have treated such a case.  Not one.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry believes that the genesis of these stories sits in the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, a condition many likewise cite to account for alien abduction.  The psychology of mass hysteria then fills in the rest.  It may also be that at least a few reported Popobawa incidents may be actual instances of the horrible crime of rape, but blaming a demonic creature makes it easier for the victim's mind to handle.  Maybe, I don't know.  I don't mean to fribble with such a serious topic, but more than a few alien abduction cases have been revealed to be sexual assaults from all-too human monsters.

It's too bad the evidence for the Popobawa is nearly nil.  He'd be perfect for the subject of the next Disney/Pixar film.  That and I'm sure the good ol' GOP would support him.  What with their stance on rape and women's rights and all.


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