The Popobawa is an evil spirit, or shetani, believed by many people in the Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania to attack households at night. First reported on the island of Pemba in the mid-1960s, it has returned in waves of fear ever since, most famously in 1995, when panic spread from Pemba to Unguja, the main island of Zanzibar, and on to Dar es Salaam on the mainland. Unlike most entries in this index, the Popobawa is not usually thought of as an animal at all. It is a shapeshifting spirit, and its story is best understood through folklore, politics, history and the science of sleep.[1]
| Region | Zanzibar archipelago (Pemba and Unguja), Tanzania; also Dar es Salaam and the Tanzanian coast |
|---|---|
| Type | Evil spirit (shetani) or jinn; shapeshifter |
| Name | Swahili popo (bat) + bawa (wing): “bat-wing” |
| First reports | About 1965, on Pemba |
| Major panics | 1970, the 1980s, 1995 (the largest), 2000, 2007 |
| Reported signs | Night attacks on households, a sulfurous smell, poltergeist-like activity |
| Leading explanations | Sleep paralysis, mass panic, and social and political anxieties |
What the name means
“Popobawa” is Swahili for “bat-wing,” from popo, “bat,” and bawa, “wing.” According to Zanzibari accounts, the name describes the dark shadow the spirit casts as it attacks at night, not its actual shape, which can change. The plural mapopobawa is sometimes used for multiple appearances of the spirit.[1]
Popular websites and books outside Tanzania often describe the Popobawa as a one-eyed, dwarf-like creature with bat wings and talons. Those details are best treated as later embellishment: in Zanzibar itself, the Popobawa’s defining feature is that it has no fixed form.[1][2]
What the Popobawa is said to do
The Popobawa can appear in human or animal form and change from one to the other. It usually visits homes at night, though it is sometimes seen by day, and its arrival is sometimes marked by a smell of sulfur. It may attack every member of a household before moving on to the next house in the neighborhood. Reported attacks range from simple physical assault and poltergeist-like disturbances to sexual assault, which is the most feared part of the legend and the reason the Popobawa is so notorious.[1]
One of the strangest features of the belief is that the spirit is said to demand publicity. Victims are told they must tell others what has happened, or the Popobawa will return. Villagers also say the spirit becomes enraged if its existence is denied, a belief that has given it a wry reputation among skeptics.[1]
During panics, families have protected themselves by spending the night outdoors, huddled around fires with their neighbors rather than sleeping inside. Others turn to exorcism and protective charms, sometimes placed at the base of fig trees, or animal sacrifice.[1]
A short history of the panics
- About 1965: the anthropologist David Parkin dates the first reports to Pemba, shortly after Zanzibar’s 1964 revolution.[1]
- 1970–71: a better-known wave of reports. In 1971 the Popobawa allegedly spoke to villagers on Pemba through a possessed girl named Fatuma, using a deep male voice, after which witnesses described hearing a sound like a car revving and something rustling on the roof.[1]
- 1980s: periodic returns.[1]
- 1995: the largest panic, spreading from Pemba to Unguja and Dar es Salaam, and reported in the international press.[1]
- 2000 and 2007: shorter outbreaks; in 2007 a wave of reports hit Dar es Salaam.[1]
Where did the Popobawa come from?
A popular origin story says that an angry sheikh released a jinn to take revenge on his neighbors, but lost control of it, and the jinn turned to evil. The jinn, spirits of Islamic tradition, are a familiar part of Swahili coastal culture, and Zanzibar’s folklore draws on many traditions brought by Arab, Persian, Indian, Portuguese, British and mainland African traders and settlers.[1]
Scholars have looked for deeper meanings. Parkin has argued that the Popobawa may express a social memory of Zanzibar’s past as a center of the East African slave trade, a history of violence and domination that finds an echo in the spirit’s attacks on helpless sleepers.[1]
Politics and the Popobawa
Observers have repeatedly noticed that Popobawa reports seem to rise and fall with Zanzibar’s tense election cycles, although many who believe in the spirit insist it has nothing to do with politics. 1995, the year of the biggest panic, was also the year of Zanzibar’s first multiparty elections. Some local explanations made the link explicit, claiming that the Popobawa was the vengeful ghost of Zanzibar’s first president, Abeid Karume, assassinated in 1972, or that it had been summoned by the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi.[1]
Researchers have also studied the darker side of these panics. The anthropologist Martin Walsh’s 2014 paper “Killing Popobawa” examined the link between collective panic and violence in Zanzibar, a reminder that fear of a spirit can put real people in danger when communities search for someone to blame.[1]
Sleep paralysis
The most common scientific explanation for individual Popobawa experiences is sleep paralysis. After the 1995 panic, the investigator Joe Nickell compared the reported attacks with “waking dreams,” the vivid hallucinations that can occur as a person is falling asleep or waking up. During these episodes, a person is conscious but unable to move, often feels a crushing weight on the chest, senses a presence in the room and may see or feel a figure attacking them. Nickell compared Popobawa attacks with the incubus and succubus of European folklore, the night “hag” of Western folklore and modern alien abduction stories, all of which share the same features. The shadowy Hat Man is a modern example of the same experience.[1][3]
Sleep paralysis explains the terror of an individual attack, but not the waves of reports. For those, researchers point to social contagion: once a panic is under way, every strange noise, smell or nightmare is interpreted as a Popobawa visit, and the spirit’s own rule that victims must tell others ensures the story spreads quickly.
The skeptical writer Benjamin Radford, who traveled to Zanzibar to investigate, reported that the doctors he spoke to at the Zanzibar Medical Group had never treated a Popobawa victim.[1][4]
A debate about outsiders
Not everyone is comfortable with skeptical explanations from abroad. In her 2017 book Popobawa: Tanzanian Talk, Global Misreadings, the scholar Katrina Daly Thompson criticized Western writers, Nickell among them, for “associating Zanzibaris with fear and Westerners with skepticism,” and argued that talk about the Popobawa is a sophisticated way for Zanzibaris to discuss sexuality, power and politics. Nickell replied that outsiders should be careful not to impose simplistic patterns, but should not shy away from scientific observation either. Both points are worth keeping in mind.[1][5]
The Popobawa in popular culture
The Popobawa has appeared in the cartoon The Secret Saturdays, in a 2008 episode of the paranormal travel series Destination Truth, and in the 2022 horror anthology film Satanic Hispanics. It is often listed alongside winged cryptids such as the Kongamato and the Chupacabra, though it belongs to a different category, a spirit rather than an unknown animal.[1]
Our assessment
There is no evidence that the Popobawa is a physical creature, and it would be a mistake to treat it as one. It is a genuine and powerful belief in a particular place, which has shaped how thousands of people experience frightening nights. The best explanations combine individual experiences of sleep paralysis with social panic, and the political and historical tensions of Zanzibar. The Popobawa is a reminder that monsters often reveal more about the fears of a society than about its wildlife.
References
- “Popobawa,” Wikipedia, citing D. Parkin (2004), J. Nickell (1995), B. Radford (2008), K. D. Thompson (2014, 2017), M. Walsh (2014), BBC News (2001, 2007), and others.
- Benjamin Radford, “New MonsterTalk Episode: My Investigation of the Skeptic-Raping Demon Popobawa,” benjaminradford.com (16 August 2012).
- Joe Nickell, “The Skeptic-Raping Demon of Zanzibar,” Skeptical Briefs, December 1995.
- MonsterTalk, Popobawa episode, Skeptics Society (2012).
- Katrina Daly Thompson, Popobawa: Tanzanian Talk, Global Misreadings (Indiana University Press, 2017).
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources. Earlier versions described the Popobawa as primarily a bat-like animal with a single eye and dated its international attention to the 1970s; the largest panic was in 1995. The illustration above is an artistic impression.