Popobawa - Succubus Bluaz

Popobawa, or Popo Bawa, is an evil spirit that first appeared on Pemba Island, Tanzania, and experienced massive popularization in 1995, when it came to be known and feared by the inhabitants of the Zanzibar archipelago, Dar es Salaam, and many other towns on the East African coast.

Popobawa ~ Popo Bawa

The name popobawa comes from Swahili and means bat wing: popo - bat, bawa - wing. The spirit has an unclear, undefined form, and the name is not necessarily related to its image but to the demon's shadow, which is said to resemble the shadow of a bat.
Popobawa can change its shape, transforming into either a human being, an animal, or anything else. It usually visits its victims at night, but there have been cases where it appeared during the day. When it metamorphoses and makes its appearance, the phenomenon is often accompanied by the emission of a heavy, sulfurous smell (rotten eggs). The victims of this demon can be women, children, men, and even all members of a family.
This evil spirit is an incubus demon. Among its attacks, which can sometimes be simple poltergeist phenomena or physical strikes, the most feared is sodomy. Both African women and men fear being sodomized by this incubus demon, and there is a belief that if you have been visited/sodomized by Popo Bawa and do not tell anyone, it will return for another... round :) Therefore, victims of the spirit are advised to tell as many people as possible what happened to them. To protect themselves and their families from this devil, Africans often spend the night outside, guarding their homes; neighbors are frequently called to help, and fires are lit around the house believed to be visited.
Appearances of the Popobawa devil are relatively new, with the first cases reported in 1965 on Pemba Island, in the period following the political revolution. The demon claimed more victims in the 1970s, 1980s, and in 1995; then again in 2002 and, after a five-year break, in 2007.

The Legend of Popobawa

One of the spirit's legends says that, in 1970, a sheikh released this spirit and asked for its help to take revenge on his neighbors. The spirit, however, escaped his control, becoming the evil demon Popobawa. Due to the fact that in the past Zanzibar was ruled by Arabs who, upon conquering the island, used it as a slave market, it is hypothesized that the legend of Popobawa was born from the social memory of the island's inhabitants and is actually a manifestation of the horrors they endured during slavery. Many other legends in Zanzibar are borrowed from past slave traders: Arabs, Chinese, English, Indians, Persians, or other African tribes.
In 2007, Benjamin Radford investigated the Popobawa cases and concluded that the legend has its origins in Islam, one reason being that passages from the
Quran are read to drive away this evil spirit—Islam being the main religion in the area.
Other interesting information about popobawa:

Popobawa

• It has been observed that the demon appears most often during election periods; however, victims of the demon claim that Popobawa is apolitical.
• Popobawa, unlike the "standard" devil, becomes violent and dangerous when someone denies its existence.
• The inhabitants of the islands off the East African coast believe in exorcism.
• In 1971, a girl named Fatuma from a village on Pemba Island was possessed by Popobawa and spoke, with its voice, to the villagers; during the phenomenon, witnesses said they heard noises like those of a car engine coming from somewhere above, on the roofs of the houses.
• To be protected from Popobawa and other demons, Africans place protective talismans at the base of fig trees and sometimes sacrifice goats.
• Benjamin Radford interviewed doctors at the main hospital in Zanzibar—Zanzibar Medical Group—and learned from them that none of them had ever had a patient who was a victim of Popobawa.