Sasabonsam
Africa certainly has its share of mysterious and fantastic animals, and the sasabonsam is no exception. The creature was depicted in an Ashanti (natives of Ghana) carving seen by J.B. Danquah. The sculpture showed the Sasabonsam as a man-faced creature with a beard and small horns. It had two short, stubby arms which were raised to display bat-like wings under them, an emaciated body, and short, twisted legs with toed feet. Although the creature is most likely a creation of mythmakers, some have wondered if it could have been some type of gigantic bat.
A young man present in the crowd observing the sculpture told Danquah that once he had actually seen a Sasabonsam, which had been killed by a man named Agya Wuo. He gave Danquah several details of his sighting. The creature had been a little over 5 feet tall, with a wingspan of almost 20 feet. Its teeth and arms were quite long, it was spotted black and white, and it had scaly ridges over the eyes. Agya Wuo said he had found it sleeping in a tree, and that it made a somewhat bat-like cry. The body had been taken to the home of the District Commissioner, L.W. Wood, who on February 22, 1928, photographed the carcass.
Danquah contacted Wood later, but Wood was not sure if he had, indeed, taken the photograph. He said that he was in Ashanti in February, 1918, but not 1928.
In his discussion of Danquah's story, Bernard Heuvelmans states his belief, backed up in his seminal 1986 checklist, that the Sasabonsam is merely a local name for the kongamato, olitiau, and the other bat-like creatures of eastern and central Africa.
However, the form of the Sasabonsam portrayed in the folklore of the area is quite different than Danquah's bat-like monster. In mythology, it is usually portrayed as an archetypical ogre: according to A Dictionary of World Mythology,
...the hairy Sasabonsam has large blood-shot eyes, long legs, and feet pointing both ways. Its favourite trick is to sit on the high branches of a tree and dangle its legs so as to entangle the unwary hunter.
Matthew Bunson further states that there are three types of Sasabonsam (asanbosam in the text): male, female, and small. Also, he notes it is credited with iron teeth, a common attribute of folkloric ogres and vampires.
The mystery of the Sasabonsam shall probably never be completely solved, at least until another body or Wood's photograph surfaces.
BUNSON, Matthew
1993 The
Vampire Encyclopedia. New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks.
COTTERELL, Arthur
1986 A Dictionary of World
Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
HEUVELMANS, Bernard
1978 Les Derniers Dragons
d'Afrique. Paris: Plon.
1986 Annotated Checklist of
Apparently Unknown Animals With Which Cryptozoology is Concerned. Cryptozoology
5. pp. 1-26.
SHUKER, Dr. Karl P.N.
1994 A Belfry Of
Crypto-Bats. Fortean Studies 1. pp. 235-245.