I wish I had a picture to post. There seems, as yet, to be no good graphic representation of this entity floating around the internet.

However, there seems to be a new bad boy in town, down Zanzibar way, who goes by the name of Popo Bawa.

CHAKE CHAKE, Tanzania (Reuters) – 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 defence, nothing else,” says the 41-year-old driver and father of four. “But Popo Bawa is real, and well prepared.”

Holidaymakers 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 sodomising 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.

You know, one simply has to love anything called a raping demon. It puts one in the mind of Incubi & Succubi, a most twisted erotic fantasy.

To have one’s will sapped, in bed, asleep. The most vulnerable of positions, the most secure, safe, friendly place in one’s home. To have it take, violated, not by force, but by cold, evil, supernatural coercion.

To have this power — to be this entity. To slink in and take control, do wicked, carnal harm.

What’s not to like in this fantasy?

Thanks to the wonderful BoingBoing for this story.