The Sasabonsam or Shamantin (for the female) is a flying humanoid, reported from south-central Ghana. Height, 5 feet 6 inches. Black-and-white spotted skin or red skin. Females have white skin. Stiff head-hair. Human face. Bloodshot eyes. Horns or pointed ears. Long teeth. Beard. Thin body. Thin, batlike wings attached to long forelimbs. Wingspan, up to 20 feet. Long legs. Reversible feet with toes. Makes a cry like a bat’s but deeper. Attacks and eats humans or sucks their blood. Females are much less malevolent.
In February 1918 or 1928, an Asante man named Agya Wuo killed a Sasabonsam and took it into his town. He had found it sleeping in a tree hollow, and it had emitted a deep cry. The carcass was allegedly photographed by the region’s district commissioner, L. W. Wood.
In the 1930s, J. B. Danquah obtained a wood sculpture of a Sasabonsam, carved by Asante artist Osei-Bonsu.
Possible explanations[]
- A large, undescribed species of bat.
- A surviving pterosaur, a group of winged reptiles that lived from the Late Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous, 150–65 million years ago.
- A spirit based on certain real and imagined characteristics of the Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla).