The Devil Bat

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Before the skies were buzzing with anal-probing Greys, there was Popo Bawa, described by Reuters as "the most feared spirit-monster of the Zanzibar spice islands." William Maclean reports:

Vacationers 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 sodomizing 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.

Like Karl Rove and Bob Shrum, the randy batman is especially active at election time—"a habit," Maclean writes, "that is testing nerves ahead of polls due in October."