Asanbosam (sasabonsam)

The asanbosam, or sasabonsam, is a forest being of Akan belief in Ghana, said to live in the tallest trees and seize people from above. The British Museum holds a figure of one.

The British Museum holds a sasabonsam figure, registration number Af1935,1212.1. The museum describes the sasabonsam as a superhuman being grounded in traditional Ghanaian belief, though its image draws partly on the Christian devil. It lives in the bush, in the highest trees, and is often shown hairy and red, with wings like a bat's, a long beard, horns, an ape's body and legs like snakes. The museum says it is thought to side with witches and to be a danger to people.

The oldest written source here, R. S. Rattray's Ashanti Proverbs (1916), uses the name sasabonsam, and his description has no wings. In his account it sits in the treetops with its legs hanging to the ground, and its feet are hooks that catch anyone who comes near. It has iron teeth, and Rattray says the sasabonsam come as male, female and young. The name sasabonsam kyew, or devil's hat, is given to a big fungus like a cabbage that grows on trees.

Wikipedia places the belief among the Akan people in the south of Ghana, and also in Côte d'Ivoire and Togo, and says enslaved Akan carried it to Jamaica in the eighteenth century. It describes the creature as long-haired and iron-toothed, living in forest trees where it claims ground and preys on people who stray into it.