Bultungin
Bultungin is a Kanuri verb for turning oneself into a hyena, recorded in 1854 with the belief that everyone in one town could become a hyena. Wikipedia places the belief in the Lake Chad region.
The earliest record here is Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle's 1854 collection of Kanuri (Bornu) proverbs and tales. He lists bultungin as a verb meaning to become a hyena, or to change oneself into one. A man named Ali, Koelle wrote, held that in a town called Kabutiloa, in Gazir, every inhabitant could turn into a hyena. Such a person, Koelle wrote, is called ngadza.
Edward Burnett Tylor repeated the entry in 1871. He explained that the verb is built from bultu, the Kanuri word for hyena, and that people of Bornu claimed every man in Kabutiloa had this power.
Wikipedia's article on werehyenas gives bultungin as the Kanuri term for them, around Lake Chad, in what was once the Bornu Empire. It says one or two villages there were once thought to be made up wholly of werehyenas, spelling one of them Kabultiloa, and gives ngadza as the word for such a person.
"bultungin, v. 1 become a hyena, transform myself into a hyena. Ali maintains that there is a town in Gazir, called Kd- butiloa, in which every individual possesses the faculty of transforming himself into a hyena. Any such person is called ngddza."
- Werehyena, Wikipedia
- Primitive Culture, Vol. 1, Edward Burnett Tylor (1871; John Murray edition)