Country file · Africa
Cryptids of Ghana
What cryptids are in Ghana? The best-known is Sasabonsam.
Ghana is the heartland of the Akan peoples, including the Ashanti, whose spiritual world is rich in forest beings. Chief among the unseen inhabitants of the high forest is the sasabonsam, an iron-toothed, long-limbed being said to sit in the branches of great silk-cotton trees and catch hunters who stray into its territory. The tradition is a living one, and in the way it ties dangerous creatures to sacred trees it works as an old form of forest protection.
- 1 cryptid
- 2 recorded sightings
Cryptids reported in Ghana
The legends of Ghana
Scholars such as R. S. Rattray recorded Ashanti beliefs in the 1920s, and the sasabonsam spread beyond Ghana: it appears in eighteenth-century Jamaican records among enslaved Akan people. Today it is a favourite figure of Ghanaian art, music and literature. Visitors who want to experience the forest canopy for themselves can walk the suspended bridges at Kakum National Park.
Hotspots
- Kakum National Park, Central Region
Rainforest reserve with a canopy walkway above the trees that feature in sasabonsam lore.
- Kumasi, Ashanti Region
Capital of the Ashanti and home of the Manhyia Palace Museum on Ashanti history and culture.
Sightings timeline
- 1923Rattray’s Ashanti Sasabonsam
R. S. Rattray’s ethnography of Ashanti religion and customs is among the early scholarly works cited in discussions of the asasabonsam.
- c. 1935Wooden figure in the British Museum Sasabonsam
A carved sasabonsam figure estimated to date from 1935 is held in the British Museum’s collection.