a little about the Owlman an kikiyaon...Avian humanoids ~heather

GAMBIA'S AVIAN HUMANOIDS?

As for Gambian beasts, perhaps the area has the monopoly on mythical winged humanoids. Kikiyaon and guiafairo are both sharp-clawed flying monsters that appear to combine human and avian traits. It is unclear from the accounts if they are truly regarded as real, or if they are spirit-creatures that only appear in dreams and hallucinations - indeed, kikiyaon has been called the 'soul cannibal' and is reportedly conjured up by sorcerers. By the way, the first articles to bring both kikiyaon and guiafairo to mainstream attention were written by Owen Burnham. Sasabonsam, traditionally a vampire or ogre-like monster from Ashanti myth, is sort of similar, though it was regarded by Heuvelmans as another name for the kongamato. Remarkably, a 1939 article published in The West African Review recounts the capture, killing and examination of a sasabonsam specimen.

According to the account, the creature had a man-sized body with bat-like wing membranes attached to elongate clawed arms. The wingspan was something like 20 ft. Some of the features described are just bizarre - its hands were reported to be retractable and it apparently had a human-like nose and two short horns on its head. Other features are highly intriguing. For example, it had a prominent ridge down the middle of its chest


Predictably, the similarity this incarnation of the sasabonsam seems to have with the Cornish 'Owlman' has not been missed by para-researcher Jonathan Downes. Downes has written numerous articles and a book on these entities: his approach to the subject is arcane, involving the history of surrealist art, the reincarnation of Max Ernst, some mutilated wallabies from Newquay zoo and the claims and counter-claims of Tony Shiels the Irish wizard. Personally, many esoterists don't think the owlmen and their winged brethren have much to do with cryptozoology in the strict sense - however, they are significant 'indicators' in that how they are interpreted reveals the approach of the investigator.

To Downes and co, these things are so-called zooform phenomena: phantom-like entities that look like animals but are instead manifestations of an unknown nature. Perhaps these ideas were inspired by similar theories concocted by Janet and Colin Bord, but we're also reminded of internet devotees who argue that the creature in the Patterson film is a inter-dimensional alien android that can vanish from the camera viewfinder at will. In other words, by making mystery beasts into uncatchable, untestable phantoms one provides an ostensible explanation for the total lack of material evidence. One would more likely side with the folklorists and anthropologists and suggest that group psychology and the power of iconographic tradition are forcing people into believing in animals that really do not exist outside of the human skull.

Moving to the opposite extreme, as unlikely as it may seem that such creatures are cryptids sensu stricto, this is proposed by some. Dubbed 'Loren's paradigm', after cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, though strictly speaking it's not Loren's and it's not a paradigm (to elaborate another time). Mark Hall, for example, apparently a strict applicator of Loren's paradigm, has argued that some of the feathery 'winged humanoids' may actually be gigantic owls, a notion evolutionary orinthologists find pretty ludicrous.

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