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Nyongo working dead

Also called: nyongo, ekongi, kupe, Mount Kupe zombies
Folklore and mythUndeadSorcery1900 to 1967

Nyongo is a Cameroonian witchcraft belief in which the newly rich are suspected of killing their kin by occult means and putting them to work as the living dead. The victims toil unseen on Mount Kupe, in Bakossi country, to build their owner's fortune. Anthropologists link the belief to colonial plantation agriculture and, later, to economic crisis. It is one of the best-studied African parallels to the Haitian zombi, and like it turns on the theft of a dead person's labour.123

⚔️ Battle it
First recorded
1950
Legends current from around the Second World War; first described by the anthropologist Edwin Ardener in the 1950s
Origin
Cameroonian (Bakweri, Bakossi and neighbouring peoples)
Cameroon
What causes it
Sorcery
Members of a secret witch society are believed to 'sell' relatives, who seem to die but are taken from the grave to work.
How you become one
A nyongo member makes a relative appear to die, then removes the person from the grave.
Intelligence
Mindless
Weak spots
  • witch-finding: villages paid the witch-hunter Obasi Njom to cleanse them
  • suspected members were beheaded or buried face down so they would not rise as ekongi

When did it first appear?

Ancient world
Middle Ages
1500 to 1899
1900 to 1967
1968 to 1999
2000 to 2009
2010 to today
1950

Legends current from around the Second World War; first described by the anthropologist Edwin Ardener in the 1950s

field notes

What the sources say

1

The victims' labour is said to make their owner rich123

2

Dead rats were said to be laid under the 'corpse' to hasten the burial123

3

Tin roofs were taken as a sign of membership, which for a time discouraged people from building modern houses123

4

Children were warned not to pick up coins from the ground, which might be bait123

5

Accusations rose sharply after the economic crisis of the late 1980s123

6

A 1992 road accident that killed schoolchildren was blamed on a headmaster 'giving' them to the society123

Sources

  1. Nyongo society - Wikipedia
  2. Vivian Besem Ojong, 'The Working-Dead in Nyongo Occult Economy in Cameroonian Society', Journal of Dharma 37 (2012)
  3. Zombies - Encyclopedia.com

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

Same era: 1900 to 1967

AmalanhigVisayan (Philippines), 1967Felicia Felix-MentorHaitian, 1937