The legends were first written about in the 1950s by British social anthropologist, Edwin Ardener, while describing what he called the Nyongo Terror in the present-day Southwest Province in Cameroon.
[4] However, by the time cross-Atlantic trade had flooded the local villages with wealth, social unrest was beginning to form with a flurry of N'yongo accusations.
The locals paid dearly for witch-hunter Obasi Njom to come to their villages and perform ju-ju to rid them of witches from the N'yongo Society.
For this reason, especially in the late 70s, there were reports of children being told to refrain from picking up coins, as they may have been dropped by nyongo practitioners in order to snare a new victim.
[3] In 1992, when a road accident killed multiple schoolchildren, the headmaster had to be removed from the area as local people insisted that he had given the children to the head of the Nyongo Society.
[1] When somebody who is believed to be a member of the N'yongo Society dies, they may be decapitated, or buried face down, in order to prevent them rising as an ekongi.