Article
Crash-Landings of Flying Witches in Ghana: Grand Mystical Feats or Diagnosable Psychiatric Illnesses?
Transcultural Psychiatry
(2017)
Abstract
Crash-landings are a recurrent theme in Ghanaian witchcraft discourse. In the society’s witchcraft lore, these are inadvertent aborted flights of purported maleficent witches en route to secret nocturnal witches’ assemblies or in transit to designated locations to implement diabolical witchcraft deeds. While the phenomenon invariably leads to severe mistreatment of the putative witches, no study has systematically explored this purported phenomenon. In this article, I describe the results of an analysis of ten cases of alleged abortive aerial flights of putative witches which were reported in the Ghanaian media over a twelve-year period. In addition to identifying the common characteristics associated with the alleged crash-landings, I provide a summary description of each case. The results show that the alleged witches were overwhelmingly female, elderly and poor, and suffered from some grave psychopathological condition. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.
Keywords
- witchcraft,
- witches,
- flying witches,
- mental illness,
- Ghana
Disciplines
Publication Date
Fall September 26, 2017
Citation Information
Mensah Adinkrah. "Crash-Landings of Flying Witches in Ghana: Grand Mystical Feats or Diagnosable Psychiatric Illnesses?" Transcultural Psychiatry (2017) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mensah_adinkrah/40/