ADZE

The Vampiric Firefly

The Adze is a vampiric creature of the folklore of the Ewe, a people of southern Togo and Ghana. In the night, it takes the form of a firefly, a tiny glow that slips through keyholes, cracks in the walls and the undersides of doors. Once inside the house, it drinks the blood of sleepers, preferably that of children, who then waste away from an ill that nothing seems to explain. For want of blood, it makes do with palm oil or coconut water. If one manages to capture it, the Adze resumes human form and reveals its true nature: a spirit that possesses the living. The person inhabited by an adze is held to be a witch, and suspicions often fell on the jealous and the envious, of whom it was said that the ill gnawed at the heart before gnawing at others. The folklorists see in this narrative an ancient reading of nocturnal fevers, notably of the malaria transmitted by insects in these same regions. A cousin of the great vampiric figures found in the Afro-diasporic pantheons, the Adze reminds us that the surest danger is not the visible beast, but the familiar light that enters the house without a sound.