In western culture October is the month people celebrate Halloween, a holiday with roots in witchcraft/paganism but is now celebrated by dressing up as your favourite pop culture/cultural icon. It still has a scary vibe to it. We donʼt celebrate it here tho, mostly because someone could knock at your door and introduce themselves as a witch and really be a witch.
So since we donʼt celebrate but some of us are still horror enthusiasts, today I will be talking about scary legends in Nigerian secondary schools.
Let me refresh your memory by talking about things we feared the most as secondary school students.
Miss Koi Koi
Legend has it that she roams the halls of school hostels in search of her red shoe that she lost while she was alive. They say you can hear the clicking of her heels on the ground go koi koi and that is why she goes by miss koi koi.
This story terrified me especially because I went to a boarding school, good thing she never came to visit my school in search of her shoe.
There are varying stories regarding miss koi koi’s origin and you will get a different version depending on who you ask. Some say she was a teacher who was falsely accused of a crime and sacked on her way home she got killed in an accident which is why she roams school hostels because they caused her death.
The Hairdresser
She takes off her head and puts it on her lap to braid it. Someone told me her sister once saw her while she was braiding her hair, she ran away screaming. I mean who wouldnʼt?
Kato
Also known as an incubus. He walks into girls’ hostels and tries to lay with them. Some people reported that they were sleeping and felt a presence, when they opened their eyes a man was staring at them. I can imagine how terrifying that must be.
Good thing he always took off running once an alarm was raised.
Sceptics/non-believers say it is boys/men living around the school and not a spirit. Others argue that it isnʼt.
Bush Baby
Legend has it that they are very tiny creatures that carry a mat around, and they are usually found in…you guessed it, the bushes surrounding a school.
Once you encounter them, they lure you in with promises of riches if you take their mat but you shouldnʼt because once you do, they will relentlessly ask for it back.
They look like babies and cry like them hence the name bush babies. They cry endlessly to get you to give the mat back and you know how heartbreaking the sound of a baby cry is. But you shouldnʼt fall for it because once you give the mat back you are doomed.
But I am curious as to why anyone would take anything from a talking baby. Why wonʼt you immediately run when you see one? I know thatʼs what I will do.
White Man From Kenya
This one happened in the secondary school I attended. I was in Jss2 at the time and it was midnight after visiting day.
Someone screamed in my hostel and we all woke up, she claimed that she saw a dwarfish-like man and he was in white.
The lights were turned on and he was nowhere to be found, so we started to pray. I donʼt know what he wanted but I remember we were really terrified and many couldnʼt go back to sleep.
Queen Mother
Another tale from the school I attended, there was this big tree we all liked to lie under after classes/ exams. It provided a good shade and it was very airy until we learned that an evil witch lived in it.
A girl in Jss1 claimed she belonged to the witchʼs coven and referred to her as queen mother. She said the witch was very powerful, every branch on the tree represented a country and every time leaves fell from the tree someone died.
After hearing that we stopped lying under the tree, and students started to report that they felt dizzy whenever they lay under it.
The Bunk Shaker
As the name implies they will shake your bunk violently until you fell off resulting in your death. Many students were scared to sleep on the top bunk because they were afraid of falling off and dying so whenever someone fell off their bunk and sustained an injury they blamed the bunk shaker.
I can’t say if these stories are real or but I know they really scared us and if you don’t know of these did you really go to a Nigerian boarding school?