Abonsam is a malevolent spirit of the Gold Coast, a region of West Africa now known as Ghana. When accidents or disease afflict an area, local shamans may find the spirit to blame, and a community rite drives it into the sea.
- A malevolent spirit of the Gold Coast, the West African coast now called Ghana
- Blamed for accidents and disease in an area, once shamans find it at fault
- Four weeks of silence open the expulsion rite
- Homes are emptied of furniture, then their inner rooms are struck with sticks
- Shouting and gunfire drive the spirit out to sea
What it is
Abonsam is a harmful spirit of the Gold Coast, the West African coast that is now Ghana. People of the region hold it responsible when trouble settles on a community: accidents, sickness and other misfortunes. The blame is a finding, not a guess. Local shamans, the ritual specialists of the area, decide whether the spirit stands behind the trouble. When they judge that it does, the community acts together. A public rite sends Abonsam out of the land and into the sea. The expulsion is built on a sharp pair of extremes: weeks of enforced quiet first, then a storm of noise inside empty houses. The spirit is treated as a public danger, one that only a collective ceremony can remove.
How it is done
The expulsion follows a set order. It opens with silence: for four weeks, everyone involved keeps total quiet. Next the homes are emptied, and all the furniture is carried out. Inside the bare rooms, the inner walls are struck with sticks. Then comes the din: shouting and gunshots, raised together. At the end of the rite the spirit is sent out to sea. The sequence runs from stillness to uproar, with the emptied houses as its stage.
Tools and materials
The rite needs no special kit beyond what a community already has. Sticks serve as the striking tools, laid against the inner walls of the emptied houses. Guns supply the sharpest noise, fired alongside the participants' own shouting. The other material is absence: every piece of furniture is carried out first, so the rooms stand bare when the striking begins. Four weeks of silence precede all of it.
Abonsam, drawn and placed
- Living
- Revived
- Fading
- Historical
- Legendary
- Performed
- Lineage
- Gold Coast spirit belief, West Africa
- Timing
- when accidents or disease strike, on the shamans' finding
What it is for
The rite answers a shared crisis. When accidents or sickness settle on an area, the question goes to the local shamans: is Abonsam responsible? If they find that it is, the expulsion is arranged. The aim is to send the spirit out of the settlement and into the sea, taking the run of misfortune with it. In this way of seeing, disease and accidents have an author, and the author can be put out. The ceremony is a collective act, because the trouble it answers touches many homes rather than one.
Who does it
Two kinds of actors appear. The first are the shamans, the local ritual specialists who judge whether the spirit is to blame for an area's troubles; they decide when the expulsion is to be held. The second are the households. The rite takes place in and around the homes involved: their occupants carry the furniture out, strike the inner walls and add their voices to the din. Gunfire is part of the noise, so people with guns join the expulsion as well.
At a glance: who, where and when
Who does it
Occasions
What people believe
The outlook behind the rite gives misfortune a nameable cause. A harmful spirit can lie over an area and show itself as accidents and disease. Its presence is not a matter for individual opinion: the shamans investigate and reach a finding, and their finding sets the community in motion. The rite also assumes that a spirit responds to what people do, since weeks of silence and then sticks, shouting and gunfire are treated as forces that can move it along. The sea, in the end, is where it is sent.
When it is done
The expulsion follows trouble rather than a date. It is called for when accidents or disease have settled on an area and the shamans have found the spirit at fault. From that moment the rite runs on its own clock. It opens with a fixed span of silence, four weeks long, and only then moves to the emptied houses, the sticks and the gunfire that close the matter.
Questions people ask about Abonsam
What is Abonsam?
It is a harmful spirit of the Gold Coast, a region of West Africa, in present-day Ghana. People hold it responsible when accidents and disease fall on a community, once the local shamans have found it to be the cause.
Where does the belief come from?
It belongs to the Gold Coast, the West African coast now known as Ghana. The spirit appears in local tradition there, where shamans judge whether an area's misfortune should be laid at its door.
How is the spirit driven out?
After four weeks of silence, the homes involved are emptied of furniture and their inner rooms are struck with sticks. Shouting and gunfire then fill the air, and the rite is said to drive the spirit into the sea.
Who decides that Abonsam is to blame?
The local shamans do. When accidents and disease trouble an area, they determine whether the spirit is responsible, and their finding is what sets the expulsion rite in motion.
Does the spirit harm one person or a whole area?
As described, it afflicts a whole area rather than one person. When accidents and disease fall on a community, the shamans judge whether the spirit is at fault, and the rite that follows involves many homes at once.
Good reading and sources
The facts on this page come from the Wikipedia article "Abonsam", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, and from its Wikidata record (CC0). EveryJaadu rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
It may contain mistakes. Names and customs differ from one community to the next, and some knowledge is closed to outsiders and left out here. This page describes belief and practice. It does not say that any of it works, it is not a how-to, and it is not medical advice. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-19.
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