There is a light in the village tonight that should not be there. Among the fireflies pulsing above the cassava fields, one does not blink. Its glow is steady, cold, and it moves with purpose toward the room where a child is sleeping. Nothing can keep it out. No locked door, no sealed window, no mosquito net. It passes through any crack wide enough for a beam of light.

The Ewe people of Ghana and Togo call this creature the Adze. But the Adze is not what you expect. It is not a monster from the wilderness. It is a spiritual force that lives inside a human being. Your neighbor. Your relative. The woman who braids your daughter's hair. When the Adze is caught in its firefly form, it transforms back into its human host, and the village has found its witch.

In this episode, we trace the Adze from its roots in Ewe oral tradition, through t ...