To Dance with Devils

It was the early hours of the morning on a fateful day in the early 2000s when a middle-aged woman was found unconscious on the road in a Diwanya suburb. When she was taken to the hospital, she had a horrific story to tell the authorities. Apparently, she was a musician, and she had been hired to provide entertainment for a gathering in a large villa in the neighbourhood she was found in. As the night went on, however, she came to realise that a number of her clients weren’t entirely human. She tried to escape and evidently failed.

Ghoul Party!

This happened in Diwanya, Kuwait (Western Asia). In the early 2000s (source doesn’t give an exact date), stories appeared in the Kuwaiti media detailing the run-in that a hapless victim had with beings that would normally be confined to the dark reaches of mythology and folklore.

Art Source

The musician was a middle-aged woman who plays a traditional Kuwaiti instrument. She received a call from a prospective client who wanted to hire her for her services during the month of Ramadan. Since it is inappropriate to perform music during Ramadan, the witness initially refused - but the caller insisted, and tripled her usual fee - persuading her to go. The callers sent their own driver to pick her up, and what began as a usual musical event suddenly took a sharp turn for the supernatural. The party started early in the evening, but continued on till 12am, at which point some of the attendees began to act bizarrely. A group of young girls at the centre of the room, for example, started to dance very aggressively. They moved in such a vigorous manner that their legs began showing under their long dresses, revealing that their legs were not in fact those of humans - but rather bore a closer resemblance to 'horses’ legs’.

Terrified, as anyone would be in this anomalous situation, the woman ran out of the party where she found the driver who had picked her up waiting for her. Panicked, she quickly got into the car and refused to comment when the driver asked her what was wrong due to being too distraught to speak coherently. After a couple of minutes, however, she had calmed down enough to be asked again by the driver. She told him that some of the partygoers did not have human legs, prompting the driver to reply 'you mean just like mine?’ before revealing his legs under his clothes. Like the young girls at the gathering, they were those of an animal. The woman was hysterical with fear at this point, and so threw herself from the car and landed on the street, rendering herself unconscious. The next day, after reporting the bizarre incident, she decided to return to the villa accompanied by the local authorities. However, the villa was gone. It had completely vanished, leaving nothing behind but an empty yard.

Living Legends?

Ethiopia is sometimes said to be home to satyrs and fauns, which resemble humanoids with goat-like feet and legs. The source from which I garnered this story also makes a link to the Hebrew figure of the Queen of Sheba - or Bilquis - who was said in various folktales and apocryphal accounts from all three Abrahamic faiths to have animal hooves. This links her to the ghoul or ghul, which is sometimes classified as a type of Djinn in Islamic tradition. The words said by the driver just before revealing his non-human identity are also very closely mimicked in Japanese folklore, with the this time coming from the terrifying faceless shapeshifters known as Noppera-bō just before they make their human faces melt away with the intention of scaring the bejesus out of an unfortunate victim.

As for the source in question, well, unfortunately it's no longer available. It was a video on the YouTube channel Mysterious Middle East which has since been removed by the owners of the channel. I have no idea where they heard it from and I haven't been able to find reference to it elsewhere online. I think that this means that my retelling of the story is the sole surviving rendition - which is always pretty neat to know.