East Africa is haunted by a witch-killing scare as violent lynch mobs in Tanzania and Uganda hunt down scores of people suspected of casting spells.
Many of the victims of the hysteria are elderly people, often women who suffer from red eyes which their attackers say is a sign of sorcery. In fact the condition is caused by smoke from cooking fires in badly ventilated huts.
Police in Tanzania say more than 350 people in the last 18 months have been beaten or burnt to death by gangs. Research by the country's Ministry of Home Affairs suggests the problem could be much more widespread as many crimes go unreported for fear of earning the ire of the killers. Departmental figures show up to 5,000 people may have died between 1994 and 1998.
Tanzanian police have linked many recent killings, especially in the southern region around Mbeya, to a bloody trade in human skin and other body parts, believed to be used in rituals to protect homes from evil spirits, increase harvests and lure clients to businesses.
Several suspects have been arrested, including one who was detained for chasing a small boy. A search of his clothing revealed he was carrying a bloody human jaw, tongue, nose and teeth.
"It is a shame and embarrassment to the country. Those who did it said they were going to sell the skins for witchcraft purposes," said Mbeya police chief, Laurian Sanya.
In Uganda witch killings have resurfaced after a lull since police in the eastern district of Mbale intervened two years ago to stop a mass lynching.
But in the past few months at least three suspected witches have been killed, said police spokesman Asmani Mugenyi.
Observers fear Kenya could also now be vulnerable as the country is gripped by speculation over a government report that concluded Satanists had occupied senior positions in business and officialdom.
The report, from the Presidential Commission into the Cult of Devil Worship, was written in 1995, but its contents had been kept secret until it leaked into the press earlier this month in a series of lurid exposes. "The way that report was handled, especially with the sensationalist headlines in the press, is really dangerous. It could easily spur people into taking violent action," said one Western diplomatic observer.
Presenting unsubstantiated testimony from witnesses who described human sacrifice, blood drinking and cannibalism, the commission found that Freemasons, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses were some of dozens of groups suspected to be guilty of Satanism.
Despite a failure to name individual suspects, the report has worried many ordinary Kenyans and fed the potentially dangerous rumour mill.
Already several incidents have occurred. Two women in the village of Gachami in central Kenya were recently doused in petrol and burnt to death after villagers accused them of trying to kidnap children for use in Satanic rituals.
Local police said there had been several cases of missing people in the area, but now it will never be known if the women were guilty or not. Mob justice ensured they never got near a courthouse.
However, many Kenyans have been outraged at the report's findings and the reaction they have provoked. They point out the commission was staffed by conservative Christian clerics and that many of the organisations it labelled as fronts for devil worshippers, such as followers of evangelists and charismatic churches, are precisely those most successful in taking support away from the mainstream denominations.
"The report is an embarrassment. What is given to be evidence are the ramblings of characters whose psychological histories we are only left to guess," said Gitau Warigi, a columnist on the Sunday Nation newspaper.
In Kenya there is a widespread belief in "nightrunners", a breed of terrifying witch that preys on people at night, banging on doors and roofs. People suspected of being nightrunners are often killed.
Prof Joseph Nyasani of the University of Nairobi, believes the unfortunate victims simply suffer from sleep disorders, a concept not widely understood in rural Kenya.
"People need education on the matter as they just don't understand that nightrunners are not witches, but just sick," he said.
However, so strong are traditional beliefs that it is not just the uneducated who hold them. Among Kampala's emerging elite there was a fashion for planting a species of tree in the gardens of the Ugandan capital's middle-class suburbs.
A few months ago local witchdoctors started a rumour that the tree, known as an umbrella tree, was cursed and that when its roots touched a house it would cause the death of the inhabitant.
All across Kampala the plush suburbs are now abuzz with the sound of chainsaws as the trees are hurriedly cut down.