Ebu Gogo

Ebu Gogo appear in Nage village histories and folktales as beings of a former time who lived in caves and forested areas of Flores and interacted with human communities. The name from Nage compounds ebu ('grandparent') with gogo ('one who eats anything'), situating them in an ancestral frame and characterizing them by voracious eating. Stories present them as part of village memory rather than as a cosmological creation myth.

Tales describe Ebu Gogo as small, humanlike people about 1.5 m tall (approximately 5 feet / ≈4 ft 11 in), with wide flat noses, broad faces, large mouths, and hairy bodies; females are sometimes described as having long, pendulous breasts. They are depicted as able walkers and fast runners, distinct from ordinary villagers in morphology and speech.

Folklore attributes to them physical agility (able walkers, fast runners), murmured speech in a language villagers assumed was their own, and a capacity to mimic or repeat words and phrases in a parrot‑like way. Behaviorally they are characterized by gluttony (the element 'gogo') and by stories in which they attempt to kidnap or eat human children. No consistent supernatural powers beyond these physical and vocal traits are recorded in the supplied sources.