Who is Madam Koi Koi?

Ask anyone who went to boarding school in Nigeria about Madam Koi Koi and you'll usually get the same first detail: the sound. Koi... koi... koi. The click of a woman's heels on a corridor floor, late at night, long after lights out.

The story

In most tellings, Madam Koi Koi was a teacher, sometimes a matron or a housemistress, known for her high-heeled shoes, often red. How she died changes with the teller. In some versions she was cruel to her students and they turned on her. In others she was the victim of someone else's violence. Very often, she lost a shoe.

After her death, the story goes, she came back to the school. Students hear her heels in the hostel at night, walking the corridors, sometimes with one shoe on and one bare foot. Some say she is looking for her missing shoe. Some say she is looking for the students responsible.

The rules students pass on

Like many school legends, it comes with rules, passed down from senior students to new ones:

• If you hear her heels, stay in bed and stay quiet.
• Don't go out into the corridor after lights out.
• Don't look at her.

Those three ideas became the three rules of our game: listen for the heels, stay out of the dark, and whatever you do, do not look at her.

Why it lasts

Boarding school is a place where children live away from home, with strict teachers, older students in charge, and long, dark nights in shared rooms. A story about a teacher whose footsteps you hear in the dark fits that world exactly. It's told to frighten new students, to keep them in bed after lights out, and simply because a good scary story is fun to tell.

Versions of the story are told in schools in other West African countries too, and it lives on in countless retellings online.

Our telling

The legend belongs to everyone who grew up hearing it, and we don't claim it. What we made is one version: a school called Ikenga Memorial, a teacher called Adaeze Okonkwo, six boys in SS3, and a brother who went back to find out what happened. If you grew up with a different version, we'd love to hear it.