9 Real Disguises of the World’s Best Undercover Reporter – Anas Aremeyaw Anas

#4:. A Parent with a (Fake) Baby

Some communities in Ghana believe that deformed or disabled children are possessed by evil spirits. The families of these “spirit children,” seek out “concoction men” to diagnose the so-called evil lurking within. In cases where the evil is “confirmed,” they brew poison, force feed it to the children, and kill them.

Anas hired one such concoction man to kill a fictitious child. To assist with the reporting, one of Anas’s colleagues agreed to let him use her 18-month-old son as a stand-in. A concoction man examined the boy, and, at the last minute, Anas swapped the human baby out for a dummy. The simulacra was made by a London-based movie props company. It was so lifelike, the concoction man didn’t realize he was being handed a fleshy slab of silicone. The next thing on his hands? Cuffs.