By February 1946 the murders had resulted in a breakdown in law and order on such a scale that the administrative map was redrawn and eight Court Areas from Abak and Opobo Divisions were amalgamated to create the ‘Leopard Area’. This zone was frequently referred to as the ‘infected area’ and the killings as a whole were discussed in an idiom of contagion and disease. The crisis was called an ‘outbreak’, and villages in which no suspicious deaths were recorded were said to be ‘immune’. The atmosphere and daily routines of people living in the villages around Ibesit and Ikot Afanga were dominated by confusion and fear.

A key index of local security was market day, and the number of people willing to risk the threat of the leopard men in order to trade. Of this period women recall the infrequency with which they ventured from the confines of the compound and that on trips to the market, to distant farm plots or to uncultivated forest areas, they walked in groups and always in single file. People were so frightened of the human-leopard killers that they would urinate in their houses at night for fear of stepping outside in the dark. Parents would lock their children in the house if they were leaving them at home to go to market. These fears, however, were not confined to the anxiety of physical attacks.