Soucouyant

Lore & Background

The soucouyant is a folklore character who appears as a reclusive old woman (or man) by day. By night, they strip off their wrinkled skin and put it in a mortar. In the form of a fireball, they fly across the dark sky in search of a victim. The soucouyant can enter the home of their victim through any sized hole such as cracks and keyholes. Soucouyants suck humans' blood from their arms, necks, legs and other soft regions while the victim sleeps, leaving black and blue marks on the body in the morning. If the soucouyant draws too much blood, the victim may die, but they do not become a soucouyant themselves, nor does the soucouyant assume the victim's skin. The soucouyant practices black magic. Soucouyants trade their victims' blood for evil powers with Bazil, the demon who resides in the silk cotton tree.

Reader's Guide

Belief in soucouyants is still preserved to an extent in Guyana, Suriname and some Caribbean islands, including Saint Lucia, Dominica, Haiti and Trinidad. Many Caribbean islands have plays about the soucouyant and many other folklore characters, including Trinidad, Grenada and Barbados. The soucouyant belongs to a class of spirits called jumbies. Some believe that soucouyants were brought to the Caribbean from European countries in the form of French vampire-myths, which intermingled with those of enslaved Africans. In the French West Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique) and Suriname, the Soukougnan or Soukounian is a person able to shed their skin to turn into a vampiric fireball; these figures can be of any gender and age. The term 'Loogaroo' is also sometimes used, possibly from the French loup-garou (werewolf). With time, the soucouyant is no longer exclusively described as an elderly woman. The origin likely has a strong connection to the Yoruba Aje, a witch who leaves her body and turns into an animal, though the Hag (similar to the soucouyant) sheds her skin and turns into a ball of fire.

Did You Know?

• To expose a soucouyant, one should heap rice around its house or at a village crossroads; the creature will be obligated to gather the rice grain by grain and be caught in the act.
• To destroy a soucouyant, coarse salt must be placed in the mortar with its stripped-off skin so that she perishes, unable to put it back on.
• The soucouyant trades victims' blood for evil powers with Bazil, a demon who resides in the silk cotton tree.
• The term 'Loogaroo' possibly comes from the French word for werewolf: loup-garou.