Soucouyant

The soucouyant or soucriant in Dominica, Trinidadian and Guadeloupean folklore (also known as Ole-Higue or Loogaroo elsewhere in the Caribbean), is a kind of witch vampire.^[1][2]

Legend

The soucouyant that lives by day as an old woman at the end of the village. By night, however, she strips off her wrinkled skin, puts it in a mortar, and flies in the shape of a fireball through the darkness, looking for a victim. Still in the shape of a fireball, the soucouyant enters the home of her victim through the keyhole or any crack or crevice.

Soucouyants suck the blood of people from their arms, legs and other soft parts while they sleep^[3]. If the soucouyant draws out too much blood from her victim, it is believed that the victim will die and become a soucouyant herself, or else perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin. The soucouyant practices witchcraft, voodoo, and black magic. Soucouyants trade the blood of their victims for evil powers with Bazil the demon who resides in the silk cotton tree^[4]. To expose a soucouyant, one should heap rice around the house or at the village cross roads as the creature will be obligated to gather every grain, grain by grain (an almost imposible task to do before dawn) thus being caught in the act^[5]. In order to destroy the soucouyant, coarse salt must be placed in the mortar containing the soucouyant's skin. She then cannot put the skin back on and will perish. Belief in soucoyants is still preserved to some extent in Trinidad.^[6]

The skin of the soucouyant is said to be very valuable, as it is used when practicing black magic.

Origin

Soucouyants belong to a class of spirits called jumbees. Some believe that soucouyants were brought to the Caribbean from European countries in the form of French vampire-myths. These beliefs intermingled with those of enslaved Africans.

In the French West Indies, specifically the island of Guadeloupe, the Soukougnan or Soukounian is a person able to shed his or her skin to turn into a vampiric fireball. In general these figures can be anyone, not only old women, although some affirm that only women could become Soukounian, because only female breasts could disguise the creature's wings.

The term "Loogaroo" also used to describe the soucouyant, possibly comes from the French mythological creature called the Loup-garou, a type of werewolf and is common in the Culture of Mauritius.

In popular culture

• In Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark a soucouyant is one of Anna Morgan's daydreaming fears before she undergoes an abortion that leaves her bleeding to death. It is worth noting that before the ending was edited, Anna Morgan dies of the abortion.
• Also used in Rhys's short story, "The Day They Burned the Books" in a servant's description of Mrs. Sawyer, a main character in the story: "...Mildred told the other servants in the town that her eyes had gone wicked, like a soucriant's eyes, and that afterwards she had picked up some of the hair he pulled out and put it in an envelope, and that Mr. Sawyer ought to look out (hair is obeah as well as hands)".
• Also used in a third Jean Rhys book, Wide Sargasso Sea, when the former slave, Christophine, describes Antoinette's eyes as "red like soucriant".
• In "Greedy Choke Puppy", a short story by Nalo Hopkinson, a soucouyant narrates part of the story. Hopkinson's book Brown Girl in the Ring also features a soucouyant, who is delayed from her purpose of consuming blood by another character who drops rice grains on the floor, forcing the soucouyant to pick them up before proceeding.
• Appears in the novel White is for Witching: A Novel by Helen Oyeyemi.
• Soucouyant is the title and one of the primary plot devices of a novel by David Chariandy.

See also

• Chonchon
• Shtriga
• Adze
• Manananggal
• Silk cotton tree

References

1. ^ Welland, Michael (January 2009). Sand: The Never-Ending Story. University of California Press. pp. 66–67. ISBN 0520254376. http://books.google.com/books?id=RwAHE18nioMC&lpg=PA66&dq=Loogaroo&pg=PA66#v=onepage&q=Loogaroo&f=false. 
2. ^ http://www.dominicanewsonline.com/all_news/general/6173.html?print
3. ^ Courtesy The Heritage Library via the Trinidad Guardian
4. ^ Courtesy The Heritage Library via the Trinidad Guardian
5. ^ Courtesy The Heritage Library via the Trinidad Guardian
6. ^ Maberry, Jonathan (September 1, 2006). Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings That Haunt Us, Hunt .... Citadel. pp. 203. ISBN 9780806528137. http://books.google.com/books?id=H1axCZifXdwC&lpg=PA203&dq=Loogaroo%2C%20skin%2C%20tree&client=firefox-a&pg=PA203#v=onepage&q=Loogaroo,%20skin,%20tree&f=false. 

External links

• http://www.triniview.com/TnT/Soucouyant.htm
• http://www.montraykreyol.org/spip.php?article106
• Trinidad and Tobago Folklore Characters