Soucouyant vs Ol’ Higue: Caribbean Skin-Shedding Witches

ByNikki Woods

The soucouyant and the Ol’ Higue are regional names for the same kind of folklore figure: an old woman who lives quietly among her neighbours by day, takes off her skin at night and goes out to drink blood. “Soucouyant” is the name most used in Trinidad and Tobago and the French Creole islands. “Ol’ Higue” (or “Ole Higue”) is the Guyanese and Jamaican name. In Guyana she is said to prefer babies, and in Jamaica one account has her taking the form of an owl.

The loogaroo of the French Creole islands and the azeman of Suriname share the skin-shedding and the blood-drinking, but each place adds its own remedies, disguises and rules. This post sets the versions side by side, sticking to what printed sources record and noting where they disagree. For the full story of the soucouyant herself, see our main guide to the soucouyant in Caribbean folklore.

TL;DR

  • Soucouyant, Ol’ Higue, loogaroo and azeman are local names for one shared figure: a witch who sheds her skin at night and drinks blood.
  • The soucouyant (Trinidad, Dominica, the French Antilles) is said to travel as a ball of fire and to leave her skin in a mortar.
  • The Guyanese Ol’ Higue is also a fireball who favours babies; one Jamaican account makes the Ol’ Hige an owl.
  • Almost every version shares two remedies: scattered rice she is forced to count, and salt (sometimes pepper) rubbed into her abandoned skin.
  • Scholars read the figure as a story about fear of women, especially old women living alone, and it has been reworked in fiction such as David Chariandy’s novel Soucouyant.

Table of Contents

  1. Soucouyant meaning and the shared figure
  2. Island by island: the names and the differences
  3. Soucouyant vs Ol’ Higue vs loogaroo vs azeman
  4. Rice and salt: the remedies they share
  5. Why always an old woman?
  6. The soucouyant in fiction

Soucouyant meaning and the shared figure

The Trinidad Guardian suggests the word “soucouyant” may come from the French Creole soucougnan, and close relatives of the figure appear in Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Lucia and Haiti. In Guadeloupe and Martinique she is known as the soukougnan or soukounian.

Across the versions, the outline stays the same:

  • By day, she looks like a reclusive or harmless old woman. Some accounts say a soucouyant can also be a man.
  • At night, she sheds her skin and hides it. In Trinidad it is said to go in a mortar.
  • She travels as a ball of fire across the night sky and slips into houses through cracks, keyholes or gaps in wooden walls.
  • She feeds on the blood of sleepers, leaving bruise-like marks by morning. In some tellings a victim drained too far becomes a soucouyant in turn.

Trinidadian lore adds that she trades the blood she collects with Bazil, a demon said to live in the silk cotton tree, in return for her powers. Some writers connect the figure to West African beliefs carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans, including the Yoruba àjẹ́, though the link is suggested more often than documented.

Island by island: the names and the differences

Soucouyant: Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, the French Antilles

This is the fireball version described above. The Trinidad Guardian adds house protections such as blue dye around windows and doors and hanging protective herbs. She is one of several figures in Trinidad’s folklore, and the Guyanese writer Al Creighton calls her “the Trinidadian version of the Ol Higue as known in Guyana.”

Ol’ Higue: Guyana

The Guyana Chronicle describes Ole Higues as old women who can turn into balls of fire, and says the curse is passed from one Ole Higue to another. Creighton writes in Stabroek News that she “specialises in sucking children or babies,” and that because she lives among the villagers her identity is a secret and a source of suspicion. One local protection is rubbing cow gall and mutton fat on the body to make the blood bitter.

Ol’ Hige: Jamaica

The Jamaican version differs most. According to the Jamaica Observer, the Ol’ Hige sheds her skin at night “after assuming the physical form of an owl.” She sucks out her victims’ breath while they sleep and “is most fascinated with babies.” Once out of her skin she is vulnerable and can be killed. Salt and pepper rubbed into the skin stops her from fitting back in. She sits alongside the duppies and rolling calves in Jamaican folklore.

Loogaroo, lougarou, lougawou: the French Creole name

“Loogaroo” is sometimes used as another name for the soucouyant, and it probably comes from the French loup-garou, meaning werewolf. The word came from the werewolf tradition, but in the Caribbean it was attached to the skin-shedding witch. Belief in the figure persists to some extent in Haiti, Saint Lucia and Dominica.

Azeman (asema): Suriname

Melville and Frances Herskovits collected a story in Suriname Folk-Lore (1936) about an azeman, glossed as “vampire.” She is a woman who sheds her skin to drink a sleeping man’s blood and runs off when a barking dog wakes a neighbour. Scattered rice is the defence. She cannot cross it, and when she picks up rice-filled cloth the grains fall out and she has to gather them again. The collection also mentions pepper. Further north, a 1904 record of Bahamian folklore describes a “hag” who “always shed her skin” on entering a house.

Soucouyant vs Ol’ Higue vs loogaroo vs azeman

Name Where How she travels How to stop her
Soucouyant (soukougnan) Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Martinique Ball of fire; enters through cracks and keyholes Coarse salt in the skin; rice to count; blue dye at doors and windows
Ol’ Higue / Ole Higue Guyana Ball of fire Rice she must count before entering; cow gall and mutton fat on the body
Ol’ Hige Jamaica Takes the form of an owl Salt and pepper in the skin; attack her while she is out of it
Loogaroo / lougarou Used across the French Creole islands, including Haiti and Saint Lucia As the soucouyant: ball of fire As the soucouyant: salt and rice
Azeman (asema) Suriname Skinless; recorded entering a house at night Scattered rice she cannot cross; pepper

Rice and salt: the remedies they share

Two defences show up in nearly every version.

  1. Counting grains. Heap or scatter rice around the house or at a crossroads. She is compelled to pick it up or count it grain by grain, so she is still at it when dawn catches her. Trinidadian sources mention rice, salt or small seeds. Guyana says she must count every grain before she can enter. In Suriname she simply cannot cross it.
  2. Salting the skin. Find the skin she has left behind and rub coarse salt into it, or salt and pepper in Jamaica. The salt burns, and she cannot get back into it. In Trinidad she is then said to die at sunrise.

Why always an old woman?

Literary scholar Giselle Liza Anatol, author of The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora, asks the obvious question: “The figure was always female. So what is it about a woman having this power that is exceptionally frightening?” She reads the stories as “social attempts to contain and control women who live alone.” The tales taught children obedience and girls how they were expected to behave, and Anatol links their stories of draining to the legacy of slavery.

The Trinidad Guardian sees the legend as reflecting “fears of isolation, jealousy, unexplained illness and mistrust within close-knit communities.” Illness with no obvious cause was sometimes blamed on a soucouyant.

Is the soucouyant real? No. She is a folklore figure. But suspicion can still do real harm. Creighton reported a case on Guyana’s East Coast in which villagers beat a woman to death because they believed she was an Ol’ Higue.

The soucouyant in fiction

The best-known literary use is David Chariandy’s first novel, Soucouyant, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. It was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Set near the Scarborough Bluffs in Ontario, it follows a Canadian-born son who returns to his Trinidad-born mother, now living with dementia, and pieces together her life from wartime Trinidad to Canada in the early 1960s. The Trinidad Guardian notes that Caribbean writers have reimagined the soucouyant as “a symbol of memory, colonial trauma and feminine power,” and she also appears in plays in Trinidad, Grenada and Barbados.

Our perspective

What strikes us in these stories is how each place kept its own details: a mortar here, an owl there, cow gall in Guyana, blue paint in Trinidad. Calling them all “the Caribbean vampire” loses that precision, and the question the stories keep asking: why fear settled on the old woman living alone.

As a press publishing Caribbean and diaspora fiction rooted in folklore and memory, we think these figures deserve serious treatment, not cosy treatment. They hold real histories of suspicion, illness, displacement and survival, and good fiction can show both the terror and the person behind the rumour.

Read more from Maroon House Press

For the soucouyant’s full story, read our guide to the soucouyant and Caribbean folklore. To see where she fits among the region’s other spirits, browse our overview of Caribbean folklore creatures.

If you want these figures on the page in novels and stories, start with our reading list of Caribbean horror books, from duppies to rolling calves.

FAQ

What is the difference between a soucouyant and an Ol’ Higue?

Mostly the name and local details. Both are skin-shedding, blood-drinking old women; the Guyanese Ol’ Higue is especially linked to babies, and the Jamaican Ol’ Hige is said to take the form of an owl rather than a fireball.

What does soucouyant mean?

It names a skin-shedding, blood-drinking witch in Caribbean folklore. The word may come from the French Creole soucougnan.

Is the soucouyant real?

No. She is a folklore figure, once used to explain sudden illness and keep children indoors after dark.

Is a loogaroo a werewolf?

The name comes from the French loup-garou, werewolf, but in the Caribbean the name is often used for the soucouyant herself: a skin-shedding witch rather than a wolf.

Why does rice stop a soucouyant?

She is compelled to count or gather every grain, which delays her until dawn.

Sources

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