soucouyant

Noun

soucouyant (plural soucouyants)

1. (Caribbean) A night witch who sucks people's blood, sheds her skin, and can transform into a fireball and fly.
   • We can notice, for example, that “Vampire” combines the folkloric soucouyant (blood-sucking old woman in the shape of a ball of fire), a science fiction creature (“clammy, from its bed of hairs / And thirsty” [p. 24]), the moon again (Brown’s poems are obsessed by the moon); …1986, Kenneth Ramchand, “Wayne Vincent Brown”, in Daryl Cumber Dance (ed.), Fifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 90
   • The Soucouyant is an evil fire, a kind of witch, that robes itself entirely in the skin of an old woman to hide its true identity from neighbors.2002, David E. Jones, Evil in Our Midst: A Chilling Glimpse of the World's Most Feared and Frightening Demons, Square One Publishers, Inc., →ISBN, page 133