#soucouyant

[allmythologies]

day 30 of horror mythology: soucouyant

soucouyant appear as a reclusive old woman by day. by night, she strips off her wrinkled skin and puts it in a mortar. in form of a fireball, she flies across the dark sky in search of a victim. the soucouyant can enter the home of her victim through any sized hole such as cracks and keyholes. soucouyants suck humans' blood from their arms, necks, legs and other soft regions while they sleep, leaving black and blue marks on the body in the morning. if the soucouyant draws too much blood, it is believed that the victim will either die and become a soucouyant or perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin.

[gennsoup]

She tells me now that she doesn't understand that thing called memory. She doesn't understand its essence of dynamic, and why, especially, it never seems to abide by the rules of time or space or individual consciousness.

David Chariandy, Soucouyant

[thegenxorcist]

Soucouyant

The Soucouyant is a creature of Caribbean folklore that has been passed down through generations and remains an urban legend in many parts of the Caribbean. Originating in countries such as Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guadeloupe, the Soucouyant is described as a supernatural creature that takes the form of a vampire-like being with an insatiable thirst for human blood. In this blog post, we will explore the mysterious and fascinating Soucouyant and its connection to urban legend...

Soucouyant: The Vampire-Like Folklore of the Caribbean

[connectparanormal]

Soucouyant Hags

Caribbean folklore, especially in Trinidad and Tobago and other West Indies, features the Soucouyant, a haunting and enigmatic character. This shape-shifting vampiric creature represents the anxieties, mysteries, and cultural values of the people that tell her stories. African, French, and Caribbean beliefs form the foundation of The Soucouyant, a terrifying fable that combines witchcraft, vampirism, and human fragility. The Soucouyant appears to be a secluded old woman, living on the margins of her town by day. Her demure exterior hides her frightening inner nature. At night, the Soucouyant transforms into a blazing ball by stripping off her skin and hiding it in a mortar or another secret location. It's nighttime, and she sneaks inside homes to prey on unsuspecting victims. Her main aim is human blood, which she takes by biting victims as they sleep and leaves dark bruises. The Soucouyant's vampiric nature connects her to global legends of blood-drinking animals and roots her in Caribbean culture.

The Soucouyant is more than a terrifying figure. She warns and reflects social worries. In various versions of the mythology, the Soucouyant is a greedy, envious, or power-hungry woman who made a deal with dark forces for supernatural powers. Her metamorphosis into a night creature is considered a punishment and a consequence of her moral shortcomings, highlighting the perils of deviating from conventional beliefs or engaging in forbidden acts. People also see the Soucouyant as a victim of her own desires, trapped in a cycle of predation and secrecy. Shedding her skin symbolizes vulnerability and dualism. Without skin, the Soucouyant is vulnerable and reveals her true character. Her biggest weakness is that anyone who finds her discarded skin can salt or burn it, preventing her from regaining her human form. The mythology emphasizes exposure and vengeance, showing that Soucouyants are not indestructible, no matter how powerful or crafty. Her fear of discovery and punishment mirrors the human fear of judgment and consequences, adding a moral dimension to her story. The Soucouyant narrative demonstrates the intertwining of Caribbean mythology and nature. Her capacity to become a ball of fire and fly through the night sky conjures spirits or energy, mixing the supernatural with the normal. Her propensity to sneak through tiny holes and crevices shows her fear of the invisible and uncontrollable, as well as the permeability of human-supernatural boundaries.  The Soucouyant symbolizes the unseen forces lying beyond human perception in a location where insects, animals, and plants rustle at night.

Not only is the Soucouyant a mythological figure, she also represents Caribbean culture. Her name comes from the French word sucoyer, meaning to suck, referring to her vampiric nature, while her witchcraft and shape-shifting roots come from African spirituality. Caribbean colonial and post-colonial experiences shaped Soucouyant stories of resistance, survival, and adaptability. The Soucouyant weaves these varied cultural threads into a single, timeless story that captivates and frightens. Today, the Soucouyant is a powerful Caribbean figure. Her story shows how folklore may address universal fears and problems about morality, vulnerability, and the unknown. She symbolizes the conflict between humans and the otherworld, which is frightening and fascinating.  As a cautionary tale, cultural emblem, or spine-tingling entertainment, the Soucouyant remains one of Caribbean folklore's most intriguing figures. Her brilliant, fiery form streaking across the night sky reminds us that even in an era of reason and technology, the world's mysteries and their stories still fascinate us.

[petewentzisblack1312]

can you weebs start romanticizing caribbean creole culture please. thank you.

[candela888]

After much research I have decided that vampiric entities in the Americas come in three different types, based on region. If u have any questions feel free to ask.

Vampiric entities of Mexico & Southwest USA:

Ojai vampire

Chupacabra (dog-like variety)

Tlahuelpuchi

Lechuza

Vampiro de Belen

Cihuateteo

Witch-like or animalistic. Tend to feed on defenseless children or animals. Many can shapeshift, usually into animals like wolves or owls.

Vampiric entities of South America:

Pishtaco

Abchanchu

Peuchen

Chonchon

Capelobo

Patasola

Tunda

Boraro

Animalistic and monstrous, many of these are barely even humanoid, usually horiffic to look at. Tend to go after adults, and are usually malicious. Many have backwards feet.

Vampiric entities of the Atlantic Coast:

New England Vampire panic

NYC vampire sightings

Hag, Ole-Higue, & Boo Hag

Chupacabra (alien variety)

Vampiro de Moca

Loogaroo/Rougarou

Soucouyant

Asema

New Orleans vampire sightings

Jacques St. Germain

Almost always humanoid, usually undead, sometimes witch-like, tend to attack people of all ages.

[apocalypse-shuffle]

⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆DROLTA TZUENTES⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺ | THE DEMONESS (castlevania: nocturne)

—

“Solar Prominences” (Drolta Tzuentes x Fem!Reader)

| Drolta has been going down a path, long enacting a plan, that you wish you didn’t have to take. Even still, you’d follow the love of your immortal life all the way to the end, even if it killed you.

| SFW, established relationship, angst, some comfort, murder, alatrism, Egypt, this reader-insert does not like Erzsebet, exposition heavy - vampire!reader

| Also not Drolta highkey being a soucouyant. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but I truly do not understand some of the design choices made for her character from a creature standpoint. SEASON TWO SPOILERS. (Pic source: Castlevania: Nocturne - “Devourer of Light” S1EP8)

| 2k+ words

Night Eternal.

The sun: eaten.

Wide eyes stare ceaselessly at the covered sun and darkened sky. Your gaze bouncing all over the stretched corners of Earth’s world above and all your brothers and sisters of the vein soaring through the air during what should’ve been noon.

On the rooftop you’ve since claimed a woman lands behind you.

You hear the jingle of Drolta’s jewelry before she properly announces herself.

The subtle clack of her hoofed heels and flap of her wings come next. Then the whoosh of her hair, the open sound of her flames dying down, registers to your ears.

Arms crossed, you drum the sharp points of your nails against the brown expanse of your skin, brows lifting.

“What did I tell you, my Sweet?”

Quiet, you swallow the residual blood in your mouth from the Noblewoman you’d snatched from her carriage the moment darkness overtook the sun. Earlier in the week she’d likened your hair to the ‘dirty’ swamp moss she’d encountered during her visit to Louisiana; cockier around you than she should’ve been despite knowing what you were, too caught up on her pretend version of what the ‘natural order of things’ was.

So ‘naturally’ you drained her gaunt, and then turned to her handmaiden because even after her you’d still found yourself peckish.

These French and their ridiculous dedication to aesthetics. Absentmindedly, you flick a bit of severed flesh from your cleavage; so unnecessarily skinny the lot of them. You missed when aristocrats (even dedicated to not washing as they were) weren’t afraid to have a little meat on their bones to showcase their upper status.

Originally, you’d been planning on snatching her from her sleep after a bit of antagonism once true nightfall fell later today but you couldn’t complain about cutting short the restless anticipation that had before now had nothing better to do than fester restlessly under your skin.

“To believe,” you say at last, still chasing faint crimson with your tongue. Blood had a tendency to get trapped in the grooves of your fangs.

To believe in her impossible woman. In her false Vampire Messiah and her aggrandizing power grab.

Your brows furrow back over your dark eyes all over again.

How many years had you been by her side before Erzsebet even came into the picture, only to be cast as second priority to Erzsebet’s blood thirst and unwavering desire for conquest?

“Yes,” the corner of Drolta’s lips twitch upwards; not quite a smile for you, not yet. “And do you finally? Believe in our Messiah?”

Belief.

Faith.

What nonsense dogma. Such hollow promises.

You’d watched Sekhmet burned by the Christians, temples fallen, and faithful followers scorned without mercy. And through it all no worship had helped, no amount of sacrifice, or fighting, or tears.

No, your only constant had been Drolta and then a smear of seemingly never ending darkness atop your soul.

By the end you had learned your lesson, and yet still Drolta had failed to follow your lead. She’d clung to hope of blood possession and resurrection after you’d found yourself displaced from the safety of your lover - from Egypt - and shipped off in stacks of blood and sorrow and feces.

Still, you step back to turn from the building's edge. Drolta has always craved a higher purpose as long as you’ve known her. A ruthless, hands on way to worship and be rewarded in turn; her insistence of the same now was really nothing new bar your less than tolerant reaction towards it.

You weren’t too cocky to be unable to admit that you were…impressed, however.

She’d managed a lot with her bloodthirst and ever present plotting, broke the sun even.

What a miracle she’d orchestrated.

A hundred plus years on this neverending plane and finally something had managed to surprise you.

To yourself, you smile. Hide the tiny upturned corners of your mouth as you turn to your lover, hand an extra barrier from her gaze as you pass it through the air to sweep your cloud of thick curls over your shoulder. It cascades down the length of your back till the tips hang just past the rise of your backside, purposefully the opposite of the types of updos the French thought so favorably of for their women because you were not one of them and held no desire to be so either.

To Drolta, you give a steady look.

Following hasn’t been your particular cup of tea for the better half of multiple centuries. It only took so many years of being beaten to kneel for you to grow an aversion to its systematic use and the often heavily adorned, sometimes pale, faces who’d looked down at you in the thick of it.

And even still you hardly kneeled for Drolta unless the exchange was neutral. A natural cycle of give and take. Power exchanged willingly, participation optional.

Submitting yourself to a God’s whims, false or not, was the type of uneven exchange you preferred not to buckle for. Not anymore.

Not, especially, when it was Drolta’s bastardized Messiah.

Drolta should know that better than any soul still alive enough to tell the tale. You had not been modest about your aversion to submission during her time snatching displaced disciples from the European islands, you’re sure even that very passion had been what had drawn her so succinctly back to you in the first place.

And yet she asks you for your belief with such poorly hidden satisfaction, like all you had needed to give yourself wholly to a bitch you didn’t trust as far as you could hurl her into the sun to burn forever was Báthory making a bigger spectacle of herself than usual.

Oh how you miss the days when you’d both only existed for fucking and fighting and being free. Gorging yourselves on blood and death, beholden by your love for one another alone, and slaughtering your way through sands and snow and the King’s poorly controlled conquests before returning back home.

The raiders had already come and Sekhmet’s body had since been lost. Drolta had survived their merciless slaughtering of her sisters, and you had been brought in down the line to help her lead. To help her search.

Drolta and you had been free even despite the weight that hung over you nonetheless.

Free until Drolta’s eventual push for Báthory to take control in the face of your unacceptable reality took precedence. Until the promises of grandeur that Drolta had fed you fell at your feet, the new faulty deity that she’d built up needing to make followers anew in her vampiric image.

You’d made a beautiful offering to Báthory’s corrupted version of the goddess you'd once sworn yourself to. Convenient as her first turned, loyal to a fault to her faithful emissary, and too precious for Drolta not to keep near even whilst her priorities shifted away from you harder than ever.

For years prior it had been Drolta who you’d wanted to turn you, blessed as she’d been by your actual goddess as her most favored and ruthless priestess. Drolta, less human than you by far, had sworn to you she’d become your Maker and then promptly pivoted to convince you to take vampiric blood from the vein of another instead; to be similarly blessed by your goddess.

Except Erzsebet was hardly any goddess, reborn or otherwise, you didn’t care how much goddess blood she consumed. A fact that you, quite frankly, couldn’t stress enough even if your demoness continuously refused to listen.

Fury led your partner to previously unthought of extremes, however, and shame at her failure to be a proper priestess made her ambitious enough to give herself wholly to aiding whoever took to Sekhmet’s blood without succumbing to death. Drolta would never stop trying to make up for losing your goddess’s body, no matter if it meant calling Báthory her mistress and mauling through armies and hordes to get her on a throne.

The bullheaded woman in question draws closer. Walking past your shoulder to settle standing beside where you just were, overlooking Machecoul in all its darkened overcast glory.

Despite everything she still captures your attention.

She takes a moment to look at the eclipse. Tilts her head up and raises her arms beside her to catch the sun’s nullified beams against umber skin, to feel the wind’s delicate chill across supernatural features and outstretched wings.

The radiant ends of her tight curls dance in the breeze, little embers of colorful fire carried away by the current so fresh from her having fully transformed.

When she turns to you her lashes flutter, fuchsia eyes meeting your scarlet and locking you in place.

For a moment it’s as if she’s yours again.

As if you being hers holds the weight of every deceleration ever all at once; accumulated into one large forever vow to keep you.

Ensnared in her aura as you are when she shifts to take a step closer to you, outstretched and still raised hand turning up to invite yours, you unlock and take two deft steps of your own without a second thought.

Meeting her in the middle is easy. Magnetic attraction to your demoness more a well worn muscle than breathing at this point. You’re too far removed from your fledgling days to have pantomimed breath as a crutch in forever, but the devotion you stood by is your only constant in this un-life.

Once she gets her hands on you Drolta pulls you in with a blur of movement, her grasp unrelenting. She settles your hands on her hips without waiting for you to make the decision yourself, moves one of her now free hands to dance spindly fingers up your side and then rest her palm securely over your unmoving ribcage.

Grand leathery wings encircle you in their strange icy heat, surrounding you with just her. Her and the soft, colored insides of her wings that press against your unnaturally unscarred skin so succinctly.

“Hm,” she reaches her other hand up to ghost the tips of her nails down the side of your face, eyes searching, “I expected a bit more excitement for the miracle I helped orchestrate, you know?”

“I’m…awed,” you argue, trying not to let your face screw up.

Drolta raises a singular brow, expression unflinching. She palms the side of your face, skin cool as the dead, and rubs the pad of her finger across your lower lip.

“Oh, is that the look you’re giving me…?”

The drag of her thumb drags your attention away, your mind wandering bitterly and gaze following suit.

Whether or not you were excited really didn’t matter here.

“It’s the only look I have.”

In hardly a second the corners of her lips tick down into a frown and the quick look she drags down your body is tentative. Her face loses any traces of that worry just as it registers to you at all, though, gone too quickly for you to address.

When her thumb passes over your lip for the last time is the exact moment you realize she’s not just touching you to be sentimental either.

Drolta snatches you up by the chin, thumb digging not uncomfortably into the divot of your jaw, and forces the entirety of your gaze back onto her. She smiles at the way you frown, at the way you don’t resist.

“Nonsense. The sun is gone, most humans will die without it soon enough, and we will reign over all that remains.” The fingers on your ribcage shift like a spiders’ legs against your body in tandem with her words. Whether in admonishment or the simple urge to touch, you couldn’t guess. “Almost makes you feel alive, no?”

In her hold you twitch, bumping lightly into her wings.

Possibly.

“You make it sound far simpler than it is,” you murmur. The hold on your jaw eases up, a nail scrapes lightly across your cheek.

Drolta scoffs, luminous eyes sparking.

“There’s no use dawdling about the inevitable, my Sweet. You know that. We will rule by Sekhmet’s side again, and they will all bow or be slaughtered for their disobedience.”

“…If you believe that to be true,” you say.

The woman doesn’t so much as hesitate.

“I do.”

Her hand lifts from your ribs and Drolta takes care to sink her restless fingers into your dark hair. Touch undemanding when she scrunches it fondly, nails scraping lightly over your scalp. You lean into her hold like a withering flower long denied light.

Oh, to be hers again. To bring terror beside her like during the good eras you both lived once upon a time.

The scrape against your plumper skin stings, and then it bleeds. A singular drop falling from the finely split skin of your cheek. You don’t react to it until your lover brings her hand up to taste that bead of liquid, a line of your blood dragged down the middle of her tongue that she savors with a meager groan.

Lashes fluttering, you eagerly press back into her returning hold on your face. When you shut your eyes your lids fall heavily. You make a low noise in the back of your throat that borders on a growl, biting back your own groan, but grit your teeth against it anyway.

“Truly?”

Even while eager to taste yourself against her tongue you can’t help but to be dubious. Vampires had ruled once already, had they not? Even Dracula’s dominion had fallen, lordship finally ended in an evening. Even Sekhmet had been overshadowed, worshipers depleted to a pathetic degree compared to what they once were.

When her wings close even more securely around you it feels transcendent, you gasp at the cooling feel of them.

“Truly,” she murmurs, leaning in, the brush of her plush lips against yours almost playful when she grins. You find yourself matching her grin, if only smaller, and she chuckles lowly, lidded gaze intent on you. “There is no reason to doubt.”

Drolta’s mouth presses to yours with abandon, presence demanding as it crashes over you. She drags you in with a tug on your hair and then pulls you flush to her after bringing that very same hand down to grip your hip.

The kiss is crushing. Filled with years worth of elation, of satisfaction. It drags on for its own mini eternity, your tongues clashing as she dives in to taste the stray traces of blood staining your gums. Moaning, you wrap an arm around her to drag her impossibly closer by the waist, not fighting her palm on your cheek even as you bring your other hand up to take hold of her chin. Determined, you make her give you more access to her mouth, loosen her jaw so you can rub the tip of your tongue across her fangs and feel her shudder against you.

You stamp down your doubt only because it is her asking. Only because you want her to be so very correct on principle, even if it means ceding to Erzsebet.

At the end of the day you were happy as your own god, your own control, and your own rule maker. One god had failed you already, and unlike Drolta you would not go tracking down another Master. But, still, you could not quit Drolta. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

Her gaze is smouldering once your kiss breaks, her grasp on you remaining possessive.

Running your dark knuckles down the side of her face, pace steady, you allow her another fleeting smile.

This one is even smaller than the last but Drolta doesn’t notice enough for it to make any difference. She’s too busy staring off into the distance. Staring in the direction of the château and the grand woman who corrupted its shadow, the all powerful gift giver who has given you this night.

Nonetheless it’s not gratitude that twists your smile into something less pleasant. Not reverence that makes your eyes freeze over a brighter, frostier red.

There was a time where you complemented one another.

Where you’d vowed to be mistresses of your own domains and bow only to each other.

Now you’re not so sure she wouldn’t bow to a different mistress - her ‘goddess’ - if she took it upon herself to tear you in two with her pale crystalline hands.

Your touch upon her cheek turns sharp when you turn your hand to cup the side of her face, the tips of your nails biting into her supple skin.

How well gorged she is.

When Drolta glances with lidded pink eyes back to you she’s smirking. She thinks you're playing— her and her damned insistence on games.

Expression smoothing out to something more bored than not, you raise a brow.

“Fly back with me,” she says. An answer to a question not asked. “Let us serve Erzsebet together.”

You stare.

Curse this world and its poison called belief.

You’d had a lover once.

The corners of your eyes crinkle. If you had tears you would be too inclined to shed them.

Blinded by her devotion as she is Drolta doesn’t notice your despair. She just laughs to herself, eager to serve, even more so than typical of her.

Eager to kill, more like it.

When she looks back out to her Messiah her eyes twinkle, and where once you’d scene sapparies you now only see coal.

How had you not noticed just how far she’d fallen?

That she’d been taken from you?

“Of course,” you lie, words coating your blood stained tongue like ash.

Drolta smiles wider, pretty fangs glinting in the moon’s light, before her wings expand and flap behind her.

Pink magic swirls and her arms circle your waist. Red - your red - rushes up to match it, though wings of your own do not sprout, and with your combined abilities you take flight.

Absent your usual synergy you're almost disappointed the unconnected swirls of your energies still work to carry you towards a woman you were steady wanting less and less to do with.

Sorrow grips your unbeating heart whole and despair eats at it as you follow Drolta’s lead anyway, her arms still around you like she could keep any of the promises you whispered into one another’s skin what feels like eons ago.

Your lover’s embrace has never felt so false and the moon’s face has never looked so foreign.

The love of your life had been stolen from right under your nose and you hadn’t even noticed, no longer yours alone. No longer your beloved - your Drolta - but a believer; a follower.

Erzsebet’s beloved emissary.

Truly it had been foolish of you to ever think that after all their centuries together Drolta’s loyalty to Erzsebet Báthory could ever be shaken by her love for you, by your devotion to her, or the two lives you’ve shared together— one life more than Erzsebet’s gotten, but still not a divine enough life for you to stay the only woman at Drolta’s side.

NOTES: Hope you enjoyed!!! Drolta’s ass was wrong the whole time, but pretty privilege is a bitch so here I am adding another evil woman to my collection anyway, I love this character bad.

Okay, I finally finished this show (in Nov 2024) and started getting some ideas by the last episode so here we go. And, really, my only serious complaint as of right now is the f-bomb crutch that impacted nearly every character’s dialogue; it really did get egregious at times. And keep in mind that I wrote this before season two dropped.

Also, me and Egypt are not familiar with one another so I kept things vague but if anything is super off (and outside of the boundaries set by the show) feel free to check me.

Also also, I made a True Blood reference if anybody caught it!

btw: if you’d like to leave a comment I’d very much appreciate it!

EDITED: 1/16//25 later in the day bcs I watched the first few episodes of season two.

[yvain]

Oyeyemi’s novel might be considered as a “writing back” to the diseased body of contemporary vampire-candy fiction of romanced teenagers and beautiful normal monsters. Her use of the Caribbean mythology of the soucouyant subverts the Anglo-American vampiric tradition and, at the same time, invigorates the genre by injecting it with new blood. Oyeyemi avoids tame and glamorized vampire representations and the reproduction of dominant heterosexual values and gendered norms. By polluting the purity of the white, heteronormative vampire, Oyeyemi has created, through the character of Miranda, a female vampire who occupies a complex, queer subjectivity and struggles to disentangle herself from the trauma of racism and the limitations of Western femininity. In reconfiguring the vampiric matriarchs as British and racist, Oyeyemi writes back against xenophobic responses to “other” places as the origin of vampires or the construction of colonial subjectivity during imperialism as monstrous and “other.” In this respect, Oyeyemi seeks to return to the horror of the vampire, while resisting the gothic’s traditional authority to inscribe monstrosity on dark, foreign others. Instead, she locates vampirism in the unhomely space of 29 Barton Road, where the color white is the marker of gothic terrors and repressed racism, in order to address the historical present.

Aspasia Stephanou, “Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and the Discourse of Consumption”

[richincolor]

New Releases - February 11, 2025

We have four books on our calendar for this week. There's a lot of magic between the covers of several of the books along with a little haunting and a bit of music too.

(S)kin by Ibi Zoboi Versify

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ibi Zoboi comes her groundbreaking contemporary fantasy debut—a novel in verse based on Caribbean folklore—about the power of inherited magic and the price we must pay to live the life we yearn for.

Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her magical past—her mother.

Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the daughter of a college professor and a newly minted older half sister of twins. Her worsening skin condition and the babies’ constant wailing keep her up at night, when she stares at the dark sky with a deep longing to inhale it all. She hopes to quench the hunger that gnaws at her, one that seems to reach for some memory of her estranged mother. When a new nanny arrives to help with the twins, a family secret connecting her to Marisol is revealed, and Gen begins to find answers to questions she hasn’t even thought to ask.

But the girls soon discover that the very skin keeping their flames locked beneath the surface may be more explosive to the relationships around them than any ancient magic.

Reign of the Talons (Talons #3) by Sophie Kim Entangled: Teen

How do you kill a prophecy?

The Prophecy has arrived…and with her, war.

A prisoner caged within the walls of her own mind, the once-fierce assassin known as Shin Lina can do nothing but watch as a tide of blood and chaos sweeps across the Three Kingdoms. After all, Lina is the one who unleashed the malevolent Prophecy upon her world.

So many secrets. So many lies. And it’s all her fault.

Yet Haneul Rui—the immortal Dokkaebi Emperor who stole her heart—refuses to surrender. He alone leads the armies against the dangerous, serpentine Imugi. He alone wields his scorching fire atop blood-soaked battlefields, and he alone rallies his soldiers against a terrifying future of death and destruction.

Now the red thread of fate ties them all together in love and hatred—Rui, Lina, and the merciless Prophecy herself. And the more Lina fights against her destiny, the tighter the thread becomes.

For they are bound in both life and death; to wound one is to wound them all. To kill the Child of Venom is to kill them all.

And soon, not even the wrathful gods themselves can stop their inevitable ruin.

Ghost Queen by Mahtab Narsimhan Orca Book Publishers

Hey, Ghosties, this is the Ghost Queen tuning in from the most haunted place in India!

Teen vlogger Malika’s ghost hunter channel is almost popular enough to start earning money to support her family. All she needs is one viral video—and she knows exactly where she’s going to get it. Bhangarh Fort is the most haunted place in India, rumoured to be home to the cursed princess Ratnavati and her wicked captor. Malika convinces her boyfriend to sneak into the fort with her after dark and record the experience for her avid fans and followers. That’s when things go terribly wrong. Can the “Ghost Queen” escape, or is she doomed to spend eternity trapped with a mad magician and the princess who rejected him?

This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for teen readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read! The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Dropping Beats by Nathanael Lessore Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year’s Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?

But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral– and not in the way they’d hoped.

Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he’ll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.

But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don’t seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.

Either way, he’s ready for this. He’s steady for this. It’s comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.

[politicaloutsider]

Autumn 🍂

Shabby are these Sweater sleeves,

Come and see, these Autumn leaves!

No more pansies, peonies,

No more Lilies, Busy Bees.

Time to breathe, and watch the trees,

Stop and swoop; stoop and seize,

A mug of mead, and pumpkin seeds,

Flamboyant breeze, Soucouyant steeze.

Bars and bills, adjoined with thrills,

Candescent hills, Clarescent chills.

The wagon wheel, the Autumn feel,

with peppered veal, embraced with zeal.

Potato peels, and toothsome meals,

Much less ideal, to lie and steal,

‘cause Santa’s coming, Yes he’s real,

what’s in your heart you must reveal.

We have no time left here to waste,

the time has come to end with haste,

So mark the date, and don’t be late,

Thanksgivings on, the 28th.

[gennsoup]

"No, child . . . That won't make me happy. Justice don't never make anyone happy. Is just justice."

David Chariandy, Soucouyant

[apilgrimpassingby]

The Midnight Circle

So, this morning, I got the idea to create some monster hunters in a Gothic setting - each specialised in hunting a different monster and each outside the ideal of Victorian society in some way. There've been plenty of interesting Gothic monsters, and monster hunters are generally less interesting, so I wanted to develop them some. I don't know if I'll do anything with these characters, but they were fun to make and, if anyone wants to draw them or write fiction about them

The year is 1852. The Midnight Circle is a group of monster hunters - some full-time, some part-time, and all skilled at their jobs - who meet each new moon at midnight (though attendance is not compulsory, and many are unable to do so for various reasons) in one of their houses to discuss findings, projects and arrange their next hunt of the creatures of the night.

Marianne Cutler

Born in Manchester on the 29th of November 1820, Marianne spent her childhood doing mill work from the age of seven onwards. Her life was drastically changed at the age of fifteen, when she narrowly survived an attack by a vampire; however, she was left with an aversion to all things holy, a dislike of sunlight, a set of brutal scars on her neck and, by night, superhuman strength, speed, reflexes and senses. After being initiated by an older vampire hunter who had been looking for her, she cut her teeth hunting baobhan sith in the Scottish Highlands, spent a few years hunting penanggalan in Malaysia and a few years after that hunting soucouyants in the British Empire's Caribbean colonies, and returned to Britain at the age of twenty-three, where she joined the Midnight Circle by invitation, having caught the attention of Jonah Weller (will be detailed below) while in the Caribbean. She is now their vampire hunter and hand-to-hand combat specialist.

Dress-wise, she is unusual for a woman of her period in her preference for trousers; these are worn together with a white shirt, brown waistcoat, fichu and a lace veil and a pair of gloves to cover her skin by day. Her preferred weapon is a sabre serrated with alternate points of glass, silver and cold iron. She has red-tinted blue eyes and dark brown long hair tied back in a bun.

Personality-wise, she is withdrawn, quiet and melancholy, motivated both by the carnage she has seen and perpetrated and fear for her soul, seeing as she is unable to enter into any church due to her condition. During combat, the quietness remains the same, but the melancholy is replaced by steely skill and determination. She is free of almost all the prejudices of the era, as well as its characteristic optimism, being preoccupied with self-loathing and fear of eternal damnation.

Isaac Montefiore

Born in North London on the 1st August 1828, Isaac grew up in a family of Jewish textile mill administrators; however, he was a perpetual rebel who by the age of eighteen had rejected his family, been kicked out from his synagogue and left Britain to become a wolf-hunter on the American frontier. At the age of twenty, he met a rougarou while doing some alligator-hunting work in the Louisiana bayou, barely survived and ended up in contact with Simon Thibodeaux (again, someone who will be dealt with later) and hence with the Midnight Circle, becoming their resident werewolf hunter and marksman.

His preferred dress is a buckskin shirt with fringing, obtained on the frontier, with a matching pair of trousers, along with a European set of boots and a tricorn hat to contrast. Around the waist is a belt decorated with the fangs and claws of the many werewolves he has slain. His preferred weapon is a smoothbore musket, again decorated with fangs and claws, and loaded with silver bullets. He has short dark curly hair and brown eyes beneath heavy black eyebrows.

Personality-wise, he remains as cynical and irreverent as ever, shocking many members with his lack of formality, foul language and contempt for all religions (even in spite of his supernatural experiences). The same traits also make him entertaining in small doses, particularly while drinking or fighting. His racial views are mixed; his experience of Native Americans has led him to regard "primitive peoples" with an odd mix of contempt for their lifestyles and admiration for their defiance of colonial regimes and intimate understanding of nature. His views on gender, while initially highly conservative, have been steadily softening ever since interaction with the Circle's female members.

Ethel Johnstone

Born in Cambridge on the 1st January 1812, Ethel was the only child of a landowning family, and hence was the object of much affection and attention. She learnt Greek as a child and read some Homer and Herodotus, but her real interest was science. Chemistry in particular was her passion; while she was unable to attend Cambridge University, her father was able to check out many books from the library for her to read, and arrange meetings between her and other chemists. Through these channels, she was introduced to all kinds of occult properties of chemicals and lightning, even to the creation of flesh constructs (think Frankenstein's monster things). Through them, she was also introduced to the Midnight Circle, and has now become their hunter of flesh constructs and resident chemists.

Her fashion tastes have frozen since her teenage years, wearing dresses in various 1820s cuts, most of them covered with chemical stains which the leather apron worn over them during lab work has done little to mitigate. Her hair, likewise, is in curls from that period, with copious amounts of raggedness due to long nights in the laboratory. For going into action, she wears both a belt and bandolier in which glass vials containing various chemicals are kept.

As for personality, she possesses copious amounts of cheeriness and energy, which is alternately divested into personability and into the laboratory, with excess divesting into the laboratory sometimes turning into a tired irritability. Unlike the other members, she is married (to a Classics professor called Robert) and has children (named Margaret and Paul), but as a woman of means entrusts much of their livelihood to her and her husband's servants, which feeds into much of her politics: a strong interest in the education and emancipation of women (she has ensured a solid education for Margaret), but at the same time a great deal of support for traditional class structures.

Fr. Peter Rook

Fr. Peter was born to a sheep farmer in Clitheroe, Lancashire on the 21st February 1792. As a third son with some intelligence, he became a Roman Catholic priest, and was set for a comfortable but dull life of ministering to rural parishes in the Lancashire uplands, until he was called on to exorcise a ghost troubling the village he was assigned to, and eventually became something of a specialist in it; as such, he was invited to the Midnight Circle while in London.

His clothing is, of course, the black cassock and crucifix of a Roman Catholic priest, with the addition of a satchel carried at all times and embroidered with an image of the Archangel Michael, in which he carries his exorcistic gear - a crucifix, the text of the Rite of Exorcism and vials of holy water. He has a pair of wire-framed glasses surrounding his icy blue eyes, and a tangled mass of greying hair.

His personality is chiefly defined by intense conservativism of the small-c variety; he has stuck steadfastly to the religion of his birth, he is sceptical of most supernatural phenomena (particularly those, such as malevolent undead, that are hard to explain within Roman Catholic theology) and is the most likely to express scepticism about plans and the dated views of the period. The exception is religion - having grown up in a stigmatised minority religion, he is supportive of minority religious rights in general, and unusually accepting of Montefiore's atheism.

Simon Thibodeaux

The child of a Louisianian plantation owner and his mistress, Simon was born on the 10th September 1822, grew up in New Orleans and obsessively learnt magic throughout his life - hoodoo as a child, spiritualism as a teenager and finally hermeticism in his twenties. The resultant training left him an adept magician, which he finally put to use opposing a Satanist coven he discovered in the city's high society. While he did a great deal of damage to them, he was driven out by them - the word of several white men held much more weight than that of one biracial one - and arrived in London, where he met with Jonah Weller (again, we'll get to him) and the two established the Midnight Society together, with him specialising in hunting sorcerers and witches via being the Society's resident occultist.

His preferred clothing is the standard black suit of 1850s Western high society, although he subtly embroiders it with several details. A pentagram is sown onto the inside of his shirt collar, the buttons of his shirts have the names of sefirot on them, and in hidden compartments of his suit jacket are the herbs, incantations and wand he uses for magical purposes. His eyes are brown, and his carefully-combed hair is curly and dark brown.

Ever since his childhood, he has been endeavouring to prove himself to white society; as a result, he is a fluent speaker of English and French, intensely witty and generally skilled at all things high-society. Beneath that, however, is an insecurity that easily comes out in response to racism; Fr. Peter has learnt not to call him an "African witch doctor" after receiving a black eye from him. His other area of confidence, the occult, is less brittle - however, he is prone to going on nerdy rants if prompted.

Dr. Mortimer Rivers

Dr. Rivers was born in Bath to a wealthy landowner on the 10th October 1805; his father died when he was nine, leaving him with a substantial fortune. He used that money to purchase all the latest books and go to all the latest lectures on Egyptology; he soon became a self-taught Egyptologist (as well as learning Arabic to be able to converse in Egypt). Despite certain eccentricities - among others, his preference for eating with his fingers, his strange mutterings to himself, his avoidance of eye contact and his total lack of self-consciousness about any of the above - he became recognised as one of the best readers of hieroglyphs in Europe. He went on to accompany various Egyptologists on digs, and in the process encountered mummies risen from the dead; upon return, the Midnight Society inducted him as their specialist in mummies and research.

His clothing is something of a reflection of his personality; a very faded long Regency-era coat inherited from his father with copious numbers of patches, a pair of high boots purchased from a military surplus store, and a turban obtained in Egypt wrapped around his neck as well as his face due to rather inept wrapping, framing a face of a scruffy brown beard and hair, pale blues and wire-framed glasses. Notably, he almost never wears anything else and is conspicuously uncomfortable in other clothing.

His defining trait is his intense enthusiasm for all things Ancient Egyptian and disinterest in all modernity, especially formality. He is happiest on his own, translating hieroglyphic texts in a country house with no company but the housemaid. He is noticeably uncomfortable in almost all social interactions - the notable exception being talking with other academics about Egyptology, and they are uncomfortable with him. Although Egyptology is his first and greatest love, he is able to become fixated on numerous topics, which helps make him a particularly talented researcher. While a devout Anglican, he is increasingly plagued by doubts, both due to the supernatural things he has encountered and the lack of Egyptian textual attestation to the Exodus.

Captain Jonah Weller

Jonah Weller was born in Bristol on the 3rd July 1802 to a family of sailors, and quickly rose up in those ranks, becoming captain of his own ship, the Skua. On an 1839 voyage to Malaysia, he encountered a fishman dwelling at sea, and slew it with a harpoon; in London, he encountered Simon Thibodeaux, the two of them founded the Midnight Circle, and he became its specialist in slaying fishmen (think Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Shadow over Innsmouth) and the organiser of group logistics.

Jonah dresses in the clothing of a sailor of his period, with certain adjustments - his cloth cap has a protective pentagram embroidered by Simon into the top, his dark blue jacket has hidden pockets containing special harpoon tips, his trousers have inner waterproofing to allow better wading in the water. His black hair and long beard are rapidly going grey, and his eyes are a piercing green. His preferred weapon is a harpoon, with silver and cold iron tips and occult symbols on it.

His defining emotion is guilt. He quickly fell into alcoholism as a sailor and, in the early 19th century, this was seen as a moral rather than psychological illness. This was his drive for founding the Midnight Society - hoping to slay the demons he could not kill in himself and make the world a safer place for all. Due to his transient life and guilt, he has never had a family (or even visited a prostitute, save for one time in his youth) and has few, if any friends outside of the members of the Midnight Circle. In search of a cure for alcoholism, he has been wandering from one revivalist sect to another; he is currently in the Methodists and it even seems to be sticking.

[itriedwritingandhereiam]

Caribbean folklore is so interesting. There's only a few books on it because a lot of it is passed down through oral tradition but once you find a way to hear the stories they're so interesting.

They come from a mix and match of African, Indian and European myths with a pinch of Caribbean history to spice it up.

I don't think I've really come across it as much as other myths like Greek, Japanese etc

I wanna yap about some key figures:

Note that there will obviously be variations from region to region, even village to village because, passing through word of mouth isn't the best way to keep consistent.

So there's this lady called a Soucouyant. (Soo-coo-yah) or something along those lines. Some say she made a deal with the Devil to retain life but in order to sustain herself, she drinks the blood of unsuspecting sleeping villagers. Her mark is characterized as blue black discolourations on skin.

She's similar to vampires in a way but the key difference is probably the fact that when she descends upon a village, she peels off her skin and hides it away in her house. Fleshy and traveling as a ball of fire, she visits houses and finds a new victim nightly.

Usually, being drained by a soucouyant results in fatigue and the general effects of losing blood.

The best way to counteract her, is to line windows and doors with salt. Salt to flesh is not a fun experience after all.

Another way to be rid of her is to find her shed skin and throw salt in it to when she tries to put it on come morning, she'll burn.

On that note, if you have the misfortune of meeting one, if you topple a bag of rice over, she has no choice but to count every last grain. If she doesn't finish by sunrise, she'll burn to death (need to double check that,)

There is definitely a cultural significance of why she is portrayed the way she is, but I need to consult my grandparents, maybe some old story books to see if I can find it.

-

On the same note of devilish she-monsters, we have the La Diablesse (lah jah-bless) yeah I know it's french/maybe patois, but that's how I and my family pronounce it.

The la diablesse is a beautiful woman who appears to drunken men in a long dress and a hidden cow hoof instead of leg.

She appears in remote areas and has a hop-drop walk and usually is in need of assistance

She lures them out into the woods and to their untimely demise by sending them off the edge of a cliff.

She serves as a warning not to be out at night so late (theres more, have to check)

-

Mama D'leau, (maybe D'lo or G'lo depending on who you talk to) (pronounced, Mama D'loh), Mother of Water, a very literal title as she is the protector of rivers and their inhabitants. Usually a mermaid-type with a female upper body and serpentine lower half.

Her tolerance for anyone wishing harm upon her domain is thin and she's a fierce protector.

-

The douen (God I hate french/patois(LMAO i'm learning french)) are the spirits of unbaptized children who perished, lost in the forest. (supposedly). Pronounced Dwen (can be spelt like that too in some regions)

They're easily identified by their twisted feet and large brim straw hats hiding their featureless faces. ( I still get creeps thinking about them)

They have a disturbing habit of lurking other children into the forest by mimicking the parent's voices in order to gain new playmates or simply for the mischief of getting live children lost.

They're little pranksters and sometimes, people would complain about them trampling their gardens.

-

Papa Bois is like mother nature, (pronounced as papa bwa)but more goaty. Literally, he's the father/protector of the forest and does not tolerate any harm done to his domain, similarly to Mama D'lo. Fun fact! Some depict him as married to the protectress!

He looks a bit like satyr if you squint, a hairy body and hooves for feet, Little horns at the tip of his head and strong muscles.

He has the ability to change forms, often appearing as a deer and such. A bullhorn in his possession is used to warn wildlife when hunters approach in order for them to run to safety.

Papa Bois is feared for his wrath. IF you have the chance to meet him, don't be rude and stare at his hooves, instead, use a polite greeting and hope you don't piss him off.

Papas Bois is a cautionary tale to hunters and those who destroy nature :)

-

Calling someone a jumbie is usually to denote how late they stay up (ahem, me) but a jumbie really is a creepy ass figure.

A Jumbie is a malicious spirit who roams the Earth. Why? Beats me, (but I will look into it because now I'm curious)

Jumbies are diverse, they are unique in there traits and apparently some can blend in with the living until they reveal their true form????(news to me)

The Soucouyant is a special type of jumbie.

How can you ward of a jumbie? Jewellery! SIlver jewellery, jumbie beads (a seed from a tree, they're a pretty red and I have a nice collection from the savannah) and even salt. You can also confuse the jumbie to keep them away (which I will always find funny) by turning your clothes inside out and wearing them, walking backwards into your house, placing rice grains at your door and such.

It's interesting how creative people get.

-

I've covered the main ones but there are certainly other figures who are popular in local story-telling, figures such as Anansi also appear in oral tradition and little newspaper stories.

I'll definitely be doing a second piece AND expanding on these rudimentary points.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Final thoughts...

I have decided that Nicki is a soucouyant. She carries all the traits of one and since she's from Trinidad and Tobogo originally, it all makes sense as to why she acts the way she does. Her die-hard fans are douens, and again, if you know about island folklore from that part of the world, it all comes together.

And that my friends, is my last words about that woman and her stans.

[annabelle--cane]

latest report on my vampire movie journey: byzantium 2012. I saw this one in 2015 or 2016 and, though I couldn't remember much of the plot, there were a few visual images that stayed with me, so I thought I'd give it another go now that I am older and wiser. overall I felt like the performances and cinematography were great, though it was a bit heavy handed and sensationalist with its treatment of sex work. it's doing a similar thing to bit 2019 with its use of vampirism as power and the idea of women reconstructing hierarchies of control in the process of rejecting patriarchy, and imo it does it a little more gracefully by connecting those hierarchies to motherhood rather that consciously political female separatism.

my real qualm is what the hell they were doing with soucriant folklore? I make no claims to be an expert on this but I've read a few novels by authors from the francophone caribbean that involved soucriants/soucouyants/soucougnans and they are simply not anything like what is presented in this movie. my best guess is they wanted to do that artsy genre film thing and avoid saying vampire but fucking. say oupire. why invoke afrocaribbean syncretic folklore when your movie has fuck all to do with the caribbean and your brotherhood of vampires is explicitly a hoity toity white boys' club? truly perplexing creative decision there.

[devilsskettle]

I wanted to read about the soucouyant. I wanted to write about her, I still do. What do I want to write? Just a book, probably, another tooth for the UL’s mouth. Something that explores the meaning of the old woman whose only interaction with other people was consumption. The soucouyant who is not content with her self. She is a double danger — there is the danger of meeting her, and the danger of becoming her. Does the nightmare of her belong to everyone, or just to me?

White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi