Academic Evenings

🌿The Blood Witch of Piparo – Terror and Tragedy in 1930s Trinidad🌿
…………………………………………………....................
Long before Dole Chadee and the enormous mud volcano eruption put Piparo on the map, the village had already seen its own share of darkness.

Randolph Gopee sat across from me one evening, tapping his foot lightly against the floor as he recalled what his late aunt once told him. A tale from her childhood in the 1930s, when Piparo was the sleepiest little village, and the rhythm of life was measured by the rise and fall of the sun...................................................................
"It had dis small family who used to live next door to her," Randolph began, "Mungal, he wife Rookmin, and deh young daughter. Quiet people. Regular people."

But one night, the peace of the village was torn apart by screaming. When neighbours investigated, they heard that Mungal’s daughter awoke to deep, blue-black marks etched across her neck and legs.

“Is de kinna mark yuh get wen soucouyant suck yuh!" Randolph said with a wry smirk.

The village grew uneasy. Normally, in small places like Piparo, everyone knew who the village soucouyant was. But here, no one fit the bill. Not a soul.

Then there was Robert, a cocoa worker, who said he had stumbled onto a small shack deep in the estate, one he swore had never been there before. He’d worked those lands for years and knew every tree and stone, so the sight puzzled him immensely. The shack itself looked ancient, like it had been standing there a hundred years. From the shadows of the shack, Robert said a frail figure emerged.

“Ah old woman in ah white sari and a white head tie,” Randolph claimed, “Robert tell dem de ‘oman look half-dead, wit’ dry-dry wrinkle-up skin. He say she watch him like how dem lizard does watch fly. I hear Robert pick up and run like Crawford outta dey! ”

Inevitably, rumours began to spread.

A week later, another attack. This time, Mungal’s daughter ran screaming from the house, crying that something had pinned her down, biting her neck and chest.

The men decided enough was enough. Forks and cutlasses in hand, Robert and a few others marched off to “de cocoa” to find the shack and hopefully, the old mysterious woman.

But when they returned hours later, they were drunk... laughing, stumbling, and empty-handed.

"Dey say none ah dem know wat happen," Randolph recalled. "None ah dem remember why and wey deh get de rum from."

Then it was Rookmin's turn. She awoke one morning covered in bruises, her arms and chest dark with the same blue marks that plagued her daughter.

Mungal, who spent most nights drinking, planned to have a puja done to cleanse the house.

"But de night before de puja, on he way home… Mungal fall off he bike an' buss open he head. Gone an' dead easy-easy."

His funeral came and went, but the attacks continued. Rookmin and her daughter sought refuge in another villager’s home. Soon though, that woman also awoke to bite marks.

The twisted whispers scattered fast... “Dey curse.”... “Somethin' followin' dem.”... " Ah kala jadu wockin'."

"Neighbours start to wonder wat really out for that family," Randolph's voice dropping now a bit lower with each word. "By den, de old woman dem in de village say it was not no soucouyant, but ah rakta chudail... ah witch dat out for blood."

According to Randolph's aunt, those ships that came from India did not only bring human cargo. She was told that a few foreign, dark, and restless things travelled the waves as well.

As for the village, fear grew thicker than the Piparo mud.

Rookmin stopped coming outside. The villagers stopped calling her name. And then one morning, just like that, someone found her hanging from the ceiling of her house.

"And de daughter," Randolph concluded, "Dey find she in de groun' dead, de mudda poison she deh say. De 'oman look like she couldn't take it no more... and de witch get she blood in de end."

So what do you think truly destroyed that family? Was it the relentless feeding of a soucouyant, the bloodlust of a rakta chudail, or some nameless horror that mocks human reason? I certainly have no answers for this one just yet.
………………………………………………………………………
Have you heard any similar tales? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 👇🏽

🌿Obeah Wedding: A Personal Account (Penal, 1980s).............................................................
📚This piece forms part of our ongoing drive to preserve Trinidad’s oral history and storytelling traditions. It does not promote or endorse harmful practices, and is intended for cultural and narrative discussion..............................................................
Sometimes the heart knows too much.

Sometimes it knows nothing at all.

Gloria Maharaj had never asked for the burden of holding another person’s secret, but life, as she told me, had a way of handing you things you never applied for. Years later, she was ready to unburden her soul.
……………………………………………...................
On Clarke Road that morning, back in 1983, the tassa began as a faint rumble, a tremor under the skin. Then it grew louder, rolling in waves, the kind of sound that makes your heart quicken even when you don’t know why. People lined the street in their best clothes, waiting for the groom who was to arrive in a red Chevy Impala crowned with yellow flowers. The air itself was festive.

A perfect day for a wedding.

A wedding that should never have been.

Two years before, Lalita had slipped quietly into a job at a large supermarket, where Gloria also worked for some time.

"Pretty-pretty girl," Gloria admitted. "All dem woman inside dey vex. I was she only fren'."

Long hair, soft voice, that small, private smile. To the untrained eye Lalita looked shy. Withdrawn, even. But there was a sharpness about her, a hunger carefully folded beneath the surface.

Dave, the owner, noticed.

"She used to wear some short-short skirt an' Dave eye use to be poppin' out he head."

They began an affair, one of those things everyone sees, but pretends not to. And when Dave grew tired of it, as men of his kind often do, he simply walked away. Lalita begged, pleaded, wept, reasoned. Nothing moved him.

So, she reached for something else.

"Sometin' was wrong wit' she head yuh-know," Gloria explained, "She make she cousin carry she by ah obeah man in Siparia to try an' hook Dave, to get him back."

That obeah man went by the name Brother Broom, a Shango practitioner, who was said to have eyes that never quite looked where they should.

Gloria remembered the list of items with an unsettling clarity. Brother Broom had been very specific in what he demanded of Lalita. A photograph of Dave, a piece of his underwear, a spotted hen, a large bottle of white rum, and an envelope stuffed with three thousand dollars.

Strange objects to the ordinary eye, but in the dark world Lalita was stepping into, each one believed to have its purpose, each one a key to unlocking something she would never be able to close again.

The ritual was brief. The hen’s head severed in one clean stroke. Blood shaken directly onto Dave’s photo. A two-sided candle lit. Rum spat into the flame. Brother Broom rocking and trembling, chanting in a language that didn’t seem to belong. Lalita sat there, hands clasped, breath shallow, as something unseen turned the air thick.

He told her it would take three days… allegedly, it worked that same night.

Dave turned up. Apologetic. Overwhelmed. Lost.

Within a month he left his wife, abandoned his children, and placed Lalita in an apartment in Gulf View with a Mercedes she had no business driving.

"Everybody in wuck say he gone mad," Gloria remembered, as she drew a quiet sip from her cup. "But nobody did know de truth... only me."

By June the next year, they were to be married.

Which is why, on the wedding day, the procession inched down Clarke Road with laughter, tassa, chatter, and dancers already shifting their waists in anticipation of the festivities to come.

But the only movement that mattered was the one occurring in Dave’s mind... which all started earlier that morning.

Dave had run into his uncle, Govind, a newly "saved" man who carried his bible like a shield against a world he no longer trusted. Uncle Govind had insisted on praying for Dave before the wedding, laying one trembling hand on his nephew’s head and whispering a blessing meant for protection, prosperity, happiness.

A simple prayer.

Nothing more.

Yet when the wedding car reached Clarke Road junction, Dave suddenly exhaled sharply… as if waking from a long, troubling dream. Clarity hit him like cold water. His chest tightened.

After a few minutes of silence, he ordered the driver to stop.

Then to turn around.

The long line of vehicles behind him je**ed in confusion. The tassa group on a truck's tray paused mid-beat. Someone cursed. But Dave did not look back.

At Lalita’s house the crowd waited, puzzled, people murmuring, children running about, dancers adjusting their clothes every other second. Minutes slipped into a half-hour. Then an hour. No groom. No music. No explanation.

When the truth reached the bride, she erupted… rage, disbelief, tears that didn’t soften but burned. She demanded someone take her to find Dave, but no one moved. They only held her, speaking gentle words that skidded uselessly across her fury.

Gloria's voice dropped.

"It was Govind," Gloria suspects, "Govind and he bible. Yuh see how prayer does work?"

A prayer that seemingly shattered whatever chain Brother Broom's ritual had hooked into him.

Later, when they managed to calm Lalita and lead her to her room, she scuttled into the bathroom. The door barely closed before they heard the bottle fall.

By the time they forced their way in, she had swallowed enough of a chemical to leave her body fighting a battle her mind had already surrendered. Her neck was swollen grotesquely, her breath rattling like something trapped. Still wrapped in her burgundy sari, she arrived at the hospital unconscious, descended into a coma, and before long, the world let her go for good.

"She get wuh she pay for," Gloria concluded, "I did sorry for she eh, but yuh cyah deal up wit' devil an' doh expect it to come back on you... may not be today, not tomorrow, but it muss come back!"

"What happened to Dave?" I asked, searching for some semblance of closure to the story.

Gloria looked at me long and hard, before smiling.

"Dave live ah nice life. He wife take him back, an' he give he chiren de business. He must be somewhere abroad watchin' horse racin' all now."

A happy ending... for Dave at least.

What are we to take from this? Many obvious things I would say. Furthermore, it does echo the old wisdom hinted by the Mighty Sparrow is his timeless classic... obeah wedding bells, most certainly, do not chime.

So, keep your head up. It might not be that you're "dotish" at all... maybe somebody simply "wuck a lil’ obeah on yuh."

And perhaps it would be wise to now say a word of prayer before you go on that date.
Say two if they're from South. .....................................................
Have you heard of any similar stories? Share your thoughts in the comments below👇🏽