Brujeria

Brujería is the Spanish word for witchcraft. Brujeria also refers to a mystical sect of male witches in the southermost part of Argentina. Both men and women can be witches, brujos and brujas respectively. Brujos is the plural term that can mean either a group of male witches or both male and female witches. The … Read more

Penanggalan

The penanggalan in Malay lore is a woman whose head, esophagus,stomach, and intestines separate as a whole from the rest of her body at night to fly off and seek human prey whose blood she drinks. Her favorite victims are children and women in labor. One way to protect a home against her is to … Read more

Aswang

In the Philippine Islands today, the term aswang is a generic term that applied to a variety of mythical or paranormal creatures such as witches, vampires, manananggals and shapeshifters . The original definition is an eater of the dead, also called the bal-bal (maninilong in Catanauan, Quezon), which replaces the cadaver with banana trunks after … Read more

Loogaroo and Soukoyan

The name loogaroo occurs in islands or, in the case of Haiti, part of an island that was colonized by the French who imported African slaves to do the hard labor on their plantations. The name loogaroo is obviously derived from loups garou, a French name for the werewolf which literally means “wolf-man” and was … Read more

Asema

The asema is a vampiric witch or sorcerer found in the lore of the South American country of Surinam, once a colony called Dutch Guiana. The asema was usually an old man or woman who lived undetected in a community. Belief in the asema is an import from slaves brought to Surinam from West Africa. … Read more

Obayifu

According to Ashanti lore in Ghana, the obayifu is a witch who leaves her body at night in the form of a small ball of light which flies through the air and sucks the blood of sleeping people, especially infants and children. The Dahomeans have essentially the same belief, but they call this type of … Read more

Tlahuelpuchi

Belief in the tlahuelpuchi (plural: tlahuelpocmimi ) is prominent in at least the Mexican state of Tlaxcala. Most typically, the tlahuelpuchi is a woman born with a curse. When she enters puberty and has her first menstruation, she craves blood. At night she transforms into an animal such as a cat, a dog, a turkey, … Read more

Old Hag

The night hag or old hag is the name given to a supernatural creature, commonly associated with the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The Old Hag occurs in the lore of England and Scotland. She is also found in both Canadian and American folklore as an import. She evidently derives from the original Anglo-Saxon mare. She … Read more