One story occurred when she was a young girl in the late 1920’s. One summer, many of the cows in a village stopped giving milk and the villagers though it was the work of a local woman everybody knew was a witch. One evening, a local villager saw a cat enter a barn and start to drink milk directly from the cow and threw a rock at the cat which scurried away in pain. The following day…
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In 2000, I found myself staying in New York for a couple months, the guest of a fiercely intimidating Russian man named Andrei. A few days after my arrival, I began to wonder about the source of his income. He never mentioned work, but yet his apartment was filled with antiques, plasma TVs, expensive artwork and the champagne and vodka flowed endlessly every evening. I was convinced that he was involved in some form of organized crime,…
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The Voodooist serves a pantheon of spirits called the “lwa,” a term that comes from the French word “loi” meaning “law” as each spirit represents a law of nature or of the human condition. The lwa are divided into three major nations. The first is the Rada nation. These are the original lwa and came from African during the early days of colonization. The second is the “petro” nation which is comprised of fiery, volatile spirits born…
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I originally heard this story in the early 2000’s from a woman named Vera who know lives in Massachusetts, but who originally is from Metairie, Louisiana. In the mid 1970’s, one of the most renowned Voodoo Doctors and supposed drug dealers in New Orleans was a man by the name of Reggie. He dealt with the dark side of the occult and worked with spirits that in life had been criminals and psychologically disturbed individuals. According to…
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In this story we will see how some people believe that taking on animal qualities can be the result of a curse. I first heard this story in the spring of 2004 from a Haitian woman named Yvette Antoine with whom I attended a class in Latin American literature at the University of Massachusetts. Yvette affirms that the events described in the story occurred in her home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in the mid 1980’s and centers around…
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