Caris­sa Nanan

hen I was nine years old, my fam­i­ly lived in rur­al Blan­chisseuse, along Trinidad’s North Coast. Our house­hold con­sist­ed of my par­ents, my sis­ter, my grand­moth­er and me. At the time, my fa­ther made bar­be­cue coals, a la­bo­ri­ous process that in­volved dig­ging a large pit, burn­ing pieces of wood in­side it for sev­er­al days, and even­tu­al­ly go­ing out­side to ex­tin­guish the fire and col­lect the coal.

It was dur­ing this time that some­thing be­gan hap­pen­ing around our home.

Al­most every night, around 10 pm, we would hear strange nois­es com­ing from out­side. Among the sounds were what ap­peared to be chil­dren’s voic­es, ac­com­pa­nied by the un­mis­tak­able noise of chains drag­ging along the ground.

My grand­moth­er was al­ways firm in her warn­ings. No mat­ter what we heard, we were nev­er to ven­ture out­side or even look through the win­dows. She seemed de­ter­mined to keep us away from what­ev­er was lurk­ing in the dark­ness.

But cu­rios­i­ty can be dif­fi­cult to re­sist, es­pe­cial­ly when you are young.

One night, when I was nine and my sis­ter was 15, we de­cid­ed to ig­nore our grand­moth­er’s warn­ings. We want­ed to see for our­selves what was mak­ing those strange nois­es. So, we made the de­ci­sion to go out­side.

What we saw that night re­mains the most ter­ri­fy­ing sight of my life.

Stand­ing in the dark­ness was a crea­ture un­like any­thing we had ever seen. It had a goat-like, al­most wolf-like ap­pear­ance, and long chains hung from its body, drag­ging along the ground as it moved.

The sight was hor­ri­fy­ing. We im­me­di­ate­ly turned and ran back in­side, shak­en by what we had wit­nessed.

But the ex­pe­ri­ence did not end when we reached the safe­ty of our home. The en­counter had a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect on my sis­ter, with the mem­o­ry of this crea­ture plagu­ing her to this day.

I can­not ex­plain what we en­coun­tered in the dark­ness of rur­al Blan­chisseuse, nor can I for­get the sound of those chains or the crea­ture that emerged from the night.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a melt­ing pot of Folk­lore, mythol­o­gy, and su­per­sti­tion, with be­liefs so deeply wo­ven in­to our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty that they shape how we nav­i­gate the world around us. A per­fect ex­am­ple is walk­ing in­to our homes back­wards when en­ter­ing at or af­ter mid­night. Passed down from the gen­er­a­tions be­fore us, folk­lore and su­per­sti­tion play an in­te­gral part of our her­itage, pre­served through oral sto­ry­telling, fam­i­ly tra­di­tion and warn­ings from our el­ders.

What makes Trinidad and To­ba­go folk­lore par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tinc­tive is the in­flu­ence of our mul­ti-eth­nic back­ground. African, Eu­ro­pean, East In­di­an and In­dige­nous be­liefs blend­ed over time, leav­ing us with a ta­pes­try of folk­lore en­ti­ties, each with its own iden­ti­ty, char­ac­ter­is­tics and in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

The la­ga­hoo, like many of our folk­lore char­ac­ters, is still a feared en­ti­ty in Trinidad to this day. A shapeshift­ing crea­ture said to roam af­ter dark, he is of­ten de­scribed as a man with a wood­en cof­fin on his head and heavy iron chains drag­ging be­hind him. In oth­er tellings, he as­sumes the form of an­i­mals or strange, hy­brid crea­tures, mak­ing him a fig­ure whose ap­pear­ance is as un­pre­dictable as the sto­ries sur­round­ing him. The La­ga­hoo’s name is com­mon­ly traced to the French loup-garou, mean­ing were­wolf. His leg­end de­vel­oped with­in Trinidad’s di­verse cul­tur­al land­scape, where French Cre­ole tra­di­tions en­coun­tered African be­liefs and sto­ry­telling prac­tices.

What’s in­trigu­ing about the La­ga­hoo is the vari­a­tion in the retelling of his sto­ry. In some com­mu­ni­ties, he was be­lieved to be the trans­porter of tools, charms and herbal med­i­cine from the obeah man tucked away in his cof­fin; oth­ers be­lieved he took this form as pun­ish­ment for mak­ing a pact with the dev­il, or he car­ried the cof­fin to col­lect souls from dy­ing mem­bers of the vil­lage. In old tra­di­tion­al vil­lages, it was be­lieved that the chains rep­re­sent­ed the trau­ma of slav­ery, a curse tied to the his­to­ry of the land. Ac­cord­ing to La­ga­hoo leg­end, in or­der to con­quer this beast, he must be tied up and beat­en with a stick soaked in holy wa­ter for three days straight.

For gen­er­a­tions, sto­ries of the La­ga­hoo have trav­elled from one sto­ry­teller to an­oth­er, of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by warn­ings about ven­tur­ing out­side af­ter dark. Over time, these ac­counts se­cured the La­ga­hoo’s place among T&T’s most recog­nis­able folk­lore char­ac­ters. His sto­ry forms part of a wider cul­tur­al in­her­i­tance, one shaped by the en­coun­ters, be­liefs and ex­pe­ri­ences of the peo­ple who made T&T their home. In pre­serv­ing these leg­ends, we pre­serve more than fright­en­ing tales; we pre­serve a record of our sto­ry­telling tra­di­tions and the cul­tur­al in­flu­ences that helped shape who we are.

Caris­sa Nanan is a folk­lorist, sto­ry­teller and cre­ator of Caris­sa Is­land Mys­ter­ies.

Her work is ded­i­cat­ed to ex­plor­ing, doc­u­ment­ing and pre­serv­ing the folk­lore, leg­ends, su­per­sti­tions and su­per­nat­ur­al sto­ries of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Out­side of folk­lore, she has a back­ground in Psy­chol­o­gy, men­tal health, com­mu­ni­ty work and ad­vo­ca­cy. She is cur­rent­ly an MSc stu­dent in Coun­selling Psy­chol­o­gy and works as an EAP As­so­ciate.

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