reputed to be a loogaroo of the most infamous and evil kind. It happened that one day upon awakening the gardener had felt extraordinary weak and supine. To his horror he remarked a slight stain of blood on his clothes, and he at once realized he had been the victim of a vampire. The following night he refrained from sleep, preserving a silent vigil. A little after twelve-o’clock there came a faint scratching in the thatch of the roof. As this grew louder the man guessing that the loogaroo was about to enter thrust through the spot with his cutlass. A stifled screech fell to hideous moans, and rushing out of the hut he heard the sound die away in the distance, whilst a blue marish light vanished into the house where this ancient sibyl dwelt. The next day she was found lying in bed, half blind from an injury to one of her eyes. This she vowed had been caused during the night owing to a fall over the sharp stump of a tree whilst she was chasing some strayed chickens. Nobody believed her, and the gardener was praised for having so deservedly punished the vampire for her foul sorceries.
It is said that the human skin of a loogaroo has been found hidden in the bushes under a silk-cotton-tree. In this case it must be seized fast and pounded in a mortar with pepper and salt. So the vampire will be unable to assume a human shape and will perish miserably.
Now and again negroes have been discovered bold enough to play the loogaroo in order to cover up their nightly depredations. Two confederates will plan the robbing of a cocoa piece, and whilst one fellow will climb the tree to strip off the pods his friend will pass softly up and down in the vicinity waving a lantern fashioned from an empty dry calabash cut to imitate grotesque and gargoyled features, and lighted by a candle set in a socket which has been cleverly inserted.
The tradition, however, has its more serious sides and obscene, if not bloody, rites are practised in secret places where the white man will hardly venture. On one occasion a witch was seen at midnight dancing naked round a fire, and as she leaped to the drone of foul incantations she ever and anon cast strange substances into the flame which blazed up into a myriad colourings.
The loogaroo is particularly obnoxious to dogs, and any person at whom apparently without cause dogs will bark
