The soucouyant
The soucouyant is a figure of Caribbean folklore, an old woman who sheds her skin at night and flies as a ball of fire to drink a victim's blood. Belief in her survives to some degree from Trinidad to Guyana.
Trinidad and Tobago's national library, NALIS, tells the story this way. An old woman lives by herself where the village road ends. She is rarely seen, and her house stays shut while she sleeps through the day. Towards evening she wakes, peels off her old wrinkled skin and puts it in a mortar. Turned into a glowing fireball, she rises through her roof and flies off into the night with a shrill cry, looking for a victim whose life-blood she will drain.
Lafcadio Hearn recorded a similar being in the French West Indies and spelled it Soucouyan. In Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) he wrote that a traveller had to beware of things lying by the road. A Soucouyan's skin might be hidden in an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or bamboo strips dropped by the wayside. He added that this creature, which takes its skin off and puts it back on at will, could be subdued or driven off by prayer.
Wikipedia says the belief is still held to some degree in Suriname, Guyana and several Caribbean islands, among them Trinidad, Dominica, Saint Lucia and Haiti. It also says, without a citation, that many islands, Trinidad, Grenada and Barbados among them, stage plays featuring the soucouyant along with other folklore figures.
"A white rag, an old bone lying in the path, might be a _malefice_ which, if trodden upon, would cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of an elephant;--an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a _Soucouyan._ But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at will--and the Zombi--and the _Moun-Mò_--may be quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the Powers that save."
- Trinidad and Tobago Folklore, National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS), Trinidad and Tobago (archived 2002)
- Soucouyant, Wikipedia