Duppy Seed

By Jorge Agurcia Fasquelle
In his doctoral dissertation, The People of French Harbour (University Microfilms, 1966), anthropologist David K. Evans dedicates an entire chapter to Island folklore. My particular favorite is the part dealing with the “duppy”. What follows has been excerpted from Dr. Evans’ work, based on his research and interviews in the Bay Islands.

Islanders, particularly the older ones, believe their world to be densely populated by spirits of the dead. These are known as duppies. It seems to the villagers “more natural that the duppy should be there than that he shouldn’t” (Beckwith, 1929).

The origin of the word is African, for child or ghost, and can still be traced to Sierra Leone. According to Dr. Evans, and similar research carried out by other anthropologists throughout the West Indies, duppies are said to appear in any form at any time, though they seem to prefer twelve o’clock noon or nighttime. Generally duppies are not seen, but make their presence obvious to the living in many ways. For instance, they may cause a person to feel a warm current of air during a cool evening. If a duppy chooses to show itself in human form, one will notice that its feet don’t quite touch the ground, while moving in a smoke-like, swirling motion.

Duppies [unlike the living] are divided into good and bad. There are the “Christian” spirits, and there are those “walking th’earth ta humbug a mon.” According to lore, whenever meeting up with a duppy it is important to immediately ascertain its character. If you curse before a “good” duppy, he will vanish into a wisp of smoke; an evil one, on the other hand, will laugh and come at you, in which case you should call out the name of our Good Lord to make it go away.

Among the more popular characters in the duppy cast is the benevolent “Sea Mahmy,” a “sweet-tempered duppy who cares for little except sporting in the water and sitting on the bank, combing her gorgeous hair” (Leach, 1961), echoing the Homeric fable of the mermaid. Also the dangerous “Long-Bubby Susan” or “Bubby Girl,” who chases men into the bush and kills them with her hot suffocating breathe. Then there is “Old One Foot” or “Old Stick,” who like Robert Louis Stevenson’s notorious Long John Silver leaves characteristic prints on the sand. Additionally, there is the never-ending role call of rogues, pirates and Spaniards who once lived and died in the islands, and who still haunt their old posts.

Bearing Dr. Evans’ comments in mind, I know of one person who swears, to this day, that an ancient pirate roams his house in Roatan. I am talking about someone not only educated in Europe, but also somebody who is characteristically skeptical, even about most living folks. His first sighting of this duppy with “golden hair” was during a warm summer evening, while getting ready to go to bed. The sighting lasted a few minutes, as the ghost looked out into the ocean and then simply dissolved into the night air.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, one of my friend’s houseguests -- a man who knows the difference between reality and fantasy better than most, as he jumped out of a plane in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and lived through the siege of Bastogne -- commented on having seen a strange “blonde midget” dressed in “the old style” right outside the window, on the sun deck. My friend, who had slept in the loft and hadn’t spoken to his guest about the sighting -- afraid of seeming the fool -- reluctantly admitted to also having seen it. It may have appeared as a short person to the guest since the deck lies just below the room-level of the house; from my friend’s perspective upstairs, a full-bodied buccaneer, period style clothes, cutlass and all had been clearly in sight. Two separate witnesses, corroborating a strange event.

It so happens my friend’s house is built over an old English battery position in Port Royal.

So, I think it was Cervantes that once proclaimed in classic irony, “I do not believe in ghosts; but, as to their existence... I truly have no doubts.” (2/16/12)

Note: The author is a free-lance writer. He was a permanent contributor to Honduras This Week, under the by-line "The Leeward Course." Editor of the INCAE student magazine, "Vínculo," retired banker, taught business ethics at university, Knight of the Order of Malta, and was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order Pro Merito Melitense in 2001 for his volunteer work; he lives in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.