I.A.R Singh

🌿 Demon Fire - Green Acres, San Fernando (2002).............................................
This story was shared with me by Travis Sooklal. Additional information was sourced from the Guardian Newspaper's coverage of the incident, published on March 6, 2002...............................................

A house burning has its usual causes.

A wire shorts. A stove is forgotten. A candle topples over. People shake their heads, gather in the yard, and afterwards cry of bad luck.

The house in Green Acres was different.

Even before the fire, people had seen the signs.

The home belonged to Nora Taylor and her family. An ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood. For twenty-five years nothing remarkable had happened there.

Children had grown up under its roof. Relatives had come and gone. Life had settled into the familiar routines that make a house feel permanent.

It was in February two thousand and two that the first signs appeared, small disruptions in their everyday order that no one quite knew how to account for.

A sound here.

A movement there.

An object no longer where it had been left.

Aletha Thorne, Nora's eighty-year-old mother, insisted it was a demon.

"One day I see de piano slide from one side ah de livin' room to de nex'." She claimed.

The refrigerator later lurched against a kitchen counter. The microwave crashed to the floor. The old woman had lived long enough to know the difference between imagination and what was not.

By then, the house had begun imposing itself on the minds of those who lived there.

Nora contacted Prophet Burton of White Eagle Christian Ministries, hoping he could help. It was while speaking with him that she smelled something burning. A bitter, sulphuric scent that singed the nostrils, yet, troublingly, its source could not be found.

Two days before the fire, Aletha was washing clothes in an afternoon that offered no hint of what was already moving toward her.

Just like that, several items of clothing lifted from the line and ended up in the toilet bowl.

The event itself was absurd enough.

"When I look down," Aletha recounted with complete seriousness, "I see de clothes lightin' up inside de toilet bowl!"

At some point, even those outside the family began noticing peculiarities.

Ramjit Singh, who rented an apartment downstairs and had lived there for eleven years, said things had become strange after Carnival Monday.

"I heard scrapin' an' whisperin' comin' from upstairs two maybe three in de mornin. It was de weirdest thing."

Whatever lingered within the house had grown tired of hiding.

The person who suffered most was Nora's son, nine-year-old Stephen James. He attended St. Paul's Anglican Primary and was described as a bright child.

But children are often the first to absorb the anxieties of a household.

Stephen reportedly began dreaming of a man trying to kill him. Dreams which returned repeatedly each night. Soon headaches followed. Then stomach pains.

The boy became convinced there was a demon in the house. He was kept away from school and eventually sent to stay with a priest in Mayaro.

Then came the fire.

Around half past seven that Monday morning, Nora glanced into her bedroom and saw the thick black smoke. The curtains, to her, seemed to have given birth to the flames.

The fire ascended, kissed the ceiling, and there it unfurled, flowing across the surface in an ominous wave of crackling ruin.

In a short while, the top floor was engulfed, the flames dancing through it like a malignant revel.

The fire brigade arrived and confronted the inferno, only to find themselves faced with a phenomenon that seemed to defy expectation at every turn.

One officer remarked that he swore he heard whistling coming from all around them. Another said hoses became inexplicably tangled while they worked. Several recalled extinguishing certain areas, only for fresh flames to manifest in others.

Eventually it was contained. Only the lower section of the structure survived.

What, then, are we to make of this account? Could a mischievous demon have kindled the blaze, as the family claimed?

There may well be rational explanations for both the blaze and the peculiar events that preceded it.

And yet, reason does not always account for every detail. .........................................
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🌿 Ramgoat Rajah: The Beast From Hell - Palo Seco, 1960s.................................................
There are people in Palo Seco who still talk about that goat.

Not because it was the biggest goat anybody ever saw, though it probably was.

Not because it attacked half the village, though it certainly tried.

People remember it because of the rumours.

I first heard the story from Conrad Porter, who swore every word was true. The events happened during his childhood, and he relished bringing it back to life.

"Uncle Sonny an' he ramgoat was rell memories," he began, leaning back in his chair, "boy if dat goat only cudda talk, it wudda be Prime Minister."

By the nineteen-sixties, Uncle Sonny had become one of those figures who seemed older than the village itself. His face was a network of wrinkles. His shoulders had bent with age. His hands shook when he held a cup.

Life had not been kind recently.

His wife, Matilda, had died the month before. They had been married for over fifty years.

His children had moved abroad long before.

The little wooden house near the edge of the forest became silent. But that silence lasted for only a few weeks.

"One morning we see Uncle Sonny strollin' in de road wit' dis goat. Nobody had ah clue wey he geh it from."

A giant.

The thing stood nearly chest-high to the old man.

"I tink it was ah mix breed goat, buh eh sure which breed."

Its body was thick with muscle. Black as coal. Broad through the shoulders. Menacing horns completed the specimen. Conrad claimed it looked less like a goat and more like something that crawled out of hell.

And the smell.

"Lord!"

A sharp, sour scent of musk and urine that clung to the air longer than anything should.

"Dat smell cudda move mountains." Conrad quipped.

The goat was allegedly named Rajah.

"Uncle Sonny admit de ting used tuh rule him, so dais why he name it so."

Nobody laughed.

The goat ruled everything.

Pickets proved temporary, ropes merely symbolic. Rajah fed where appetite led him, slumbered where weariness overtook him, and visited his fury upon whomsoever offended his mysterious sensibilities.

His favourite target was Uncle Sonny himself.

"He could be mindin' he own business an' bam! I loss count de amount ah time we see Uncle Sonny on de grong fightin' dah goat."

The animal always found time to lower his head, retreat momentarily, then launch himself forward like a cannonball.

Uncle Sonny would find himself deposited unceremoniously in the grass, and Rajah, towering above him, seemed to regard the affair as a successful day's work.

"One day yuh go kill me," Sonny would shout.

Rajah would just "Brehhh."

"Rell people used to say dah goat was ah lagahoo dat couldn't change back. He used tuh watch yuh like yuh owe him money."

The villagers advised Uncle Sonny repeatedly...

"Curry him."

"Sell him."

"Call a priest an' bless him."

Uncle Sonny refused every suggestion.

The truth was that despite all the bruises, all the broken fences, all the embarrassment, the goat was a lifeline.

"My mom tell me if wasn't fuh dat goat Sonny wudda dead right after he wife... so he did over love she."

Grief is a strange thing.

Sometimes it can leave a hole so large that only chaos can fill it.

And Rajah brought that chaos in abundance.

He escaped constantly, invaded gardens, tramautised dogs, and terrorised schoolchildren.

"It had dah one time where he run een de people weddin'," Conrad recalled, "An butt d**g de bride mudda! All man-jack scatter."

Strangely, after Uncle Sonny’s death a few years later, no one could determine what became of Rajah.

The beast, many concluded, had gone back to hell. ...........................................
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🌿 Mama D'Leau - Sighting at Ortoire, Mayaro. 1971.........................................
Arlington Cooper never forgot the second half of nineteen sevety-one. It had been the beginning of a strange, uneasy time in Mayaro, East Trinidad.........................................

For years, the area had been generous. Crabs in abundance, fish practically leaping into their nets, traps triggered with ease. Then as if something had flipped in the unseen order of things, it stopped.

Traps vanished. Fishing lines snapped, no crabs running, boats found battered along the riverbanks, their wooden frames splintered beyond reason. Weeks of inexplicable damage left the village shaken.

The elders muttered prayers. The fishermen grew wary. The Ortoire River, once their provider, had turned against them.

Arlington was a teenager then, wandering without purpose as boys often did, when he happened upon something that would trouble him for years afterwards.

"I din like tuh be home, pops used tuh be drunk all de time on bush rum. So I was always out an' about, if not wit' meh padnahs, den ah was by meh self."

One night, he made his way slowly through the twisting paths toward the river’s mouth. The wind surged, burdened with the briny breath of the Atlantic, yet mosquitoes still somehow hovered like shadows. Then, further up the bank, his eyes locked onto it.

A woman.

She sat perfectly still on the damp sand of the riverbank.

Long, lustrous hair cascaded over her shoulders, and down her back resembling a massive veil. The moonlight rested upon her skin, drawing from it a warm, golden-brown radiance.

"I never in my life see dreadlocks like dat."

Yet, as his eyes narrowed, something else came into focus.

Beside her, where a shadow should have been, something stretched, long.

"I nearly drop d**g wen ah ketch wuh goin' on," Arlington insisted. "Dat wasn't no woman."

The illusion of humanity ended abruptly at her waist.

From the base of her torso issued a great tail, its surface catching the moonlight with an uncanny sheen.

Not the soft, flowing kind like a fish.

No.

This was something else entirely. Scaly, heavy, not unlike that of a great serpent.

Arlington's lungs seemed to forget their purpose. His pulse had long since abandoned any semblance of calm. Every limb felt burdened, held captive by the sheer impossibility of what lay before him.

Then...

"Ahhchoo!"

It came without warning.

"Of all de time an' place, look wey I guh want tuh sneeze."

The sound snapped through the air, echoing across the still water.

She turned.

Of course she turned.

Arlington barely had time to register her eyes.

The creature dropped without hesitation to her stomach, that gargantuan tail driving her forward in a dreadful, unbridled grace. And then, in one swift motion, she plunged into the river's mouth, leaving only ripples in her wake.

Arlington twisted at once, then bolted with an urgency that left no room for looking back.

When he told his aunt that night, she nodded knowingly, stirring a pot of callaloo as though he had merely mentioned a change in the weather.

“Mama D’Leau,” she murmured. “Mudda ah de water. If yuh see she, is cause she want yuh tuh see she.”

Arlington thought back to the way the creature had looked... wrong, but strikingly beautiful. And in that fleeting moment before she vanished, he could have sworn she looked… sad.

The Ortoire River was never quite the same for some time after that.

Rumours ignited, sweeping through the village along its usual channels. Some claimed the river had been cursed, that those who fished there would find nothing but empty nets and broken traps.

Others whispered that Mama D'Leau had been disturbed, awoken from a long slumber, and that she was angry.

"Some ah dem did say Papa Bois wasn't givin' she no sugar," Arlington grinned. "No wonder she vex."

An old fisherman swore he had seen her, just a glimpse, deep in the mangroves where the water ran blackest. A pair of golden eyes watching from the shadows before slipping beneath the surface.

Another man, passing through Point Radix at dusk, claimed he had heard soft singing, a voice too hauntingly beautiful to belong to anybody he knew.

And then there were the disappearances.

A young boy who had wandered too close to the river’s edge. A hunter who had gone deep into the mangroves.

"I doh feel I ever hear if deh find dem or not... I doubt."

Arlington never did see the creature again. But sometimes, when the wind was still and the moonlight stretched long, he thought he could feel her gaze, from just near the water's edge.

He had spent years in quiet contemplation of what he had witnessed.

To him, perhaps she was not a threat but a guard, her presence meant to keep something far more ancient and sinister at bay.

Still, lacking any additional proof, one finds it difficult to arrive at anything resembling a proper ending.

"Me eh know 'bout no Mama Delolo like wuh deh sayin'," Arlington heartily concluded. "Buh yuh see me, I gone an' name de gyul Anna... Anna Conda."...............................................
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🌿Mermaid: Salvation - La Brea, 1981.
…………………………….......
Winston Warner sat with me on a rainy afternoon. He is a kind of man who seemed half spirit... more breeze than bone.

His dreadlocks hung long, with streaks of grey twisting through the dark. His green vest and frayed khakis clung to a body that looked chiseled by sea and smoke. Though he rarely made eye contact, when he did, his gaze seemed to carry secrets too daring for words.

He held a story that sat in him for decades. When he began his voice sharpened, laced with an accent that moved up and down the Caribbean as though it belonged to no single shore...........................................
In the early eighties, Winston lived in La Brea, near Brighton. As a young man, he often found refuge in solitude, and each morning, long before dawn broke, he would walk bare-chested and bare-footed down to the beach.

The world would still be cloaked in blue-black shadows, the air cold and quiet. It was during these early hours, when most souls were still sleeping, that Winston would sit, cross-legged on the sand, and lose himself in "meditation." It was his way of communing with nature, with God.

Winston shifted his hand to his heart and insisted.

"Yuh haffi give thanks, yuh haffi give love back to de almighty, yuh overstand?"

But one morning was entirely different.

He had just stepped onto the shore of what some call "Station Beach," when he heard a sound that stopped him mid-stride. A groaning. Soft, melodic and aching, like a hymn sung by someone half-asleep, half-in-pain. It wasn’t human. Not quite. But it wasn’t animal either.

At the seam amidst sand and surf, he saw it.

A silhouette, motionless but unmistakably alive. At first, he thought it was human, perhaps injured, perhaps worse. But as he stepped closer, what he saw rooted him to the spot.

The figure had the upper body of a stunning woman, adorned with the most delicate of features. Her chest rising and falling ever so slightly, in rhythm with the miniscule waves.

However, from the waist down, her body tapered into a long, scaled tail of a fish.

Winston's heart rocketed along the width of his chest. He stood with his "spliff" trembling at the corner of his mouth, unsure whether to run or pray. But a voice deep within him spoke, a pull he could not rationalise. Not fear, not curiosity. He felt the moment demanded reverence. He needed to "See de scene."

He approached slowly, and the features of the figure became clearer, more unreal. An impossible thing caught between two worlds. Her tail shimmered with a colour that could not be named. Her dark eyes met his with a depth that struck at his nerves.

"Jah guide meh inno,” he whispered to me, “Mi see wuh mi see. Society label it mermaid, but meh elders alroun' know better. Yemoja be de real name shown to meh in de earlies. And de West and all de propaganda gwan change yuh mind an' erase de truth. Ah goddess never appear tuh harm or tuh trick, but tuh reveal!"

Strangely, the sea seemed to retreat from her, dragging toward the horizon with unnatural urgency. She did not speak, nor did she move. But her eyes spoke to his, and a message moved within him.

Winston knew what he had to do.

He acted quickly then, driven by that voice inside. He bent to her tail and tried to drag her, but the effort felt wrong, almost disrespectful. So he stopped and moved closer, slipping his arms beneath her. Lifting her took all he had. But the moment she was in his arms, the struggle fell away.

He carried her for what felt like an eternity. Time stretched with every step, the weight of her body matched only by the strange calm pressing in around them. He looked into her eyes and for a moment, it truly was eternity. Wordless, endless, deep. He felt a part of himself ease, some long-held tension break. The cold water touched his feet, then his knees. There, he lowered her gently into the tide, the sea rising to meet her.

Immediately, the wind shifted.

Her tail, once limp, snapped alive with majestic force. She flicked it once, then again, and in one graceful burst of muscle and magic, she disappeared beneath the surface.

But not fully.

Not yet.

She rose again, just her face, just enough. Her eyes found his again. They lingered on him, speaking in silence, holding a connection that words would only cheapen. Winston stood and listened in awe.

Then, slowly, she sank...until there was nothing but the sea, stretching still and wide before him.

He walked back home later that morning in silence. He didn’t speak of it. Not until now. He feared what people might say, and more importantly, he feared that naming it would turn it into a joke, or worse... an omen.

“De truth haffi live in silence fuh ah time,” Winston would later admit.

The one thing that was certain is that he was never the same.

He turned inward, where he found peace he never had before. His spirituality deepened. He became gentler, quieter, rooted. He read more. Planted more. He no longer chased after things that didn’t feed his soul.

And after all that time, not even for a moment did he believe he had saved her.

In his heart, he knew... she had saved him.

In the end, I questioned whether or not he still believed every single thing he saw, everything he felt. His eyes for once focused on mine, and he smiled.

“Brethren, I could spend meh whole wakin life boilin' 'pon wuh real an' wuh eh real inno,” he concluded, “But when yuh see de soul recognise truth… yuh never need tuh convince nobody!”
……………………………………
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🌿Interview with an Obeah Man - A Brief Exploration of A Hidden Craft. ........................................
Obeah is often whispered about, barely spoken of openly. Yet some time ago, I got a rare opportunity to sit across from a man who admitted to practising it... a spiritual healer by his account, an obeah man by everyone else’s.

In a brief but revealing exchange, he shared with me his thoughts on the powers, myths, and realities of his practice. .......................................
With age carved deep into his face like scripture, Mr. Wesley Samuels didn’t need to move to command the room.

The African garb he wore shimmered faintly in the candlelight, gold stitching twisting through deep blue fabric. His matching cap sat firm.

“Obeah,” he began, “Is deeply embedded in this country. It is very different from de old ways. Now it have a mixture of de West in it. They say is high science, simi-dimi… de real truth is about knowin' how to bend de unseen, tuh coax de air, de earth, and de spirit tuh act on your behalf.”

He explained that much of what he knew came from his aunt, the woman who raised him. She herself was a healer, carrying knowledge passed down from her grandmother who had journeyed from Jamaica. In that lineage, he traced a thread back to the African traditions that survived enslavement.

Mr. Samuels spoke of courtrooms, where even judges and magistrates, for all their robes and gavels, have not escaped the reach of obeah's hand. The same, he said, is true for doctors, businessmen, and countless others across every layer of society.

“Plenty man an' woman come tuh me for help,” he said confidently. “Some want to win ah case. Others want deh wife back. Some want protection, or some money in deh pocket. Business people too does look for ah li'l help tuh up sales.”

When I pressed further, he drew my attention to the books that have for years been sold in “religious” supply stores across the country. Manuals like "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses," "Black and White Magic for Man and Beast," and "How to Cast Spells to Put People Under Your Power."

These, he noted, were not curiosities, but step-by-step guides for those drawn to its call.

Mr. Samuels leaned forward then, his voice wavering.

“You see de candle an' powder? They are not for show. Ah candle in de shape of ah man or ah woman, or a heart... each have use. A jar of powder in de right colour, rub or blow in de right way could fix ah problem you have... or it could open ah door you never expect.”

There was a shadow in his words, an undertone both sobering and uneasy. He admitted that every wish granted carries a price.

“It might be a sacrifice of some kind... an animal, yes. But other times, it is a trade you making with your own life. Nothin' free. Nothin' at all!”

Mr. Samuels acknowledged that such practices have long been condemned by people of varying religions, who view them as dangerous or demonic. Yet for those who continue to seek them, the attraction is not diminished.

“Let people think what they like… it was all my forefathers had when de slave master take your name, your family, your humanity… they take everything! It was ah power born out of pain."

His eyes burned a conviction of fearful magnitude.

“Faith,” he concluded, “Takes many forms. Some pray in church, some pray at a shrine, some light a candle with a name on it. In de end, all I will say is that plenty prayers in this world get answered... but not always by who you think answerin' dem.”

As I left, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it all. Unsure of the rituals, the relics, and the power he spoke of so easily. Yet as a window into a hidden tradition, it was as captivating as it was unsettling. .......................................
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🌿 Jinn: Friend - Valsayn, 1980s.............................................
Wajid Ali had long been troubled.

His father died a month before he was born. Six years later, his mother followed.

The boy had scarcely begun to understand the first loss when a second was imposed upon him. The subsequent years had seen him shuttled from one relative to another, lingering nowhere long enough to establish roots of his own.

Eventually, he was taken in by an uncle and aunt living in Valsayn. To Wajid, it seemed like fortune had finally turned in his favour.

Their home was enormous.

Set back from the road behind tall walls and iron gates, the mansion stood amongst sprawling trees, their branches reached over the property with a possessive spread. It had been built decades earlier, during a time when houses were made not merely to shelter, but to impress.

“It was in ah prime location,” Wajid claimed, “Ah cudda see Kay Donna from de upstairs… wuh yuh want better dan dat?”

His uncle and aunt had a son of their own, but he had had already left for university abroad. What had once been a lively household had become strangely quiet. For them, young Wajid was a welcome interruption to that silence.

He was given his own bedroom on the upper floor, and it felt like a luxury beyond imagining. The room contained a large bed, an antique wardrobe, and windows that overlooked the dark gardens below.

During the day, sunlight poured through the windows and painted warm patterns across the floors. At night, however, the house seemed to transform. Every beam, board, and stair seemed to groan with complaint until morning.

Wajid dismissed it entirely, his attention fixed instead on the simple, almost unfamiliar comfort of having a room to call his own.

But a few months after moving in, Wajid's life would change yet again.

He awoke suddenly that night.

The room lay still, dimly lit by an errant glow from the street. Wajid tried to move his feet, but they would not respond. Something had closed quietly around his ankles. Half asleep, he assumed it was his aunt.

Perhaps she had come to wake him.

"Aunty?" Wajid muttered, but no answer came.

Slowly, he pushed himself upright and looked toward the foot of the bed.

“Nuttin! Nobody aroun’.”

Yet the pressure around his ankles remained for several seconds more before abruptly disappearing.

“Dat night ah realise sum was wrong,” he admitted, “But I wasn’t goin’ tuh beat up, before deh look tuh sen' meh somewey else.”

Wajid spent the remainder of that night awake.

The incidents did not end there.

Over the following weeks, similar curiosities began to accompany his sleep.

Some nights he would awaken to hear heavy footsteps moving slowly across the corridor outside his room. Needless to say, it was deserted whenever he investigated.

Other nights he felt the edge of his mattress sink slightly, a sensation that would last momentarily.

“Used tuh wake up all de time because someting was only whisperin’ in meh ears… after ah while ah start tuh get accustom.”

Almost.

“Den one night now, I open meh eye an’ watch d**g,” Wajid recalled, “an’ dis jumbie jus watchin’ meh in meh face.”

The figure resembled what one could only describe as the uneasy love-child of shadow and smoke. Its eyes never seemed to occupy the same place twice.

“I watch dat ting whole night… and it watch me whole night.”

For several nights, they studied each other in silence. Then, one evening, the figure broke the stillness by asking a question so strange that it unsettled him more than any threat could have.

"You like squares?"

Wajid quickly found himself caught in a blossoming friendship that ought not to have taken shape.

“He tell meh his name was Yasin,” Wajid explained, “An’ dat he used tuh live in ah place call Marrakesh, buh he eh know how he reach Trinidad… one minute he dey, an nex’ minute he here.”

Yasin apparently called himself a “Keeper of Paradise,” but his paradise bizarrely now stood on that acre of land.

“Deh chain him to de place in Valsayn,” Wajid inisisted, “He cyah leave no-how no-way... bet yuh bottom dollar he still dey.”

Wajid hinted that his uncle's connection to Yasin's bo***ge was not entirely innocent, though he remained unwilling to elaborate.

"Every night ah use tuh ask Yasin all kind ah question." he continued. "Like wuh he see an' wuh de world was like back in de day. Yuh wouldn't believe half de story he tell me."

Then in nineteen ninety-eight, his uncle died and the property was hastily sold. He and his aunt would eventually find a new home in Chaguanas, where he still lives to this day.

"It was rell strange nuh seein' Yasin after dat." Wajid concluded. "He was meh good-good frien', an' ah wish he cudda tell me how tuh help leave dat place."

His tone revealed more than his words ever intended.

And so we arrive at the unavoidable questions.

Could Wajid have formed an unlikely bond with an entity that belonged to another order of existence, privy to what most men would hesitate even to contemplate?

Or was the entire affair born of a fractured mind? A persistent delusion perhaps, that settled into the empty spaces of his life.

The verdict, of course, rests with you.........................................
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