La Diablesse

Translated as “female devil,” La Diablesse is the devil woman, a seductress, and a temptres to male travellers. She is recognised for her beauty and as a symbol of demonic lust. The story of La Diablesse is well known to all who cherish traditional stories. With her voluminous skirts and womanly figure, La Diablesse appears along lonely paths, visible to men who would digress from their courses to accommodate a pretty face.

She appears on the nights when the full moon is the only light that pierces the darkness and she waits on those removed byways where a man is likely to pass. According to 19th-century traveller and writer Lafcadio Hearn, “Mostly, she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to plantation, from hamlet to hamlet. But close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage, behind the cathedral of St Pierre.”