Seychellois supernatural folklore has an unusually well-documented vocabulary of grigri, malfezans, nanm, and dondosya, alongside folktale beings whose stories arrived through African, Malagasy, European, and wider Indian Ocean connections. University of Seychelles research has also assembled roughly 200 folktales for scholarly study, while its Folklore Database continues to preserve Creole stories from Afro-Malagasy, Indo-European, and locally developed traditions. The material available from academic and institutional records supports about 24 distinct Seychellois superstitions, supernatural beliefs, protective practices, haunting traditions, and closely related mythical motifs without padding the collection with generic beliefs from elsewhere.
These traditions are not shared uniformly. Some belong to older generations, some appear in particular family accounts or places on Mahé and Silhouette, and several survive primarily through storytelling rather than daily practice. Researchers also record skepticism among Seychellois themselves, especially around ghosts and occult practitioners. Folklore therefore describes a range of remembered and living ideas, not a single belief system followed by everyone.
Grigri, Malfezans, and Protective Practice
Grigri Can Carry Harmful Intent
Grigri is a Seychellois Creole term covering several kinds of occult practice. Ethnographic accounts connect it with malfezans, the harmful intentions attributed to another person. Stories may treat grigri as a means of causing misfortune, countering it, or explaining otherwise puzzling trouble.
Buried Coins May Be Read as Black Magic
Coins deliberately buried in soil around a home or property have been interpreted as grigri. One field account records a woman warning that such coins should not be touched because she regarded them as black magic placed by someone with hostile intentions.
The Bonnonm Dibwa May Control Misfortune
Older Seychellois accounts describe the bonnonm dibwa, literally a “man of the woods,” as a person possessing unusual knowledge who might be consulted about misfortune. Historical descriptions sometimes joined herbal knowledge and occult ability, although present-day herbalists may firmly reject that association.
Food Can Become a Channel for Occult Intent
Older stories describe love preparations being mixed into food or drink. Later ethnographic accounts also found occasions when refusing another household’s cooking could imply distrust of the cook’s intentions. The occult meaning was often left unstated rather than openly accused.
Playing Cards Can Be Used for Fortune-Telling
Card divination has remained part of the occult practices recorded in Seychelles. Academic discussion of grigri notes fortune-telling with playing cards as one of the European-derived elements absorbed into a broader local collection of supernatural practices.
Certain Books Are Treated as Repositories of Power
Books occupy an unusual place in recorded grigri traditions. Earlier informants sought books believed to contain potent spells, while later practitioners kept Cabalist or occult texts. In some accounts, the physical form of a mysterious book could matter almost as much as the words inside it.
Prayer Cards May Protect a Home From Malfezans
Prayer cards were traditionally fixed to the inside walls of some Seychellois homes and retained even after their writing had faded. Older residents interviewed during ethnographic research associated the cards with protection against malfezans, blending Catholic devotional objects with a local protective interpretation.
A Djinn May Be Consulted Through a Spiritualist
One documented Seychellois spiritualist described communicating with a being he called both a “guardian angel” and a djinn. During the recorded consultation, movement in the pages of a small leather book-like object was taken as a sign that the being was present, and a separate text linked guardian angels with astrological signs. This was one practitioner’s system, not a national custom.
Spirits May Be Credited With Healing
A Seychellois interviewee described his brother as having “many spirits” within him and said those spirits helped him heal people. The account belongs to a particular family narrative rather than a general medical tradition. Supernatural healing claims are cultural beliefs and should not replace professional medical care.
Meditation Has Sometimes Been Suspected of Being Satanic
Instructors from the Yoga Association of Seychelles told an ethnographer that they often met people who regarded yoga, especially meditation, as Satanic. Teachers sometimes avoided mantras or anything that might appear spell-like. This records a modern local suspicion rather than an old Seychellois tradition shared by the wider population.
Nanm, Dondosya, and Encounters After Dark
Nanm Are the Ghosts of Seychellois Stories
Nanm, related to the French expression for a soul, is used for ghosts in Seychellois Creole. Ethnographic fieldwork found ghost encounters to be a frequent topic in conversations among relatives, friends, interviewees, and other residents, although people differed greatly in how literally they accepted the stories.
Dondosya Are Distinguished From Ordinary Ghosts
Seychellois supernatural vocabulary also includes dondosya, described in ethnographic research as zombies. Informants distinguished these beings from nanm and from other spirits, showing that the different supernatural categories were not treated as interchangeable.
The Road Past Mont Fleuri Cemetery Is Associated With Ghosts
Ghost stories collected on Mahé repeatedly placed wandering nanm on roads at night. The road passing Mont Fleuri Cemetery was singled out as a place where ghosts might be encountered after dark, turning an ordinary journey into one of the best-recorded settings for Seychellois haunting lore.
Do Not Answer a Voice Calling Your Name at Night
A repeated piece of ghost lore says that a person walking alone at night should not turn around or acknowledge an unexplained voice calling their name. In the stories recorded on Mahé, answering or looking back could bring the walker into unwanted contact with a nanm.
Swearing Is Said to Drive a Ghost Away
Seychellois informants gave an unusual response to a nighttime ghost encounter: loud and forceful swearing. Instead of prayer or polite speech, rude language was said to repel the presence. One interviewee even connected this response with a personal story about a mysterious woman encountered on a road.
An Unseen Presence May Simply Be “Passing Through”
One family account remembers a child waking to feel an unexplained presence touching her feet. Her mother reassured her that the “something” was merely passing through and would not remain. The storyteller later questioned her own memory, illustrating how ghost stories can coexist with doubt.
A Deceased Person’s Belongings Should Not Linger Indefinitely
An ethnographic account records an expectation that possessions belonging to someone who had died should be removed from the house in a timely manner. The researcher relates this to wider Indian Ocean Afro-Creole ideas about the dead returning home, while avoiding the claim that every Seychellois family gives the practice the same explanation.
Haunted Places on Mahé and Silhouette
Silhouette’s Former Grann Kaz Has Its Own Haunting Stories
At the former Dauban family grann kaz on Silhouette, workers recalled guests asking about a baby heard crying at night when no baby was staying there. Stories also mention a pale female apparition crossing the lawn and a disembodied voice repeatedly calling a woman’s name.
Historic Mahé Buildings Have Named Ghost Traditions
Seychellois heritage lore places the ghost of Ange Pillieron in the corridors of La Bastille, the house he built in the 1930s. Ethnographic writing also records an upstairs room at Lenstiti Kreol, once the Jorre de St Jorre family home, as having a ghostly inhabitant.
Chain-Like Footsteps Haunt Some Hillside Forest Stories
Dense hillside woods connected in local memory with maroons and mocambos also appear in haunting accounts. One woman remembered hearing heavy nearby footsteps while foraging with her grandmother, with a sound suggestive of dragging chains. Her grandmother interpreted it simply as a reason to move elsewhere.
Mythical Beings Preserved in Seychellois Folktales
Soungoula Is More Than an Ordinary Hare
Soungoula is one of the best-known figures in Seychellois folktales. Although the name is connected with East African words for hare, its original meaning faded in Seychelles. Local descriptions turned Soungoula into a strange half-human, half-animal trickster, and some people have pictured the figure as a monkey.
The Swallowing Monster Appears in Several Seychellois Forms
Seychellois tales preserve an Afro-Malagasy family of devouring monsters. They may appear as people, animals, trees, or an enormous moving pumpkin. Stories such as Bononm Bengaye and other child-swallowing tales often turn the creature into a warning about strangers, danger, disobedience, or broken taboos.
Loulou Is a Wolf With an Older Spirit Identity
Seychellois audiences commonly understand Loulou as a dangerous wolf, yet linguistic and folklore research links the name with Malagasy lolo, a spirit. Older Seychellois stories retain supernatural features: Loulou is associated with darkness, forests, mysterious illness, devouring forms, and objects capable of putting a character into a deathlike sleep.
Otherworldly Women Vanish When a Taboo Is Broken
Several Seychellois tales feature supernatural women whose relationships with mortals depend on a condition. Renn Mer, the Queen of the Sea, belongs to the water-maiden tradition, while other stories tell of wives who disappear or return to a nonhuman form after a husband breaks a prohibition or promise.
Grigri and Herbal Medicine Are Not the Same Practice
Older descriptions frequently placed the bonnonm dibwa, herbal remedies, protective rites, fortune-telling, and grigri close together. More recent ethnographic work in Seychelles found a clearer separation. Herbalists introduced through cultural institutions could be emphatic that their plant knowledge had nothing to do with witchcraft, even when outsiders or older stories attached an occult reputation to the same kind of specialist.
This distinction matters because traditional plant knowledge is part of Seychellois cultural heritage in its own right. Stories about spirits, spells, or supernatural healing should not be used as evidence that an herbal practitioner is involved in grigri, nor should any traditional or supernatural remedy be treated as a substitute for appropriate medical care.
How African and Malagasy Beings Changed After Reaching Seychelles
The mythical figures in Seychellois stories are not simple copies of characters found elsewhere. A University of Seychelles study based on a collection of roughly 200 folktales shows how names and meanings shifted as stories moved through Madagascar, East Africa, Mauritius, Réunion, and Seychelles. Once older languages disappeared from everyday use, a familiar sound could acquire a new explanation. Soungoula ceased to be understood plainly as a hare, while Loulou became interpreted as a wolf even though the older Malagasy term behind the name referred to a spirit.
The same process helps explain why the swallowing monster, water maiden, trickster, European fairy-tale plots, African animal stories, and locally altered characters can appear together in Seychellois Creole folklore. The University of Seychelles Folklore Database preserves this mixed repertoire as part of ongoing documentation work with national cultural institutions. These folktale beings are best understood as living pieces of cultural memory, rather than proof that present-day Seychellois literally believe every supernatural event described in the stories.
📚 Roots of Belief
- Mairi O’Gorman — Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Life: Materials, Intimacy and Being Creole in London and Seychelles — Documents grigri, malfezans, buried coins, bonnonm dibwa traditions, card divination, protective prayer cards, occult books, spirit consultation, nanm, dondosya, Mont Fleuri ghost lore, Silhouette hauntings, heritage-house ghosts, and forest accounts through ethnographic fieldwork. (A doctoral thesis preserved by the University of Edinburgh’s institutional research repository.)
- Thérésia Penda Choppy — Monsters, Mythical Creatures, and Island Hopping in Seychellois Folktales — Examines a dataset of about 200 Seychellois folktales and documents Soungoula, the swallowing-monster tradition, Loulou, water maidens, and vanishing otherworldly women, including their African and Malagasy connections. (Published in the Seychelles Research Journal by the University of Seychelles.)
- University of Seychelles Folklore Database — Preserves Seychellois Creole folktales and identifies material drawn from Afro-Malagasy trickster traditions, Indo-European fairy tales, and stories created locally in Seychelles. (An institutional folklore resource operated by the University of Seychelles.)
- University of Seychelles — Creole Language and Culture Research Institute Research Projects — Records the Seychelles Folklore Database as an ongoing documentation project involving University researchers and the national culture institution. (The official research-project record of the University of Seychelles.)