Lougarou
A few months ago I (Matt) was riding with another missionary named Bill. Along the way, Bill was telling me about his family’s experiences in their first year in Haiti. He told me about strange noises they used to hear. He said every night they would hear something walking on and in their roof. Whatever it was would walk from one end of the roof to the other, and stop right above their bedroom. The tin roof would crunch under its weight and the wooden rafters would shiver and creak as the prowler moved through them. Night after night, they would hear it, but they could never see it.
Bill told me his family began praying over their house—and they prayed with their son who was in elementary school at the time. Sometime later, Bill was talking with another missionary named Ray and the topic of strange noises came up in the conversation. Ray told Bill that the same thing happened to his family in another town pretty far away. Ray said that he had some relatives visiting and they actually tried to trap whatever this roof-walking creature was. In the daytime they planned how they would stakeout the corners of the roof as well as access points, such as trees. In the evening, like clockwork, the intruder began making noise. Within minutes, everyone had a flashlight and got into position. They found nothing. Ray told Bill that in Haiti there is actually a spirit being that is believed to walk on rooftops.
Later that day I came home and told Pam about my day and recounted some of the things Bill and I talked about. I told her about the roof-walker. Just then, she reminded me of something unusual that happened to us when we lived among the Haitian community in Miami last year—something I had totally forgotten about.
In Miami, we lived in a new four-story building that had eight condominiums on each floor. We lived on the top floor in a corner unit. A couple months after we moved in, we began hearing what sounded like people walking on our roof at night—usually while we were in bed. It seemed unusual to us that something could make so much noise pounding around on a hurricane-grade, rubberized flat roof—and why at eleven o’clock at night? This happened for many consecutive nights; footsteps would move across our ceiling, sometimes running, sometimes walking.
After a couple weeks of this, my own curiosity began prodding me to investigate. I knew that the cable and phone companies were at our building often, and they sometimes worked at strange hours. I knew about the gentrification in the area and it wasn’t unusual to see or hear Miami-Dade police breaking up mischief. But these explanations didn’t fit well with the footsteps.
So one night, after the noises began, I went into one of stairwells and climbed up the ladder to the roof access hatch. The hatch was shut and a lever was turned into the locked position. Whatever was on the roof could not have locked itself up there from the underside of the hatch. I opened it up and climbed onto the roof. I looked out over a wide-open area slightly larger than a basketball court. Other than various air conditioning components and several vents, there was nothing there. There was no sign that anything had ever been up there! I walked to the part of the roof directly over our bedroom—I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Unless someone has access to a helicopter, there were only two ways off the roof—the hatch or a 40-foot jump.
I went back down and reported to Pam what I did not find.
We lived in Miami for several more months after that happened, but we didn’t think much of it. I can’t say we heard it all the time, just for a period of time. I can’t say that we ever prayed about it or attributed the noise to anything in the spiritual realm—we didn’t see any reason to.
But—now we live in Haiti, and we have been told about a creature called a Lougarou. From what people tell us, lougarous typically come out at night. Lougarous take on many forms, and we have been told that there are people known to be lougarous. Once someone transforms into a lougarou, they are usually only heard and not seen. However, people here have seen lougarous before and the descriptions vary widely. Oddly enough, lougarous have a propensity for walking around on rooftops and getting away unseen!
Whatever it was in Miami, we may never know. But the incident would be lost had it not reminded us of the Apostle Paul’s words to Christians in Ephesus: “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the devil. For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:11-12)