They are commonly described as having human female form with brown or dark blue skin, backward facing feet,[1] and very long manes of smooth, glossy hair that covers their bodies.
Deceitful and ready to capture the wayward traveler, it is said that they are so beautiful that they can lure men into the forest to make love with them, only to kill them afterward.
[4] Also, the legend may have originated from other myths, as distant as the Guaraní Curupí or the Hindu Churel, which was described by Rudyard Kipling in My Own True Ghost Story as having traits similar to those of the ciguapa.
The Hindu hypothesis may be far-fetched since there is no way to ascertain how this story got to the Dominican Republic during the nineteenth century when no cultural exchange occurred between these nations.
[5] A children's picture book was created by Julia Alvarez called The Secret of the Footprints in 2002, that features ciguapas.