[citation needed] Soucouyants suck humans' blood from their arms, necks, legs and other soft regions while the victim sleeps, leaving black and blue marks on the body in the morning.
[citation needed] Belief in soucouyants is still preserved to an extent in Guyana, Suriname and some Caribbean islands, including Saint Lucia, Dominica, Haïti and Trinidad.
[citation needed] In the French West Indies, specifically the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and also in Suriname, the Soukougnan or Soukounian is a person able to shed his or her skin to turn into a vampiric fireball.
[citation needed] The term "Loogaroo" also used to describe the soucouyant, possibly comes from the French word for werewolf: Loup-garou; often confused with each other since they are pronounced the same.
[citation needed] With the passage of time and gradual changes in the story, the soucouyant is no longer exclusively described as an elderly woman.
Many Bahamians who descended from the Yoruba referred to old Congolese women as witches who shed their skins in the night and sucked human blood.
In Divining the self, Velma E Love describes the Aje as "a blood-sucking, wicked, dreadful cannibal who transforms herself into a bird at night and flies to distant places, to hold nocturnal meetings with her fellow witches."