Duppy stories

It was about nine o’ clock pm and 12 year-old, Telford, walked quickly down the quiet dark country road His mother had sent him to the shop to buy something for breakfast but he wanted to get home quickly because he was afraid. As he neared his gate, a long shadow loomed across the road and seemed to move towards him.

“Duppy! Duppy!” he thought in fright while running back in the direction he had come. To risk facing the ‘duppy’ again he took the long way home which took him about 45 minutes longer than the normal route.

“When I got home my mother ask me – ‘how yu tek so long?’ I could not tell her that mi si one duppy so mi seh that I forgot something at the shop and had to go back,” said Telford, who is now in his fifties. “A little later that night I said to myself – was it really a duppy? So I asked a friend of mine to follow me and we went back down the road. The duppy turned out to be a banana tree.”

Many Jamaicans, especially those who grew up in the country in the days before street lights, can tell you many stories about banana plants and their shadows scareing the living daylights out of them.

But this fear of banana plants and the ‘duppy’ that they are mistaken for is fostered by the stories that parents tell their children. Often these ‘duppy’ stories, often told in groups, are fun but they tend to instill fear in children. Many Jamaican parents also tend to use these stories as a means to keep kids in line.

How many times can you remember hearing, ‘if you don’t behave, the blackheart man or duppy going to come and take you away tonight’ or ‘yuh too lie – mind mi mek duppy box yuh’.

According to 21-year old, David, it was not until in his mid teens that he got over his fear of ‘duppies’ and being out late at night.

“My last duppy scare happen when I was about 15 years old. Mi did sneak out – either to go to a dance or to visit a girl, I don’t remember which one. I was coming back around 1:00 in the morning. When I reached the gate, I see like somebody stand up in front of it waving them hands,” he said. “Mi catch mi coward and race go round a back. Mi so frighten that mi jump the fence and barb wire tear off di whole a mi pants -nearly cut me up. But I did not even feel it. Mi did just want to reach inside. Di next morning, I realised that it was the shadow of the banana tree.”

While the name of the superstitious object may change, the objective is still the same to drive fear into children’s heart.

Most people can remember sleepless nights after hearing stories about rolling calf (a mythical animal with a chain that makes noise, also believed to be a butcher that died and changed his form), duppy rat bat (giant bats), and the blackheart man (an ugly mythical man who kills children and eats their hearts).

The fear instilled by telling duppy stories is a powerful tool that parents can use to control their children. But I wonder, is it really worth it? To have your child spend at least the first 15 years of his or her life being afraid of certain things?

Even into adulthood some persons carry this ingrained fear.

How many of us Jamaicans would walk past a cemetery in the middle of the night, by ourselves, without our hearts speeding up and constantly looking around to make sure that nothing spooky was approaching?

It is part of our culture that I am not sure I want to pass on to my children. Unless I can tell the stories without using them as a veiled threat … maybe like Anansi stories.

But noted Jamaican story- teller, Amina Blackwood-Meeks argued that perhaps telling more duppy stories would result in a less troubled society.

“Author Paul Keens-Douglas in his book Midnight People said that his mother would not tell him not to go somewhere. Instead she would ask him how he planned to get there and then she would tell him that a duppy was under X tree. “But you are a good boy so the duppy won’t trouble you,” she would tell him. He would not test that theory so he would stay home”.

“So maybe if parents were telling their kids more duppy stories they would be more obedient. Duppy stories stimulate the imagination. Plus there are some prayers that our children say at night that scare them but that does not mean that we stop them from saying prayers,” she argued. She concluded telling duppy stories was part culture and part parental manipulation.

Since we are in Heritage Week, it is good to think if this is necessarily a good part of our culture to pass on and if so, how?

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