{"id":240789,"date":"2010-01-28T07:33:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T12:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/faithworld\/?p=11536"},"modified":"2010-01-28T07:33:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T12:33:19","slug":"haiti-quake-raises-fears-of-child-eating-spirits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/240789","title":{"rendered":"Haiti quake raises fears of child-eating spirits"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"haiti<\/p>\n

Children in a homelss camp in Port-au-Prince, 27 Jan 2010\/Eduardo Munoz<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The earthquake that shattered Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological figures entrenched in Haitian culture, are prowling homeless camps in search of young prey.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The ‘loup-garou,’<\/em> which means ‘wolf man,’ is similar to werewolf legends in other parts of the world, but in Haitian folklore it is a person who is possessed by a spirit and can turn into a beast or even a dog, cat, chicken, snake or another animal to suck the blood of babies and young children.<\/p>\n

Haitians fear loups-garous<\/em> in the best of times and even more since a powerful earthquake wrecked the capital of Port-au-Prince two weeks ago, killing as many as 200,000 people and forcing hundreds of thousands more to sleep outside in vast camps or on the streets.<\/p>\n

Most of Haiti’s 9 million people are Roman Catholics but many also practice voodoo, a religion with African roots.\u00a0 The belief in loups-garous<\/em> cuts across religious identity and is most strongly adhered to among Haiti’s poor, which are the majority in the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Read the full story here.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Children in a homelss camp in Port-au-Prince, 27 Jan 2010\/Eduardo Munoz The earthquake that shattered Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological figures entrenched in Haitian culture, are prowling homeless camps in search of young prey. The ‘loup-garou,’ which means ‘wolf man,’ is similar to werewolf legends in other parts of the world, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}