My Grandmother Was a Witch
Only on Bahama Drama
I’m only sharing this story because y’all know Bahama Drama is the one place people won’t think I’m crazy. Or maybe you still will, but I don’t care. What I saw and what I grew up around is real. Too real.

See, I was born right here in Abaco. My daddy’s a proud Bahamian, but my mom and her whole side? Straight outta Haiti. My grandmother, rest her soul, came from a quiet little town up in the mountains not one of those big cities you hear about, but a place that don’t even show up on Google Maps right. You blink, you miss it. But people in Haiti know the name. And they know what that place is famous for.

Witches.

Not the kind you see on TV with black hats and cauldrons. Nah. My grandmother was what they called a fanm dyanm, a strong woman. But also, something else. She wasn’t the type to harm people. She never made spells to break up marriages or make people sick. But she could see things. Feel things. She used to say, “Bon bagay pa bezwen pale anpil”—the real power don’t talk much.

And there’s stuff she told me that still keeps me up at night.

Like how certain people especially in those mountain regions can travel at night without walking. She said, They don’t need no broomstick. They move with fire. You ever look out your window late and see something with flames behind it, but it ain’t no plane? Don’t watch it too long. She wasn’t smiling when she said that either. I was maybe 11. Thought she was playing. But I never forgot it.

Now this next part? I’ve never told anybody. Not even my closest friends. Because even for people who believe in voodoo and spirits and l was, this one is a lot.

The woman who showed up at my grandmother’s house that day the one cussing in some old-world language nobody could understand—wasn’t just some angry stranger. I found out later that she had been trying to kill me since I was five.

My mom knew. My grandmother knew. And they never told me because I was too young to understand.

But she had poisoned food more than once. Left strange powders around our yard. I used to get real sick as a little girl, and doctors couldn’t explain it. I would see shadows in my room at night, and sometimes I’d wake up and couldn’t breathe. I thought it was nightmares, but my grandmother knew better.

That’s why she didn’t just argue with that woman that day.

She protected me.

She turned her into something else.

A goat.

Yeah, I know how that sounds. But I swear to God on my grandmother’s grave, that’s what happened.

That woman walked into our yard like she had fire in her bones, ready to finish what she started. But after that argument after whatever words they said in that ancient tongue my grandmother did something. I don’t know what. She just whispered into the wind. And that woman, she stopped. Froze. And before I could even blink, her body started to change.

Her eyes bulged. Her mouth twisted. Her hands curled up.

And right there, in the middle of our yard in Abaco, a goat stood where that woman had been.

It didn’t make a sound. Just stood there looking lost, like it didn’t know what it used to be.

My grandmother said nothing. Just told my mom to take care of it. We kept that goat in a pen behind the house for years. Quiet. Always alone. Wouldn’t eat from nobody’s hand but mine.

Sometimes I used to sit by that pen and stare into its eyes, wondering… does she remember? Did she ever stop hating me? Did she know why my grandmother had to do it?

I don’t think my grandmother had a choice. I think she did what any woman would do for her granddaughter. She protected me the only way she could.

So when I say my grandmother was a witch, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean she was powerful. She was brave. She was love in a form the world didn’t always understand.

That’s my story. You can believe it, or not. But if you’re Haitian or part Haitian like me you already know.

Some things in this world go way deeper than skin and bone.