ABSTRACT
The relationship between ghosts or spirits and darkness in contemporary Caribbean fiction, however, has shifted partly as a result of profound changes in regional conditions — political as well as infrastructural. In story the transformation of light into the source of horror marks a new direction for the supernatural story in the Caribbean region, which habitually used the darkness as the realm of the uncanny. The horror is particularly effective because the narrative maintains its lyrical tone throughout, the terror of the girl being drawn into the world of the light conveyed only through the mother’s increasing fears of losing her daughter to the mysterious force emanating from the water. The story is particularly notable in context for the ghosts’, spectres’, and bacoos’ diurnal activities — perhaps the first such creatures not confined to darkness in the Caribbean ghost stories.
