Grenada's Weird History Without the Hype

Grand Etang: the lake that invites a legend

Grand Etang Lake sits in the crater of an extinct volcano in Grenada’s Grand Etang Forest Reserve, about 530 metres above sea level and roughly 36 acres in area. Official tourism material presents it as a scenic freshwater lake surrounded by rainforest, trails, birds, frogs, lizards, fish and the looming presence of Mount Qua Qua. The same setting explains why the place attracts stranger talk: it is high, enclosed, misty, volcanic and visually separate from the everyday coast.[Grenada Tourism Authority]puregrenada.comGrenada Tourism Authority Grand Etang National Park & Forest ReserveGrenada Tourism Authority Grand Etang National Park & Forest Reserve

The familiar legend says that a mermaid lives in the depths of Grand Etang. Some tourist-facing retellings make the lake sound bottomless, but the more sober published descriptions give a depth of around 20 feet, or about six metres. That contrast is exactly what makes the story useful as folklore rather than as zoology. The “bottomless” lake is not a measured fact; it is a way of saying that a dark crater lake in a rainforest feels as though it ought to conceal something.[CPAG RIH]thecpag.orgCPAG RIHGrand Etang Lake | CPAG RIHCPAG RIHGrand Etang Lake | CPAG RIH

The mermaid claim also belongs to a wider Caribbean pattern of water spirits, dangerous beauty and moral warning. In Grenada, the legend works because Grand Etang is already a place of real natural power. The lake is not mysterious because science cannot describe it. It is mysterious because its geology, altitude and atmosphere give the imagination something convincing to work with.[Grenada Tourism Authority]puregrenada.comGrenada Tourism Authority Grand Etang National Park & Forest ReserveGrenada Tourism Authority Grand Etang National Park & Forest Reserve

Folk spirits: warnings dressed as ghosts

Grenadian folk-spirit traditions include figures such as the jumbie, the Dwenn, the Lajabless, the Ligaroo and Mama-Maladie. A Grenadian heritage education source describes the jumbie as the ghost of a dead person who may influence the living, especially during the first forty days after death; the Dwenn as the spirit of an unbaptised child who tricks other children; and the Lajabless as a beautiful night-walking woman with a hidden cloven hoof who lures men to death.[Islandlearning]islandlearning.gdFolk Spirits in Grenadian Culture and HeritageFolk Spirits in Grenadian Culture and Heritage

Read literally, these are supernatural claims. Read culturally, they are also practical maps of risk. They tell children not to wander, men not to be careless on lonely roads, mourners to respect the dead, and communities to treat childbirth, burial and night travel as serious thresholds. Their strangeness comes from how neatly they turn everyday dangers into memorable figures.

Obeah adds a more complicated layer. Scholars Kenneth Bilby and Jerome Handler describe Obeah as a broad West Indian set of practices concerned with channelling spiritual forces, often for healing, protection, good fortune, divination and defence against harm, while noting that Europeans and colonial elites heavily distorted it as wickedness or fraud. They also stress that Obeah is not a single organised religion with unified doctrine, clergy and congregations, but a catch-all term for varied practices shaped by African traditions, Caribbean conditions and local knowledge.[jeromehandler.com]jeromehandler.comObeah healing Bilby 04Obeah healing Bilby 04

Grenada’s colonial record shows why this matters. The island’s 1825 Consolidated Slave Act included a clause making Obeah illegal, using language about supposed communication with the Devil and “evil spirits”, and treating possession of materials associated with Obeah or witchcraft as a grave offence. That does not prove that accused people had paranormal powers. It does show that colonial law treated spiritual practice, healing knowledge and alleged occult harm as politically dangerous.[Obeah Histories]obeahhistories.orgOpen source on obeahhistories.org.

Jab Jab: why the “devil” is not the point

To an outsider, Grenada’s Jab Jab can look like the most obviously “demonic” item in the country’s weird archive: blackened bodies, horned helmets, chains, intense drumming and a dawn street presence. Grenada’s tourism authority describes Jab Jab as one of the standout experiences of Spicemas, with masqueraders covered in black oil or charcoal, wearing horns and carrying chains during the early-morning J’ouvert parade.[Grenada Tourism Authority]puregrenada.comGrenada Tourism Authority SpicemasGrenada Tourism Authority Spicemas

But treating Jab Jab as merely “evil-looking” misses the cultural meaning. Contemporary reporting and Grenadian cultural commentary commonly frame Jab Jab as satire, resistance and a reversal of plantation power. The frightening image is part of the argument: the masquerade takes symbols associated with bondage, accusation and colonial fear, then turns them into public performance, rhythm and collective freedom.[Essence]essence.comroots in resistance grenada jab jabroots in resistance grenada jab jab

That makes Jab Jab unusually important for country-level Forteana. It sits at the boundary between the uncanny and the historical. The figure uses devil imagery, but not simply to frighten. It dramatises how the people labelled monstrous could seize the label and make it dance.

Carriacou’s Shakespeare Mas: the uncanny duel of memory

Carriacou, Grenada’s sister island, adds one of the Caribbean’s strangest and most distinctive performance traditions: Shakespeare Mas. In 2024, UNESCO added it to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, describing it as a tradition combining speechmaking, costume design and public theatre, with “kings” competing by reciting Shakespeare, historical texts and boasts; mistakes are met with a dramatic symbolic lash.[The United Nations in the Caribbean]caribbean.un.orgOpen source on un.org.

Grenada’s National Trust describes the tradition as unique to Carriacou, rooted in speech-mas and stick-fighting, with players wearing colourful costumes, masks, capes and padded crowns while reciting lines from Julius Caesar in mock battle. The Grenada Tourism Authority similarly presents it as a friendly duel in which errors receive playful taps from an opponent’s stick.[Grenada National Trust]grenadanationaltrust.orgGrenada National Trust -Shakespeare MasGrenada National Trust -Shakespeare Mas

For a Fortean page, Shakespeare Mas matters because it shows that “weird history” is not only about apparitions and monsters. Here the uncanny element is cultural survival: Shakespearean fragments, masquerade, rivalry, village identity and ritualised violence are fused into something that looks impossible until one sees how many histories are speaking through it at once.

Kick-’em-Jenny: the invisible volcano under the sea

North of Grenada lies Kick-’em-Jenny, an active submarine volcano monitored by the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre. The Centre says the volcano first revealed itself historically in 1939, when earthquakes were felt, high waves affected Grenada, the Grenadines and Barbados, and an explosive eruption broke the sea surface with ash-laden columns rising about 300 metres. Its most recent eruption was in April 2017, and the volcano remains under a yellow alert level with a 1.5 km exclusion zone around the crater.[UWI Seismic Research Centre]uwiseismic.comUWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-‘Em-Jenny | The UWI Seismic Research CentreUWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-‘Em-Jenny | The UWI Seismic Research Centre

This is one of Grenada’s best examples of a natural phenomenon that can sound like legend without needing paranormal embellishment. The volcano is not normally visible. Its eruptions are detected by instruments; its acoustic signals can be heard underwater and sometimes on land as deep rumbling. The official monitoring network uses seismometers, tide gauges, hydrophones, tiltmeters and GPS stations on nearby islands and rocks.[UWI Seismic Research Centre]uwiseismic.comUWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-’em-Jenny FAQ | The UWI Seismic Research CentreUWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-’em-Jenny FAQ | The UWI Seismic Research Centre

Kick-’em-Jenny also produces the kind of hazards that inspire frightening maritime stories. UWI notes that submarine volcanic gas can lower water density, causing vessels to lose buoyancy, and that direct risks to boats include water disturbance, hot ejecta and ballistic rocks during eruptions. Scientists regard large tsunami fears as often exaggerated under current conditions, but they still treat the volcano as a serious shipping hazard.[UWI Seismic Research Centre]uwiseismic.comOpen source on uwiseismic.com.

The Island Queen: Grenada’s unresolved maritime tragedy

The disappearance of the Island Queen is the closest Grenada has to a classic “vanished without a trace” case. On 5 August 1944, the schooner left Grenada for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with Captain Chicra Salhab and 67 passengers and crew, including schoolgirls from St Joseph’s Convent St George’s and Anglican High School. Another vessel, the Providence Mark, made the same journey safely. The Island Queen did not arrive, and no wreckage or bodies were found.[NOW Grenada]nowgrenada.comNOW Grenada Island Queen disappeared without a trace 75 years ago | NOW GrenadaNOW Grenada Island Queen disappeared without a trace 75 years ago | NOW Grenada

NOW Grenada reported in 2019 that, 75 years later, there was still no concrete evidence for what happened. A fire was suggested at the time, supported by reports of smoke on the horizon off Carriacou, but families did not accept this as a complete answer and other theories circulated. Historian Beverley Steele later researched the tragedy through interviews with relatives and friends of those lost, publishing a book on the Island Queen and Grenada in wartime.[NOW Grenada]nowgrenada.comNOW Grenada Island Queen disappeared without a trace 75 years ago | NOW GrenadaNOW Grenada Island Queen disappeared without a trace 75 years ago | NOW Grenada

The most striking scientific hypothesis links the disappearance to Kick-’em-Jenny. UWI’s hazard discussion states that the Island Queen may have been lost because of lowered water density caused by volcanic degassing, noting that Kick-’em-Jenny had erupted the year before and may still have been actively degassing in 1944 without visible surface signs. This remains a proposed explanation, not a solved verdict, but it is a rare case where a “ghost ship” style mystery has a plausible geophysical mechanism nearby.[UWI Seismic Research Centre]uwiseismic.comOpen source on uwiseismic.com.

What Grenada’s strange record really shows

The most evidence-backed weird material in Grenada is not a neat catalogue of UFOs, animal falls and laboratory-defying monsters. It is a layered record in which landscape, performance, colonial law, oral tradition and real hazards overlap. Grand Etang shows how a volcanic lake becomes a mermaid lake. Folk spirits show how communities turn social rules and dangers into memorable beings. Jab Jab and Shakespeare Mas show how the uncanny can be performed in the street without being a claim of literal haunting. Kick-’em-Jenny shows that the sea itself can hide a roaring engine beneath the surface. The Island Queen shows how a national tragedy can remain open enough for both memory and science to circle it.

That is Grenada’s distinctive Fortean character: not a country where every odd story needs to be believed, but one where the boundary between folklore and fact is especially alive. The strongest approach is to let each case keep its proper category. A mermaid is a lake legend. A jumbie is a folk-spirit tradition. Jab Jab is a masquerade of historical resistance. Obeah is a contested spiritual and healing complex shaped by colonial criminalisation. Kick-’em-Jenny is a monitored volcano. The Island Queen is an unresolved loss with a plausible but unproven natural explanation. Together, they make Grenada’s weird-history record stranger, not weaker, because the uncertainty is honestly placed.

Amazon book picks

Further Reading

Books and field guides related to Grenada's Weird History Without the Hype. Use these as the next step if you want deeper reading beyond the article.

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The Serpent and the Rainbow

By Wade Davis

First published 1985. Subjects: Social life and customs, Description and travel, Zombiism, Bizango (Cult), Religious life and customs.

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A Brief History of the Caribbean

By Jan Rogozinski

First published 1999.

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Caribbean Folk Tales

By Virginia Hamilton

Introduces Caribbean storytelling traditions relevant to Grenada.

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Caribbean Mythology

By Gerald Hausman

Surveys myths and legends from across the Caribbean.

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Browse more on Amazon:The Serpent and the RainbowA Brief History of the CaribbeanCaribbean Folk Tales

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Endnotes

1. Source: thecpag.org
Title: CPAG RIHGrand Etang Lake | CPAG RIH
Link:https://thecpag.org/node/1309

2. Source: islandlearning.gd
Title: Folk Spirits in Grenadian Culture and Heritage
Link:https://www.islandlearning.gd/post/folk-spirits

3. Source: jeromehandler.com
Title: Obeah healing Bilby 04
Link:https://jeromehandler.com/wp-content/uploads/Obeah_healing_Bilby-04.pdf

4. Source: essence.com
Title: roots in resistance grenada jab jab
Link:https://www.essence.com/culture/roots-in-resistance-grenada-jab-jab/

5. Source: ich.unesco.org
Title: shakespeare mas a traditional component of carriacou s annual carnival 02138
Link:https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/shakespeare-mas-a-traditional-component-of-carriacou-s-annual-carnival-02138

6. Source: unesco.org
Title: document 6899
Link:https://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/document-6899

7. Source: ich.unesco.org
Link:https://ich.unesco.org/en/video/72514

8. Source: unesco.org
Title: document 6019
Link:https://www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/document-6019

9. Source: islandlearning.gd
Title: jab jab culture in grenada
Link:https://www.islandlearning.gd/post/jab-jab-culture-in-grenada

10. Source: islandlearning.gd
Title: shakespeare mas
Link:https://www.islandlearning.gd/post/shakespeare-mas

11. Source: uwispace.sta.uwi.edu
Link:https://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/bitstreams/b55d4d5b-baa7-4d42-84ef-bdf2dcac92fe/download

12. Source: archive.org
Title: s2id13415870 djvu.txt
Link:https://archive.org/stream/s2id13415870/s2id13415870_djvu.txt

13. Source: islands.com
Title: Grenada’s ‘Oldest And Largest Protected Area’ Is
Link:https://www.islands.com/1766914/grand-etang-national-park-stunning-mountain-rainforests-lake-caribbean-oldest-largest-tropical/

14. Source: youtube.com
Title: Grand Etang Lake
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpOqeLfMWQA

15. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Grenada Tourism Authority Grand Etang National Park & Forest Reserve
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/grand-etang-national-park-forest-reserve/

16. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Grenada Tourism Authority Spicemas
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/spicemas/

17. Source: uwiseismic.com
Title: UWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-‘Em-Jenny | The UWI Seismic Research Centre
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/volcanoes/kick-em-jenny/

18. Source: nowgrenada.com
Title: NOW Grenada Island Queen disappeared without a trace 75 years ago | NOW Grenada
Link:https://nowgrenada.com/2019/08/island-queen-disappeared-without-a-trace-75-years-ago/

19. Source: obeahhistories.org
Link:https://obeahhistories.org/grenada1825/

20. Source: obeahhistories.org
Title: Obeah Histories Legislation | Obeah Histories
Link:https://obeahhistories.org/law/

21. Source: caribbean.un.org
Link:https://caribbean.un.org/en/285862-cultural-expressions-grenada-and-jamaica-recognized-intangible-cultural-heritage-humanity

22. Source: grenadanationaltrust.org
Title: Grenada National Trust -Shakespeare Mas
Link:https://grenadanationaltrust.org/shakespeare-mas/

23. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Grenada Tourism Authority Carriacou Carnival
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/product/carriacou-carnival/

24. Source: uwiseismic.com
Title: UWI Seismic Research Centre Kick-’em-Jenny FAQ | The UWI Seismic Research Centre
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/faq/kick-em-jenny-faq/

25. Source: uwiseismic.com
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/volcanoes/kick-em-jenny/kej-monitoring/

26. Source: uwiseismic.com
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/volcanoes/kick-em-jenny/kej-hazards/

27. Source: nowgrenada.com
Title: musings on the jab
Link:https://nowgrenada.com/2024/09/musings-on-the-jab/

28. Source: nowgrenada.com
Title: shakespeare mas added to unescos ich representative list
Link:https://nowgrenada.com/2024/12/shakespeare-mas-added-to-unescos-ich-representative-list/

29. Source: uwiseismic.com
Title: Kick em Jenny
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Kick-em-Jenny.pdf

30. Source: uwiseismic.com
Link:https://uwiseismic.com/sp_faq/can-an-eruption-from-the-kick-em-jenny-submarine-volcano-cause-a-tsunami/

31. Source: Wikipedia
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeah

32. Source: Wikipedia
Title: Grand Etang
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Etang

33. Source: puregrenada.com
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/fr/spicemas/

34. Source: puregrenada.com
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/de/spicemas/

35. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Carnaval de Carriacou
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/fr/product/carriacou-carnival/

36. Source: puregrenada.com
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/es/spicemas/

37. Source: puregrenada.com
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/de/product/carriacou-carnival/

38. Source: puregrenada.com
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/it/spicemas/

39. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Carnaval de Carriacou
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/es/carriacou-carnival/

40. Source: puregrenada.com
Title: Carnevale di Carriacou
Link:https://www.puregrenada.com/it/product/carriacou-carnival/

41. Source: tripadvisor.com
Title: Grand Etang Lake
Link:https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147297-d149541-Reviews-Grand_Etang_Lake-Grand_Etang_National_Park_Saint_Andrew_Parish_Grenada.html

42. Source: grenadanationaltrust.org
Title: jab jab
Link:https://grenadanationaltrust.org/jab-jab/

43. Source: scholar.library.miami.edu
Link:https://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/Religion/religion.html

44. Source: be-sparkling.com
Link:https://be-sparkling.com/en/grenada-top-11-things-should-see/

Additional References

45. Source: loc.gov
Link:https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85034375/1882-01-07/ed-1/?sp=3&st=text

46. Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/p/DafimS1C5AS/

47. Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/unrulynationn/posts/-3-things-grenada-did-firstjennifer-hostenfirst-caribbean-miss-world-1970grenada/122127200996417000/

48. Source: history.co.uk
Link:https://www.history.co.uk/articles/strange-sea-serpent-sightings-from-history

49. Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRkSs1_DnSS/

50. Source: grenadabluewatersailing.com
Link:https://www.grenadabluewatersailing.com/8-awesome-animals-grenadines-grenada/

51. Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/Timesnow/posts/a-mesmerizing-natural-phenomenon-in-iran-has-left-people-worldwide-in-awe-a-beac/1114500774054517/

52. Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/p/DHL8knVJkpS/

53. Source: facebook.com
Link:https://www.facebook.com/power951/posts/a-true-display-of-tradition-and-culture-the-legendary-shakespeare-mas-is-in-full/1449329039734827/

54. Source: tanrosie.com
Link:https://www.tanrosie.com/about-carriacou