Letiche

Letiche (létiche) is the appellation either a spirit in French folklore or a wild man in south Louisianan folklore. In the older French lore, the létiche is described as the ghost of an unbaptised child "who appears at night in the form of a small white animal," compared to the ermine or stoat; while, in certain later Louisianan lore, the name refers to a human that was raised by alligators, a foundling that has grown into an brutish carnivore of the deep swamp, transformed such that it has the traits of both the human and alligator parents.

As a child spirit

 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), refers to "the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened / Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children."
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), refers to "the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened / Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children."