Letiche

Letiche (létiche) is an appellation that refers to both a spirit in French folklore and a wild man raised by alligators in south Louisianan folklore, the latter potentially being an embellishment on the first.

As a child spirit
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; and, in later Louisianan lore, while it likewise originates as an unbaptised child, the form is said to be that of an aquatic spirit of the bayou, one that harangues and seeks to overturn boats.

Notations

 * &mdash; a French poem on the ghostly entity
 * 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."
 * The Louisiana Writers' Project in Louisiana: a Guide to the State (New York: Hastings House, 1941), refers to the "Letiche of Terrebonne Parish, the soul of an unbaptized infant who swims the bayous, upsetting pirogues whenever possible."

As a half-alligator hybrid
In the more modern accounts, the lore typically being ascribed to unidentified Native American and Cajun sources, letiche refers to a human that was raised by alligators, particularly 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. The origin of this version of the letiche is not clear.