Stikini

(Sta-KEY-nee)

The Seminole Indians of Oklahoma in the United States have a vampiric creature in their mythology called a stikini ("man owl"). By day, it looks like a human, but at night it vomits up all its internal organs so that it can shape-shift into a great horned owl to fly out in search of a sleeping person to prey upon. It removes his still-beating heart from his body by pulling it out of his mouth, then it takes the heart back to its home. There, it cooks the heart in an enchanted pot and eats it in secret. Before dawn, it returns to where it hid its organs and swallows them back down before changing into its human guise.

The only way to destroy this vampire is to find its intestines while it is out hunting. Then, using magical herbs and owl feathers, one must construct an arrow. When the stikini returns to consume its organs, one can fire upon it with the magic arrow, as this is the only time that the creature is vulnerable.

Source: Gill, Dictionary of Native American Mythology, 288; Hitchcock, Traveler in Indian Territory, 139­ 40; Howard, Oklahoma Seminoles Medicines, 97; Martin, Sacred Revolt, 26; Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, 346