Chedipe — from the Telugu, roughly “the accursed” or “prostitute-spirit” — is a witch-vampire of the folklore of Andhra Pradesh and the Telugu-speaking south: a sorceress-demoness who rides naked through the night upon a tiger and creeps into the homes of sleeping men to drain their vitality. She is among the most distinctive of India’s regional vampire-figures, a close cousin of the blood-draining yakshini and the churel, and a vivid embodiment of village fears about night, sickness, and the dangerous power of the transgressive woman.
The Witch Who Rides the Tiger
The chedipe is described as a witch or a malign spirit — sometimes the ghost of a woman who died unfulfilled or in disgrace — who roams at night utterly naked, her hair unbound, riding a tiger through the darkness of forest and village. The naked, loose-haired form is itself a sign of her demonic and transgressive nature, the inversion of every norm of the modest village woman. By her sorcery she renders a household’s men insensible, then enters and works her predation upon the master of the house as he sleeps.
The Draining of Vitality
The chedipe’s attack is a slow vampirism of life-force rather than a swift killing. She is said to drink blood from the toe of her sleeping victim, or to draw out his vital energy, leaving him in the morning weakened, drained, and sick — pale, listless, and wasting, as if he had given his strength to the night without knowing it. A man so afflicted wakes believing he merely had a heavy or troubled sleep, unaware that his vitality has been siphoned away; repeated visits leave him steadily more enervated. In this the chedipe gives folk-shape to wasting illnesses, sleep-paralysis, and the inexplicable loss of vigour, naming a supernatural cause for the body’s mysterious declines.
Defence and Detection
Folk tradition holds that the chedipe can sometimes be detected and resisted. A man who wakes and finds himself unable to move may be in her grip; should he strike or wound her, or should the household rouse, she flees into the night. As with the other night-spirits of the south, her power is bound to darkness and impurity, and is countered by the usual defences against malign spirits — iron, fire, protective charms, mantras, and the vigilance of the household. By another telling, she can transform a victim into her thrall.
The Vampire of the Telugu Night
The chedipe takes her place among India’s rich gallery of regional vampire- and witch-spirits — alongside the Keralan Yakshi, the north Indian churel, and the Bengali shakchunni — each a local variation on the dangerous nocturnal feminine, the spirit-woman who drains the living. She entered wider folklore-catalogues as a noted example of the Hindu vampire, the tiger-riding witch of the southern night. In her the village imagination wove together its anxieties about death, desire, illness, and the woman who lives outside the bounds — into a single figure stealing strength from sleeping men beneath the stars.