A VAMPIRIC WITCH from Suriname (see AFRICAN VAMPIRE WITCH), the axeman is traditionally a female and fairly common in the lore of vampiric witches throughout Africa. She is a woman by day, a LIVING VAMPIRE, but at night shape-shifts into a bat and flies over the village seeking out prey — someone asleep whose foot is exposed. Very carefully she cuts a small hole in the victim’s big toe and drinks up the blood that spills forth from the wound. The axeman drinks until she is gorged with blood and then flies back to her home. The only sign of attack that the victim will experience is feeling drained and very weak the following day.

Source: Herskovits, Suriname Folk-lore, 744; Leach, Funk and Wagnalls, 99