Lopinot

In the forested foothills of Trinidad's Northern Range, the village of Lopinot takes its name from Charles Joseph, Count de Loppinot, a French royalist officer who fled the Haitian Revolution and settled the estate in the early 1800s with his family and enslaved workers, building a cocoa and coffee plantation in the valley. According to local legend, the count's spirit never left the land: residents have long claimed to see a headless horseman riding through the old estate grounds at night, and others describe hearing the count's voice or footsteps near the ruins of the great house, said to be searching for treasure he supposedly buried before his death in 1819. The stories are woven into Lopinot's identity alongside its famous parang music tradition, and locals still point visitors toward the count's tomb, on the grounds of the old estate, as the place where the haunting is said to begin.