Creatures of the Hills: Duendes and Spirits in the Shadows of Mexico

The very first story I ever published on our Scary FM network was called The Creatures from the Hills, and it was a tail recounting a true event when I was with two traveler friends in the Sacred Valley in Peru. The sun was setting and we were by this empty lake, just trying to walk around there and see what was up. That's when we decided to get back to town. The vans that brought you back to the main city were not that many, especially at night, so as we were rushing back, we spotted Eddie, this man who was standing at the top of a hill looking down. So we walked up to him, said hello, and he pointed us toward the town. Since you know, back then, the only thing Google Map showed us were foot trails on the images and nothing but hills and greenery to the right side of the map. But we started talking and as we learned about him and his family, he actually invited us over to meet them, and so we walked over. We were kind of at the edge of his farm, and we met them, talked with him, took a photo, kept going, and we finally walked back once it was dark out. Already now there, we figured it was best to just find a place to stay around there. There was something that really bothered me. When we were leaving, Eddie warned us to watch out for the little people. I thought that he was joking, but he tried to convince me that yes, they do come out at night and have sometimes taken their animals and children. I kind of laughed nervously and kept walking, but I could tell that all three of us were thinking about what he had just said right there as we were going back to the small streets of cincetto this small town in the dark. It's been ten years as that happened, and I've only looked at the surface of what these little people the wind this or goblins as someone call them, really are. And in my research I found much more than just little creatures at Rome in the wilderness. I found historical journals from explorers in the Americas, or all accounts recorded by anthropologists, and even written record having to do with medicine and magic that points to these little people and other traditions creatures like Alushes Duendez creatures from the hills being much more than what we know them to be. Let's not be fooled here. Some accounts are actually terrifying. Today we're going to visit one of the greatest mysteries I've always hoped to uncover of stories from the creatures that steel play pranks and terrify us walking down long dirt trails and unexplored places. My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story. Stories of Duendez and these creatures are from all over the world, but for this episode, I'm going to focus specifically on the area we know now as Mexico. In the region of Jalisco, Mexico, there's a place known as El Salto in Santa Cruzel. Vaie Dundez are said to roam there, and it's in that location where I found this story where a man tells how he grew up there and how people would mention Duen this In passing. He said that a co madre, a close friend of his aunt Victoria, was enduen dada, which is a way of saying taken over by d Wendez. Duende come out of the water, he said, not on earth as we know it, they'd come out to mess with us. It turns out this woman was out to bathe in a place they call La Sankas, pools filled with crystalline water, and she was sitting on a rock when suddenly the duin this came out. People noticed once it started to turn late, and she hadn't gotten home, so they went out to look for her and found her sitting there at Lasankas on a rock. But she kept on laughing and also looked like she was talking with someone, so she would keep looking toward the water again, laughing, unable to hear those who kept calling her name, and words started to spread quickly. If you know what's happening, they would say, she's been taken over by the wind this the goblins, and they're making her laugh. So they ran over to find one of the local men, someone who knew about curing these types of evil spells, and he said that there was something that they could do that they didn't have her end wind Dada taken over by the wind this, but rather espirituada, so the goblins had spiritually taken over. So he said, quickly, go to a store where they sell toys, buy lots and lots of them, and when you have them, run over to see her and throw them in the water. At nine at night, when you have thrown in all the toys, get in to grab the woman out of the water, and so they did. They bought little toy plates and cups, little dolls, and they threw everything in the water right at that time when this guy said to do it. Then the husband went in there and got her out, but something wasn't right. She came out in this drowsy state, distracted, like as if she had gone crazy. So they took her to a curandero, the man the same one who gave them the advice about the toys, and it was then she started reacting properly to everything. It took a while, though, and they asked her about the situation later, what has she felt what happened? And she said that she saw these small creatures, very curious, very funny. When this that they would move around, bumping into each other, falling, getting up, making noise and speaking in voices that she was amused by. She also said that she didn't know how long she had been there with them. But the story spread that when this had stolen her spirit. But not all of these stories portrayed when this as funny little creatures with hidden bad intentions, though there was another legend written by the Mexican writer Arthemio de vallieresbe the one that is said in the late sixteenth century, and it talks about Donia Luisa de Servantees, a woman who was married to a city councilor now. The story goes that Dona Luisa was tormented by a duende or a demon, who would slap her face, hurting her enough to bruise, marking her from the assaults. She was around other ladies, her gloves would suddenly fly off her hands and everyone would see it. Her shoes would escape and hop across the room, carried by this invisible duende from one place to another, and sometimes even while she was talking with other people, her face would get smeared with ink or charcoal placed by the duende in order to embarrass her. Sometimes that when they would untie and lower her petticoats in front of gentlemen, and Dona Luisa would scream and faint. Even while she was traveling in her carriage, the Gwen, they would take off her garters and throw them in the air, And while she was at home working on a pincushion or something, the duende would take them and throw them out the windows. And the events unfolded like that at all hours of the day and night, everywhere, even in church, chased by this the when they're trying to make her life miserable, destroying her prayer book, throwing her rosary, and sometimes even showing up in creepy forms and figures around the house. Now, this type of torment may do Na Luisa live in a state you can only describe as perpetual fear, living by dying. Now, this story was just that, a story written by Arthemio, who was known to speak of when this in a negative way, associating them with the devil, the Christian devil we might be familiar with. And as we dig deeper into why this happens, we have to start to get familiar with colonial narratives, primarily in Mexico, where things being tied to the devil were part of the process to evangelization from the Spanish. And I find this a lot actually, and you'll see it as a recurring theme and a lot of stories that involve the colonization by the Spanish. They arrived, saw a different civilization and started trying to change the names of things, calling some works of the devil. It's how many celebrations and customs were lost, and as you'll see, when this were not always called When this, the darkness that was tied to them came after the fact, but not to make them scarier, I mean to literally hide them. Now. I know this is a phrase I repeat often, maybe because my family is rooted a little closer to it. But ghost stories feel more natural and are accepted with less stigma to me in Latin America than in some of the Western cultures that are developing, like in the United States. So here's what we're gonna do. I want you to imagine this. You're now part of an old world. Here we go in this world. The rustle of the leaves in the forest, and the darkness with animals waking up in the trees around you, the sudden ripple of water in a spring, and the success of a hunt. They all have a meaning, had all been negotiated already with forces much more powerful than you had known up until this point. And everything had a reason, and everything has a price. In the beginning, there was nothing in a fable of the Sun and the Moon. We learned that the gods wanted to illuminate the world, so they commanded nobles and important men that they must go through this great, raging fire and bring light to everything. But when the men were confronted by this enormous blaze, the nobles were too scared to try it. Noticing this, an ancient god approached a man whom no one respected, a poor and sick man that was full of sores, and persuaded him to go through this blaze. And with that courage the one that the nobles didn't have, the man covered and sores, accepted the challenge. He threw himself into the heart of the fire, and after he went through, he came out to a sacred pool of water, purified and cleansed, and from the spool he rose into the sky and transformed into the magnificent, brilliant Sun. And when the rest of the men saw this, they started to feel envy. Now the chance for glory was fading, so one of the nobles decided to jump into the fire. But because the ferocity of the fire had died down a little bit, the noble came out not as another sun, but as the moon, a borrowed and paler light. Offerings were often done at the top of the highest mountains because of this story, and it's a thank you to these spirits. The Mayans also had their own fables in creation, just like many civilizations around the world, but these gave the explanations of spirits. Some that lived in tools, took care of the crops in the fields, and in order to negotiate positive results. People back then had a complex system of rituals and offerings. But why am I bringing this up? I want to show you how daily practices were influenced by this. These mundane things like going out to hunt deer that eventually became spiritual events. This certain type of respect for spirits of the forest and the animals themselves, considered a hunt a sacred act. Before setting out, the hunter would address as hunting snares as my sister, the snake woman, and implored so that they would capture the prey seven roses, the words that meant deer. And this is how things get a little bit darker, at least for the Spanish, who got to learn about nahalism, the ability of certain humans to transform into animal counterparts, and the Manoil de Ministros de Indios. This book detailing many of these myths and tables. They outlined this phenomenon the spirit and everything and this ability to transform into the animals themselves. Priests were staying at this convent when suddenly a large bat entered the cell. Scared by the sight of it, they started throwing their hats at it until they actually heard it, and then it flew away injured. The next day, an old woman from the village came to the convent, complaining angrily that the priest had tried to kill her the night before, and that showed to them without a doubt that she had been the bat that they had heard. In another account, a man named Simon Gomez was traveling with his sons when suddenly a massive crocodile, a kaiman, came out from the river. Afraid for their lives, Simon shot and killed a creature, and at that very moment, an old woman who had been weaving in his home suddenly fell down and died. The wounds on her body corresponded exactly to the wounds that Simon had inflicted on the crocodile. And there were stories of ghosts too. The Yualte Pustli was one of them, a spirit that appeared as a headless man whose chest would split open and slam shut. It would make the sound like a woodcutter's axe hitting a tree in the dead of night. It sounds terrifying, but some believed that it was not all evil, because if a brave man could overcome his fear and take the spirit's heart from its open chest, it would be granted his deepest wishes and receive a powerful omen of good fortune. It was at this point that you might start seeing the spirits in everything scary and not so scary. But let's continue. So in come the Spanish, the missionaries, and they start this theological war on the meso American spiritual landscape. They had this strict framework for Christianity. After all, it's a duality, right, a universe with a single conflict, good versus evil, God and Satan. So when they all saw these rituals, they didn't see it as something that competed with their system. They didn't even think of it as another religion. They dove into one belief, and one belief only, that all of this was work of the devil. The devil had organized all of this, and it was their duty to fix it. This is how they came up with this system to change what drove these ideas, but with almost clinical precision, They called it a spiritual sickness that it needed a doctor to cure and destroy the devil's work. Frei Bernardino de Sagun wrote the General History of the Things of New Spain and even took that metaphor in the route of a doctor. He said that first the doctor needed to see the disease. Once identified, they could hear it, and from his work, even the songs that the natives would sing suddenly became a quote forest or a thorny thicket field with very dense brambles, planted by our enemy, the devil. It was made to perform his works and to hide himself in them in order to not be discovered. But the natives, staying true to their customs, wouldn't go to church and instead would go to the mountain to make sacrifices to their gods, and this was interpreted as a trick of the devil to take them away from the one true God. In another work, the Tratado de Superstisio, the author says that the words were made up in Mexican languages introduced by the devil's industry to make spells seem even more mysterious and powerful to the ignorant, and it may have been true the thing about the made up words, because indigenous practices were still happening, either through direct resistance or by mixing them with a new faith that was being imposed on everyone. This process of syncretism was subtle, but a very very powerful form of cultural resistance. Sure, they would adopt new practices, but they would also keep the ones that they had known and had kept them alive for generations. Spanish and the collectors of stories to share back in Spain had their own suspicions that this was happening, so they challenged some of the stories, including one of the most important and famous legends in Mexico, the one of the Vidhan de lalla Lupe that the here's a super condensed version of it just in case. So it's December fifteen, thirty one, ten years after the Spanish had taken over to Nochitlan, and we're just north of Mexico City in the hill of Tepeyac. Humble indigenous man Juan Diego Quatla Twatzin was walking near the Payac on his way to church. He suddenly heard music and saw a radiant woman surrounded by light, speaking in his native language Nawtli. Now she said that she was the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and asked him to go to the bishop Frei Juan de Sumaraga with a request build a church in her honor on that hill. So he told the bishop, and the bishop had his doubts, so he said to ask for a sign. Juan Diego went back and the Virgin appeared again, promising to give him proof to show the bishop. On December twelfth, fifteen thirty one, she told Juan Diego to climb to the top of Tepeyac, and even though it was winter, Juandego found Castilian roses, and those flowers weren't even native to Mexico. He put them in his cloak pistilma, and took them to the bishop. And in front of this guy, he opened up the cloak and the roses fell to the ground, and on the cloth there was a miraculous image of the vidhen de Juadalupe, exactly how Juan Diego had seen her, and that image is still preserved in the Vasilica de Juadalupe in Mexico City. But why was this other priest the one I wrote in these original accounts? I told you about the one that was very suspicious of this original story. Well, he said that the shrine at the Tepeyac was built on the exact site where a temple to the Mother Goddess though Nanzien, our Mother, had once stood. He was watching as many natives started coming from far away places to venerate the Virgin, calling her do Nansen and fear that this was a Satanic invention to hide idolatry under the confusion of this name. But natives would also hide their idols in the pedestals of crosses by putting sacred figures in the foundation of the Christian cross and adore them openly against the Spanish teachings. They would leave candles and incense at the foot of the cross while secretly directing their worship to the hidden gods. And as a result, this historical conflict with religion and the natives trying to keep their own practices drove the old ways underground. We can see the effects of hiding rituals even today. For example, alongside these stories there were also real effects illness without explanation that needed answers, and answers that were found through this realm of the shadows which developed a type of folk medical system all on its own. Now there's this complex connection between magical or religious beliefs and home based treatment secure illnesses, like in the region of Los Tuslas Vera, Cruz, where there exists this world view that sickness may come from supernatural causes, including witchcraft, soul loss, and encounters with spirits. Now, this comes from a blend of pre Hispanic African and Hispanic traditions, and it created this concept called susto, meaning fright. In a recent episode on my other podcast called Paranormal Club, I mentioned looking into the malojo the evil eye concepts that are understood already by many, though to me it was very new and I had no idea what it was. So I asked around and it sounded like everyone's parents in Latin America seems to know about this already, or at least has heard about it. From what I found about illnesses and how they're treated, we divide this into two things. The first is natural cause things like burns, cuts, something along the lines with an explanation, and then there are the illnesses that are believed to be actions of sorcerers, spirits or brugheria. Evil wished upon you. It turns out you can get sick for something much simpler than that. A frightening experience, something that shocks you can cause a soul to become dislodged from the body. They all have a type of explanation, like let's say you have an accident or witchcraft was done on you. Maybe you had a supernatural encounter with the Chinek spirits that live in natural places, or a viper snake. Now the symptoms are well documented. If you're polls suddenly rises, if you end up feeling broken, this can sometimes lead to death if untreated goranderos, topalores or limpiadores. They performed these rituals to clean this up, sometimes through herbs, incense, white carnations, talismans, and cleansers like eggs or basil, which are believed to absorb the negative energy or illness. Not Of all of these, the one that creeps me out the most is the achisos, the curses or spells, and such was the case of Lonachepa. Doniachepa was brought in by her daughter to a healer due to a suspicion that she had been bewitched. Doniachepa was experiencing symptoms like loss of spirit, lack of appetite, sudden weight loss, nausea, and insomnia. Some of us would call that depression, but it appeared to be influencing her and the rest of her family. So the healer, Guate Chagala from Santiago Tuxtla, said that yes, she had been cursed or bewitched out of envy, and that an evil spirit was making her sick. It all seemed to make sense. Doniachepa and her family were convinced that her sickness came from an argument with another person right before the sin victums began showing up, and so she was brought into the healer's house, where he purified the room's environment with basil and incense, and Dona Chepa was seated in front of an altar. The healer put a glass of water in her right hand and a bunch of basil in her left hand, then told her to strike the glass seven times with the basil while he recited a prayer, one that asked for protection, asking that no one bothered her and that she be cleansed of envy and bad deeds. After this, he did the cleansing ritual using basil, starting from her head and moving down to her feet, and this operation repeated three times as he kept praying for the evil to go away. During the process, Doniachepa fell into a trance. The healer kept going. He moistened the basil with red lotion made with aromatic herbs, and he kept sweeping her head and shoulders, chest and throat. He sprayed lotion from his mouth onto the patient's entire body, and that's when Dona Chepa started making these deep guttural sounds. So he sprayed water on her head and blew on her in the form of a cross. And it was here but the Nya Cheppy opened her eyes. The healer poured water into the glass and made cross signs, put a ribbon on her neck, and then kept cleaning NonStop prayers for health and protection. Luoniachepa then talked about what happened. She had fallen asleep and saw a spirit, a house with two shining eyes and some horns. Remembering everything, she says, that's what I saw twice in the dream. Thenia Chepa soon started to feel better and the family soon became convinced that the cleans had worked, but had to accept that it also meant that they had accepted the existence and power of witchcraft. But what was it then, the Placeboy effect? Or did our ancestors know something that we don't, That nature, the energies where we come from, and the stable ones that have been here and will remain long after we're gone, carry spirits. I'd like to think so, But when we're offered rational and supportive theories in these modern times, they seem to make more sense, at least to most of us. And then there are others that believe that there's no other way but to believe in spirits. I often think back on that conversation with Eddie, the farmer from the Sacred Valley in Peru and his fear of the creatures from the hills. There's places there that go years without being visited, where creatures and their spirits can roam free. I think of my roots and the people that came before me, and I wonder just how right they were. Even if they're just stories, they still mean something to all of us. And these modern figures of meso American folklore, the when This who guard the forest, the Chanekis who live in the rivers, and the Alushas who watch over the fields. There are direct descendants of this ancient hidden pantheon, one that had to stay in the dark in order to survive. They are now powerful spirits that survive the conquests, living in the stories and beliefs of common people, marked forever in this cultural war that branded them as creatures of the shadows, whose stories would only be told and whispers. Thank you all for your support and for joining me in the celebration of Hispanic heritage months. If you want to die even deeper to these subjects that I learned about, get in touch. You can find more info to join our newsletter and the links in the description of this episode, or over on horror story dot com. In This episode of horror Story was written and produced by me Edwin Kovarubiez. I'm Edwin Cove. That's E d W I N co O V over on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. If you're subscribed, I'll be back next week with another story. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.