Tales and Legends of Mexican Witches

The night of December eighth, nineteen sixty was a lot colder than usual in San Pedro Glaxcala, Mexico. This is a small rural village beneath the Melinsi Volcano bordering the state of Pueblar. Attired Francisca nurse her newborn baby Cristina one more time before bed. Her husband, Philemon, was already snoring. She had worked a very long day. Francisca kissed baby Cristina good night and laid her down on her mat, and then got in bed herself. Three hours later, Francisca was startled awake. There was an intense light just outside of her window. She tried to get up to see what was going on, but she couldn't move. Her body felt heavy, and against her wishes, she fell asleep again. Less than one hour went by and she woke up one more time, and when she opened her eyes, her room was filled with an odd mist and in front of her there appeared to be a figure. It looked like it was glowing. To try to get up, but she felt so heavy. She kept telling her body to move, but as a missed inch closer to her, she found herself asleep once again. When the sun rose and it was time to wake up, both Philemon and Francisca tired. Filemone had to shake his wife awake. They went into Baby Christina's room and found out she was not breathing, her chest was covered in scratches, and her skin was purple. During the night, a Mexican bruja, a witch known as at Tla Welpucci, a shape shifting witch, had sucked Baby Christina's blood until it was all gone. Philemon and Francisca were heartbroken, but they soon learned that it wasn't just their baby. Seven other infants were found dead on the cold morning of December ninth, nineteen sixty. My name is Edmund, and here's a horror story. Stories of witches sneaking in the middle of the night to suck the blood of a newborn baby are told again and again. I know I've heard of them. There are parts of Mexico where parents put salts on window sills and place iron scissors underneath cribs to protect their newborns from brujas. And I always wondered where do these stories come from and are any of them true? We found the story of Philemon, Francisca and baby Christina while trying to answer these questions. According to legend that with Bouchi is a shape shifting witch, and she looks like any regular person except for once a month when she removes her legs and hunts in the form of a vulture or a turkey. When the shape shift happens, the witch needs blood to survive, and she most often feeds on infants. Her preferred victim is between newborn and ten months old, and she hunts on very cold nights between midnight and three a m. It is said that she needs to fly in the shape of a cross above the house where she intends to enter. A there say she comes in through the smallest crevices, like cracks in a window or keyholes, and once she's inside, the room is filled with a mist that paralyzes everyone. That t La Wilbouci is born this way, but she cannot find out until puberty. The only way to find out if a woman is at Tla Wilbouci is to catch her feeding. If she is found, she must be killed on the spot, but not by her family. If this witch is killed by a member of her family, the curse will be passed down. In order to protect themselves from her, people have to leave scissors or safety pins under the cribs. Some believe a mirror or a dirty diaper near someone's bed will ward her off. Onions or garlic are also believed to stop her. Those from the Mexican state of the Laskala believe in this legend. It goes back to Nahua indigenous beliefs and the word is derived from the Nawatul word de Lawipochtli, which means either glowing haze or illuminated haze. Anthropologist Ugu Nutini happened to be in the village of sam Pedro in the Mexican state of the Laskala when the Tlawalpuci prayed on eight newborn babies. He examined them that same morning, and for the next ten years he studied another forty seven the Lawilpuci attacks. He published a book on this called an Epistemological Study of Anthromorphe fixed supernaturalism in rural Tlexcala. I know it's a long name, but this book summed ub what he learned during his time in the town of Saint Pedro. In his book, he wrote about what he believed really killed those babies. Quote. When traditional Tlexcalan verbalized the Tlawelpucci complex, they are in fact presenting an explanation of why and under what conditions infants before the age of one die given specified circumstances. It is almost as if by design that the accent of the belief system was placed on explaining and rationalizing the death of infants involved as being beyond the control of the actors involved. That was also a little hard to understand, but basically the legend of the Tlawalboucci has used to explain when otherwise healthy babies die. After studying forty seven infant deaths over the course of ten years, he found similarities in most of these deaths, purple skin and bruising. He came to the conclusion that these babies did not lose blood. These were classic signs of asphyxiation. He believed these deaths were accidental, and the fact that they occurred on extremely cold nights cemented his theory. Most mothers in the village nursed their babies to sleep while lying down, then they would move the baby to their own sleeping mat, but if the night was super cold, there's less chance that a mom would move the baby on an extremely cold night. It's likely they would have an extra blanket, and that extra blanket, along with the tired mom, would lead to suffocation. Not all the infant deaths were accidental, though Oogo Nutini found that a handful were intentional, in some cases by the hand of the baby's mother and another by a jealous mother in law Wuoogo Nutini returned to the village in the nineteen eighties, these types of deaths were much less common, and the memory of the Tlawalpucci became a distant memory, but locals remained firm in their beliefs this was a doing of a t Lawalpucci and sure gougu Nutini's findings explained the deaths of the babies, But what about the myst that Francisca and Philemon saw the same glowing myst that everyone sees. Gogo's research could not explain this phenomenon. The legend of Le le Choosie is one that can be heard all over Mexico. The giant owl that is seven feet tall and has a wingspan of fifteen feet. The lachusid is so big that It can carry a grown adult in its talents. It is said to have the face of an old woman. This giant owl can be seen in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Guahuila, Lurngo, Nevoleon, and Tamaulipas, but it doesn't stop there. It has also been seen in Texas in southern California. Most variations of the legend say that the Luchusa was once a woman who was wronged and now seeks revenge. In another version, villagers killed her child. Others say that her child was killed in some sort of accident caused by a drunk man. Other versions state that the witch was killed by locals and then she returned as the Lichusa to seek revenge. And it is also believed that the Lychusa is a witch that has sold her soul to the devil. The cry of the Lychusa mimics the cry of a baby, luring people outside where she can swoop down for them. I mean, who wouldn't run toward the sound of a crying baby. It is also said to whistle and lure you outside, and once you're there, she takes you and eats you. If you're outside after midnight, don't whistle, because she will come for you. Some believe the cry of the lituosa is an omen of death, and if you hear it, someone you know will die. Seeing the litusa in your dreams has the same effect. The lytusa is said to cause storms. She cannot be harmed by guns. She prays on human emotions, often appearing during domestic disputes and waiting for her next victim to storm outside. No one is really safe from it. The litusa has swooped down on cars and can travel at the same speed. It prays on drunk men, children, and especially unbaptized newborn babies. According to legends, there are things you can do to protect yourself. Many play salts on their windowsills every night, and if you see the litusa you should yell curse words at it to drive it away. They'll be careful with that one. Other versions of the legends say that cursing at the litusa makes it angrier. Tying a rope of seven knots and hanging it on your door will also protect you. It is a sign of acknowledgments and respect to what the lichusa. Some say praying can also save you from it. There are so many Chusa's stories where she has found and killed, but in most stories it soops down to torment and then it is never seen again. The nineteen fifties, the Mexican town of Laredo, Tamaulipas was being terrorized by a lichusa. People hid in their homes during the night because it was seen flying every night. The townspeople were fed up and they devised a plan to capture it and kill it. They used a boy to lure the lichusa, and just as it flew down to try and take the child, shots were fired. A group of men were ready to shoot the monster down and kill it, but it flew away. It's left wing seemed to be injured, yet it managed to flee. The men were not happy with this. They wanted the torment to end. When morning came, the same group of men went door to door looking for the witch that transformed into the Litusa. Eventually they came to a house and they knocked and a woman answered. Her left shoulder appeared to be injured and it looked like a gunshot. They found the witch and that account ends there. We don't really know what happened to her, but In nineteen seventy five, another town, Robstown and Texas, was being terrorized by a witch owl. It was October and every night the police station's phone kept ringing. It was always a similar call. There's a giant monster bird in the sky. It's six feet tall and has the face of a woman. All the sightings were around the same place, the heavily wooded area near Bosquez Street and rob Road, always at night. The sightings were so frequent that the local radio station was offering a thousand dollar reward for whoever caught the bird. One man also told the police he had been attacked by it. It was hard for local police to believe, but there were too many phone calls with the same story. They were instructed by the police Captain, Melvin Arnold, to keep an eye out for this bird during their patrols. Later that same night, two officers confirmed seeing the giant owl in the sky. Sightings began spreading to nearby towns. One man in Brownsville told police he heard a noise outside of his trailer home. When he went out to check, he saw a four foot tall bird with the long beak and eyes as big as silver dollars. With the horrifying face. He told the reporter that animal is not from this world. How scared. National news picked up on the sidings and began arriving at Robstown, but then the sightings just stopped. Months later, police officers in Robstown received a phone call from a group of teenagers. They told the police that they had actually seen the monster bird. When officers arrived, they were met with a wooden dummy hanging from a nearby tree. Officers confiscated the dummy from the group of teenagers, and police Captain Melvin Arnold believed all the phone calls they had been receiving were actually this dummy. But what really came first? The phone calls are the dummy? If it had been the dummy, the teenagers really derive from town to town making their wooden dummy fly. If that's the case, how were they making it fly? The mass sightings of nineteen seventy five stopped, but tales of La li Chusai encounters, and not only Texas but all all over the Southwest and Mexico are still occurring today. You've probably caught a video war two in recent times about witches in Mexico and a half some of those stories coming up next. Stay with me. The belief in witchcraft and witches is one that has persisted in Mexico. The mixture of Catholicism, Indigenous and African beliefs made it easier for these beliefs to continue. And like I mentioned earlier, I have heard countless legends involving blood sucking witches, witches that turn into fireballs, or legends like Lalchiusa, a witch that shape shifts into an owl and is said to eat children. Videos of Mexican witches on social media go viral all the time. Just a few months ago, TikTok user Alejandro Hernandez zero one twenty four uploaded a video posted on March twenty three. The video is being recorded from the inside of a car. The camera is pointing at the windshield and it is dark outside. It's a car drive straight. The basic generated voice says, we were heading back home when we ran into this Spanish A dark silhouette appears in the distance and seems to be moving closer, stops directly in front of the car for a few seconds, and then continues to fly past the car. Now there's no way of knowing if this is somehow doctored. It's TikTok, and it's not hard to fake something like this, but the video went viral. It reached over two point five million views in just a couple of hours. Many of the comments seem to believe the video shows a flying witch. One comment read, I swear to God, we saw something just like this on the same road only two months ago. There were no cables anywhere either, there was no possibility to fake it. Another video from April of this year was uploaded by TikTok account to Coloniala Pressa and it went viral, reaching three point one million views over a few hours. The video showed a far away hill. It's dark around seven p m. The people recording were hanging out on the rooftop and they started recording because out on the distance they could see fireballs. At first glance, it looks like a regular fire but when you look closer, something is off. There's three separate fireballs that seemed to move up and down on this hill. This was recorded on Chikiueite Hill to Lane pante A municipality on the state of Mexico. It just happens that on this very hill there have always been stories of witches and this might have been the first video that captured the alleged witches of Chiki Wueite. Most comments on viral videos like these are full of fear. It makes sense that most people are scared of Mexican witches, but that doesn't happen everywhere. In fact, there's a city in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz where brujas and brujos gather once a year. It's become a tourist event and has been featured in The New York Times and NPR. This event is called Elia de Brujos, the Congress of Witches. The majority of the witches are actually warlocks, but the witches are there too. Hundreds of tourists and locals flock into Katemaco for an egg cleansing, a good luck spell, or even to place a curse on an enemy. And this event takes place on the first Friday of every March and lasts for three days. The day of the Witches start with a black mass right at midnight. This takes place at the foot of a cave known as a Devil's Cave. Witches and warlocks dressed in black and warlock known as El Brujo Major, or the High Sorcerer, lays the ritual. They stand together at the edge of the Gatemaco Lake, also said to be magical. This is where the official sanctioned Black Mass takes place. But a little bit further away, in the hills of Gatemaco, there's a second black Mass. This reunion is a little different than the ceremony over by the Devil's Cave. It officially states this ritual in the Hills of Katemaco, it's one of black magic. A goat is brought out and sacrificed in front of everyone. Splashes of blood land in the audience. A six pointed star is brought out and set on fire. Katemaco and the three Day Festival is unique in this way. Black magic and white magic are publicly practiced in front of thousands. Different Mexican presidents and the Catholic Church have attempted to ban the three day celebration. Neither have been successful. Some believe that the three day festival is a lie and it's just full of scameras and cons, and yes, con artists have been known to join the hundreds of shamans, witches, and warlocks that gather for the festival. There are also many who are completely opposed to the celebration, citing the animal sacrifice, satanic imagery, and Santa Muerte worship as pure evil, but this has not stopped thousands of curious tourists from attending the Congress of Witches. Would you go? Tales of Mexican witches are as old as time, with well documented cases dating back to the Spanish Inquisition. Documents from Spanish codexes, which were written during the colonization of Mexico, speak of witches. It's no wonder that these stories are passed down from generation to generation and so widespread to this day. So when you look out window tonight, look at the sky and remember that many years ago, with all the distractions we have now, our minds may have been more open to seeing and believing what lurks out there. It may not have been that uncommon to hear tales of other worldly creatures flying in the dark. Up next, check out True Scary Story, where real people share their true tales or the most terrifying experiences. You can find out by searching for True Scary Story on your podcast app to listen ad free. Check out Scary Plus over at scaryplus dot com, or in the links that are in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening and for your comments. See you soon.