Puerto rican ghost stories: Puerto Rican Spooky Legends — Popular Urban Legends | by Local Guest
Puerto Rican Spooky Legends — Popular Urban Legends | by Local Guest
One of the things that connect people among them and also, to the place they were born are in fact, urban legends. From Women crying in the middle of the darkest roads late at night to mythical creatures that kill animals on farms around the island, these legends in Puerto Rico are part of our history, as it happens with many others around the world.
To celebrate Halloween, at Local Guest we decided to compile some of the most popular legends that you might hear about in Puerto Rican streets. Some of them are creepy and, we do recommend to be alert –to not find any of these creatures- while visiting our lovely island.
Las Calabazas Bridge, Coamo, Puerto Rico (Picture: Primera Hora)
La Llorona is a story that repeats itself almost everywhere in Latin America. La Llorona is supposed to be a mother that lost her children and that in the night time, she could be heard crying and begging for the children she lost.
In Puerto Rico, that legend is set in the town of Coamo. Many drivers say that they have seen a woman on the side of the road by the Las Calabazas Bridge. They mentioned that ignoring her wasn’t enough because she would appear inside the car. Many people think that this is the reason why there are so many accidents on that bridge.
This is how they said the “Vampire” looked like (Picture: El Vocero)
In 1975, a legend about a vampire haunting the town of Moca became famous in the whole country. Farm animals from all over the town were appearing dead with a round shaped bite from an unidentified creature and with no blood. The town started to believe that these attacks were done by a vampire. The description given by those who claim they saw the “vampire” is that this creature had wings and two sharp fangs to attack the victims. The newspapers during that year covered the news about the vampire daily.
Sketch of the Chupacabras
During the 90’s a new urban legend appear: this one was known as the Chupacabras.
El Chupacabras was a creature that even inspired the former Mayor of Canóvanas, José “Chemo” Soto, to go on an expedition to find it. It became popular because it was believed that it killed hundreds of animals in the town. According to the Mayor of Canóvanas, the Chupacabras was two legged, whose skin looked like fish scales, had a spiked crest on his head, and it also had a long tongue that allowed it to extract the blood from the other animals. This legend spread through other places in Latin America and the Chupacabras became famous in other countries as well.
There is a natural well in Playa Jobos, Isabela which is known as El Pozo de Jacinto or Jacinto’s Well. Legend says that there was a farmer named Jacinto who took out his cows to eat around that area. Jacinto held his cows with a rope that he secured around his waist. During a rainy day, one of the cows was scared of the thunder and ran until it fell inside the well taking Jacinto too.
Nowadays, if you step close to the well and shout “Jacinto dame la vaca” the waves hit harder the rocks around it. The legend also says that you need to shout in Spanish since, Jacinto never learned English while he was alive so he doesn’t understand any other language.
Sketches of the Barceloneta’s Gargoyle
The most recent urban legend hitting the streets of Puerto Rico is a Gargoyle. In the town of Barceloneta during the month of August 2018, some animals were killed and many claimed that they had seen a two legged creature with a pair of wings, that smelled like sulfur and that looked like a gargoyle. Many brigades around Barceloneta went out to the forest trying to catch the gargoyle.
Project MUSE – Afroantillano Ghost Story
Malcolm Friend
- Pleiades: Literature in Context
- University of Central Missouri, Department of English and Philosophy
Volume 39, Issue 2, Summer 2019
- pp.
132-134 - 10.1353/plc.2019.0121
- Article
- View Citation
- Additional Information
132-134In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Afroantillano Ghost Story
Malcolm Friend (bio)
after Terrance Hayes
Calling all ectoafrocaribbeans, all disembodied afroboricuas,to rematerialize to the colorblind,show them even our ghosts still be prieto.In Pittsburgh, the prospective PhD studentfrom UPR says race isn’t a big deal in Puerto Rico.We don’t see white kids and black kidswe’re all just Puerto Rican. I don’t respond.Just listen to the way my bones rattlein the winter wind and isn’t thisthe perfect setting for a ghost story?On the way home I listen to “Si Dios fuera negro” to “El negro bembón” to “Babaila” to “Bandoleros” to “Loíza.
” to the breath of every fantasma slapping me in the face with this frost. [End Page 132] Years later I am on the island for the first time.As I walk past El Morro, Raquel tells me the slave tradedidn’t actually end here in 1817. Speaks of slaves smuggled infor decades to follow. I’m not at all surprised. Maybe evenknew this already. Have been marked black marked contraband marked anything butboricua and known the rattling of chains as prelude to a rattlingof bones. Isn’t this the perfect setting for a ghost story?The night is dark, though it isn’t stormy.I guess the waves crashing behind us will suffice.Hasn’t the air always been heavy with every fantasmakilled by this city’s walls?That is the only kind of ghost storyI have ever known.I wish there were moreabout negritos who died on sugar plantations on coffee plantations,dark-skinned spirits haunting consumers of their products throughout the Western world.
I wish there were stories of negritos who died on ships destined for Puerto Rico and now capsize every cruise shipclose enough to a shore they never reached. Instead I’m left [End Page 133] with a chorus of skeletons.So adiós mi gente. Adiós mi pueblo.Adiós (adiós adiós adiós) Borinquen queridaand hello to this humiditythat has swallowed every fantasmathe myth of progress has failed to exorcise.Let me be inexplicable as a spiritshuffling the bones of the living. [End Page 134]
Malcolm Friend
Malcolm Friend is the author of the chapbook mxd kd mixtape (Glass Poetry, 2017) and the full-length collection Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple (Inlandia Books, 2018), selected by Cynthia Arrieu-King as winner of the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize.
Copyright © 2019 Pleiades and Pleiades Press
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How I was a ghost and how to make money on evil spirits
- Boris Maksimov
- BBC
Subscribe to our “Context” newsletter: it will help you understand the events.
And then I realized that they took me for a ghost. An evil Jamaican ghost called dappy, who possesses the souls of innocent people.
In the rearview mirror, I saw a man, gray with fear, quickly throw five or six pebbles onto the road – and run away even faster.
Necessary disclaimer: I do not believe in ghosts, spirits, angels and other evil spirits, but I am fully aware that for many these are quite real beings, visible and invisible.
How do I know about dappies, it’s better not to ask. But in Jamaican folklore, they are known not only for the fact that they penetrate the soul, and that it is better not to mess with them.
They are pale (since it is the spirit of a deceased bad person), they are inquisitive, and they can only count up to three. This is where stones come in handy.
If five or six pebbles or any other objects are thrown in front of a dappy, this ghost will become curious about what it is. And it will begin to count them – one, two, three … pah – and will count again and again, and in the meantime, its potential victim can safely escape.
And so, deep in the wilds of the western part of Jamaica, I am driving a car, and as I turn around another mountain, I see a local peasant coming towards me.
There are no foreigners in these remote lands. Suddenly seeing a pale and inquisitive-looking man approaching quickly, he apparently decided that I was the same vicious dappie that he had been told about since childhood.
And then he threw his pebbles on the road and rushed far away at the speed of light.
And I drove on, only regretting that I accidentally scared a man half to death with my appearance.
We don’t believe, but we actually believe
When it comes to believing in ghosts, elves, fairies, trolls and other incorporeal creatures, people, often at the same time, hold diametrically opposed views.
- Why it’s good to believe in ghosts
- 10 creepiest haunted castles in England
- Ghost Visitors: A Ghost Story in Photographs
- Paranormal Britain, or What kind of people, such and ghosts
- Why do people believe in the supernatural?
A survey was conducted in Iceland a few years ago.
The first question was: “Do you believe in ghosts, trolls and elves?” 70 percent said that, of course, no.
Then followed questions about what kind of yogurt the respondents prefer, what political party they support, and so on. And in the end they asked: “If one of your acquaintances tells you that he saw a ghost, an elf or a troll, will you believe them?” All the same 70 percent said “yes”.
Feet from the ceiling
People love stories like this. My college at Oxford was allegedly haunted by a certain bishop who was executed during the Reformation.
During his lifetime, he spent his free time in the college library – and supposedly still wanders there and scares students, as he walks on the floor of the library, as he was in his time. Over the centuries, the floor has been raised 25 centimeters, and now, students living on the first floor under the library are said to sometimes see ghostly legs wandering somewhere under their ceiling.
The fact that British students like to drink well, of course, has nothing to do with these bikes.
It is said that in London’s Bush House, where the BBC World Service used to be located, next to the room of the thematic broadcasting department of the Russian Service, a ghost was wandering up the fire escape – an elderly woman.
Colleagues assured me that it was in this room exactly at midnight that all the equipment switched on by itself. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it, I don’t believe it, but the story is beautiful.
Ghost Rapist
Once I went to visit relatives in Cape Town. I slept on a mattress on the floor of the veranda: it was January outside, the height of summer.
The gardener who came in the morning was very surprised, and then he quite seriously warned me that it was extremely dangerous to sleep like that, since I might be attacked by a tokoloshe.
Tokoloshe is such a very short and very evil spirit.
At night, he gets out from under the bed and rapes both women and men sleeping, forcing them to do all sorts of nasty things.
But since he is said to be very short, he cannot climb onto a bed with high legs. And here I am right on the mattress on the floor: a dream for any tokoloshe.
But no one seems to have attacked me like that.
Earnings
While you are laughing at the gullibility of people, remember that there is no market economy in the yard.
And, of course, you can earn extra money on ghosts. No, we are not talking about all sorts of fortune-tellers, healers and sorcerers. This is folklore at best, and the money here is usually not too serious. We are talking about quite respectable citizens.
Bishops, for example.
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A ghost has suddenly appeared at my college in Oxford. A sexually horny ghost invisible to no one: in the dark it grabbed the girls by the buttocks. It was in the eighties.
The girls complained to the college authorities. They took it seriously and called in the help of the local bishop of the Anglican Church. It turns out that every diocese has a special committee for the exorcism of demons.
The bishop and his assistants came to the college. They did all the rites appropriate for such an occasion, said a special prayer for protection and deliverance “from the malice of the wicked, from the encroachments of unclean spirits, from enemies visible and invisible, from the trapping nets of the devil, from every earthly voluptuousness that seduces the soul and body,” and please – no one else touched the students.
The Bishop was paid for such an important service, even though he still lives on a salary of 45,000 pounds a year in a residence provided free of charge.
However, Anglican bishops and priests cannot get rich on the exorcism, they are rarely called (it should be noted that they come to such ceremonies with psychiatrists – just in case).
But there are other religions, where the question of the expulsion of all kinds of harmful beings is practically put on an industrial basis, and some make quite good money on this.
From religion to psychotherapy
The capital of Puerto Rico, the city of San Juan. I am sitting in a very expensive jeep with two local men – one of Italian origin, the other of British origin. And we are going to meet with the most important Santero – the priest of the religion called Santeria.
Santeria is a serious voodoo-like syncretic religion that combines Catholicism with traditional West African beliefs. It has its own theology, its own saints, its own deities (orisha), its own rituals and everything that is required.
Religious ceremonies are conducted in the Lukumi language, which has its roots in the Yoruba.
Santeria is practiced mainly in Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as in the USA, where people from these countries live. We are talking about millions of people. Miami police and schools organize special courses for their employees so that they know the basics of santeria and voodoo and, God forbid, would not offend someone’s religious feelings.
We were going to meet not with a simple santero, but with one of the main ones, like a bishop, to use Christian terminology. He had followers on both islands and all along the East Coast of the United States – from Florida to Boston.
What my companions wanted from him, I do not know to this day, but I wanted to attend one of the exorcism sessions. Santero said that he had nothing against it, provided that one of the parishioners agreed to it.
One girl agreed. And so we go to his waiting room.
The girl tells how someone seems to have put damage on her and some evil spirits create problems for her with her boyfriend, money and family.
Santero listened to this. He got up in his vestments, left the shells on the table, cast some spells, waved some objects – and sat down.
This was followed by quite a traditional session of psychotherapy as in the films of Woody Allen.
Half an hour later, he got up again, left the shells again, cast spells again and told the girl that everything would be fine and that the spirits could be got rid of, but she should buy herself a white dove right now, feed it well and return in a week with this bird. This obviously did not bode well for the pigeon.
Each such session is, of course, not free and not even cheap. 20 people patiently waited for their turn.
Santero lived in a luxurious house surrounded by a huge garden and lawn, where white goats were grazing, chickens were roaming, white pigeons were sitting in cages, and all kinds of medicinal herbs were growing in the garden.
All this was in the elite, very expensive, fenced and heavily guarded suburb of San Juan.
Santero also advised my companions to buy a white dove.
And so we drove around San Juan in an expensive jeep, from one botanica store, which sells everything that the followers of santeria need, to another, since on that day there was a shortage of pigeons for sale in the capital.
Representatives of all religions known to me are engaged in the exorcism of ghosts and evil spirits, and not for free.
Sometimes it comes down to physical assault. Patients appear in London hospitals every year, slightly maimed, if not worse, by some evangelical pastor, but that’s another story.
What people do not earn.
And I entertain all the people of Jamaican origin I know, not only by the fact that I generally know what a dappie is, but also by the fact that in the eyes of one frightened peasant I was just that ghost.
And, by the way, all the illustrations here are the hands of your obedient servant, who has seen too much in his life.
Swiss take on British ghosts
Having analyzed Victorian stories about spirits and ghosts, Zoe Lehmann-Imfeld helped to get closer to understanding the logic on the basis of which a person builds his relationship with unknown phenomena, sometimes causing a real shock. Mauro Mellone/Swiss National Science Foundation
Swiss theologian and philologist Zoe Lehmann-Imfeld was recently awarded a scientific award for a new word in the interpretation of the paranormal associated with … ghosts. As it turns out, this is a rather serious matter, and her project has nothing to do with quackery. Rather, it is about Victorian literature and the fundamentals of astrophysics.
This content was published on Jul 24, 2016 – 11:00
Celia Luterbacher, London-Zurich, swissinfo.
ch
Stories of disembodied spirits and ghosts have been told and retold at all times. Contacts with the spirits of the dead, journeys “to the other side”, exorcisms of demons, sad castle ghosts ringing their chains at midnight – such stories have traditionally been one of the foundations of any national folklore. They still remain an inexhaustible source of inspiration for writers and filmmakers. Swiss theologian and philologist Zoë Lehmann Imfeld, who was born in London to a mixed Swiss-British family and moved permanently to Zurich 13 years ago, believes there is something more behind all these stories.
Her work, done at the Institute of English Language and LiteratureExternal link at the University of Bern, turned out to be – and all experts and specialists agree on this – a real breakthrough, opening up new methods for solving the question of why stories about ghosts and ghosts affect us so influence, frighten us and at the same time irresistibly attract.
In June 2016, Zoe Lehmann-Imfeld received the Marie Heim-Vögtlin-Preis on behalf of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for her new and original interpretation of the deep content of Victorian ghost and spirit stories.
Zoe Lehmann-Imfeld says that at first she did not intend to analyze stories about ghosts and ghosts from a theological point of view, paying attention, first of all, to the cultural archetypes common to all of them. “But the more I read these stories, the clearer the underlying idea of the opposition between the forces of Evil, on the one hand, and the religious attitude to the world, on the other, became clearer,” she explained to swissinfo.ch.
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“All these stories were often built on the basis of the same scheme: on the one hand, we have the forces of evil, which, as we remember, “reign supreme at night”, and on the other, a niche left vanished for one reason or another reasons for religion.
The balance is broken, and the forces of evil get the opportunity to invade our world and arrange terrible things here, ”says Z. Lehmann-Imfeld. Focusing on this aspect of the Victorian ghost texts, she made an interesting point: all literary scholars and philologists who had studied these texts before her tended to be very reluctant to approach them from a theological point of view.
“In university departments, such literature, and literary creativity in general, is often regarded as an exclusively secular phenomenon. Probably, this was due to the fear of scientists, interpreting this body of texts from a theological point of view, inadvertently giving out something especially intimate in relation to their own religious preferences.
Horror against the backdrop of everyday life
Z. Lehmann-Imfeld herself focused on a detailed study of the short story genre, especially popular at the end of the 19th century. At the center of almost every such story was, as a rule, the main character, who did not have any supernatural powers.
She was interested in the most ordinary people, who were qualitatively different from the heroes of the “very curly written” stories in the format of the gothic horror novel, the most famous example of which is, of course, written by Mary Shelley (Mary Shelley, 1797 – 1851) in Switzerland at the beginning of the 19th century. novel “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus” (“Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus”).
In such short stories, “very often, some incomprehensible element suddenly appears, and no one knows what to do with it and how to treat it,” says Z. Lehmann-Imfeld. “The whole story takes place against a completely mundane everyday background, and this makes it even more frightening.” A typical author who worked in this manner was Montague Rhodes JamesExternal link (Montague Rhodes James; 1862-1936), English writer, historian, specialist in the Middle Ages, King’s College, Cambridge (1905-1918) and later Eton (1918-1936).
He entered the history of world literature as the greatest master of the ghost story, influencing, in particular, such contemporary writers as Howard Lovecraft and Stephen King.
The narrator in his texts—usually an unremarkable, slightly naive, scientific gentleman—discovers a manuscript or ancient artifact that brings him into contact with the world of the dead. At the same time, otherworldly forces are far from being peaceful. “It is important that the ghost be filled with the most evil intentions,” wrote M. R. James. “Good spirits have a place in folk tales and legends, but not in my stories.”
“The purpose of these stories is to force the reader to take otherworldly and supernatural phenomena seriously again,” stresses Z. Lehmann-Imfeld. “The way of thinking of the heroes of these stories is very similar to our modern way of thinking. All of them are convinced of the omnipotence of science and that there are no white spots left anywhere, neither on earth, nor in heaven, nor on the sea. The hero is sure that the problems will disappear by themselves, but then he becomes convinced that this is not so, that he is dealing with something that cannot be rationally explained.
From Victorian England to “a distant galaxy”
Her thesis was published this summer in the form of a monograph, The Victorian Ghost Story and TheologyExternal link. After analyzing this kind of literature from a theological point of view, Z. Lehmann-Imfeld still believes that anyone can read this kind of work from any position. Theology is only one of the possible approaches. On the other hand, it helps to recognize and bring to light many aspects that may otherwise remain untouched.
Z. Lehmann-Imfeld is currently a postdoc at the Center for Space ResearchExternal link (Zentrum für Weltraumforschung / Center for Space and Habitability) at the University of Bern. At the center of her work is the task of elucidating the psychological characteristics of a person’s collision with unknown and incomprehensible phenomena, in particular, in the field of astrophysics. But what could a literary scholar say that is new in this area?
“I am primarily interested in the question, what is life, how do we relate some phenomena to the world of living matter, and others, on the contrary, to the world of dead matter? What is life in general, what forms of life could exist on other planets? Is life really a form of existence only of protein bodies, or is it also possible on the basis of, for example, silicon or carbon? And how will a person react in the course of contact with such forms?
According to her, literature is not just entertainment, it is also a kind of futuristic laboratory that makes it possible to ask questions that look fantastic, but who knows how quickly this fantasy will become our new everyday life? After all, what the recently deceased Erwin Toffler called “future shock” is becoming an everyday modality of our everyday existence.
Exactly the same shock was experienced by people in their time from a collision with what they called “spirits” and “ghosts”. Literature helped both to cope with these “shocks” and to develop schemes, usually of a religious nature, to help explain the presence of evil in our lives. Something similar is happening now. Science fiction puts us in the conditions of the coming future, looks at our reaction, prepares us for the “shock of the future”, already now scrolls through possible scenarios of our “response” to an external “challenge” never seen before. “My task is to clarify the psychology of a person’s reaction to the unseen, the unknown. My experience with ghosts, oddly enough, helps a lot in my new job, ”Z. Lehmann-Imfeld sums up.
Supernatural in Switzerland
German speaking regions. Typically, these kinds of stories are built around supposedly occurring sounds, movements, or visual effects that had no rational explanation. The supernatural occurrences in these stories usually take place in a real place or in a mundane everyday context, and the source or cause of such phenomena is usually attributed to the “poor souls” of unknown dead people.
Ghost stories are traditionally more common in rural areas of Switzerland. The exception here is Zurich, whose history is full of legends about ghosts and ghosts. Especially in their honor, the tourist “Zurich Ghost Walk” (“Ghost Walk of ZurichExternal link”) was laid in the city. Those who wish can book a tour, during which the guide will tell you about the famous city poltergeists, ghosts and other “walking dead”.
Until recently, the most famous haunted house in Switzerland was one of the houses located in the town of Stans, in the canton of Nidwalden. According to the Historical Dictionary of SwitzerlandExternal link, it belonged to Melchio Joller, a Swiss lawyer who was born on January 1, 1818. In 1862, M. Yoller began to observe “mystical visions” in his house, in particular, ghosts, which ultimately forced him to leave the city altogether. In 2003, based on these events, the documentary Das SpukhausExternal Link (Haunted House) was filmed. This house was demolished in 2010.