EA is a student at USC majoring in Creative Writing. She is also a co-worker at the United University Church [UUC] working at the front desk. This story comes from her Mexican heritage.

Transcribed from Audio Recording:

There’s one like my family is from Mexico um its like a super super small ah…like little pueblo and we have a lot of like mountains and everybody always says to the kids to be careful when they go out there ‘cause like, everybody like walks their cows like thats the route that you take. So they’re always like be careful because like, they like say bad things happen like gnomes, you have them there i\I think um a lot of people say that they see like or hear little kids playing

Los duendes?

Yeah. They’re little kids playing and like um so they like if little kid are there so of course they want to play with so they take you deep into the forest and they like you are chasing after them the next thing you know you have no idea where you are and like stuck in this mountain so like that has happened a lot and there’s a lot of people who have come back and tell you  about hey heard and saw

Do they actually go with the kids?

Yeah but not its not like oh let me go test it out i think that one of the ladies it such a small pueblo that like to call you call like one house and they call they tell you they have speakers and they tell you you have a call like like E—- you have a call and you go to the house there so like that lady who um owns that little house thingy uh she went to go…I think to go pick up some berries or something random like that. She took her two little kids and they were like…they were like from there so they know like the mountain and all that stuff. Supposedly, they like…she heard one of the kids…they heard like some kids playing so like he ran after her and they like um were stuck there and they like the mom went to look for her um for the little kid and they ended up being stuck I think for like…I forgot how many days. Like a little over a week, probably ten days they were lost on this mountain and like she doesn’t remember how but she got down and she was able to get her kids down too.

This is a cautionary tale that points out that just because something looks innocent does not mean that it is. Children are an important part of any culture and this is a way of cautioning parents of the need to be suspicious of everything when it concerns their child. There are many dangers that can befall children particularly in a remote area, where search for a missing child can be difficult.