I was headed home from friends house and decided to use the lyft application, not knowing what to talk about i asked the driver Charles “Carlos” Van Stuesen if he knew any folk lore, he asked and i explained and he told me a rather interesting, supposedly factual story his mother had told him she witnessed.

Informant: So this is a story that my mom told me.. um she was born..in um.. silver city New Mexico and there was a prom that she was attending… and there was this beautiful guy that was there at the dance and um.. all the girls thought he was handsome all the guys thought he was handsome but no one knew.. of him.. they where just all googoogaaggaa over him good looking he looked and he had been there all night long and that um…finally at the end of the night though one of the girls actually noticed his feet and he didn’t have shoes on but they were like of goats hooves almost like devil you know.. and so of course the screams started yelling and other people started noticing …his feet and then everybody then evacuated… the prom and in the chaos the guy just like poof he disappeared .. he didn’t exit they went in and looked for him he was not there but everybody had seen him and seen that he had like hooves for feet not feet the description was that it was just like a goats foot. that was my moms story and she said it was so creepy even how gorgeous he looked.. even the straight guys just fell in love with him and the girls were just all over then one had to notice his feet and it was hooves

Collector: so your mom told you this

Informant: yes

Collector: of what decent is your mom

Informant: Mexican

Collector: how old was she

Informant: she now is 7f she was probably in 11th or 12

Collector: so in the 60s?

informant: before 64

Collector: do you think this could have been the devil?

Informant: when she tells it yes it totally seems like it was the devil  visiting for some reason  idk but yes it totally seems like this could have been the devil in disguise and his disguise was attracting people because of how good looking he made himself

Collector: is your family religious?

Informant: yes my mom is super Catholic

Collector: was this a catholic school per chance

Informant: no wow

Collector: was this a Catholic area

Informant: i mean most people in new Mexico then were catholic.

This story is bizarre, i’ve tried to try to explain it with science in my head but the only thing i could imagine is a hallucination or a dream that was told as if were real but the informant claims that an entire town saw this an so it kind of rules out those two. unless this was a practical joke i don’t understand this as anything but a belief that an entire class prom was visited by the devil or some supernatural creature with devilish characteristics.

Culturally, as my interview shows the people in this building primarily came from a catholic background and most of them if not all would have been familiar with this fear.