Category Archives: general

El Padre Sin Cabeza (The Headless Priest)

Age: 54

Text:

Informant: “Years ago, around 1150, they killed a bishop in Leon, Nicaragua. They stabbed and decapitated him. It’s said that a lot of people have seen a tall spirit with a cassock that priests use and doesn’t have a head. They see it walking near churches and cemeteries when people are walking by at night and no one else is around.”

Context:

The informant was taught this legend as a teen by their grandma while living in Nicaragua. It follows the story of a bishop who was stabbed and decapitated and goes around haunting churches and cemeteries.

Analysis:

El Padre Sin Cabeza is a legend as it’s a story set in the past that can’t be verified. There’s no proof that a priest was murdered in 1150 and now haunts churches and cemeteries. Yet, many people believe it to be true and older generations will swear that they have seen him. In Andrew Peck’s article, “Tall, Dark, and Loathsome…” he writes that “legends are less about individual texts and more about communication—they are discourses on belief.” This legend follows that mindset as people don’t seek evidence of it being true, but rather find community within sharing the belief.

Chains on Roof

Age: 22

Text:

Informant: “He lived in Mexico and it was like a very small bedroom, a one story house. This was probably around midnight, I could be wrong. He was either by himself or with his siblings. All of a sudden they hear someone up on the roof walking, just like dragging chains. Hugh chains. It went on for a couple of minutes.”

Context:

The informant’s uncle told them the story of when he was living in Mexico and heard chains dragging on the roof in the middle of the night.

Analysis:

A common motif in Mexican folklore is the sound of chains dragging on the roof. It can symbolize a restless spirit. Although, there’s no specific myth or legend attached to it.

The informant’s uncle’s personal story may or may not be true. It could be a story created in good fun to scare the informant when they were a child. If so, it takes a functionalist approach because there’s a purpose to the story being told.

La Carreta Nagua (The Witch Wagon)

Age: 54

Text:

Informant: “My grandma would tell the story of ‘La Carreta Nagua.’ It was a wagon that was pulled by bulls and they were so skinny that they were skeletons, practically dead. The conductor was also a skeleton and they called her “La Muerte.” This wagon supposedly passed by in the middle of the night/early morning. If you were on the street, you were told to go somewhere where you could hear her coming. It made a lot of noise. You could hear the wagon’s wheels and chains. The old ladies would always tell you to not go outside in the middle of the night, especially when you’re alone and there’s no one else on the road because sometimes, the skeleton would give you a bone. That bone meant that someone in your house would get really sick and die. They told you not to go outside so you wouldn’t see them. My grandma says that when she lived in her parent’s house, everyone in her family slept in a room near the living room. The windows were doors but instead of being double doors, they were divided into four. In the middle of the doors, there was a gap. Because of that gap, her and her sisters saw the wagon pass by once in the middle of the night and it was really loud. Everyone outside ran to hide. The wagons would disappear at every corner because corners are in the shape of a cross. Since the skeletons are demonic and Catholics think crosses are holy, the story goes that the wagon can’t go on corners, they’ll disappear and reappear on a different street.”

Context:

The informant’s grandma lived in Nicaragua and told the story about La Carreta Nagua, which is a wagon pulled by bulls and controlled by a skeleton. Children and teens are warned not to go out and night because if they hear the wagon and receive a bone from this skeleton, it means someone in their family will die. The informant revealed that their grandma has told them that she saw the wagon one night when she was an adult.

Analysis:

This Nicaraguan legend seems to take a functionalist approach by scaring teens and children from going out alone at night. Adults didn’t want their kids to be out in the middle of the night unsupervised and likely created this story to make sure they followed their curfew. The setting is a real place – it includes streets that the children and teens live near, which makes it feel more real. While it is a Nicaraguan legend, the informant says that their grandma always told it as a true story and even once they became an adult, their grandma never said that the story was false.

Scary Camp Story

Age: 22

Text:
“There once was an old man who lived in an old house, and he lived around no one else except for one other old neighbor. It was just an old man who lived there by himself, and this man became infatuated with the life of this old man who lived next to him. Infatuated. He was so intrigued by his life as a single old man that he couldn’t resist. So every night for a week, he went into the old man’s bedroom, snuck into his house, broke in. The old man had no idea, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear. He had bad senses, he’s an old man. He broke into his house and would just watch him sleep and try and figure out what he was thinking about. On the 8th night, he goes back to the old man’s house like usual, but he swears he sees the old man’s eyes open. So, instinctually, he grabs the pocket knife out of his pocket and stabs the old man in the heart. He’s panicking. He just killed a man and doesn’t know what he did. He was scared. So, he buries the old man under the floorboards in the old house. Eventually, the police came and asked him to go to the crime scene, as he’s the only one that lives around this old man. He works through the investigation, and nothing happens. He goes to sleep that night, but he’s awoken by a slow thumping. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom. The sound of the old man’s heart beating from under the floorboards. Boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom. Finally, he goes back. He looks under the floorboards. The old man’s still dead, but he can hear the boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom of his heart. This sound follows him for the rest of his life, and eventually, he tells the police that he killed the old man, and the police said, ‘We don’t know anything about this old man.’ He dreamed it all.”

Context:
A boy who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and learned this ghost story when he was camping as an Eagle Scout.

Analysis:
This ghost story is interesting for a few reasons. I have often found that ghost stories that end with “It was a dream all along” are ones that are made up completely and didn’t know how to end it or, similarly, someone forgot the ending and changed it. I would be interested to see other versions of this tale and if they have a different ending or not. It’s also interesting that he learned it as a Boy Scout, potentially serving as a cautionary tale for invading privacy and lying.

Bloody Mary

Age: 22

Text:
As a younger sibling, my sister would always do things to try and scare me. But the one thing that I knew that she didn’t, as a mere four-year-old, was Bloody Mary. What you do is you go into one bathroom, and you spin someone around in the dark eight times, saying, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” Then you turn the lights on for a quick second so you can see the reflection of Bloody Mary in the mirror. I did it to my sister, and she screamed. She ran out of the bathroom while the lights were flickering on and off, and then you keep flicking them on and off. Then they believe that the Bloody Mary is actually trying to scare them.”

Context:
A boy from Kansas City, Missouri discussing how to scare people with the Bloody Mary legend that he learned at school.

Analysis:
He used a folkloric myth/legend/ghost story that he learned through his classmates to scare and prank his sister into thinking there was a demon ghost woman with a bloody face in their bathroom. You start by doing a ritual (turning the lights off, closing eyes, and spinning three times), making the person disoriented and confused when the light starts flickering. Children often see a woman because they are so scared and imagine it even though she’s not actually there.