Main Piece: Padre Sin Cabeza  

The following was an interview of a Participant/interviewee about ghost stories of her hometown. She is marked as MS. I am marked as DM.

MS: Algo que paso ahi donde yo nací. En la iglesia que está en el pueblo que yo nací se muere un sacerdote. La iglesia era una iglesia antigua donde siempre se celebran las fiestas de la virgen de guadalupe. Entonces cada cierto tiempo pasaba que el padre que se murió dicen que le cortaron la cabeza. El alma de ese padre bajaba en la iglesia desde aparte de atrás de la iglesia hasta el frente de la iglesia. En las noches si oía cuando el padre salía y arrastraba las cadenas y el padre murmuraba y lloraba por el patio de toda la iglesia. Mucha gente en el pueblo sabían que era el padre porque mucha gente lo llego a mirar. Hoy, todavía se puede oír las cadenas del padre.   

Translate:

MS: In the church that is in the village that I was born in, a priest died. The church was an ancient church where the festivities of the Virgin of Guadalupe are always celebrated. Then every once in a while they heard the father who died, people said they cut off his head. That Father’s soul was coming down into the church from  the back of the church to the front of the church. In the evenings one could hear when the father went out and dragged the chains and the Father murmured and his cries in the courtyard of the whole church. A lot of people in town knew it was the father because a lot of people saw him. Today, you can still hear the father’s chains.

Background/Context:

The participant is 52 years old. She grew up in Michoacan, Mexico. Maria, who is marked as MS, is my grandma. In her hometown, there is a lot of superstition beliefs that spread throughout the whole town. In this specific story, almost everyone in town heard the chains and cries of the decapitated priest.They heard the priest mostly at night around 12. Below is a conversation I had with MS for more background/context of the remedy, which was originally in Spanish.  

DM:Why do you know this ghost story?

MS: I know this story because I am the one who lived through it. Me and my sister heard stories about the church and we went to see for ourselves what it was like.

DM: Why do you like telling this ghost story?

MS:  I like telling this story because it is something I want people to know what I have been through.

DM: Where/who did they learn it from?

MS: There was stories already in my town of the priest, but I never heard him it until that time walking with my sister.

DM: Why is this ghost story important to you?

MS: Whenever there is a family gather I will be able to tell what I lived through and what my town believed. I want my kids and grandkids to tell it to keep this story alive because I feel like it’s apart of my hometown.

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

This story shows how universal this story was in MS’s hometown. If she was able to hear about it from others, then experience it herself it means that this is true. MS explains to me how her and her sister heard a lot about the priest’s cry before they heard it.