Tag Archives: mexican ghost stories

El Cucuy

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase
Residence: Laguna Niguel
Performance Date: 4/14/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

–Informant Info–
Nationality: United States of America
Age: 30
Occupation: Lead Associate of Operations, Chase Bank
Residence: Laguna Niguel, CA
Date of Performance/Collection: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English
Other Language(s): Spanish

Main Piece:

The following conversation is transcribed from a conversation between me (HS) and my co-worker/informant (MR).

HS: So tell me about El Cucuy.

MR: El Cucuy was a lot like other legends that my friends and parents used to scare me when I was little. A lot like La Mano Peluda, my parents would say things like, “El Cucuy is going to come and get you!” When I was really little, probably 5 or 6, I would be scared to get clothes out of my closet at night because that’s where I was told El Cucuy was waiting to get me and eat me. I honestly don’t even know anything about El Cucuy, he was kind of just like a boogeyman type thing that I use now to scare kids into behaving.

MR: *Googles El Cucuy on her phone for the first time*

MR: Oh wow. This story is crazy weird. Hahahaha. Apparently, a father was cursed after forgetting that he left his kids locked in the closet while their barn burned down, so all his kids were killed. After years of looking for his kids in other families’ closets, he grew an appetite for them? That makes no sense but it’s nice to finally know where the story of El Cucuy came from after all these years.

Background:

My informant is my co-worker from my job. She is essentially my supervisor and she enjoys helping me to practice my Spanish and telling me a lot about her culture and heritage. She was raised in a Spanish-speaking household by two parents who both immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She comes from a devout Catholic family and has taught me a lot of traditions that I didn’t know pertain to Catholicism, seeing as to the fact that I myself was raised in a Catholic family. She also knows a lot of Mexican urban legends and ghost stories from her childhood.

Context:

This story was brought up while having a general discussion with my co-worker about her culture and traditions. We had just finished talking about La Mano Peluda and other legends such as El Chupacabra. She had told me about these traditions before but I asked her to go more in-depth for the sake of the collection project. We were sitting next to each other on the teller line at work and we would chat in-between customers. In a lot of the audio recordings, you can hear us having a conversation and then stopping abruptly because a customer walks in.

Thoughts:

Something that I found interesting, and I don’t know if this applies on a broader scale, is that there was a significant difference in my coworker’s response to talking about El Cucuy as opposed to other legends. In the case of La Mano Peluda, she recited many childhood experiences where she was genuinely afraid of it, along with talking about her scare-filled experiences of searching for El Chupacabra. She was not as passionate or enthusiastic about El Cucuy, perhaps because the legend wasn’t as effective at scaring her as a child or because it wasn’t used by her parents as much. Regardless, El Cucuy is a typical urban legend. My coworker’s comment on how El Cucuy is similar to the boogeyman made me realize that, like many other legends, it is part of a global pattern of stories made up to scare children into behaving.

To see how El Cucuy links with these other boogeyman stories, read:

Hayes, Joe., and Honorio. Robledo. El Cucuy! : a Bogeyman Cuento . 1st ed., Cinco Puntos Press, 2001.

The Vejita

Background: I was FaceTiming a couple friends from high school, and I mentioned my ghost story collection project. One of them said that their roommate at Baylor had a good story. I then Facetimed her and her roommate and asked her roommate to tell me her ghost story.

Statement: “So when I was younger I apparently used to talk to a spirit in my grandma’s house. My grandma would catch me talking to a little Mary statue. Then later I found out that the statue has a vejita in it, which means old lady in Spanish. She goes around the house and just tries to take care of everything. If we leave the door unlocked, she’ll lock it and stuff like that. The vejita really likes clean around the house and do dishes and make sure that everything is like nice and tidy. I used to try and like see her, cause my grandma used to claim that she does it all at night when we’re sleeping, so she doesn’t disturb us during the day. To catch her, I used to sleep over in the living room so I could catch her walk in the hallways. I allegedly claimed that I saw her walking to the bathroom and clean it when I was like seven. But I definitely saw it. But then like three years ago, my family was moving my grandma out of that house and into an apartment, and my parents made me and my siblings help like pack everything up. I was alone in the house packing shit up cause my brothers were both busy and I packed up the statue in some box, but later we couldn’t find it. Like we searched every fucking box twice. But like when we were unpacking everything in the apartment, I shit you not the statue was literally in the first box we opened. Everybody saying I didn’t see her when I was seven can go to hell cause that literally proves she’s real.”

Context: My informant is from Midland, Texas. She is Christian and of Mexican descent. She is currently a freshman at Baylor University. She used to spend a lot of time at her grandmother’s house while her parents were busy at work.


Analysis: The theme of ghosts in Christianity is obviously an integral element to this story. The vejita appears to be a “friendly ghost”, going along with the fact that the spirit stems from the statue of Mother Mary. I believe this ghost is meant to serve as a symbol of Mother Mary’s caring and maternal nature. My informant and her siblings viewed this spirit as one who helps with chores around the house, one who helps wherever help is needed. She also mentioned that the spirit only tends to the house at night when everyone is sleeping. That fact could serve two purposes. It could help to explain why no one has seen the ghost (except my informant), or it could help to describe the character of Mother Mary, as one who considers the feelings of others and does not seek recognition for her good deeds. Her grandmother could have possibly fabricated the existence of the vejita in order to create physical proof of the benevolence of Mother Mary. Thus, as her grandchildren became older, they will always remember the helpful vejita that lived in their grandmother’s Mother Mary statue. I believe that my informant did in fact see the ghost due to the tone of her voice and the correlation between Chrisitanity and ghosts.

La Llorona’s Curse

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 23
Occupation: USC Viterbi Masters Student
Residence: currently: Los Angeles; born: Guanajuato, Mexico
Performance Date: 3/29/19
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: english

Main Piece

H: “This guy in our town would always tell the story of La Llorana and he died in his house in a weird way. It looked like someone choked him.

My cousin invited us to play Mario kart. So we played and then were like let’s go outside and talk to my uncle. His name was Miguel. We asked him questions about his stutter. We were kids, so some ppl were born that way, but some other people they become that way with a stutter. When I was young he used to speak fluidly. So we asked him why he started talking that way.

 

This woman who lost their children, it dates back all the way to when the Spanish ppl came to the first time to America and they invaded the Mayas. There was this girl who was trying to be a Maya and her husband put her in a hole with her children so they could escape the killing of that the Spanish people were doing. But it started to rain, and she was able to survive but her children died.

 

You can see her ghost and hear her voice asking for her children. The way she said, “Ayy chicos.” It’s just that in there, that there are a lot of people who are able to replicate her voice and they sound like her. I was with my mom and my sister and you started to hear someone in the house, I was looking at the window and was trying to see what it is. And I was scared. She looked at me weird and was like, “Oh, it’s probably someone.” It sounded so real, it was a woman’s voice, when I heard it – my skin got like chicken skin. People use it so people would get scared in communities, so people would get scared and get inside their houses. So people do it so they can steal your animals like cows and pigs. So you get scared and you lock yourself in your house so those people can get your things.

 

Anyways, back to the original story I was telling you. He used to have a parcel, a small land where he farmed corn. The thing is, is that the places where I lived in Mexico, you have the place where you live and the place you farm the corn is far away. So his parcel was a mile away from where he lives. So he had to walk there. people in my town used to work very late, they wouldn’t get to their house until 8pm. So he used to tell us one day he was working there in his parcel, on his way home he realized he forgot his bag with tools, on his way back to the parcel to his farm. First, he started feeling someone was following him. The weather started to get really windy, and then, how do you say it, when you have a lot of mist?”

 

Me: “Foggy?”

 

H: “Yeah it started to get a little foggy. Being a kid he was 12 he started realizing something was moving in between the trees and he actually felt someone threw a rock at him. He saw this girl in a white dress. That’s how a lot of people describe La Llorana – this woman in a wedding dress. When he saw her he started to run, he tripped and when he tried to get up, La Llorana touched him on the lips. So that’s why he stutters, because he was so scared.”

 

Context

The informant told me this story when I asked him to tell me some ghost stories from his childhood because he grew up in Guanajuato, Mexico. He told me about the main experiences he’s had with La Llorana. The context of how my friend heard the story is included in the main piece.

 

Notes

 

It almost feels like these stories came from a documentary or movie. It follows so many creative tropes like the typical old man in the village who has a quirk because he was touched or saw a ghost. Plus, how people will pretend to be ghosts to scare people into their homes so they can steal their livestock. I have heard the story of La Llorana before, but not so many stories that came from one person to where, while my friend was telling me the stories, I started to really believe all of it was true. I don’t actually know if it is true or not, but I was definitely convinced while he was telling them to me.