Mexican legends and folklore has it’s origins in ancient native mythology. Combine that with European legends brought by Spanish explorers and many centuries of bloody history. What you get is a collection of some of our world’s darkest legends. Here are the darkest Mexican legends I have ever heard.
La Chusa
There is a creature in northern Mexico that appears as a giant owl, big enough to match it’s hunger for humans. It is a shape shifting witch, only emerging at night to hunt people. The creature usually has the body of a massive owl but the head of an old woman. If you see it in your dreams, someone in your family will soon fall victim to it. The creature stops at nothing to kill it’s target, swooping down on them before they realize.
If under shelter it will cry like a baby to lure you into the open, where it can attack you. If one single feather from it touches your skin, you will die. It was created when a human was falsely accused of being a witch and executed. Satan gave her a chance for revenge, transforming her into a real witch. Since that day she has hunted those who remind her of her killers. Deadly owls are a common theme not just in Mexican legends but in the legends of native American cultures generally. Look out for them in other mythologies.
The Man Who Whistles
There is a man who wanders the Earth carrying a sack full of human bones. He is ten feet tall but deformed and hunched over. He is known to enter the home of sleeping victims at night, where he opens the sack to count each bone one by one. If the sound of his counting disturbs your sleep enough to wake you up, it will scare him away and you will be safe. But if you don’t notice his presence by morning you will never wake up.
He was once an ordinary human boy. But after witnessing his father murder his mother, he in turn stabbed his father to death. But his grandfather could not forgiver this. He tied the boy to a tree and whipped his back until it was bloody. Throwing the fathers bones into a sack, he cursed the boy to carry them on his now deformed back. From that day he has walked the Earth, unable to die, moving from one victim to the next.
El Cucuy
You can’t talk about Mexican legends without giving a mention to El Cucuy. Long ago there was a man suffering tuberculosis. In those days little could be done to cure the disease but he was desperate. Do desperate that he sought the advice of an African witch doctor. The witch doctor told him that by drinking the blood of a child his illness would be cured. And so he took to the streets searching for a child to murder. But when he did eventually drink the blood of a child he killed, something much worse than tuberculosis took hold of him.
His body faded, as he became transparent like a shadow, but his eyes glew bright red. In this ghost like form he continues his search for more children, hoping their blood will make him human again. They call him El Cucuy – a name that is feared everywhere Spanish is spoken.
La Planchada
In a hospital that no longer exists, something terrible once happened. A nurse working there fell in love with a doctor. But he had no interest in her. Years of heartbreak drove her insane and she began to murder patients under her care. As more and more patients fell victim to her the hospital was shut down due to the bodycount. Fearing she would be exposed as the killer, she commit suicide. But rejected from both heaven and even hell, her ghost soon returned to hospitals. She now appears in many different hospitals looking for new victims to quietly murder.
La Llorona
Many centuries ago there was a beautiful woman. She had broken countless hearts but never been in love, until she dell for a Spanish noble. In those days a wealthy noble like him was not meant to be with a poor woman like her. But her beauty won him over. They were together only for a brief time, until she revealed her two children to him. He immediately lost interest on finding out she was a mother and ended the affair.
Heartbroken and enraged, she drowned her young children in a nearby river, hoping to win him back. But this of course didn’t make him want her – so she drowned herself in the same river. Her ghost now wonders beside rivers weeping and searching for a way to redeem her soul. Any lone child who encounters the ghost will be drowned by it, just as her own children were.
The Mannequin
In the middle of a store in Northern Mexico there is a mannequin avoided by locals. Since it’s installation in 1930 it has made customers feel uncomfortable as they felt like it’s eyes would follow them around the store. Employees would claim to see it move when the store was closed. Word soon spread that it was haunted. It does look eerily life like , in fact it resembles the daughter of the store’s owner – who died just before it was installed. They say the mannequin is her corpse, preserved.
1593 Transported Soldier
In 1593 a strange confused man was found wandering the streets of Mexico city. He was Gil Perez – a man who claimed to be a Spanish soldier stationed in the Philippines. He could not explain how he came to be in Mexico – telling that in the blink of an eye he was teleported across the globe. No one believed his story and he was accused of deserting his military service, for which he was thrown in jail.
He told them about how the governor of the Philippines was assassinated just before his teleportation – but still no one believed him. Months later a ship from the Philippines docked in Mexico. It’s crew told of how their governor had been assassinated around the time Gil Perez was found in Mexico. One of them even recognized Gil. It remains one of history’s greatest mysteries.
House of Laments
In central Mexico is an 18th century mansion. There are many grand buildings in central America, but this one has home to a Victorian serial killer who practised witchcraft. In 1890 employees of Tadeo Mejia’s mining company invaded the home and stabbed his wife to death. The trauma of this triggered some kind of psychosis within Mejia. He became obsessed with the idea of raising her from the dead. Visiting a local witch, he soon began practising occult rituals and sacrificing live humans to the devil. It’s unclear how many he killed to bring back his wife, but the ghosts of his victims are said to attack anyone to disturb them.
The Alley of Hands
In the city of San Luis Potosi is an alleyway said to be haunted. In 1780 a Spanish priest came to the area, which at the time was a small town. He brought a house and hired two teenage boys to help his missionary work. One day the boys came to his house, as they did each morning. But to their horror they discovered the priest lying dead in a pool of blood. It was clear he had been murdered but there was no sign of who killed him. With no evidence either way, the boys were soon blamed. They were hanged by the neck until dead. Their hands were then cut off and nailed to the walls of the ally outside the priests home. Since that day, ghostly hands have appeared floating in the air to greet those who enter the alley of hands – or to warn them, depending on what you believe.
El Chupacabra
The name El Chupacabra literally means “goat-sucker”. It belongs to a strange blood sucking monster, a reptilian wolf with long fangs. No photographs of the creature exist but countless farm owners claim to have seen it drain the blood of their livestock. El Chupacabra stands five feet tall and is strong enough to kill any human, holding it’s victims down with it’s long claws while it drains them of blood completely. Hundreds of attacks gave been reported, with each report ending the same. El chupacabra disappears into the night, leaving no trace behind other than it’s victims corpses. It is no surprise that el chupacabra is the most well known and notorious of all Mexican legends.