Hi is Bugiz Christina here. As you heard in our last episode, the
part two of Gloria Trevi and Set, we are taking a little break.
For the next two weeks. You'll hear episodes from friends of the podcast Suo
and It's Haunted. What Now. If you've been a listener for a while,
you've heard this story before, but you haven't heard Aiden say it,
and honestly it's better than us. If you haven't already, go check out
Aiden and susta podcast and we'll catch you in a couple of weeks. Thank
you. Hey, cool friends, It's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way,
I am still your host and you are still listening to Sustal. For
those of you who are not familiar with me or the show, Sustal is
a scary podcast centered around paranormal folklore from Latin American and Hispanic cultures. Each
episode is narrative driven, so I like to tell a story and then afterwards
I dive into any relevant context that surrounds the story, whether it's cultural,
historical, what have you. And sometimes they're just good old scary stories.
Now you might be thinking, what is this, what's going on? Well,
the ghouls over at a Spooky Tales have been so kind as to allow
me to drop one of my episodes in their feed as a sneak peek into
Sustal. If you haven't heard it before. If you have, heygolfriend and
nice to see you again. Funny running into you here, and if you
haven't, I hope that you enjoy this episode and feel free to visit me
anytime you'd like before we move on. If you have any of your own
scary stories to share with me, or anything you think that I should share
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can do so by sending me a DM to one of those platforms. You
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sustopodcast dot com. And while you're on my website, feel free to check
out my other episodes, my shop, my blog, anything that I throw
on there. Again, I hope that you enjoy it. It's so nice
meeting you, and without further ado, let's get into today's episode. December
eighth, nineteen sixty an unseasonably cold night in San Pedro Cholotla, a rural,
primarily Nahuatch speaking community beneath Lamalinsi Volcano in the Mexican state of Lashkala.
Philemon and Francisca, a couple in their early thirties, were working late carting
wool and making yarn. Like most households in the community, they supported themselves
with their weaving. They lived in one room of Philemon's parents extended household with
their four children, two boys and a girl between five and fourteen years old,
and a seven month old daughter, Christina. Around midnight, Philemmon's older
brother returned from Mexico City, where he had gone to deliver an order of
sarapis. The three of them had coffee and chatted, then all retired for
the night. Philemmon, exhausted, fell asleep immediately, but Franciska gave baby
Christina one last breastfeeding. Then she put Christina back in her crib before going
to bed herself. Two or three hours later, Francisca awoke and saw a
glowing light moving around outside the bedroom window. She tried to get up to
investigate, but her body felt heavy and unresponsive, and she soon fell back
asleep. A little later, she half woke again. A strange mist filled
the room, and out of it materialized a large bird like creature. Again,
she tried to get up, but the mist overcame her, and that's
all she remembered. As the sun rose, Philemon woke up and noticed that
the door to the room was partially open. Then he saw baby Christina lying
not in her crib, but on the floor a few feet away. He
got up to investigate while Franciska was still fast asleep. It took several minutes
for Philammon to wake Franciska from her deep slumber with the terrible news Baby Christina
was dead. The skin around her chest and neck was bruised, and she
was pale as if she had been drained of her blood. That same morning,
six other families were shaken out of trance like sleeps to a similar discovery.
A still tiny body, sometimes an open door, seven dead babies.
It was a Flawalbuchi epidemic. The blood sucking shape shifter Tlaowerbuci looks like an
ordinary person and lives in any family, but they must consume human blood at
least once a month to survive. They hunt in the form of an animal,
usually a turkey or vulture. Lawalbuchis prefer the blood of infants, and
they hunt the most in cold or rainy weather. In flashgalen lore, they
strike most often in cold and or wet weather. They hunt whenever they are
hungry, but prefer to strike in the middle of the night. To hunt,
they fly from village to village in their bird form or as a hovering
ball of light in the night. It is said you can tell if an
animal is the Tlawalbuci by its glowing aura and the faint smell of blood.
After at Thlawalbuchi picks a v victim, they wait outside for a good opportunity
to sneak into the house. Some people say that to enter the house that
Lawerbouchi must fly over the roof in the shape of a cross from east to
west and north to south. Others say she can sneak in as a paralyzing
mist that knocks out everyone in the room. Once inside, she turns back
into a bird and sucks her victim's blood with her long needle like tongue.
When she escapes, she leaves the victim's body by the door. The position
of the body, along with bruises around the victim's chest, upper back,
or neck, are the signs of a Flowerbucci attack. You can try to
protect yourself or your baby from the flowerboucci in many ways. Leave a sharp
object under the crib, a knife, scissors, needles, or pins.
Make a cross out of safety pins on your garments. Put a mirror or
dirty shorts, or a soiled duck viper near the bed, but none of
these are full proof. Only onions or garlic are guaranteed to ward off an
attack. You cannot tell who the tlawalpucci in your midst might be. Sometimes
they don't know themselves until they hit puberty and begin to crave blood. They
can be any gender, but are mostly women. It is said the stronger,
meaner, more bloodthirsty ones are typically women. At Lawalbuchi can't kill their
own family unless that family member tries to give their identity away. In turn,
a family member who is responsible for the death of atlawalpuci will turn into
one themselves, leaving families to live with the secret. Though Atlawalbuchi can hunt
or shape shift any time they need to. Once a month, they must
go through a ritual. After midnight, they light a fire in the kitchen
with certain types of wood and leaves that have magical properties. They walk over
the fire three times, first north to south, then east to west,
chanting incantations as they do so. Then they sit on the fire facing north.
Their upper body separates from their legs and feet, and they turn into
a bird and fly out into the night, leaving their legs behind. If
the flowered bucci doesn't find a victim by daybreak, they will die. In
the stress and terror of a rash of deaths, people will accuse their neighbors
of being the Towerboucci. That person is executed, stoned, or clubbed to
death, their body left in a ravine. This is rare and fortunately didn't
happen in Saint Pedro Schrootla. Normally, when a child died in rural Plashkala,
their funeral procession was filled with music. Mourners sang and made noise on
the way to the cemetery. Perhaps this was a way to comfort the spirit
of the child on their furs and last journey without their parents. But the
funeral of a Tlawalpucci victim was a silent affair. No priest said prayers over
the casket. No one said a word until the Badarinos condemned the baby's soul
to God as they erected the cross over their grave. It is tradition for
the Badarinos to visit the grave after eight days, also known as the ogdava
de Gruz, but this didn't happen for Lawalpucci victim. After the wake,
all the child's clothes and possessions were burned. They had no ogdava le gruz.
No flowers were ever placed on their graves, nor were they remembered on
the family altar. On the other Los Martos, they were rarely spoken of.
Again, it says if the child never existed, a tragedy the family
tried to wish away. Anthropologist Hugo Nutini had been conducting field studies nearby at
the time of the epidemic and stayed to observe the community in the aftermath of
the tragedy. He posited that the close kinship ties in the community prevented any
accusations, since Lawilpucci cannot attack their own family. So what led to the
onslaught of infant deaths. Over the next decade, Neutheni studied forty seven of
these cases, bringing in a doctor to examine the bodies or examine them himself.
While the medical professionals wouldn't speak definitively about the cause of death without an
autopsy, the bruising of the victim's bodies provided a strong clue the victims hadn't
lost blood but oxygen. Okay, I know that one kind of ended on
a little bit of the cliffhanger, but that was intentional. So before I
continue, I do want to credit this story. It was adapted from a
blog. It's muto ghost dot WordPress dot com. That's the blog that I
got her from, Muto Ghost m u lto ghost dot WordPress dot com,
and they had an entry about the Lapucci. So that was like the first
part of it, or almost like all of it. And I saved this
last part for this part of the episode because I thought it would be really
interesting. So I'm going to read kind of this like disclaimer that is at
the end of this entry. Yeah, so it says the names of victims
and parents are as given by Nutini Hugo Nodini, which is sounds like he's
a sociologist that studied these cases and this community after these deaths. So it
says, yeah, the names of the victims and parents are as given by
Nutini, except Maria and Juana, whose names weren't given, and I'm going
to reference them to in a little while. This story is based on true
events. From what I have seen in doing more research into this episode and
into the Lawbuci, there are a bunch of academic papers that were written about
Lashkala, about the Mexican state Lashkala. I'm going to continue on with the
rest of this blog entry. So basically, they go on to say that
what they think happened, and you know, the story ended with that cliffhander,
that cliffhanger of asphyxiation. But what they go on to say is that
they think that the cause of these infant deaths were accidents, or they could
be people who felt cultural pressure to do the unthinkable. Basically, the first
explanation was of course Lawbucci, but the first I guess real quote unquote,
real on the record explanations would have been accidents. So some say that it
was customary for mothers in the region to feed their babies while they were lying
on their side. On a cold night, the mother would most likely feed
her baby while they were in bed or wherever they were sleeping, already wrapped
up. And so if it's late at night, if the parent is tired,
they're basically alluding to if the parent is sleeping with the baby, that
they could have accidentally rolled over and suffocated the baby. I certainly have heard
about cases like this happening, but it's horrible, you know, to imagine,
and especially because this happened somewhere. This really did happen somewhere. Another
explanation could be that because of the region in the world that this was in
in nineteen sixty that, you know, they didn't have the same luxuries that
we have now, you know, like space heaters and controlled temperature and you're
wherever you're living. So when they're putting the babies to sleep, you know,
they want to bundle them up so that they stay warm if it gets
cold at night. And like was mentioned in the story that the Tlapucci is
said to strike on cold nights, that could be another explanation is that,
well, it's a cold night, we're going to wrap the baby up,
bundle them up. So that they don't get cold, and maybe to try
to prevent freezing to death. But then if they're completely bundled up, if
they roll the wrong way and they cover their face and they're unable to breathe,
then they can also suffocate that way, which is why I think that
they say now that you're not supposed to like put a baby to sleep with
blankets, because you know something like that can happen. So that was another
explanation. Then the blog entry goes on to explanations that are maybe intentional,
that are not that Basically, it's it's people killing their kids. And this
is for several different reasons. I'm going to read it a part of the
same blog entry. There are other tensions that could lead to infanticide. I
was recently reading Bengali author Rabindra nath to Gore. One of his oft return
to two themes was the position of women in strict traditional Hindi households. Once
a woman married, she was the property of her husband and his family.
In very strict families, she couldn't return to her own parents. Even if
something went very wrong with the marriage. They'd give her away. They weren't
taking her back In an extended family living situation, a wife was out absolutely
subject to her mother in law, the domestic head of the household. A
woman's future happiness could depend more on her relationship with her mother in law then
on her relationship with her husband, and so it was in rual t Lashkala
as well, which is where this story was set. Maria tried hard to
placate her disagreeable mother in law, Juana, but this couldn't make up for
the fact that Maria was older than her husband, too old according to her
mother in La Juana, and only had daughters, a wifely failure in a
patriarchal society. The more Maria tried to defer to Juana, the more abusive
her mother in law got. Finally, after enduring an afternoon of especially vicious
verbal abuse, Maria snapped and let her mother in law have it, very
nearly striking her. The other women of the family had to hold her back.
Maria left the house for the rest of the day to cool down.
That night, her mother in La Juana inexplicably insisted on sleeping in the room
where Maria, her husband, and family slept. That night, that Lawilbucci
struck by Nuthini's account, Several other women who had seen the altercation clearly suspected
that Juana had killed Maria's baby, though they never accused her outright. Juana
seemed quite nervous when Nudini came to interview the family for his research, and
on his follow up visits, she avoided him altogether. What Maria thought or
what she did about it isn't recorded. And I wish I could give the
writer's name of the blog, but I can't find their name anywhere I'm seeing.
What I'm thinking is them commenting, but it's under a username and I
can't find their name. But all they can do is you offer you their
blog like I did earlier. There's a little bit more in the entry,
but they end with a PostScript. And I thought this was very interesting also,
and it says infant mortality rates dropped drastically in rural Lashkala after about nineteen
sixty five, from about forty five percent of children under five in nineteen sixty
to about twenty percent in nineteen eighty five. So again, the infant mortality
rate in Lashkala dropped from forty five percent to twenty percent in about twenty years
when Nudini revisited the area in the mid eighties, that Lawalpucci was only a
vague folkloric memory, just a story even to his original informants. In fact,
he noticed that many people had stopped using the Nahuat term Flawalbucci, opting
instead for the generic Spanish word bruha. So that's also interesting too that after
his study, and I wish I could see like a chart or a graph,
but it to me it sounds, you know, that that was like
a steady drop of infant mortality rates. That's twenty five percent in twenty years,
so it sounds like a steady drop. Again, I won't I'm not
going to say that definitively because I don't see a chart, so I don't
know what the trend looks like. But it is a drop regardless. But
it's interesting that it happened after he visited. So the reason that I thought
this specific story was very interesting and that I wanted to go with the Muto
Ghosts blog was because again, this speaks to the idea that we're always talking
about on SUSTO about trauma and when traumatic events happen, like how do they
get explained away? And what is the conversation in the community at that time.
So I think it was referenced earlier, but if not, it's in
a different link. There was over forty cases like this that Nutini studied,
and he wrote a book about it, and I'm going to reference that book
too. I want to buy it so bad. You know, if there's
forty cases, if I don't know what a normal amount of infant mortality rate
is, but I feel like forty five any is high. I feel like
forty five is probably really high. And I feel like forty cases in I'm
going to say the span of like what two years this says this happened in
nineteen sixty there was seven deaths over one night. That is huge. That's
really traumatic for a community. People are going to find something to point their
finger at and be like, this is what it is. It's this vampire
sorceress, the Lawalpucci. It's her versus you know, maybe pointing fingers at
each other. And I feel like the story of the Lawalpucci and her characteristics
are very very indicative of how people behave because there's also that point about how
she doesn't attack her own family and the only reason that she would attack her
own family is if they try to identify her. So if they try to
out her for whatever reason, I think this spoke to the way people behave
in a very like kind of raw way. I'll move on to the next
link that I have here, and this is a good old Wikipedia entry.
This is just going to break down what a lawalpuci is down to the bear
minimum or description or whatever in case it was unclear in the story, but
I think or just to reiterate what was in the story, but this says
that. It's a short a pretty short Wiki entry, and it says belief
in the bloodsucker at Lawalpuci is prominent in the Mexican state of Plashkala, with
deep roots amongst the indigenous Nahwak culture of the region. The word lawalbuci derives
from the Nahuatlochli plural. Let me see if I can get this one La
lahui bodin a compound of lahuilla or to light up or illuminate. And you
know we have that descriptor of the tower boucci that they glow. So again
this light flahuilla to light up or illuminate and bocht li, which can mean
haze, left southern or youth, which is interesting because it's said that she
feeds primarily on infants, but also can travel in this haze of light or
can create this mist. So many I guess different you know facets to her
as a result. Lawibucci may mean glowing haze or illuminated youth. Interesting.
The description says the flower boucci is a type of vampire or witch that lives
with a human family. It is able to shape shift and sucks the blood
of infants at night. It has a kind of glowing aura when shape shifted.
Flowerpucci are born with their curse and cannot avoid it. They first learn
of what they are sometime around puberty. Most flowerbucci are female, and the
female lawalbouci are more powerful than males. They also have a pact with shamans
and other supernatural creatures. A shaman won't turn in a suspected lawerbuci. The
typical sign that a victim was killed by the tlawalbuci are bruises on their upper
body. The Tlawalbuchi largely feeds on children, though it can kill others,
and there's also something about their powers and weaknesses. So again, this says
that they're able to change form by detaching their body from their legs. Then
they go hunting, usually in the form of some bird turkey of vulture.
That the Taupouchi has to perform a ritual before she can enter the house of
a victim, so again flying over in the shape of across east to west,
north to south, I think is what it was. And then the
weaknesses we mentioned them again in the story, but one more time. This
says that they must feed on the blood at least once a month or they
die. Their victim of choice is an infant, so they are picky eaters.
There is no way to detect with Lawalbuci except by catching them in the
act. Their family protects them out of shame and because if a family member
is responsible for the death of a Flowerbucci, the curse will be passed down
to them. I don't think that part was in the story or the blog
entry that I read, but I thought that was really interesting that this is
hereditary in a way. Yeah, it's hereditary because this is only if a
family member it kills them. If a stranger kills them, then nothing happens
to the stranger. But if a family does, then because they're related,
it's passed down to them. This continues, the curse cannot be lifted and
if at Thlowerbucci is identified, they must be killed on the spot. Garlic
onions and metal repel the Thlawerbucci again like you mentioned earlier. Also, I'm
sure, as you all know, all of the direct links will be available
in these Susto Google docs on Patreon It's patreon dot com slash sustal podcast.
And so now we get into the academic links. This is from Journeys dot
Dartmouth dot edu and it is their folklore archive. So once I started seeing
these links, I was like, okay, yeah, folklore. And then
I started seeing like sociologic studies and so I was like, wait, what
is going on? Is this real? So this one just says the witches
who suck the blood of children or newborns. So unfortunately with this one they
have an item or it's basically like a like they recorded this guy's story about
this, and it's really roughly translated on here. So I'm having a hard
time understanding it. So if you have access to the just to Google docs
or if you find this online again. It's Journeys dot Dartmouth dot edu and
it's from their folklore archive. I would say, feel free to read it
and try and figure it out. But what I'm seeing from the other parts
of this entry is that they were trying to collect entries about the Otomi culture
and he ended up giving this story. He's swearing to them that it's true,
but it is about blood sucking, which is what we're talking about this
episode as the Tawerbucci. So just wanted to put that out there because I
think it's interesting that academic papers are collecting and publishing stories like this. The
next one that I really want this is from jstore dot org. This is
a book called Bloodsucking Witchcraft, An Epistemological Study of Anthropomorphic Supernaturalism in Rural Tlashkala.
I really really really want to buy this book. I found it online.
I think the cheapest that I found it was like fifty three dollars.
So I'm going to see if I can maybe save up a little bit and
buy it because I'm very interested in this. I mean, it's like all
of my favorite things. I love sociology. I mean, obviously I think
this show can tell you that about me. You know, I love learning
about cultures, and I really want to get this book, but it is
heavily protected. It is an app it's an academic book, and it's by
Hugo g Nutini, which is the one that we reference in the story.
He was there for these studies and John M. Roberts. This was published
or it was copyrighted, in nineteen ninety three, so I was maybe only
a year old when this book came out. But I'm going to read some
of the excerpts from the chapters. The introduction says this book is concerned with
bloodsucking witchcraft and rural tlash Gala Mexico, the most prominent personified complex in the
non Catholic belief system of the region. The primary aim of this book is
to analyze the social and psychological contexts of witchcraft and to place it within the
framework of rural plash, good and culture. The manifold aspects of bloodsucking witchcraft
are complex and ramified, and they are described and analyzed within the overall system
of magic and religious supernaturalism. As these phenomena are embedded in kinship, ritual
kinship, the household, the non residential, extended family, the neighborhood,
the community, and the entire region. I want this book so bad.
This sounds like it's just right up my alley. And this is a little
bit of what I studied in school. But if you have never listened to
SUSTOL or if you have been listening to SUSA for a while, this really
is a good glimpse into what this show is about. This specifically is about
witchcraft, and it's about bloodsucking whitch. But I feel like you can apply
almost any supernatural or unexplainable phenomena or entity or creature in place of the witchcraft
here. That's like kind of what SUSTO is, you know. I love
to look at people and communities and families and society at large and how we
behave in relation to insert whatever you know, paranormal, unexplainable thing that's from
the introduction. I'm gonna go down. I'm going to stop at a random
chapter Chapter eight. Let's do chapter eight. This says. Chapters two and
five presented the ideology and belief system of bloodsucking witchcraft and Route Lashkala, as
well as the social matrix in which it takes place. The socio psychological ambience
in which the Laobucci is supposed to kill her victims, was also discussed and
placed in the context of family structure and the organization of the household, occasionally
giving the impression of a certain ontological reality attributed to this anthropomorphics Supernatural. Chapter
six presented the data about the circumstances immediately preceding the bloodsucking event, positioned with
respect to the subsequent behavior of the primary actors involved. The next one is
from Springer dot com or I'm sorry link dot Springer dot com. Another paper
about Plashkala. It's called the lash galin Constructions of Acute Grief, and this
is by also Hugo Nutini and Oracio Fabrega. This was published in nineteen ninety
four. And there is an abstract for this paper. And I'm sure that
probably a lot of what is in here, or some of what is in
here is also in Bloodsucking Witchcraft in Hugo's book. But the abstract says in
rule tlash Gala Mexico, the sudden and unexpected death of infants and young children
was a relatively common occurrence during the time when this study was conducted. Not
surprisingly, the deaths constituted major and social tragedies and operated as psychological traumas to
the family, especially the parents. Acute grief reactions inevitable resulted, and these
were suffused with body and psychological disturbances of different types, some of which were
handled in the society as illness. The article grows out of a longitudinal study
about these tragedies to families and the region. Attention is given to the grief
reactions of parents, with special emphasis placed on psychological and behavioral manifestations. Of
particular interest is the way local cultural symbols pertaining to the cause of the deaths,
which involved the malevolent attack of bloodsucking witches, were configured in the verbalizations
and behavioral actions that comprised the grief reactions. What I'm taking from that or
the way that I am understanding it, and I hope it's correct. If
anybody has any other ideas, please feel free to send them in DM them
whatever or comment them, is that this study paid really close attention to the
way that people reacted after the deaths. So if we think back to the
story, then that means that they didn't have the same kinds of funeral processions.
Instead of the music and the songs the funerals were sit the priests didn't
pray over the coffins, they didn't place nobody placed flowers at the gravestones.
The godparents didn't do the eighth day visit. The reaction like it was in
that story. The reaction is opposite of what it normally is, especially for
children's funerals. So I think that's what this is talking about, is that
this paper is really focused on how the families and the parents reacted after the
loss of their child, which obviously no one's going to react well. So
the last link that I thought I had is actually just a repeat of the
one that we just talked about. That third academic article. I thought it
was a different one, but it's the same thing. It's the same authors
and the same paper. I just got really excited about it. Welcome back
one last time, Goalfriends. Thank you so much again for listening. If
this is your first time hearing Sustal, I hope that you enjoyed it.
I hope that you'll check out my other episodes. And this was again just
a taste of what a typical episode of Sustal is like. Sometimes they do
book reviews, sometimes they do interviews, sometimes they do crossovers with other shows.
So if you enjoyed this, feel free to visit me on my website
sustalpodcast dot com, Subscribe, follow, rate, review, You know what
to do all those buttons wherever you are listening. And if you have your
own scary story or even if it's a video photo, anything paranormal related that
you think I should share either on my show or my socials, send that
to me via email that's sustalpodcast at gmail dot com, through my website sustalpodcast
dot com, in a DM on any social media at sustal podcast across all
platforms, or by leaving it in the Spotify Q and A or a five
star Apple Podcasts review. One more time, thank you so much for being
here. I hope that you enjoyed this and I will haunt you later. Bye,