Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage
Month in the US, I was asked about a story
that combines my experience with a twist that includes a
part of my own, very real fears. At the end,
I hope you joined me in sharing your stories. My
name is Edwin and here's a scary story. Does spear
get passed down through our blood? I asked, my face
now completely serious. After the many jokes and songs we
played around the porch of my uncle's ranch in Mexico,
there weren't that many of us left. My three cousins
were off by the grill, worming up some of the
meat and tortillas that were left over from earlier. I
almost never got the chance to be in such a place.
For the rest of my family that lived in Mexico,
these stories were completely normal. But to my sister and I,
tales of the hairy hand, the scissors under the crib,
and the stories of doglike creatures that turn into humans
were new. My dad always said that we didn't miss
out on it, but traded it for other chances, something
we could always go back to anyway, to look at it,
like an old hidden chest full of secrets and stories,
and that's exactly what it felt like. My uncle looked
at me and answered my question with a question, now,
gillin's mio, what are you afraid of? I thought about
answering that for a while, because it wasn't that simple.
Most people would say that they were afraid of the dark,
or bees or snakes, maybe ghosts or la your oonna.
Perhaps it was of being alone, not in the literal sense,
but rather feeling like I didn't belong anywhere. That's not
what he was asking, Brujas, I said, witches. He looked
at me straight in the eye as if he wanted
me to continue, but I couldn't. There was no reason
behind it, so I hardly even knew what they were,
but I knew that whenever a story about those came up. Ay,
a full grown adult by now struggled to walk down
a very dark hallway lit by the moonlight without imagining
a which blocking its path from the outside. There was
something strange about being out in the desert in Mexico.
Perhaps it was a silence. It made every sound feel
like a thread out there. My uncle was a smart
guy and answered my question clearly enough for me to
never ask it again, even though it took him a while,
and to this day, I haven't forgotten it. Miho, he started.
Fear gets passed down through our blood to protect us,
and witches, especially out here, are a thing we must
do everything in our power to avoid at all costs.
It's why we never walk alone out here? Do you
notice that? And he was right. Even my cousins to
asked each other to head out to the bath at night,
to go out to grab something from the car, or
to walk to the store on those dimly lit dirt roads.
Do they exist? I asked them, Are they real? Yes?
He said, letting the thoughts sink into my mind for
what seemed like an eternity. Do you know why we
live here now? Did your mom ever tell you of
the brucha of Gimichi's My eyes were wide open now
waiting for him to continue. Long before we moved here
to the north, your family and all of us used
to live in a small town in the state of Nayarite.
We lived, like every other family, off the land, supplementing
it with food and things we picked up from the city.
We didn't have much money, but we were rich fields
of beans and corn, for us whenever we wanted to eat,
always something to do, a topic of conversation with the neighbors,
and seasons to look forward to. Christmas wasn't like how
we spent them here. Back then, it was a town celebration.
Our mayors used to do things for us or we
would kick them out. But along with that, evil and
envy used to roam much more easily. People along before
me used to tell our family to watch out for that,
because women like La Bruxao f Kimchi's were not to
be messed with. I don't know if she actually existed,
but what she left behind definitely did. Had friends go
from healthy and strong people to weak and vulnerable guys.
Intelligent business owners go bankrupt and later run off into
the mountains and shame to never be found again. All
of this, it was said, came from the work of
this witch. But why did you leave? I asked my uncle,
right before his stare went blank. Did you really want
to know, he asked, as he turned his head to
whit me, the light of the fire making it much
more eerie than and I will ever be able to retell. Yeah,
I whispered, it was from your grandmother. She asked us
right before she died whether we were willing to fight
this thing together or not. And as you know, she
was successful with her own things, her shop. Do you
remember the photos she fed all five of us growing
up with that, and your grandfather protected all of us.
But no matter how much she wanted to fight this thing,
he didn't want to risk the rest of us, not
after seeing what she was capable of doing, so we moved.
There was this one woman. She used to live on
the corner of the last street in town, right where
the hill started. There was a nook there, no other
houses around, just an empty lot and not much else
to see but her tiny one bedroom hut in the
middle of it. People used to say that she was
a descendant of this witch Bruja the Kimchi's, and she
would do work that you wanted for a price. Of course,
word around town was that somebody was envious of your
grandmother's shop and one day brought her something to eat,
something that had all of the evil intentions tied up
to it, and it worked. Suddenly your grandmother started having
trouble standing up for the time she needed to at
her shop. Then her hand stopped working, and soon she
became bedridden. We rarely talked about this with the rest
of your aunts and uncles, but all of us agree
on something that this thing that happened to your grandmother
was absolutely a curse, a curse that came from this woman.
I stared at the dying fire for several minutes, wondering
about what I had just heard from my uncle. He
had no reason to lie about something so serious, so
deep for her family. So it makes sense that you're
afraid of witches. It's for your own good now, he said,
turned his head to everyone. I'm going to sleep. Turn
off the lights and lock the gates before you go
to bed. And I didn't know it back then, but
that short story, a tale one normally hears from an
older relative, was about to change my life. I asked
my family about this witch, La Brucha e Kimchi's, and
everyone had a story about her. Some, I must admit,
asked me to stop looking into it because of how
serious it was and how much it had affected everyone,
but most told me about their own experiences in this
small town the central coast of Mexico, stay away from
the witch. Years later, and with my family, I went
down to that very town, but by that time there
were a few people in town who remember the events
from long ago. The stories had turned into tales that
only people my age would share around campfires just to
scare each other. But those that knew the truth told
me everything they remembered. Deep in the hills there lived
a woman whose only company were the owls, snakes, and
the river that kept her alive. She would come into
town about once a month, typically when the moon was full,
to buy some things that she couldn't make or grow
on her own. A bottle of shampoo was one of
the things that everyone remembers her buying, and everyone knew
when to expect her, the lonely old lady from the
mountain some would call her, or others referred to her
as the witch. It always bothered me to think that
this is what scared me, a thing that I couldn't
quite describe. And I came back from that trip to
Mexico feeling like I missed out for being away from
everything for so long, apart from the rest of my
extended family, far from everything that made me feel more
Mexican words and phrases that I never learned, and the
fear of not knowing how to use them. It was
always a fear of mine growing up. The stories that
only my small family of four shared in my home.
Some stories that only the same friends at eight burritos
for lunch at school would understand, The ones and bilingual
classes that they try to take away from us through
policies that I was far too young to understand as
a kid. Fear of being put into classes where the
teacher would skip trying to pronounce my last name and
refer to me simply as Edwin C. But these stories
of witches, of ghosts like La Jorona, legends like El Tilbon,
stories of Nahwalez creatures that turn into humans to blend
in with us for Maine, and spread through my dad's
radio late at night during those drives at the Juana,
a city right across the border of California. I didn't
know it back then, but there were millions of us
here already in line to share our stories, sharing my
same fears and excitement for these tales and for many others,
not quite scared, but essential to what makes us us.
I often wonder about this irrational fear of witches brujas
in Spanish, Where does it come from. Is there something
else that I need to explore or to figure it out?
Are there really people out there with evil intentions that
will stop at nothing to hurt us through these invisible forces?
Is it something that we cannot protect ourselves against. As
a storyteller myself, it's common for me to encounter the
ghost story here in the United States to be quite
different from the ones in Mexico and Latin America. Here,
I have to convince you of the existence of these entities.
While in Mexico it's so embedded as part of our
story that we skip that part entirely and go straight
into our fears. But perhaps I'm somewhere in the middle
with the real fear that I'm just now beginning to
understand while still trying to convince myself of its existence.
There's a whole place out there that leaves in them.
And as I take this opportunity to celebrate our heritage
these fears, brujas or something else, I'd like to remind
you that even if you're on that lonely road on
your way to the corner shop, or if you just
have to go a few doors down the dark hallway
to the bathroom at night, there are many things that
our brain doesn't understand, but you feel it. Fear that
runs through you. Stories that need us as much as
we need them, because they stay alive when they're shared,
and they, along with the voices of everyone who shape them,
live inside me, pass down in my blood, and that
is the reason why I don't walk alone. Scary Story
Podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kovarujas. I'd
like you to join me in celebrating this month by
telling me a story that has been passed down to you,
and of course, everyone is welcome in our community, so
feel free to share them with me. Legends, stories from
where your parents are from, a story a grandparent shared
with you. You can DM me on Instagram or use
a contact form on my website Scary Story podcast dot com.
Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary. Every
one too soon,