October 16, 2024 • 37 mins
This week, we're joined by Ayden Castellanos, host of Susto, a podcast of ooky-spooky scary stories centered around the folklore of Latinx and Hispanic cultures. Ayden was born and raised on the Texas-Mexico border and grew up hearing cautionary tales and connecting with people through ghost stories. In this episode, we discuss duendes, the girl who danced with the devil, and some lesser known legends.
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Speaker 2 (02:02):
So it's spooky season, it's Hispanic Heritage Month. We have
a very a fun, scary and Latino episode for you all.
We have Aiden Castellanos, the host of Sousto, a podcast
of oogi spooky scary story centered around the folklore of
latinx and Hispanic cultures. Aiden was born and raised in
the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas Mexico border. He
(02:26):
grew up here in cautionary tales and connecting with people
through ghost stories.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yes, hey, cool friends, my name is Adrian or Aiden
either way, I am the host of the podcast Sousto.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
And where are you calling in from?
Speaker 5 (02:41):
I am calling in all the way from Austin, Texas,
where I currently reside, but I am originally born and
raised in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas Mexico border.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And the Rio Grande Valley and the border play a
huge role in your work on the Susto podcast. And
a lot of the stories that you tell are these
borderland RGV stories, And so I love that you rep
the RGV. I love that you're telling stories from the RGV.
How did you what inspired you to move in that
(03:13):
direction and put this podcast together?
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Well, first and foremost, I have to say boot on
nine five six RGV excellence all the way. But I mean,
these stories, they were just so entrenched in my upbringing.
Like after the barbecues, someone's THEA was always saying, I
saw the devil last night, I saw the devil last week.
There was a lady in the backyard. We saw an
all black rooster. It was always something right, and if
(03:39):
it wasn't that, it was your cousins or your friends
at a sleepover. And I think that kind of culture
seeped its way into our classroom as well. I have
this book that I reference in a lot of my episodes.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
It's a book called.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Stories that Must Not Die and it's full of fables
and folk tells that were collected along the Texas Mexico border.
And they would read this book to us in elementary school.
And I still have the actual physical copy of this
book from my elementary classroom. But it had stories like Laorna,
(04:13):
the Girl who danns with the Devil, La Lichusa, so
these ghost stories that they were reading to little kids, right,
but at the end of each story, and they were
in English and Spanish, and at the end of each
story there was also a set of questions, so they
were kind of teaching us reading comprehension and introducing critical
thinking to us by way of scary stories. So it's
(04:36):
just always kind of stuck with me, like it's been
a part of my life since I was very very young.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I love this story about you learning and reading these
stories in elementary school because it shows how entrenched these
stories are this folklore is in the culture. So can
you share with us what is a ghost story or
a fable or folklore? And you grew up hearing you
(05:02):
already mentioned a couple, but let's talk about one of
them for sure.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
So one of the earlier ones that I remember that
isn't Lena, because I feel like that is like the
go to right away for everyone. I tell people, she's
like the Beyonce of spirits, right like everybody knows who
she is, everybody knows her story.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
But another one that was really popular in my.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Upbringing was the story of the girl who downs at
the Devil, And I think that one's very interesting because
it is the quintessential Sousto story. There are so many
different versions of it, and everybody swears that it happened
in their neck of the woods. So there's a version
from San Antonio that happened at a bar called Camaroncito.
But growing up, I heard that it happened in McCallan, Texas,
(05:42):
which is a city in the valley, at a bar
called Boccaccio three thousand and it was just like this
discotheque in I think seventy nine. And the story is
that this really young, pious woman decided to break the
rules and to go to a dance for the first time,
against her parents' wishes. And while she was out there,
(06:05):
she met this handsome stranger. Nobody knew who this man was,
but he approached her and he asked her to dance.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
And as they're dancing.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
She's kind of hypnotized by him until she hears the
screams and the shrieks of the crowd around them, And
as she starts looking to see what are they screaming
at what's happening, they're pointing at them, and she realizes
they're pointing at his feet, and.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
They're saying his feet, his feet.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
Look and she looks down and she sees that he
has one goat's hoof and one chicken's talon, and she
realizes that she's been dancing with the devil the whole time.
And so in this version, or in the version that
I remember hearing growing up, is that he kind of
just disappeared. He vanished into some black smoke and it
smelled like sulfur, and that this young woman was left
(06:52):
with burn marks on her body from where he was
holding and caressing her. Some people say that she lived.
Some people say that she did not. But again, there's
different versions of this story. It's told in so many
different places, And for me, I think it's extra interesting
because growing up, the story was listen to your parents,
(07:12):
or something bad can happen to you, right, And as
I got older, I realized that the one through line,
no matter who was telling the story, no matter what
was different, the one detail that remained the same, was
that it happened to a young woman. And so I
started to think, well, that's interesting. Why are we telling
this story to classrooms of second third graders And it's
always a young woman being punished for trying to have
(07:35):
a night of fun, right, And then when you think
about the reality of the world, the reality is is
that it is a much more dangerous place for women
and for fems, and so it's kind of one of
those unnecessary evils that we do want to tell this
story to the young women and girls in our classrooms
and say, hey, unfortunately, that's the way the world is
(07:56):
right now. But I invite people to have that conversation
to kind of dissect to that, because a scary story
can be more than just a scary story.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Lookomotives, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And we're back with more of our episode. I love
that you point that out, and I think we know
that in a lot of film and television, the women
are always the victim of a kidnapping, the victim of
some horrible crime. There's a lot of crimes against women
that are made into entertainment. In what you're talking about here,
(08:36):
it's a cautionary tale of what could happen to you
if you step out into the night and you dance
with a handsome stranger. And I'm really curious, why do
you think that there are so many of these stories,
specifically in this region of the world, in the RGV
and along the border. What is it about this place
that is just like ripe for these types of stories.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
I always attribute that to the resiliency of our culture
and our people. Right. For example, the story of that
is a centuries old story. There are versions of that
story that go back like so so far back, and
I kind of use that as an example of the
power of transformation, the power of survival, because even when
(09:22):
you think of some of these stories like Luchusa, for example,
there's a physical transformation there of a witch to an owl,
a person to an animal. So there's this idea of
transformation that floats around. But I think it's also representative
of how we are culture and we as a people,
how we have also had to change in certain ways
to survive, and these stories are just kind of like
(09:45):
a representation of that in a way, they.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Tell the story of our survival.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
They also teach us something about I like this lens
of looking at it as a cautionary tale and looking
at it from the perspective of maybe there's like a
patriarchal lens, you know in the telling of this story,
where it's always the young girl that something happens to her,
(10:11):
and it's used as a cautionary tale to scare young
girls to kind of act right, to get in line.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And if we think about the way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Religion is also used as a type of fear mongering, Right,
you have to do the right thing. If not, like Diablo,
if not, you're going to hell. There's something right, And
so I like thinking about like, there's so much depth
to these stories. It's not just spooky and it's scary.
It's there's a culture within it. There's subcultures within this,
(10:38):
Like one folklore or this one story.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Yeah, absolutely, And what are.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Some of the stories or what is an example of
a story that you learned because of soustopod, either a
story a guest brought or within your own research you
learned that was new to you, because I know, you
don't just cover the border, you also cover all of
Latin America and Hispanic folklore and legends.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, so initially it started that way, and then I
started in doing my research finding versions of either those
same stories from other parts of the diaspora that I
never thought maybe I'd have a connection with, or a
completely different kind of story or cryptid or spirit, but
some there was always some similarity some tie to them.
(11:24):
So definitely the stories or the culture that I cover
has it's widened in doing my research and doing this show.
One though that I was really interested to learn about,
and I've told this story live a lot because I
think it's really impactful, is there's a story of this
creature called Bucci, and it's an a HOAt word for
(11:47):
this creature that is known to be a blood sucking
shape shifter and anybody can be Albucci. It's like a
like similar to like a werewolf. You know this person
can transform into this thing when they need to feed.
And this is a story that comes out of San
Pedro in the state of flash Gala in Mexico. And
(12:09):
essentially the story is that overnight there were seven infant
deaths in this very rural area of Mexico in the sixties,
and people started blaming essentially this creature. They said, it's
a Tlauidpucci epidemic. We've been attacked by the Tlauidpucci.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
And so.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
The reason I think that this story is extremely impactful
is because it's based in a real event. So at
the time, there were these anthropologists that were doing a
study of these rural townships in Tlashkala, and while they
were there, that event happened, those those infanticides happened. So
(12:51):
the focus of their research shifted to how this community
was now processing not only this very heinous act but
also their trauma by way of supernaturalism. And so again
you go into it thinking, oh, this is a really
scary story, and then you keep reading or you keep
(13:12):
listening or watching, and you discover that this is about
so much more. I actually have a book about that
as well that it's called Bloodsucking shape shifter, and it
details in these anthropologists. In this book, they detail everything
from the events in that evening leading up to before
(13:35):
their sleep, to the traditional layouts of their homes, to
the traditional or the typical sleeping patterns of the families.
They detail everything in there is a full d depth
sociological study of this community. And then of course it
also goes into testimony and observations of what these people
(13:57):
were saying, because immediately after that more, when they discovered
what happened this small community, they were in a panic,
they were in disarray, but the one thing that they
were all kind of agreeing on was it was this monster.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
It was this creature.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
We hope you're enjoying this interview.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Stay tuned, we're back, and we hope you enjoyed the
rest of the interview. Very fascinating. You recently sat down
with doctor emily's Arka from PBS Digital Studios Monstrum and
(14:35):
you talked about Lala Chusa. You also on your website
reading about how you are referring to yourself as a folklorist, yes,
and as your title as your honorific but that you
had a little bit of hesitation at one point about
like dubbing yourself in that way. I love the term.
So can you talk to us about what that term
(14:57):
means to you and how you identify as a folklorist
and how that shows up in your work. Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Absolutely, so for me, the being a folklorist, it's more
about an act. So I've said many times before, also
that my susto in my show. It's my contribution to
the tradition of oral storytelling. It's something that's existed for
a very long time. I haven't created anything new. I'm
(15:24):
participating in this tradition and I'm yes putting my own
twist on it. I'm bringing it to the world of podcasting.
But yeah, it's more about action. Like I mentioned earlier,
a lot of these stories to me represent resiliency and
power and survival, and so to me, being a folk
(15:44):
lost is about participating in that act by way of
continuing the telling of these stories.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Do you have family members that come to you and say, aiden,
can you come over and tell us a story? Like
tell us a scary story? Is are you somebody that
people are looking to to be a storyteller in real time?
Speaker 6 (16:06):
It's definitely happened.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
I've been like like a party or something, and then
you know, people slowly kind of trickle off for the
evening and when there's maybe like four or five of us,
I'm telling you, it always happens.
Speaker 6 (16:19):
Someone's like I heard a.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Noise in my house last week, and then it just
starts that way. So I definitely ended up kind of
have everyone sitting around and telling a story. I will
say that some people in my family are like my
core immediate family, and me as well, it's a misconception
about me. We're kind of scaredy cats. So like my
(16:42):
sister and my mom, for example, will tell me that
they'll be listening and they have to just cut it
off in the middle of a story and say, we're
gonna come back to this later.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And I tell them, how do you think I.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Feel reading about this or recording it that I don't
record after dark if I'm going to be recording a
story because I don't want to put myself.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
In that position.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
That's hilarious. I love that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So question about your family and the podcast and the
stories that you grew up with the stories that you
share on the podcast, was there ever any tension between
you and your family where one, for example, I wasn't
allowed to watch scary movies as a kid because my
dad was like, you're welcoming something into the house, so
(17:24):
you're not allowed to watch any of that because so literally,
So I'm wondering if you ever grew up with any
of that tension and either how that contributed to the
making of the show or maybe inspired you gave you
ideas in the making of the show.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Yeah, I feel like growing up, I can't remember that
I watched too many like scary movies or horror movies
growing up. But again for us, it was these like
the tellings of these stories. So we would talk about it,
you know, all the time. But when we'd go to
the mall, I my mom wouldn't want me to go
in a hot topic because essen was that the how
(18:01):
topic is this? At the nas so like I couldn't
I wasn't allowed to shop there for a very long time.
But I think also, and this is one of the
reasons that I attribute so many Latina people being into
the paranormal and the macab is because so many of
us are also raised Catholic. And I say this all
the time, the Catholicism, it's inherently horror. It's inherently spooky
(18:24):
because you go to meet with your coven, your church
once a week, you do all of these rituals, you
say these spells, prayers to a deity who, by the way,
is hanging up on the wall in front of you,
splayed out like. That is horror right there, that's a
horror story.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
We were just talking about this the other day about
how Catholics are the most.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Pagan of Christians.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, it's so campy, first of all, and also it's
so witchy, like the blood and body.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Are you serious?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Are you for real?
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Right now?
Speaker 6 (18:59):
Totally exactly.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
There's so much ritual and it's funny because it doesn't
even in there depending on which Catholic you are.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
You're also getting your cards.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Read, and you have the VELAs at home, and it's
not even just your lighting a vella of La Vire
and you're lighting a vella of Don Pedro Caramio and
you're writing your name and your birthday and putting it
under the candle, right Like, there's so much ritual that
stems from Catholicism, which again that's that is a whole
other that could be its own episode about like how
(19:28):
Bruhidia modern bluhidia is basically are are very traditional what
we would assume as indigenous practices, but they've they've taken
on these Catholic motifs and iconography and verbiage. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Absolutely, we talk about it all the time. It's so
macabre and there's a reason why, Like I think a
lot of people who went to Catholic school really get
into matters of like be a cult. Like we're just
primed for it. We're just you know, we're prepped for
that sort of a thing. I also I wanted to
ask you too about the name of your show about soustal.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
So it's a.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Great name and it means like, you know, like a
fright right, like to catch a fright, And so I
seem to recall and correct me if I'm wrong, But
in listening to your show, you spoke more about the
term and like the meaning that it has and why
you named your show that way. Can you share a
little bit about that with our listeners.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
So if anybody is unfamiliar it hasn't heard of it,
the words sustal, Yes, it's Spanish for fright. It's also
a cultural illness. So there are many people and I
grew up with this belief that after a big scare
or something traumatic, that your soul can separate itself from
your body, and if this trauma is severe enough, the
(20:46):
soul can also fragment. And there's different remedies based on
which community you're speaking to and on the severity of
the soustal.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
So for me, it was.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Growing up, it was to have a spoonful of sugar
in a glass of water, dissolve it, and you chug it.
And that's supposed too for other people in Mexico City.
I have a friend from there, and she said, after
the earthquake in twenty seventeen, it was really bad that
the food vendors were out in the street and they
were handing out bolos for free or the bread loaves
(21:20):
because that's their remedy for it. And then if it
gets really severe and you need to see a professional
like gurandere or a bruja or someone, they can use
different sorts of ramas, the awa florida or whatever ritual
you know that they put into practice.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
So yeah, it was something that I grew up with.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Like I said, like we had we had the remedy
for susto, if we had ma de ojo.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
It was a rubdown with an egg.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
And so when I was developing the show, I was
trying to think of a title.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
I was like, I don't know, I don't know what
to call it.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
And I think I was talking to my family about it,
and my mom she started, you know, telling stories. She
was like, oh, well, one time you had susto and
then I was like wait, I was like, that's.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
It, that's it, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
So yeah, it's just it's it's been that for five
years now.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I love that so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I grew up with with the boleo or not necessarily bolio,
but like come pan, you know, you have to have
the bread. And after the last earthquake here in La,
at least this past summer, I saw this meme going
around where it was like someone throwing like a bunch
of bolos.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And I was like, all of La right now.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah, Yeah, I love There's actual food science behind it too.
I read an article on it once about the food
science of like glucose and when your body is stressed out,
when you're having a susto, there's a chemical reaction in
your body and there's like chemicals and hormones or whatever
flooding from like one part of the brain to the
other one part of the body. And so it's I'm
(22:53):
not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, so I can't
recall it as well. But there there is literature out
there on the science behind the food based remedies.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
There is, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So question about I have a question for you about
the wind is do you have your own wind this story? Oh?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
My god, yes I do. Unfortunately, and my sister will
not let it go.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I need to hear it because I have my own
wind this story, and so I wanted to ask you
about your wind this story.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And the one that episode is so good. We'll talk
more about it. But yes, you're you're the when this story.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
And can you define for our listeners who may be
hearing this term for the first time, what is a wendy?
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Okay, before I say this out loud in my home,
this is not an invitation, not a welcome roll out.
I'm using this as example, Okay. A dwende is the
easiest way to describe it. It's like a gnome like
creature or a being. It's a very small humanoid being.
Couple feet tall, even lesson of foot tall sometimes and
(23:54):
they're very mischievous, and so they're known to move.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
Your stuff around or to hide your stuff.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Sometimes they are the theme that goes bump in the night,
and they're not really dangerous per se, but again they're
very mischievous. And so actually, a couple Halloweens ago, I
was at home. I had already moved away from home,
but I was visiting, and I was helping my mom
pass out candy because in my mom's neighborhood there's tons
(24:22):
of trick or treaters and if anybody is curious about
where I get my love from, I don't know if
she knows it or if she realizes it. But her house
on Halloween is amazing. She has dolls hanging from her
tree and like light up everything.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
It's so fun.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
So she's passing out candy and my sister had just
gotten a car a couple months prior and it was
like an SUV, so we had the back open, we
had music playing. We're sitting in there just hanging out,
engaging with the tricker treaters, hanging out.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
Candy and whatnot.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
The night wraps up, it's fine, so we start packing
up everything, putting candy away inside, and we're going to
lock up the car and my mom asks me for
the keys and I was like, well, I don't have them.
I gave them to you, and she was like, no,
I gave them to you. I was like, well, we
probably put them down. So we start looking and it's dark,
so we have our flashlights on and we're looking around
(25:16):
in the car like, okay, it's not in here. And
my sister's a virgo, if that says anything, so I
was like, we need to find this before she gets back.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
So we start looking under the car. Nothing.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
I'm like, shut the candy ball. Maybe you put them
in the bowl, and so we're like, dump all the
candy out. We're rifling through it. We cannot find To
this day, we don't know where this key is. And
thankfully my sister had a spare. But I mean, of course,
I mean naturally anyone would be right. But she was
upset and she was like, how could you lose my key?
Speaker 6 (25:44):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:45):
And my only explanation was it was a dunde. It
was prime time for Halloween. This dunde was out in
disguise with these children, and it snuck and it stole
your key, like we we like any explanation we had
to where the key could have been. It was nowhere
to be found, like maybe lost, yes, but not just vanished.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Wow, just gone. It was just straight up gone.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Yeah. And they're they're they're the they're they're known or
allegedly they like shiny things.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
They're kind of like crows, right, they like the shiny things.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
If you if you think that you have when their
problem in your home, one of the kind of ways
that's said to get rid of them is to toss
out a handful of treats out the door. As you
open the door, you toss out treats, whether it's candy
or some food, and you tell them go get it,
go get it. Wait a couple of seconds, and then
you shut the door behind them.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That's good to know. Life anti life hack.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean my when this story. I have a couple,
but one that I still still makes me scratch my
head is that I had a fifty dollars bill on
my vanity and I was sitting there for a couple
of day and I kept looking at it and saying like,
I have to go put that in the bank, or
I have to put that away, and then a couple
days later, the fifty dollars bill is now a twenty
(27:09):
dollar bill, and I was like, wait, no, no, this
no right. So I'm like I asked my parents, like okay,
it's okay, did somebody swap my bill? It's fine if
you did. If you needed cash, all good, but just
let me know. And they were like, no, we have
not done that. We have not taken money from you.
(27:29):
We haven't borrowed money. Like no, And I in my
mind a gwyn that was playing a trick on me. Yeah,
because there's just no other explanation. We didn't have anybody
coming into the house. There were no visitors. It was
just my parents. And so that is still like one
of my stories to this day that makes me think,
like a Glen that was like playing a prank on me.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
And I believe you do have a dunda in your
house because we were shooting something at her house once.
There was a bunch of us there. We had scripts
and there was a specific script that I maybe I
put it down or we put it down on your
dining room table, and then it was gone and we
were looking high and low for this script. We were
looking for a long time and we could not find
(28:09):
it anywhere. And I totally believe you have a d
Wenda in your house because it was just no like
it was it was. It vanished, it vanished, and so
you have like a very clever wen there because he made.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Change made honestly, how did he go to.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
The drag show?
Speaker 5 (28:25):
I only need thirty dollars tips and drinks. I just
will give her the rest.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Don't understand it. I will say though, that since a
relative has left my house, I think that the duenda
is gone.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
But when they went with him, yes, his house.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
It was, Yeah, it was his dlende.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I'm screaming, possibly allegedly allegedly.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
You need to ask him if he's been missing stuff
or his stuff isn't moving around?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
All right, I will I love it. My grandma definitely
has a d Wende. And it's funny because my grandma's
dwen that we talk about it openly, like it's like
a family member, you know, because she's always talking about
her when they like there's it's just like a matter
of fact, you know. I think there's a little bit
like you know, I think she's being forgetful and she
misplaces things. But He's a constant factor, and I it
(29:15):
for school. I'm writing a short film and it's like
a little bit of a horror short and it's called
Dwhende and it's my sister made me like a little
Dwende puppet head, So we're imagining what it might look like.
And months and months ago before I started writing the script,
I did listen to your t Whende episode for research purposes,
and I learned so many things, Like I didn't realize
(29:38):
that in some areas the when this can actually be
quite violent and scary and like attack old people or
kidnapped children. And I think maybe the ones that we've
grown up knowing about or living with have been a
little more benign and a little bit more like tricksters.
So I was curious too about that side of the
when this that more nefarious, more violent. I guess nature
(30:00):
that some of them have.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Yeah, so there's this kind of I noticed themes with
these different kinds of entities that I cover, and so
one of my favorites is the cryptid fems. So there's
always this kind of like women or fem spirits, and
it's usually about like vengeance and revenge.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
And I'm always on their side. And then there's.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Another area where there are these kind of protectors of
nature and the when the stories that.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
I found where they were on the more.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Violent or dangerous side was they were doing it in
service of or in protection of nature or like forests.
And so it's said that if you go into a forest,
if you're disrespectful, if you're causing trouble anything to damage
the nature, that's when they kind of come out and
they're like, all right, well, now you've got to pay
(30:50):
up because you're you know, you're being rude out here
and this is our home, this is your home.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Respect it right.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
One story that they can up in after I covered
them early on was the story of I don't know
if you remember those children that survived a plane crash
in the Amazon Amazon jungle. Okay, So their grandmother, after
they were found, came forward and she said that her
belief was that a duende was helping them because on
(31:21):
the flip side, those lendas that are dangerous to people
who are quote being bad, that they can either lure
people into the forest deeper into it and get them
more lost, or they can help them. And so that
she said that in this case like the Duenda that
they encountered helped them find their way because they traveled.
(31:41):
I think it was it wasn't what we would say
is like very long. It wasn't a very long distance.
But in the Amazon jungle it's extremely it's it's extremely
dangerous just to be out there right without anything really,
but then to be moving through it is even more dangerous.
And this was a group of kids, a very young kids,
and so the fact that they survived was this like miracle.
(32:03):
And so that's why then I think the grandmother came
forward and said, no, there was a dlenda that helped them,
and we thank the forest. We show it all our
gratitude and love for returning our children to us. So
again it's kind of one of those like I think
that the Dundas are very you know, they're like us.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
You know, they're they're able to.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Make up their minds about people and then to decide
how they want to treat those people.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Gave me chills, I have chill.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yes, that gave me chills.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Yeah, it was a great.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Yeah, that one's a great like a really I mean,
it's of course tragic that that ever happened to those kids,
but it's also so lovely that they were that they survived.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh truly, Wow, I guess to to, Uh, we're coming
towards the end of our interview here, but is there
a creature, a story, a folklore that you want to
show a little bit more love too that you think
is maybe undertold, underrated, not an people know about it,
(33:01):
but maybe should look into it.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Absolutely, Oh my god, there's so many.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
One that I did recently that I thought was really
really cool was the story of Again this falls into
the cryptid femmes kind of category. It's the story of
this spirit called latak Nuda. And so the story that
there's two really popular versions. The one that I covered
or that I did the narrative part of in my
episode was it's the story of this young woman who
(33:28):
was going to meet up with her boyfriend with her lover,
and when she went to meet up with him, a
cab was distracted by her.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
They were checking her.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Out, and they crashed into her boyfriend and they killed him.
And so the story is that you know, she ended
up passing as well, and that now she kind of
roams the streets of hondudas it's said to happen there
and she stops for a taxi ride, and when they
pick her up, they go to their she gives them
(34:02):
a destination they drive, and that if they are able
to make it to their destination without looking back at her,
without being distracted, that at most she'll vanish and she
leaves the center or the fragrance of perfume, and that
if they are distracted, and if they keep looking back
at her, she has a knife and she kills them.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
And so that was.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
One version, and then another version of that, the same
kind of high heel. And again they say that you
can hear her heels in the street, that she was
wearing heels when that happened, that her her boyfriend was killed,
and so so she's called latakunuda. So another version is
that she was the victim of an abusive relationship and
it ended up in the loss of her life, and
(34:44):
so that she's kind of roaming this realm as a
vengeful spirit, right, And so that that's the sign, is
that you can hear her heels, and that she typically
targets drunken abusive men, which again I on her side
in this instance. And there's one detail with her that
(35:05):
happens in many stories that the closer the sound of
her heels are, the further way that she is, but
the further away the sound of her heels are, the
closer she is.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Tricking you.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
Yeah, exactly, And that's something that does happen in other stories.
So people say that about about the tusas, about this
other spirit called Eli who is said to whistle, and
so they say the same thing about the noises that
those entities make.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Amazing. I love her, She's great. Yeah, name right right, name.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Well, thank you Aiden for sharing your expertise, your knowledge,
your joy with us. This was, you know, like a
spooky episode but also like a joy filled episode, Like
it was so good to connect with you and and
talk about the folklore of the region that you're from
and also other folklore of Latin America.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
For having me. It's good to see you all again.
Audio Honors.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yes, we met Aiden in New York City at the
Gotham where we were receiving awards for our podcasting work,
and you got an Audio Honor for Sousta and write
up in Variety magazine the issue with Brendan Frasier on
the cover. It was fabulous, such a good time.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
So it was so nice to meet you all there,
and I'm happy to get to be here again.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yes, it was so good to meet you. We hope
we can see each other in real life soon.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yes, absolutely, I need to go out to California.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Oh yes, please, we got some scary stories out here.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yes all right, Well, thank you so much, have a
good rest of your evening.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
Take care too, have a great spooky season.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Thank you for listening to another Capitalo Loka to Radio.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
We'll catch you next time. Psitos.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Loka to a Radio is executive produced by Viosa Fem
and Mala Munios.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Stephanie Franco is our producer.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Story editing by me viosa.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Creative direction by me Mala.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Loka to a Radio is a part of iHeartRadio's Michael
Tura podcast network.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You can listen to Loka to a Radio on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Leave us a review and share with your prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And thank you to our Loka motives, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Besitos Loka
Look at Our Radio is a radiophonic novela.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Which is just a very extra way of saying a podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
I'm Fosa Fem.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I am ma la Munios. We're podcasting through another
Trump election year. We've been podcasting through election years, a
global pandemic, civic unrest, political controversies, the Me Too movement,
the rise of TikTok, and we are still here. We're
not done telling stories.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
We're still making podcasts.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
We're older, we're wiser, We're even podcasting through a new
decade of our lives.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Since twenty sixteen, we've been making Loca thro Our Radio
independently until we joined iHeartMedia's Michael Gura Network in twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
From our Lips to your ears, Fall in love with
Loka to a radio like you never have before.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Welcome to Season nine. Love that first listen.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
O La La Loka Morees. Welcome to season nine of
lok At Tora Radio.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm Theosa and I'm Mala.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Loka Tora Radio is a podcast dedicated to archiving our
present and shifting the culture forward. You're tuning in to
Capitolo to eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Last time on Lokatra Radio. We spoke with Hamza Ahmad
and Tarnib Jabert, three siblings who left Gaza in April
and are now attempting to rebuild their lives elsewhere.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
It's been here seeing and listening for all of this
and news. Can you just please but yourself? I know
no nobody around the world can can it can even imagine,
but just try to imagine, to but yourself and just
like the symbolist situation in Gaza right now and imagine.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Can you afford just please support the three siblings who
kindly share their stories by contributing to the Mermaid Jabart
Scholarship fund this scholarship which will provide them with the
means to complete their education.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I'm so proud of that episode. So please give it
a listen if you have already, and support the gofund me.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So it's spooky season, it's Hispanic Heritage Month. We have
a very a fun, scary and Latino episode for you all.
We have Aiden Castellanos, the host of Sousto, a podcast
of oogi spooky scary story centered around the folklore of
latinx and Hispanic cultures. Aiden was born and raised in
the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas Mexico border. He
(02:26):
grew up here in cautionary tales and connecting with people
through ghost stories.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yes, hey, cool friends, my name is Adrian or Aiden
either way, I am the host of the podcast Sousto.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
And where are you calling in from?
Speaker 5 (02:41):
I am calling in all the way from Austin, Texas,
where I currently reside, but I am originally born and
raised in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas Mexico border.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And the Rio Grande Valley and the border play a
huge role in your work on the Susto podcast. And
a lot of the stories that you tell are these
borderland RGV stories, And so I love that you rep
the RGV. I love that you're telling stories from the RGV.
How did you what inspired you to move in that
(03:13):
direction and put this podcast together?
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Well, first and foremost, I have to say boot on
nine five six RGV excellence all the way. But I mean,
these stories, they were just so entrenched in my upbringing.
Like after the barbecues, someone's THEA was always saying, I
saw the devil last night, I saw the devil last week.
There was a lady in the backyard. We saw an
all black rooster. It was always something right, and if
(03:39):
it wasn't that, it was your cousins or your friends
at a sleepover. And I think that kind of culture
seeped its way into our classroom as well. I have
this book that I reference in a lot of my episodes.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
It's a book called.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Stories that Must Not Die and it's full of fables
and folk tells that were collected along the Texas Mexico border.
And they would read this book to us in elementary school.
And I still have the actual physical copy of this
book from my elementary classroom. But it had stories like Laorna,
(04:13):
the Girl who danns with the Devil, La Lichusa, so
these ghost stories that they were reading to little kids, right,
but at the end of each story, and they were
in English and Spanish, and at the end of each
story there was also a set of questions, so they
were kind of teaching us reading comprehension and introducing critical
thinking to us by way of scary stories. So it's
(04:36):
just always kind of stuck with me, like it's been
a part of my life since I was very very young.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I love this story about you learning and reading these
stories in elementary school because it shows how entrenched these
stories are this folklore is in the culture. So can
you share with us what is a ghost story or
a fable or folklore? And you grew up hearing you
(05:02):
already mentioned a couple, but let's talk about one of
them for sure.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
So one of the earlier ones that I remember that
isn't Lena, because I feel like that is like the
go to right away for everyone. I tell people, she's
like the Beyonce of spirits, right like everybody knows who
she is, everybody knows her story.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
But another one that was really popular in my.
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Upbringing was the story of the girl who downs at
the Devil, And I think that one's very interesting because
it is the quintessential Sousto story. There are so many
different versions of it, and everybody swears that it happened
in their neck of the woods. So there's a version
from San Antonio that happened at a bar called Camaroncito.
But growing up, I heard that it happened in McCallan, Texas,
(05:42):
which is a city in the valley, at a bar
called Boccaccio three thousand and it was just like this
discotheque in I think seventy nine. And the story is
that this really young, pious woman decided to break the
rules and to go to a dance for the first time,
against her parents' wishes. And while she was out there,
(06:05):
she met this handsome stranger. Nobody knew who this man was,
but he approached her and he asked her to dance.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
And as they're dancing.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
She's kind of hypnotized by him until she hears the
screams and the shrieks of the crowd around them, And
as she starts looking to see what are they screaming
at what's happening, they're pointing at them, and she realizes
they're pointing at his feet, and.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
They're saying his feet, his feet.
Speaker 5 (06:29):
Look and she looks down and she sees that he
has one goat's hoof and one chicken's talon, and she
realizes that she's been dancing with the devil the whole time.
And so in this version, or in the version that
I remember hearing growing up, is that he kind of
just disappeared. He vanished into some black smoke and it
smelled like sulfur, and that this young woman was left
(06:52):
with burn marks on her body from where he was
holding and caressing her. Some people say that she lived.
Some people say that she did not. But again, there's
different versions of this story. It's told in so many
different places, And for me, I think it's extra interesting
because growing up, the story was listen to your parents,
(07:12):
or something bad can happen to you, right, And as
I got older, I realized that the one through line,
no matter who was telling the story, no matter what
was different, the one detail that remained the same, was
that it happened to a young woman. And so I
started to think, well, that's interesting. Why are we telling
this story to classrooms of second third graders And it's
always a young woman being punished for trying to have
(07:35):
a night of fun, right, And then when you think
about the reality of the world, the reality is is
that it is a much more dangerous place for women
and for fems, and so it's kind of one of
those unnecessary evils that we do want to tell this
story to the young women and girls in our classrooms
and say, hey, unfortunately, that's the way the world is
(07:56):
right now. But I invite people to have that conversation
to kind of dissect to that, because a scary story
can be more than just a scary story.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Lookomotives, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
And we're back with more of our episode. I love
that you point that out, and I think we know
that in a lot of film and television, the women
are always the victim of a kidnapping, the victim of
some horrible crime. There's a lot of crimes against women
that are made into entertainment. In what you're talking about here,
(08:36):
it's a cautionary tale of what could happen to you
if you step out into the night and you dance
with a handsome stranger. And I'm really curious, why do
you think that there are so many of these stories,
specifically in this region of the world, in the RGV
and along the border. What is it about this place
that is just like ripe for these types of stories.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
I always attribute that to the resiliency of our culture
and our people. Right. For example, the story of that
is a centuries old story. There are versions of that
story that go back like so so far back, and
I kind of use that as an example of the
power of transformation, the power of survival, because even when
(09:22):
you think of some of these stories like Luchusa, for example,
there's a physical transformation there of a witch to an owl,
a person to an animal. So there's this idea of
transformation that floats around. But I think it's also representative
of how we are culture and we as a people,
how we have also had to change in certain ways
to survive, and these stories are just kind of like
(09:45):
a representation of that in a way, they.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
Tell the story of our survival.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
They also teach us something about I like this lens
of looking at it as a cautionary tale and looking
at it from the perspective of maybe there's like a
patriarchal lens, you know in the telling of this story,
where it's always the young girl that something happens to her,
(10:11):
and it's used as a cautionary tale to scare young
girls to kind of act right, to get in line.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
And if we think about the way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Religion is also used as a type of fear mongering, Right,
you have to do the right thing. If not, like Diablo,
if not, you're going to hell. There's something right, And
so I like thinking about like, there's so much depth
to these stories. It's not just spooky and it's scary.
It's there's a culture within it. There's subcultures within this,
(10:38):
Like one folklore or this one story.
Speaker 6 (10:41):
Yeah, absolutely, And what are.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Some of the stories or what is an example of
a story that you learned because of soustopod, either a
story a guest brought or within your own research you
learned that was new to you, because I know, you
don't just cover the border, you also cover all of
Latin America and Hispanic folklore and legends.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
Yeah, so initially it started that way, and then I
started in doing my research finding versions of either those
same stories from other parts of the diaspora that I
never thought maybe I'd have a connection with, or a
completely different kind of story or cryptid or spirit, but
some there was always some similarity some tie to them.
(11:24):
So definitely the stories or the culture that I cover
has it's widened in doing my research and doing this show.
One though that I was really interested to learn about,
and I've told this story live a lot because I
think it's really impactful, is there's a story of this
creature called Bucci, and it's an a HOAt word for
(11:47):
this creature that is known to be a blood sucking
shape shifter and anybody can be Albucci. It's like a
like similar to like a werewolf. You know this person
can transform into this thing when they need to feed.
And this is a story that comes out of San
Pedro in the state of flash Gala in Mexico. And
(12:09):
essentially the story is that overnight there were seven infant
deaths in this very rural area of Mexico in the sixties,
and people started blaming essentially this creature. They said, it's
a Tlauidpucci epidemic. We've been attacked by the Tlauidpucci.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
And so.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
The reason I think that this story is extremely impactful
is because it's based in a real event. So at
the time, there were these anthropologists that were doing a
study of these rural townships in Tlashkala, and while they
were there, that event happened, those those infanticides happened. So
(12:51):
the focus of their research shifted to how this community
was now processing not only this very heinous act but
also their trauma by way of supernaturalism. And so again
you go into it thinking, oh, this is a really
scary story, and then you keep reading or you keep
(13:12):
listening or watching, and you discover that this is about
so much more. I actually have a book about that
as well that it's called Bloodsucking shape shifter, and it
details in these anthropologists. In this book, they detail everything
from the events in that evening leading up to before
(13:35):
their sleep, to the traditional layouts of their homes, to
the traditional or the typical sleeping patterns of the families.
They detail everything in there is a full d depth
sociological study of this community. And then of course it
also goes into testimony and observations of what these people
(13:57):
were saying, because immediately after that more, when they discovered
what happened this small community, they were in a panic,
they were in disarray, but the one thing that they
were all kind of agreeing on was it was this monster.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
It was this creature.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
We hope you're enjoying this interview.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Stay tuned, we're back, and we hope you enjoyed the
rest of the interview. Very fascinating. You recently sat down
with doctor emily's Arka from PBS Digital Studios Monstrum and
(14:35):
you talked about Lala Chusa. You also on your website
reading about how you are referring to yourself as a folklorist, yes,
and as your title as your honorific but that you
had a little bit of hesitation at one point about
like dubbing yourself in that way. I love the term.
So can you talk to us about what that term
(14:57):
means to you and how you identify as a folklorist
and how that shows up in your work. Yeah?
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Absolutely, so for me, the being a folklorist, it's more
about an act. So I've said many times before, also
that my susto in my show. It's my contribution to
the tradition of oral storytelling. It's something that's existed for
a very long time. I haven't created anything new. I'm
(15:24):
participating in this tradition and I'm yes putting my own
twist on it. I'm bringing it to the world of podcasting.
But yeah, it's more about action. Like I mentioned earlier,
a lot of these stories to me represent resiliency and
power and survival, and so to me, being a folk
(15:44):
lost is about participating in that act by way of
continuing the telling of these stories.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Do you have family members that come to you and say, aiden,
can you come over and tell us a story? Like
tell us a scary story? Is are you somebody that
people are looking to to be a storyteller in real time?
Speaker 6 (16:06):
It's definitely happened.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
I've been like like a party or something, and then
you know, people slowly kind of trickle off for the
evening and when there's maybe like four or five of us,
I'm telling you, it always happens.
Speaker 6 (16:19):
Someone's like I heard a.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Noise in my house last week, and then it just
starts that way. So I definitely ended up kind of
have everyone sitting around and telling a story. I will
say that some people in my family are like my
core immediate family, and me as well, it's a misconception
about me. We're kind of scaredy cats. So like my
(16:42):
sister and my mom, for example, will tell me that
they'll be listening and they have to just cut it
off in the middle of a story and say, we're
gonna come back to this later.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And I tell them, how do you think I.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Feel reading about this or recording it that I don't
record after dark if I'm going to be recording a
story because I don't want to put myself.
Speaker 6 (16:59):
In that position.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
That's hilarious. I love that.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So question about your family and the podcast and the
stories that you grew up with the stories that you
share on the podcast, was there ever any tension between
you and your family where one, for example, I wasn't
allowed to watch scary movies as a kid because my
dad was like, you're welcoming something into the house, so
(17:24):
you're not allowed to watch any of that because so literally,
So I'm wondering if you ever grew up with any
of that tension and either how that contributed to the
making of the show or maybe inspired you gave you
ideas in the making of the show.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Yeah, I feel like growing up, I can't remember that
I watched too many like scary movies or horror movies
growing up. But again for us, it was these like
the tellings of these stories. So we would talk about it,
you know, all the time. But when we'd go to
the mall, I my mom wouldn't want me to go
in a hot topic because essen was that the how
(18:01):
topic is this? At the nas so like I couldn't
I wasn't allowed to shop there for a very long time.
But I think also, and this is one of the
reasons that I attribute so many Latina people being into
the paranormal and the macab is because so many of
us are also raised Catholic. And I say this all
the time, the Catholicism, it's inherently horror. It's inherently spooky
(18:24):
because you go to meet with your coven, your church
once a week, you do all of these rituals, you
say these spells, prayers to a deity who, by the way,
is hanging up on the wall in front of you,
splayed out like. That is horror right there, that's a
horror story.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
We were just talking about this the other day about
how Catholics are the most.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Pagan of Christians.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, it's so campy, first of all, and also it's
so witchy, like the blood and body.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Are you serious?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Are you for real?
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Right now?
Speaker 6 (18:59):
Totally exactly.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
There's so much ritual and it's funny because it doesn't
even in there depending on which Catholic you are.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
You're also getting your cards.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Read, and you have the VELAs at home, and it's
not even just your lighting a vella of La Vire
and you're lighting a vella of Don Pedro Caramio and
you're writing your name and your birthday and putting it
under the candle, right Like, there's so much ritual that
stems from Catholicism, which again that's that is a whole
other that could be its own episode about like how
(19:28):
Bruhidia modern bluhidia is basically are are very traditional what
we would assume as indigenous practices, but they've they've taken
on these Catholic motifs and iconography and verbiage. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Absolutely, we talk about it all the time. It's so
macabre and there's a reason why, Like I think a
lot of people who went to Catholic school really get
into matters of like be a cult. Like we're just
primed for it. We're just you know, we're prepped for
that sort of a thing. I also I wanted to
ask you too about the name of your show about soustal.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
So it's a.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Great name and it means like, you know, like a
fright right, like to catch a fright, And so I
seem to recall and correct me if I'm wrong, But
in listening to your show, you spoke more about the
term and like the meaning that it has and why
you named your show that way. Can you share a
little bit about that with our listeners.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 5 (20:25):
So if anybody is unfamiliar it hasn't heard of it,
the words sustal, Yes, it's Spanish for fright. It's also
a cultural illness. So there are many people and I
grew up with this belief that after a big scare
or something traumatic, that your soul can separate itself from
your body, and if this trauma is severe enough, the
(20:46):
soul can also fragment. And there's different remedies based on
which community you're speaking to and on the severity of
the soustal.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
So for me, it was.
Speaker 5 (20:56):
Growing up, it was to have a spoonful of sugar
in a glass of water, dissolve it, and you chug it.
And that's supposed too for other people in Mexico City.
I have a friend from there, and she said, after
the earthquake in twenty seventeen, it was really bad that
the food vendors were out in the street and they
were handing out bolos for free or the bread loaves
(21:20):
because that's their remedy for it. And then if it
gets really severe and you need to see a professional
like gurandere or a bruja or someone, they can use
different sorts of ramas, the awa florida or whatever ritual
you know that they put into practice.
Speaker 6 (21:38):
So yeah, it was something that I grew up with.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
Like I said, like we had we had the remedy
for susto, if we had ma de ojo.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
It was a rubdown with an egg.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
And so when I was developing the show, I was
trying to think of a title.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
I was like, I don't know, I don't know what
to call it.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
And I think I was talking to my family about it,
and my mom she started, you know, telling stories. She
was like, oh, well, one time you had susto and
then I was like wait, I was like, that's.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
It, that's it, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
So yeah, it's just it's it's been that for five
years now.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I love that so much. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I grew up with with the boleo or not necessarily bolio,
but like come pan, you know, you have to have
the bread. And after the last earthquake here in La,
at least this past summer, I saw this meme going
around where it was like someone throwing like a bunch
of bolos.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And I was like, all of La right now.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah, Yeah, I love There's actual food science behind it too.
I read an article on it once about the food
science of like glucose and when your body is stressed out,
when you're having a susto, there's a chemical reaction in
your body and there's like chemicals and hormones or whatever
flooding from like one part of the brain to the
other one part of the body. And so it's I'm
(22:53):
not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, so I can't
recall it as well. But there there is literature out
there on the science behind the food based remedies.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
There is, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So question about I have a question for you about
the wind is do you have your own wind this story? Oh?
Speaker 5 (23:10):
My god, yes I do. Unfortunately, and my sister will
not let it go.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I need to hear it because I have my own
wind this story, and so I wanted to ask you
about your wind this story.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
And the one that episode is so good. We'll talk
more about it. But yes, you're you're the when this story.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
And can you define for our listeners who may be
hearing this term for the first time, what is a wendy?
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Okay, before I say this out loud in my home,
this is not an invitation, not a welcome roll out.
I'm using this as example, Okay. A dwende is the
easiest way to describe it. It's like a gnome like
creature or a being. It's a very small humanoid being.
Couple feet tall, even lesson of foot tall sometimes and
(23:54):
they're very mischievous, and so they're known to move.
Speaker 6 (23:57):
Your stuff around or to hide your stuff.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Sometimes they are the theme that goes bump in the night,
and they're not really dangerous per se, but again they're
very mischievous. And so actually, a couple Halloweens ago, I
was at home. I had already moved away from home,
but I was visiting, and I was helping my mom
pass out candy because in my mom's neighborhood there's tons
(24:22):
of trick or treaters and if anybody is curious about
where I get my love from, I don't know if
she knows it or if she realizes it. But her house
on Halloween is amazing. She has dolls hanging from her
tree and like light up everything.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
It's so fun.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
So she's passing out candy and my sister had just
gotten a car a couple months prior and it was
like an SUV, so we had the back open, we
had music playing. We're sitting in there just hanging out,
engaging with the tricker treaters, hanging out.
Speaker 6 (24:53):
Candy and whatnot.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
The night wraps up, it's fine, so we start packing
up everything, putting candy away inside, and we're going to
lock up the car and my mom asks me for
the keys and I was like, well, I don't have them.
I gave them to you, and she was like, no,
I gave them to you. I was like, well, we
probably put them down. So we start looking and it's dark,
so we have our flashlights on and we're looking around
(25:16):
in the car like, okay, it's not in here. And
my sister's a virgo, if that says anything, so I
was like, we need to find this before she gets back.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
So we start looking under the car. Nothing.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
I'm like, shut the candy ball. Maybe you put them
in the bowl, and so we're like, dump all the
candy out. We're rifling through it. We cannot find To
this day, we don't know where this key is. And
thankfully my sister had a spare. But I mean, of course,
I mean naturally anyone would be right. But she was
upset and she was like, how could you lose my key?
Speaker 6 (25:44):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:45):
And my only explanation was it was a dunde. It
was prime time for Halloween. This dunde was out in
disguise with these children, and it snuck and it stole
your key, like we we like any explanation we had
to where the key could have been. It was nowhere
to be found, like maybe lost, yes, but not just vanished.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Wow, just gone. It was just straight up gone.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Yeah. And they're they're they're the they're they're known or
allegedly they like shiny things.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
They're kind of like crows, right, they like the shiny things.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
If you if you think that you have when their
problem in your home, one of the kind of ways
that's said to get rid of them is to toss
out a handful of treats out the door. As you
open the door, you toss out treats, whether it's candy
or some food, and you tell them go get it,
go get it. Wait a couple of seconds, and then
you shut the door behind them.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That's good to know. Life anti life hack.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean my when this story. I have a couple,
but one that I still still makes me scratch my
head is that I had a fifty dollars bill on
my vanity and I was sitting there for a couple
of day and I kept looking at it and saying like,
I have to go put that in the bank, or
I have to put that away, and then a couple
days later, the fifty dollars bill is now a twenty
(27:09):
dollar bill, and I was like, wait, no, no, this
no right. So I'm like I asked my parents, like okay,
it's okay, did somebody swap my bill? It's fine if
you did. If you needed cash, all good, but just
let me know. And they were like, no, we have
not done that. We have not taken money from you.
(27:29):
We haven't borrowed money. Like no, And I in my
mind a gwyn that was playing a trick on me. Yeah,
because there's just no other explanation. We didn't have anybody
coming into the house. There were no visitors. It was
just my parents. And so that is still like one
of my stories to this day that makes me think,
like a Glen that was like playing a prank on me.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
And I believe you do have a dunda in your
house because we were shooting something at her house once.
There was a bunch of us there. We had scripts
and there was a specific script that I maybe I
put it down or we put it down on your
dining room table, and then it was gone and we
were looking high and low for this script. We were
looking for a long time and we could not find
(28:09):
it anywhere. And I totally believe you have a d
Wenda in your house because it was just no like
it was it was. It vanished, it vanished, and so
you have like a very clever wen there because he made.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Change made honestly, how did he go to.
Speaker 6 (28:24):
The drag show?
Speaker 5 (28:25):
I only need thirty dollars tips and drinks. I just
will give her the rest.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Don't understand it. I will say though, that since a
relative has left my house, I think that the duenda
is gone.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
But when they went with him, yes, his house.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
It was, Yeah, it was his dlende.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I'm screaming, possibly allegedly allegedly.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
You need to ask him if he's been missing stuff
or his stuff isn't moving around?
Speaker 2 (28:50):
All right, I will I love it. My grandma definitely
has a d Wende. And it's funny because my grandma's
dwen that we talk about it openly, like it's like
a family member, you know, because she's always talking about
her when they like there's it's just like a matter
of fact, you know. I think there's a little bit
like you know, I think she's being forgetful and she
misplaces things. But He's a constant factor, and I it
(29:15):
for school. I'm writing a short film and it's like
a little bit of a horror short and it's called
Dwhende and it's my sister made me like a little
Dwende puppet head, So we're imagining what it might look like.
And months and months ago before I started writing the script,
I did listen to your t Whende episode for research purposes,
and I learned so many things, Like I didn't realize
(29:38):
that in some areas the when this can actually be
quite violent and scary and like attack old people or
kidnapped children. And I think maybe the ones that we've
grown up knowing about or living with have been a
little more benign and a little bit more like tricksters.
So I was curious too about that side of the
when this that more nefarious, more violent. I guess nature
(30:00):
that some of them have.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
Yeah, so there's this kind of I noticed themes with
these different kinds of entities that I cover, and so
one of my favorites is the cryptid fems. So there's
always this kind of like women or fem spirits, and
it's usually about like vengeance and revenge.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
And I'm always on their side. And then there's.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
Another area where there are these kind of protectors of
nature and the when the stories that.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
I found where they were on the more.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Violent or dangerous side was they were doing it in
service of or in protection of nature or like forests.
And so it's said that if you go into a forest,
if you're disrespectful, if you're causing trouble anything to damage
the nature, that's when they kind of come out and
they're like, all right, well, now you've got to pay
(30:50):
up because you're you know, you're being rude out here
and this is our home, this is your home.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
Respect it right.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
One story that they can up in after I covered
them early on was the story of I don't know
if you remember those children that survived a plane crash
in the Amazon Amazon jungle. Okay, So their grandmother, after
they were found, came forward and she said that her
belief was that a duende was helping them because on
(31:21):
the flip side, those lendas that are dangerous to people
who are quote being bad, that they can either lure
people into the forest deeper into it and get them
more lost, or they can help them. And so that
she said that in this case like the Duenda that
they encountered helped them find their way because they traveled.
(31:41):
I think it was it wasn't what we would say
is like very long. It wasn't a very long distance.
But in the Amazon jungle it's extremely it's it's extremely
dangerous just to be out there right without anything really,
but then to be moving through it is even more dangerous.
And this was a group of kids, a very young kids,
and so the fact that they survived was this like miracle.
(32:03):
And so that's why then I think the grandmother came
forward and said, no, there was a dlenda that helped them,
and we thank the forest. We show it all our
gratitude and love for returning our children to us. So
again it's kind of one of those like I think
that the Dundas are very you know, they're like us.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
You know, they're they're able to.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
Make up their minds about people and then to decide
how they want to treat those people.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Gave me chills, I have chill.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yes, that gave me chills.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Yeah, it was a great.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Yeah, that one's a great like a really I mean,
it's of course tragic that that ever happened to those kids,
but it's also so lovely that they were that they survived.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh truly, Wow, I guess to to, Uh, we're coming
towards the end of our interview here, but is there
a creature, a story, a folklore that you want to
show a little bit more love too that you think
is maybe undertold, underrated, not an people know about it,
(33:01):
but maybe should look into it.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
Absolutely, Oh my god, there's so many.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
One that I did recently that I thought was really
really cool was the story of Again this falls into
the cryptid femmes kind of category. It's the story of
this spirit called latak Nuda. And so the story that
there's two really popular versions. The one that I covered
or that I did the narrative part of in my
episode was it's the story of this young woman who
(33:28):
was going to meet up with her boyfriend with her lover,
and when she went to meet up with him, a
cab was distracted by her.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
They were checking her.
Speaker 5 (33:41):
Out, and they crashed into her boyfriend and they killed him.
And so the story is that you know, she ended
up passing as well, and that now she kind of
roams the streets of hondudas it's said to happen there
and she stops for a taxi ride, and when they
pick her up, they go to their she gives them
(34:02):
a destination they drive, and that if they are able
to make it to their destination without looking back at her,
without being distracted, that at most she'll vanish and she
leaves the center or the fragrance of perfume, and that
if they are distracted, and if they keep looking back
at her, she has a knife and she kills them.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
And so that was.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
One version, and then another version of that, the same
kind of high heel. And again they say that you
can hear her heels in the street, that she was
wearing heels when that happened, that her her boyfriend was killed,
and so so she's called latakunuda. So another version is
that she was the victim of an abusive relationship and
it ended up in the loss of her life, and
(34:44):
so that she's kind of roaming this realm as a
vengeful spirit, right, And so that that's the sign, is
that you can hear her heels, and that she typically
targets drunken abusive men, which again I on her side
in this instance. And there's one detail with her that
(35:05):
happens in many stories that the closer the sound of
her heels are, the further way that she is, but
the further away the sound of her heels are, the
closer she is.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Tricking you.
Speaker 5 (35:18):
Yeah, exactly, And that's something that does happen in other stories.
So people say that about about the tusas, about this
other spirit called Eli who is said to whistle, and
so they say the same thing about the noises that
those entities make.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Amazing. I love her, She's great. Yeah, name right right, name.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Well, thank you Aiden for sharing your expertise, your knowledge,
your joy with us. This was, you know, like a
spooky episode but also like a joy filled episode, Like
it was so good to connect with you and and
talk about the folklore of the region that you're from
and also other folklore of Latin America.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
For having me. It's good to see you all again.
Audio Honors.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yes, we met Aiden in New York City at the
Gotham where we were receiving awards for our podcasting work,
and you got an Audio Honor for Sousta and write
up in Variety magazine the issue with Brendan Frasier on
the cover. It was fabulous, such a good time.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
So it was so nice to meet you all there,
and I'm happy to get to be here again.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yes, it was so good to meet you. We hope
we can see each other in real life soon.
Speaker 5 (36:40):
Yes, absolutely, I need to go out to California.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Oh yes, please, we got some scary stories out here.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yes all right, Well, thank you so much, have a
good rest of your evening.
Speaker 6 (36:56):
Take care too, have a great spooky season.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Thank you for listening to another Capitalo Loka to Radio.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
We'll catch you next time. Psitos.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Loka to a Radio is executive produced by Viosa Fem
and Mala Munios.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Stephanie Franco is our producer.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Story editing by me viosa.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Creative direction by me Mala.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Loka to a Radio is a part of iHeartRadio's Michael
Tura podcast network.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You can listen to Loka to a Radio on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Leave us a review and share with your prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And thank you to our Loka motives, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Besitos Loka
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