There’s Something Different About Mexican Ghost Stories

[00:00:00] Back when I was a kid, I was about 7 or 8 years old, I used to visit my grandma's house in Mexico. My family's from Sonora in Mexico, right across Nevada. We would head out, they would get to see their families again, and we would get to hang out with our cousins, which were just the coolest little adventures we could ever have as children, right? Anyway, I was there, in the middle of the night, my cousin and I were watching ¿Le temes a la oscuridad?, which is like the Spanish version of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Creepy show, show where they tell scary stories. My cousin falls asleep, and it's just me.

[00:00:29] It's around, I don't know, 2, 3 in the morning, and I start hearing sounds coming from outside in the hall. I think almost nothing of it, but I know for sure I'm not going to get up and go to the bathroom. I'm just going to cover myself up. Hopefully, I wake up in the morning and I forget about it. And I do, I wake up, and when my grandma's making huini con huevo, like, you know, eggs and sausage or wieners, I don't know what you call them, hecho con mil, I bring it up to my grandma, and I say, hey, I heard some noises in the middle of the night.

[00:00:57] And she said, oh yeah, have you ever seen the marionettes that I have up in the room? And of course I said, yeah, because I had seen them and actually wanted to take them off the wall and play with them. She said, well, in the middle of the night, they get up and they walk around. There's nothing as creepy as imagining some toys walking in the middle of the night. My cousin also gets freaked out. He's a year younger than me, and we don't know what to say.

[00:01:23] She's like, yeah, so if you don't behave, they're going to come up to you in the middle of the night and do this. And I was like, whoa, freaked me out. And by the way, I ended up getting a marionette as a, you know, one of those touristy gifts that you get when you go to Mexico. But there was something about that. There was something about that story. And there's something about Mexican stories, stories that I've heard from my family, stories that I've heard from other families that just hit different.

[00:01:50] There's something that makes them so creepy. And I wanted to figure out why. So that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. You ready? My name is Edwin, and this is Paranormal Club. When I was asking for scary stories for my family, right, to get this whole podcast stuff started, my aunt told me this thing about her two, her niece and nephew. They used to be troublemakers.

[00:02:19] They used to like play out in the corner of the street and not come in till like late at night. Now, at the time, their grandma was taking care of them. And she used to go to sleep early. So she would be like, hey, come on, like, let's just go to sleep. Don't be out so late. Things can go wrong. Something can happen to you. They wouldn't listen. They would actually come in the house, wait until the grandma would fall asleep, and they would head back out. Well, one day, the grandma said, you know what? I want you to come back early. If you don't, something's going to happen to you. If you don't, something's going to scare you out there.

[00:02:50] They said, sure, sure, whatever, grandma. Go to sleep. She goes to sleep. They sneak out. While they were out, they actually told my aunt, who, you know, she would be like the trusted person here. We all have one of those family members that we really trust and we'll tell them anything. They said, yeah, well, we went out one day, like one night. And when we were out there, something started approaching us, and they ran. They went into the house. They closed the door. And then in the middle of the night, they could hear somebody knocking on the door, calling for them.

[00:03:18] Grandma woke up, said, hey, like chamacos, kids, stop and go back, you know, go back to your houses. Go to sleep. The thing wouldn't stop. They just kept knocking, calling for them. My aunt's niece's nephew were saying, hey, what's knocking on the door for us? Like, should we open it? They're like, no, no, no. They're going to go away. We just leave them. But the thing wouldn't stop. Eventually, the thing left, but that stopped them from going out so late at night after that. Now, here's the thing, right?

[00:03:47] To you, this might be just a, well, yeah, maybe somebody did try to scare them in the middle of the night. But for me, I can see that. I know that street, right? It's this dark street that leads up to this mountainy area. Down below is the main street. And further down is the centro, which is the downtown area. When I think of this place, I know what those streetlights look like. I know what the sound of your footsteps sounds like against the dirt, against the rocks and stuff.

[00:04:15] Because there was no pavement there at the time. So for me, it's a lot creepier. And I think that is one of the things that affect us a lot about these scary stories. And it's that they're tied to a whole different visual than what we're used to here. So here's the thing. I take stories from True Scary Story, like that's a podcast that I have, where people call in and tell me their scary stories. We record them, we edit them, we release them.

[00:04:40] And I also take stories for Terror Historias Reales, which is the Spanish version of True Scary Story, where people call in. We take their stories, we record them, we edit them, we release them. One of them's in English, one of them's in Spanish. But they go into completely different worlds. And I'm saying the stories, yeah, they might be equally as creepy, right? But the thing is, I can visualize the ones in Spanish in a completely different way. Here's one I want to talk to you about. This one is just how dark they can get.

[00:05:09] Now, heads up, this is a very, very dark story. There was this woman for Terror Historias Reales who told me a story about her hometown in Cuer Amaro. Now, the story involved witches and how people all around town knew where these witches would hang out. But she also mentioned the thing about a nest of witches, a nido de brujas, which is a place where they were just there flying around among the trees, planning what they're going to do. And they're known to steal little girls so they could turn them into servants. At least that's what the story says, right?

[00:05:39] But there's one part. We're talking about going back into town. They had gone to get some chilaquiles, which is some, you know, Mexican dish, to go eat and then come right back. And they're walking along this dark road. Now, as they're heading down, they see something up in the air. What gets described as this bouncing black bag, bouncing in the sky. Of course, they see that. The grandma sees that. Says, okay, everybody, we need to get back fast. Like start like running pretty much.

[00:06:07] So they start making their way back like faster. They pick up the pace. The grandma sees that the thing is approaching. And they see the grandma get down, grab a lace of her tennis shoes, make a prayer. And at the same time, start tying a knot on this, on the shoelace. Then she says, in el nombre de Dios, ties it really, really tight. Then they all see this figure that was bouncing in the sky just plop down to the earth and crash so hard that a dust cloud popped up from the ground.

[00:06:37] They said, run because the thing's going to get undone. So let's go. So that knot that she had made was going to be only a temporary fix. They run and they make it back. Now, all of the family there knows that that happened. The people who had gone to get the chilaquiles that night, they knew that this stuff happened. Like they could remember it. They said, yeah, I remember when grandma did that. They go back, share their stories. They're like, oh, yeah. And they start sharing the stories of witches in Cueramaro.

[00:07:02] So when I think of these stories, right, I think, okay, witches can't be real, right? They just, there's no such thing. The thing is, they always freak me out. There's something about brujas in general. I don't say Mexican brujas, but like brujas in general that really, really creeps me out. Way more than anything about zombies or vampires or anything like that. There's something about witchcraft that can really affect your lives.

[00:07:28] And you hear stories, warnings from people who are very seriously telling you to watch out to who you listen to, who you talk to, who you take food from. Now, I said this is going to be a dark story, right? And we haven't gotten to like the dark part yet. But there was this story that she also shared about this man who fell in love with a girl, but the girl did not love him back.

[00:07:56] Since she didn't like him, he got really sad and really depressed and didn't know what to do with his life. You know, it was just, he was devastated because she didn't want him. He was so obsessed with her that he would supposedly start trying to get her to like him by dark means. Like literally by any means necessary, including invoking the devil or help from the dark side to get her to like him.

[00:08:26] All right. So heads up, this part is involving self-harm, suicide. So here's, if not, just skip, skip ahead a couple of minutes. One day they find him hanging from his mechanic shop from a tree there. They, you know, she mentions the search, how they try to find him and they search everywhere. The mom was really worried. They finally found him. They found him with this thick, like muck, mud, dark thing just kind of all over his body.

[00:08:56] They say that that wasn't normal, right? You don't see that. And when you see somebody who has ended their lives like that, they have a different aspect to them. Like they look different. It's not like that. The thing is in the background, a song that he was obsessed with is called Enamorado de un Fantasma, In Love with a Ghost. And this is a song by Liberacion. My mom used to listen to it all the time and it's really creepy. If you watch just the music video on YouTube, you're going to kind of get the hang of it. It's old, right?

[00:09:25] But you can see this man who was in love with this girl, but the girl left him and he can never get her. These are the kinds of stories that we get. We also have stories about things that appear in the highway. Tragic stories. Stories of death in the family. Stories of envy within the family. Stories of witchcraft.

[00:09:51] Family members doing each other harm with, you know, witchcraft, brujería, all this stuff. But when I see the contrast between the storytelling aspect of it and the actual, like how stories are told in English and how they're told in Spanish, there's a very, very, very clear difference, right? So here's what we have. So back to this question. Why do Mexican scary stories hit different? People tell them like they actually happened.

[00:10:19] When you hear somebody, an uncle, an aunt, grandfather, grandmother, sit you down, say, hey, sit down. I'm going to tell you a story of the time that I saw this witch coming out of the trees in your father's house. You sit down and you listen. And tell you, hey, everybody, I'm going to tell you something that happened not long ago, actually. You heard about the case and blah, blah, blah.

[00:10:42] Well, that's exactly where I found the horseman, you know, with the cowboy hat roaming around. And then they start talking about and then we go around Robin, like somebody tells a story. Somebody else has a story. You have somebody asking questions. You have somebody like me just kind of like, what is going on? And it's just they tell them like that. And you can tell you have very serious uncles and aunts that they wouldn't lie just for the heck of it.

[00:11:10] But like, yeah, you know, we were walking down the street, down the whatever dirt road. And as they're telling you the story, they'll say, do you remember that? You remember that time when? Yeah. They're like, yeah, I remember that. Remember we were standing. We were having coffee by so and so. Right. Yeah. That night. That's the night that I saw it. Like, yeah, you came by really scared. Like, yeah, that's why I've never gone back. You know, I've never went back, right? And they're like, yeah, I never went back. You just never did. That's how the stories are told. Like they actually happen.

[00:11:37] Number two, death is not hidden in Mexican scary stories. When you talk about somebody dying, it's not like how you hear about it in the stories in the United States. Let me let me clear up that point a little bit. Death is something that people are afraid of sometimes. Right. Or maybe they're just treat them as like treat death as something that, hey, we know we all have to go through it. And they go through more of a spiritual kind of perspective of it. However, death in Mexico is viewed completely different. Yeah, people are afraid of it.

[00:12:06] Yeah, people get sad about it. It's true. But there's also a thing about how the dead don't really feel dead in certain traditions in Mexico. Not in all places, by the way. My family is not known for celebrating Day of the Dead. They like, yeah, they get scared of going to the cemetery. And we all tell scary stories about things in the cemetery.

[00:12:25] But you do have that other culture of people more in the south and also, I guess, in different regions of Mexico that talk about death as this stage or this, like what happens after you die? And that's it. They can still come visit you. Your relatives are still your relatives. You can still go and leave flowers for them. And during the Day of the Dead, they will come back. And they will eat with you. They will party. And they will want their favorite food. They're going to be really hungry.

[00:12:55] So you need to make them food and make them all their favorite things because they're going to come back. And as kids, they grow up thinking, wow, like, okay, so this day they're coming back. They put their pictures up. They remember them. They talk to them. It's just viewed as a normal thing. I mean, in that perspective itself, it's something that I like, but it's also something that's very hard for me to understand because I didn't grow up around it. In the U.S., we grew up around thinking death being something that we're afraid of because nobody wants to die.

[00:13:24] Nobody wants to go away. And once they do die and they do come back, they come back as scary ghosts, not as a relative that you're happy or excited they're going to come back and see you again. So that's another thing, right? Um, geography, the places where they take place, as in the stories that are told about a rancho, a place in the middle of nowhere. You can see that you can visualize that. And darkness there is actually dark.

[00:13:54] Nighttime is dark. It's not like for us in Southern California where nighttime is there's light everywhere. No, no. It's like there is a point where you can't see beyond your window, like as in you look out and there's nothing out there. So all these stories come out from places like that. So let me tell you a little bit about how I've experienced stories. I came to Mexico City for the first time less than, what is it, four years ago or five years ago? And while I was, you know, arriving and it was for a podcasting kind of event.

[00:14:23] While I'm there, I go out and I look at, you know, what's what's around the city, right? Getting to walk around, getting to see things and all that. And I see this book fair kind of thing at a park. And of course I go, I'm like, there has to be scary books here. People love scary stories. So I start roaming around and I ask one of the booksellers and I'm like, hey, I'm looking for historias de terror. And he's like, oh yeah. And he points me to a big old stack of them. And I'm going through them and I'm like, but I'm looking for like short stories, like relatos, which are like experiences, accounts from people.

[00:14:53] And he's like, oh yeah. Gives me a few books and I'm going through them and I'm like flipping through them. And then he's like, I have a story for you. And then he tells me the story. He used to work at the top of this, it was like a, like a factory kind of like a plant and it was up in the hills and he pointed to them. He's like, yeah, he used to work up there as a security guard. And the things that I saw, I still can't explain. He's like, I don't know if they're ghosts. I don't know if they're, you know, my mind playing tricks on me or whatever.

[00:15:20] But I clearly remember being there one night when I saw a series of flashing light, like bright lights up in the sky. And I followed them with my eyes and I saw them as they landed. And I think they were aliens. But the thing is, nobody believes me. And they kept saying that it was, it was something else. It might've been witches or it might've been ghosts or spirits or something around there. To this day, I ask around and I ask if people have seen these things up in the sky. And they say, yeah, I've seen them.

[00:15:50] There was another guy that was right around there, like right hanging out there, listening to the story. And he's like, oh yeah, I know, I know about the towers. I know about the, you know, the, the, the hill. And then he started telling a story about his, his family looking up at the hills and seeing things like that. He's like, but you know what? I think they're, they're not witches. I think they're aliens because they're over there by, you know, and they start talking about the volcanoes and everything. That was as simple as I could get.

[00:16:16] Like people hear a story, they start adding to it and experience that happened to them. And it's completely open. It's completely available for everyone to hear. And they'll support it. They'll be like, yeah, this is what happened. I don't care if you believe me. They'll actually assume that you're already going to believe them. That's the thing that happens with, with, with stories in Mexico. There is a side of my family that we, I mean, I personally don't really, I'm not really close to, you know, and I feel like we all have that in our families.

[00:16:44] But I know that they've had stories and they've been wanting to share stories with me about this. And they always live in this small town. My mom's side of the family comes from a very, very small town. I'm saying dirt roads, they go and they actually fish and they get shrimp to eat. And they, sometimes they even eat like, you know, like game and stuff. I mean, it's just, they talk about it like it was a very beautiful life, but they also had very little. Right. So they eventually moved to a larger city. That's how they ended up in Sonora.

[00:17:13] Now here is where things get a little bit weird because in small towns in Mexico, you have stories that are guaranteed to send chills down your spine. Because they are the impossible happening with multiple witnesses confirming it. There's a story I've mentioned before with this woman who used to basically take photographs from people. Like as in you bring them a picture, tell them what you want done. And then she does witchcraft basically. Like she does brujeria.

[00:17:42] Whether that's, I don't know, something bad, something good. But she would do that. And she would get these objects that carry people's energies. And at night they could see her go into this tambo, like this, this bucket, like this metal, like one of those fuel buckets. I don't know. And she would light them on fire and they could see that, right? The neighbors could see that she was doing, there she goes again, doing her witchcraft stuff. And they knew that, right? This lady's like that.

[00:18:08] A couple of my family's relatives, like my relatives, I guess, they peeked over the fence one time. And they saw her turn into a ball of fire and rise into the air. Yeah, multiple people confirming it. I'm saying like three or four were saying, yeah, we saw her fly up into the sky as a ball of fire. Now there was a time, I find this kind of funny because I mentioned it too, where they see the ball of fire going down the street. It crashes into a tree and then it kind of fades away.

[00:18:38] Like people are like, the witch is here, the witch, the witch. And the next day they see the woman all beat up, like as in her face is like really beat up. They're like, whoa, like what happened, right? Well, she's the one that hit the tree while she was on fire. That's what happened. But when you hear these stories being told to you like that, this is where we get into that. Like it's just how they're told. This thing happened to me and that's it. Other things, right? Where were we? The Mexican monsters, right?

[00:19:07] The Mexican archetypes. Now these things are bizarre. Of course, other countries I feel can compete and sometimes win with some of these. But I feel like it's what makes some of the identity. What am I talking about? I'm talking about things like La Llorona. And La Llorona, we all know the Llorona's tale, right? The Llorona is this woman that I guess in the colonial story or the story that gets circulated the most is this woman who was in love with this man. They had kids.

[00:19:36] Like, you know, he just kind of didn't want her anymore. Goodbye. She was really sad about it. She went and drowned the kids in the river. She changes her mind. She can't get the kids back. So now she roams along rivers, bodies of water, dark, empty streets, crying for her children. And she says, ay, mis hijos. Ah, my children. Everybody who claims like, oh, yeah.

[00:20:01] Like, there's so ask in your family if you're Mexican or Latin American, because La Llorona story expands. Like it goes it goes wide. Ask. Do you know somebody who has who has genuinely seen La Llorona? La Llorona. They're going to have a story. I'm sure they're going to have a story of when they heard La Llorona or maybe even saw her La Llorona. Because most of the time you just hear La Llorona. Now, what makes this really eerie is that most of the time you hear her. It's not something that you see. It's not someone that you you know what she looks like.

[00:20:29] You just hear her and that that fear of like, oh, what is that? It's La Llorona. That's really creepy. Now, with La Llorona, there's also the story of the Siguacuatl, which is this is a story that's told a legend that's told about this woman who goes down the streets crying for her children. But this one is tied more about the loss of identity and culture after the Spanish colonization. It's rooted in a lot of things. Right.

[00:20:53] And surprise, surprise, these places where La Llorona exists or the legends live on are places that were colonized by the Spanish. Things like La Lechuza. Right. Lechuza is basically an owl, a barn owl that is said to be a witch. Now, this thing can turn from a witch to the owl again, back to the witch. And this thing, you know, it got so serious.

[00:21:20] Like it got so like the belief is so strong that these what do you call them? Like these groups that help animals and stuff, they had to go and actually make like campaigns to not kill these barn owls because people would see them and say they're witches and would kill them, which is sad. Right. But sometimes these lechuzas, they're not only associated with witches, but they're also associated with aliens.

[00:21:45] When I started finding out all these stories about La Lechuza, I started finding them localized into the northern part of Mexico and in the, I guess, the southern part of the United States, like west, the southwest. So where did the lechuza actually come from? A lot of the stories that I receive about lechuzas come from the southwest area. California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas. They talk about lechuza stories, but you head down south even more and they're not there.

[00:22:14] You might hear some of them every once in a while, but this is what I mean. Like there's different regions. Mexico is pretty big and it has a lot of legends that are localized of people that genuinely believe that these things are real and exist. It's something that I mean, I'm personally interested in finding out. But if you know of stories about that, please send them in. You want to hear about more of these Mexican monsters? Obviously, we can't go get by without the whole Nahuales, which are these spiritual things. They're not like werewolves, right?

[00:22:42] Because they're people that can turn into all these kinds of animals. Black dogs, I don't know, chivos, donkeys. Chivos? How do you say that? Goats, little animals, birds. These things are creepy because they've been caught on cameras, allegedly. Caught on camera transforming, which is eerie. Duendes, which are the little people from the hills. Creepy. Now, these things, Duendes, by the way, they're known to be like just mischievous little things that they like to mess with you.

[00:23:12] They like to hide things from you. They like to make things go wrong for you and stuff like that. And there's one that I found when I was looking up like, why are Mexican stories so, so different? Like, why do they hit so different? At least for us, right? It depends a lot on the person who's receiving the story as well, right? There was a story of El Charro Negro. Now, this story, I feel like, comes from like the Guadalajara or the Jalisco area in Mexico.

[00:23:37] But basically, it's this man who is said to be roaming around these dirt roads in this dark horse wearing all black and a black hat. But, you know, I say that those that encounter him say that he can either like offer a conversation, offer to take you somewhere, like try to give you something. And if you accept, you have to face the consequences.

[00:24:04] Because they say that this Charro Negro, this Charro is like a, like the, I guess the black cowboy, I guess, or the black. Yeah, something like that. He has been condemned to hell and he's trying to find somebody to take his place. So he just roams around. He's going to keep roaming around forever. There's a recent video that popped up about a sighting of the Charro Negro. It's terrifying thinking of encountering something. I think bumping into anything in the middle of the night when you're out in a dirt road is creepy.

[00:24:33] So that leaves us with this question. Are Mexican scary stories actually scarier? Is there something about them that makes them actually scarier than other stories? Here's where the debate comes from. And this is where I want to hear from you. I believe that in part, yes, they do. They do. They are a little creepier. But also, it has to do with how they're told. When we're hearing a story in English, right? We're hearing a story, I guess, not only in English, but like if we're hearing a story from a different culture, like from the United States.

[00:25:03] Part of the story is trying to convince us that this is real, right? That these stories exist. Like these entities are real. Or you might hear the person say, I'm not crazy. I promise. I actually saw this, right? You might hear that. It's how they're told. The story is told from Mexico. It's not like that. It's more like I saw this and you have people that are very serious, very normal people. Not trying to justify their stories. They're just going to try to tell you this is what happened. And be like, oh, yeah, you know what? Like these things do happen.

[00:25:33] And the conversation starts from there. It's how they're told, right? Also, another thing that says like the culture of storytelling in a lot of these things with scary. I'm talking about true accounts from people, right? I'm not talking about scary movies or scary books necessarily. I'm talking about accounts from people. Instead of saying, yeah, this happened. The perspective is more like this happened to us. This is the thing that happened to us. And they explain.

[00:26:00] It's very subtle, but it's also very important of how these stories are told. Because instead of them just being stories, they're not humanized. There's something that affected the person right in front of you telling you a story. Another thing is I hear stories in Spanish. They all involve something that I feel like I can relate to, right? And it feels like that's also what makes them really creepy. And it's also why when we listen to a story from Japan or we listen to a story from India or, you know, from other countries.

[00:26:28] Yeah, we'll find them interesting for the story. Some of us might not identify directly with those things. And I feel like that barrier is what holds us from really diving into what makes stories creepy. Like all these accounts. Like, for example, if you hear about a ghost in Thailand, right? Thailand, like the Thai people have a different perspective of ghosts, right? They actually set little homes, little houses for ghosts. Hearing about that, yeah, we'll be like, well, that's interesting.

[00:26:57] But we won't be able to tie ourselves to that, like as in connect with that. And I feel like when we say, yeah, you know what, scary stories, they just hit different. It's true. It's true because we can connect with them in a different way. Now, objectively, right, let's just go back to the original question. Are Mexican scary stories actually scarier? Maybe not scarier all the time, but often they're a lot darker.

[00:27:23] They're stories that tell you the truth about your family, truth about what people are capable of, and also what can happen to you if you don't listen to these stories. Ugh, man, that gets me. Tell me, tell me, tell me, what stories has your family told you? Like what stories have they shared with you that they swear are true? I want to hear them. Please, please send them in. Send them in, send them in. The comment section, send them in through DM, send them in through email.

[00:27:52] I want to hear about these stories desperately. We have Halloween coming up and we need to share some stories, some listener stories. So please, please send them in. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you very much for listening or watching. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.

[00:28:17] You know, just today I got this message from my sister and she said, hey, she told me about, you know, this thing that we had around the house and that was just a weird thing. But she said, you know, a couple of months ago I went to my apartment and she doesn't live in, you know, with her parents, but she lives in, you know, in Southern California, but like another part. And she says, I went in and I saw a bunch of flies, you know, they were flying everywhere. And I got really freaked out.

[00:28:46] So I went and asked about, you know, what could this mean? And they told her what to do. They told her to get agua florida and spray it or, you know, say a prayer around the house and cover herself in it and stuff like that. She's like, I just find that really weird. Now, immediately, immediately, I'm like, hey, you have to tell my dad about this. Now, here's the thing about Mexicans. We say my dad instead of, even though we have to tell dad about it. It's like my dad, even though it's her dad too.

[00:29:13] And all my white friends would always say like, it's a, but why do you say my dad? It's her dad too. And I'm like, yeah, she can say my dad. It just never made sense. Do you do that? I don't know. I don't know if it's just me. I doubt it. I doubt it's just me. But anyway, I was like, you got to call my dad because, and tell him about this because he called me and he told me that he went into the house, like, you know, their house. And there was like a cloud of flies around there.

[00:29:42] And my dad went a whole different route. Like, he didn't go into like asking for spiritual help. Like, he just got like bleach and all this stuff to like clean the floors. He went into Home Depot and got like, you know, fly poison or whatever and, and got rid of all the flies. But he's like, it was, he's like, it was an unbelievable amount of flies. He has never seen that before. But he did, he told me that he got a little freaked out thinking that maybe, you know, somebody was about to die. Like, that's the, he just told me bluntly.

[00:30:12] He's like, we got to be careful. But my sister telling me that and telling me around that same time really scared me, right? Because I'm thinking, could it be something else? And here's where we'll go with this, right? We won't think it's just a coincidence. We won't say like, oh, you know, this stuff happens. Maybe we left something out. We're going to go into actually talking about this and I know how it's going to go.

[00:30:38] We're going to start talking about more scary stories, which is why I'm so into scary stories to begin with. Right? And I just, and I wanted to share that with you. Also, I've also mentioned this a couple of times where when we were moving into that house in the very, very beginning, we found, we used to find like dead birds in the corners of the property, I also found a really weird thing that was like, I'm going to draw. I wanted to show you because I keep bringing it up, but it's like this little balloon, like a plastic balloon.

[00:31:06] It was red and my dad burned it. And inside were like Rice Krispies or what I hope were Rice Krispies and not maggots, but they were burning up. And then inside there was a coin and that thing was right in the house. So I don't know what that was. We still talk about it every once in a while. We also talk about, you know, some of the witches experiences, you know, like the woman that turned into a ball of fire. There's a lot of stuff that goes on.

[00:31:33] And I find that, you know, fascinating. So Mexican stories, you know, when you hear about Mexican scary stories, we're probably going to get a chill all the time. We can ask questions. We automatically believe them. We like joining in and telling our own stories. We like making people also feel like we listen to them and we believe them. It's part of the culture. You know, it's kind of how we make friends. Somebody tells you something like, oh, yeah, like that's how it is.

[00:32:03] People follow along with you. You sit down next to a stranger and you start talking about something. They're going to follow along with you. They'll laugh with you. They're going to. It's just we just do that, you know, and I find that really cool, really, really cool. And I feel like it goes along with scary stories. But I'm interested in finding out what you think. Remember, tell me the stories that your family swear are true. And also, do you think that Mexican scary stories are actually scarier? Let me know.