Although there’s been no explanation from authorities on what happened to the bodies. Authorities have blamed alcohol as the culprit of these disappearances.

It doesn’t help that many people have disappeared from our village without explanation.

Whether at Christmas time, birthday parties, or family gatherings, family and neighbors exchange stories of sightings of an owl witch. Supposedly, the woman’s descendants live amongst our village and exact their revenge on our people when the opportunity strikes. I’m referring to them in the plural sense because there’s more than one, at least according to people from my village. But I found it very odd that adults in the town talked about owl witches as if they were real. Once I turned 14 years old, I finally saw the story of the owl witch as the myth that it was, used to scare children into behaving. “I am a witch, and I’ll be back for every one of you.” As the woman fled, most likely in an effort to stop the villagers from following her, she yelled a phrase that still spreads fear amongst our village to this day. Somehow, the elder’s son made enough of a distraction to allow the woman to flee with her daughter. The elder instructed that the mother and daughter be tied up with their mouths covered so that they be unable to cast any spells on them. It was at this point that he proclaimed the woman and her daughter to be witches. Upon arriving back at the village, the elder made a grand spectacle to the villagers, ensuring everyone was made aware of the great sins the woman had committed.ĭuring the elder’s speech, the woman’s daughter suffered another seizure. The henchmen brought all three of them back to the village. The story is unclear how exactly the tragedy happened, but amid the struggle, the woman’s daughter was hit in the head, causing a seizure. Two days later, after the son and the woman ran out of water, they eventually slowed down and were caught by the village men. He ordered men from the village to bring back all three of them alive. Shortly after their escape, the elder found out and was furious that the woman had betrayed him in such a disrespectful way. Realizing they had no alternative, the woman and the elder’s son devised a plan to run away. The arranged marriage was intended to strengthen the influence of the family, and the son knew his father wouldn’t allow him to stray off course. Unfortunately for the woman, the elder’s son was to marry another, at the orders of his father. They began dating in secret and soon fell in love. Weeks went by, and the woman soon formed a bond with the elder’s adult son. The elder’s wife convinced him to allow the woman to stay with them, just until she got back on her feet. After pleading with the villagers for the sake of her daughter’s life, a respected village elder gave the woman a job, at the behest of his wife.

Unfortunately, the woman didn’t have much luck, as our village was suspicious of outsiders. It might have been the fact that even as a child, I noticed how the owl witch would dictate the actions of grown men, who would think twice about going outside alone at night.Īs the story goes, back in the 1800’s, a mother and her daughter traveled to our village, looking for work. Perhaps it was the vigor with which my grandfather told it, or the way my mind would take the descriptions I heard and concoct an image of this beast. For some unknown reason, this story really resonated with me as kid. In our village, the owl witch was a popular story that was told to the children of the village in order to keep them from misbehaving. More specifically, the witch has the body of an owl, with a human head. The owl witch is supposedly an old woman that shape-shifts into a human sized owl. Hearing these stories always made me feel as if I was experiencing a piece of the past.Īs a kid, one of my favorite stories my grandfather would tell was of la Lechuza, or the Owl witch. We may not have had the luxuries of some, but we invented our own entertainment, some of which came in the form of stories, which were passed on from previous generations. Our village was extremely poor, but when thinking back on my childhood, I can honestly say I never felt poor. Our village was quite far from any metropolitan area, which made daily tasks, such as buying household items, quite difficult. The entire village had a population of approximately 200 residents, all living within proximity. I grew up in a small village in Mexico in the 1950’s.

La lechuza owl