Spooked - Las Muñecas

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Francisco finds a doll in his pocket every single day. And every single day, he gets sicker and weaker. He needs to get rid of these dolls... before they get rid of him. Big thanks to Francisco Vazquez for sharing your story with the Spooked.  Produced by Fernando Hernandez and Erick Yanez, original score by Renzo Gorrio, artwork by Teo Ducot Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere, ages and ages hence. Two roads diverts in a wood and I. I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference. Listening to Spoot, stay. People born through the sunshine. With the warm breeze of their back,

these rare and wonderful people often do not understand. their eventual calamity. How could this happen, they say? What have I done? Or even, why have thou forsaken me? Those born under a shadow, they laugh. They learn early to suspect that even their good fortune may hide a trick. What will it cost me?

How will it hurt? Born under a spinning wheel. Or a gambler's coin and my fortune follows unknown. seasons. Watch me because my day shines brighter than the noontime sun. My music can make the angels dance, but my nights. On waves on my horizon, no stars shine in my midnight. I sit in the dark of the cave, the dark of the prison, knowing that this black season will be my last picked clean, wasted to bare bones. And it's only when I can no longer live my head to the spinner spins, leaving me to wash up upon the shore of the daytime, to weep under the glow

of the sun, then I wonder, cursed, am I blessed? Universe, please decide. Within Washington, the wheel spins. Spook starts. Today we're traveling all the way down to a small town in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Francisco Velasquez. He's 22 years old in the prime of his life, but he's about to discover all that can go away an instant. The village I grew up in is called San Jose del Progreso in Waxaca. That was my home until I was 22 years old. This was at my own's birthday party. She's the oldest sister on my dad's side.

I wanted to bridge the gap between the families. I wanted to reach out to them because they had not spoken to each other for so long. It was dinner time. They started serving soda and water, but I didn't like soda. And the birthday woman walked over to me and said hi. She grids me, she hands me the cup of Jamaica, Ibiscus tea. Then we all sit down and have dinner. So I leave the party and I felt fine, but four or five days later, I can start to feel like some kind of dizziness.

I felt my vision suddenly getting blurry. I started to feel my knee hurting, my right knee at first. Some really strong stomach pain somewhere around my belly, really faint at first and getting worse later, much worse. I come back home. Once I'm home, I do the typical thing. Take off my clothes. Get ready to sleep. And looking inside my pockets, my pants pocket, there's a doll.

A tiny little doll. I find a tiny doll. A tiny doll. It wasn't larger than an inch. And it's meant like I was sniffing an orange or a piece of panella-style cheese. What struck me about the doll was that it was a very small doll but it had really fine features.

Her eyes, her little mouth, the nose, everything. Even the short hair over her shoulders, she looked like she was wearing a headband, just like little girls do. So the first thing that I thought was, somebody must have slipped this in my pocket. Maybe someone from the family. I didn't think too much about it.

I just left it there. I put it on a nightstand I had next to my bed. I got to sleep. The next morning, I just sleep for work. After work, I went to my bedroom and took off my clothes, my pants. And for the second consecutive night, I found another doll.

A little doll, the same size of the previous one, but a different color. Different color this time. I looked at the nightstand, where I had left the doll the night before, thinking maybe I picked it again by accident, but no. There she was, the doll from last night.

And this was a new one. Well, maybe someone at work or school, they're playing me jokes, that's it. I'll give the dolls away later. I went to sleep, and next day, same thing, same routine, always the same. Get up, take a shower, have breakfast, go to town, get to work. But the pain was getting so... much worse, it was getting much, much worse. The pain around my belly was getting sharper, and as the days went by, my vision was getting blurrier. So for the third night, I come back home from work,

and once again, a new doll. And sometime later, I started to have other problems, such as nightmares. I don't know exactly how long after this happened, but my mom told me one day, hey, I was cleaning your room and I found you have some dolls there. There's a line of dolls. over your nightstand. What's up with that? She said. And my sister, she asked, are you collecting them?

Well, no, not exactly. I replied. I didn't want to talk about it. I don't know why, but something deep inside was telling me not to talk about it. Well, those are quite a few dolls, she said.

Those are quite a few. Can I have them? My sister said, I like them. No, no. Just leave them there. Leave them there, I said. Something was also telling me,

I guess, from my subconscious, that I had to leave those dolls alone. Every single day, a new doll. Every single day, the pain is getting more intense. Every single day I was losing weight. If the weather was cold around December, it gets real cold in Oaxaca, I would sweat. I was getting weaker.

My skin was turning yellow. I ran into a friend of mine, he said, Hey, what's wrong with you? You don't fit in your clothes anymore. You look sick. What's up with you? You have eye backs. aren't you sleeping?

Your eyes are turning yellow. I think you should visit a doctor. I went to the doctor. I think it was Friday. So they plugged me into every single machine in the office. You know how doctors are? He immediately lays me down because I was way too skinny already. He's making a visual examination.

He looks at my mom. And he says, you know what, Dona Silvina? I'm sorry, but I can't give Paco any prescription. That's my nickname ever since I was a child, Paco. And my mom says, but why? Just look at him. He was fainting on his way here. He says, yeah, but every test showed negative results. He's not sick. I wasn't sleeping anymore.

It had been months, weeks without any sleep, weeks without drinking water. I had a terrible urge to drink water, but I knew that if I tried to drink some, an intense urge, the throw up would overcome me. But nothing would come out. Everything was already too frightening. I even lost my job. And so one day, it must have been Sunday. Yeah, it was Sunday. I went for a walk in downtown Oaxaca City.

And I clearly remember that I sat down on a bench in the Oaxaca City Square. Well, I was sitting there, a woman. Well, in Oaxaca we call them Hitanitas. They are fortune-tellers, terror readers. It's a young woman. She's about 30-something. She's passing by, and she offers me a lot. a poem reading.

Care for a poem reading, young man? No, thanks. Thank you. I'm skeptical. Not believing any of that. For some reason, she's insisting and says, I truly want to read your poem, young man. You know what? I'm going to do it for free.

She said something in the lines of young man. You should understand that what's happening to you is not natural. You can look around for the most important doctor you may find, but they won't cure you because it's not on their hands to cure you. she said, what is happening to you is a tragedy. So I stare at the woman

and I accept her of her. Give me your right hand. Now your left hand, she says. She grabs both of my hands and then she starts to speak about the things I was going through. Listen, young man, she said, I know you can heal.

And the woman takes out some pieces of paper. and she writes down an address and a local phone number. She hands me a note. She says, go to this place. Trust me, you gotta go as soon as you can, if you want to leave. That's what she said. If you want to live, go there as soon as you can. This is too much.

I took a taxi to that address. As soon as I climb up the stairs, the first thing I see in front of me is a six feet seven tall statue of La Virgen of Guadalupe. behind La Virgen. There was another statue of a grim river. There's an altar over a landing. And beyond it, there's a private room where there's a man that greeted me immediately. And Pedro, he said, welcome to our consultation. I told him, I met this person and she gave me this address. She prompted me to visit you. And she said you wouldn't charge me for this if I told you her name. So he agreed and said there was no problem.

He didn't ask a thing, and I didn't tell him a thing. He then said, okay, here's some money, have it. Go to any grocery store yourself, any store you want, and come back here with five chicken eggs. So I bought the chicken eggs, he placed me right in front of him. He wrapped a chicken egg, a creole egg, as we call them in Oaxaca, and he wrapped it with basil. He was rubbing the egg against my body.

He inspected the basal. He would look at me in the eye, and then the basal. He cracks the egg in a crystal ball. And the water in the bowl turns into blackish blue. Something like that. He says, have you ever seen an egg with a black or blue yolk? Well, no. No, of course not.

All right, then. Grab another egg, he says. I'm going to crack this egg, okay? I want you to notice carefully what is going to come out or what shape is going to show up, he says. But before I crack the egg, do you have in mind that you're the one who brought the eggs? Yes, of course, I do.

All right, I'll crack it. And when he cracks the egg... Instead of an egg yolk, there was a mouse fetus wrapping some kind of slime, some kind of white-reddish membrane. And it was still fresh. Oh my, that's the only thing he said.

We didn't talk that much, really. let's take a look at that leg of yours he says and he touches my knee does it hurt yeah pretty bad he says okay let's get to my desk so i sit down he goes around and sits in front of me he grabs a notebook a pencil and he stares directly to my face and says don't look away at any moment he asked about the place and date of my birth my last name and he starts writing or scribbling and when he's done writing he closes the notebook He says, how many doctors have you visited? All of those tests, it doesn't matter how powerful they are. They won't detect a single illness because you're not sick.

You have nothing a doctor can cure. But you're dying. I'm going to tell you what, the way that this is going. If we look at what the people who are doing this to you are planning, it will be such a miracle if you're still around after six or seven months from now. To put it in my own words, you have one foot here in this world. and the other in the grave. He says, I'm just going to give you the name of a person.

This is a woman who you haven't talked to me about because we just met a few minutes ago. You didn't have a close relationship with this woman, but she's the one that is causing all of this. And this woman, she wants to see you dead, to kill you, to send you to the grave immediately. I'm going to give you the name, and he gives me the name,

and I said, of course, she's my name. grandmother. Well, that's her. Are you telling me that my father's mother, my grandmother, she wants me dead? No, she doesn't. I mean, if it was up to her, you'd be dead already. And then he gave me

another name. And I said, of course, that's my aunt. The birthday woman, he replies immediately. I try to recall. Yeah, it's true. I've been sick since her birthday party. How long after the birthday party did you start to feel like this?

He asked. I don't really remember. I mean, it was a very short time. All right, then. And what about that Hamaica? He said this. If you ever want to fuck someone up with this kind of witchcraft, hibiscus tea is a really great option.

And so it's everything that is red-colored, because that's how you hide it. In your grandma's stove, he says, there's a pot full of water. It's a pewter pot. And underneath, there's ash. Ash left from the burning wood. and underneath the ash, that's where you are.

That's the place where you'll find what's been causing you to stop eating and drinking and keeping you from walking and playing and hanging out with your friends. All of that. He says, look young man, you're going to go home and speak to your parents. Make sure your dad goes to your grandmother's house and see for himself. In there, he's going to retrieve a photo of you. Both your mom and dad must know when that photo went missing. Now, he says, you're going to buy two pieces of flannel, one red, one black.

You know what, I have some scraps here, so you won't have to buy anything. Tomorrow, when you're undressing, you take those flannel scraps out and put them back in the right pocket of the next set of pants you'll be wearing. You put them in your pockets. You put those scraps there because the amulet won't appear back tonight, he said, referring to the dolls. He called the dolls amulets. He said, look. I'm going to cure you in three months. During my hour and a half commute back home, I was thinking,

among my thoughts, I was considering the possibility of my dad snapping out, like, hey, what's wrong with you? Are you going crazy? What's your problem? I expected this because I was going to deliver such bad news. So I arrived home. And as I was. telling them this, I noticed that mom and dad were just staring at each other.

My dad starts crying and he says, I'm going to do it. You know what? I'll even do it tomorrow. He said he was going to my grandma's house to look for that pewter pot. The morning after, I remember sleeping a little bit the night before, if only an hour and a half. The dolls had stopped appearing. And when I woke up, I asked my mom, where's dad? He's sound, she said. And when my dad comes back around 11 a.m. or noon, he came back angry.

He immediately told me. See? Just how you told us. He had found a pot, and the stuff was there. He looked at my mom saying, Luke Sylvina, because my mom's name is Sylvina. And he said, look, Silvina, there's the photo. As he threw it on the table, I remember. It was a photo of my high school prom night.

And yes, that was me. And he also shows us a black ragdoll. That ragdoll had little pins inside. They were pinned onto its belly and its leg, exactly where I was feeling pain. The fabric of this ragdoll was weather due to the time that it remained buried between the earth, the ash, and the stove.

And I remember mom and dad sitting on the couch, my dad tells me, look Francisco, son, the thing is that my parents were never on board with me marrying your mother because of the age difference. When they moved in together, my dad was going to turn 18 and my mom was 30. And my dad started crying. I knew that they're capable, but I did not think that they would act on it, he said. And then mom and dad start talking about how my grandmother opposed to them getting married. When my mom was barely three months pregnant, my granddad and my grandmother

went to her address to beat her up so that she might miscarry. My dad cried a lot that day, that night. He told me, you don't know it now because you're not a dad, but once you have children, you're going to realize it yourself, and only then you'll know what it feels like

when you're told that your own family is attempting to harm your children's lives. Truth is, upon your children's lives. till today, it's a very difficult situation to overcome, knowing that your own grandmother wants you dead. Did you want revenge? No, in that moment I did. But Pedro, the witch doctor, had told me that he was going to cure me in exchange of me keeping it cool. He told me, we have a code. We can tell you who's harming you and prove it, but at the same time encourage you to not look for revenge because you're healed.

Life has given you another chance. I told my mom and that everything about what Pedro, the witch doctor, had told me. The witch doctor told me to throw the dolls away. He said I had to be the one to do so, but not anywhere. It had to be in the cemetery. He instructed me to go there by myself at 5 a.m. But the cemetery is closed at that time, I replied. He said, you don't have to go in.

You just have to throw them over the wall and don't ever look back until you're far away enough that the cemetery is out of sight. Only then you can look anywhere, but do not look towards the cemetery. If you look back, the spell will return. I went home, and the first thing I did was trying to take a shower. I was reuniting with water.

Yeah. I say it like that now. And sometimes it makes me giggle, but no, it is a joy laughter. Do you know what I mean? It's a way of release. Yeah, it's peace. It's satisfaction for being alive.

I took a shower, I took some fresh clean clothes, put on my sneakers, and hopped on my motorcycle. The motorcycle had some sort of saddle back, so I threw the back with the dolls there. As I approached the cemetery, I started pulling it out. I was a nervous wreck. I was scared, to tell you the truth, I felt fear. I had to go through 110 pitch dark yards.

The street was one way, and I had to go back in the opposite direction. I slowed down and I took the back in my hand and I threw the back over the wall without looking back. I took off down the main avenue and on my way home now I'm feeling this refreshing sense of peacefulness already thinking that once I get home I will drink a glass of water because I'm thirsty.

I had this intense thirst feeling like I could just gop a whole gallon of water. Big thanks to Francisco for sharing your story to Spook. That original score was by Renzo Goryo, and a big shout-out to Eric Yanez, our spook correspondent down in Mexico, and Fernando Hernandez, who produced that story.

You know it's never over. Because the story never stops. This is not a journey for the story. for the thank of heart. Please do not step foot on this path unless you know beforehand that we do not know the way. Be afraid.

If you like, amazing storytelling told in the light of day, storytelling that might just change life. Check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment, Storytelling the Beat, baby. Beat. Spooks was brought you by the team that never plays with dolls.

Run. Run away from Mark Ristich. An assessment, our chief spookster, Eliza Smith, Lauren Newsom, Chris Hamburg, Annie Nguyen, Renzo Giorgio, Leon Moni Mocho, Jacob Winick, Tiffin Delizza, Ann Ford, Erjanias, Sanakhan, Marissa Dodds, the spook theme soft is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is the Washington, and please, go on ahead, set your live, lock your doors. Check on the kids one more time, all of that, do all of that, but you can't forget the important thing of all the things. that can make the difference between a happy ending and a poor outcome. Say it with me now. Never, ever, never, ever, never, never, never.