Spooked - Los Chaneques

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Saulo knows the stories about the mischievous creatures who lurk in the forests and beaches of Oaxaca. But one night a hunt for turtle eggs becomes a search for the truth. Thank you, Saulo, for sharing your story with Spooked! Produced by Erick Yañez, original score by Leon Morimoto, artwork by Teo Ducot Erick doesn’t just work for Spooked, he is also the producer of a horror fiction podcast that you are gonna love. Check out Psicofonías wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When I came across the genie, and she asked, what was my wish? I told her golden diamonds, and she served them on a dish. I snatched it off and ran away, but never asked the price. But the genie doesn't work for free. And now she wants my life. Oh no, very expensive. He listened to Spooked. Stay.

Northern Michigan, it's deer hunting. season, wintertime out in the woods, and the hunters say, you can't eat if you don't shoot, which is almost never true because you got a cooler full of food back at the cabin, pot of all-day jalapeno chili simmering away, and I don't even know while I'm carrying this rifle. You may know that in several decades, it was traipsing this spot of land I've never once fired a shot. In fact, the only instance that I'm absolutely guaranteed to see a deer is when I stop pretending I'm going to shoot one and put the gun down.

The last time, I lowered my rifle barrel completely because I'm fumbling around for a flask of whiskey, making up all kinds of racket. I look up to see a beautiful 12-point buck silhouetted in the winter fog, more like a patroness and a stag not 30 feet away and it is magical

him staring right back at me right back through me proud hearty disdainful for like a full 10 seconds before leaping off into the bush and I want him to come back

I want to keep communing with this other soul even though I know it's a really bad idea from the stick around. Because if I don't shoot, someone else most certainly will.

These woods are chalk full of orange vests, but somehow, and I can't tell you why, but I know I'm certain that try as they might. No bullet. No ever graze this animal. For this story, Spook travels

to Oaxaca, Mexico. To meet Saolo, and as a team, Saolo grew up riding his bike, hunting, exploring the beaches and forests of his homeland, a place with a supernatural, is just as natural as nature itself. Saolo's mom, she knew this. She always told her son to beware the creatures of the night, but would he listen? You know he wouldn't listen. In Oaxaca, for the general, naces, naces in an ambient paranormal. In Oaxaca

In O'Hawakia, you are basically born in a paranormal environment. Everything that has to do with the supernatural, the esoteric, the magical, the occult. It's our bread and butter. From the moment you are born, until you die. Since I was a child, we were often to die. Since I was a child, we were off the time.

all that, we shouldn't stay out late. It wasn't just because something bad could happen, but it was mostly because of the beliefs that most of the townsfolk have towards darkness. That's why our parents always kept us inside. Why do you think you can't go out if there's aire malo, they would tell us? When it's there's an air air male,

the sensation of the place where you're completely, When we say that there's iremalo or bad air, we mean that the feeling of a place shifts and becomes weird. It always happens in the middle of the night. The air becomes cold. The tension is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. It's as if someone or something is watching you, surrounding you,

but you can't see it. My mom told me once about an experience she had. At the time she had, was like six or seven years old. When she lived with her grandfather, who was a fisherman, and they would often travel during the wee hours of the morning to make deliveries. He would go to the big cities and trade fish for beans, rice, things like that. So that day, before they leave, my mom and grandpa wait until the rooster crows.

Because leaving before the rooster crows, it's bad luck. Then, they join a caravan and live for the city. The journey there is very dark, but they are guided by the reflection of the moon. My mother is riding a mule at the back, while her grandfather is at the front. Then all of a sudden, she feels the air change. She looks around and she starts to feel like she's being watched. That aire malo. And when she looks at the trees next to her,

she sees a shadow walking through the branches. She hears a rustling noise. But it's not an animal. No animals live in this area. So she looks closer and she can see the shadow of a little person. Then this shadow thing is on the treetops. jumping from one tree to the other. So she starts to feel afraid.

When she looks up, she notices it's already above her, hanging from a branch. The cause was above of her in a ram. And that's when she sees it. It looks like a kid. But no it distinctly totally. She can't see all its features. But what she can see is a disfigured face.

And his eyes. And its eyes. It has red eyes. The reaction is to be to bejaroos. She jumps off the mule and catches up with her grandfather in the front. She's freaked out.

Then her grandfather says to my mom, that creature that was a chaneke. That creature is called a chaneke. He tells her that those creatures live there and that she should not be afraid of them. The word chaneke is who who's who quid the place. The word chaneke is a word in Nahuatl

that means the home protectors or those who guard a place. The name changes depending on where you live. In the Mayan language, you call them alushes. In Oaxaca, we call them chaneques. They are the guardians of the forests, the jungles, beaches, the animals. When some people step,

Step into the forest, they ask the chaneques for permission to walk around, cut a tree, or hunt an animal. They can even help you if you are lost. There are more dark, but some chaneques are more evil and have darker intentions. They will play tricks on you, hurt you if you bump into them, punch you, scare you, take you with them. I remember when I was young, people would usually tell me, don't go to the river by yourself because you might run into Cheneke's. But my friends and I would go check the river to see if you could find anything. But nope.

Never saw anything. So I never take the stories too seriously. Much time and then after. So flash forwards, I'm about 14, 15 years old. I have a group of very close friends who go to the same school. And after school, we would go home and play soccer, or we go to the countryside with rifles to hunt quails or iguanas. Ornices or the iguanas.

And apart, it's a pegave to one of my friends also hangs out with us. The father of one of my friends also hangs out with us. His name was Donello. His name is Donello. Dontejo is an adult with a child's art. He has this house near the beach where he keeps horses and chickens. One day, we are playing soccer when Donthello suddenly says, Let's play for a little more, and then let's go to the beach and get some turtle legs.

All the people that came to the beach, well, I'm used to be used to the bed. At the time, for people who live near the beach, it's normal for them to harvest turtle eggs and eat them. It was common to see people selling eggs at street markets, just like someone who sells bread, who sells atolle, tamales. But now it's no longer allowed. We can stay the night at the beach, Don Tejo says. And then, we can return to the next morning.

I need to ask my mom for permission because we would be out very late. And being a teenager, it's difficult. to get permission. So I ask Don Tejo to go ask her personally. And my mom is cool with it and allows me to go. We don't mention that we're going to pick Turtle X. 8 o'clock in the evening, Dontejo picks us up. We got our backpacks with flashlights and other camping supplies.

We arrived at his house, which is near the beach, and he tells us that we're going to live on horseback because it's a long trip. He already has the horses ready. We take two rifles and we live around 11 o'clock at night. I'm riding a horse with one of my friends. My other two friends are on a different horse and Don Tejo is riding his own horse in the front. The only light is from the moon.

Rompen las solas, the strenor, how see the paisage, the empedratos. I hear the sound of the waves breaking, the rumble. and I can see the landscape full of rocks in the moonlight. We're having a blast, going crazy. We are on an adventure. We love adventures.

And we love adventures. We're chatting the entire way, and we finally get to the turtle nesting side. We get off the horses, tie them up to a tree nearby. We sit down and light a small campfire. Then we lie on the sand and wait. Eventually, we see about 20 turtles arrive. They begin making their nests. They use their flippers to ship the sand,

and then they, like, clean the area and start digging a large run hole for the nests. It's like if you've seen the programs National Geographic? You want to be there, no? It's like watching National Geographic on TV, but we were like, right there. seeing it firsthand. Once they drop their eggs,

they begin to cover the nests with sand using their flippers. Then, the turtles leave the nest and crawl back to the ocean. That's when we jump in and start grabbing eggs left and right, and we put them into buckets. They look like golfes,

but bland-littes. They look like golf balls, but they're soft. The plan is to eat. them the next day. And by the way, I'm the only one who isn't really interested in eating the turtle eggs. I just want to see the turtles. Yeah, we're just going to sit the turtles.

Once we finish picking the eggs, we sit down on the beach and start chatting again. After a while, we realized around two hours had passed. It's maybe around 1.30 in the morning. So we think, okay, that was cool. Cool. Let's go home now. So we get back on our horses. And we hit towards the shore for about 100 meters. And in that very moment, what of my friend says,

Are you seeing what I am seeing? He points to an area full of rocks where the waves are crying. He points to an area full of rocks where the waves are crashing. and he says, There are people. We don't see anything. We even say, you're crazy. We think he's messing with us, trying to scare us.

There are people there. I just saw them, really, he says. I saw a person come out of the rocks, didn't go back in. Nah, that can't be true. say. There's nothing. But we're still looking around and then again he says, There it is. There it is. And when he says this, this time, we are dumbfounded. We spot the silhouettes of like four or five people who are playing. They look like children running around and laughing. Carcajas.

It's like a shriek or a harsh laugh. What I don't think is children, but I have no other explanation. Why would they be out here so late? I suggested on Tejo that maybe he should turn on the flashlights. And he says, no, no, no, no, no, no, wait. So we go about 50 meters closer, and the horses are starting to get skittish. We feel that aire malo. And then, finally, Don Tejo says,

Yeah, no, come in, stop. It's when we hear more defined, how they're running, like they're playing. It is then we hear more laughter, more sounds of plain. They're chakoteing between the spuma where they're romped

the walls and the feet. They are running around by the waves and the rocks. They're jumping and hiding. Dontejo shouts, and they're gritty, Hey, chamecos, what are here? Hey, kids! What are you doing here?

What are you doing? They don't respond or even notice us. It's like we don't exist. And that's when Don Tejo tells us, I know what they are. I want to see them. That's when it all clicks for me. They must be the Chaneke's.

I'm really scared, but I'm also curious. I want to see what they look like. So I say to Donello, I'll turn on my flashlight, and he nods. So I graph my flashlight. It's one of those flashlights we had a long range, and I turned it on and point the light at them. The moment the light hits them,

they stop playing and turn around. I feel like I couldn't even say a thing. I feel like I couldn't even say a thing. For the first time, I'm seeing everything that they told me as a child. They're some of a lot of much a meter, they're desnudes. They are beings of maybe one meter tall, naked. I moved the flashlight downwards to see whether they are male or female. But they don't have to have.

genitals. So I look at their faces. And his car was like of those people asianas, disfigurated, so feas. The skin is very wrinkly, disfigured,

ugly. I noticed that one of them has a chunk of its ear turned apart. It's a very quick moment. Four or five seconds. Four or five seconds. The chanekes are

They're looking at us. The channeques are stirring at us. It's a heavy, numbing, violent stare. They growl at us. Grunny, in an grunny, like a beastia, like an animal, grue. It's the growl of a beast, an animal. They open their mouths. Their crook teeth are separated by gaps.

The teeth they do have are sharpened to a point. The cavioles relinched, they put in ariscus. The horses start freaking out again, And I know I'm in danger. It's deadice to the pierre, you're scared. I get goosebumps. I'm scared. I can't believe what I'm seeing.

We've seen. Then they start moving forward. Like they are preparing to run towards us. And they start laughing. That's when my horse nays and bucks me up. That's when my horse nays and bucks me off. And I fall onto this end. I can't feel the pain because of the adrenaline and the fear running through my body.

My friends also fall off the horses, and of course, nobody knows where the rifles are. As the horses run away, we see the turtle legs falling out of the buckets. I can't even scream. All I want to do is get out of here. Together, we start running away, but we start feeling something for me. behind. My friends run in front of me and as they pass me, they are screaming, and they say, no voltes, no voltes. Don't look back. Don't look back. And we get into some mangroves and hide under a tree.

I'm so scared. I don't know what is going to happen. I thought they could do something to us. Nobody is saying anything now. The horses are gone. We don't know where they're are. I get to think that the Cheneke us were not because we've taken the water I started to think that

maybe the Chenekees are messing with us because we grabbed the turtle eggs. Suddenly, we start to hear footsteps around our tree. We can hear laughter.

It sounds like they are surrounding us. Every time they're walking, they're kicking sand. No, there was nothing that would show us. the vista and there was luna, but not we'd rather

go to see them. Even though there is moonlight, it's hard to see them. We start to hear the laughter getting closer and louder. We get more afraid. They are mocking us. And then, all of a sudden,

we don't hear anything anymore. There's no laughter. There's nothing. Deep down, we are all still freaking out. We're still freaking out. We hide under the tree like a hour to comeoeseyra.

We hide under that tree for another hour silently until sunrise. We wait until the rooster grows. We check our watches and it's about 4.30 a.m.

That's when Don Tejo says Now, now we can go now. He says, there's to go to get the animals. We have to go get the horses. We've got to go get the horses. So we walk and we find a mangrove swamp. And we see that there's like a small lagoon.

And the horses are there. One of them doesn't have its saddle on. And then we spot a trail of turtle legs laying in the sand. And one of my friends took what was their own. And one of my friends took them to get in his tambos. And one of my friends, he starts grabbing them and puts them in the buckets again.

Then we hop on the horses and we head home. No one says anything along the way. So the sun is now up and we arrive at Don Tejo's house. He unpacked her stuff and ties the horses up. It's there where he says, Don Tejo,

and that's when Don Tejo says, Come here. They said, you know, they said, they said, they said, Did you notice the horses? They are braided. We approach the horses and we all see that their mains are braided. The braids are very well made as if someone had combed it.

And I'm just like, there is no way. Who would be braiding a horse man in the country's side so late at night? Who would be braiding a horse's mane in the countryside so late at night? I tell Dontejo, I had heard about this. I've heard that Chanekees would do these to horses, but I didn't believe it. He says, so now you see Chamekos, those were the Chenekees missing with us. When he says that, it confirms what we had experienced. After that, we all eat breakfast and go home.

Once I get home, my mom serves breakfast again. I sit at the table and we start talking. She asks, so how was it? How's the beach at night? I tell her it was cool. We had a great time. I obviously didn't tell her what happened. Because if I did, she wouldn't let me go out at night again. So I had gone to my mom And to the

I go to play football With the other way With the same routine So I have breakfast with mom And then I go out to play soccer with my friends As we would do every weekend No one says a thing about the night before I tell my mom a few years later

I tell my mom a few years later We're having dinner and I bring it up She says Why didn't you tell me Well, if I had told you you wouldn't have allowed me to go out again She said surprised and she's still shocked But then she starts laughing And me, he said, it's really?

Dixen, it'sisten, he says. She tells me, I told you it's true They exist They exist Maybe the Chenekees were protecting the turtle legs There was his space of life and we're going to invade them. They showed up when we trespassed their territory,

their land, their home. I still can't grab my head around what I saw. It was so scary. I am thankful that nothing happened to me. That good that no me passed nothing, said I. If I ever have kids or nephews, I'm going to tell them all of these stories.

I'll be very clear with them. Be careful when you go out at night. Chanekees are not a joke. Meses after my friends with my friends, with the same group of friends and Dontejo. Months later, the same group of friends and Donello, we decided to go camp on a beach that was very close to the one where we had the encounter. We stayed the night there. And I think...

And I think... And I get to think, to see what on, to see something to see. What if we see something again? I tell this to Dontenjo, but he laughs it up. Instead, he offers me some turtle eggs that he had. And I try some, but I don't like it.

Preferia, I'd rather have fish, or other thing, or anything else. sharing your story of the spook. The story was produced by Spook Story Scout and producer Eric Yanniers with all our Spanish speakers. Eric, he is also the producer of a horror fiction podcast. You are going to love. Go and search for psychophonias.

Wherever you get your podcast, that's psychoponias, and it's spelled P-S-I-C-O-F-N-I-A-A-S. The original score was by Leon Morimoto. Some folk, they inherit their mother's good looks. Maybe they were passed down some of their grandfather's charm, but some people, very different talents from the family tree. In fact, some of their skills are set to skip a generation for once again reasserting more powerfully than ever before. Forsy, healing, divination, projection.

Do you know someone that is an inheritor of powers that they themselves question? perhaps that person is you? If so, if so, I would love to know all about it. Matrilineal, patron, we do not care. Please share your story. Spook at SnapJJ, because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook was brought to you with a team that knows how to navigate by animal sounds through the dark waste.

Except, of course, from Mark Ristich. He just keeps banging the GPS. with the tent pole. There's David Kim, there's Chris Hambrick, Leon Morimoto, Teo Decoe, DeCotte, Marissa Dodge,

Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Yari Bundy, Eric Yanez, Cody Harjo, Lola Abrera, Doug Stewart, and Miles Lassie.

The spook theme song is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is in Washington. It might not happen next week. It might not happen next year, next decade, but let me tell you something.

It's a story that's older than time is that people will always find exactly what it is they're looking for and the problem they don't realize what they seek until it's far too late and if you're going to venture off the path into the dark force please at least take the most basic of precautions first and foremost whatever you do never never ever never ever ever ever ever ever