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Demon House & Duendes
33 Plays10 months ago
This week, we're covering two topics that are close to our horror hearts and our heritages!
First up, Lauren explores the legend of The Demon House of Pennsylvania - a haunted house she recently visited in Monongahela, PA. It may just be a fictitious haunted attraction these days, but the horror and the true crime history that the McCue Mansion has held within its walls since the 1800s is very real. Was the former proprietor just a healer…or a witch? And what did they discover when excavating for the original mansion? Rumor is they unleashed an evil that is found in the Demon House to this day! And that maybe the haunts aren’t so staged after all…
Next, Felicia explores a creature of local Costa Rican folklore - a tale she heard told from her father during his childhood in CR. The Duendes are Dwarve-like fantastical creatures (similar also to Gnomes or Leprechauns) with roots in Latin American, Iberian, and Ibero American culture. Depending on the location and version of the mythology, Duendes can be playful tricksters full of mischief or wicked punishers of children. Imagine Dobby from Harry Potter…if he looked like wanted to murder you. Listen to hear Felicia's personal twist on the Duendes, and someone's possible real life encounter!
PS: If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out, follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction & New Year Goals
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Lauren. I'm Felicia. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. And Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Yeah, wow. Should we address that anyway? Do you have any... I feel like you are a New Year's resolutions person, no? I'm a goal setter New Year's person, for sure.
00:00:40
Speaker
I can tell you. Do you have some? Do you want to tell yours that I can tell mine? Is that too private? No, I can share some of mine. I mean, this is boring, but I am really trying to refocus on my health, which for me right now is not drinking as much as I am or have been. I love that. I love it. My mom doesn't enjoy it anymore.
00:01:01
Speaker
Good for her. I like thought about it. I tried to do it last year and I like almost did it last year Yeah, I'm trying I thought maybe I would try not drinking during the week and only give myself like one week night where weekend day
00:01:17
Speaker
If you do that, I think that's great. I feel like that's achievable. But then I also like I want to get back on my like, you know, roasted veggies and working out and trying to do more of that again. But the biggest thing that I really want to do more and have been advised to do more of is journaling, which I just hate, but I need to do. Did we ever talk about morning pages? No.
00:01:44
Speaker
It's from that book, the, ooh, what's it called? The Artist Way or something like that. But yeah, it talks about basically, it's basically like a brain dump where you write in the morning, ideally three pages, depending on your notebook size. And you just, and it's called morning pages and you just kind of brain dump before the day starts. I love that. Yeah, I used to do it back in the day. I haven't done it in a while and probably like two years, but I remember enjoying it.
00:02:14
Speaker
It's so funny because I feel like I was so like self-help guru productivity vibed girly for so much of my life. And then the pandemic, I feel like I lost all of it. And then I feel like I'm slowly working back towards that kind of vibe of like I get it bettering myself. I get that. Yeah.
00:02:42
Speaker
But yeah, I love that. And mine's similar. Mine's also how it's just like, I want to get in shape for my wedding, basically. I'm doing the yoga with Adrienne 30-day thing. Oh, nice. Just to get back into moving my body in any way. But yeah, that's kind of my big one. I have some other creative aspirations.
00:03:09
Speaker
And that's had like a general one. It's very general, but like, I want to just be more creative this year and make more things like write more songs, make collages, doodle, even though I'm bad at drawing journal, just like make things for like the joy of making things. That's kind of my big, my other big one.
Film Reviews: 'Saltburn' and 'Poor Things'
00:03:30
Speaker
I love that. And you're so creative. So I think that you should. I should. I should.
00:03:37
Speaker
I love that. Should we do quick recommendations? Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to talk about salt burn if you don't mind. Yes. I was going to say I want to talk about salt burn and then you have not seen poor things yet, right? Not yet. I was going to go yesterday and then Travis and I just sat on the couch for 24 hours.
00:03:58
Speaker
As you needed to. Didn't happen. But Poor Things is really good and honestly might be my favorite movie of last year. Oh my gosh, amazing. Okay. You should go see it. I will go. It's a Frankenstein story. It's a feminist story. It's amazing. So yes, that. Sulphurn, I did really like. Did you love? Were you like, oh my god, most incredible thing ever?
00:04:25
Speaker
What's your, where are you? I really, so the things I loved about it, the aesthetics of it, I thought were just like amazing. I loved the objectifying men in a film in a way that we're not used to was very exciting. I thought the last third did a little mutt, like didn't need to do as much as it did. I was like, Oh, we didn't need to like make this
00:04:53
Speaker
like a murder mystery or something. I don't know that spoilers. Oh, sorry. I guess. I mean, I guess I don't know. Maybe that's not really a spoiler anyway. Yeah, I just think it did too much work when it already like I was cool for it just to be vibes. Yeah. Yeah. Just a movie of vibes. That was fine. But I didn't mind. And I love the last like obviously the iconic dance sequence at the end is so
00:05:22
Speaker
was everything for me. So oh my gosh, there were like a lot of yeah, really visually crazy and also just like crazy stuff happening. I felt kind of the same way where I think I thought
00:05:33
Speaker
Like it is very strange, I guess, in some ways, like I like, I think I thought it would be maybe stranger or like less explained. Like I kind of thought at the end, yeah, Oh, what happened? You're like, Oh, no, it tells you all the answers to questions I didn't really have.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that too. I thought it would maybe be more strange and cool. Instead, I was just like, oh, thanks for telling us A, B, C, D, E. Exactly. I love the performances though. I thought also so amazing. Yeah, everybody in that movie is amazing.
00:06:17
Speaker
so captivating. Like, yes. And yeah. And so the shots, I thought, yeah, visually, it was really so impressive. And so yeah. And it was really I mean, maybe this is me using a term poorly, but to me, it felt so like female, gazey, like the way in which the camera like looks at men's bodies in that movie. I know. I just thought.
00:06:45
Speaker
I was like, oh, the female gaze is like here for us to see a movie through this lens, even though the main characters are men. Yeah. Then I was like, I was thinking about, then I was like, is it like gay man gaze, but like not really? I don't think so. I think there's like an argument. That's what I was going to say. I think there's an argument for like no one being gay, actually. But maybe anyway.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You know, good question. Um, but yeah, but overall, I just like that whole movie could be turned into posters hung up in my room and I would be happy. Totally. Totally. I love it. All right. Are you good? Anything else? No, let's just jump on it. Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker
All right, so I am doing what I promised last year, LOL, two weeks ago, which is I'm talking about...
Haunted Locations: Demon House and McHugh Mansion
00:07:46
Speaker
So the haunted house I went to with my family was called Demon House and it was in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. And so I'm going to talk about kind of the history of this haunted house or really like the legend that kind of is behind the mansion that it takes place in.
00:08:04
Speaker
but I will say first like I do I know I shouted it out last time but I just for you Felicia like and also for us as like haunted house and you know event people and all of it I just thought it was such a cool idea because it's basically like you take
00:08:19
Speaker
you park at like a school or I can't remember what it was, like some kind of like big parking lot built in and then a little like mini bus takes you to like the haunted house location. Oh fun. But when you get there, it's like a whole complex. There's like hot chocolate and some snacks. There's like little shops that have like, you know, weird stuff you can buy. There's a big like movie
00:08:45
Speaker
screen and like an outdoor movie showing. So they were like showing gremlins. Oh, so fun. Yeah. And then there was a, you know, I think you
00:08:54
Speaker
It's a good question actually. I think you could buy alcohol and then there's like, you know, like campfires or like little like fire pits. So I was like, it was just such a vibe. Like I was like, this is such a good idea. I want to be bigger. Exactly. So I thought that was such a cool thing. And I was like, honestly, if I ever like really was like, I want to do a haunted house, like or whatever, create a haunted house, like that I thought was like such a cool way of doing it and kind of, you know, kind of like what we were doing with our haunted house parties.
00:09:23
Speaker
As I said, it's right outside Pittsburgh. It is known as the McHugh Mansion or some places call it the Emerald Hill-Hell House. Emerald Hill-Hell House. That's hard to say. There are rumors of paranormal activity.
00:09:40
Speaker
Mostly due to all these legends about its its history people claim to have seen apparitions career noises it was featured on Some kind of yes, so it's on a television show
00:09:59
Speaker
That's one of those paranormal investigative TV shows that's called Portals to Hell. I think it was on the Travel Channel, but they did an episode there. I think I had to use the first one of my episodes. I think I had to watch something on there.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yes, so you could definitely check out that episode. It came out in like 2019. I'm not going to talk about it too much because it's honestly not, it was not very exciting to me. But the Facebook page that I found for The Haunted House, I could not find anywhere when The Haunted House was first opened, but it looks like it's been around at least since 2009.
00:10:36
Speaker
But then I found most of the information like the history of the house has mostly been a secret since 2014. So the new owners of the haunted house were planning like the annual haunted house experience. And they learned that the land that the mansion now sits on was once used as a burial ground. Perfect. Perfect.
00:11:01
Speaker
They found a photograph in the basement of the mansion. And I can share this on the Instagram, but it basically is like a man excavating and there's like all these like skeletons and just unknown graves that were found on site. So very spooky.
00:11:18
Speaker
So they'll kind of legend about all of, uh, I guess like maybe why these skeletons would be there is kind of how this starts. So since sometime in the late 1860s, there was a young woman named Carla.
00:11:34
Speaker
She was believed to be a widow. She was a wealthier woman, appreciated the finer things in life. She commissioned the building of this estate, this big mansion, in 1871.
00:11:49
Speaker
And it was on land that was transferred to her by her uncle. So the record books aren't very clear from that time, but she's known to have owned that plot of land. And then when Carla was getting this building built is when they found all these bones. So they started out by just finding the bones from a human hand and they kept digging and eventually unearthed all 70 unmarked graves.
00:12:17
Speaker
So that's believed to be the time that evil was unleashed, was finding all these skeletons. So no one really knows where these unmarked graves came from. A lot of people believe that it was the burial ground for local indigenous tribes or people.
00:12:37
Speaker
Another legend tells the story of how I think the Spanish is what the website, the Demon House website says, had a torturous prison at this location and that those bones came from that. Either way, there were a bunch of skeletons that were found. Carla wasn't really bothered. She even apparently asked to keep some of the remains, which also seems bad.
00:13:05
Speaker
I don't think she should. No, but she was also like there's kind of like witch vibes from her. Some people say she was like an evil witch. Some people say she was a healer. But basically people would come, you know, come from kind of all over to ask for her help with healing, sometimes even as far as like demonic possessions.
00:13:28
Speaker
And so from 1872 to 1888, she kind of grew in popularity. Everybody talked about how wonderful she was, how much she had helped them. And then like 1889 is when people started to like shift the narrative it seems like and started to talk more negatively. And whether that is like
00:13:50
Speaker
just that, whether that is like the ground was cursed and she was being taken over, whether she was evil all along and at first it was helping people and then it was not. It's kind of unclear, but people stopped returning to their homes after coming to see her. So very spooky.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yes. So people continue to arrive at the mansion probably until 1894 ish. And then on this is as legend goes on October 13th, 1894, a man named Pat Caldwell arrived with his daughter who was sick only to find that the estate was totally empty and just like bleak, desolate, kind of falling apart.
00:14:40
Speaker
And so Caldwell contacted the local sheriff and he began a full out investigation. So Chad Nichols was the deputy sheriff and he wrote a report of the house. It basically is just like, you know, no one's here. It's run down. It's kind of sketchy out here. And so they decided to kind of like get a like a search party or they went like went back into town and kind of gathered up a bunch of people to go back and look around further.
00:15:10
Speaker
And about that time, there was a letter that arrived. It was addressed simply to DHD.
00:15:17
Speaker
And it said that the person needed help and that they didn't want to die like the others. They had the initials E V L. So the same evening, the search party went back to the mansion. And then kind of like the next, like, you know, artifact or information we have is that the niece of the deputy wrote a journal account from what she witnessed. She was like waiting outside, I guess. And she said, so her name was Joan Millington singe.
00:15:45
Speaker
And this was written on November 2nd, 1894. So, quote, one by one, all seven men went into the mansion. The door slammed shut. The mansion began to rumble with a noise that could be heard from town. I could hear one of the men scream.
00:16:01
Speaker
Then silence. And then no men ever came back out of the house. And so on November 2nd, no one was ever seen at the house again. Those men supposedly disappeared.
00:16:15
Speaker
It is pretty cool. I mean, honestly, a lot of this, I was hoping there was a little bit more hard fact information. It does seem like the unmarked graves is pretty easily searchable, pretty reputable. There were dead bodies discovered or skeletons discovered at the site of this haunted house, which is always terrifying. But another one of those things that I'm just like, if we started doing a little
00:16:40
Speaker
a little research a little digging. I just feel like so many places are probably a lot of unmarked graves, right? I mean, everyone that's ever lived has died. So that is a lot of bodies to deal with. And like, when I don't know, maybe I should do this is maybe too bleak. I don't know. I was gonna say should I do an episode on cremation? Because I'm like, when did that start? When did it start? I mean, I knew like the Vikings did that right where they like burned and put it to sea.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yes, that does make sense. Yeah. But that is interesting. Like cremation, the way we do it now in like an oven. Like how did that start? Is that too dark for me to do as a topic? I don't know. I don't know.
00:17:25
Speaker
I mean, I think it's okay. But it is, it is interesting, right? And so I think very cool that this haunted house has all of this legend behind it. The website is obviously like very curated and some of this is like findable other places, some of it is not.
00:17:44
Speaker
But I love that they have the little like journal entries, they have like pictures of like the actual, you know, supposed pages and photos. So that I think is very cool. Oh, this, okay, so this article actually says that the house remained empty until 2004, when then it was starting to be converted for haunted houses. So I think that, yeah, it's a very impressive place.
00:18:08
Speaker
It's very cool because I don't know of a lot of, or at least I haven't gotten the chance to go to a lot of haunted houses that are actually in mansions or in homes like that.
00:18:19
Speaker
So that part was really cool to me, obviously like the history of all of it and like maybe an evil witch torturing people. Like all of that could be a little bit fabricated, but I think it's a very cool haunted house, a very cool setup they have over there. And obviously I was really impressed by it. Yeah, it was a great time. I wish there was like some more. I was really hoping that this was like more of like a,
00:18:44
Speaker
factual legend, but I'm glad that I looked into it a little bit further and hey, maybe I'll research cremation next time. Yeah, sure. Let's pick a light topic. Cremation. That's so dark. I love it. I love it. Amazing. Great job. Great job. I love it.
Folklore of Duendes
00:19:20
Speaker
Okay, so the story I'm telling today came up when I was home for my holiday break at my parents house. Oh, I love it just naturally. It actually came up and I said, Okay, should do that on the podcast. And then today we were going to record at six. And so at 555, I called my dad and said, Can you remind me? These stories
00:19:47
Speaker
Okay, so my dad's from Costa Rica. When I was home, he started telling me or telling my family this story that I was really excited about because I hadn't heard a lot of folklore from his childhood. And the only thing I've done that's Costa Rican in the past was that one asylum I did that like tuberculosis hospital asylum something.
00:20:12
Speaker
That was haunted, but I haven't really done anything else that's like sort of part of my culture. And so this was exciting to me. So today I'm going to talk about Duendes. So Duendes are presented in a lot of Latin American countries in various ways.
00:20:40
Speaker
in terms of the kind of general overall, they're these sort of gnomes or goblins. I love it. Yeah. That are also known as Dueno de Casa, which is basically means master of the house. And they're these creatures that
00:21:06
Speaker
And once again, there's so many different versions of them. It's very hard to solidify into one. But in some cultures, they're mischievous goblins that are up to no good. They kidnap children. They mess up your house. They live in your walls or they live in the mountains. They like to cause chaos, blah, blah, blah. In other countries, they can be these small creatures that are more childlike.
00:21:36
Speaker
but are actually there to help you in a time of need. For example, getting lost in the woods, they'll help you find your way home, something like that. So I'll tell you some more general stuff. My dad actually had sent me this Reddit page that was very useful. So the history in terms of the Costa Rican version of this is that when Lucifer, the devil, was...
00:22:05
Speaker
Um, when God said, when God said, you're done here and sit him down, God curse your version of the Bible. When God said, you're done, you're done. He opened up the whatever of heaven and Lucifer fell and he wasn't allowed to go back. So supposedly, uh, many of the angels stayed in heaven, but
00:22:34
Speaker
another group left. And they didn't actually end up in hell because they didn't want to follow God and they didn't want to follow Lucifer. So they were left in the in-between, which is on earth. And these became known as Duendes. I love that. Yeah, so that's one historical, you know, that's one like, one lore of it.
00:23:04
Speaker
In terms of what they look like generally, in terms of Costa Rica, they look like children. They're very short. They can have long beards.
00:23:15
Speaker
and long teeth. Their skin is green or very, very pale white. They have pointy ears and they dress in really bright colors. So blue, yellow, red, really bright, bright colors. And sometimes a beret of the same color. Oh, I like that. It's a beret, a French. So, yeah.
00:23:43
Speaker
So the Duende, where once again it's gnome, elf, goblin, it's like interchangeable with some of those words in English. And so there's the kinds that live in the mountains and they mostly manifest in the human shape I've described, but in some cultures they can also manifest as animal shapes. Once again, it just depends.
00:24:07
Speaker
And they have their own concept of good and evil. And this is a similar thing of not wanting to follow God or the devil. It's this idea that they have their own morality and their own code that they go by. And it may not align exactly with what humans think is good and bad, but it's what they like. So some of them
00:24:30
Speaker
are very joyful. They like to play music and sing and dance. And then, and then once again, there's the kind of the other side of it where they like to cause mischief, steal, kidnap children, etc. Okay, so
00:24:49
Speaker
I'm now going to tell the stories my dad told me. I'm going to do my best to get these right. If I mess something up, dad, if you're listening, I'm sorry. Okay, so we're going to start on the property.
00:25:06
Speaker
Actually, pretty much all this takes place on the same property. So timeline, we're talking like 1820s or 30s. We have my father's great-grandmother, Tila, and her brother Juan González, brother and sister. And they lived in Rio Segundo. So my dad always says, Rose Segundo. But I was Googling it. I was like, oh, it's Rio Segundo.
00:25:31
Speaker
But I guess he just does it fast. Something I noticed actually, in the last year, while I've been teaching a lot of kids that don't speak English, they only speak Spanish.
00:25:44
Speaker
I started to think back on all the things my dad says in Spanish. And I realized I've been like mishearing certain things. Like, I always thought my dad was saying benga benga, which I know means like, come here. But I thought he was saying it with a B. He's actually saying with a V. I was like, Oh, benga benga. Okay.
00:26:07
Speaker
There was another one of those, I can't remember right now, where I was like, wait, what? And I tried to, like, Google what he was saying. And then I was like, oh, I'm, like, mishearing it because I've just heard you say it for so long. And my, you know, probably three-year-old brain just said it was this and then never got corrected. But my dad, when I hear him say it, I hear him say, Rosagundo. But when I Google Rosagundo, it's real Zagundo. So I don't know.
00:26:35
Speaker
I'm like, maybe, yeah, maybe he's just saying it faster. I'm like, maybe it's with different accents, like from different areas. I don't know. I don't know. This isn't very, I should have checked that. I should have called again, but.
00:26:46
Speaker
Anyways, anyways, so on this property, so there there is a small coffee farm that is basically there's sort of a house out the corner here and you have a coffee farm and another house and and to say this Rosagundo is a very small
00:27:09
Speaker
community, particularly at this time, very small community. So not a ton of families, not even a real road, you know, throwback. So the first story I heard is that, so his great-grandmother Tila had in her kitchen this window and there was no glass. So it was just wooden shutters and it was next to like her wood burning stove.
00:27:34
Speaker
And her and Juan started to think something suspicious was happening. And they weren't sure exactly what, but they just kind of something was going on. And then soon after that, someone or something started leaving these bags of balsa, which is basically like, you know, like the little feather things that come off a cattail. Yeah.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yeah, like a bunch of those like in little bags were like leaving them by the window. And they didn't know what that meant or what it was for. But after a couple of times of this happening,
00:28:12
Speaker
Juan was like, oh, I have a great idea. So he got KAL, which is a building material. It's white powder that you mix with something and it basically you put it on the front of houses, sort of like concrete, but not. But it starts off in a powder form, this white powder. And so he's like, OK, I'm going to sprinkle all this powder by the window.
00:28:34
Speaker
and see who is leaving these things and like what's going on at this house, like something's going on. And the next thing, there were all of these footprints the size of baby feet. And so what my dad had always heard growing up,
00:28:57
Speaker
was that Duendes were not goblins or gnomes, but were actually the souls of children and infants that had died. And because they are innocent, and we're also talking about a very Catholic and Christian country,
00:29:19
Speaker
They're sort of lost in the in-between. They don't understand that they're dead and that they need to go to heaven. They don't understand that they've passed. So their souls are just kind of lingering around. And my dad also said that these are not, at least how he learned about them growing up, not mischievous or malicious creatures. They're playful. And I'll tell another story in a second that we'll build on this, but they can also be very helpful.
00:29:49
Speaker
I was going to say, maybe your dad just grew up in a loving, supportive household instead of one that needs to- Can you imagine? ... terrorize children. Yes, exactly. Yeah, because in some cultures, they're used as a threat. The Duendes are going to come get you if you don't do this. There's this one, I can't remember one country, it's from, but there was one version of it that was like, if you don't keep your nails clean, your toenails and your fingernails clean, the Duendes will come at night and chew off your toenails.
00:30:16
Speaker
like things like that like sort of I know but like this idea of like keeping kids in line which is so much of the folklore and like urban legends and all that stories we've covered so much about that yeah I think we should do this Felicia you and I should have the same monster that we create for our children so that they're well behaved and then they can talk to each other and be like oh my god you know about the whatever too
00:30:38
Speaker
Oh, we make it all up. Oh my gosh. Yes. I love it. And they never trust us again. I'm just kidding. I think that's great. OK, so then the second story he told me, so that's like 1820s, blah, blah. Now we're in like the 1940s-ish. And this is the story of Raul Gonzalez, who my dad knew growing up and lived basically on the other side of the coffee farm. And generations of these families grew up together.
00:31:07
Speaker
So one day Raul was like a toddler, very young, disappeared. Nobody could find him. They're searching in the coffee field. They're searching other people's houses. They're looking in the river in case he drowns. They can't find him anywhere. And suddenly after all this searching, like, and once again, small town, like all the moms are involved. Everyone's trying to find Raul. Raul appears and he is perfectly fine.
00:31:37
Speaker
And his pockets are filled with all these sweets, like candies and little things. And so my dad, and he said he has a recording of this conversation somewhere. Because one time my dad in Costa Rica did these video recordings, like basically interviewing some of our family members. But he said he asked Raul, like if he remembered the experience. And he said he remembers parts of it. Like he said he remembers
00:32:04
Speaker
that the Duendes were dressed in bright colors, which really aligns with some of the research I did. And they played music and they gave him candy and that he was never scared of them. He just kind of knew
00:32:22
Speaker
that they were okay to be with, and then seemingly at some point, they let him home. And it's interesting because some of the Duende tales that I find, and a lot of stories we covered, we have this idea of fae, elves, these creatures that kidnap children. And some of the Duende's tales, they talk about that like moments of chaos, like during a parade or during a party or something, they'll come and take the children.
00:32:49
Speaker
And this is sort of a case of that, but not in a scary way. It was sort of like they borrowed Raoul to hang out for the day and then brought him back. And then one last one that I have for you is so Rafa, who was my dad's aunt Cecilia's husband,
00:33:14
Speaker
They were having some sort of issue with the septic tank.
00:33:20
Speaker
So he had to dig and he was like digging the hole to the stuff to take I guess to like check out and figure out what the issue was and so he digs and For like a couple of days and but at some point He is standing in the hole and the ground at this point is like a foot over his head so he's he's really dug quite a deep hole and He decides he's gonna get out and he can't move and he said something was holding on to his ankles and
00:33:49
Speaker
And he could not get out of the hole. And he doesn't know why he's calling for help. And at some point, they just released him and let him go. And then he got out of the hole fine.
00:34:02
Speaker
And so, and once again, like these just even in these three stories from the same family about these one days is this idea coming back to that they have their own sense of right and wrong and good and evil. And because they are in the in between, and so they make their own rules about it. So even something like that, that sounds quite scary and mischievous may not have
00:34:32
Speaker
been so in the Dwinday's eyes. Might've just been a fun little game to play, especially because Dwindays are seen as childlike in many ways. And so it reminds me, and this is not how my dad told it, but it reminds me of a sibling messing with you or something, and not necessarily like, I'm going to eat your toenails off in the middle of the night.
00:34:56
Speaker
But yeah, so yeah, so in one last thing, so I found also a Facebook post about Costa Rican specific Duan days. And they also use the language here, instead of mischievous practical jokes, which I think is also kind of like a slight differentiation of like, it's something that more playful. And then also it said, according to legend, when a child is born,
00:35:24
Speaker
If the creature, the duende, becomes fond of the infant for their innocence, the goblin, or duende, can choose to become a guardian for that child.
00:35:37
Speaker
And many of the versions of many of the Latin American countries, Duendes also can really only be seen by children. And to everyone else, they're basically invisible. Whoa. And so I was like, oh, maybe Raoul just had a little guardian Duende that was just like this little guy that was protecting him. And sweet him. Yeah, and gave him lots of candy.
00:36:02
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that's, that's one days for you. And once again, I really leaned this towards, you know, my dad's history and stories that he heard growing up about them. There's about a million different versions, even on the Wikipedia page alone under Dwinday. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Wow.
00:36:24
Speaker
Oh, 15, 16 different versions of them, depending on what country you're in. And most of them actually come out of Spain, which is interesting too. A lot of them come out of Spain specifically. I love that. I love that. And I love that it had such a personal history for you. Me too. And dad, if I messed any of it up, I don't know who listens to this podcast. It's fine. Does your dad listen? Do you know? I don't think so. He's got to listen to this one.
00:36:54
Speaker
Yeah, he's going to listen to this one. That's why I think I messed up multiple times on things because I was like, oh, my dad's gonna know I said that wrong. Well, I'll edit it all together and no one will know. No one will know anything. I love it. All right. Thank you all so much for listening. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.