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Boo Hags & The Island of the Dolls
24 Plays3 years ago
In this week's episode, it's Hags & rag dolls! Felicia covers Boo Hags - a mythical creature found in the folklore of South Carolina's Gullah culture. Similar to vampires, they're scary, skinless monsters that can suck the life right out of you! While Lauren faces her fear of dolls and discusses "La Isla de las Muñecas" aka "The Island of Dolls." Dating all the way back to the 1950s, a man named Don Julián Santana Barrera collected lost dolls, hanging them all over a deserted island he owned in Mexico City, believing that the dolls helped to chase away the spirit of a girl who drowned there years ago. He himself mysteriously died on the island in 2001, reportedly near where the girl died. You'll likely never sleep again after seeing those pictures...
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Interests
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. Oh, yeah. So I guess we can go right into recommendations because finally, I have watched Yellow Jackets.
00:00:31
Speaker
Start to finish. I was off work this week, so I watched the whole thing. And I was just as obsessed with it as everyone said I would be. I loved every second of it. Isn't it just so good? It's so good. I just, I mean, obviously I just want more. Part of me was like, I kind of wish this was just like a one season mini series because there was just so much at the end that I was like, wow, that's like a real big cliffhanger that we probably won't get for like a year.
00:01:01
Speaker
But the characters are amazing.
00:01:06
Speaker
The levels of psychological and supernatural and all these different types of thriller elements that you don't know how they all fit together is just so exciting. Oh my gosh, it's so good. And also just all the different characters, I feel, are girls that you knew, but also not really. I don't know. They just all feel like such great, fleshed out characters. Yes, totally.
00:01:34
Speaker
Even like it was so weird to me that I don't know why at first glance I thought the like popular girl was going to grow up to be Christina Ricci because she has these big eyes. Yeah, absolutely. And so when it wasn't, I was like, how is this not Christina Ricci? And then you totally see it. I don't know. It was just it was really thrilling to me. Great. That's great. The caching is so amazing. Yes. And young Juliette Lewis, I just thought is so good. Yes, absolutely.
00:02:03
Speaker
And I'm like honestly like the biggest fan of the Melanie Linsky's character. She is just so complicated. I'm just so obsessed with that character. She's so interesting to me. Yes. And her relationship. I love that that's her husband and like that whole plot. It's crazy town. It's crazy town. And yeah, no spoilers, but it's amazing. Definitely watch it. Yeah.
Discussion on Horror Films and Series
00:02:33
Speaker
What about you? So I, again, too, finally watched something that you've been recommending to me for ages. I finally watched the autopsy of Jane Doe. Oh, good. Nice one.
00:02:44
Speaker
That is maybe the best horror movie I've seen, I don't know, in a long, long time I felt. It just stood up so well. I didn't see, again, no spoilers, but I didn't see the twist that happens. I thought the performances were so good. I'm coming off of, I am a big succession fan, so that Brian Cox's most of the movie was just everything to me. He's so good.
00:03:11
Speaker
And just like the, how gory it was, but it's still, you know, it all holds up even, I guess it's like, it's not that much, it's not that old. It's only like five or six years old, I think, but still just, I thought great performances, really solid plot, and just such a smart concept for a movie. Yeah, very underrated film. Like, I feel like maybe people were talking about it a lot more a few years ago, but yeah, really, really good movie. Yeah.
00:03:40
Speaker
and scary, like actually made them scary. And really scary. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then I also wanted to say I finally started watching True Detective. Did you ever watch that? Oh, wait, wait, no, no, no. Sorry. I thought you were going to say, what's that other detective show? You're talking about the one on HBO. Oh no, I've never seen that. You should watch it. So it's Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are like the two stars in the first one.
00:04:06
Speaker
And it just like, you just so, I know people have said this before, but like you so clearly see that like it is the foundation behind so many of like the true crime shows that I feel like I watched after it, but it's like, oh, they're all trying to be like true detective. I didn't get it. Like even Mindhunter, I'm like, yeah, like this is, I mean, obviously Mindhunter is great in its own way, but it feels very much like, oh, we're trying to do like our version of true detective.
00:04:36
Speaker
Nice. That's interesting. Each season, too. It's kind of like American Horror Story. Each season's like a different case, different cast. So I'm excited to see how it goes. But I've heard that the second season's not quite as good. But the first season is just like really interesting, really interesting serial killer, lots of twists, great performances, you know, the classic. Love it. Love it. Very nice. Yeah.
00:05:02
Speaker
Okay, should we go ahead and dive in? I'd love it. All right.
Folklore of Boo Hags
00:05:08
Speaker
I'm excited for yours. I'm excited too. It's something I'd never heard of, but I could think of a lot of references of stuff in pop culture that reminds me of this, so I think it'll be fun to talk about.
00:05:23
Speaker
So today I'm talking about boohags, which come from South Carolina. And before I go into the kind of history of it, it's basically like an energy vampire, if you will. Shout out to what we do in the shadows. But it's this creature, and I'll describe it first. They are basically skinless.
00:05:53
Speaker
vampire type creatures that creep into people's homes, climb onto their chest for what's called a ride. And it's not in a dirty way, but in a
00:06:05
Speaker
Very scary way. And they suck out your breath or your energy or your soul, however you want to put it. And sometimes they don't take all of you and they'll just kind of leave and you'll, you know, wake up feeling exceptionally drained or tired. But then sometimes they actually tear the victim's skin off because they like to wear it to keep themselves warm and also to disguise themselves as humans during the daytime.
00:06:35
Speaker
Wow. That's a lot to unpack. It's a lot going on there. It's a dementor's kiss. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I kind of wrote down some stuff like that throughout here. I was like, I'm thinking dementor. I'm thinking doctor's sleep. I'm thinking even sleep paralysis demons come up in this a little bit. But yeah, so basically it comes from a section of North Carolina where a group of people called the gala live.
00:07:01
Speaker
The Gullah are mostly West African slaves that had come over in the 1500s, and they sort of developed, and what happens in a few parts of the United States is kind of crossover culture going on. And they actually, sorry, this takes place in South Carolina mostly, but the Gullah, they were part of Georgia, Florida, South and North Carolina.
00:07:30
Speaker
And they have developed a Creole language that's also called Gullah. And they, of course, at the time of slavery, were working on plantations, farms, and a lot of islands with crops for things like sugarcane and indigo. So this group of people
00:07:53
Speaker
is pretty famous for holding on to their culture and keeping it alive over time. They're known for preserving African linguistic and cultural heritage more so than any other African American community in the United States.
00:08:14
Speaker
And this includes everything from food to music, folk stories, which we're talking about today, farming, fishing traditions, all that kind of stuff. That's so cool. So it's a really cool group of people, yes. And this boohag really comes from their storytelling of this legend.
00:08:36
Speaker
So there's even a phrase that is used in Gullah culture that says, don't let the hag ride ya. It's kind of like, sleep tight, don't let the bugs bite kind of situation. Yeah. And the thing that makes the boohag so scary, first of all, it has no skin, right? That's scary. And it has this kind of pulsing blue veins on them. And they can get into your house through any really small crack or hole in the wall.
00:09:06
Speaker
And if somebody wakes up while the boohag is riding you, a couple of things could happen. One, it's kind of like this idea of the sleep paralysis demon of you're just kind of frozen and you're just having this horrifying image of this creature on top of you sucking the energy out of you, which is, you know, nightmarish. Or if you wake up and you struggle and you can actually try to fight
00:09:35
Speaker
the hag off, they're known to feel like warm raw meat to the touch. Ew. That's a feeling I never want to have. Warm raw meat. I know. Sometimes I get even grossed out when I have to like handle like a chicken breast. I know. But if it was warm, very bad.
00:09:58
Speaker
But yeah, and it's more typical that if you wake up and try to fight it, that's when they'll take your skin. But if you sleep through it, you'll probably be okay. Oh my gosh. I know. It's a nightmare. So how do you stop a boo-hag? I guess it's the big question here. So one thing, which we've actually talked about in some other stories before, this idea of trying to confuse a creature.
00:10:24
Speaker
So one is placing a broom or even hair brushes near your door because it will be forced to count every single bristle.
00:10:34
Speaker
before it comes in. Yeah, we've heard that. Yeah, we've heard something before like spilling salt wasn't it or something like that salt or grain and yeah, and the other one that I thought was really interesting is actually about using a color that's called paint blue. So this color is kind of like a Robin blue sky blue color that people in this culture have used for a long time to
00:11:04
Speaker
ward off angry spirits. So sometimes you'll see it like painted on like the patios of houses and things like that. But the idea is that when the spirit comes to the house, if they see that blue color either on the door or the window shutters or the patio,
00:11:22
Speaker
It'll be confusing because the ghost will think either that they've stumbled into a body of water so they can't get across or that they stepped into open sky and will be swept by the wind or killed by the sun. So this is where a little bit of them. Yeah. So this is where a little bit of the vampire stuff comes in. If you can distract a hag, boo hag long enough,
00:11:47
Speaker
When the sun comes up, if they're not back in their skin suit, they will die by sunlight. Wow. My brother has a blue house. I wonder if that's the right shade of blue. Oh, I wonder if it's paint blue.
00:12:01
Speaker
But yeah, that's basically boohags. I think they're just mostly so scary to me because the imagery of a skinless beast sitting on top of you and you waking up and looking at it and it's just sucking the energy out of you is so horribly nightmarish and really does remind me of like the vampires in Dr. Sleep. Yes. Like that mist, you know. Yes. And just the idea of like a creature having to sustain itself by like sucking the soul from something else.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, feels so creepy. Absolutely. And like somehow like makes more sense in a way than vampires sucking blood. It's like, yeah, sucking out their life force.
00:12:43
Speaker
life force and that's what carries you on. I'm a very dementors kiss. I wonder if that's where JK got some of her inspiration. Maybe. Maybe. I think I said this another week, but I'm really going down this list of local legends from every single state. If you notice I'm hopping from state to state every week, that's why, but this one's from South Carolina. I love it. That's pretty cool. That's so cool and so creepy and I can't wait to see the pictures of them too.
00:13:11
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's horrifying in every possible way. Hey, are you addicted to horror? Well then, subscribe to Horror Addicts on YouTube and get your fix. Everything from Saw to Scooby Doo, we got you. Is your jam elevated horror or is it torture porn?
00:13:36
Speaker
We don't shame or judge. As long as you like horror, we'll be there for you without fudge. We love to review, stream, play, and unbox all things horror. Check out horror addicts on YouTube.
00:13:57
Speaker
Okay, so this week I'm really facing my fears everyone and I am covering the island of the dolls or Spanish I know I know really facing my fears
Island of the Dolls' Haunted History
00:14:11
Speaker
Wait till you see the pictures, they're really unsettling. But in Spanish, I'm going to butcher this, but it is La Isla de las Monecas. I know I butchered it, and I'm sorry, everyone, I should have taken Spanish in high school, not French. Oh, you took French? Oh, terrible choices were made. I thought it would help me with ballet. I don't know what I was thinking. Oh, that's very sweet. Plié, balance. That's all you need to know.
00:14:43
Speaker
But anyway, so this is the legend of how there became an island covered with dolls. I guess I should give you some context. So basically this is an island that's in the confines of Mexico City. So I'll get into it, but this is kind of like the legend of how it became this way.
00:15:06
Speaker
Don Julian Santana Barrera, who was a native of Mexico City, supposedly left his wife and family in the mid-20th century to go off on his own to an island. And it is on
00:15:21
Speaker
Tesulio Lake, and that's technically within the limits of Mexico City, but Barrera supposedly owned the island. It was only one acre. There were three huts on it, and no one really knew why he went off on his own at first, but it kind of, I guess he
00:15:43
Speaker
eventually had a purpose. He was unfortunately not doing well mentally, I'll say. So after he made his way to the island, supposedly he found the body of a young girl drowned in the lake. Oh, no. Very sad. He claimed to have heard the spirit of the girl crying out, I want my doll. And then just as he had heard that, he saw her body, a doll came floating down the canals.
00:16:11
Speaker
And it totally changed his life and kind of messed him up forever. So he was all alone on the island and he started seeing ghosts. And one day he woke up to find all of his crops had died. Another kind of classic with our paranormal stories, I feel, just killing crops. So he tried to save his crops and tried every tactic he knew, but he couldn't save them.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so he took this to mean the land was cursed due to the girl who had died there. And he was just becoming more and more scared over time. He was all alone. So he built an altar in his cabin hoping to appease the spirit, but the spirit still came. So eventually he took the doll that he had found
00:17:04
Speaker
and he hung it from a tree hoping that that would somehow keep this girl, the spirit of the dead girl, happy. But over the next 50 years of his life, he spent his time finding dolls in the trash and either floating down the canal or people even said that he would come into Mexico City and trade to get more dolls. And so he was just hanging all these dolls across the island
00:17:33
Speaker
in various states, so that's the creepy part. So creepy. So obviously, if he was finding dolls in the trash, they weren't in great shape, but he would hang them headless, torso-less, taken apart in other ways. He would never clean them, obviously, because why would you clean them if they're just being hung on a tree, I guess? But they would have missing eyes, missing limbs, covered in dirt, just disgusting, really.
00:18:04
Speaker
And the wind and weather would even, you know, even the ones that he traded for maybe were in nicer shape eventually just were, you know, ruined by the wind and the weather.
00:18:14
Speaker
And he also kept his hut that he lived in filled with the dolls. It's kind of interesting too, when you look at pictures to see kind of the different kinds of dolls. And there are definitely ones that like, you know, he would like put headdresses on or even like sunglasses or other, you know, other accessories, I guess, on all these dolls and some, I guess he was taken care of.
00:18:40
Speaker
It's really sad. Now there are more than a thousand dolls that are hung all the way around the island. So there are kind of doubts surrounding how real his telling of the story is. He was a real man. He really did hang the dolls. But many people, including his own family, think that either he imagined the dead girl
00:19:04
Speaker
or, you know, came up with something to explain why it had this kind of crazy behavior of hanging all these dolls. But I, you know, I think it's clear that something was not well with him mentally. The other kind of interesting part of this whole thing is that even before this story, locals in the town swore to have seen ghosts and heard shadows talking around on this island. I mean, it was an abandoned island. No one else was living there.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I do think the idea of it being cursed or creepy things happening was felt by the locals even before he started hanging the dolls. So I think that's kind of an interesting part of it.
00:19:47
Speaker
And way back to conquistador times, many people would flee to this island and hide on the canals. And a lot of those people were women and children hiding from the conquistadors. And many women even were known to have killed themselves instead of being caught and raped, which I think is just so sad.
00:20:13
Speaker
such a terrifying time, I'm sure, but I can't imagine being faced with that choice. So it was a creepy island regardless of the dolls, but once he got there and started putting all these dolls up, obviously it's a terrifying place. But even when he was still alive, it kind of became a spot that people would visit.
00:20:34
Speaker
So he would welcome visitors, he would show them around, he even started charging a fee for taking photos. So there's another part of me that's like maybe he was a little bit more of a businessman than we're giving him credit for, but it mostly to me seems like a sad story. But in 2001, Barrera passed away. So his body
00:21:00
Speaker
It's all just such a sad story, but so his body was discovered drowned in the canal in the exact place that he had supposedly seen the dead little girl. So whether that was something creepy or paranormal going on and that he ended up in that same spot or whether it was just a sad mentally ill man that really had crafted this whole story, it's a little bit unclear.
00:21:26
Speaker
His great nephew, whose name is Rogelio Sanchez Santana, is actually the guardian of the dolls now. So he, of the parts he believes, he believes that his uncle died of a heart attack and that maybe the spirit of the girl
00:21:45
Speaker
came and dragged him into the water. That's his thought, which I think is so, he's definitely all aboard the selling the paranormal and creepy part of the story. Of course. Of course. So in response to Barrera dying, of course that spurred even more tourists to come and pay tribute
00:22:09
Speaker
And now people to this day still bring dolls of their own and have added to that part of the island, which I think is like so creepy and so cool is that now it's not only the dolls that he had put up, but people from all over the world, you know, come and hang their dolls on the island as well.
Tourist Attraction and Modern Stories
00:22:28
Speaker
So yeah, it's crazy. So the, I guess the situation is now basically is just that
00:22:35
Speaker
Santana, who owns it now, his uncle took over the island after Barrera had died. And then after his death in 2019, now Santana has guardianship of the island. And as I said, he seems much more like all aboard the tourist train. But he and his wife and three children actually choose not to live on the island, of course, again, to probably sell the story. And I think it's probably creepy. Why would you want to live there? I mean, yeah, I'm sure you want to want to raise your children there.
00:23:05
Speaker
A nice home. A nice home on the island of dolls. But obviously, you know, it's a must-see tour location. Many ferries stop there. It's in, you know, ancient Aztec canals. But the craziest thing to me is that there are now several other imitation doll islands.
00:23:25
Speaker
that have popped up in these same canals. So if you watch YouTube videos, there are a lot of people that can't find the real Doll Island, or there's some confusion over whether people have actually been to the right one. There's one guy that's like, I've been here four times, and I keep not going to the right one. And it's wild to think that there are all these other ones that have kind of popped up trying to recreate it.
00:23:54
Speaker
Is it for tourist reasons to make money, do you think? I guess. It's weird. I'm sure the ones that are, yes, imitating it are trying to compete in some way. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I feel weird where I'm like, if I was the real island of dolls, why wouldn't I make it so clear that I'm the real one?
00:24:16
Speaker
But maybe it's hard. Maybe it's hard. And that's the funny thing too. One of the YouTubes I watched was like a guy that was showing an island that had a big sign that was like, we are the real doll island. And it wasn't. It's a trick, but it's, it's really cool. If you watch videos on YouTube or if you see anything, they have these like very brightly colored boats that can take you to this island.
00:24:42
Speaker
There is a small museum with articles from local newspapers about the island and the previous owner, the legend that I talked about. So it has become a tourist location in some ways.
00:24:54
Speaker
Of course, it's also a hot spot for people exploring the paranormal. Even Santana, who is the nephew that I mentioned, he says that he sees shadows on the island. Other visitors have claimed to witness the doll's eyes moving and hearing them talk.
00:25:15
Speaker
But the other kind of interesting part of the story I think is that Santana does say that after he dies, he's not leaving the island to his children. He's leaving the island to the dead. So whether you believe him or not, I don't know what, you know, what will eventually happen. But it's definitely a very creepy location.
00:25:34
Speaker
I clearly would never want to be there or maybe not be there at night, but it's such a weird part of the world. Again, if it is all based on this sad story, it's sad to me that it ended up this way, but it would definitely be a spot to check out if you want to try to catch some ghosts or see some creepy dirty dolls.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of cool. I like the idea of these dolls kind of like being for the dead women and children. Like it's sad, of course, but it also is like a thing of honoring, right? Which I think is like a thing in Mexico of honoring the dead. Yes. Like Dia de los Muertos and like bringing gifts to graves and things like that. It sounds, you know,
00:26:16
Speaker
like, you know, on I was gonna say on brand sounds like part of that culture, like, you know, a more intense level for this, like, particular thing. But I don't know. I know. I can't wait to see pictures of this one. That sounds so spooky.
00:26:33
Speaker
It really is though. I hadn't really thought about it in that way. It does feel like it's coming from that tradition of respecting the dead or honoring the dead, but in this creepy, maybe mentally unstable man's way.
00:26:47
Speaker
Yeah. But also people bringing dolls there, I was like, that's nice. They're supporting it. They're like, let's keep this island decorated in dolls. Yeah. And also dolls representing, you know, obviously dolls are, you know, a representation of humans. So I think that's like another interesting layer. But anyway. Yeah. Wow. Creepy. Spooky stories this week. Well done. Yes. Boo Hags was my favorite.
00:27:17
Speaker
Boo Hags, Island of Dolls. Something's always coming to get you. Always, always. All right. Well, thank you all for listening and we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.
Listener Engagement and Call to Action
00:27:36
Speaker
Do you have a freaky topic you want us to cover on the podcast? We're always looking for new ideas and we want to hear from you. And this week we have a new ask for you, our sweet and strange listeners. We've heard a few of you have had real encounters with the paranormal.
00:27:51
Speaker
If you want to hear your stories read on the podcast, send them to us. Don't be shy. Anything goes. Anything strange, unusual, sinister, spooky. Send them to us on Instagram at sinister sisters podcast or at our email sinister sisters podcast, 666 at gmail.com.