Here’s the last segment of our ghost ship tale. Remember that islanders believe the crew members are brujos, or sorcerers, capable of coming ashore and abducting villagers. They also make pacts with islanders, usually involving a payment of gold. We’ll start with a story that’s reminiscent of the Men in Black saga related to the UFO phenomena, but the flying saucers in this case are…well, read it and see.
Joes Barrientos, a farmer, claims that one night in 1945 a man who he believes was a crew member of the Caleuche came to his door with a message.
“He was tall and thin. He had large eyes and was dressed in a dark suit and tie and black shoes.” The stranger told Barrientos that his mother, who had recently died, had found a box of china and if she had kept her discovery secret, she would have become a wealthy woman and lived to an old age. Instead, she and Barrientos’ sister, brother and several friends had sold the china.
“Because of this, your mother and sister died and so will your brother.” The man gave Barrientos a letter to take to one of another women who he said still had some of the china. Barrientos was told that if the woman didn’t return the goods, she would die and so would her two sons. “You are to give her my message,” the stranger instructed him; “then you are to gather up the remaining pieces of china and leave them in the woods, where we will retrieve them.”
Barrientos delivered the message to the woman the following morning. But when he told her husband found out why he had come, the man turned his dogs loose on Barrientos. Shortly afterward the woman, her two sons and Barrientos’ brother died just as the stranger had predicted.
Barrientos was convinced the deaths were a reprisal because the individuals had kept something that belonged to the Caleuche. “The rest of the people involved saved themselves by throwing the china into the sea,” he said. Flying saucers, indeed!
Chilean writer Cardenas Tabies says the crew members occasionally make pacts with the islanders who act as agents for them. If, for instance, the crew wishes to hold a celebration, the agent arranges the details. He might draw up a contract with one of the villagers, stating that in return for the use of his home and his silence, he will be rewarded with gold.
Other times, crew members supposedly circumvent the agent and directly confront islanders. Elena Guerrero’s first experience with the Caleuche involved what she believed was an attempt by crew members to establish a pact.
“I was young, still living with my parents at the time. Around twilight we saw a brilliantly-colored ship headed toward land. Maybe my parents realized it was the ghost ship because they sent my brothers, sisters and me off to bed. I was the only one who disobeyed.
“Through the window I could see seven seamen approaching the house.”
When the men knocked, her father asked what they wanted. One of them replied: “Water and provisions, and for this you will be well paid in gold.”
Elena heard her father tell the men he would rather be poor the rest of his life than give them even a drop of water. “To this day, I still don’t understand why the mariners didn’t take reprisals against my father.”
While many islanders fear the sight of the Caleuche, Graciela Ruiz, a seamstress of the island of Lemuy near Chiloe, sought out the ghost ship. She claimed that each year on the same date the ship surfaces in the Bay of Lincay near Lemuy. On this particular date in 1976 she and some friends walked to a small hill where they had a view of the bay.
“We hid behind some rocks on a hill because the mariners of the Caleuche can see a great distance, and there we waited. Midnight finally arrived and suddenly we saw a light rising from the depths of the water and it lit up the entire bay. A gigantic ship emerged, bright as gold, and we were so close it was like we were on board.”
Ruiz says she saw an immense salon where men and women were dancing to a majestic orchestra whose music she and her friends heard clearly. The festivities lasted three or four hours, she recalled. Then the day began showing signs of life and the boat started to sink. She claims, “We watched until it vanished beneath the surface. Only then could we leave because it would have been dangerous before.”
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We’ll finish with a personal story from our time on Chiloe. It doesn’t directly involve the Caleuche, as far as we know, but it did involve shape-shifting brujos.
One of the things we noticed was that we didn’t see tourists. It was the off-season, winter, and the island was quiet. So quiet, in fact, that when we walked into a hotel late one afternoon after arriving in the village of Chonchi, the woman behind the counter gasped, as if we’d caught her by surprise and given her a fright. As it turned out, we were the only guests on that cold night.
During our stay in Chonchi, we met Ines Ovando, an English student at the University of Valparaiso. She was on break from classes, visiting her family. She told us a peculiar and eerie story about a powerful brujo, who supposedly had cast a spell on a woman, paralyzing her for ten years. “Two days after the woman died, one of the islanders saw the brujo dig up her body.
“The man said he watched the brujo hang the body upside down. It’s said that the brujos collect body oil from the dead and rub it onto their skin so they can change shapes and fly.” As Ines told us this story, we were walking through town. We looked up at one of the two-story buildings we were passing and saw seven or eight large black birds–possibly a species of vulture–huddled together on the edge of the roof staring down at us, almost as if they were listening. Rob remembers watching the birds on that cold, gray day as Ines finished her story, and feeling as if he were inside an Edgar Allan Poe story.
When we asked Ines if she thought it was possible for brujos to shape shift and fly, she responded: “These things frighten me. But yes, I suppose it’s possible. Many here believe it.”
Ines, who was barely five feet tall, was bundled in heavy clothing to stay warm. She rubbed her hands together, glanced up toward the birds, then said: “Now I must go.” Rob asked where she was going, and her answer was the last thing we expected to hear from this tiny Chilean woman. “I’m going to play basketball.”
With that, she walked off, leaving behind two puzzled Americans wondering where on this island she was going to play basketball…and with whom.
