Myths and Legends of Venezuela

Venezuela is a land of great contrast, from glacial peaks (use to be seven permanent glaciers up to the middle of the past century but only one remains) to exuberant rain forest, home of exotic creatures as the biggest spider in the world, the birtheater goliath spider.
See Australia, you got nothing on us.

Originally inhabited by at least 26 distinct indigenous groups dating back some fifteen thousand years, the country has a rich mixture of cultures since the Spanish colonization in the 16th century and the subsequent incorporation of traditions and religions from slaves brought from Africa, and other European and Asian groups that migrated in the nineteen and early twentieth century; although the majority of the country identifies as catholic, in reality most people have to some extent a syncretic believe system, incorporating elements of all groups that have contributed to the culture of the country.

A big part of my life elapsed in rural areas of the Venezuelan Andes; Andinos are deeply catholic but still the pre-Columbian traditions of the Timoto–Cuica are deeply rooted on their day to day activities, even as most of the current inhabitants don’t share a link to the indigenous population. Oral tradition of spirit living near water sources, witches doing their rituals in waterfalls and many more oral tales are abundant, some of the older folk have a real fear to these places and say their tales with caution; a few kilometers of my home there is a beautiful small lagoon that have some rocks with pre Columbian petroglyph, there is the local legend that it is inhabited by a lady spirit that sometimes grant you wishes but can also be evil depending on her mood.


Indigent comes from the highlands, pretty place called laguna la estrella, but i dint saw any spirit, i learned to not go thru the marsh...

During a particularly rainy season the dirt road leading to our land was getting a mud puddle in a place that was not really annoying or difficult to travel, one day one of the local farmers started to drain the puddle and put rocks to prevent its formation, the old man dint had a car and my family was the only to benefit from it, so we asked why he was doing it and he said it was because evil childlike spirits lives in the puddles (he called them something like wasakos), everyone got fascinating tales of demons, witches and spirits, even I have seen some crazy stuff and my mother had some pretty crazy tales of witches chasing my uncles (probably grandma though any woman after her babies were witches )

So here I present some of the most popular tales in Venezuela, most of them dating back to the 1800s.

La sayona

Predominantly present on the region of los llanos (the plains) the legend of la sayona tells the tale of a young beautiful woman named Melissa from a small town where she was the most beautiful girl, married to a loving husband and mother of a baby boy. She frequently bathe naked in a river where a man started to stalk her and watch her naked from the distance; the stalker continued to follow her around until one day she confronted him and told him to stop and leave her alone.

At that moment, he said he was not a stalking her but just was there to warm her that her husband was having an affair with Melissa´s mother. Melissa ran to her house where she found the husband sleeping with the bay in his arms, blinded by mad rage she burned the house while the neighbors heard the screams of agony of the husband and baby. after doing this she grabbed a machete and when to kill her mother, cutting her belly until she bleed to death; before dying her mom cursed her to a vengeful spirit in search of unfaithful men.

From that time legend tells that she roams the roads in the form of a young desirable woman looking for lonely men, seducing them into remote areas where after, or during, sex she reveal her wretched form and mangles the men to death (or just their genitals on some accounts).

Most of the modern accounts of the tale involve truckers picking the sayona as a hitchhiker, she seduce them and kill them if they are weak and unfaithful. Sometimes in some versions she eats the genitals of the men and left them emasculate, or simply fill the penis of the victims with wards and STD so the wife knows what they did.

Funny, that image looks just like my wife, she also kills me inside

La Llorona

Very similar to la sayona this tale is more widespread in Hispanic culture.
In most versions of The Weeping Woman, a beautiful woman finds out that her husband left her for a younger woman and as revenge she throws her children into a river; after realizing what she has done she drowns herself. In the afterlife she is not allowed to enter heaven until she has found her lost children. Forced to wander the earth for all eternity, searching without avail the lost offspring, she weeps constantly.

In Venezuelan tradition, the woman lived during the colonial period; a Spanish woman had children with an indigenous man. Her brothers found out of the children and consider them aberrations, as indigenous people were mere soulless animals to them, from diabolic origin without religion.

The brothers killed the sons and force her into marriage to a Spanish man, but the woman went mad and run away every night in search of her lost children. Roaming the fields in her white night attire, she wept constantly for the lost children. Soon after she died but peasants can hear her cry until our days.

El silbon

By now you must realize all these tales are the same

A sorrowful spirit of a man that gutted his father after this killed his wife because, according to the father, the women was a tramp and deserve it. After he killed his father, the grandparent tied the man to a tree, whipped him and tossed him to two starving dogs, not before cursing him to roam for all eternity with the bones of his father.

Now the spirit roam the land, very tall and slim, with a straw hat, carrying the bones on a sack, continuously whistling in the key of do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, looking for bones to add to his collection. If you hear his whisper close, there is nothing to be afraid, if you hear him far, he is right next to you and only the crack of a whip or the bark of a dog can save you from death.

Other version says he is very skinny because he was always hungry in life; one day his father went to hunt a deer but could not hunt a single one, so when he arrived home the boy saw no deer, murdered him and skinned the meat of his bones, he then took the meat to his mother that tried to cook it but the meat was always hard, she ask what type of meat it was and when he said it was from the father the woman cursed him, his brother lashed him and commanded a hound to follow him until the end of the world biting his heels.

Obviously, if you are in a remote area you should totally try to mimic the whistle to see if you can scare a superstitious local

Aguirre the Tyrant

A tale from margarita island, narrates the story of a pirate, that one day disembarked in the island pretending to be a merchant in need of help, after he received all the help the locals could give, he raped, killed and burnt most of the island inhabitants and buildings for days, in a drunken binge after there was no more women to rape, he raped and killed his own daughter. After the effect of the alcohol passed, realizing what he did, he took his own life, but his soul was condemn to roam the land for all eternity.


In some forms of the tale he roams in an infernal horse, dragging heavy chains and it can be heard at nights. In others, his fiery souls takes the form of a fireball hovering the fields.

Many witness have given testimony of the fireball, sometimes not in the context of the of the Aguirre tale, but other legends, sometimes just as something that may be a legit natural phenomenon.


An unrelated true natural phenomena, still not well understood occurring in Venezuela is the Catatumbo lightning, an atmospheric phenomenon that only occurs in the mouth of Catatumbo river where it joins lake Maracaibo. On a 140 to 260 nights a year there are lighting discharge on a rate of 280 times per hour. Currently the region holds the record Guiness of most lightning per square kilometer in a year, and its believe to be an important source of ozone.


Dr Knoche

Not a ghost or evil spirit, August Gottfried Knoche was a German doctor and surgeon, that emigrated to Venezuela in 1840s to an already established German colony, for years he was a regular doctor of some success, enough to allow him to build a wealthy compound in the coast of Venezuela, some of the structures still stand to this day even as it was abandoned after his death more than 100 years ago.

The weirdness starts when he started to play with a mummification method.

during the Federal War, when many bodies were brought from the battlefields, he became fascinated with the process of decomposition and began experimenting on unclaimed corpses, which he took on muleback to his laboratory at Buena Vista. Soon, he devised a fluid that could be injected into the veins and preserve the cadaver without having to remove the organs.

Many rumors about his experiments circulated, giving rise to a popular apocryphal anecdote: The family of Tomás Lander, a journalist and politician, heard about his fluid and asked him to mummify Lander. After finishing the process, with the corpse elegantly dressed and groomed, he placed it at a desk in the entryway of his (Lander's) house, where it remained for forty years

In preparation for Knoche's own death, he concocted the proper dosage and entrusted it to his nurse (and possibly cousin) Amalie Weismann. She carried out this commission faithfully, and remained at Buena Vista until her death in 1926 at the age of eighty-eight when, in accordance with her wishes, she was also placed in the mausoleum. As she became more reclusive, locals began to refer to her as the "Witch of Ávila" and she was said to have the power to talk to birds.

en.wikipedia.org...

His formula was lost to history. Mummies in Venezuela, who knew.

There are many other minor legends that over time I may add, but of greater importance is the cult of María Lionza.

María Lionza

According to the legends, María Lionza was born in 1802 to an Indian chef from the region of Yaracuy. A statue on the Francisco Fajardo Highway in Caracas by the Venezuelan sculptor, Alejandro Colina, portrays her as a well-endowed and strong woman, riding a large tapir, and holding a female pelvis, to represent fertility. It is said that she reigned over the savage beasts, and in her throne were indigenous animals like turtles and snakes. She is said to still live on the mountain of Sorte, where her followers come to pay homage to her, calling her their "Queen." Because of the tradition, the mountain of Sorte was declared a National Park in the 1980s.

The name María Lionza comes from Santa María de la Onza ("Saint Mary of the Jaguar"), from the full name "Santa María de la Onza Talavera del Prato de Nívar" given by the Catholic Church to Christianize the religion. Eventually the name was contracted to "María Lionza".

Nothing Christian about the cult, in the sacred (for them) mountain of Sorte they practice the cult, similar to Santeria, the people claim to be incorporated by spirits in bloody rituals. The cult has a strong following in the country and it is said the late Chavez was a devote follower, until he started to prefer Cuban santeros, this believe in the supernatural may have killed him, as he may have delayed cancer treatment in order to try spiritual healing, but the illness was never well documented and everything concerning the actual type of cancer, or treatment is still a state secret (after all the government claims from time to time USA killed Chavez with a secret weapon).

A long report about the cult if you are interested,
www.nytimes.com...

and a graphic video in Italian (best I could find)
www.youtube.com...

With this I hope to give you something fresh and somewhat different to what is usually found in ATS nowadays.
Most of the illustration comes from this link
mitosleyendasdevenezuela.blogspot.com.es...

Also I'm trying to learn how to format prettier but I still need some help, like for example how to center the images, or leave some space between the text and the side images, also how to properly place captions under the image when i place to the sides, any help would be appreciated.

I see you're asking the same question as I. This thread and the ETH thread..
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Are the best written and formatting I've seen in weeks.
I applaud this great thread

That's not red paint.
and a graphic video in Italian (best I could find)
www.youtube.com...


Whoops i hit reply by accident 😅



Edit Edit: third edit.... S&F

a reply to: Bigburgh

Hey thanks!

Now that I remember there was an episode of lonely planet in Venezuela and the guy went to sorte, perhaps that was a better video, but yea that is not paint...

Some people pay big money to get something done by the brujos, if the pay is right I would have no problem to smoke some tobacco on your face, spit some rum and smack you with some branches to do some spiritual cleansing

a reply to: Indigent

S&f late Read

What I know of Venezuela first hand is the women are smokin hottt!!!

La Llorona

This sounds like a legend they have in Texas of an old woman/ghost near rivers that will abduct your children or some such thing.

a reply to: CB328

It seems to be popular in mexico, its a tale to scare kids about wandering near rivers.

I have Mexican and Mexican American friends in California, when we were younger they would talk about a weeping woman who floats around on the water and would snatch you up or something. Pretty funny seeing you guys talk about that.

All I know, which is really nothing about the place itself since I doubt it was actually filmed there, about Venezuala, is that, in the movie Arachnaphobia (sp?) that's where they are in the beginning of the movie, where the deadly spider hitches a ride back home to the US, inside the coffin of the man bitten and killed by same spider, feeding off his corpse during the journey, and then, proceeds to mate with a common house spider, magically producing about 1million full grown deadly serial killer spiders...

And of course in your intro, you had to drag those childhood nightmares back up to the surface by BRAGGING about Venezuala having the largest spiders (maybe why the writers/producers chose that location for the film) and then showing a PICTURE of one!

a reply to: 3n19m470

I dont know why left out all the text in my post after the emoticon, it just cut off right there. I had a paragraph thanking you for the thread and congratulating your formatting... Oh well, SnF! Even though spiders scare the life force out of me lol! Note to self:next time skip the dumb emoticon

Now i realize i had yet another paragraph missing after the emoticon. Ill reconstruct it as best as i can remember:

I'm surprised there aren't any tales around there about killer spiders... Heck, the tales of mere human spirits are probably to distract the people from the real danger living amongst them, the freaking face-hugger spiders! Or, let me guess, they probably worship them there and the locals sacrifice a tourist to be eaten alive by them on special holidays? Lol

a reply to: 3n19m470

The intro was actually shot in Venezuela, one of the few movies portraying Venezuela that was actually shot there, the spiders were from new Zealand

Gonna watch that movie again today, thanks for remind me of it.

La Llorona in particular is common here, as well as out in the baja part of the continent. It seems to pervade latin culture, i guess.

interesting. If the plains indians use the same name for the same character, and that name is the same spanish name....id be interested to see how this ended up happening.

ATS should allow to edit op more, i tried to proof it this time and still is so poorly written, additionally to all the extra, unnecessary words, things don't make sense, like

Soon after she died but peasants can hear her cry until our days.

Should be " she died soon after, but peasants can hear her cry until our days."

Some day ill get it right

a reply to: Indigent

I think your English is so much better than my Spanish.

Honestlly, its only people ignorant people who would make fun of someone being able to read/write in 2 languages.

I thought your OP was well written and easy enough to read. The mistakes only remind me how lucky we re to have access to international audiences learned enough in English to share their perspectives. Seriously.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Thanks man.

Myths about Venezuela:
1) The country is running out of food. The shelves are empty! - This is a fraud proposed by the EU as they proposed this exact same fraud during the 80s about the Soviet Union.

2) People are protesting in the street against Maduro! - That's a fraud! EU stooges are orchestrating riots to destabilize the government as the EU used to do for the whole 20th century in south america.

3) There's a color revolution about to happen! - This is the wet dream of the EU for a new "arab spring" in south america and in some other places (Turkey and South Korea)! That is only a EU's dream/hallucination.
The EU will lose all influence on these countries within 2017, and this time they can't even reliably start wars in them because they are way too far. So once the subversion fails, everything fails.