The Witch Trials of Chiloé

0:24 Pig. Wel friend, it's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way, I am still your host and you are still listening to Susstol, the podcast of paranormal folklore from Latin American culture is Welcome back. Thank you for returning from the other side. And if this is your first time, welcome, thank you for being here. No, don't worry, You're not that late. It's okay, it's only been six years. Have a seat, It's fine. I was just thinking about that earlier this week. Has it been six or five? I'll need to check someone fact check me, but it may have been six already, which means this April will be seven six seven, I don't know. It could also very well be five to six and that was just an embarrassing waste of a joke. Anyway, thank you so much for being here. Quick updates before we get into this episode.

1:09 So the new book club book has been announced for the month of March. We are reading Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, who, if you know anything about me, you know is one of my favorite authors. I've read so many of his other books. I actually have had this book for a very long time. It's upstairs I can't show you right now, but I have this book and I got it signed by Grady because Jeff and I went to an event that he did in San Antonio a couple months ago, and he essentially was presenting all of the research that he did for the book, and that presentation alone, that talk could have been its own like touring thing that he did without the book existing. But knowing that that all existed because of the book makes me really excited to read it. And I think if you have never done the Sustol book Club, or if you're looking for an excuse to read this book, that would be it. I can't make any promises. I haven't read it. I've had it for months literally sitting on my pile, and we finally have the opportunity to read it because you, the voters Patreo subscribers have access to vote for what we read, so but participating in the book club itself. It's free and open to anybody, So if you want to, you can check out the socials for those posts. That's at Sustal podcast on every platform for any anmal updates on the show like the book club. Again, this month, we are reading Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendricks, Grab your copy, go to the library, whatever you got to do, and then stay tuned on social media for meeting details toward the end of the month. One more announcement is that the Strange and Extraordinary Fest is happening. You may have remembered I

2:42 was promoting this a while back and it had to get postponed. But it's happening towards the end of this month, So March twenty eighth at KMFA Studios here in Austin from eleven forty five am to seven forty five pm. It is a day full of really really cool things, really cool people. There are VIP experiences happening a little earlier than eleven forty five and a bit after seven forty five, so there's gonna be panels markets. I am also speaking on a panel. I'm actually am seeing this event, which I'm very excited for. So you can get your tickets by visiting Strange and Extraordinaryfest dot com. And there's also an option for a virtual attendance, so if you can't make it in person for whatever reason, you can get a virtual ticket so that you can watch and listen to those panels online. So there's something for everyone. Obviously, if you can make it in person, it would be so fun for everyone to come out. Let's hang out, watch me be a gester on stage or what have you, and check out the panels. It's going to be really cool.

3:39 It's a great lineup and I'm very excited for this. As always end before we get into today's episode. You can support SUSTAL in many different ways, but one of them is by engaging with the show whereveryon are listening, so that means leaving positive ratings and reviews and comments, comments like this one from Savanna Rodriguez on the Dancing with the Double episode. Savanna said, OMG, I'm columbs and specifically from Cali, and there's a super similar story about the Devil appearing at a nightclub in a known area for nightclubs back in the day called Juanchito Sevana. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. If I think this comment was left on the original Dancing with the Devil episode, which has since been resurrected or remastered, whatever you want to call it, I know for sure in the updated version I do talk about the different variations and the different places that it's happened, not only across Texas, but across the nation and even across the world. Thanks sure to check that one out. I haven't heard about this one, so I'm excited to look more into this version, specifically in this place called Juanchito, because we know of El cam and San Antonio, we know of Bocaccio two thousand in McAllen. I think I forgot what it was called, but there was a place, I want to say, somewhere in San Marcos. I'm excited to check out this specific version. Anyway, Thank you so much to Leabana for that comment. And one more thing I know I said we're about to but this is, you know, typical reminders every time. Please send in your stories to me. You can do so by visiting my website or visiting my link tree and clicking the submit story button so that they can be featured on a Letters from the Beyond episode. They get the full Soustal treatment with music, sometimes sound effects, and it doesn't just have to be a written story. If

5:11 you have multimedia, so a video of photo, an EVP, please feel free to send those in and I will find a way to feature them either on an episode or on social media. Now we can get into the story really quick. Disclaimer. I'm not sure if you can hear it, but I feel like my voice may sound a bit off, which is podcasters nightmare. But my allergies have been dragging me through the mud, so if I sound off, please forgive me. I'm trying my best. This is the best I've felt in a couple days. Hopefully it's not too noticeable. I hope this isn't one of those situations where you didn't even notice it until I said something and then I just spoiled it. But hopefully not. I got my water here. I'm trying hard to stay hydrated and clear voiced, so hopefully it doesn't interfere too much with this episode. But if you do notice something and you're wondering what is going on, it's ced or fever.

6:01 The Central Texas allergies are my enemy and they want me dead. But I will be getting an allergy shot this week, so hopefully that works, and if not, I'm just gonna have to sleep for like the next two months. Anyway, Let's get into today's episode, which is all about the witch trials of Chiloe. The first testimony does not begin with a crime. It begins with a transformation. A witness, voice shaking, tells the court that men removed their ordinary clothes and put on something else, a macune of but not made of wool, not made of leather, made from the skin of the dead. He says it had been taken from a corpse, flayed, carefully treated, preserved. When tied around the shoulders, it clung like a second body. When the wearer whispered certain words, secret words, the garment would stiffen, swell and lift. Then the brujo would fly. Another witness

7:35 claims he saw them pass across the moon, not walking and not climbing. Flying. The brujo's arms are tight to their sides, legs rigid, faces expressionless, and they did not travel alone. They traveled in groups. The court clerk records testimony describing how the Brujos got gathered at night along the coasts of the Chiloe Archipelago. They stood in a circle. They spoke in vocations, not in Spanish, but in words. The witnesses did not recognize indigenous phrases, fragments of something older.

8:18 Then they disappeared into the sky. Another man describes the cave. He says it is hidden in the cliffs, accessible only at low tide, Its entrance sealed by enchantment. Only the Brujos members of Larechta Provincia knew how to open it. Outsiders could not inside. He claims there were chambers lit without candles, a council table carved from stone, shelves lined with jars containing powders and bones, and guarding the entrance. Something worse the vucce. The testimony describes it as a child stolen in infancy. Its limbs are deliberately broken and reset backwards. One leg twisted over its shoulder, the other fused at the knee. Its head rotated so that it could not face forward, and its tongue split to produce inhuman grunts and cries fed raw flesh taught to obey.

9:26 Its purpose was solely to guard the cave, attack intruders and silence traders. One witness claims he heard it before he saw it, a wet, choking rasp echoing from inside the rock. Another says the creature did not walk, it dragged. The court records these statements without comment, but they continue. The Brujos witnesses insist could transform into animals black dogs with burning eyes, owls that watched from church towers, seabirds that circled fishing boats before disaster. They could enter homes unseen, slipping through keyholes as mist. They could cause illness by burying small packets of enchanted earth beneath a threshold. A farmer testifies that after he angered a member of the Rector Provincia, his livestock began dying one by one. No wounds, no explanation, just collapse. A woman claims her child wasted away after she refused to pay for healing services. She says she saw Brujo standing outside her window at night, though when her husband opened the door there was no one there, only the acrid night air. These aren't medieval documents.

10:56 They are sworn testimonies recorded in eighteen eighty in a courtroom in southern Chile. This is the story of the trial of the so called witches of Chiloe, the men of the Recta Provincia, and the modern state that decided they had to disappear. Long before there were courtrooms in Ankoud, long before Chile declared itself a republic, there were already laws here before Spanish sales appeared on the horizon. In the sixteenth century. The islands of the Chiloe Archipelago were home to the indigenous communities, most prominently the huiliche A southern brand of the Mapuche cultural world. They were not scattered tribes wandering without structure. They were organized societies. They farmed potatoes hundreds of varieties, adapted to rain and cold soil.

11:54 They fished in dugout canoes carved from native forests. They traded across islands and onto the mainland. They had territorial authorities, kinship systems, spiritual leaders, and mechanisms for resolving conflict. Power did not come from a distant capital. It came from reciprocity, from lineage, from spiritual knowledge. The Wilicha worldview did not divide the world into natural and supernatural. The forest, the sea, illness, storms, all were relational. If someone fell sick, the cause might not be bacteria. It might be an imbalance, a broken relationship, an unseen force, and there were specialists trained to restore that balance, healers, ritual authorities, interpreters of dreams. When Spanish colonizers arrived in the fifteen hundreds, they did not encounter an empty frontier, they encountered a living, thriving Cisam. Over time, Catholic missions were established, churches rose, many of which still stand today. Spanish law arrived, and new hierarchies formed, but Chiloe remained geographically isolated, cut off by rough seas and dense forest. Colonial authority was thin. Indigenous and Mestiezel traditions did not disappear. They intertwined. Out of that cultural braid

13:30 emerged something new. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, what later authorities would call the erecta provincia had taken shape. And in that world, the erecta provincia wasn't just a coven. It functioned as something closer to a shadow government from within the community. These were not witches, because when we imagine witches, we imagine monsters. But these men were neighbours. They harvested crops in the rain, They buried their dead in the same cemeteries as their accusers. They navigated the same tides. They married, they raised children, they attended mass, and at night they performed rituals. To call them brujos witches is to adopt the language of the accusation. In practice, many functioned as mediators. If two families disputed land, livestock, or marriage arrangements, a member of the Recta Provincia might arbitrate.

14:34 If someone believed they had been harmed, spiritually, Abrujo might prescribe herbs, prayers or ritual acts meant to counteract malice. This was not chaos. It was governance, just not the governance recognized by Santiago. Historical records and oral traditions suggest that the Recta Provincia developed an internal structure that mirrored political organization, territories named after major cities, ranks within the group, even symbolic titles suggesting sovereignty, a parallel republic, and in a place where the Central Chilean State had limited presence, that system worked. People trusted it, feared it perhaps, but also relied on it. So when the state later described the Rechta Provincia as a criminal conspiracy, it was not simply dismantling superstition. It was dismantling an institution that had legitimacy in the eyes of many islanders. To the governor, it looked like sedition. To villagers, it might have looked like order. And that difference, that gap in perception is where the conflict begins. By eighteen eighty, Chile was not a fragile, young republic. It was an expanding power. Just one year earlier, the country had entered the War of the Pacific, a brutal conflict against Peru and Bolivia over nitrate rich desert territory. In the north, Chilean troops pushed

16:08 across borders. Ports were seized, provinces absorbed. Expansion was not subtle, it was policy, and this outward surge was paired with something equally aggressive at home. In the south, the Chilean state had already carried out what it called the Pacification of aro Gania, a military campaign to conquer and incorporate Mapucha territory that had resisted Spanish rule for centuries. Indigenous lands were confiscated, communities were confined to reductions. Traditional authority structures were dismantled or subordinated to Santiago. The message was clear.

16:50 There would be one law, one sovereignty, one republic. Remote enclaves with autonomous power structures were not romantic curiosities. They were threats, and that brings us to the island's governor. In eighteen eighty, Luis Martiniano Rodriguez. Archival records suggest Rodriguez was not a superstitious man. He did not believe in flying cloaks or demonic guardians in caves, but he did believe in order, and he believed the state's authority in Chiloe was dangerously thin. The archipelago was geographically isolated, communication with Santiago was slow, Local loyalties ran deep, and rumors circulated that members of the Erecta Provincia were sheltering army deserters, men who had fled service during wartime in the context of national mobilization. That was no small accusation. If true, it meant that this so called secret society was not just mediating local disputes, it was interfering with national war efforts.

17:59 Rodri Ugaz reportedly understood something critical. He did not need to prove that witches could fly, transform and cast spells. He needed to prove that crimes had been committed. Even if he suspected that not every member of the Recta Provincia was guilty of murder or poisoning, he recognized that dismantling the organization required legal justification. Find enough evidence of tangible crimes, illegal association, homicide, conspiracy, and the structure itself could be destroyed. The mythology could be tolerated, the autonomy could not. From the perspective of Santiago, Chiloe was no longer a distant island with charming folklore. It was a jurisdiction, and during wartime expansion, jurisdictions must be controlled. Chile in the eighteen eighties was building a modern nation state, centralized, militarized, and unified. But modern nation states do not share sovereignty.

19:03 Rodriguez's crackdown was not a medieval witch hunt. It was an administrative conquest. Arrests began quietly, interrogations followed, and once testimony started flowing about flying brujos, about Invunce's guarding secret courts, the state found something even more useful than proof of harboring deserters. It found a narrative, a story so strange, so unsettling, that it could justify intervention in the name of public order. And perhaps that was the most powerful weapon of all, because once the machinery of the state begins to move, it rarely stops at myth. It searches for conviction. Once the arrests are made the state decides that it will not prosecute witchcraft. There will be no theological debate about demons, no legal arguments about supernatural Instead, the men of the Erecta Provincia are charged with crimes that exist squarely inside modern law, illegal association, attempted poisoning, homicide, and extortion. And that distinction matters because once the sensationalism is stripped away, some of the accusations are not mythic at all. They are frighteningly practical. Several key witnesses claim to be former members of the Erecta Provincia, men who say they once participated in the rituals, who once stood

20:35 in the cave, swore the oaths, but who now regret it. They describe an organization that over time changed what may have once functioned as a governance and healing structure had, according to these witnesses, become something coercive. They testified that members began demanding payments from farmers, protection money if a family refused, Livestock might fall ill, crops might mysteriously fail, a barn might burn in the middle of the night. Whether the destruction was supernatural or deliberate hardly mattered. To the victims, their fear was real. One former member tells the court that the Erecta Provincia maintained authority not only through belief, but through intimidation. If someone challenged a ruling, they might be marked. And here the testimony shifts. There are allegations of attempted poisonings, powders slipped into drinks, bitter infusions mixed into stews, livestock feed tampered with. There are accusations of contract killings. Witnesses claim that certain members accepted payment to eliminate enemies, whether through ritual curse or physical violence.

21:53 In some accounts, the method was direct, a beating staged as an accident, a drowning blamed on the tip. In others, the cause of death was ambiguous and interpreted through the lens of witchcraft. And this is where the courtroom becomes a battleground between two realities. On one side, fantastical imagery men flying under moonlight, the invunce guarding a subterranean council chamber, secret kingdoms named after distant cities. On the other, recognizably human crimes, blackmail, violence, murder. The prosecution leans heavily on the latter It argues that the mythology served as camouflage, that fear of supernatural retaliation allowed the organization to operate without resistance, that belief was the weapon. But there is a complication. Many of the most damning accusations come from self described former members, men who may have been under pressure, men who may have sought leniency, men who may have reshaped their own roles to avoid harsher punishment. And woven through even these criminal allegations are supernatural threads. The judge listens the clerk rights, and the Chilean state does something very modern. It separates the story from the statute. The court does not ask whether the invuncea exists. It asks

23:26 whether someone administered poison. It does not ask whether flight is possible. It asks whether threats were made. But in practice the line is not so clean, because fear of magic may have been the mechanism that enabled very real crimes. Or, and this is the unsettling possibility, accusations of crime may have been amplified by a state determined to dismantle a rival authority. Was the erecta provincia a spiritual governance network corrupted by opportunists? Was it always a chorus of structure hiding behind ritual, or were some crimes exaggerated, folded into myth to justify destroying the entire institution. The courtroom never fully answers those questions. It only delivers verdicts, and those verdicts which change Chiloe forever. When the guilty verdicts are finally delivered, the courtroom does not erupt. There are no screams, no dramatic confessions, just sentences. The Chilean court avoids the language of sorcery. It convicts on crimes the republic recognizes.

24:40 Two members of the Dekhta Provincia are found guilty of manslaughter, accused of involvement in death tied to the organization's eternal enforcement, and alleged contract violence. Each receives a sentence of fifteen years in prison. Ten additional men are convicted not of murder, but of belonging to a assosacion ilicita, an unlawful society. Their crime is membership itself. Their sentences vary one and a half years three years, terms long enough to dismantle livelihoods, severe reputations, and fracture families. Others receive shorter sentences for related offenses, intimidation, conspiracy, participation in what prosecutors frame as racketeering operations. The court accepts testimony that the Erecta Provincia demanded payment from farmers in exchange for protection refusal. Witnesses claim led to destroyed crops, dead livestock, threats whispered in the dark. In the official record, the fantastical elements fade.

25:48 There is no conviction for flying, no statute against the creation of invuncees. But here's the problem. Much of the prosecution's case rests on the words of in prison and men, self described former members who were motivated to comply with the prosecution with hopes of leniency. Beyond these testimonies, there is little physical evidence. No bodies exhumed with confirmed poison, no financial ledgers documenting systematic extortion, no cave discovered with an invuncea chained at its mouth. As appeals move forward, higher courts begin to scrutinize the process. Gradually, sentences begin to unravel, convictions are overturned, penalties are reduced. Some of the accused are released early, but history is not decided only in appellate courts. By the time these men walk free.

26:43 The damage is done. The arrests have shattered the internal structure of the Recta Provincia. Public fear has intensified. Members have been exposed, stigmatized, divided. The parallel court system, the healing network, the shadow governance structure, collapses under the weight of scrutiny and imprisonment. Even if some convictions fail, the organization does not recover. The Chilean Republic did not need to prove the existence of witches. It only needed to break the institution, and in that sense it succeeds. By the early eighteen eighties, the state's authority in the Chilauea Archipelago is no longer symbolic. It is absolute. Court's answer to Santiago law flows from the capitol. The cave, real or imagined no longer governs the republic does. Today, the Chilauea Archipelago looks peaceful. Wooden churches painted in soft pastels rise above fishing villages. Ferries move steadily between islands. Children walk to school along paved roads that did not exist in eighteen eighty. The Chilean state govers re here, now fully, bureaucratically, permanently.

28:05 The Wilicha people remain too. They organize, advocate, preserve language and ritual. Their cosmology, shaped by centuries of adaption, continues in quieter or private ways. The old stories are told at festivals, in classrooms, in homes. Officially, the recta provincia is gone. There is no parallel court system, no formal council in a cave, no registered, unlawful society operating beyond the reach of the republic. And yet ask quietly enough, in the right place and the story's surface, some Islanders still say the Brujos never disappeared. They adjusted, They stopped gathering openly. They stopped naming provinces after distant capitals. They stopped speaking of councils and kingdoms. But they did not stop existing. There are islanders who swear they've seen the lights over the water on moonless nights, moving against the wind.

29:14 There are elders who insist that even now, certain men in certain villages never seem to age quite like the rest. And then there is the ship, the Caluche, the ghost vessel long woven into Chilote mythology, sometimes described as the transport of witches across the archipelago. Witnesses claim to see it shimmering offshore, a fully lit ship gliding silently across black water, music drifting from its decks, only to vanish in mist. They say. The Brujos still use it to gather, to travel, to conduct business beyond the visible world. And when something inexplicable happens, when a healthy family member suddenly falls gravely ill, when livestock die without a clear cause, when a crop fails despite careful tending. There are those who do not call it coincidence. They call it retaliation, or balance, or unfinished business. It has been nearly one hundred forty years since the arrests of eighteen eighty, one hundred and forty years since the Chilean state dismantled the known structure of the Recta Provincia. But belief does not dissolve with the verdict. It does not disappear with an overturned sentence. Institutions can collapse, power structures can be broken,

30:48 but myth, especially myth rooted in reality, is far harder to extinguish. Perhaps the Brujos were only ever men, farmers, carpenters, healers, caught between two legal systems. Or perhaps the state dismantled the visible hierarchy, while something older, quieter, and more patient simply receded into the forest. Because of witches truly existed in Chiloe, why would they continue to announce themselves. Welcome back, well friends, thank you so much for listening to that episode.

31:45 I really really enjoyed this one. I am always all about anything witchy like this also teetered on the edge of conspiracy true crime. So yeah, I was really really into this episode. I was really when we came across the topic. And so we're going to dive into the sources here. The first one we have is from you guessed it, good old Wikipedia. This one gives a lot of good background before we dive into the Erecta Provincia and the Mayoia, which we're not really mentioning the story, but I'm excited to get into it. But anyway, this is good background that I want to go over. It covers some terms and some things that we will be referencing. This is talking about the Galuche, and this says the Galuche, also called the Mariner, Ship of Art, ship of Fire, ghost ship, or Ship of the Witches, is a legendary ghost ship from the mythology of Chiloe and southern Chile.

32:35 So we did mention that it's a ghost shrip, but there are some key details that I want to mention here. This continues. The legend of the Galuche is related to many aspects of the history and beliefs of the Chiloete Archipelago. I had such a hard time with that word archipelago because I want to say archipelago, but it's archipelago. I believe that's what the Google pronunciation gave me, so hopefully I said it right each time. I'll figure that out in the edit. But yeah, anyway, this continues. Among the various hypotheses proposed regarding the origin of the legend, it has been suggested that it may be a reinterpretation of the European legend of the ghast ship known as the Flying Dutchman, which, as we know now, even with this story itself, is very likely the influence of European mythology, European folklore. It happened in like the practice of witchcraft, and I'll unpack that a bit more too. So it can also happen, as we know with the legend, as it happens to many other legends, right It has also been argued that it was based on real events, such as the expeditions to the Strait of Magellan. Another possibility is that the legend is based on the arrival of Dutch privateers to the Archipelago archipelaga, including the one led by Bautasad de Gorddes, an expedition that briefly captured the island in sixteen hundred. Yet another interpretation maintains that it was originally simply a fabrication to conceal smuggling operations in the Chiloette Archipelago. There are also those who link its origin to the phenomenon of usos or unidentified submerged objects, so not in the air, but in the water or

34:06 maybe in the dirt, subterranean submerged anyway, So essentially, yeah, this is it's a ghost ship. And when we scroll down here and also direct links will be on these seust to Google docs on Patreon, But this talks about there's a section here it says magical transport ship of the Witches of Chilowe, which is like, oh, yeah, this is exactly why this is included here, right. It says as widespread as the idea that it is a ship of the dead and of enslaved sailors. Is the version that it is also a magical vessel in which the sorcerers of Chilawe hold their celebrations and transport goods. After this voyage, the sorcerers return from a journey they make every three months to improve their magical abilities. So it's kind of like a work retreat, right. They're like, hey, border directors are going on a retreat a cruise basically, right, to improve their magical abilities, which I would love to go on that cruise, but without all the crime this says. However, it is said that only the sorcerers can board it and only using the chilo Es seahorse as their means of transport, since by order of the Miya Loobo, it is forbidden for other beings to board it or to access the ship by any other means. Okay, a couple things to touch on here. So it says that it can only be boarded by the sorcerers using a Chilos seahorse.

35:18 So this is not just like a regular seahorse. This is a mythical, mythological seahorse, right, It's like a It's not you know, the cute little seahorse that we see floating around, not the seahorse in our hippocampus, as we learned from doctor Floydas in the last episode. Shout out doctor floydas. But it's like a it's a mythological creature that they I guess it's like the ferry boat that they take to the Kalucha. This this ghost ship and but only brujos, only shaman. And I'll just use the general English term, which is can use these things to get onto that boat, right, And then it says by the order of the Miyaalobo, which I looked into here, that's another mythological creature from Chiloei mythology. And it's like a sea line in sort of merman sort of thing, So imagine a merman but with the sea lion, not like a fish. So lots of different Listen, the Chilawet mythology is so rich and so deep. Do not be shocked if we do a dive into a bunch of these other stories. You're gonna probably hear some of these things in the future because they're all really cool. But yes, that's one of them. But this also references the the invunche I wanted to talk about this. So scrolling back up a bit, it says about the sailors, beny believe that the sailors on this ship have one leg attached to their spine, like the invunche. However, others describe them as very well presented people, wearing special clothing, and when greeting them, one shakes a very cold hand. In general, they're polite in their dealings, and with the help of their collaborators at sea, they rescue shipwrecked sailors. Some believe

36:49 that their final destination is the City of the Caesars, a wondrous place nestled somewhere in the Andes Mountains where its residents live eternally. So yeah, they're saying that the sailors that are on here on this ship, these ghost sailors, right, they have some form of physical disfigurement. And I'm using that word because we're gonna there's a source that we found here that honestly, like it made my stomach drop. I'm using the word disfigurement as like unintentional, as a deliberate thing, like they were disfigured, like something happened to these people. It also says somewhere in here that this ship is used to basically like collect souls of sailors that were that lost their lives at sea. So I don't know if it's by punishment or if it's just a you know, you just happen to die at sea, then you get all access passed to the Klucha right to this ship. But yeah, there's a lot of mythology around this ship alone, but some of the other things here.

37:42 It talks about magic ship, Home of the Dead at the at Sea, cursed Ship of enslaved sailors and fishermen. We talked about the transport of the Witches of Chilouette magic smuggling ship, So like the Witches of Chili can use this ship to smuggle goods and items, and I'm assuming other people because like we mentioned, it's very very exclusive access to this ship. Not anybody can get on it. So then you would think like, yeah, then you can use it to smuggle whatever you can think of smuggling on a ghost ship, right, And some say that it is also a conscious being that this ship has its sort of like autonomy, It has a mind of its own. So that was one thing that was referenced in the story that I wanted to make sure that we understood what that was. Right now, we can go into the general kind of legend of the Warlocks of Chiloe or the Witches of Chiloe. This says the and this is another Wikipedia entry. It says the Warlocks of Chiloe or the Brucos. The Chiloe or Brucos Chilotes are people of the Chiloe Archipelago said to practice witchcraft linked to Chilote mythology.

38:45 The source of their witchcraft is often attributed to a legendary encounter between Basque navigator Jose de Moala Imontero and Huiliche Machi Chipila Chipila. This is a person. And again there are a bunch of words that I'm gonna have to break down here because I was reading this and I was like, I need to know, I need to understand what all these things are because I don't just know them off the top of my head. Right. So, Chilpila is an individual person. She's like an individual character. And she is a wilicha machi Wlisia is the people. She is a machi, which is like a shaman. So she is a shaman of the Wilicha people and her name is Chilpila. Does that make sense? So Machi is her title as the shaman, Kuilicha is her culture, her people, and her name is Chipila. Okay, got it? So what happened?

39:32 Here's here's the tea. Here's the gossip for this story is that this navigator, he was a cartographer, so he's a map maker. He showed up here to Chiloe to create maps and he had an encounter with with a machi, with Chilpila, and it's apparently documented because he was a real person that he wanted to encounter Amachi. But this encounter specifically, this event was not documented, so who knows right what the truth is. But the legend is that he went head to head with Chipila, who again is a Huilichi Machi. She is a shaman of the Huilicha people, and basically challenged her magic and was like I don't believe it, or maybe like didn't think she had any like real strong power, and she ended up proving it, it said. Chipila is said to have defeated Moraalela in a duel of witchcraft, obtaining a book of European magic as a reward. So after she defeated him, it said that she like, I think, like left his ship stranded or something, and that was his being like, okay, yeah, you got me. That he gave her this book of European magic. And so that essentially is where the Aedekta Provincia is formed. In that moment, the electa provincia is formed with the combination the melding, if you will, of traditional indigenous like spiritual practices and European magic. This continues.

40:56 Belief in witchcraft was common in the archipelago, reaching such Influen's that in eighteen eighty Chilean authorities put warlocks on trial, who they claimed ruled the archipelago through a secret society, right, and that was this whole story. This continues here. Though popular belief was attributed to the sorcerers of Chilawe complex organization, the help of magical creatures and numerous powers and weaknesses. It says that the warlocks are said to have had a secret society called La Rechta Provincia or La Mayoria. Now this is a different thing. La Mayoria is essentially it's like the governing council, if you will. It is the governmental body within the Recta Provincia. So if you were to think about it, you could say, the decta provincia is this kind of like shadow government, this dual government that exists, or not even it's just government that existed on its own before the colonizers really truly took over.

41:44 And La Mayoria is the counselor it's like the board of directors, right, the people who made the decisions, who held the titles within the Recta provincia. So because I thought initially that they were interchangeable, that there were one and the same, but of course reading through these sources during the research, I realized, okay, no, no, no, it's they exist, yes, side by side, one with the other, but they are distinct things. So think of it that way. Directa Provincia is the group itself. It is the umbrella, and le Mayoria is the council that runs it, the people that run it, the group of people. Right. This says its origins date back to the Chilean colonial period when again Navigator Jose the Moralleda visited Chilouet in seventeen eighty six, So that's that's almost one hundred years between when this organization was essentially founded because it's said that it happened when Josse the Morelleda had that encounter with Chilpila and then the trial. Right, it existed for almost one hundred years on its own. Then this continues. According to legend, Josse the Morelella Imotero challenged the power of the Machi Chilpila, which is again the sham and Chilpila to a quote magic competition. Morealeda was defeated and Chilpila ran his ship aground when he tried to leave the island. So I guess he tried to get on his boat and was like bye, and she said nope, I'm going to ground your ship essentially with her power. However, there are other sources that say that this was coincidence because of the tides, that it just kind of pulled his ship back. It

43:14 didn't let him go. But because they had that sort of battle or that challenge, that competition going on, he thought, okay, no, it was her work and she took credit for it, right, This says. Accepting his defeat, Moraaleda gave Chilpila a magic book from which some indigenous people among them Machi's and Gotkus, which we know that Machi is the shaman, that's what Chipila is, and so Gotku is essentially like the other side of that. It gotgu is someone who is known to practice sort of like to do evil or bad or if we had to use modern like colonial terms, they do black magic. They do dark magic. Right, So Machis are the shamans, the healers, and Godkus are the people who do kind of like the evil bidding, if you will. So once they got that book from Moraleeda of European magic, these spiritual these indigen spiritual practitioners, the Shamans and the Machis and the Gakus, they got a hold of that too and they started taking instruction from it.

44:06 This fact, it continues, led to the union of indigenous rituals and practices with the knowledge described in the given book, which would give rise to the secret society there. It is that Ekta Provincia was born out of that. All of that mixing and melting, this continues. Moraleda does not mention in his report having met the sorceress Chief Bila, but he does mention the fact that he wanted to make contact with Amachi or again a shaman, I keep using words that we're that we may be more familiar with, so that we really learned these things together. Right, class is in session reiterating that point. Okay, and now this talks a bit more about kind of like the structure of La Mayoria again, that council that runs the acta Provincia. It says the jurisdiction of La Rechta Provincia, which if you don't know, it stands for God. What was the translation that it gave me. It was like the not the right, the righteous, the righteous province. It says that their jurisdiction extended throughout the ark Pelago and was headed by a king who, together with other subordinates, formed a governing council, again known as La Mayoria. There were seven districts or republics with code names taken from places in Spain and its colonies. The seat of the king was in the cueva the Gikavi or Casa Grande in the surroundings of Gikavi, in the commune of Gemchi. So this is literally the So this is saying that the king seat was in the cave of Gikavi, and this is the cave that was mentioned the story. It was supposed to be an actual real place which was never discovered, but allegedly existed. And this is where the Mayoia, the council of the Rector Provincia, would get together and meet.

45:37 This is where they had their meetings. They made their big decisions in this cave. This says according to legend, the society worked out a cave that was guarded by a quote deformed being the imbunce there and there's different pronunciations for it. It's the imbunce I think it's also known as in vunce with a V. And it says there they kept the book the Levisterio or levisorio, an instrument they used to take various exams, and the Chayanko used to monitor all members of the witch community. They said that they had this device. I think it was a mirror that would tell them secrets. It would tell them, it would give them information. It was essentially like a magic mirror that they also had in this cave. This cave measured approximately two hundred meters long by three hundred meters high and contained many rooms lit by torches and jugs of human oil. And that means that they were using like human fat to make candles and torches and stuff. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of mention of murder and using human bodies for things. So if you're squeamish, I'm not going to get into great detail. But we're going to be covering some of that before that, though, let's take a quick break. Welcome back, well friends. So the next source that we have this is from A. A.

46:55 Vista's academicas Chilena's or Davista's Chilena's Die You Chile. And this is essentially just a this is I believe, an article or a paper, not really a thesis, I don't think. And this is called Chilote Witchcraft and the Dynamics of the Refuge Region. It is in Spanish, but the abstract is in English, and I wanted to read that to you because there is a full like you can get the full article and it is how many pages let me just make sure here pdf, it's twenty five pages. It is in Spanish. But if you want to find it and translate it, which I may do because you all know I say this every time I eat it up. Anytime there's an academic source about this kind of stuff because I'm like, give it to me. I need to learn all the things about the paranormal and so yeah, if you want to do that, you can find it.

47:42 But I'm going to read the abstract here to you. This says during eighteen eighty a legal process initiated in Oncoud, which I think was mentioned in the story. And Ongood is the city in the Chiloe Archipelago, and it says again legal process initiated in that city, stemming from crimes committed during powers ruggles uncovered a witchcraft organization that controlled the sorcerers and healers of Chilawe, politically structured into two areas controlled by two kings. One governed the north central zone of the archipelago from Ghikavi, where the cave was, while the other ruled the southeastern zone, based in the town of Guaylen. This organization, called the Erechta Provincia or Righteous Province, has its origins in the ancestral shamanism of the indigenous Veliche people, part of their Mapuche heritage. However, the complexities of its practice are due to a culturation processes and above all, to the social processes that took place on the main island. The academic approach used to construct this narrative is based on a boundary between a type of history that seeks to be cultural, drawing inspiration from Italian microhistory and cultural geography. So if you wanted a concise but dense academic explanation of what this story is, that was. That was it, basically. And I wish I had the time to read all twenty five pages of the translated document, but I did not give myself enough time for that. Sorry, But it is available, so again, direct links are on the Patreon. But if you search Chilote Witchcraft in the Dynamics of the Refuge Region and the authors are Rafael Hidalgo Carrasco and Jose Marcelo Bravo Sanchez. Again,

49:16 it's at the Ravista's academicas Chilena's And this doesn't seem to be behind like a log in or a paywall or anything like that. You should be able to find it pretty simply. But yeah, that was a good, I think, concise explanation. It's an abstract. Hello, that's what an abstract is about this story. This next one, there are some really cool things here too. This one is also pretty small, This is from Memoria Chilena, and this is titled under their mini site Religiosity, myth and Chilotte Identity. There's an entry called the Trial of the Witches of Chiloe, and this says in eighteen eighty this is going to be a bit of a repeat, but I want to explain it, explain it in as many different variations as I can, because also each of these things has little details that the other doesn't right, So this as in eighteen eighty Governor Madiniano Rodriguez decided to prosecute the powerful society of which is known as Lamayoria or the Majority, which again is the council that leads La Reta Provincia. This society had been established in Chiloe since the beginning of the nineteenth century and came to wield considerable power over the population.

50:20 Lamayoia was an institution that arose from the need to regulate witchcraft in the archipelago, and it had an extensive network of officials whose organization mirrored that of the Chilean state self defining itself as a tribunal of the indigenous race. Its influence extended to a large part of the archipelago's rural population who presented their claims to it. These claims generally related to healings and accusations of witchcraft, to which Lamayoia commonly handed down sentences that could range from exile to the death of the witch. Following the trial, which was held on charges of conspiracy, the Powerful Witch's organization was dismantled and gradually faded into obscurity over time, popular imagination of all sorts of legends related to witchcraft, some of which persist to this day, and which we are persisting here today right now with this episode. So this is where I really came to understand, Like it really hit me when I read this entry. This is like it was a fully functioning, self contained existed in a vacuum, basically kind of governed system or government system. They were doing it all on their own. They had a system they had it seemed like laws or rules or agreements that they all seemed to follow, and there were consequences if those agreements were broken. And so it seems like it started off as something really i'll use the word altruistic or genuine. But then later, you know, we come to find out that these real crimes were happening. They were doing harm to to people, but like not not spiritual, you know, not like they were like for their own personal benefit. It wasn't like people were coming to them for spiritual help, whether that was for protection or to

51:52 ask them to harm somebody else on their behalf. You know, they weren't acting as like kind of like benevolent bipartisan party. They were taking it upon themselves to benefit from either their power or the power that people will leave them to have. Right. I will say also on this entry, I thought it was really cool. There is an article here. It is in Spanish, but it's it's a scan of it, and it's the processo Chilo and it's essentially it's just it's about the trials. And this was published in nineteen fifty nine. I think it's the center the society. But yeah, it is on this page if you find it as well. And there's also a photo here, a drawing that was made in nineteen eighty five. It's a sorcerer flying with the macgunye a vest made from the skin. This version says of a virgin woman's breast that allows him to fly.

52:41 This is in nineteen ninety five. It's a really really cool sketch. I will probably use this as the art for the episode for the social media post. But yeah, this thing was also mentioned in the story the Macunye, and again it is a vest made out of skin. And there are different versions or different idea of what this vest could be made of. So here it says skin of a virgin woman's torso and it literally looks like a vest like you put on. I saw other versions that may come up here that say that it's just any sort of like corpse. And so people in Chiloeg got into the habit of slashing their loved ones corpses, like after they had passed and before they would bury them, they would cut their corpse so that their skin could not be used to make the magunya, which is the vest that gave the Brujos the power to fly. Like they had to put this thing on and then the word it'll come up, I'll find it later. There's a specific word that they would say and they would take flight.

53:37 So that's what the macunya is. And yeah, it was like so impactful. People believed it so much that they again before they laid their loved ones to rest, they made their skin unusable by the brujos. They didn't even want to risk it, which reminds me of like other things that we think of now that and hey, who knows, there may have been truth to that, right, but also reminds me of like death practic. This is that people do that maybe we look at now like well, there's no need for that, or like that's that that act is fully governed by your belief and something so like yeah, the way people will put like cages on grave sites so that their loved ones wouldn't come back as like a zombie or the undead or what have you. So things like that, it was just really it stood out to me. Okay, And then there's another source here where I'm sorry, I'm doing this for several of these. I hate to do this to you all, but this one is one hundred and twelve pages. It is a thesis by Joaquin Ednandez, and Jeff said that he like really just like when he was writing, he just kind of like really skimmed through this. It is also in Spanish, so you would have to download it and translate it.

54:39 But this one specifically, it is all about like the trials and the general geographical and like cultural info on the area of Chilawad the archipelago. Yes, right, okay, got that word. Every time I have to think about it, So yeah, that was just another kind of academic source. And every time we got those, even if we don't use them, I like to to them on the Susto, Google doc, Patreon, and I like to like share them with you too when I can, because I think it is so interesting that academic entries about these scenes exist, and so if you want to take the time to read through them, I highly encourage it because it's just like, it's so cool that this is documented this way. But again, this is a thesis by Joaqui Nernandez. And I don't see the title here. There's no title on this. What I see it's an introduction. I really see a title, but the link it says repos dot you Chile, so it's from U Chile. Again, I think we have a couple from here. All right, before we move on to the last set of sources, we're going to take one more quick break and we are back, which is this next source. Here is another Wikipedia entry and this is Witches of Chiloe and this is similar to the earlier one, but again it did have different details that I wanted to read through. And this says, the witches of chilaue are characters from the mythology of Chilauea, an archipelago located

56:11 in the Lake district in the south of the country. It is one of the most deeply rooted traditions of witchcraft in Chilean national folklore. They originate from the attribution of magical powers that was made in the past to real people such as those with knowledge of natural medicine, and possibly also to practitioners figures existing in them up wicha tradition and religion such as again the Machi and the Gtku, which again, what are they? Machi are the shamans and Godku are the like evildoers if you will, merging them with the beliefs of European witches in a cultural and religious syncretism. So something I thought that was interesting here It said many of these quote witches were imprisoned for their alleged involvement in murders and other crimes, but were later released due to a lack of material evidence, So that actually happened where they're like, well, we can't really prove that they did these things, and this continues, and because it could not be proven that belonging to a witch's guild would have constituted a crime. However, it is uncertain how much of their statements were true, as it is possible they were tortured to force confessions, which we know has happened in the past with people of varying religious religious practices. They are tortured into converting being tortured into a confession, which would not be a far fetched idea, right. This says in the twenty first century, the belief in witches remains deeply rooted in Chilewe but aside, and I thought this was interesting here Aside from labeling those with knowledge of natural medicine or beliefs in magic as such as witches, the term the term witch or brujo,

57:43 I'm assuming, is used to undermine people's reputations, especially when they are poor, indigenous, or elderly. So I think we've seen this happen time and time again. It is a trope that I think we see in many books, probably with the book that we're going to read for this month's book club, which I didn't even think about that I just thought about that that that lined up. I am the universe, the universe is me. It's a full circle. I don't know how that lined up, but essentially, like outsiders are always labeled as witches, that's like a trope, right, Like the outsider is the witch, the outsider is the monster, is the villain. So it happens here too, where it's saying that in the twenty first century, the belief still very much exists. And yes, there are people that are identified that way or maybe even self identified because they practice plant medicine or they believe in magic. But the term itself is also used to undermine people that could already be seen as outsiders, poor people, indigenous people, the elderly.

58:37 I think that is like one of the hidden groups of people maybe not depending on how to look at it, that are marginalized. I think the elderly are marginalized mainly because of how systems are set up, like financially, and I can't get into it. I cannot get into it. But if you know, you know, like I think the elderly are a group of people that should be taken better care of by the government because it's going to be all of us one day, hopefully, right we all grow to be old and gray. And I'm just going to stop that right there before the flood gates open. But anyway, yes's that's what I'm saying, is that that word the identity of a witch is used to label outsiders. Okay, this is the part that I really wanted to read to you all, was about initiation. How did people join therekta Provincia? This says it is said that entering witchcraft in Chiloett is a great privilege, and that preference is usually given to relatives and children of witches, or to a few special people who have made some deal with them. Okay, Nepo witches. Never in my life did I think that would be a thing, right, But here we are apparently to be in the erect that Provincia, you needed to be a Nepo baby, or at least that was one of your options. It says to become a sorcerer one must perform a series of rites. First, it is necessary to quote wash away baptism, that is, to abandon Christianity through a ritual in which the aspirant must spend forty nights with their head under a draiguen a small waterfall somew it in Naluad. Others in the Gouyiwe the Gammaweto, a mythical creature and initiated sorcerers also bathe there to

1:00:09 gain strength. And the Gammaweto, it's a mythical creature found in again Chilote mythology is used to explain landslides and the formation of rivers, streams and similar waterways. So it's saying that this creature, along with other sorcerers and initiates, they go to bathe under this waterfall to get that magical strength. Right, this continues, then one must call upon the devil allowed to erase the sacrament. If one wishes to remove baptism more quickly and demonstrates their interest to other sorcerers, the initiate must wash their head and body with the blood. This is sorry, y'all, trigger warning infanticide with the blood of an unbaptized newborn. This ritual is performed to achieve great mental strength and acquire heightened sensitivity, allowing them to perceive the thoughts of even the purest humans.

1:00:59 So where these writes these practices to to initiate into the Adeta Provincia, I don't know exactly where they came from, what the origin of they are. But like it said, or it was mentioned earlier, and like with many of these stories, people maybe ran with their imaginations on this, but you know, sometimes these things are rooted in reality. We don't actually know what the process was to join this group. Anyway, this continues. After completing these tests, the sorcerer is taken to the cave before the majority or the Mayoia which is the council, and presented to the leadership presided over by the Buddha, who have convened in solemn session to determine his final initiation test, which also I think is a good spot to mention it. It may come up a little bit later. Like I just used the pronoun his because from what we could find online that at the provincia it is a sect of male witches. So I think that some of them, like the kings, they could have a queen, but the queen did not hold a position of power. In the Chaplovincio or in the Myotia. This was like a male lead thing, which of course it dulved. It just turned into a bunch of crime and doing bad when you leave men to do their own thing. So I just wanted to point that out here before we continue. This says, you know, he does the initiation test. This test generally involves again more murder, murdering a beloved relative and must be carried out on a Tuesday night. Now. I wanted to say something here because I have been getting into learning a

1:02:30 bit more about the planets as I'm learning a bit more about Taro, and I learned that Tuesday is ruled by the planet Mars, and Mars is the ruler of one of the signs is a scorpio and Aries, and we know Aries is the god of war, right, so I think there's already there's like action. It's also a day for like action, for physical action, for motivational boosts and stuff. It just seems like the day to take action, right, so I would I don't know. When I read this, I was like, that makes sense to me, Like Tuesday, fire action, aries, war, and with that comes death, right, So yeah, it just it made sense to me. If there's anybody out there that knows about the planets, let me know what you think about that. Is that why they chose Tuesday to do that? Right? Because Monday is emotions, family, relationships, food, Tuesdays action physical action, Wednesday is communication, Thursday's success, Friday is beauty, love, fashion, socializing, Saturdays for tasks, responsibilities, rules, and Sundays for creativity, self expression, stuff like that. So I don't know really quick lesson on the days. But also if you know more about that, please tell what you think about Tuesday being the day to have to murder your loved one to join a mal witch sect.

1:03:43 You let me know. This continues afterward, on a dark night, he must walk three complete circuits around the islands, naked and shouting a call to the douvil. During this journey, he is not allowed to walk on the planes or along coastal paths, as an instructor sorcerer watches him the entire way. Upon reaching the breakwaters at low tide, the initiate it must jump into the water. Once he has reached his destination, I performed the ritual, and if the devil has appeared to him, the chief gives him the magune or the vest previously made by the initiate himself. So aside from all these murders and stuff, bathing in the baby blood, killing a loved one, all that stuff. You also have to make your magune or your skin vest that gives you the power of flight. Then you will receive it towards the end or at the end, it says. Upon completing his rituals, he must take an oath which includes allegiance to the devil, for the devil is the supreme leader of witchcraft. And this is, I think is where the European influence comes in. I think that's where that the devil and washing away Christianity and pledging allegiance to the devil, I think that's the European influence one hundred percent, it says. And the oath to keep his status as a witch a secret, for failure to do so will result in his death. Within a year after his initiation, a grand banquet is held, the main course of which trigger warning again in fanticide, is the roasted flesh of a baby. Gross this wraps up.

1:05:01 The apprentice sorcerer is then secluded for a time, wearing a lizard on his forehead, held by a red cloth, so that he may acquire wisdom. Once familiar with the lizard, which has undoubtedly imparted some magical power to him, he can witness his master's transformations into animals, lizards, dogs, horses, et cetera. He can also observe him flying, opening doors without keys, putting people to sleep, and so on. Later, some wise elders teach him the powers, abilities, and rules, such as the prohibition against tasting salt and the probition against rape or theft, as these are forbidden by their code of morality. So there is a code of morality even though they are killing babies and people to become initiates. They say murder is fine, but rape and theft are not okay, which none of them are okay. But I'm like, how did you make that decision? I don't know, this says.

1:05:47 This code also forbids him from other uses of his magic that involve appropriating what belongs to others, even in cases of extreme needs, since a sorcerer must not be driven by such desires. See and this is where you can see that. Even though it's it's like some weird lucy goosey like they said code of morality, this started off one way, like there was like you cannot appropriate what belongs to others. So to me, that means you wouldn't blackmail somebody for their money. Or their crops or live livestock, right, and like, how did that switch happen? I think that counts as theft, right, So where what's going on? I'm not sure? Okay the next one, and this one is a really happy one. I actually did read through this whole thing and it was really really cool.

1:06:28 I suggest that you look through this one. This is from Smithsonian Magazine. It's smithsonianmag dot com and it is titled Into the Caves of Chila's Witches. Did members of a powerful society of Warlocks actually murder their enemies and kidnap children? And this is the one that Jeff said that he based pretty much almost all or like the majority of the story or report, whatever you want to call it. He based it on this. And this is really really comprehensive. It just it tells the whole story basically from beginning to end. And this was by Mike Dash published in twenty thirteen, So shout out Mike. You did an amazing job with this. Thank you for writing this. One thing that I really wanted to talk about in this one is the in vunce because this this talks about people's testimonies. I'm not sure where he got the testimonies from I'm sure that they're sided and and the sources down here, But this talks about the invunce. And this is what I said that I read earlier in my stomach, drafted because this was wild. So this says the most important of the warlocks brought to court in eighteen eighty was a Chilote farmer by the name of Madeo Gogna God. He was then seventy years old and by his own admission, had been a member of the Righteous Province for more than two decades. According to Gouigna god Is testimony, the society was an important power on the island, with numerous members, an elaborate hierarchy of kings and viceroys, and a headquart is located in a vast cavern forty or more yards long, whose secret entrance had been cleverly concealed in the side of a ravine. Okay.

1:07:55 And this says that Gougna God's testimony may be found lodged among the papers of the Chilean his store in Benjamin Vikunya McKenna, Okay. This is part of the testimony. It says twenty years ago, when Jose Mariiman was king, He was ordered to go to the cave with meat for some animals that lived inside. He complied with the order and took them the meat of a kid he had slaughtered. Mariiman went with him, and when they reached the cave, he started dancing about like a sorcerer and quickly opened the entryway. This was covered over with a layer of earth and grass to keep it hidden, and under this was a piece of metal the quote alchemy key. He used this to open the entryway and was then faced with two completely disfigured beings which burst out of the gloom and rushed towards him. One looked like a goat, for it dragged itself along on four legs, and the other was a naked man with a completely white beard and haired down to his waist. This outside of the testimony in Mike's Riding, says, it is possible from other records of the Righteous Province or the Erechta Provincia to learn more about the hideous creature that Gunnacar swore he had encountered in eighteen sixty, the goat like monster as the Chivato, a deformed mute covered in piggish bristles, the other and by far the more dangerous of the caves twin Denisens was the Invunce or imbunce. Like the Chivato, it had once been a human baby and had been kidnapped in infancy. Chatwin describes what happened to the baby next, and you may want to skip maybe like a minute or two a head, because this was wild to me.

1:09:22 But this says back to the testimony. When the sect needs a new invunce, the council of the cave orders a member to steal a boy child from six months to a year old. The deformer, a permanent resident of the cave. So this is somebody's position, starts work at once. He disjoints the arms and legs and the hands and feet. Then begins the delicate task of altering the position of the head, day after day and for hours at a stretch. He twists the head with a turnicquet until it has rotated through an angle of one hundred eighty degrees, that is, until the child can look straight down the line of its own vertebrae. There remains one last operation, for which another specialist is needed. At full moon, the child is laid on a workbench lashed down with its head covered in a bag. The specialist cuts a deep incision under the right shoulder blade into the hole, he inserts the right arm and sews up the wound with thread taken from the neck of an ew. When it has healed, the invunce is complete. Oh God, that gave me chills.

1:10:22 So initially, when we were reading about this, I thought an invunce was another mythological creature. No, wrong, an in vunce is created, it is made. It is a person that is intentionally deliberately disfigured. Deformed is a word that they used earlier. They are tortured. Essentially, they are tortured and their bodies are broken for whatever reason. I'm still getting chills. So I was shocked to learn that this isn't some mythological creature and it just exists that way. No, this was a child that was kidnapped and they did this to them to turn them into a quote monstrous guard. This continues naked, fed principally on human flesh, and confined below ground. Neither the Chivato nor the invuncee received any sort of education. Indeed, it was said that neither ever acquired human speech. In all the years they served what Chatwin calls the Committee of the Cave. Nevertheless, he concludes, over the years does develop a working knowledge of the committee's procedure and can instruct novices with harsh and guttural cries.

1:11:26 It would be and wise, of course, to accept at face value the testimony given at any witch trial, not least evidence that concerns the existence of a hidden cave that a week long search conducted in the spring of eighteen eighty felt to utterly uncover. That was again, so this talks about how they did they couldn't find the cave, But yeah, I thought that part was wild, that this Invuncee was not a mythological, magical creature being thing. It was someone that they harmed. That was crazy to me. So then this also goes on to talk more about the process or the rituals of initiation and the things that they have to do. And this talks more about like the government doing what they needed to do to put an end to these people, which I mean, I don't know. I'm like, yeah, they were committing crimes, right, but the Spanish government's not committing crimes. The US government is not committing crimes. Like, who's to say that you get to exist and do crimes, but those people cannot do crimes because all of a sudden you have moral superiority, right, I don't know. I was just like they were a system that was working, and I'm not exactly sure where that intention shifted to them, you know, harming their own community really, But it's like there's there's always you can always rely on colonial governments to overreach and step in where they probably shouldn't and ultimately, and this is saying here too, this was really I think about the War of the Pacific and how I'll just rehear this says.

1:12:55 As a result, the great bulk of the country's armed forces were committed far to the north, situation that Chila's old rival at Hindiana was quick to take advantage of. Yeah, Hinthinus chose eighteen eighty to revive a number of claims they had to land along their border, and this threat was keenly felt on the western side of the Andes until it was diffused by the eighteen eighty one Ratado de Limitas, a treaty that continues to determine the boundary between the countries Chiloez, which trial is probably best understood as a product of these tense tensions. Certainly, the first published reference to the religious province to the Righteous Province appear in a decrease ordering the roundup of army deserters that were issued by the island's governor, Luis Rodriguez Marthiniano, which again there were deserters people that went a wall and they were like, well, you have our criminals, so we're just going to go ahead and dismantle your whole thing so that we can get them back, right. Yeah, it all came down to politics and war as to why they dismantled this, I think more than the crimes.

1:13:52 I don't think they actually did care about the crimes that they were committing. They're like, well, those are our soldiers and we want them back, so we're going to do what we can to get them back, and that meant disbanding them. I will say, I do want to read how this ends. Sorry I'm going to spoil the end for you, but I was like, ooh, that gave me chills. That was spooky, it says. Still several mysteries remained when the verdicts were handed down. Had every member of the Myotia really been accounted for. Had the society actually been headquartered in a hidden cave. If so, what happened to its ancient leather book of spells? And what became of the invunce. So these people that were disfigured and tortured and then turned into whatever they were turned into an in vunce, if that was real, where they just left out there? Did they still exist out there? Like? What? Like?

1:14:35 Just imagine being out there and not knowing what who this person is, what happened to them, but just seeing them that way and thinking, oh, this is a monster, Like it would be freaky to me without knowing the context to think that something like that, someone like that exists out there again, not knowing the terrible things that happened to them. Because if anything, I feel bad for the Invunce, for the people who were turned into invuncez okay and then really quickly the last two sources that we have here, this is another paper, and this one is the Supernatural as an explanation of reality, myth, magic and witchcraft in Chiloe. This one is not that long. It's also in Spanish, so we would have to translate it to read the whole thing. But I think this is really cool. We've had similar things like this, like the the book that I have, the Bloodsucking Witchcraft about the Lapucci. It talks about people using supernaturalism to explain anything really and so I thought this is really interesting.

1:15:26 And this one is by two folks. It's written by a Francisco Garvez and Jose Ernandez Rojas. And this is also yeah Revista dot Umcee. Again it's titled the Supernatural as an Explanation of Reality, Myth, Magic and Witchcraft in Chiloe. And that's an academic paper. And then the very last thing I am going to post pictures. I think of this in the social media post. This is a photo book by a Claudio Albaran and the photo book is called Director Provincia. First of all, I want to say, if anybody can find this book, I want a copy of it so bad. This artist, this photographer put this photo book together and it is heavily inspired and influenced by the witch trials of Chiloe in eighteen eighty. These pictures are haunting. They are very scary looking, but also like there's I can see the beauty in them too, Like I don't know. You all know how my freaky mine works. And I I'm gonna tag the artist in the photos as well when I post them, because they just they look creepy and you can see them on the social media post risk because yeah, I'm like, I want this book so bad, and it was just really cool this and they talk about the story itself in here, but it's all stuff that we've just covered in these sources.

1:16:45 But I just wanted to share it because it's heavily, heavily influenced by these witch trials. Again, it is by Claudio Albaran and the book is called Director Provincia. I think the publisher, it says here is Fluck Books, Fluk Books or Fluke. I'm not sure they might pronounce that, but I would say, check out the pictures look so cool. Again, I need to find a copy of this. All right, let's take a quick break. Welcome back, girl friends. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Again, I really had fun with this one. I thought it was so cool. I'm sorry I hate providing sources and being like, well, I didn't read this one, but I'm like, I don't have time to read all of these things like personally in my personal life much less to like put them in the episode, but they are more like resources that I want to put out there because I think that's part of this show too, is like encouraging us to gather our own stories. And so if you end up reading any of these or it doesn't even have to relate to this episode anything, you're like, hey, I think you would like this. I think you would think this is cool. I have had people send me stuff like that.

1:17:56 I love when that happens. It's so fun to me. Like I said, I love any sort of like writing, whether it is academic, anecdotal, a news article, a medical article, and anything like related to this stuff I am so into. So that's kind of like my way of doing that for you too, Like, Hey, check this out. I think you might think it's interesting. But anyway, I really hope that you like this episode. I certainly enjoyed it. Thank you Jeff for writing this story, Thank you for listening few cook your minders. Before we go, please make sure to join the book club once more. We are reading Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendricks. I will see you at Strange and Extraordinary Fest. You can get your tickets at my link tree or by visiting Strange and Extraordinary Fest dot com. Please support tousto by engaging wherever you are listening, like leaving positive ratings and reviews. Reviews like this one from aidfs. Aid Afs says, I love love this podcast. I love it too. The stories are super interesting and I learned so much looking up the topics.

1:18:49 I've learned so much in the last year and I am still learning with every podcast. Adrian keeps it fresh and scary. And yes, I've had to come back to episodes the next day during the day, so I'm not scared to listen to it. Definitely recommend adofs. Thank you so much. You all know I love hearing that you just you're spoiling me by saying that that you have to like put it on pause and listen to it when the sun's out. That forms my cold, weirdo cryptid little heart when you all say that. So yeah, Adas, thank you so much for that review. Please make sure you leave a positive rating or review wherever you are listening. You can also support Sustal for three dollars or more a month by signing up on Patreon dot com. Slash Sustal podcast. You can check out the Tears see if any of those work for you. You may get some fun things like early and ad free episodes. And I would like to extend a very gracious, ghostly, ghoulish, ghastly thank you to this episode's patron saints, and you are Liza, Rachel, Alejandra Luther, April d Josette, Mandy, Laurie, Genie, Desiree c Ashes, Nedesa, rachel A, Asusanna Marlen, Chata, Laney, Desiree A Ricado, Vanessa, Marizza, Manormal, Iris, mad Floor, Selena Nightingville, Clint, Rachel w Armani and Bianca.

1:20:02 Thank you so so much. I really truly do appreciate it. I will talk to you all in the next one, and until then not des bye,