La Fantasma de Chillogallo

My last two posts covered some ghostly occurrences that I, in some way, personally witnessed. This story is something that happened to my wife before she met me.

First, a little bit of background on the layout of her parents’ house- it’s a one-floor dwelling, and it only has windows in the front. Because of this, the only rooms that get any outdoor light are the kitchen, the living room, and her parents’ bedroom. All of the other rooms have small skylights in their ceilings, which let in a little sunlight. In the daytime, these rooms tend to be quite dim without some sort of electric light. At night, they’re pretty much pitch black.

The layout of the house is such that the only way into or out of my wife’s old bedroom is through her sister’s room. Pilar’s room was pretty quiet and isolated from the rest of the house.

Another thing to consider is Ecuadorian cemeteries. They are not like we are used to in America- nice green areas where everyone is buried underground. They are a little spookier- tending to be a bunch of small, above-ground nooks where the bodies are stored. They tend to resemble the portions of New Orleans cemeteries where the poor are buried- no elaborate mausoleums, just spaces that are big enough to hold the body. And those are the nicer ones.

Not too long before I met Pilar, odd things started happening around the house, especially at night. There was the occasional strange noise, doors that were supposed to be closed were left open, and vice versa. A few nights, when she was trying to sleep, Pilar noticed someone entering her room and looking in her closet. Thinking it was her sister, she would ask her what she wanted. Of course, the response would come back from her sister’s room, and not from the figure near the closet. Turning on the light would reveal no one standing there. Pilar also started having weird dreams about skeletons and dead people, and so were other members of her family.

These things were weirding everyone out, because no one knew why they were happening. Finally her father broke down and confessed that he had recently been in a cemetery and had seen some interesting rocks lying around, so he picked them up and took them home. He placed these rocks in his bedroom closet. Not too long after that was when the weirdness started.

It turned out that these were not rocks, but were actually bones. Of course, everyone begged him to return them to he found them. He was stubborn, and refused to. Finally, though, something happened that scared him, although he would never say what it was. This was his breaking point, and he returned the bones to the cemetery. All the scariness stopped after that.