Video: Tourist routes aren't for everyone: eerie Island of the Dolls on the outskirts of Mexico City
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Dolls are actually quite a creepy thing. And if you see them in huge numbers, hanging in the trees on an uninhabited island, where the soul of a dead girl supposedly lives, then you can completely succumb to panic fear. The description of the island is not taken from a horror movie. This is a real place that is included in all of Mexico's tourist avenues.
On the outskirts of the Mexican capital, in the Xochimilco area, famous for the ancient Aztec canals, there is an island that has become a haven for thousands of dolls hung from the trees. Most of the dolls are disfigured, with missing body parts, dirty, half-dressed and adorned with fancy homemade ornaments. You can get to this deserted island only by boat, accompanied by local residents who know this area well.
The place is, of course, creepy, but we open the cards - there is nothing mystical here. La Isla de las Munecas (Island of the Dolls) is the brainchild of Don Julian Santos Barrera, a man who left his family and retired to the island.
Don Julian was born in 1921 and lived a seemingly ordinary life. He differed from his neighbors only in his immoderate addiction to alcohol and special religiosity. His fellow villagers were bothered by his drunken prayers and begging. But suddenly the man, for no reason at all, began to collect old dolls that people threw into the landfill - plastic, celluloid, wood, rubber, rags, and not necessarily whole and clean. He, as if possessed, scoured the city for days and rummaged in garbage cans in search of dolls, resting only when the next barrel was filled with his "treasures".
In 1975, without any explanation, Don Julian left his wife, loaded all his dolls into a boat and sailed away, never to return. He took a fancy to the deserted island and settled there with his dolls. Robinson Don Julian not only built a hut, but also got a farm: he grew fruits and vegetables, and fish could always be caught in the canal.
According to legend, many years ago, three girls played at the channel. One inadvertently fell into the water and drowned, and her soul, finding no rest, settled on the island. When Julian appeared there, he began to feel the burden of responsibility for the untimely death of the child, and tried to placate the girl's soul. The hermit created a kind of altar, and hung dolls around - either to appease the wandering soul, or to please the girl. The hermit admitted to his nephew that he also needed dolls in order to protect himself from evil spirits that roam the island at nightfall and are very, very dangerous.
The only living person with whom Don Julian communicated in his seclusion was his nephew Anastasio. He brought him clothes, food, inventory, and also took away fruits in order to exchange them for new dolls and deliver them to his uncle. Years passed and the obsolete dolls filled the whole island. They can be seen on the fence, on the roof, in the barn, on the walls of the hut. There is not a single branch on the island where there are no dolls.
In 1991, the hermit was discovered by ecologists who cleared the channels of algae. Rumors about him spread throughout the district. For ecologists, journalists came to the old man, and after them tourists who, in order to appease the hermit, brought him dolls, receiving in return the fruits he had grown.
In 2001, Anastasio came to visit his uncle and help him in the garden. After breakfast they sat down to fish. Having caught a very large fish, Don Julian suddenly began to sing with joy. And then he told his nephew that lately mermaids have been calling him more and more often so that he sang for them, but he does not agree. And then suddenly he began to sing. The man walked away from his uncle for only a couple of minutes, and when he returned, he saw that the old man was swimming face down. The examination established that an 80-year-old man died of a heart attack and fell into the water, but many today are sure that he was taken by mermaids.
Today Don Julian's “Island of the Dolls” is included in all tourist avenues of Mexico and is thriving - this place has become a cult place for young people who love all kinds of horror stories. And its new owner, Anastasio Santana, receives guests and looks after the island.
Recommended:
Pleated in life: eerie sculptures from nylon stockings
Strange, almost creepy nylon sculptures are created by a Dutch artist. With the help of needles and pins, she forms distorted silhouettes, as if covered with wrinkles. Thus, the artist tries to reflect her vision of the cyclical nature of life: a person comes into this world with folds and leaves it with them
What symbols did Dürer encrypt on the eerie engraving "Knight", and Why did they say that he was driven by the fear of death
The work of Albrecht Durer "Knight, Death and the Devil" made a splash in Europe in the XVI century! But even nowadays it causes awe and somewhere even horror. But do you know the secrets hidden in this engraving? And most importantly, is it true that death accompanied Dürer from childhood, and it was this fear that influenced the creation of the famous work?
Better to hear it a hundred times. Eerie sculptures by Laurent Le Deunff
I warn you right away: it is not recommended to get acquainted with the work of the French artist Laurent Le Deunff for too impressionable and squeamish people, as well as those who are madly in love with animals, and is ready to tear to pieces everyone who shouts at a cheeky yard cat or swings at a heart-rending barking vagrant doggie. No, he does not dissect the carcasses of the unfortunate four-legged - in his sculptures he reproduces a variety of animals, but he does it in a rather exotic format
Plastic fantasies: eerie sculptures from former dolls
The astonishing sculptures by Australian sculptor Freya Jobbins are made from plastic dolls that are no longer in use. Arms, legs, torso - all this is assembled anew, but in a completely different order and with an unexpected result. Freya's finished sculptures look at least strange and eerie, but in any case unusual
Eerie sculptures of hybrid animals. Metamorphosed Animals Project by Enrique Gomez De Molina
Inventing and reproducing new worlds that are inside ours, or even exist outside of time and space, artists and sculptors often inhabit them with outlandish creatures, the likes of which can only be seen in delirium, feverish dreams, or under the influence of potent "substances". Where they come from and where they go is unknown, but in modern art strange animals can be seen in the works of Jessica Jocelyn, Steve Bishop or today's hero of the publication, sc