118. Brazilian Horror Folklore: Animated Corpses, Old Hags, and Backwoods Creatures

Let's look at three of the scariest legends from Brazilian Folklore: Corpo Secos that rise from their graves, Pisadeiras that creep into your room at night, and the mighty Mapinguari that stalks the rainforest Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/brazilianfolklore Subscribe on ⁠Patreon ⁠ https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspoundingfor bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on ⁠Tik Tok ⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=enand ⁠Instagram⁠ https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:43Kaelyn Moore?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole-body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever, and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices.

• 1:28Kaelyn Moore?

  The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends, and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "constant comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment. Curiously different, impossible to forget.

• 2:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding. Once again, I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore. I'm excited to share some stories with you today. This episode was actually requested by one of our Brazilian listeners who told me I had to check out the scary legends from the country. So I did, and I haven't been able to sleep since, mostly because I'm terrified of the creatures I read about coming to get me at night. If you have a specific region in mind of folklore you'd like to hear from around the world, drop a comment wherever you're listening. If it's Spotify, if it's YouTube, wherever, let me know and maybe you'll hear an episode on it. Or, as always, you can send a messenger to the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters. I sit here all day by the fire, reading scary stories you guys

• 2:44Kaelyn Moore?

  send me with Jinx, our friendly ghost. And before we dive in this week, you know I love to shout out listeners, so I wanted to shout out listener Teresa, who told me she recently went on a vacation where she discovered a strange VHS tape in the cabin she was staying in. She watched it, and then she got a phone call where the person on the other end said, "Seven days," and then hung up. I think the weirdest part of that story, honestly, is the fact that you stayed at a place that still had VHS tapes. But Teresa, please contact me next week so we know you're okay. Okay, I love hearing all of the scary stuff that happens to you guys, you know that. So keep sharing those stories, as well as any macabre hobbies, special interests, jobs you have, you name it. I love our dark little community.

• 3:29Kaelyn Moore?

  But for now, let's get into our first terrifying story.

• 3:34Kaelyn Moore?

  In southern Brazil, outside of the city of Montero Lobato, there's a deep cave that locals know not to go near. Not because you may get lost inside the long, pitch-black tunnels of the cave. No, it's far worse. See, at night, a horrible shriek can be heard coming from the depths of the cave. It's been happening for as long as people can remember. And while no one really knows what's inside of the cave that makes that sound, if you were to stop and talk to one of the elders in the community, they may tell you that they remember a time before something horrible inhabited the cave. And then, they would tell you this story.

• 4:18Kaelyn Moore?

  Many years ago, there was a man named Pedro Vicente who lived in town. Locals knew him as the smartest boy in the area. He always had his nose in a book. And he lived next door to another young man named Zé Maximano. The whole town, including Pedro, knew that Zé was a cruel person, especially to his parents. Neighbors would hear him screaming at them at night about how he needed more allowance for nicer clothes and fancier things. Now, Zé's family wasn't particularly wealthy. And aside from that, they didn't think it was a good lesson to just hand their son as much money as he wanted. But when they didn't comply with his demands, he would lash out even harder, sometimes even violently.

• 5:00Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, this would have been terrible anywhere, but Brazilian culture places a big emphasis on family and respect for elders, which meant Zé's abuse wasn't just awful, it was unforgivable. And it wasn't just his parents. Zé was a bully to students and teachers at his school, to his neighbors, even to Pedro Vicente next door. His reign of terror seemed to have no boundaries. But one evening, Zé's parents came home and found him laying face down on the floor, dead. A window in the back of the house was left wide open and a breeze wafted inside. His parents called for help, devastated, but the police didn't seem all that interested

• 5:44Kaelyn Moore?

  in solving this case. No one in town seemed all that interested in the case being solved, honestly. And so what happened to Zé still remains a mystery to this day. Regardless, his parents decided that he should be buried in the local cemetery. And normally, that would have been fine, but some of the townspeople got a really bad feeling when they heard about this. They said that he shouldn't be buried in town. And so Pedro asked them why that was. See, in Brazil, it's believed that something can happen when a person is so evil that neither God nor the devil wants them.

• 6:24Kaelyn Moore?

  Legends have been passed down that say because of this rejection, the earth itself will expel them from their grave. An elder told Pedro that he had seen this happen before. After an evil person is buried, the dirt over their grave will stay unsettled until slowly a dirty and limp hand appears. Then another, and finally, the whole person is spit out from their grave. "Well, why can't you just re-bury them?" Pedro asked, "with a big cement block over them or something." "Because they've become a Corpo Secu," the man replied. "A Corpo Seco?" Pedro asked, "What's that?"

• 7:07Kaelyn Moore?

  "A monster cursed to roam around the land of the living as a violent undead thing. And if you try to catch them, they'll kill you, rip you limb from limb." Pedro looked at him suspiciously. He honestly sounded like a crazy old man. Corpses didn't just rise from the dead. Pedro had read enough books to know that for certain. But because of this worry, the town decided to move Zay's body from the local graveyard to a distant cave in the mountains, one that was surrounded by water. Corpo Secos can't swim, you see. The water seeps through the holes in their rotted flesh and exposed bones, and they can't stay afloat. So even if Zay came back to life, the stream would keep him locked away forever.

• 7:52Kaelyn Moore?

  The local priest asked Pedro to move the body. No one else in their community would, and they told him that it would bring many blessings in the church if he did this. "Just make sure you bring a quince stick," the priest told him. A quince stick is a branch from a fruit plant native to Brazil, and they say that it's the only weapon you can use against a Corpo Secu. Pedro agreed, and he went to the local graveyard to dig up Zay's body.

• 8:21Kaelyn Moore?

  He moved it into a basket, trying to not look at how disfigured and terrifying his neighbor seemed. Zay's skin was all dried out and was wrapped tightly around his bones like cracked leather drapes. But he didn't move. Of course, he didn't move, Pedro thought. The elder was just trying to scare him. And as he was leaving the church cemetery, he saw a quince stick sitting by the entrance gate. But, once again, he looked back at Zay's body, which was under a blanket, sitting in a wagon hitched to his horse. And it was, once again, completely still. He didn't need some dumb stick, he decided. And he set out for the mountains with Zay's body in tow.

• 9:05Kaelyn Moore?

  Eventually, he got up the mountains to a fast-flowing stream in front of a cave. This must be where the elders wanted him to drop Zay. Because Corbussecus couldn't swim, Zay would never be able to leave this cave. Pedro looked back at the blanket, which continued to not move. It didn't seem like Zay would be doing much swimming anyways, but here we go. He unhitched the wagon and pulled Zay's body onto the horse, which carried them across the stream towards the cave. Pedro could immediately tell why they chose this cave. It was too short for his horse, so he pulled Zay's body off and started dragging it into the depths of the pitch

• 9:50Kaelyn Moore?

  blackness. It seemed to go on forever. Those elders were so paranoid, Pedro thought. Finally, they got deep enough into the cave where Pedro had to light a match. The moist walls were illuminated, and there, on the ground in front of him, he saw something. The outline of footprints.

• 10:14Kaelyn Moore?

  But they were spiny and thin, skeletal, and they were walking in the opposite direction of him, out towards the entrance of the cave. Pedro shook it off, and he just kept walking, until he finally reached the end of the cave system, where he saw a pile of skeletons. "Other supposed corpus Secos," he figured. "See, all the bodies did was lay there and rot, not a corpus secu to be found." He dropped off Zay's body, and then he turned back around to leave the cave. But he noticed he was walking a bit faster than usual. Was it because he was nervous?

• 10:56Kaelyn Moore?

  "No, corpus Secos aren't real," he reminded himself. It was just the elders being paranoid. And yet, his pace was picking up, faster still. Pedro was almost at the entrance of the cave. He could see the outside world, but his horse was no longer there. He squinted and saw that it was back on the opposite side of the river, running in the other direction, as if something had spooked it. And then, something stepped in front of him. A silhouette of rotting flesh and decay. The smell was putrid, like spoiled meat. Cracked, leathery skin still covered parts of the figure.

• 11:40Kaelyn Moore?

  It lunged at Pedro, who had no choice but to turn around and run back into the cave, the figure limping quickly after him. He reached the end, and he saw that Zay's body was no longer there. He turned and saw two deathly figures limping towards him. The one from outside of the cave, and Zay. All that could be heard from the outside, over the sound of the rushing river, was Pedro, as he was torn limb from limb by the corpus secus.

• 12:19Kaelyn Moore?

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• 13:02Kaelyn Moore?

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• 13:20Speaker 01

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• 14:05Speaker 01

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• 14:23Kaelyn Moore?

  The word "corpusecu" translates to "dried body" in Portuguese, which is precisely what it is. It's a cursed person condemned to roam the earth as a dried-out undead corpse. Its specific description varies across regions, with some sure that its face is full of pustules, and others describing a skeletal figure with cracked, dry, leathery skin stretched over its bones. It's mostly found in graveyards, abandoned buildings, and dark forests or road sides at dusk. People who have seen these things report feeling a huge sense of dread. Sometimes this feeling is so powerful, it literally paralyzes them, which can put them in danger in more ways than one.

• 15:08Kaelyn Moore?

  First, because they can't move or run, but also dread and fear and all that kind of stuff really enriches a corpusecu. It feeds off of terror, so the more scared you are, the more it wants to get you. The origin story of the corpusecu actually involves someone like Zé, a man who was so evil that when he died, the ground expelled his body. And there's actually a famous Brazilian folklorist that I found named Luiz de Camara Cascudo. And he wrote about the corpusecu in his 1947 book, "A Geografia dos Mitos Brasileiros", and in it, he pointed out that the myth is actually broader than that,

• 15:51Kaelyn Moore?

  saying, "In the north of Brazil, the greedy, the incestuous, the bad son, and his body rejected by the tomb, the earth does not eat the hand that was raised against the father, the mother, or the priest." Basically, anyone who disrespects a holy person or a parent could become a corpusecu, a creature who is damned to prowl the earth as an undead thing for eternity. But even though the corpusecu's roots are very old, it's deeply, deeply ingrained in Brazilian culture, some people swear that they still see these creatures today.

• 16:30Kaelyn Moore?

  So a few years ago, a local paper spoke to a woman named Maria, and she had a very scary story to tell them about something that happened to her while she was visiting a cemetery in southern Brazil. Maria was inside this walled-in graveyard, and she was looking out over the rows of flat, innocuous headstones. There were bright-colored flowers covering a lot of the plots, all planted there by loved ones. None of this was unusual, of course. It looked exactly like it always did, just a regular cemetery. But at some point, she noticed something on the wall that surrounded the enclosure. And when she looked at it and her eyes focused on it, she could feel the blood drain from her face.

• 17:15Kaelyn Moore?

  Because on the wall was the unmistakable figure of a corpse. She could see it, but not like someone forgot to bury a body. It was like it was crouched on top of a stone, staring down at her with vacant, hollow eyes that looked like windows into the black depths of hell. Maria escaped the cemetery that day, but it was an experience that she would never forget. When she told the newspaper about it, she said, "I saw with my own two eyes that the Corpo Secu exists, and I don't want to go near that cemetery ever again." Which, Maria, honestly, is understandable. I, too, would never want to go into a cemetery again

• 17:58Kaelyn Moore?

  if I saw a corpse staring down at me like that. But I will make a note here, that cemeteries aren't the only place in Brazil where you can meet a monster. And not even a quince stick will keep you safe from this next one I want to tell you about.

• 18:17Kaelyn Moore?

  Imagine this: it's dinner time, and your best friends in the world come over to your house for a meal. You all sit down at your large communal table. The lights are low, candles flicker, and a carooning dinner party soundtrack plays. You pass around some wine and feast on the banquet in front of you. And as you all eat, you laugh and tell stories. You're having such a magical time, and you're sitting for so long that it's easy to keep indulging in the food and drink in front of you. The rich, marinated meat and the decadent potatoes go perfectly with the earthy wine. It's well after midnight by the time you go to bed, and you're too drunk and happy to do the dishes, so you just crawl into your sheets and snuggle in.

• 18:59Kaelyn Moore?

  You fall asleep very, very quickly. Except, at some point, you realize you're not asleep anymore. This realization comes on slowly. First, you understand you're lying in bed, and then you become aware of the room around you. A faint breeze blows in through your open window, rustling the curtains. You're also aware that something smells really bad. A putrid, rotting stench that makes your still-full stomach heave. You want to sit up and see what it is, but when you try, you realize you can't move. You're still heavy with sleep, and your body won't listen to your brain.

• 19:43Kaelyn Moore?

  Your chest feels heavy, too, in a horrible way that makes it hard to breathe. The air barely makes it into your throat, not quite filling up your lungs all the way. It makes you panic, which makes it even harder to breathe. The only thing that works correctly on your body are your eyes. You can move them, which means you can see that the room is very, very dark, with just a sliver of moonlight coming in through the gap in the curtains. It casts a shadow about the room, and it shines a spotlight on the creature sitting on your chest. It has the face of an old woman,

• 20:25Kaelyn Moore?

  with blazing red eyes that glint in the bluish hue of the moon. She lifts a finger with a long, dirt-caked nail and presses it to her lips, as if telling you to hush. She doesn't need to, though. Your throat won't work, no matter how hard you try to scream for help. And judging by the gaping, twisted grin on this woman's face, she knows it. She lets out a rancid, hair-raising laugh. And as her cackle rattles around in your head, her weight seems to press down even more. The only thing you can do is stare into her evil face and silently pray for mercy.

• 21:07Kaelyn Moore?

  The woman on your chest has a name, the Pisadera. The creature who sneaks into rooms in the dead of night to sit on her victims' chests and laugh at them while they struggle. Her moniker originates from the Portuguese word for nightmare, pesadelo, which has roots in the word peso, meaning "heavy." She's often portrayed as an elderly and dirty woman with long fingernails and red eyes. At times, she possesses a horrible cackling laugh and smells terrible because some of her flesh is rotting. In some regions, it says she wears a red hat, and if you can regain control of your body and take the hat off of her head, she'll grant you a wish.

• 21:49Kaelyn Moore?

  Just make sure you don't insult her, because some people think that makes her stronger. When Pisadera sits on you, it's not an accident. She chooses her victims carefully by waiting on rooftops at night and peering into people's homes as they eat dinner. Some say that she's watching for those who eat too much or otherwise overindulge, and when she finds you, she'll wait until you fall asleep and then sneak into your room and climb onto your chest. Once she does this, you won't be able to breathe or move. And when you see her and understand what's happening, you'll start to panic. But that's what the Pisadera wants: panic.

• 22:31Kaelyn Moore?

  She loves watching her victims struggle under her weight, terrified that they're being suffocated. And that's what is so horrible to me about this creature, because it doesn't seem like the Pisadera cares about blood or death. She just wants you to be scared. And according to folklorist Luiz de Camara Cascudo, people have been warning each other about the Pisadera for hundreds of years. He actually thinks the Pisadera might be a variation of a way older Portuguese myth that's arguably even scarier. This one is from the 16th century, about a creature called Fredino da Moferrada, or "Little Hand-Hole Friar."

• 23:13Kaelyn Moore?

  Fredino always wears a red cap, which is also present in some variations of the Pisadera. He enters someone's room late at night through a keyhole in the door, and then... He straddles his victims and gives them nightmares, all while putting his unnaturally heavy hand on the sleeper's chest to keep them still and make it so they can hardly breathe. Some people believe these legends were created as ways to cope with a very real and very horrifying phenomenon: sleep paralysis.

• 23:47Kaelyn Moore?

  So, sleep paralysis is a documented medical condition that occurs when your mind is waking up from sleep, but your body is still experiencing muscle paralysis from REM. The body cannot move during this time, even though your brain is active and alert. We've talked about it on the show before, but it's way more common than people think. The numbers vary pretty significantly, but I've seen reports saying at least 5% of people experience it at least once in their lives. I am one of those people, and I know a lot of you are too, because I hear the horrifying stories of what happens during your sleep paralysis episodes. And all of this sounds like a Pisadera attack. Before medical professionals understood the science behind sleep, or had the vocabulary

• 24:32Kaelyn Moore?

  to discuss it in depth, these symptoms would have felt supernaturally terrifying. So, it makes sense why different cultures around the world believe that sleep paralysis was the work of a monster. Most countries and cultures therefore have their own "old hag demon," like the Pisadera. But here's the thing: even if you can tell yourself that the Pisadera is a hallucination brought on by sleep paralysis, my question is, why do people throughout time and across different cultures see very similar things? Variations of the Pisadera around the world are always almost a witch or a demon who lies, sits, or stomps on the chests of their victims.

• 25:16Kaelyn Moore?

  In America, people often talk about seeing the Hat Man. It's so consistent. But one thing that always gets me is, there are stories of people who don't see anything during their sleep paralysis attacks, or Americans who will see the Hat Man during their sleep paralysis attacks, but when they go to Brazil, they start seeing the Pisadera. Even people who have never heard of this legend will report the Pisadera coming into their room.

• 25:47Kaelyn Moore?

  It's possible that we're thinking about the legend backwards. Maybe the Pisadera wasn't created to explain sleep paralysis. Maybe the term sleep paralysis was created to explain the Pisadera. It's a medical explanation for the skeptical, a way to calm ourselves and pretend that monsters aren't real and things don't go bump in the night. Because for those who have actually seen her and been rendered paralyzed under her heavy weight, there's no question, she must be feared and avoided at all costs. More after the break.

• 26:25Kaelyn Moore?

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• 27:07Kaelyn Moore?

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• 27:52Kaelyn Moore?

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• 28:36Kaelyn Moore?

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• 29:20Kaelyn Moore?

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• 29:30Kaelyn Moore?

  Our last creature of folklore takes us deep into the Amazon rainforest. The part where the canopy is so dense, hardly any sunlight gets through, making the rainforest seem like it's in perpetual night. It's where the nearest civilization is hours away, where your screams get absorbed in the noise of the forest and no one can hear you. There, in 2004, a 27-year-old man named Givaldo saw something he never should have. Givaldo was a member of the Carachiana tribe, an indigenous people who live in the northern part of the Amazon. There aren't many of them left, less than 500 actually, and they're spread out across seven villages.

• 30:13Kaelyn Moore?

  The Carachiana are hunters, and Givaldo was no exception. That's what he was doing in the Amazon that day: hunting. He wasn't too far from his village at the time, when all of a sudden, he heard something rushing through the jungle, making a ton of noise. He froze in place and peered through the dense foliage, trying to find the source. He was used to the sounds of the rainforest, the stalking steps of a jaguar, the slither of a green anaconda, but this was totally different. In the distance, he heard what sounded like entire trees being snapped in half, and that's when he saw it.

• 30:54Kaelyn Moore?

  It was some kind of large, hairy creature, and it was moving through the forest fast, shoving entire trees and vines to the side to make way for its massive form. It stood on two feet and was covered in brown hair, its long, spidery fingers wrapped around entire tree trunks, and its head had only one eye. There was no mouth, at least not above the creature's neck. No. Its mouth lay vertical on its stomach. It let out a high-pitched scream, showing its razor-sharp teeth, and then a frighteningly sharp tongue escaped its mouth.

• 31:33Kaelyn Moore?

  The panic froze Givaldo in his place, because he was scared for himself, but also he realized that this thing was moving towards his village. He tried to run, but after taking just one step, the creature turned to him and changed its course. As it got closer, Givaldo was disarmed by a powerful, rancid smell. It hit his nostrils like a train and made his vision swim. The creature showed its razor-sharp teeth and screamed, making Givaldo lightheaded. The world blurred, and suddenly, everything went black as he fainted.

• 32:14Kaelyn Moore?

  When he woke up, he was on the forest floor, and the monster was nowhere in sight. He eventually made it back to his village and immediately told his father, Lucas, what had happened. And when Lucas asked for proof, Givaldo took him back to the spot where it all happened, the place where he saw the monster. But the creature was nowhere to be seen. Though, that didn't mean there was no sight of it. Lucas immediately knew that his son was telling the truth, because all around the area, the foliage had been completely flattened, like something plowed through the forest and stampeded everything in its path.

• 32:56Kaelyn Moore?

  That's how he knew his son had narrowly avoided a mapinguari. He told Givaldo he was incredibly lucky. Usually, when a mapinguari comes across a human in the forest, it twists their head off and eats them with its stomach mouth. The mapinguari, whose name translates to roaring animal or fetid beast, is a large creature that prowls the deepest parts of the Amazon under the cover of darkness. Its description varies a lot across Brazil, with some claiming it resembles a tall horse and others saying it looks more like a primate. In some areas, it has two eyes, while in other accounts, it only has one.

• 33:39Kaelyn Moore?

  But it does get consistent on a few main points. It's known to be incredibly strong and tall, standing at around seven feet. It has a lethal gaping mouth on its underbelly and thick, impenetrable fur. And when I say impenetrable, I truly mean it. Nothing can get through the fur, not even bullets or arrows. Amazon tribal leader Domingos Parentintin told The New York Times that, quote, "The only way you can kill a mapinguari is by shooting at its head. But that's hard to do because it has the power to make you dizzy and turn day into night. So the best thing to do, if you see one, is climb a tree and hide." Sometimes, the mapinguari roars.

• 34:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Other times, it screams in this high pitched way that can sound incredibly human. But just to offer a little bit of a bright spot in this, the mapinguari doesn't always mean harm. According to those that live deep, deep inside the Amazon, it lives in harmony with a lot of the other animals in its environment. And even though humans are its prey, some lore specifies that it only wants to kill the worst of us, like people who over hunt or damage the rainforest. Brazilian folklorist Marzi O Souza told the New York Times that the mapinguari usually takes revenge on people who transgress, or specifically those who over hunt or set inhumane traps. The takeaway here is that the mapinguari

• 35:10Kaelyn Moore?

  isn't really just a predator. It seems to be a protector, too. In the Amazon, deforestation is a huge problem, and those that live there, both people and animals, seem to be completely powerless to stop it. So even though the mapinguari isn't something that you necessarily want to run into in the Amazon, you can kind of think of it as a necessary evil, an entity that guards the sanctity of the wild forest. But despite its reputation as a protector, it's still horrifying. Parents still tell their children not to go into the woods or hurt the mapinguari's habitat in any way, because if they do, they'll be eaten. And whole villages in the Amazon have just picked up and moved

• 35:55Kaelyn Moore?

  after residents have found mapinguari tracks, heard its distinctive screams, or saw it in the flesh. Like, one instance, in September of 1981, when a little girl named Lydia was at the edge of the forest by her house. Now, it's not entirely clear what she was doing, just that the sun had set and she was still outside, in the middle of whatever she was working on. As night took hold, she heard a sound come from the forest.

• 36:27Kaelyn Moore?

  And she described it as kind of a howling noise and it really scared her. Something about it was unnatural and ferocious. And she was terrified that whatever made that noise would soon come out of the trees. So she did what most children do when they're scared and don't know what else to do. She ran inside her house and she told her dad. And her dad immediately grabbed his gun and went outside to check it out. He made a beeline for his cow, untied it, probably to make sure that whatever predator was in the woods didn't get it. And while he was doing this, he saw a massive creature emerge from the dark formidable trees, flinging branches and brushed to the side with unbearable strength.

• 37:12Kaelyn Moore?

  It was a mopinguari and it made him tremble all over. With shaking hands, he lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. But he didn't wait to see if it hit the monster. Instead, he raced back into his house and slammed the door behind him.

• 37:32Kaelyn Moore?

  When other people heard about Lydia and her father's encounter, the entire village relocated to a different area, a spot near a river. They didn't want to remain in mopinguari territory. And I know that there's people that'll hear this and think, oh, wow, a whole village moved because of a mythical creature. Come on. But here's the thing that really freaks me out about the mopinguari. Even if you don't believe in cryptids and you think that this is totally unrealistic, there's a chance that the mopinguari is real. More specifically, there's actual scientific evidence that the mopinguari could be related to an ancient predator of the area called the giant ground sloth, one of the largest mammals that's ever lived on earth.

• 38:17Kaelyn Moore?

  As in, it was bigger than an elephant, but it went extinct over 10,000 years ago. And we know that this giant sloth existed in places like Patagonia, all the way up to the northwestern United States, because archaeologists have found its fossils in those areas. And descriptions of the Mapinguari very closely match the ground sloth, save for a few details. And a lot of other things line up about it, too. Some claim that the Mapinguari have backwards feet, and they use that to conceal the direction that they're heading in. And actually, these sloths walked with their claws rotated towards the center of their body. And also, these sloths had two distinct calls: one that sounded like thunder, and another

• 39:02Kaelyn Moore?

  that was a high-pitched scream that sounded like a person. And that's exactly how the Mapinguari calls are described. This Brazilian-American ornithologist named David Orin was actually one of the most passionate researchers on the subject, and he spent the bulk of his career collecting Mapinguari sightings and other evidence. And given all that he learned, after all of the research he did, everything he put into this research, he was sure that the Mapinguari legend was indeed based on ancient stories about humans in the Amazon interacting with these ground sloths. But one of his theories actually went a step further than this, saying that there are legends that have just been passed down.

• 39:47Kaelyn Moore?

  He actually wonders if the Mapinguari isn't just a descendant of the ground sloth. Maybe it, in fact, is one, as in, the Mapinguari are actually the last living giant sloths that are still hiding in the deepest, most remote corners of the Amazon. And that brings me to something that I say a lot on this show. You guys have heard me say this a bunch. But sometimes, the legends are true. And we definitely see that with some of these stories. Maybe the Mapinguari is a giant sloth that's been hiding in the Amazon. Or maybe it's something else entirely. After all, there are flora and fauna in the Amazon that still haven't been discovered

• 40:32Kaelyn Moore?

  to this day. Just like maybe the pisidera really is a creature that people in Brazil have seen during sleep paralysis. And, you know, to this day, people swear they've seen corpus Secos around the country.

• 40:47Kaelyn Moore?

  And that's not the only way that these tales resonate in our day-to-day lives. They're reminders, or warnings, of actual dangers and life lessons. The Corbusseku is a reminder to treat your elders with respect and to live a moral life, while the Pisa Dera encourages you to not overindulge in eating, especially right before bed. The Mapinguari teaches kids to not wander into the actually dangerous Amazon jungle. And most of these tales were told orally, and a lot has not been written down. It was actually kind of hard to find stories about these creatures because of that, so that's why I definitely wanted to shout out some of the Brazilian folklorists that have dedicated their lives to studying these tales and creatures, like Luiz de Camara, Cascudo,

• 41:32Kaelyn Moore?

  and Marcio Souza. But that's all I have for you today. Join me here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters next week for a dark mystery about a family who went off the deep end, and no one knows why. If you're a listener in India, you'll definitely want to check this one out. And I'll actually also be here Monday for a special episode on some of my favorite internet scary stories, which I'm going to be sharing that episode with a very special guest, Morgan Absher, my co-host for the new true crime show Clues that I'm doing with Paved Studios. I'm going to share my very own "Let's Not Meet" story of a very scary interaction I had in college, actually, so you're not going to want to miss that one.

• 42:16Kaelyn Moore?

  And also, you can always join me on the High Council tier of Patreon where I go through my case file on each episode and I share a little bit more research that didn't make it in. For this episode, I'm going to be sharing some more creatures of Brazilian folklore. And until then, fica curioso.

• 42:40Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Kate Murdock. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, Ben Jaffe, and our listener Christine, who helped me out with a little bit of Portuguese. Have a case request or a heart pounding story? Check out heartstarts pounding dot com.

• 43:04Speaker 02

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• 43:47Speaker 02

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• 44:05Kaelyn Moore?

  Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven-day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heartstarts pounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.