The Unsettling Legend Behind The Island Of The Dolls
In the 1950s, Don Julián Santana Barrera decided to abandon his family and live alone on the arable sliver of uninhabited land on Teshuilo Lake. The island's new caretaker occasionally ventured to the neighboring Barrio de la Asunción to sell his vegetables and enjoy the popular pulque — an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the agave plant.
However, his ever-growing superstitions led him to start preaching the Bible around town. Eventually, the sector expelled him, and he remained on his island.
One day, Barrera came upon the dead body of a drowned girl and her doll. Superstitious and deeply religious, he grew fearful that the dead girl's spirit haunted the island. He decided to hang her doll up on a tree to appease her potentially vengeful soul and started a habit he wouldn't break for the rest of his life.
o keep the girl's spirit content, Barrera retrieved dolls that had washed up in the lilies of the canal and saved them from the garbage wherever he went. These discarded dolls were hanged up across the island in whatever ramshackle state he found them in.
According to some stories, Barrera was increasingly haunted by a girl whispering, "I want my doll" and footsteps in the dead of night. While it's unknown what exactly he experienced in his hut, in the thick of the jungle miles away from civilization, one thing is terrifyingly certain.
Barrera was found dead in 2001 — drowned in the same spot he reported finding the dead girl and her doll nearly 50 years before.
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