The Top 5 Latino Horror Legends & Monsters

*I’m not a big fan of listicles, but it’s All Hallows Eve, and this is kinda cool. VL

By Julia Taveras, Remezcla

In true Latin Alternative style, this Halloween Remezcla is celebrating the more obscure legends & monsters used by parents throughout Latin America to scare young boys and girls –  and also twenty-somethings. I’m definitely still scared. Last year, Matt Barbot gave you a detailed-CSI piece about El Chupacabras, plus we’ve seen the lil’ goat sucker even in NYC. And since La Llorona is getting her spot on NBC, we decided to focus on a few other monsters & legends that might be a little more off the radar:

1. El Cuco or El Viejo del Saco (Chile, Cuba, Mexico)

Though perhaps the story itself originated in Almería, Spain, El Hombre del Saco is well known throughout Latin America, as there are many versions of the tale.  According to a Spanish legend,Francisco Ortega, aka el Moruno, was a man sick with tuberculosis at the beginning of the XXth century. He was desperately looking for a cure for the disease, so he sought help from aCurandera. She told him he would be cured by drinking the blood of children and rubbing his fat on his chest. And so, el Moruno kidnapped a 7-year old boy, Bernardo, in a cloth bag, to slit his underarm and drink his blood. El Cuco is known for walking up and down the streets at night with a black bag, scouting for those children who roam the streets or misbehave. There’s that “Duermete niño, duermete ya; que viene el cuco, y te comerá!” that many of you may or may not have heard as kids. Oh also, in espanglish zones such as some border regions of Mexico he is known as El Sacomán. Way to modernize El Cuco, that’s better than any DJ name.

Click HERE to read the rest of the list.