Soul Thief

Back cover of the book:

In his international best-seller, Gavriel Ramirez exposes the horrifying and fascinating true life-story of “Emilio”, Mexico’s most elusive and mysterious phychopath.

After years of careful research, Ramirez paints before our eyes the picture of a charismatic man intimately versed in the darkest secrets of the old mayan magic, who spent his life on the haunted Island-of-dolls, harvesting the very souls of the most isolated and fragile men: the grief stricken widowers.”

Summary of the content of the book:

“ “Emilio”, a young man from Xochimilco, spends his youth learning from the very last elders of the mayan tribes all there is to know about death, souls, human sacrifices and spiritism. With them, he is very probably involved in the abduction and sacrifice of many poor people in the overcrowded and insalubrious streets of Xochimilco during the late 40s. The channels of the swamps that used to be the water-gardens offer many opportunities to get rid of countless bodies.

As his talents of persuasion grow, he names himself “Mariposa”, the butterfly, and manages to convince the most distressed people of the community that he is able to communicate with the dead, and that he can convey messages to and from the great beyond.

As he roams at night the labyrinthic channels of the swamps, rumours soon start flying that he has been seen with la Llorana, and that, instead of being drowned to his death, he managed to bind the mournful and deadly creature to his will.

Yet some claim that it isn’t la Llorana that he has under his control, but Cihuacoatl herself. The “snake woman”, as the elders know her, is a powerful and old mayan goddess of fertility, but most of all, she is the gardian of the Cihuateteo, the vengeful spirits of women dead in childbirth.

Childbirth was sometimes compared to warfare in the mayan culture, and the women who died in childbirth were honored as fallen warriors. Their spirits, the Cihuateteo, were depicted with skeletal faces like Cihuacoatl. Like her, the Cihuateteo were thought to haunt crossroads at night to steal children and take revenge on their husbands.

The Llorana, a more modern personification of these spirits, is thought to haunt the waterways at night, lamenting the loss of her children and calling out for help, before dragging under the water the innocent people foolish enough to heed her plea.

In the intensely religious and superstitious society of the mexican slums in the 50s and 60s, the men who lost their wives or lovers in childbirth were very afraid that their spirits would come and try to drown or kill either them or their surviving children. Those men would then seek the help of the Mariposa, but his help had a price: He would help them talk to the spirit of their dearly departed and appease their souls so that they would pass on to the afterlife, but in exchange, he asked for nothing less than the very soul of the men asking for his help.

During these dark rituals, the men were told to bring with them a doll made or bought by the deceased woman specially for their unborn child, as is the mexican tradition. The sorcerer would then nail the doll to a tree in the swam, and bind the soul of the husband to it as payment for his help. What he then did with the collected souls, no one knows, but the men would forevermore be protected from the spirit of their angry wives.

In an era where so many people disappeared without leaving any traces, it is easy to imagine that Emilio would only have to get rid of a handful of widower to make his power seem needed. He was, in a way, the equivalent of a soul-thug, offering protection from the invisible in exchange for respect and power.

This incredible story was first recounted to the author by Don Julian Santana Barrera, or as he was known, the “the madman of the island of dolls”. Julian was a young man when his secret lover died in childbirth, while he was hiding at home with his wife. Afraid that the deceased would seek revenge on him for his cowardice, he tried to find the Mariposa. He had heard everything that there was to know about the dark sorcerer, and he brought along with him the doll he would need to sign away his soul. But Emilio was nowhere to be found. Scared for his life, Julian decided nonetheless to nail his doll to a tree, hoping that it would be enough to buy the protection of the necromancer and thus save his life. But as he was about to leave the small island on which grew the tree he had picked to nail his doll to, he saw another doll floating in the water. Chilled by dread, he picked the toy which must have fallen after being used in one of the necromantic rituals and nailed it back to a tree. Searching around in the swamps, he found several more toys either fallen or partially destroyed, and felt in his heart that it was his role to place them back where they belongued until the sorcerer came back to the swamp. During the following years, he kept coming regularly to make sure that his dolls were still up, and to add some more to the trees, slowly turning the whole island into what it is now known: the Isla de la munecas, the island of dolls.

Julian Died in 2001 and many thought him a madman. The author himself was uncertain that he was to be believed, but he kept on searching for more information about the elusive necromancer of the Xochimilco swamps. But just like the swamps were slowly disapearing, being turned back into islands and channels, so did the past, as the elders refused to talk openly about Emilio. And if all knew of the rumours in horrifying details, none of them admitted to ever meeting the man.

The Isand of Dolls, the author discovered, has been passed down from generation to generation down the line of a mysterious familly, the Torrez. The last name on the official papers, Manuel Emilio Torrez, was added in 1982, is this the Emilio also known as el Mariposa? No one knows for sure, and even an official request of identification from the government turned no answer. So much so that if the mysterious owner of the island doesn’t identify himself before the end of 2015, the land will return to the local council, allowing for the diseased trees that are menacing to topple and kill the visitors to finally be removed. But will this be enough to force the necromancer out of the shadows? Despite the author’s best effort, Manuel Emilio Torrez was another dead-end.

This is until a few month ago, in late 2014, one of these old men got back in touch with the author. Ernesto, as we will name him, admitted then being one of the many who had sold his soul to the Mariposa.

Decades ago, after his wife died in childbirth, Ernesto was so worried for the life of his daughter, who had survived her mother’s death, that he met in secret with the necromancer.

He retold in many details how the man took him to the swamps in the middle of a moonless night, to communicate with the spirit of his wife. He heard her voice as clearly as if she was standing next to him, and together they spoke tearfully about their life together, and about their newborn daughter. Ernesto promised that he would take care of her and make her as happy as any child could ever be, and at dawn they made their goodbyes and his wife moved on, never to be heard of again.

Then, Emilio asked Ernesto if he willingly gave him his soul, and as Ernesto accepted, Emilio cut him with a blade, placing some of his blood on his daughter’s doll that he had brought along, and nailed the toy to a tree. His soul now belonged to the necromancer. Emilio would keep it until his last breath, and then it would be collected by the Mariposa.

Ernesto was then sworn to secrecy. A secret he kept for decades, until his now very advanced age, and he would have taken it to the grave, hadn’t he seen the Mariposa again!

The man had not been seen or heard of in twenty years, and many were those hoping that it meant that he had died himself and that their souls were now free again.

But that day, during his sunday shopping in the busy streets of the neighborhood, Ernesto saw something that made his blood turn cold: standing there in the soft light of a side street, was the Mariposa. He was looking straight at him, and, to his horror, the face had lost nothing of its rugged youthfulness and looked exactly as it had when it bought Ernesto’s soul.

Ernesto thought that he must have dreamed, but he has since seen the sorcerer again, walking quietly along a channel of the new water gardens, not far from the island of dolls. In the full light of a quiet afternoon, there was no mistaking him, and Ernesto ran as fast as he could, least the sorcerer, tired of waiting for his price, took it upon himself to drag the old man under the black water of the deserted channels.

Ernesto contacted the author a few days later, and together, we asked a sketch artist at the police department to draw the picture of the eternally youthful necromancer. They did even better with this reconstructed photography of what Emilio looked like 30 years ago, as well as a few weeks ago. With this picture in hand, the author went back to talk to some of the elders he had first interviewed, and he saw many of them blanch and sign themselves hastily when they saw the face or the Mariposa, before asking the author to leave and never come back, lest he attracted death onto their home.