Portuguese folklore that haunted me as a child

grantaire-wannabe:

This is all buzzfeed unsolved fault. Also this is how my family and the villagers that helped raised me in early 2000 told me so it’s more than likely to be different from what you know because 1) my memory is shit 2) I was raised in center of portugal by a bunch of farmers and a family from nazaré, peniche, lisbon and mirandela.

Homem do Saco or Velho do Saco (aka man with the bag ig):

So the legend I was told was that there was this old man that carried a bag of sarrapilheira like the ones you used to carry potatoes. And he would catch children that misbehaved or that would stay in the streets past bedtime. He would take the children and make buttons and soap out of them.  10/10 worked to scare the shit out of me. Imagine like Jean Valjean when he got out of prison but for some reason he thought it would be nice to make soap out of little kids.

Bicho Papão (the boogeyman):

It’s about this demon/ghost that would be on the roofs of houses and would take the children that were being naughty or disrespecting their elders and well eat them. So you would not listen to your grandfather when he said that you couldn’t play with his watch but you did it anyway? The Bicho papão would come at night when you were in bed and eat you with this many teeth. 10/10 scary my grandmother used to have to let me say the little prayer/poem for me to keep me safe. “Vai-te papão, bicho malvado, sai do telhado. Deixa o menino dormir um soninho descansado.”

Coca 

ffs okay so I was already like 6 ig when my great grandmother told me this. Now that lady was kind of evil but she liked me a lot for some reason but she still told me about this which made me afraid of dark corners or streets. Coca is a lady with head of gourd that had nothing beside holes where the mouth and eyes should be. And the holes in her eyes would burn because of the evilness. She would stay in any dark corner or dark place looking at the misbehaved child and take them away forever and eat them and leave their bones in their parents door. I mean I know this is basically “scary beast eats children” but it works okay you just get older and now know coca is men hidden in dark places instead of a lady with a gourd face. You also have to give it to my great grandmother because the bones thing was her twist because not a single one of my friends know about the bones thing. 150/10 this one fucked me up for real I still hate dark corners. 

Maria do poço:

 She was this demon with horns and fire that would caught children in rivers and wells and drown them to eat them. But she sometimes looked as a little girl and would cry for help so children would try to help her and when you tried she would pull you inside transform in a demon and eat you like a crab. We love. 3/10 I was a weird child and I would shit on a tree near our well and talk with her

Bruxas Lavadeiras

This one isn’t exactly scary I mean they wouldn’t eat children so that’s a pretty good way to not scare the living shit out of tiny me. So they were this ghosts of ladies that wore all white and would run around town at night with lanterns and clean blood dirty clothes. People who saw them would end up dying soon so f u n 1/10 scary because they don’t eat you, you just know you gonna die soon so F U N

Pesadelo

This asshole was a demon that wore a hood and if you would leave your bed not made then the next night he would come and put his hand in your mouth. Now you wouldn’t choke because he had a hole in this hand and would only leave if he got scared by an adult. 2/10 this didn’t work for me I always said that making the bed was dumb and I would only do it because my mom was scarier than him.

Os lobos da Serra

Okay this one is from my village and was told by older kids. And the old people would agree because it was basically: don’t you fucking dare to go to the woods at night.

There was this two kids that were playing in the woods at night and a wolf started to run behind them and the youngest fell but the oldest didn’t help him, leaving him to the wolves. But when the oldest was almost out of the woods he fell and scratched his left palm right in the middle and the wolves go him. After that a curse was given to us and every child born with a palm line right in the middle of their left palm would become a wolf. 0/10 I was ready to be a werewolf the moment they told me and I saw the line.



Be my guest to add more or your own versions because I love this kind of shit, I think I wasn’t threaten with death enough growing up.

(via its-the-tear-in-my-heart)

Apr. 6 2019
Via grantaire-wannabe
184 notes

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  21. thewitch243 reblogged this from official-portugal and added:
    Related to the ‘Homem do Saco or Velho do Saco (aka man with the bag ig)’, my mum once told me that, in her old...
  22. tielofthenightsong reblogged this from official-portugal and added:
    Nossa cara eu sei q isso n é do folclore brasileiro/portugues em si mas eu morro de medo da loira do banheiro (e...
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