Manchas protecting the house even
though the ghosts are inside.

There's a ghost in our apartment. For the first several days that we were here I'd keep feeling like someone was standing behind me and looking over my shoulder, and I'd think I'd see things in the many mirrors this apartment has, then look closer and there'd be nothing. One night when I was home alone one of the giant mirrors fell off the wall and then last night the guardian angel painting that I mentioned in the last post also fell off the wall. Ghost?

Mono has a haunting story about his aunt that I just had him retell me so I'd get it right. It's a true story and it goes like this.

Once upon a time Mono's aunt thought that her husband was cheating on her so she went to a shaman. If you watch "The Real Housewives of Atlanta," which you should, you may have seen these magic-medicine-people cast fertility spells on Kenya. So Mono's aunt went to the medicine woman and asked her if she could help her figure out if it was true and with whom he was cheating. Plot twist: he was cheating with the shaman. 

Again, this really happened.

The shaman mixed up a drink and told Mono's aunt that it would help her husband fall in love with her again. She drank it up and immediately felt dizzy. The shaman asked her if she'd had any visions and told her that the dizzy feelings might last for awhile.

Aunt went home and things started to happen. It started out with odd behaviors when the family would pray before meals and at night when the aunt would bless the kids before they went to sleep. During both of those times she'd get very agitated and go into a bit of a frenzy as Mono's grandma said the prayer. Then it started to get worse to the point where she jumped atop and crouched on the table, shoveling food into her mouth during the prayer.

Things ended with the cheating husband and the aunt moved back in to the family home, where Mono's dad and uncles still lived. They put her in a room and hung pictures of saints on the walls, which she destroyed. One time Mono's dad brought in a picture of the Virgin Mary, framed and with a glass front. Mono's aunt crushed it, her hands all bloody with the splinters. On Palm Sunday the family brought the palms and laid them under her bed. They didn't tell her they were there, but instead of getting into the bed she started rocking back and forth on the floor. Later they got her in the bed and she wouldn't lay flat, instead arching her back because she said the mattress was burning her. The other thing the family said is that when you looked at her she had tiny crosses in her eyes.

The family tried to do a couple of exorcisms with a priest from the area and then later from the state and finally they had to have one come in from Mexico City. I guess that did the job but Mono says even now around thirty years later something is off with her. She's very submissive and will zone out of her surroundings pretty frequently.

Well. Sweet dreams!