„La Isla de Las Munecas“

One of my dolls, in a tree, a Christmas tree.
It is in porcelain and very tiny, but very cute!

Before I go to sleep, I usually read something short enough to keep me concentrated and awake. For some evenings ago, I read an article about „La Isla de Las Munecas“. I had heard about it, but never really got deeper in to the story. 

But this time, surfing the net, I ended up on a newspaper page with different short stories about strange places in the world. There was deep caves under water, burning holes in the ground and other stories. This one, about some dolls on a island caught my eye. 

About an hour from the Mexico City lies Isla de las Munecas, the Island of the Dolls. It is a chinampa, a floating garden and is in Xochimilco. On the island lived a man named Julian Santana Barrera and he was a native of the La Asuncion neighborhood. He was a loner and lived on the island all by himself. 

There is a legend that tells that Julian found a little girl drowned in mysterious circumstances in the canals. He also found a doll floating in the water, nearby the girl. He assumed that these two belonged together. In a sign of respect he hung the doll in a tree. Then he started to hear whispers, footsteps and wails in the darkness, even if he was miles away from civilization. He got scared and for 50 years he collected dolls and doll parts and hung them in the trees, just to appease the drowned girl’s spirit. 

Julian died in 2001, in the same place as the girl was found drowned. The place is now a popular tourist attraction and some visitors bring more dolls, just in case as something that appease the dark spirits there. The new doll connects then with the other dolls on the island. The place is not haunted, but charmed, as the locals say. Some visitors hear whispering and think that it is a creepy place. It was never meant to be a tourist attraction, but some paranormal happenings made people interested. 

Even if this island sounds like a very scary and odd place, I am still intrigued. At the moment I do not think that I would take a trip there, looking at some photos is just enough. And if I visited the island, I would take a doll along. Just in case.

The dolls are still there, with marks from the sun, rain and wind. It looks like the dolls have had a rough life. No-one knows what brought Julian to start putting dolls all over the island. His family says that Julian believed that the island was haunted by the spirit of a little girl and he thought that he could make the dead girl happy and keep evil away, by hanging up these dolls.