Dangerous “Island Of Dolls” In Mexico Will Give You Goosebumps
How a doll collector changed the look of an island forever
Imagine yourself all alone on an island. Imagine that you live there, growing your own vegetables and cooking your own meals, leading a rather modest and otherwise normal life. Now, imagine that one day you find a corpse floating in the canal water.
I personally, would immediately pack my suitcases, abandon my crops and flee the island out of terror. However, I must admit I am a cowardly wimp on most good days, so I’ll assume that others who may be a little more dare-devilish than me wouldn’t think much of the corpse.
Perhaps some of you would just say a few prayers for the corpse and go on with your lives, unbothered and at peace. But what if I told you, that soon after the appearance of a corpse you find a doll floating in the exact same spot you find the dead body?
Surely now all of us would run for our lives, right?
The Lone Man on the Island
Don Julian Santana Barrera, is a middle-aged man who lived a quiet life by himself on an island located to the south of Mexico City. Barrera had a normal life back on the mainland with his wife and child, however, due to reasons still unknown he left his family and came to the island to live alone. Visitors from the mainland who would go to the island to help him with his crops mostly describe him as a rather welcoming and kind-hearted man. Until one day, an incident happened that changed his life and the island itself for years to come.
One day while working near the canal, he spotted the lifeless body of a young girl floating in the water. She had drowned in the water and her corpse had floated over to the island.
And you can already guess that this is where the fun begins so I suggest you pull your covers tight because this is about to get truly bone-chilling!
The Beginning of Barrera’s Doll Obsession
While it is not clear what ended up happening to the body of the poor girl, what is clear is that Barrera, a genuinely good-hearted and God-fearing man was overcome with grief for the girl.
Obviously, he must have wished that he could have saved the girl. A few days later, while Barrera was in this period of grief, he found something else in the water. This time it was a doll, floating in the exact same place where he had found the young girl.
Barrera believed that the doll must have belonged to the girl so to pay respects to her spirit; he took the doll and hung it up over the island. However, there may be more to this story because some natives who have visited the island claim that Barrera actually did this to protect the island from the spirit of the dead girl who he thought must have been angry at him for not saving her.
Whatever the reason was, Barrera seemed to have developed a firm belief regarding the girl and the doll.
Barrera’s Tragic Descent into a Mental Spiral
Clearly, Barrera was not done with just one doll. After some time, he started hanging more and more dolls up on the island. Not just this, when people from the mainland visited the island to buy vegetables and other foodstuffs from him, he would demand to be paid with dolls instead of money creating a bizarre barter system for his trade.
Very soon, the island started looking very horrific and people started limiting their visits to the place. Dolls were hung up on lines all over the island and nature had started to eat away at their plastic, making them deformed and giving the entire island a very haunted feel.
Barrera would also search through the water and trash regularly to see if he could find more dolls, and when he found them, he would obviously hang them up regardless of how decayed they were.
The Doll Collector Meets His End
Later, in 2001 when the island had started looking even worse, Barrera’s nephew, Anastasio Velasco visited him to help with planting pumpkins. While the two were working, Anastasio left his uncle’s side for a short while, and when he returned he found his dead body floating in the canal water.
Wanna guess where his dead body was discovered? In the exact same place where the girl’s body had been found!
Since then tourists have regularly flocked to the island to pay respect to the good-hearted (albeit, not that sound of mind) man and to — you guessed it, hang more dolls in there!
In 2016, in a small talk with two ghost hunters from Buzzfeed, Anastasio who is the current owner of the island claims that at night one can hear the sound of Barrera’s walking cane patrolling the island.
A Logical Perspective
There are many who claim that Barrera must have just been out of his head (literally) and that perhaps he had mental illnesses that lead him to act the way he did and do the things he did (because like be real, who in their right mind would leave their family just to go live alone on an island).
Some people claim that Barrera may have just drowned himself in the water and may even have waited for Anastasio’s arrival to do it so that he could be found in the same place as the girl.
Many also believe that there was no young girl in the first place and that Barrera was just mad. Regardless of what the truth was, the island still exists today, a haunting proof of the human mind and its capabilities.
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