History of the ‘Island of the Dolls’ near Mexico City

Who died there and is it haunted? Also, why are there dolls?

In the middle of a lake — Laguna de Teshuilo — just south of Mexico City, there was once an unnamed island with arable land on it.

Don Julian Santana Barrera was born in the Xochimilco borough of Mexico City in 1921. During the 1950s, he moved to that island and became its caretaker. He lived a modest and simple life there growing vegetables.

It is unclear why he moved to such an isolated spot. Some say it was for spiritual reasons and he intended to live like a hermit. Whatever the case, Julian was very religious. He would often visit neighboring towns and communities in order to preach the gospel.

Getting beaten up

At the time — during the 1950s — it was presumed that only anointed priests were allowed to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a result, Julian’s preaching was not looked upon with favor by the Catholic communities which he visited. Julian was beaten up a lot, which led to him becoming even more reclusive over the years.

The legend of his life and that of the island starts with the death of a young girl which supposedly occurred around this time. Julian claimed that one day while minding his own business he saw the corpse of a little girl wash up on the shores of the island. Beside her was a doll.

Being deeply religious (and superstitious), Julian buried the girl’s body on his island, and in order to appease her spirit, he also hung her doll from a tree so she could play with it. Just for reference, the story about the dead girl was never confirmed and her body was never found.

A haunting

Julian claimed that while continuing to live alone on the island, after the girl’s death he began hearing voices and whispers around him as well as other strange phenomena — such as finding the doll hanging off a different tree than he had left it.

He decided that now the island was being haunted and the spirit of the girl was malevolent, so in a further attempt to appease it, he again began to visit the communities around the south of Mexico City. While out there conducting some trade and no longer preaching the gospel, he began to search for dolls through all the rubbish bins he could find. Whenever he acquired one, he brought it back.

Once he brought the spirit of the dead girl more dolls, she was pacified — for a while.

Dolls floating down-river

Again, I must state that this is the legend of the island of dolls in Julian’s words and isn’t necessarily true. However, this is how Mexico came to have one of the creepiest islands in the world, so listen up!

Things were calm and Julian resumed his relatively simple life. However, pretty soon he began to find numerous dolls floating down the Xochimilco canal which flowed into the lake his island was surrounded by. Allegedly, the haunting of his home became even more noticeable after that. For example, he began to hear footsteps near him and something whisper “I want my doll,” during the nights. However, his island was in the middle of the jungle surrounded by water and whenever he got up to look around, he didn’t see anyone.

So he began also collecting the dolls from the river and hanging them up on trees. The most likely truth according to historians is that there were a few dolls which he found in the river and a lot which he collected himself from rubbish bins. The voices and whispers of ghosts are most likely either rumors or existed purely in Julian’s imagination.

Some people joke that maybe the girl’s spirit was restless because the dolls he brought back were so ugly. Whatever the case, Julian never fixed the dolls he hung from the trees. As a result, many of them are missing limbs or eyes. Having been there for over 70 years, their clothes are decaying and rotting and insects sometimes crawl out of their eye sockets. It’s not a pretty sight.

There are also dolls that Julian had found in a better condition. He played dress-up with these dolls and made them a special little home — although when you open up the door to the shed they are in it still looks like something out of a horror movie. Julian also collected accessories which he would fix on them. His favorite dolls were named Agustina and Monec.

Gondolas

Julian had abandoned his family to live on this island all alone. When he had been visiting communities in the south of Mexico City — such as Barrio de la Asunción — in order to sell vegetables and drink pulque, he had annoyed the locals by also preaching to them. However, as decades passed and he needed to find a place from which to collect dolls, the locals forgot or forgave him.

As such, he eventually began to tell the story of the dead girl he had found on the shores of the island and why he was collecting the dolls.

What he soon found was that some people were willing to pay for him to give them a tour of his creepy island. During the 1990s he began to supplement his income by doing that.

His previously unnamed island became known as La Isla de las Muñecas (“The Island of the Dolls”).

Julian’s mysterious death

This could all just be part of the lore but apparently, 2001 marked the 50-year anniversary of when Julian claimed to have found the corpse of the little girl washed up on his island. In that year, his dead body was found in the exact same spot where he found her. He had drowned. Local media reported his death extensively and locals became even more interested in the island. People who knew him eagerly jumped on the publicity bandwagon and added to the already numerous myths about his home.

Apparently, the real reason why Julian was collecting dolls was that he was himself possessed by an evil spirit that still inhabits that island. Very religious or superstitious people now avoid the location near the Isla de las Muñecas. But people who are keen on making a few easy pesos will bring visitors right onto the island’s shores.

Anastasio Santana Velasco — Julian’s nephew — is currently in possession of the island. Since the year 2002, Velasco along with numerous other companies have been offering paid boat tours that go all around the edge of Mexico City — which is a jungle divided by canals. The island of the dolls is the most popular stopping point on that tour.

Whereas Julian himself had thought that the dolls on the island were “an assortment of beautiful protectors,” most people find them incredibly eerie.

A professional photographer named Cindy Vasko once stated in an interview that the island was the “creepiest place” she had ever seen.

“At the end of the journey, the trajinera (boat) turned along a bend in the waterway, and I was struck by a surreal vision of hundreds, maybe thousands, of dolls hanging from trees on the tiny island.” — Cindy Vasko

If you were to visit now

It seems that locals are mainly divided into two camps regarding their approach to the cursed island. Some locals avoid it like the plague; others visit the island regularly and continue the tradition of hanging broken dolls from the trees in order to ward off evil spirits. As a result, some estimates claim that there are thousands of dolls on the island.

La Isla de las Muñecas is now pretty famous around the world.

A movie was shot on the island in 1943. Emilio Fernández filmed María Candelaria there — starring Dolores del Río and Pedro Armendáriz.

Also:

“A significant number of international and local channels have featured articles on the island, including The Huffington Post, Travel Channel and ABC News… The island was featured on the Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures and the Amazon Prime show Lore. It was also featured in BuzzFeed Unsolved.” — The Island of the Dolls

There is now also a small museum on the island as its popularity grows every year. Needless to say, the island is not haunted but the story sure is an interesting one — or at least it was for me.

Thank you for reading.

References

https://isladelasmunecas.com/ https://www.discovery.com/exploration/the-island-of-the-dolls-has-a-murky-and-terrifying-history https://allthatsinteresting.com/island-of-the-dolls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Dolls https://www.vice.com/en/article/qbw4z7/the-island-of-the-dolls