The Witch of Xalapa and Other Horror Stories

I want to share an experience that happened to me 18 years ago in Jalapa, Veracruz.

I prefer to leave out my name, but I'd like to tell this story, which I call The Cat's Tree.

I was 9 years old and lived with my family in an area of Jalapa near Pacho Viejo, around the Gobernadores neighborhood, very close to Margaritas.

There's a lot more out there now, but back in 2008 it was very different.

There was practically nothing.

We had no electricity, no lit streets, and the few houses that existed were very spread apart from each other.

There was forest, coffee plantations, and enormous plots of land where at night the darkness was total.

For a while we had been living in a borrowed house, until one day they asked us to leave.

My family didn't have many options, so we found a plot of land even more remote and started building our own house there.

It was a very small structure, about 5 meters by 5, built with whatever we could find.

Wood, sticks, cardboard sheeting, some metal sheets.

It was essentially a shell of a house.

We had already left spaces for the windows, but we didn't have them yet, so at night we covered the openings with curtains to try to hold back some of the cold.

We also had no gas.

We cooked over firewood we collected ourselves, and for light we used candles and a white rechargeable Phillips lamp.

Occasionally a neighbor would let us plug it into their generator to charge it.

That lamp was very important because, apart from the candles, it was practically our only source of light.

And the nights, as I said, were very dark out there.

One night several people were helping us with the construction of the house, including the man who was my brother-in-law at the time, who stayed working quite late trying to finish some things so we could be a little more comfortable.

By the time we realized it was almost 11 at night and a lot of fog had rolled in.

My ex-brother-in-law had to get back to his house and needed a lamp to cross the road, but we couldn't lend him the only one we had because we would be left completely in the dark.

So a decision was made that now, looking back, seems like madness, but at the time I suppose it was simply what had to be done.

I would walk him with the lamp to the exit of Gobernadores, near Margaritas.

There he would continue on his own, and I would return alone.

I was nine years old.