Although Halloween is not celebrated by resident Ticos, Costa Rica still has plenty of ghosts.

Escazú is known as a place where covens of witches call up spirits.

In all, a mystical place. One such phantom is the young lady at left. She is La Tulevieja, this one carved by master artisan Carlos Jiménez.

There are two stories, none of which adequately account for her wings and chicken feet. In the first tale, she is an old lady who wore the traditional straw hat, the "tule."  The old woman’s straw hat blew away in a wind, and she plunged into a local river to retrieve it, never to be seen again, at least in the flesh.

The second tale says that the deformed old woman was once a teenage girl who had a child out of wedlock. She refused to breastfeed her child, thus causing the child’s death.

She was transformed into a horrible creature with pendulous breasts, doomed to wander Costa Rica as an example to other young ladies. We still do not know from where the chicken feet came.

Escazú means “resting place,” but there’s a restless and often spooky quality to this suburb southwest of San José. In recent years, the area has burgeoned into a thriving commercial hub that plenty of well-heeled Ticos, Gringos and foreign ambassadors call home, but ancient burial grounds still lie beneath their modern abodes. Old Escazú remains steeped in its pre-Columbian history, and its legends have tended to take on lives of their own.

Bizarre creatures, enchantments and particularly witches are said to roam the land, andescazuceños seem generally accepting of this. Known informally as the “city of witches,” Escazú spawned a soccer teamed dubbed “Brujas F.C.,” and witch figurines are displayed prominently on residential chimneys. The municipal seal also depicts a witch on a broom.

“For the community of Escazú, as well as other towns in Costa Rica, oral history has been the instrument by which the generations have

passed on local and regional stories,” said Amalia León, a spokeswoman for the Escazú Municipality’s culture program.

Nearly all of Escazú’s legends are both fascinating and terrifying, but one legend has stood out from the rest – and even been the subject of a dubious recent development.

The Tulevieja

A ghost with the head of an old woman and the body of a bird, the Tulevieja is said to have lived up on Pico Blanco in the mountains of Escazú, occasionally coming down to ambush local farmers with her famous cry, “¡Voy, voy, voy!” before devouring them. Some also say she had gargantuan breasts that constantly dripped milk, prompting ants to follow her everywhere.

One day, a man named Liborio Constantino de Jesús Fernández, who was informally referred to as Tuto Yoyo, set out to trap the Tulevieja. Supposedly, she could only be caught with a special vine of Yazú, which somehow Tuto Yoyo got his hands on. He then tamed her by inviting her to dance – according to legend, the Tulevieja loves to dance – and returned to the town to brag about his success.

Nobody believed Tuto Yoyo, so he had to go back to Pico Blanco a second time to ask the Tulevieja if she would mind coming down to Escazú to be paraded around. She agreed, and the townspeople were flabbergasted and delighted – but only for the moment. After Tuto Yoyo let the Tulevieja go, many people’s memories of the occasion mysteriously vanished. Only Tuto Yoyo’s true friends who had good hearts could remember that he had bested the Tulevieja.

The Tulevieja legend is a longtime favorite, but not long ago it got some renewed attention. According to a Costa Rica tourism website, a group of archaeologists were excavating near Pico

Blanco when they unearthed a petrified segment of a vine that some believe is the vine of Yazú.

There is a pretty big problem with this story: The article doesn’t mention the date of the excavation or the names of anyone involved. The Tico Times submitted numerous inquiries to the Costa Rican Tourism Board and various Escazú city employees, but nobody had ever heard of any Pico Blanco excavation.

Helen Dunn Frame, an expat author working on a book that includes Costa Rican legends, was also stumped over when the excavation might have taken place. Her book, entitled “Doctors, Dogs, and Pura Vida in Intriguing Costa Rica,” will include a full chapter on legends from all over the country.

“If you look at the myths, you can learn a lot about people,” she said.

While researching the legends of Escazú for her book, the author talked to many of her Tico friends about their beliefs, and found that many still go to “witches” for readings and put curses on each other.

“But they don’t normally talk about it,” she said. “When you meet people from here, they don’t tell you they believe these things.”

Still, she said, many are convinced they have “the powers.”

Calling Tim Burton

It’s become fairly clear that director and master of spook Tim Burton should base a film on the legends of Escazú. And in case he needs assistance with plot lines or characters, we’re here to help.

One of the oldest Escazú legends is that of the carreta sin bueyes, the oxcart without oxen. The cart is said to roll slowly up and down

the street at night, creaking very loudly. It is said to be driven by the devil.

A witch named Zárate terrorized Escazú for years and is said to still reside in the caves of Pico Blanco. At times she takes the shape of the rooster that crows at midnight. She’s also the fog that comes down the mountain, and strange voices in the night. She’s the sound of waves lapping against the mountain – even though there’s no lake there.

The Cadejos is a black dog that appears out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly, clanking invisible chains.

A magic monkey dubbed Mico Malo also enjoys appearing suddenly and screaming at people, particularly on bridges. Mico Malo and La Segua, with an attractive woman’s body and the head of a smiling horse, are both said to be active on and around the bridge over the Río Tiribí, which has long been a suicide spot that some residents still refuse to cross.

The Llorona is a particularly sad case: on moonlit nights she cries by riverbanks, mourning the child she cast into the water before having second thoughts.

María Negra (Black Maria) is the most prominent spell-caster of any witch, and Nicomedes is a benevolent male witch who cured diseases with dried snakes, owls, bats, scorpions and lizards.

Witch of Escazu

Legend has it that this witch was black and one of the last highly renowned witches of the village, that lived to the north of the church located in the center of Escazu.

It is said of her that one morning she was discovered by her grandpa Talí completely nude, in a ravine that passed beside her house, and in a trance.

Realizing that she was discovered, the sorceress told her grandfather that he tell no one what he had seen. Paternally he replied: "Oh, Mary, now you are hurting someone." After some time, the grandfather had disclosed the facts to a few trusted neighbors and it is said that a few days later he was punished for disobeying his granddaughter witch´s orders; he then began to realize at midnight that dung droppings began to fall on the roof of his house, nearby cows began to kick furiously, and it seemed as though they were about to break the posts that enclosed them and the railings of his home. He went out to see what was happening… and everything appeared in order, nothing strange, with only the faint odor of dung in the air.

Days later, due to negligence on the part of the grandfather Tali, one of his young ones was killed due to a seemingly harmless piece of candy that he had choked on. And to make matters worse, when he had to go to near the witches home to the Jabmoncillo, close to the site of hatillo, to plant the seeds, upon passibng by the house of the evil woman a large black sow began to follow him, with a brood of piglets that began to bite his legs and continued to chase him at will. Tali defended himself with a knife, but he was unable to kill, no less injure these supernatural beasts. This lasted for several weeks, until the witch died; and legend has it that that very same day, the a tremor of sizable strength shook the ground, and that the home of the fallen witch was destroyed. From then on, the grandfather Tali reveled in a permanent and complete tranquil life.

With nearly three-quarters of the Earth covered by water, it's little wonder that, centuries ago, the oceans were believed to contain many mysterious creatures, including sea serpents and mermaids. Merfolk (mermaids and mermen) are, of course, only the marine version of half-human, half-animal legends that have captured human imagination for ages.

C.J.S. Thompson, a former curator at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, noted in his book "The Mystery and Lore of Monsters" (Kessinger, 2010), "Traditions concerning creatures half-human and half-fish in form have existed for thousands of years, and the Babylonian deity Era or Oannes, the Fish-god, is represented on seals and in sculpture, as being in this shape over 2,000 years B.C. He is usually depicted as having a bearded head with a crown and a body like a man, but from the waist downwards, he has the shape of a fish covered with scales and a tail."

Greek mythology contains stories of the god Triton, the merman messenger of the sea, and several modern religions, including Hinduism and Candomblé (an Afro-Brazilian belief), worship mermaid goddesses to this day. In folklore, mermaids were often associated with bad luck and misfortune. They lured errant sailors off course and even onto rocky shoals, much like their cousins, the sirens  — beautiful, alluring half-bird, half-women who dwelled near rocky cliffs and sung to passing sailors. The sirens would enchant men to steer their ships toward the singing — and the dangerous rocks that were sure to sink them. Homer's "Odyssey," written around 800 B.C., tells tales of the brave Ulysses, whose naked ears were tortured by the sweet sounds of the sirens. In other legends — from Scotland and Wales, for example — mermaids befriended, and even married, humans.

'Real' mermaids?

There are many legends about mermaids and even a few dozen historical claims of supposedly "real" mermaid sightings. Hundreds of years ago, sailors and residents in coastal towns around the world told of encounters with sea-maidens. One story, dating back to the 1600s, claimed that a mermaid had entered Holland through a dike, and was injured in the process. She was taken to a nearby lake and was soon nursed back to health. She

eventually became a productive citizen, learned to speak Dutch, performed household chores and converted to Catholicism.

Another supposed mermaid encounter is described in Edward Snow's "Incredible Mysteries and Legends of the Sea" (Dodd Mead, 1967). A sea captain off the coast of Newfoundland described his 1614 encounter: "Captain John Smith saw a mermaid 'swimming about with all possible grace.' He pictured her as having large eyes, a finely shaped nose that was 'somewhat short,' and well-formed ears that were rather too long. Smith goes on to say that 'her long green hair imparted to her an original character that was by no means unattractive.'" In fact, Smith was so taken with this lovely woman that he began "to experience the first effects of love" (take that as you will) as he gazed at her before his sudden (and surely profoundly disappointing) realization that she was a fish from the waist down. This dilemma is reflected in a popular song titled "The Mermaid," by Newfoundland band Great Big Sea:

"I love the girl with all me heartBut I only like the upper partI do not like the tail!"

Another story, from 1830 in Scotland, claimed that a young boy killed a mermaid by throwing rocks at it; the creature looked like a child of about 3 or 4, but had a salmon's tail instead of legs. The villagers are said to have buried it in a coffin, though there seems to be no historical evidence of this fishy tale.

By the 1800s, hoaxers churned out faked mermaids by the dozen to satisfy the public's interest in the creatures. The great showman P.T. Barnum was well aware of the public's interest in mermaids and, in the 1840s, displayed the "Feejee Mermaid," which became one of his most popular attractions. People paying 50 cents hoping to see a long-limbed, fish-tailed beauty comb her hair were surely disappointed; instead, they saw a grotesque fake corpse a few feet long. It had the torso, head and limbs of a monkey and the bottom part of a fish. To modern eyes, it was an obvious fake, but it fooled and intrigued many people at the time.

Modern mermaids?

Could there be a scientific basis for any of the mermaid stories? Some researchers believe that sightings of human-size ocean animals, such asmanatees and dugongs, might have inspired merfolk legends. These animals have a flat tail and two flippers that resemble stubby arms — traits that may make them resemble merfolk. They don't look exactly like typical mermaids or mermen, of course. But many sightings were from quite a distance away, and since they were mostly submerged in water and waves, only parts of their bodies were visible. A glimpse of a head, arm or tail just before it dives under the waves might have spawned at least some mermaid reports.

Modern mermaid reports are very rare, but they do occur; for example, news reports in 2009 claimed that a mermaid had seen sighted off the coast of Israel in the town of Kiryat Yam. It (or she) performed a few tricks for onlookers just before sunset, then disappearing for the night. One of the first people to see the mermaid, Shlomo Cohen, said, "I was with friends when, suddenly, we saw a woman laying on the sand in a weird way. At first, I thought she was just another sunbather, but when we approached, she jumped into the water and disappeared. We were all in shock because we saw she had a tail."

The town's tourism board was delighted with the town's newfound fame and offered a $1 million reward for the first person to photograph the creature. Town spokesman Natti Zilberman thinks the reward money is well spent. "I believe if there really is a mermaid, then so many people will come to Kiryat Yam; a lot more money will be made than $1 million," Zilberman said.

Unfortunately, the reports vanished almost as quickly as they surfaced, and no one ever claimed the reward. It's not clear what people were seeing, though the power of suggestion and imagination can be strong. Identifying animals in water is inherently problematic, since eyewitnesses are only seeing a small part of the creature. When you factor in low light at sunset and the distances involved, positively identifying even a known creature can be very difficult. Many wondered if it was just a case of mass suggestion, or even a hoax to drum up tourism. Either way, the mermaid hasn't been seen since. 

In 2012, a TV special called "Mermaids: The Body Found" renewed interest in mermaids. It presented the story of scientists finding proof of real mermaids

in the oceans. It was fiction but was presented in a fake-documentary format that seemed realistic. If the program fooled people, it's because it was intended to. As the show's website noted, the movie "paints a wildly convincing picture of the existence of mermaids, what they may look like and why they've stayed hidden … until now."

The show was so convincing that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, represented in the film, received enough inquiries following the TV special that the agency issued a statement officially denying the existence of mermaids. In a June 27 post, NOAA noted, "The belief in mermaids may have arisen at the very dawn of our species. ... But are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That's a question best left to historians, philosophers and anthropologists."

Legends of mermaids may be ancient, but they are still present in many forms; their images can be found in films, books, movies and even Starbucks.