The witches
There are women who have mysterious gifts. There is a variety of these special women,
there are good and bad ones, there are healers, those who presage, the fortune tellers,
those who eat children, those who make sacrifices, there is a whole diversity of practices,
actions and magical or religious expressions. But today I will talk about those, the people
use to scare , from the youngest to the most adult.
Witches are believed to be beings of the nigh and darkness, who made a pact with the
devil. They are also thought to have a very old and spooky appearance. According to the
popular beliefs of the Dominican Republic, they were seen very frequently and they could
travel long distances on a flying broom and that they even enjoyed hurting and scaring
people. As well, it is said about witches that their souls are perverse and apart from flying
on broomsticks, they like to flutter over houses making spooky noises, terrifying laughter,
also, there are some witches who transform into young women to attract men.
The people said that witches like small children, and they like to suck them, sucking their
blood through their navel or big toe, until they kill them. It is said that a Witch has some
limits with children, which is said that she will not attack the children of her own friends or
if they are twin children. It is also believed that if the child is baptized and the witch suck
them, the witch will begin to vomit the blood.
Many people believed and considered that the Witches take off their skin before flying,
and they put them to soak in a jar and then fly away. As they fly, they let out laughter and
songs that nobody understands. In the same way, the stories talk about, if the Witches
were discovered, they can be trapped, only by people who are called the Tumba Brujas,
these have power in their prayers and special rituals to knock down the witches. When
these are caught, you must wait for the sun to rise, because that is when the witch’s
enchantment is broken, and you can discover who the witch really is.
There are some tricks to protect yourself from witches, such as, it was said that you had to
put a broom upside-down, so that if the witch reached the roof of the house she could not
fly, you can use her greatest fear, the salt, hers body can get salty, because they have left
the skin stored, and if you put the salt under the seats they will not be able to get up.
There is a belief that made me smile and think about, and it is, when it rains and the sun is
out, it is because in somewhere, a Witch is getting married. Apparently, they get married
right at the point where the sun, the rain and the earth meet.
Before concluding I would like to tell a story that my family tells, and that is about when I
was a newborn, I was lying in a room in my grandmother's house, they had left me alone
because I was sleeping. My mother was in the kitchen and my grandmother in the living
room, when they heard a very loud sound on the ceiling, right in the room where I was
sleeping, but they didn't think it was something bad, rather, they thought it might have
been a coconut. that fell from one of the coconut trees that were near the house, after a
few minutes I began to cry nonstop and nothing they did could calm me down. At that
moment a brother of my grandmother was arriving, who was a twin and automatically he
touched the floor of the house, they heard a horrible scream like pain and something that
came out jumping from the roof and colliding with the nearby trees, it was at that
moment that my mother and my grandmother found out there was a witch in the roof.
In the town, where I was born, Montecristi, there is a lot of belief in those legends, and
more than legends they are believed as experiences, who believe very convinced of what
happened. As is the case with my story, there are many more in my family, friends and
many other people in the country. I cannot affirm that witches exist, but I cannot deny
their existence either, that will be left to your personal discretion.
I think that witches are a worldwide belief, since I have heard many stories from other
countries, which, like mine, have their own witches. I think that the stories about witches
are a little different from the stories that are used to sleep, as is the case with Disney,
since witches in my country are used more to scare, mostly children and to be careful, and
obedient children. The world of Disney modify their stories to be more kids friendly and
appropriate for the whole family and , to sell more and reach the largest audience they
can reach.