Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and there's Jerry sitting in for Dave. And this is stuff you should know.
That's right. We're beginning our Spookcius month about two.
Yes, and I'm psyched.
I am too. We love our halloweeny content. And we're going to talk to you a little bit today about a kind of one of those just fun urban legend stories that seems to be geographically specific in that it's around you know, maybe Texas, New Mexico border towns, mainly of the Lalla Choosa, the owl witch.
Yeah, but I think that's where its origin was, along the border of Texas and Mexico. But I saw also it spread chuck to places like Argentina and Cuba. They have their own versions. But Lala Choosa is a I think somewhere around a set foot owl with the face of a woman, fifteen foot wingspan and a bad attitude. Yeah.
And this is one of those things where you know, because it's lore and legend, it's going to differ from place to place depending on who's telling the story. By the way, we should think how stuff works and all that's interesting. Austin Harvey from there, and I found a fun article on Texas Standard from Sarah ash and Raoul Alonzo that helped out with this. But yeah, this is one of those sort of legends where and there's a lot of different versions. We're going to go for a
few of those. One is that La La Chusa will make like sounds like a baby is crying, hoping that someone will go, like, try and find this baby and all of a sudden be snatchable by the talons and they would be snatched up and return to the owl's nest. Ostensibly that's so creepy.
Yeah. Can you imagine seven foot owl woman with a fifteen foot wingspan mimicing of baby's cries.
No, it's pretty terrifying like that.
Also, some of the other stuff that said about her is that if you see her near your house, it means she's portending that something bad is about to happen to somebody in your house. Maybe a piece of furniture in your house. I don't know.
Yeah, if I think sometimes if you dream about La La choose a family member will die soon. And it seems like most of the tellings it is a woman who was once a or an ol woman who was once a human woman and something bad happened to her, some act of cruelty, usually something by a bad man happened, or maybe maybe happened to her child and it turned
her into a vengeful beast. Sometimes La la Choosa is more of a witch's familiar, like the like you know, Dracula's or a vampire's familiar, and I think in that case the as a witch's familiar, they would abduct kids for the witch.
Right. She's also been accused of being an MS area of Satan himself Satan, that's right. And one of the things you said is that she's often described as being vengeful because of something that happened in her past or her kid. Usually that's chalked up to either her child was killed for a crime they didn't commit and so now she's stealing other people's kids in return, or that her child was killed by a drunk man. Yeah, and
that's actually one group that she seems to target. And modern tellings are drunk dudes stumbling out of bars and walking home alone at night and then wow, fifteen foot wingspan comes out of nowhere and the talents just sink into their head and carry them off by their scalp, and if they're lucky, their scalp will rip off of their head and they'll follow the ground and die on impact.
And if they're unlucky, they'll be carried by their scalp all the way back to Lalla Choose's layer, and bad things are going to happen to him there.
That's right. If you want to kill Lalla Choose, a good luck, buddy, because apparently you cannot hurt Alala Choosa with bullets. I think if you try to kill one with a gun or something like that, you're going to get killed like pretty soon afterward for sure.
Right, Yeah, I guess in the La La Choose a fact off, there's that whole idea that this is a woman, our woman who is actually some sort of spirit or familiar or something like that means that there is an actual person involved in this elsewhere, often a member of the community secretly preying on the rest of the community as Lalla Choosa, and that when La La Chusa is out doing her thing, that person is unconscious back home in some room until she comes back and reinhabits their body.
So either they're possessed by her or they're using her or their special ability to enact vengeance and terrorize a community. And there's actually sposedly I looked all over for I couldn't find it. But there's supposedly some sort of incantation or prayer or something that a community can use that will reveal the person who is actually La la choosa and then ostensibly they get their scalp taken.
All right, shall we come back after this, Yes, all right, we'll be right back with Mara la la Choosa.
Okay, Chuck. And we've been using the name La la choosa without explaining to non Spanish speakers that la choosa is actually the word for owl. Yeah, which makes lot of sense. Sure, And this was we said that this whole thing kind of came from the Texas Mexico border,
that seems to be the origin of it. And they think essentially that this is just like any other bit of folklore, that it was used to explain unbearable things like the disappearance of children, or probably more likely, it was used to keep kids on the straight and narrow, like fairy tales were right, you know, Western Europe, same thing if you're out messing around and you know, spray painting,
somebody's brick wall or something like that. Lola Choose is going to come out of nowhere and snatch you up, so you better be good kind of thing.
Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, as far as where these things come from, I remember, God, many many years ago, we did one in urban legends, and it's always pretty much impossible to trace back like the true origin With this one. There are people who think this might have come from pre Columbian meso America, when the indigenous peoples
had very close relationships in bonds with animals. But when the Spaniards came along to meso America, they brought, of course Christian Catholic Christian beliefs with them and condemned the rest as paganism. Of course.
Yeah, I thought this is really interesting because a lot of the gods in meso American cultures were animal human hybrids. Right, Yeah, so an owl woman may have been some ancient or eldritch deity and was in no way, shape or form evil. But the Spaniards came along as Christians and went to that Christian playbook and basically said, your gods are now Christianity's demons, so stop worshiping them. And that is a great explanation for where something like La Choosa came from.
Yeah, for sure. It's also popped up over the years in like various pop culture ways. I'm surprised or has it been like a pretty cool La la choose a like movie or a character in a movie or TV show? You know, they'd be truly frightening.
Have you seen the movie based on Lajrana? I don't think I saw that. That was it was kind of scary that it was the Latino urban legend and it was okay.
All right, well maybe I'll check it out. You have good horror recommendations.
Okay, I take that back then, because I don't want to. I don't want to ruin Streek.
Yeah, I mentioned pop culture. I think Lalla Chuosa was a was an enemy in an issue of a comic book called Releempago, and that was created by Margarito Garza. So that was one. What else it was music too, righte?
Yeah? There. Yeah, there's a song called El Parajo Gigante de Robe, which is by a group called Los Campion's de Raul Ruiz and the de Robe is actually talking about a specific town called Robestown or Rob'stown. Texas along the borders near Corpus Christy and there was an outbreak of sightings of La La Choosa in nineteen seventy five and seventy six, and like it was a big deal, Like this whole town was like like credible. People are
like I saw La La Choosa with my own eyes. Yeah, And it turned out that there was a group of teens from town who had created a pretty convincing La La Choosa like dummy, like a life size one, and was just you know, running it around town scaring the Bejesus out of people. So that's where that that inspired that song. As far as I can tell.
You know, I wish I knew somebody who was a good sort of model maker creature maker, because we've been getting more into the Halloween front yard decorations and like to be a little outside the box and not just whatever you get at party City or no, not party city.
What is it?
We did a whole episode on it last year.
Oh spar Halloween.
I mean there's there's a is really good. I'm not knocking it.
Have you been at home Depot lately, dude? They've gone off the chain?
Oh really?
Oh yeah, they have like ten twelve foot tall scary monsters. Now it's crazy like their Halloween thing. But it's the same issue that you don't want, which is name somebody two door sounds gonna have the same thing.
Yeah, I would love a custom sort of. I think Allala choose it would be truly scary and it has kind of a fun story behind it all like stuff that has like a legend behind it. So hey, if anyone out there wants to just you know, make me one, I'll just say my address on the show and you can just drop it off in the front yard.
Good plan. Yeah. There was one other thing too, and I kind of touched on that Lalla choos has survived into modern day and that the most modern interpretations tend to kind of drill into the kind of gender norm or flip flop gender norms. Yeah, that the fable or the urban legend actually kind of gets into, which is there's a vengeful woman who is big enough and powerful
enough and angry enough to punish bad men. Yeah, and that not just men who stumble home drunk from the bar are targeted, but men who are known to abuse their wives their children are her favorite like prey. Now, so It's interesting how she kind of evolved into a bit of like an avenger for women and children.
I like that version.
Yeah, hats off Leila Choosa.
That's right. We're good guys. Don't come after us.
That is true, Chuck, that is true. Anything else?
I got nothing else?
Okay, well then short stuff is Oh.
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