Short Stuff: La Pascualita

long lived mannequin. I mean, how many mannequins do you think are at Macy's that were put into into work put to work in the nineteen thirties? Just the old Marge Okay, one out of thousands, right, So that in

and of itself is pretty impressive. But what makes La Pascualita even more impressive, or more interesting even is that a lot of people, especially in the Chihuahua area, believe that she's not a mannequin at all, that she's actually an embalmed corpse, specifically the embalmed corpse of the original owner of La Popular bridal dress shop in Chihuahua, Mexico. That's right. I urge you to go when you can

safely do so. Look up pictures of La Pascualita and specifically just put in as your search term La Pascualita mannequin hands, Yeah, because that is one of the creepiest parts of this mannequin. Are these? I mean, it looks like no mannequin hands that I've seen. They look like, at worst, like a Madame Tussau's dummy hands. I would say even more detail than that. I've never seen more life like non life hands in my life. You ever been to Madame Tussau's I have, and I'm telling you

this mannequin hasn't beaten well. The story of Lo Pascualita, Um, you know, it's an urban legend, and usually when there's an urban legend, you can't pinpoint like any head cannon. Uh. It's usually just a story kind of passed around that morrison changes. And that's probably the case here. But as the story goes in the nineteen thirties, the she's known as the corpse Bride, was going to get married and

her mom. Uh. There's a couple of different versions. One was her mother was not in favor of the marriage and the daughter it like broke her heart, so she died. I saw other versions where she was bitten by a black widow or there are other sort of like bug stings and bites that killed her, depending on who's telling the story separately, not all at once, right, depending on

the story. Right. And that mama was so distraught that she had this her daughter's body mummified or and or embalmed, and said you're gonna live in my window as the corpse bride forevermore right, Yeah, which is kind of sweet in a lot of ways. Kind of The woman, by the way, that you're speaking of who had her daughter embalmed is named Pasquala Esparza, the owner of the Bridle shop in the thirties when La Pasqualita made her debut and local people said, look at those hands. I don't

know what Madame Tousseau is it yet, but this beats them. Yeah, never seen hands like that in my entire life. But also doesn't that mannequin bear a very strong resemblance to Pasquala's daughter who's now dead. I think that's really odd. Did you think she did? I didn't think she looked a whole lot like her. No, but we'll get to

that in a minute. There's a reason why she didn't look a whole lot like There's a picture that you're referring to, I think on the internet where it shows a picture of Pasquala's daughter and then a picture of La Pascualita the mannequin. Right, yeah, that sounds like a great cliffhanger. Okay, all right, we'll be going back stout. Stop you shouldn't, I should know, all right, I'm hanging

let's hear it. Oh, okay, Well, the reason that the mannequin La Pasqualita doesn't look anything like the daughter of Pasquala that has shown in that picture is that the woman of pictures not the daughter of pasqual There was no daughter of Pasquala as far as okay, has that been super confirmed? Because this all how stuff works, dug up. A woman named Teresa Cordova, who did a dissertation in twenty twelve from the University of New Mexico that had to do with this, went down to the shop to

interview them. I don't know if it is still the same family. That's one thing I couldn't find. I don't believe it is, but it's it's the shop's been open the whole time, but I believe it's changed hands, all right, changed creepy mummified hands that had an interview lined up with the manager. The manager did not show up for the interview, and they said that, you know, she got back in touch and they said, no, we think it's bad luck, so we're not going to do this interview.

And she proposed, Hey, this is all just a marketing thing because I have done some pretty extensive public record searching and I have not found that this daughter exists, So they're not gonna do this interview because this negative publicity and missing is a great marketing tool. Yeah, that's

what I was basing it on. Cordova's research. Okay, she searched for obituaries church documents at the local church historical records and found no record of Pasquala A. Sparza having a daughter or at all, let alone one that died.

That's that's how I take it. Okay, As far as whether or not this could be a embalmed human being, not only did how stuff works interview some embalmers and people in the funeral industry, but I got on Reddit the source for all information, and there were quite a few embalmers who weighed in, and all of them said, there's just no way, like the most super plus plus two point zero embalming that you could ever do on somebody, if you really wanted someone to last a long time

for some weird reason, there's just no way it would last seas long this long, especially in these conditions like La Pascualita, if it were an embalmed corps. First of all, this is like has been standing in a sunny, bright window for ninety years. That all that alone says nope, not a corpse. Thing would have rotted by now. It would certainly not look like it does today, which is in pretty good shape. Right. The second thing is there are corpses out there that have been embalmed and kept

preserved for very long time, like Lennon's corpse. I don't remember when he died, but I think it was the thirties as well. And if you look at him, he's still looking okay, that's clearly a corpse. But also he's kept under extremely specific conditions. There's a team of people who whose job it is is to keep him, you know, up to snuff. Yeah. Yeah, essentially, and over the years, through all of these updates and like freshen ups, he's

basically been turned into rubber. Yeah. So you couldn't just embalm the corpse wants standed up in a dress shop window for ninety years and it would look like that. It just wouldn't. So, Yes, if you're a professional or balmer, you're like, this is not a corpse. It's just not a corpse. Yeah, much less change the clothes on this thing, right, I mean I didn't. I didn't find any information on that. But unless she's wearing the bridal dress from the nineteen thirties,

is that true? I found um that there's so she supposedly has vericoast veins in her legs. I'd try to find a picture of that, but I couldn't find one. Okay, here's why, because that piece of information that's bandied about is evidence that she's actually not TRPs came from I don't know if it's true or not, but it's It really fits into the idea of an urban legend where a woman unnamed who supposedly worked in the dress shop

when who knows and was responsible for changing law. Pascuelita is the one who said that she had vericoast veins. That woman might not exist either, right, So again, and we're just following the steps of a great urban legend where it just over time, somebody said it, it it became a really interesting thing. It's way more interesting than that's a really strange mannequin that they've had since the nineteen thirties.

And the dress shop itself is like, no, we're not going to We're not going to rebuke this or dispute it, like it's great. It brings people to our bridal shop. Yeah, did they ask a lady when she said and she also has vericos veins. I've seen them where they like,

is that a bluepin in your front pocket? What pocket? Apparently, also, there was another thing that's frequently said, like, oh well, this is great evidence too, that the owner requires that La Pascualita be changed from dress to dress behind a drawn curtain. Well, sure, so if she were a mannequin, why would you care? Right? But there is one question I have, Chuck, that I find fascinating. Nowhere on the internet, is there even a suggestion of the manufacturer of that mannequin?

Oh right, or mention of any other mannequins that have hands like that. Nobody's stepped up and been like, look, she comes from the line of crazy hands from you know, Nerveco that made mannequins back in the thirties. There's nothing like that. Yea, So I really do wonder who made that mannequin. It's it's really interesting, and I think that too, is helping keep things going. Maybe it was Vincent Price. It could have been very creepy. Look at those hands, everybody.

I'm telling you, I think to make it even more creepy, we should just sit here in silence for thirty seconds before we finish. Really all right, I guess we're doing this. I'm gonna say short Stuff's out, and then I'm just gonna sit here. Short Stuff's out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.