Perched in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, a day’s drive northeast of Mexico City, the village of Chicontepec keeps the lore of a Mesoamerican monster alive. Details of this ancient creature are shared only in hushed whispers, in stories told behind closed doors—doors that are, ideally, guarded by hanging garlic.

Beware the teyollohcuani, a vampiric witch. It may take the form of a harmless elderly woman or man, but then shape-shift into an animal—usually a turkey, vulture, or other large bird. It flies into homes to suck the blood of infants, or worse: The word teyollohcuani actually translates as “customarily eats human hearts” in the Mexican Nahuatl language. The creature first took shape in precolonial Mexico and has been evolving ever since, as Spanish, African, and modern pop culture monsters intermix.

About 20 years ago, while anthropologist and independent scholar Edgar Martín del Campo lived with the Nahua and Otomi people of the rural region of Huasteca, including Chicontepec, he explored the complicated folklore of the teyollohcuani. His research led to the only academic paper devoted to the obscure figure—but it took a while to gather all the threads.

At first, no one in the community would talk of the taboo subject. “I got a lot of tight lips,” says Martín del Campo. “Witchcraft was not something that you openly talked about. I had to find ways of sneaking it in, or just shutting up and listening when people did talk about it.”

The <em>teyollohcuani</em> is known for shape-shifting from human to bird and back again, and sometimes displaying attributes of both forms simultaneously.
The teyollohcuani is known for shape-shifting from human to bird and back again, and sometimes displaying attributes of both forms simultaneously.

Martín del Campo, who has ancestral ties to the Cora people of Nayarit in western Mexico, says the country’s indigenous folklore is full of creatures with supernatural abilities, but the teyollohcuani is unique. It’s the only Mesoamerican monster that sucks the blood of children, and is also—unlike Dracula and other undead vampires—a living creature, says the anthropologist, whose 2009 paper in History of Religions detailed Spanish, African, and modern media’s influence on the stories of the teyollohcuani. As Martín del Campo discovered in the course of his research, it can be hard to tease out which parts of the creature’s lore have indigenous roots, which came from Mexico’s colonial period, and which have been added more recently.

The rise of what we think of as a classic vampire—the living dead who comes to suck your blood in the form of human or bat—is often traced back to Slavic folklore, but variations can be found around the world and throughout history, from ancient Greece to East Asia. There’s something about vampires that transcends culture, says Rachel Stewart, a doctoral candidate in literature at Ohio State University.

“At the times these traditions are emerging, it’s not like someone in Mexico is calling up their friend in Eastern Europe. These traditions are just occurring naturally because of these innate fears that we have, and how we wrestle with them and make sense of them,” says Stewart, whose research on Victorian vampires and their persistence in pop culture earned her the nickname “the vampire scholar.”

Vampires hide in the human form, blending in as one of us while also blurring the line between the living and the dead. They violate our bodies and steal our blood, considered an individual’s life force in many cultures around the world. Vampires can also serve as convenient scapegoats for heinous acts, allowing a community to say, “‘It wasn’t one of us that did this, we would never do this to one of our own,’” says Stewart.

The same is true for the vampire-like monsters of precolonial Mexico, says Martín del Campo. “Witchcraft is still a common source for explaining suffering in the villages where I did my fieldwork, and … in many cultures around the world,” he says. He adds that many people find comfort in believing, “‘My misfortune is because of somebody else’s ill wishes toward me,’ whether they’re aware of it or not.”

Martín del Campo believes the teyollohcuani originated within societies that spoke Oto-Manguean languages—a large linguistic family in the region—then spread to the Nahua, the ethnic group that includes the Aztecs. Tales of the teyollohcuani are now found throughout Central Mexico, from the state of Oaxaca on the Pacific coast to the Huasteca region along the Gulf of Mexico. The creature goes by different regional names, and sometimes has region-specific traits: While it usually appears as an old woman, or sometimes an old man, some incarnations can travel by flying fireball, or turn their arms into wings made of woven mats.

While the teyollohcuani today is seen as malevolent, that might not have always been the case, says Martín del Campo. In precolonial times, “shape-shifting was something only those who were attuned with the higher levels of the sacred, such as gods and priests, could do,” he says. “When the Spanish arrived, their ideas of shape-shifting were associated with witchcraft, and witchcraft was inherently evil. These beings that had formerly been sacred and mythical now turned into monsters.”

The term teyollohcuani was first documented in 1555 in Alonso de Molina’s Nahuatl and Spanish dictionary. However, earlier works, such as the Codex Borgia, a visual record of precolonial Mexico created between 1450 and 1500, feature many images of colorful birds and raptors consuming hearts and possibly blood.

The teyollohcuani may seem similar to the strix, a mythical figure from ancient Rome that could morph into a large bird, but stories about it predate the arrival of the Spanish to Mesoamerica.
The teyollohcuani may seem similar to the strix, a mythical figure from ancient Rome that could morph into a large bird, but stories about it predate the arrival of the Spanish to Mesoamerica.

Teasing out how the Spanish contributed to the myth is less certain. The teyollohcuani may seem similar to the strix, a mythical figure from antiquity that could morph into a large, bloodthirsty bird. While stories of the strix originated in ancient Rome, its lore eventually spread across much of Europe. Martín del Campo dismisses a possible Spanish influence here, noting that the teyollohcuani was already known long before tales of the strix reached Mexico.

Likewise, Martín del Campo has not found clear evidence to support another suggested Spanish influence on the indigenous folktale. Anthropologist Hugo Gino Nutini, who studied the local lore of Tlaxcala, a state just east of Mexico City, linked tales of bloodsucking witches to potential maternal neglect. In 16th-century Spain in particular, women seen as poor mothers, especially due to intoxication, were often accused of witchcraft. While it’s possible that this Spanish association worked its way into the teyollohcuani myth, firm proof remains elusive.

However, Martín del Campo has found that the cultural traditions of enslaved people from West and Central Africa, who were brought to the region by the Spanish, have influenced the teyollohcuani’s lore. It is only after enslaved people arrived in Mexico that the teyollohcuani has the ability to project its spirit or soul outside its body, a concept that exists in several folklore traditions from across Africa.

As Mexico’s largely rural Nahua and Otomi communities have increasing access to modern pop culture trends, their monsters continue to evolve. Despite the teyollohcuani traditionally being described as a bloodsucking witch, Nahuatl speakers working with Martín del Campo often translated the creature’s name as “vampire,” which he attributes to exposure to media such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dracula.

In another sign of outside cultural influence, he also saw residents of the region hanging braids of garlic on their doors to ward off vampires—despite the pungent plant, and belief in its vampire-repelling qualities, not being native to Mexico. It’s yet another example of the lore of the teyollohcuani continuing to evolve, shape-shifting to incorporate new traditions.