Where is the Island of Abandoned Dolls? The Island of the Dolls is a scary Mexican landmark. The making of the Island of Abandoned Dolls

Mexico - mysterious country. The mysterious Aztecs, representatives of Indian tribes, began to populate this territory long before the first white man set foot there. Over the centuries, they created a civilization with a unique culture, rich in traditions and myths. Unfortunately, the arrival of Europeans in these places meant the beginning of the decline of this civilization. Along with the Aztec civilization, many myths died. In their place new ones were born. One of them is the Island of Dolls.

A little history

Throughout the valley, where the capital of Mexico, Mexico City, is located, an ancient network of canals dug in once marshy areas has been preserved to this day. In some ways it was a unique type of farming. To increase the area for growing vegetables and fruits, the Aztecs selected bottom silt, placed it on wooden rafts and planted crops. In place of the selected silt, long channels were formed. After some time, islands of agriculture washed ashore and took root there. There are still many such canals with islands in these places.

One of the areas with such canals, called Xochimilco, is located less than twenty kilometers from Mexico City. This is where the Island of Dolls is located.

Birth of a myth

Like many other places with their own myths, this one has its own strange story. Once upon a time, a little girl drowned in one of the canals. Around the same time, Don Julian Santana Barrera appeared on the island. He was a heavy drinker, although people who knew him noted his religiosity. Information about what exactly was the reason for his seclusion has not been preserved, but this is not important. Another thing is interesting. Julian suddenly became an avid doll collector. He found them everywhere, they were plastic and wooden, whole and not so good. Bringing the dolls to his island, he placed them wherever possible: he hung them on tree branches, secured them with wire to trunks and pegs driven into the ground. Sometimes he simply sat the dolls in the grass near the water.

Despite the lack of money, he was able to organize his lonely existence quite well, as he was engaged in fishing, cultivated the land and grew vegetables. Gradually I began to exchange with other people. The subject of exchange for him, naturally, were dolls. In addition, some of the toys were delivered to him by his nephew, Anastasio Santana. The dolls became a part of Julian's life, as if he saw them as something greater than those around him. The Island of Dolls became a home not only for him, but also for all his many charges, which became more and more numerous over the years.

Julian explained to his nephew that the dolls are protection from evil spirits, of which there are many in the surrounding swamps. In addition, he is constantly visited by the soul of a girl who drowned in this place. To appease her, he collects toys. She hopes that the dolls she likes will be able to occupy her and she will not cause harm.

Discovery of a creepy island

Today everyone knows this place as the Island of Dolls. Mexico has become an even more visited corner of the planet since a team of scientists, clearing overgrown canals, discovered a lone man surrounded by thousands of dolls.

As soon as the secret of the place was revealed, journalists rushed to him. And then photos of the island of abandoned dolls in Mexico spread all over the world.

Following the journalists, tourists began visiting the island.

Many of them brought dolls with them and left them with the owner of the island. And there was a place for each of them.

Soon, despite the distance from the main roads, the Island of Dolls became another point on the map of the country’s attractions.

Over time, toys not only occupied all the branches on the trees, but also began to hang on fences, under the roof and on the walls of huts.

The death of a strange collector

In a strange twist of fate, the owner of the island of dolls in Mexico himself drowned at the age of eighty. After his death, in 2001, the dolls became the rightful owners of this island. There is a feeling that they are constantly monitoring visitors and controlling their actions.

Despite the fact that the flow of tourists to the Island of Dolls is increasing every year, there are few daredevils who want to spend the night on it. After all, according to legend, all dolls are connected with the souls of those who drowned in local canals and swamps. And every night they come to life. Perhaps because of these rumors, since the death of the owner, no one not only spent the night on the island, but also did not linger on it until dark.

Julian himself practically repeated the fate of the girl whose spirit he had been trying to appease for a long time.

Afterword

Who knows, perhaps the soul of the drowned girl could not part with her faithful admirer and decided to call him to herself? And if the legends are right, his soul found refuge in one of the many dolls on the mystical island and is now watching over visitors. And perhaps, when the next tourist takes a photo on the island of dolls in Mexico, he will capture a piece of the soul of the former owner of this strange place.

You can get to the island by taking a boat from the Cuemanco pier. Delivery to the place and back with a walk along the canals will cost 800 pesos (approximately 2,400 rubles).

– this is extremely popular country among tourists with an amazing original culture and unusual sights. There is one thing here unique place– The Island of Dolls, which is loved by vacationers who want to tickle their nerves.

History of the Island of the Dolls, Mexico

In the Xochimilco area, lost among the famous Aztec canals Mysterious Island dead dolls of Mexico. Visitors to this place are treated to an eerie view reminiscent of a scene from a horror movie: scary and mutilated dolls are hung on trees, poles and buildings. According to rumors, the attraction was created by Julian Santana Barrera, who led a reclusive lifestyle. The man began collecting dolls thrown into trash cans in 1950 after a girl drowned before his eyes. The collected toys were hung by him on an abandoned island: the hermit believed that he was appeasing the spirit of the little drowned woman.

There is also a version according to which Julian Santana Barrera caught dolls from ponds and hung them near the house in order to appease the ghost of a drowned girl who came to him. The hermit even exchanged the vegetables and fruits he grew for broken dolls. However, the Island of Dead Dolls was little known until the early 90s of the last century. And thanks to the Xochimilco canal cleaning program, this mysterious attraction has gained popularity. By the way, the creator of the island drowned in 2001 in one of the canals.

Island of Abandoned Dolls today

Nowadays, quite a few tourists flock to the Island of Dolls. You can only get there by boat, and, by the way, there are no communications or electricity there. Order on the island is maintained by the relatives of Julian Santana Barrera through the donations that tourists leave. Visitors have the opportunity to see about 1,000 eerie exhibits. And so that the dolls do not get angry for the intrusion and are not persecuted, it is customary to bring gifts here.

One of the world's most famous places of pilgrimage for tourists - small island"La Isla de la Munecas", located in extensive network canals, south of Mexico City. The name translates from Spanish as “Island of Dolls.”

Island of Dead Dolls

For those who have never heard of this place, the expectation of seeing a beautiful and cute world of toys is shattered to smithereens. In fact, the island is overflowing with dirty, ugly and mutilated dolls that are hung on trees everywhere. There are at least 1000 of them here. Some of the children's toys, long disowned by their owners, can strike terror into even the bravest tourists.

They say that in the 50s of the last century, the hermit Julian Santana Barrera, who renounced the world and family in favor of the island, began collecting dolls from trash cans and hanging them on branches.

Initially, the hermit’s goal was to calm the soul of a girl who drowned nearby, and then all the girls and young women who died in different years in the waters of the canals. In the end, Barrera managed to turn this wonderful island into a strange, scary place, where your every step is watched by the creepy eyes of mutilated toys.

The gloomy collection was replenished with the efforts of local residents, who exchanged dolls that had fallen into disrepair for vegetables that were grown on the island by a strange hermit.

Today, the family of the hermit, who himself drowned in a canal on April 17, 2001, maintains his museum under open air thanks to donations from numerous visitors. There is no electricity or communications, and you can only get here by boat.

They say that each of the dolls placed on the island has an astral connection with one of the drowned women and is fed with energy from her. Rumors also say that as dusk approaches, some dolls can hypnotize lonely tourists and whisper to them to come home to the underwater kingdom. In order not to become an unwitting guest of such an invitation, you should light a candle in front of the suspicious doll and read a prayer for the repose of the drowned soul...

Video - The creepiest island

Do you want to tickle your nerves a little? Island of the Dolls in Mexico.

Somewhere in the tropical Mexican forests, not far from the unremarkable town of Xochimilco, there is an island with a touching name Island of the Dolls. Don’t let such a harmless name deceive you; just visit it and your opinion will change radically. And.....not a trace will remain of your good mood. Because it island of dead dolls.
Stepping onto the island, you will find yourself in an ugly world consisting of the remains of dolls, which were once a great joy for children. These abandoned dolls make up entire compositions. Some of them are screwed to tree trunks, and some are hanging from trees on ropes, with their heads turned back. The blackened, dirty and crumpled faces of these dolls look at tourists with bright blue eyes or, on the contrary, empty eye sockets. The spectacle, it must be said, is not for the faint of heart. And the history of this place could begin like this...

Once upon a time there lived in a Mexican town an eccentric named Don Julian Santana. He was born in 1921 and did not stand out among people in anything special, except that he prayed to God more earnestly than others and drank heavily. History is silent about what went into his not entirely sober head, but at one point, this strange man became interested in collecting dolls, and not just any dolls, but certainly old ones and abandoned by people. And he didn’t disdain anything; everything was suitable, wooden and rag, plastic and rubber, with or without heads. And in 1975, Santana left the city altogether, loading his “favorites” into the boat and leaving his wife. He fell in love with a lonely island surrounded by an overgrown canal and never returned, preferring the company of his pets to human society.

On the island, Don built himself a hut and lived by growing vegetables, fishing in the canal, and maintaining contact with the outside world exclusively through his nephew Anastasio, who brought him the necessary equipment and exchanged the fruits and vegetables grown by Santana for the dolls so kind to him. Found this gloomy Island of the Dolls ecologists who cleaned the canal of algae and they spread the word about the old man with such a strange fantasy. Over the years of his voluntary solitude, thousands of these freaks have accumulated; they are everywhere, on the walls of his hut and inside it, on the fence and on the roof, and there is practically not a single free branch where dolls do not hang. Like this one island of dead dolls in mexico.


Even without visiting the island, you can understand that it leaves some kind of mystical and painful impression, is not it? And it would seem that the old man did not intentionally disfigure the dolls and did not make monsters out of them, but simply collected and hung up what once brought joy, and then was carelessly forgotten and abandoned by people. But come on, I have chills all over my skin and I wouldn’t want to spend the night there, would you?….Island of Dolls photo:


Island of the Dolls Mexico photo.

The Island of the Dolls is deservedly considered one of the creepiest attractions of modern Mexico. Just seven or eight decades ago, this place did not stand out among the small abandoned islands scattered among the canals south of the Mexican capital.

Today the island is “inhabited” with hundreds of mutilated dolls hanging on trees and walls of buildings.

The opening views are more like the scenery of a horror film: everywhere you see empty eye sockets, twisted bodies with broken limbs, crushed heads.

The ominous transformation of the island began in the mid-1950s. An ordinary Mexican guy, Julian Barrera, became an accidental witness to a tragic incident: a little girl drowned in one of the canals, leaving only her doll on the shore. It is unknown what prompted Julian to think about the existence of a mystical connection between the doll and the soul of the deceased.

According to Barrera, from that day on, the spirit of the dead girl constantly appeared to him. In an attempt to appease the newcomer from the other world, Julian began to create a kind of sanctuary, using for this purpose found in trash cans old dolls.

For about 50 years, Barrera lived as a hermit in a hut on the island. All these years he continued to tirelessly add to his terrifying “collection.” To the exhibits found in garbage dumps were added dolls, exchanged with local residents for vegetables, which Barrera cultivated in a small garden.

As a result, the number of toy monsters exceeded 1000.

The life of a strange hermit was cut short in 2001 - like the girl whose spirit accompanied Julian all her life, he drowned in one of the canals.

Today, the Barrera family is engaged in maintaining the unique appearance of the island.

Creepy place island of dolls

Everyone's attention to unusual island was attracted in the 90s, after special services cleared the canals around the island. The only way to get to the island is by boat. This is the way into this creepy place Thousands of tourists come every year.

According to visitor reviews, it is difficult to find another place that makes such a depressing impression. The feeling of dead eyes looking from all sides, etched into the memory, the sights of countless mutilated dolls, the special gloomy atmosphere reigning on the island - all this, like a magnet, attracts those who like to tickle their nerves to the island.

The stunning island has already given rise to many rumors. They say that almost every doll has an astral connection with one of the children who drowned in the canals and is fueled by their energy. Especially impressionable tourists who ventured to walk along the ominous island in dark time days, they claim that they clearly heard the whisper of dolls luring unwary passers-by into the canals.

It has already become a tradition for visitors to the island to light candles in front of the dolls and leave small gifts for the mysterious and terrible inhabitants of the island.


Address: Tepoztlan, Greater Cuernavaca, Oaxtepec / Lomas de Cocoyoc
Coordinates: 19°17"2"N 99°5"38"W

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