Menacing Statue Linked to Witchcraft Mysteriously Appears in Texas Cemetery

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UPDATE 1/26/2013: The statue has been found destroyed, thought to be ruined by angry locals.

A menacing statue mysteriously appeared in a Texas cemetery last week, and an occult expert believes it’s linked to witchcraft intended to do deadly harm.

The 3 foot tall statue depicting Death perched atop a pile of skulls was discovered by two San Benito women on Thursday, who brought the statue to the attention of cemetery officials. The women believed the porcelain figure to be disrespectful to the family plots located nearby.

“I noticed the statue on Monday (January 14) when I came to visit my mom’s grave,” 61-year-old “Samantha” told the San Benito News. “First of all, a statue like this shouldn’t be placed at a city cemetery. Whoever it belongs to should have a little more respect for our loved ones and the other people who are buried here. I don’t have anything against people who worship that statue, just not here at our city cemetery. It is disrespectful to our loved ones.”

Samantha’s friend wasn’t as shaken by the find, claiming that she’s “into a lot of prayer” and has already been in contact with the city officials about the statue’s presence. The local police told her that it was out of their juridiction and wouldn’t remove it.

Dr. Antonio N. Zavaleta, Vice President for External Affairs at the University of Texas at Brownsville is a world renowned occult expert who believes that the figure is part of a ritual intended to cause harm to one of the families who’s relatives are buried in the nearby graves.

“Someone, a man or woman, is doing witchcraft for pay,” Zavaleta said. “Somebody has paid the witch; they don’t do it for free and it (witchcraft) could easily go for a couple thousand dollars. So it definitely needs to be removed. The city should remove it, and that should be the end of it.”

Zavaleta went on to estimate the statue was worth somewhere between $100 and $200, and if officials were serious about disposing the idol, they would do well to incinerate it.

The figure depicts the Santa Muerte, a kind of “local saint” that originated in Mexico City in the 80′s, and has most recently been referred to as the “patron saint of Mexico’s drug war”. If you’re a fan of Breaking Bad, you might recognize the figure a particular season 3 episode that involved a lot of crawling. Santa Muerte, while a relatively new figure in Mexico’s rich religious tapestry, had certainly picked up a lot of steam in the last few years. A 2012 quote from the Houston Press says it all:

In 2008, police found 11 charred heads near a Santa Muerte shrine in the Yucatán tended by the Zetas drug cartel. Earlier this year, Drug Enforcement Administration agent Chris Diaz testified that during a wiretapping operation, he heard a Zeta heavy boast of sacrificing two teenaged rivals to Santa Muerte by slicing open their bellies and offering the blood of one as a toast to La Flaka. Also this year, on the side of a highway not far from Monterrey, police found the handless, footless and headless torsos of 49 men and women, many of which bore Santa Muerte tattoos.

Said to bring swift revenge to the enemies of her worshippers, it seems that Santa Muerte is starting to gather some followers across the border.

“If I were to walk here and study (the cemetery), I could probably uncover some other things, but what for? There’s no purpose in it. These witches, people who practice black magic – especially with Santa Muerte – they’re going to always lay out their work once they’re done with it. They’re going to lay it out in a cemetery.”

San Benito, if you start seeing some scary bald dudes with pointy skull boots, just run.

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Greg Newkirk

Director at Planet Weird

Documentary film-maker, professional monster chaser, and mystery monger, Greg is also the contributing editor for Who Forted? 'Zine. When he's not occupied by writing about the wide world of the weird, he's busy directing and editing films like The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching or perusing used bookstores for antique occult books. He's currently in production on his new project: an original documentary web series titled Planet Weird, which you should totally check out. He currently lives in Toronto.

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