The Haunted House of Las Dos Palmas
A young boy experiences unexplained phenomena in his old house, including noises, apparitions, and inexplicable events. Locals believe the house is haunted due to past dark deeds, possibly abortions and secret burials.
There are tales that send a chill down your spine. And then there are tales that make you pause, look at your cat suspiciously, and wonder if it’s more sinister than it lets on. This, dear reader, is one of the latter. It’s the story of a boy, a house, and an assortment of ghosts that seemed to have been let loose from some sort of spectral carnival, all happening in the Las Dos Palmas ranch of Santa Rosa, Mexico.
But before we dive headfirst into the uncanny, let me set the scene for you. Picture an old adobe house, walls so wide they could survive an apocalypse and still have enough thermal mass to keep you warm in the winter. This house wasn’t just old; it was ancient. It was built in a time when people apparently thought, “You know what? Let’s bury our dark secrets—literally—in the corners of the house.” And when I say secrets, I mean tiny, tragic ones, the souls of unborn children, left to haunt the living for eternity. Cheery, right?
The protagonist of this story is a boy who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided to keep living in this house. This lad, likely in possession of nerves of steel or the world’s worst sense of curiosity, grew up in a maelstrom of poltergeist shenanigans. Dishes flying, pots clattering, and the eerie sound of children laughing—this wasn’t a one-off Halloween prank. This was his Tuesday night.
The boy’s mother, being a rational soul, naturally blamed the cat. And who wouldn’t? Cats have always seemed vaguely supernatural, with their glowing eyes and penchant for knocking things over for no reason whatsoever. But the boy insisted. No, it wasn’t the cat. It was children. Invisible ones. Running and laughing. If this sounds absurd, imagine being the poor lad, stuck there trying to sleep while a ghostly rendition of recess played out in the corridors.
Here’s where things escalate from mildly creepy to outright absurd. A family decided to spend the night. They unrolled a rubber mattress in the living room, presumably thinking, “What’s the worst that could happen?” As it turns out, the worst was waking up outside with the mattress, staring at the house as if it had grown teeth overnight. “Who carried us out?” they asked. No one answered, because no one had the faintest idea. They packed their things, probably muttered something about never again, and bolted.
The mother, bless her, finally decided that maybe her son wasn’t entirely mad. She brought in a priest, a figure who presumably thought he’d just say a few prayers and call it a day. Except, when the holy man entered the house, he emerged visibly shaken. His exact words, according to the tale: “How could you have lived here?” A rhetorical question, I assume, because by that point, the family was as baffled as he was.
The climax of this ghostly saga involves the mother stepping outside one night to fetch water—a seemingly harmless chore. But what greeted her wasn’t the gentle embrace of a cool evening breeze. No, it was something monstrous. Something that flung itself at her chest, rendering her unconscious. When she was finally revived with the timeless cure-all of alcohol (not the drinking kind, unfortunately), she claimed to have seen “something very ugly.”
The priest, probably pale and wondering if this gig was worth it, declared that these were restless souls. Souls, he claimed, that needed peace. One would assume that his prayers helped, because the boy—now an old man—still lives in that house. And apparently, the ghosts have either gone silent or retired from their nightly hijinks.
The question you’re likely asking—and rightly so—is why on earth anyone would stay in a house like this. And the answer, maddeningly, is that they just did. Maybe it’s stubbornness. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Or maybe it’s the kind of logic that says, “The ghosts are quiet now, so everything’s fine.”
But one thing is certain. This isn’t just a story about a haunted house. It’s a story about resilience, the kind that says, “Yes, my house might be a portal to the afterlife, but the location is unbeatable, and the adobe walls are great for insulation.”
So, the next time you hear a bump in the night or blame the cat for something mysterious, spare a thought for the boy from Las Dos Palmas. Because somewhere out there, he’s still living in that house, sipping tea, and wondering why the visitors never come back for a second stay.
In-text Citation: (Crispin Terrazas , 2021, pp. 62-63)
