Real story behind ‘haunted’ Island of the Dolls in Mexico

MEXICO
Deep in the heart of the canals of Xochimilco — Mexico City’s last vestige of the
Aztecs — is one of the world’s most haunted and tragic locations: the Island of the
Dolls.
Here, on this single acre, which houses three huts and a crowd of decaying dolls,
locals swear they see ghosts and hear shadows talking. It is, they believe, cursed.
“During the time of Cortez many people fled here to Xochimilco and hid on the
canals,” Gerardo Ibarra, co-founder of Ruta Origen, a sustainable travel company
in Mexico, told The Post. “A lot of these people were women and children hiding
from the conquistadores. And many women killed themselves rather than be
caught and raped [by the Spanish].”
The Island of the Dolls was, for centuries, a place to disappear.
Remarkably, it’s within the city limits of one of the world’s biggest metropolises.
Mexico City was originally an island in a volcanic caldera lake surrounded by the
Sierra Madre mountains. The Aztec empire (1300 BC – 1521 BC) was the first to
start developing the area, building a system of manmade islands, called
chinampas, and a canal system for farmers to navigate them.
The dolls were collected by Barrera to protect himself from the spirits that lingered
on the island.
Paula Froelich
After the Aztecs were defeated in the Spanish Aztec war (1591- 1521), much of the
chinampas were filled in and turned into the basis of the city we know today.
Except for, that is, the most southern end of Mexico City, in Xochimilco, where the
chinampas and canal system still exist – an integral part of local life and are a
UNESCO world heritage site.
At times, the neighborhood was also used as shelter for Mexican revolutionaries
and religious practitioners who may have fallen out of favor; some of them ended
up killed or drowned in these canals.
Ibarra introduced me to Don Lauro, a community leader who has spent his entire
life in Xochimilco, paddling through the small islands that are used for farming
maize, squash and chiles.
Don Lauro, the community leader and lifelong resident of Xochimilco, rows
Gerardo Ibarra, the founder of eco-tourism company Ruto Origen to La Isla de las
Munecas.
Paula Froelich
Using a on a wooden, flat-bottomed chalupa, Lauro paddled to the infamous Island
of the Dolls and recalled how, 50 years ago, the water was “so clear you could see
to the bottom.”
And that’s how, in the 1950s, Julian Santana Barrera found the body of a young girl
at the bottom of the waterway just outside his door.
“The girl was swimming with her sister or friends and the current took and she
drowned,” said Rogelio Sanchez Santana, the current “guardian of the dolls” and a
great nephew of Barrera.
The dolls are often seen heavily decayed — and creepy.
Paula Froelich
According to him, it was after his uncle found the body that trouble started.
“The spirit of the girl was living in sorrow,” Santana said. “In the mornings Julian
started seeing ghosts, and one day woke up and found all his crops had died. He
tried many things to improve his crops but he couldn’t because the spirit damaged
it. He became more and more scared.”
Barrera built an altar in his one-room cabin on the island where he and his wife
lived, hoping to appease the spirit.
“But the spirit still came,” Santna said. “So he started collecting dolls as a way to
protect himself from the spirit.”

To get across the canals, residents are pulled over the water by flat bottomed
boats attached to lines.
Paula Froelich
Over the next half-century, Barrera collected more than 1,000 dolls — some from
the trash in the area’s main city, others gifted by neighbors and visitors. They’re all
still there, decaying, sometimes beheaded and truly creepy. Everywhere you look,
there are dirty dolls hanging from trees, nailed to buildings and other structures,
strung along clothes line.
In 2001, according to Santana, Barrera died of a heart attack in the same spot
where he had found the body of the girl.
“The spirit of the girl came to him and dragged him into the water,” Rogelio said.
“He and his wife could never have children [because of the island], so my uncle
Anastacio took over.”
After Anastacio’s death in 2019, Santana assumed guardianship of the island,
although he and his wife and three children do not live there, choosing to stay on
their own island 20 minutes away.
On the island is a small grave of the original owner, Julian Santana Barrera, who
died in 2001 at 86.
Paula Froelich
Over the years, several other imitation doll islands have popped up in the canal. “It
is big business now,” Santana said. But there is only one true Island of the Dolls.

Santa said he sometimes sees “some shadows in the night with the moonlight” but
other visitors have claimed to have witnessed the dolls eyes moving and hearing
them talk.
As for what will happen to the island when he dies, Santana said: “The ownership, I
leave to the dead.”