When TikToker Angie’s (@angiee.calderonx) brother was two years old, he accidentally invited a duende into their grandmother’s house in Mexico.
According to folklore, a duende is a mischievous elf/goblin. The creature followed them halfway home to the U.S.
On the day that it happened, Angie’s mom was in the backyard, and her brother was standing by the stairs. He kept saying that something wanted to get into the house.
Her mother, trying to appease him, opened the gate and signaled for whatever it was to come in, which was a big mistake on her part. But they had thought he was talking to an imaginary friend.
One day, Angie’s brother was playing with his toys when he started crying about how something had pushed him. He was angry and wanted it to go away.
Later, he fell asleep but woke up screaming, claiming that this thing was pulling his hair.
“By this time, this thing was now in our closet,” Angie recalled. “So, my mom, my brother, and I used to share a room, and there was a big walk-in closet right in front of the bed where my mom and my brother slept. He was sitting up, and he was like, It’s right there, it’s not leaving.”
Angie started showing him pictures of different types of dolls and asking him what the creature looked like. The closest description they got from him resembled one of those troll dolls from the ’90s with the tall, colorful hair.
But her brother said that its hair was not colorful. That’s how Angie and her mom came to the conclusion that the creature must be a duende.
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After a while, it stopped bothering her brother, but it was still around. On the way back home from Mexico, they spent the night at a hotel in San Antonio.
They went to bed without incident, but then her brother woke up screaming again because the duende had pulled his hair. Apparently, it was sitting in a little chair in the corner across the room.
Angie, who was around seven or eight years old at the time, started going off on the duende, telling it that it could not go home with them. Somehow, it worked because when they got home, everything went back to normal.
Several TikTok users shared their own experiences with duendes in the comments section.
“The duende probably was not pulling his hair. Maybe he was trying to braid it! That’s how duendes mark the kids they want to take,” stated one user.
“My husband was stolen by a duende in Mexico as a little kid. He doesn’t remember anything at all, but I’ve been told that basically it had him going in circles for hours, and his older cousins found him,” commented another.
“Girl, we accidentally brought one back when we came from Cancun. They keep messing with me and my cousin. We later found out that the place we stayed at in Cancun was called the island of duendes,” wrote a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
