May-2015
“I think it was an apparition”
The fire invites us to talk about fear, to listen about courage, to warm us from the cold. The moment we sat around it, stories began to appear without invitation, they simply appeared.
In Tatajuba, every child has a terrible story to tell. No, not stories they heard, stories they lived themselves. These children have their courage tested their whole lives. They’ve felt fear’s breath on their eyes and have come face to face with ghosts.
Gleistone tells of when he saw some legs and a figure in the mangrove and didn’t know what it was. He only heard “the noises the crabs make when they walk,” everything else was dead silent. “They were hairy legs, I only saw them from the knees down. When I looked up, I saw it was a full moon. The creature was this tall, look! All black, like a huge hog looking at me. I grabbed a rock and threw it at him, and he took off running towards the edge. Then the tide was high, then all I saw was the waves. Then I didn’t see him anymore.”
Maurício tells of when he walked with his mother around Cabaceiras. They saw a black shape “standing very still,” then he looked again and it was gone. His father isn’t sure if it was a werewolf, but he reckons it was.
Lucas says sometimes, when he’s walking home, he hears a boy crying inside the mangrove. Maurício says it’s a pagan child.
One day, Totonho was walking home with his mother and heard the chitchat of people in the yard talking about killing someone. When he opened the door, there was no one there, no sign of anything.
From story to story, one thing is for sure: they all think, “It was an apparition.”
Text and photo: Renata Meirelles
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