Urban Legends

Severed Hands

Origin: Mexico

The Severed Hands is a scary true ghost story about a haunted alley in Mexico where people are afraid to go because it is said to be haunted by two skeletal hands. It's called "El Callejón de las Manitas" or "The Alley of the Hands".

Back in 1780, a Franciscan priest came to the city of San Luis Potosi in Mexico. He found work as a Latin teacher in one of the best schools of the time and rented a house in one of the most desolate parts of the city, called Alfalfa.

To help him with his duties, he hired two teenage boys who lived in the area. One day, he went on a journey to visit several villages in the surrounding area and brought the boys with him. He was collecting donations for the church.

When they came home, the priest gave the boys orders to unsaddle the horses and put them into their stalls with hay and water. The two boys went about their work, and when they finished, they were hungry, so they went home for dinner. Meanwhile, the priest was very tired, and after saying his prayers, he went to bed early.

When it was night, the boys returned to the priest's house. When they went inside, they were horrified by what they found. The priest was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He had been murdered.

The boys fled in terror and ran through the streets, shouting for help. People gathered at the house, and someone had the presence of mind to alert the soldiers and doctors in the nearby military hospital. They confirmed that what the boys were saying was true. The priest had been brutally murdered.

The city authorities immediately took on the task of investigating what happened to the poor man. They searched every corner of the city and surrounding towns, looking for suspects. They arrested several people, but without any evidence against them, they were released.

One official at the police station was suspicious of the two boys and had them arrested. He placed them n separate rooms at the Military Hospital and began a harsh interrogation. Under such intense pressure, the boys started blaming each other.

The younger boy said that the older one had killed the priest to steal the money he had collected from the villages. The authorities took the boys back to the priest's house, where they recovered the money and the murder weapon, a bloody dagger.

The boys were put on trial and found guilty. The judge sentenced them to be executed. They were hung by the neck until they were dead, and then, their hands were cut off.

The severed hands of the two teenage boys were hung on the wall on the gloomy alley outside the priest's house as a warning to others. Ever since then, the sad and lonely alleyway has been known as The Alley of the Hands. People were afraid to pass through it. Whenever they had to go down this alley, they made the sign of the cross and said a prayer. They didn't stop praying until they came out on the other side.

After a while, the severed hands were taken down and buried. But a few days later, they were back hanging on the wall. Whenever anyone tried to remove them, they would just keep reappearing on the wall. This went on for years until the district was renovated. The alley was demolished and turned into a wide street.

However, they say that if you go to the place where the gloomy alley once stood, on some nights in November, you will see the skeletal hands floating above you. You also might catch a glimpse of the ghost of the priest disappearing around the corner.