Short Stories

Mama Yita

I wasn't like other children. They all preferred fairy tales as bedtimes stories, but not me. I liked my mother's stories, her experiences, and the lessons she learned afterwards. One day, I asked her for a ghost story, and she whispered, "Have I ever told you the Mama Yita legend?" as I shook my head, I covered myself with my warm blanket and snuggled with my stuffed animal.

Her story begun with this old lady called Mama Yita, who attended a birthday party one night and started feeling a bit dizzy. She decided to take something to relax and calm herself down. The problem was that the medicine she took relaxed her too much, and once the party ended everyone was flabbergasted when they found the lady dead on the sofa. They gave her a proper funeral and buried her in the San José Cemetery in the small town of Villa Mercedes. One day, a few girls were fetching water in the graveyard when they heard a constant pounding when passing by Mama Yita's crypt. Horrified of what they had heard, they informed the authorities, who decided to open the old lady's casket to prove the young girls wrong. But surprisingly, once it was wide open, they noticed the inside of her polished casket was all scratched as if she were training to escape her fate and it was confirmed she had died of asphyxiation a few days after being mistakenly buried alive. Burring her was a dreadful mistake, one everyone regrets. Being buried alive turned into my mother's worst nightmare after that story, and now, it was mine.

While gripping my silky blanket, mom ended her story telling me that Mama Yita's livid spirit is still out there, going from house to house, knocking on people's doors, looking for the person who gave her for dead when she was sound asleep so that she can get her revenge. Fear running through my veins, my mother kissed me good night and turned off the lights. I was about to go to bed when there was a frantic knocking at the door.