Isla de las Muñecas holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of haunted dolls. But who was the eccentric owner of the island, and why did he collect so many?

Technically, Isla de las Muñecas is not an island at all. It’s a chinampa, or a small rectangle of fertile arable land built up on wetlands for agricultural purposes. Thie particular chinampa is located in the ancient Aztec canals of Xochimilco in Mexico City, Mexico. Don Julian Santana Barrera was the owner of the island until his death in 2001. The island was used as the location of the film María Candelaria, the first Mexican film to be screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. Barrera moved to the island in the early 1950s, and from there, things took a strange turn.

There are three popular versions of the legend of the dolls’ origin. In one version, a young girl got caught in the canal’s water lilies and drowned years before Barrera arrived. In others, Barrera either found her body floating in the canal, or he found her as she was drowning but was unable to rescue her. In any case, after her death, Barrera claimed to have heard her spirit screaming “I want my doll.” The following day, Barrera found a doll drifting down the canal. Believing it to be hers, he hung it from a tree, both to honor the girl and to ward off evil spirits.

Soon afterwards, the girl’s spirit supposedly haunted the island, and Barrera claimed that he would discover new dolls strung up on trees every time he went outside. When his crops failed, he took matters into his own hands, scouring trash and trading produce in exchange for more dolls. He then placed these around the island in an attempt to appease the girl. Barrera continued collecting dolls for more than 50 years. The dolls did not necessarily need to be in one piece. In fact, many of the dolls are missing limbs, heads, torsos, clothes, or eyes. Some of the dolls are just heads that have been placed on sticks.

In 2001, Barrera’s nephew visited his uncle on the island. While fishing in the canal, Barrera, then 80, claimed that mermaids in the water were calling to him. The nephew left for a few moments, and when he returned, Barrera was dead. He was found face-down in the canal, drowned in the exact spot where the girl was said to have died. Some suggest that he had a heart attack, but popular superstition holds that his death was caused by the girl’s spirit.

Since his death, Barrera’s family has opened the island to the public as a tourist attraction. There is a small museum on the island in the hut where Barrera lived, displaying articles from local newspapers about the island, the first doll Barrera collected, and Agustina, his favorite doll. It is only accessible via boat tour on the canals, though some rowers refuse to set foot on the island.

Visitors sometimes bring new dolls, as well as placing offerings around the dolls as a petition for blessings or miracles. Some even change the dolls’ clothes and maintain the island as a way to pay respects to the spirits that haunt the dolls. Today, there are more than 1,500 dolls on the island, and there have been claims that the dolls move on their own, turn their heads, blink, or whisper to each other when night falls.

Kaylee Fowler