By Reddit user "Omarion07"
“I grew up in Southern California and my grandmother was Mexican. As a child, I often listened to her stories about the Devil (El Diablo) and Phantasms (ghosts).
I especially remember the story of La Liorona - a ghost woman who lost her children and therefore walks at night and constantly searches for them. And if she finds any child, she will grab him and carry him into her world. This story was used by my family as an intimidation so that we would not walk until dark.
Also, my grandmother talked a lot about the duende or gnomes and not only her, these stories I heard from other adults. Grandma said that especially the duende loved to joke on a man in the forest, and when she was a little girl, she herself saw one duende.
Every year we had large family gatherings, to which even distant relatives were invited. They were uncles, aunts, cousins, and so on. When I turned 15, there was another big family gathering, and during it I noticed a girl, 12 years old, in the corner. I did not know her name, but for you, let her be just Jackie.
Jackie with a kind of very melancholy glance watched my young cousins, who were from 6 to 12 years old, play cheerfully, but she herself did not play. When I approached her and asked what had happened, she just shook her head. Thus, I left her alone for a while, but then she herself came up to me and whispered that she would tell me a story, only I would not believe in her anyway.
I told her that I would try to believe her and then she told me that recently duende had climbed into her room. When she saw them climbing through the window, she immediately called her younger sister and told her. And the duende, of whom there were four, climbed onto the chest of drawers and took something from it, after which they went back through the window.
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My first thought was that Jackie was making it up, but then I thought she had no need to lie to me. Besides, I thought Jackie was scared when she talked about it.
When I turned 18, I heard another story about the gnomes - the duende, this time from a friend of my mother who grew up in Bolivia. When she was a little girl, the duende put her into a trance-like state and began luring her into the jungle to play with her.
She remembers going further and further into the thicket and that the duende called her to play with her. Fortunately, her sister saw her and grabbed her hand, after which the trance disappeared and the girl woke up. It was right in front of the thicket of the forest. Mom's friend was 50 years old when she talked about this, so I don't think it was fiction.
The last story about the duende was told to me by someone whom I consider to be a very good and honest person. More precisely, this is my girlfriend. It happened somewhere in the Philippines about 10 years ago, when my girlfriend went there to see her aunt.
When she arrived, her aunt shared with her her concerns about her cousin, because she began to play often in the street with the duende. The sister was then 7 years old and she played with the duende next to the dense bushes.
The game, however, was practically one-sided. Duende, by persuasion and intimidation, forced the girl to play with them, and when she wanted to go home, they were very angry. Sometimes, when her aunt called her home to dinner or to sleep, they very persistently persuaded her sister to stay with them.
The aunt herself said then that she also saw these duende and even tried to find a way to protect her daughter from their society, but it seemed unsuccessful. And when my girlfriend recently reminded her aunt about this, she said that her daughter probably no longer remembers anything that happened to her in childhood."
