Imbunche

The imbunche is one of the darkest figures in Chilote folklore, a grotesquely deformed being said to be created by the members of the legendary Recta Provincia, a secret brotherhood of warlocks believed to operate from hidden caves in the Chiloé Archipelago, most famously the cave of Quicaví. Belief in the brotherhood ran deep enough that in 1880 the governor of Chiloé opened a criminal trial in Ancud, imprisoning more than fifty islanders accused of belonging to the Recta Provincia and practicing sorcery and homicide — a case that dragged on nearly a year before most defendants were acquitted on appeal. According to tradition, the imbunche was once a stolen infant subjected to horrifying ritual mutilations, its legs broken and twisted behind its back, one arm fused to its shoulder, its tongue split, and its body sealed with animal fat and left to grow inside the cave, deprived of language and daylight, until it becomes the loyal, monstrous guardian of the warlocks' hideout. Stories describe it hopping on all fours to block the cave entrance from intruders. The tale functioned as a chilling deterrent, discouraging islanders from investigating rumored witch caves or challenging the feared brujo societies said to control local misfortune, disease and crop failure through sorcery.