🦶 CRYPTID SIGHTING · EXP. Nº6501 ACTIVE

Lobizón

Lobizón is a cryptid — a creature whose existence is unconfirmed by science — with reported sightings near Argentina, AR. This file collects the accounts and folklore surrounding it.

Where and when was Lobizón sighted?

Location: Argentina, AR
Date sighted: Unknown
Coordinates: -27.8, -64.3
Testimonies: 0
Last updated: 2026-08-31

LOCATION

What is Lobizón?

The lobisón — also lobizón, and luisõ in Guaraní — is the River Plate werewolf, and its defining rule is a birth order: the seventh consecutive son is said to change shape on Friday nights and prowl graveyards and open country. The name is a loanword from Portuguese lobisomem; Argentina's standard nineteenth-century dictionary of River Plate speech, Daniel Granada's Vocabulario rioplatense razonado (1890), does not carry it at all. The oldest first-hand account we could read is Juan B. Ambrosetti's, collected in Misiones in the 1890s and printed in 1917: his informants described not a wolf but a creature 'resembling a dog and a pig, with great ears', and they pointed out the neighbour they suspected, making of him 'a kind of pariah'. Argentina's presidents really do stand godfather to seventh sons, and the practice is regulated — Decree 848/73, Law 20,843, Decree 1416/2009 — but no official text ties it to the werewolf: the reason on record is a Russian imperial custom brought by Volga German settlers.

Lobizón — illustration — Image: Patty P · Public domain

What is the history of Lobizón?

The Spanish American Academies' dictionary registers the word as lobisón, for Paraguay and Argentina, with the variants lobizón and luisón and a one-line etymology: from Portuguese lobisomem, 'wolf man'. In 2022 the Paraguayan philologist Domingo Aguilera Jiménez placed it among the 67 Portuguese loanwords he traced in Paraguayan Guaraní, and filled in the route: it comes from Brazilian Portuguese lobishomem, as Germán de Granda had already recorded; the Royal Spanish Academy did not admit lobisón until the 1984 edition of its dictionary, marked for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay; and the living Guaraní form is not lobisón but luisõ. The name, in short, arrives through Portuguese. It is worth noting how late it reaches the record books: Daniel Granada's Vocabulario rioplatense razonado (1890), the reference work on River Plate speech in the nineteenth century, does not carry the word in any spelling, while it does carry gaucho, mate, tapera and ñandubay. The oldest field account we could read in full is by Juan Bautista Ambrosetti, director of the Ethnographic Museum in Buenos Aires. In Supersticiones y leyendas (1917), which gathers travel notebooks from the 1890s that he had begun publishing in 1893, Ambrosetti says he first heard the word in Rio Grande do Sul, sung in Portuguese by a countryman at a dance: 'Ando comprindo o meu fado / En trages de Lobisomé'. When he asked what it meant in the Misiones country, his informants gave him the rule that still governs the belief: being a lobisome is the fatal condition of the seventh consecutive son, and the seventh consecutive daughter becomes a witch instead. The creature they described was not a wolf but 'an animal resembling a dog and a pig, with great ears that cover its face'; it changed on Fridays at midnight, fed on filth and on unbaptised infants, and was released from the spell if someone wounded it without knowing who it was. Ambrosetti added a flat footnote: 'this legend is of European origin; it is what in France is called Loup Garou'. The Guaraní layer is real, but it is not the one usually told. The luisõ is the seventh son of Tau and Keraná in the cycle of the seven cursed offspring of Guaraní mythology, and the version in circulation today owes much to the ethnogenetic poem Ñande Ypy Kuéra by Narciso R. Colmán (Rosicrán). In his own etymological glossary Colmán heads the entry 'Huiso, huicho, Luisón o Lobisón' and describes a lord of the night who feeds on corpses in graveyards: pale, foul- smelling, with long dirty hair. There is no wolf and no full moon. Aguilera explains why: in the Guaraní-speaking area the European figure was adapted by swapping the animal, so that 'instead of turning into a wolf-man, the possessed person here turns into a dog-man, the European canid being replaced by the dog, its commonest relative in these lands'. Argentina's presidential godparenthood, by contrast, exists and is in the official gazette. It was created by Decree 848 of 24 December 1973, signed by Juan Domingo Perón, after the provincial government of Tucumán asked that girls be included too — so the extension to seventh daughters dates from 1973, not later. Its preamble is the key document in this whole story: 'that in the year 1907 the then President of the Nation, Doctor José Figueroa Alcorta, granted the first request for godparenthood, made by a resident of the country of Russian nationality'. No names, no town, and not one word about werewolves. Decree 143 of 1974 adapted the ceremony for a female president; Law 20,843, passed on 28 September 1974 and published on 10 December, does not mention seventh sons at all — it only guarantees free schooling to anyone the president has sponsored — and Decree 964/76 set out the scholarship rules. Decree 1416, of October 2009, modernised the requirements (cohabiting couples, single mothers or fathers, adoption, non-Catholic faiths) and dated the custom again: 'invariably since 1907'. The proper names come from the local press of Coronel Pringles, not from the national archive. According to the newspaper El Orden, José Brost was born there on 8 October 1907, seventh son of the Volga German farmer Enrique Brost and of Apolonia Holmann, and was baptised on 20 October — a Sunday — in the parish of Santa Rosa de Lima, which had existed since 1890. A priest surnamed Alfonsín officiated, the godmother was Berta Sieder, and the president was represented by the municipal commissioner Manuel Gascón; the party was held in the old town hall. The same paper gives the reason the father put forward: to continue 'the Russian tradition whereby the tsar stood godfather to seventh sons'. That fits the 1973 decree — Volga Germans reached Argentina on Russian passports — and it does not fit the lobizón.

Timeline: the documented record of Lobizón

1890 Daniel Granada's Vocabulario rioplatense razonado, the standard nineteenth-century dictionary of River Plate speech, carries no entry for lobisón, lobizón or luisón in its second edition. The scanned text is searchable: gaucho, mate and tapera all return hits, the werewolf does not.
from 1893 Juan Bautista Ambrosetti begins publishing his folklore notes in the Revista del Jardín Zoológico de Buenos Aires. He later explains that the Misiones material came from travel notebooks written some twenty-five years before 1917 and had remained largely unpublished.
8 and 20 October 1907 According to the Coronel Pringles newspaper El Orden, José Brost is born on 8 October, seventh son of Enrique Brost and Apolonia Holmann, and is baptised on 20 October — a Sunday — in the Santa Rosa de Lima parish, with municipal commissioner Manuel Gascón standing in for President Figueroa Alcorta. The same account says the father asked for it in order to continue the Russian tsarist custom.
1917 Ambrosetti prints 'El Lobisomé' in Supersticiones y leyendas. He records the seventh-consecutive-son rule, the dog-and-pig shape with huge ears, the Friday midnight change, and the fact that neighbours pointed out the accused man and made of him 'a kind of pariah'. His footnote calls the legend European, the French loup-garou.
1929 Narciso R. Colmán (Rosicrán) fixes the Guaraní cycle in Ñande Ypy Kuéra: the luisõ is the seventh son of Tau and Keraná, lord of the night who eats the dead in graveyards. His own glossary heads the entry 'Huiso, huicho, Luisón o Lobisón', joining the Guaraní figure to the Portuguese name. The digitised Spanish version by the author is later — its front matter cites the author's honours up to 1936.
January 1964 L. Illis publishes 'On porphyria and the aetiology of werwolves' in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (57:23-26), the origin of the porphyria explanation that press coverage still attaches to the lobizón.
24 December 1973 Decree 848/73, signed by Juan Domingo Perón, creates the Padrinazgo Presidencial after a request from the province of Tucumán to include girls — so seventh daughters are covered from the start. Its preamble states that in 1907 President José Figueroa Alcorta granted the first such request, made by 'a resident of the country of Russian nationality'. Neither the werewolf nor any name appears.
28 September / 10 December 1974 Congress passes Law 20,843, promulgated on 4 December and published in the Boletín Oficial on 10 December (issue 23,053, p. 2). Contrary to what is often written, it says nothing about seventh sons or werewolves: it guarantees free primary, secondary, university or special education to anyone sponsored by the head of the executive.
12 March 1976 Decree 964/76, signed by María Estela Martínez de Perón days before the coup, regulates the scholarships: amounts indexed to the cost of living, renewal conditional on school performance, applications through the Presidency's protocol office.
1984 The Royal Spanish Academy admits lobisón into its main dictionary for the first time, marked for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, according to Aguilera's review of the Academy's historical lexicographic record. The belief is centuries older than its dictionary entry.
1990-2016 The porphyria route is dismantled in the medical literature: Winkler and Anderson describe the 'medicalization of a myth' (1990), Cox writes of 'another myth in the making' (1995) and Maranda and colleagues return to it in JAMA Dermatology (2016).
6 October 2009 Decree 1416/2009 modernises the scheme — cohabiting couples, single parents, adopted children, non-Catholic faiths, and the name Padrinazgo/Madrinazgo — and repeats the official dating: the tradition has been granted 'invariably since 1907'.
2022 Domingo Aguilera Jiménez lists lobisón/luisón among 67 Portuguese loanwords in Paraguayan Guaraní and notes the key adaptation: in the Guaraní area the possessed person becomes a dog-man, not a wolf-man, 'the European canid being replaced by the dog'.

Is there a rational explanation for Lobizón?

The medical explanation everyone repeats has an author and a date: in January 1964 the neurologist L. Illis published 'On porphyria and the aetiology of werwolves' in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, proposing congenital porphyria as the root of European werewolf legends. The idea escaped into popular writing, the same move was later made with vampires, and the medical literature turned on it: Winkler and Anderson called it the 'medicalization of a myth' (1990), Cox titled his note 'another myth in the making' (1995), and Maranda and colleagues returned to it in JAMA Dermatology (2016) as 'a myth, sensationalized'. Nils Metzger (History of Psychiatry, 2013) has studied precisely this reflex of rationalising werewolf belief by medical authority, from the early modern trials onwards. For the River Plate version there is a further problem that needs no authority at all, only arithmetic: the rule here is not a disease, it is a birth order. Congenital erythropoietic porphyria, the only form that produces the spectacular skin damage usually invoked, is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern; in a carrier couple the risk is identical for the first child and for the seventh. No porphyria distinguishes positions within a sibship, so it cannot explain the single clause that defines the lobisón. The same holds for rabies: Juan Gómez-Alonso argued in Neurology (1998) that rabies lay behind the eighteenth-century Balkan vampire legend, a reasonable hypothesis for attacks and agitation but silent on seventh sons. What is documented is the social cost, and Ambrosetti documented it himself in 1917: the belief was so entrenched that people 'not only claim to have seen him, but also, with great mystery, point out the individual accused of being a lobisome, showing him with mistrust, and make of that man a kind of pariah'. That is the verifiable harm in the myth: not a metamorphosis, but a marked neighbour. Then there is the bridge that is taken for granted and that the archive does not hold. The presidential godparenthood is real and legislated, but no official text — not the founding 1973 decree, not the 1974 law, not the 2009 decree — mentions the lobizón; the only stated motive, in the decree and in the Coronel Pringles local account alike, is the Russian custom of imperial sponsorship of seventh sons. As of August 2026 we have found no 1907 document — no register entry, no contemporary newspaper, no resolution — supporting the names and the baptismal detail: the earliest datable mention we could read is the 1973 decree, which gives no names, and the names appear only in much later local sources.

Can you visit Lobizón?

There is nothing to visit: the lobisón is a belief, not a place, and any page promising 'guaranteed sightings' is selling smoke. What can be toured is its paper trail. In Coronel Pringles (Buenos Aires province, some 550 km south-west of the city of Buenos Aires, on national route 51) two of the buildings in the story still stand: the parish church of Santa Rosa de Lima, where the local account places the 1907 baptism, and Plaza Juan Pascual Pringles, facing the Casa de Cultura, the old municipal building where the party was held. The town is also worth a stop for the art deco works of the architect Francisco Salamone, listed as municipal historic monuments. The church is a working parish: ask there for service times — we do not publish opening hours we cannot check. The presidential godparenthood is still in force and is applied for in writing, free of charge. Under article 2 of Decree 848/73 as rewritten by Decree 1416/2009, it may be requested by spouses, by cohabiting partners or by a single mother or father who have seven sons or seven daughters (a child of the other sex in between is allowed, and adopted children count); applications go to the Secretaría General of the Presidency. The sponsorship amounts to a medal and a ceremony, and the decree itself states that it 'creates no rights or benefits of any kind'. The study grant is a separate matter, under Law 20,843, with applications due before the last working day of October. Checked in August 2026: verify the current text before applying, as Argentine agencies are renamed often. The whole legal file is public and free: the decrees and the law can be read in full on InfoLEG and in the Boletín Oficial, and the books by Ambrosetti (1917), Granada (1890) and Colmán are digitised on archive.org. It is by far the best excursion this myth allows.

Sources consulted

Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content

📎 Source: Enigma Atlas

Lobizón

Where and when was Lobizón sighted?

What is Lobizón?

What is the history of Lobizón?

Timeline: the documented record of Lobizón

Is there a rational explanation for Lobizón?

Can you visit Lobizón?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

Add your testimony

Lobizón

Where and when was Lobizón sighted?

What is Lobizón?

What is the history of Lobizón?

Timeline: the documented record of Lobizón

Is there a rational explanation for Lobizón?

Can you visit Lobizón?

Sources consulted

💬 Field testimonies (0)

Add your testimony

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