Witch House – Revisited (by Cindy)

It’s a Saturday afternoon in October here in Costa Rica. We had a beautiful sunny morning, but now the sky has turned overcast, the thunder is rumbling, and the rain has started falling. October is the rainiest month of the rainy season, when we get almost daily afternoon rain showers. The rains make the vegetation beautifully green and lush. This weather is not typical of our Octobers back in Iowa, where you could often just feel the crispness of Fall in the air, the leaves would be turning, and neighbors would adorn their porches with pumpkins.

Here in Costa Rica, we subscribe to a TV service that allows us to watch US TV stations with US commercials. Now that it is October, we are seeing a lot of Halloween-themed commercials. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Costa Rica doesn’t celebrate Halloween, like the US, nor Day of the Dead, as in Mexico. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t believe in things we normally associate with Halloween, like witches. 

The first year we lived in Costa Rica, we lived in Escazú, a suburb of the capital that proudly proclaims itself as “The City of the Witches” and has a stereotypical broomstick flying witch on it’s city emblem. Our Spanish teacher, who lives in Escazú, told us that he believed in witches based on his experience trying to rent a house that turned out to be haunted, from a woman who seemed to be a witch. Curious, John and I had attempted to and finally did find the house.  We chronicled our teacher’s story and our subsequent hunt for that witch house in the posts below:

Which House is the Witch House? (by Cindy)

Witch House – Update (by Cindy)

We moved to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica over a year ago, and the vibe here is much different than in Escazú. I’d totally put the witch house out of my mind, until …

In Spanish class a few months ago, our teacher was having our class (attempt to) read news articles in Spanish for understanding. One evening he sent a message to our class with a link to an online news article.  I didn’t notice that the article was originally posted in February of this year (2021), because my attention was drawn to the first picture.   I recognized that house – it was the Witch House!  I then noticed the headline. I could figure out enough of the Spanish words to know that this wasn’t good – “Dies in a Septic Tank…” 

The article was long. I tried to make my way through it in Spanish, laboring over a lot of words that I didn’t know, and hopefully, wouldn’t need to know in my day-to-day interactions – words like “eviction”, “decomposition”, “forensic”, and “autopsy”, to name just a few.  After a few attempts at understanding, I was just too curious to wait to go over it in class.  You might say I cheated a bit, by bringing up the article on my computer and letting Google attempt to translate it. As with most translations of complex material in another language, it did a fair, but far from perfect, job.  It was enough to get the gist of it, but there were still some confusing elements. Even when we reviewed it in class, we discovered that the article contained puzzling aspects.

As mentioned in the previous posts, there are two houses side by side associated with the “witch” in the Escazú neighborhood of Trejos Montealegre. As you faced the houses, the house on the right was the one that was perpetually for sale and was the house that our Spanish teacher had tried to rent. The house on the left was the one with all of the cats, the house that the purported witch lived in.

So what was this news story about? What happened at the witch house?  According to the article, authorities went to the house to evict the woman (who lived in the witch house, the house with all of the cats), whose last name was Palma. An eviction notice had been served to Palma a month earlier, and at that time, she was there and seemed fine. When authorities arrived at the house this time, no one answered.  Another woman, who was identified in the article at times as Palma’s goddaughter, and at other times, her employee, was with the authorities, and told them that she hadn’t heard from Palma since January 26. (Note: The article was posted on February 24^th, so it was confusing as to how long the goddaughter hadn’t heard from Palma.) 

The goddaughter had been concerned prior to this. In the article, it stated that she said that Palma hadn’t responded to her messages and calls and didn’t open the door when she went to the house. The goddaughter said she had notified the police, but said the police were dismissive, and told her that probably Palma had already left, since she was going to be evicted. The goddaughter could hear the animals inside the house and told the police that Palma wouldn’t leave without the animals. The police then indicated that they would enter Palma into the system as a missing person. From the article it didn’t appear that any action had been taken on the missing person case.

When the police came to do the eviction, and Palma didn’t answer, they called a locksmith. The locksmith proceeded to open the locks, gates and doors of the witch house.  The animals were there – more on that in a moment – but Palma was nowhere to be found. The goddaughter accompanied the police officers into the house and urged them to look in the “septic” tank, because they sometimes drew water from there. (This was another confusing fact in the article. The initial description of the tank in the article was a septic tank.  But they sometimes drew water from it?  So, it was more like a cistern?) Anyway, when they opened the heavy iron lid of the tank, they found Palma, floating face down in dirty water in the tank.  The article says that the goddaughter asked the police for help, hoping that Palma was alive, but upon arrival of the paramedics, they declared her dead.  It was later determined that she had been dead more than one week. 

The conditions in the house were appalling.  Palma appeared to be a classic animal hoarder. There were approximately 50 cats in the house, as well as three dogs and even some turtles, that were walking through the garbage in the house. At least nine dead cats were found, already in a state of decomposition.  The authorities did take care of the animals in the house. All but two of the dogs were rescued by SENASA, an animal support organization in Costa Rica. The two dogs were adopted by neighbors.

You might be wondering about the witch’s neighbors.  According to the article, the neighbors didn’t know her very well. Interestingly, Palma described herself to her neighbors as a psychologist. When interviewed for the article, they claimed they didn’t talk to her much, because she seldom went out, and when she did have interactions with the neighbors, it wasn’t pleasant. One neighbor described her as not normal and aggressive with others. This neighbor claimed to be scared of her. As one might imagine, the neighbors also had issues with her due to all of the cats. According to the article, the neighbors said that the cats defecated outside of their houses and died under their vehicles. As to one of them knowing what might have happened to Palma?  None of them claimed that they heard anything unusual in the past days.

The police said Palma’s death was under investigation because of the circumstances surrounding her death. Palma was found in a tank that didn’t have any steps leading into it. The very heavy iron lid on the tank was closed, which would probably been impossible for someone to do from inside the tank.  

Who are the possible suspects?  What about the goddaughter?  She informed the police of Palma’s disappearance. She was also the one who “suggested” that the authorities look in the tank. Would they have looked there if she hadn’t urged them to do so?  Why would she think that Palma would be there?  What about the neighbors?  There wasn’t any love lost between them and Palma. Did one or several of them finally have enough and decide to take matters into their own hands?

Maybe, but maybe Palma’s death wasn’t caused by a human at all.  Maybe it was caused by something spookier and far more sinister.  Strange, haunting activities were going there.  Was she being affected even before her ultimate demise? 

What happened to the witch?  No one knows. And, maybe no one ever will.  

There have been no updates since the article was published in February.

Happy Halloween!