The Island of the Living Dead Dolls, Xochimilco

Come and follow me to the Canal of Xochimilco, with its unsettling mystical charm. Over hundreds of years the area has been desecrated to this one single canal, the sole tributary of the Xochimilco Lake... Here, an old legend tells a story that mirrors the survival and strength of the ancient Aztecs. It is the tale of La Isla de las Munecas, or : The Island of Dolls...

Once upon a time, on a small island in Teshuilo Lake, between Xochimilco and Mexico City, three young girls were playing. As one of them drowned, the area soon became known as a haunted spot and few trespassed the land.

Sometime in the 1950's, a loner named Julian Santana Barrera chose this tiny island to live on. Being visited by the ghost of the girl who drowned there long ago - and by some other bad spirits too - he started collecting dolls he found in the trash.

With these dolls, Julian wanted to make the girl who drowned happy again, and also these dolls could keep the bad spirits away. He brought allo the old discarded dolls he could find to the island as an offering, and tied them to the trees, in addition to a special altar he constructed for the spirit child.

For many years, this little island was forgotten. But then, in the 1990's, a program started to clean up the canals, and the Mexican style gondolas - called trajineras - again passed by the island.

Since Julian Santana had a wonderful garden, the locals brought old dolls in trade for fresh vegetables. And so, on Doll Island grew an amazing collection of thousands of dolls in various stages of disintegration.

Coincidentally or not, Julian drowned at his island on April 17th, 2001. Obviously, he hadn't been strong enough to chase the bad spirits away, that once had drowned this little girl too.

Thanks to the visitor's donations, the family of Julian Santana can keep the place. But there is no electricity, no running water, no any other kind of utilities.

Cellular phones do get a signal though, as Xochimilco is inside the limits of Mexico City's Federal District.

If you come and visit me, you best take a trajinera from the Cuemanco Pier and ask to be taken to the Island of the Dead Dolls.

It's a two hour trip. You will enjoy the beautiful views of the Xochimilco scenery.

Call me creepy and morbid, but I will make you look at Death & Demise in a different way.

Call me weird and bizarre, but once these silently aging dolls made a little spirit girl very happy, you know.

And even today I relish every new addition to my resting place.