This was the finest job I ever had, a roving commission to travel all over Peru and examine everything that looked like a mine… I was twenty-seven years old when I got this promotion, and I spent the greater part of the next four years on muleback journeys over Peru, occasionally getting down into Chile and over into Bolivia… After a year or so I made all trips alone, employing a local guide only when necessary…
Not long after I took my job as exploration engineer for the Cerro de Pasco Company I was witness to a phenomenon which still leaves me without an explanation. It happened in the little village of Jauja, in Central Peru, where I had been sent to take temporary charge of a small but very rich copper mine for the company. I am no great believer in what is called the supernatural. To me it is a convenient word, too freely used, to describe any occurrence which cannot be explained readily on logical grounds… an insidious formula which, if followed, would long ago have stifled all scientific thought.
Taking this sane attitude, I can readily suppose that there must have been a rational explanation of the Jauja affair, if I had had the time to investigate it with the scientific thoroughness with which, say, I would have analyzed a sample of ore from a mine I suspected of being “salted.” I did not have such time, and therefore the thing remains a mystery to me…
Having thus chided myself, let me tell what it was that left me so deeply puzzled – and just a little frightened.
In Jauja.
It was during the war. Jauja lies in the valley of the Mantaro, at an altitude of about eleven thousand feet, and with the exception of a few store-keepers and officials is made up entirely of Indians, who work the outlying farms and graze sheep over the grass-covered slopes of the surrounding hills. Jauja is very old and occupies the site of a city which must have flourished long before the empire of the Incas. On a low ridge just back of the town is a series of curious circular structures built of stone without mortar, which look like granaries, and there are numerous traces of heavy fortifications, all attesting the long occupancy of a former people.
I had rented what for Jauja was a very grand house about midway between the railroad station and the town itself. The copper mine of which I had charge was up in the mountains about two leagues from Jauja. I used to ride out there every day or so and spend the rest of my time assaying and superintending the shipments of ore which were brought down on the backs of llamas in hundred-pound sacks and then sent by rail to the smelter at Casapalca. I was hoping to return to New York and join the army within a few months and, having some spare time, began to prepare myself for the rigors of war by beginning to study French where Ihad left off at college.
Jauja, because of its altitude and the dryness of the air, attracts many people suffering with tuberculosis from the cities of the coast, and among them I found a young French priest, unusually well educated, who was serving the local church while endeavouring to recover his health, and he agreed to help me with my French… We became good friends and passed many agreeable hours together each day. Father Conde was an interesting talker… One afternoon while struggling with one of the most irregular of the irregular French verbs Father Conde suddenly stopped me, saying he wanted to tell me of something strange that was happening in town. He appeared to be a bit upset and said the matter had been weighing upon him.
It seems that several days before a man named Vasquez, an Indian, had called at the rectory and begged him to come to his house and exorcise the spirits that had taken possession of the place and were driving him and his family almost crazy. For a week or more the members of his family, while in the house, had been struck by stones thrown by unseen hands. This happened sometimes during the day, but especially at night when the doors were closed and the shutters securely bolted in good Peruvian style.
Vasquez was worked up to such a pitch of excitement that it was obvious that something indeed was happening, and Father Conde thereupon visited the house and did what he could to stop the strange visitations by blessing the family and sprinkling holy water about the place. However, Father Conde admitted, this curious situation still persisted, and he was honestly at a loss to explain it on any grounds whatever.
Unable to resist a ghost-laying expedition, I suggested we call on the Vasquez together, although, just a few months before, I had spent the night in a kitchen where blue lights were supposed to flare from the floor, and twice I had in considerable discomfort slept in a reputedly haunted house to see what would happen, getting nothing for my troubles but a few stiff joints. Father Conde’s story impressed me though, for I knew he was not a man to be easily duped. He said we could go there at any time and agreed to start off with me immediately. We set out for the town, and as we passed the tiny hotel we met the mayor, a very decent chap with whom i had had an occasional drink. He invited us to join him in a bottle of beer, but we told him we were bound for the house haunted by the evil spirits and would be glad to make it a little later. The mayor, like everyone else in the town, had heard of this and begged to be allowed to accompany us.
When we reached the house we found the usual structure, a combined living room and kitchen and two other smaller rooms, one of which was used as a bedroom and the other as a storeroom, with a few odds and ends of broken furniture in it – a saddle, some horsehair rope and a meager hoard of sun-dried beef and native cheese. The house was a one-story affair built of adobe brick, with walls about two feet thick, and roofed with rough native tile. The rooms were sealed with tucullo, a kind of unbleached cotton goods which is woven by hand and tacked to the beams of the ceiling.
Fortunately the Vasquez family was at home. There was Vasquez, his wife and three girls ranging from eight to fifteen years of age. The mother was in a hysterical condition and began weeping as soon as we appeared, begging us in the native Quichua language to do something, anything, to avert the terrible fate which was bearing down on her family. Her face and head were covered with bumps and scars, some of them obviously quite recent. The girls were in no better condition. They showed us a pile of rocks, ranging in size from pebbles to cobblestones and including lumps of dried mud and pieces of broken tile, all of which they said had been thrown at them during the last ten days or so. Curiously enough, nothing had ever hit Vasquez himself, nor had any of the family been struck while out of the house.
After inspecting the premises carefully, we asked whether they would mind our staying there to watch, in order that we might perhaps witness something of the strange procedure. After a good deal of persuasion and further tears and protestations on the part of the mother and girls the family agreed.
We took a chair from the living room and placed it in the centre of the almost empty storeroom, and by means of threats and promises persuaded one of the daughters to sit in it. She was an intelligent-looking girl of about twelve years of age, and her head and face, and even her shoulders, were badly bruised and cut. We closed the heavy wooden door leading to the living room, and the three of us, Conde, the mayor and I, stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway with our backs against the door. The little girl sat facing us in the centre of the room, and back of her was a window of four small panes nailed tightly shut, which was set in a deep embrasure of the wall and gave on to the street. There was no other opening into the room. We examined the walls with care, as well as the ceiling and the hard mud floor. Nor was there any place where anyone could have been concealed.
We stood there silent and expectant for some time without anything happening. Perhaps twenty minutes passed, and our gaze, which had been fixed on the little girl, had probably wandered. Suddenly we heard a noise like a dull slap, followed by a thud, and saw rolling across the floor a stone about the size of a man’s two fists, which had hit the girl on the cheek with enough force to jerk her sideways but not hard enough to knock her off the chair. She at once buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs but did not get up. The priest and I remained where we were, but the mayor rushed over in great excitement and grabbed the stone.
“There is some terrible fake here,” he shouted. “That must be a false window.” And with that he threw the stone at the window and smashed it. Keeping the door closed, we went inch by inch over the walls and ceiling of the room trying to find a place through which the stone might have been thrown, but there was no opening of any kind. The girl had been hit on the cheek, so that the stone must have come from one side of the room. It had not been thrown with much force, or it would have knocked her off the chair. It seemed, from the sound of the thud and the effect of the blow, as if it had been thrown underhand from a distance of about six feet. It could not possibly have come from the ceiling or the window or door, even if these apertures had been open. We were completely baffled.
The little girl’s cheek was beginning to swell, and we did what we could to soothe her. While the mayor remained with Father Conde, who began again to bless the family, I went out and bought some beer for the father and mother and a few trinkets and sweetmeats for the girls, and we left them as happy as they could be made under the circumstances.
I followed the case quite carefully. The strange visitations kept up for about a week more and then stopped as suddenly as they had come. It was just about time too, for the family seemed on the way to complete insanity.
I do not expect anyone to believe this story, because I don’t believe it myself. I have simply attempted to recount as faithfully as possible exactly what I saw and what happened. For years I have tried to find some explanation for this fantastic episode but am no nearer a solution now than I was that afternoon in Jauja, when Father Conde, the mayor and I, very shaken by what we had seen, left the Vasquez house to steady our nerves in the barroom of the little hotel.
In ‘Pay Streak’ by John Baragwanath, 1936.
(He was born in 1888, suggests this happened when he was about 28 and ‘during the war’ So perhaps 1916).