Estudiar inglés no solo se trata de aprender el idioma, sino también conocer las tradiciones de las personas que lo hablan como lengua materna. Una de las más fantásticas tradiciones que forma parte de la cultura del idioma inglés es el Halloween, y de la mano con esta festividad de orígenes celtas se han desarrollado muchas leyendas y escrito muchos cuentos de terror.
El día de hoy, te contare algunos cuentos cortos de terror en ingles que te pondrán la piel de gallina y seguro que comienzan a crear el ambiente perfecto para una reunión de Halloween con tus amigos de tus clases de inglés.
Pero, antes de comenzar con estos pequeños relatos, déjame que te cuente un poco sobre el Halloween.
¿De dónde viene el Halloween?
Los orígenes del Halloween provienen de la antigua cultura Celta. Ellos celebraban el final de la temporada de cosecha entre el anochecer del 31 de octubre y el del 1 de noviembre. Aunado a esto, se creía que las almas de los difuntos visitaban este plano así que los vivos utilizaban máscaras y disfraces para ahuyentar a los espíritus indeseables.
Poco a poco, comenzaron a mezclarse las tradiciones celtas con las nuevas creencias católicas, y fue el papa Gregorio III quien instauro que el día de todos los santos (All saints day) se celebrara el 1 de noviembre. Esta fecha también se conocía como All Hallows Eve, lo cual derivo en el actual nombre: Halloween.
Ahora, seguro te preguntas por que el Halloween se asocia con el terror y lo fantasmagórico, esto se explica desde el punto de vista de los Celtas y Druidas, ya que entre el 31 de octubre y 1 de noviembre la línea que divide el mundo de los vivos y el mundo de los muertos, espectros y fuerzas sobrenaturales se volvía más delgada, y en consecuencia, era más fácil que diferentes entes pudieran acercarse a nosotros para causar daño o hacer travesuras.
Además, las brujas sufrieron una gran transformación en las mentes de los fieles conversos católicos, ahora ya no se trataba de mujeres sabias que sanaban con hierbas, sino que eran vistas como adoradoras de fuerzas oscuras. Esto, aunado a las manifestaciones literarias, en especial de la literatura gótica y de terror, se fueron volviendo más y más cercanos al Samhain moderno.
The Bony Hand
Pero basta de historia, vayamos ahora a la parte más divertida, los cuentos de terror. Primero te contare una de los relatos menos escalofriantes, este se llama “The Bony Hand”
A seven-year-old girl was left with her grandmother in her small apartment while her parents went to the movies. Grandmother and granddaughter had dinner together and chatted for a while. At ten o’clock, the grandmother picked up her sewing, and the little girl turned on the TV. They were sitting companionably together when the grandmother got a terrible thirst and asked her granddaughter to bring her a glass of water.
“It’s too dark,” said the girl.
“Don’t be scared. Follow the corridor. There’s a switch right next to the bathroom door.”
The girl got up and felt her way along the wall of the corridor, groping for the switch. As she reached the bathroom, she stopped and felt around, only to come into contact with a bony hand that tried to drag her into the bathroom. The girl managed to pull away and ran, screaming and crying, back to her grandmother. After the incident, the girl needed psychological treatment. What happened, has never been established, though no one but the grandmother and the girl were in the apartment at the time.
¿Un monstruo en la almohada?
Ahora te voy a contar una historia de un reconocido escritor llamado Horacio Quiroga. Uno de los grandes maestros de la literatura Latinoamericana, con una temática de horror y sufrimiento. Te presento, “The feather pillow” o en español, “El almohadón de plumas”:
Alicia's entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers. A blonde, angelic, and timid young girl, the childish fancies she had dreamed about being a bride had been chilled by her husband's rough character. She loved him very much, nonetheless, although sometimes she gave a light shudder when, as they returned home through the streets together at night, she cast a furtive glance at the impressive stature of her Jordan, who had been silent for an hour. He, for his part, loved her profoundly but never let it be seen.
For three months--they had been married in April--they lived in a special kind of bliss.
Doubtless she would have wished less severity in the rigorous sky of love, more expansive and less cautious tenderness, but her husband's impassive manner always restrained her.
The house in which they lived influenced her chills and shuddering to no small degree. The whiteness of the silent patio--friezes, columns, and marble statues--produced the wintry impression of an enchanted palace. Inside the glacial brilliance of stucco, the completely bare walls, affirmed the sensation of unpleasant coldness. As one crossed from one room to another, the echo of his steps reverberated throughout the house, as if long abandonment had sensitized its resonance.
Alicia passed the autumn in this strange love nest. She had determined, however, to cast a veil over her former dreams and live like a sleeping beauty in the hostile house, trying not to think about anything until her husband arrived each evening.
It is not strange that she grew thin. She had a light attack of influenza that dragged on insidiously for days and days: after that Alicia's health never returned. Finally, one afternoon she was able to go into the garden, supported on her husband's arm. She looked around listlessly.
Suddenly Jordan, with deep tenderness, ran his hand very slowly over her head, and Alicia instantly burst into sobs, throwing her arms around his neck. For a long time she cried out all the fears she had kept silent, redoubling her weeping at Jordan's slightest caress. Then her sobs subsided, and she stood a long while, her face hidden in the hollow of his neck, not moving or speaking a word.
This was the last day Alicia was well enough to be up. On the following day she awakened feeling faint. Jordan's doctor examined her with minute attention, prescribing calm and absolute rest.
'I don't know,' he said to Jordan at the street door. 'She has a great weakness that I am unable to explain. And with no vomiting, nothing...if she wakes tomorrow as she did today, call me at once.
When she awakened the following day, Alicia was worse. There was a consultation. It was agreed there was an anaemia of incredible progression, completely inexplicable. Alicia had no more fainting spells, but she was visibly moving toward death. The lights were lighted all day long in her bedroom, and there was complete silence. Hours went by without the slightest sound.
Alicia dozed. Jordan virtually lived in the drawing room, which was also always lighted. With tireless persistence he paced ceaselessly from one end of the room to the other. The carpet swallowed his steps. At times he entered the bedroom and continued his silent pacing back and forth alongside the bed, stopping for an instant at each end to regard his wife.
Suddenly Alicia began to have hallucinations, vague images, at first seeming to float in the air, then descending to floor level. Her eyes excessively wide, she stared continuously at the carpet on either side of the head of her bed. One night she suddenly focused on one spot. Then she opened her mouth to scream, and pearls of sweat suddenly beaded her nose and lips.
'Jordan! Jordan!' she clamoured, rigid with fright, still staring at the carpet.
Jordan ran to the bedroom, and, when she saw him appear, Alicia screamed with terror.
'It's I, Alicia, it's I!'
Alicia looked at him confusedly; she looked at the carpet; she looked at him once again; and after a long moment of stupefied confrontation, she regained her senses. She smiled and took her husband's hand in hers, caressing it, trembling, for half an hour.
Among her most persistent hallucinations was that of an anthropoid poised on his fingertips on the carpet, staring at her.
The doctors returned, but to no avail. They saw before them a diminishing life, a life bleeding away day by day, hour by hour, absolutely without their knowing why. During their last consultation Alicia lay in a stupor while they took her pulse, passing her inert wrist from one to another. They observed her a long time in silence and then moved into the dining room.
'Phew. . .' The discouraged chief physician shrugged his shoulders. 'It is an inexplicable case.
There is little we can do. . .'
'That's my last hope!' Jordan groaned. And he staggered blindly against the table.
Alicia's life was fading away in the subdelirium of anaemia, a delirium which grew worse through the evening hours but which let up somewhat after dawn. The illness never worsened during the daytime, but each morning she awakened pale as death, almost in a swoon. It seemed only at night that her life drained out of her in new waves of blood. Always when she awakened she had the sensation of lying collapsed in the bed with a million-pound weight on top of her.
Following the third day of this relapse she never left her bed again. She could scarcely move her head. She did not want her bed to be touched, not even to have her bedcovers arranged. Her crepuscular terrors advanced now in the form of monsters that dragged themselves toward the bed and laboriously climbed upon the bedspread.
Then she lost consciousness. The final two days she raved ceaselessly in a weak voice. The lights funereally illuminated the bedroom and drawing room. In the deathly silence of the house the only sound was the monotonous delirium from the bedroom and the dull echoes of Jordan's eternal pacing.
Finally, Alicia died. The servant, when she came in afterward to strip the now empty bed, stared wonderingly for a moment at the pillow.
'Sir!' she called Jordan in a low voice. 'There are stains on the pillow that look like blood.'
Jordan approached rapidly and bent over the pillow. Truly, on the case, on both sides of the hollow left by Alicia's head, were two small dark spots.
'They look like punctures,' the servant murmured after a moment of motionless observation.
'Hold it up to the light,' Jordan told her.
The servant raised the pillow but immediately dropped it and stood staring at it, livid and trembling. Without knowing why, Jordan felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
'What is it?' he murmured in a hoarse voice.
'It's very heavy,' the servant whispered, still trembling.
Jordan picked it up; it was extraordinarily heavy. He carried it out of the room, and on the dining room table he ripped open the case and the ticking with a slash. The top feathers floated away, and the servant, her mouth opened wide, gave a scream of horror and covered her face with her clenched fists: in the bottom of the pillowcase, among the feathers, slowly moving its hairy legs, was a monstrous animal, a living, viscous ball. It was so swollen one could scarcely make out its mouth.
Night after night, since Alicia had taken to her bed, this abomination had stealthily applied its mouth--its proboscis one might better say--to the girl's temples, sucking her blood. The puncture was scarcely perceptible. The daily plumping of the pillow had doubtlessly at first impeded its progress, but as soon as the girl could no longer move, the suction became vertiginous. In five days, in five nights, the monster had drained Alicia's life away.
These parasites of feathered creatures, diminutive in their habitual environment, reach enormous proportions under certain conditions. Human blood seems particularly favourable to them, and it is not rare to encounter them in feather pillows.
Cuando los espíritus están cerca…
¿Escalofriante sin tratarse de una historia de fantasmas, cierto? Pero, que tal que ahora te cuento una de estos entes... No tiene nombre, pero llamémosla “Don’t go there”:
A daughter was in her room, busy with homework, when she heard her mother call her name: dinner was ready! She jumped onto her feet and began making her way downstairs when suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her into the laundry room beside the staircase. She panicked before realizing it was her mother — unusually weepy, with bloodshot eyes. “Don’t go down there, honey. I heard it too.”
¿Qué te pareció esta historia? Si no fue lo suficientemente escalofriante, espera a escuchar “The Red Wristband”
A doctor was working at a hospital, a hospital where the patients were tagged with coloured bands. Green: alive. Red: deceased.
One night, the doctor was instructed to get a few supplies from the basement of the hospital, and so he headed to the lift. The lift doors opened and there was a patient inside, minding her own business. Patients were allowed to roam around the hospital to stretch, especially those who have stayed long. The rule was to be back in their rooms before ten.
The doctor smiled at the patient before pressing the number for the basement. He found it unusual that the woman didn’t have a button already pressed. He wondered if she was heading to the basement too.
The lift finally reached the floor where the doors opened. In the distance a man was limping towards the elevator, and in a panic the doctor slammed the elevator button to close. It finally did and the lift began to ascend back up, the doctor’s heart pounding.
“Why did you do that? He was trying to use the lift.” The woman stated, annoyed.
“Did you see his wrist?” The doctor asked, “It was red. He died last night. I would know because I did his surgery.”
The woman lifted her wrist. He saw red. She smiled. “Like this one?”
¡Boooo! ¡Qué miedo!, ¿verdad? Poco a poco esto se está poniendo más intenso.
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Alguien te está siguiendo
Cada historia tiene su momento más terrorífico o intrigante. Y hay algunas que te dejan esperando más, o te dejan a la imaginación si hay una continuación, como en el caso de
Some time ago, a friend of mine and I decided to do the Ouija board for the first time, something we had never dared to do before. We called two other friends to come and do it with us as I had been told that it was more likely something would happen if there were more people. We had a hard time convincing the other two, but, in the end, they agreed to come along. We got everything ready and, feeling a bit nervous, got started.
During the session, one of the girls we had called to join us said: “This is nonsense. I’m out of here.” We got a little scared and decided to leave it for another time.
After a few days, the girl who had left called me, beside herself. She said that, as she was passing a derelict house near her home on the way back from the local library, a little girl dressed in white had asked to play with her. My friend told her that she couldn’t as she was in a hurry to get home, and immediately the girl began to cry tears of blood. My friend fled and when she got home, she called me. At first, I thought she was pulling my leg, but something told me that was not the case.
I began to think about the day we had done the Ouija board and how abrupt my friend had been when she had got up to leave. I didn’t give it much more thought and went to bed. The next day, my friend called me because she was going to be home alone studying and, as she was scared, she asked me to keep her company. I took a bus over to hers and we settled down with our books. After a while, we heard a scratching noise behind us. We both looked up and were horrified to find that the girl she had described to me was sitting on my friend’s bed, scratching the wall. We ran out of the room and when we got to the front door, I noticed that my friend was not there, but I was so terrified, I couldn’t make myself wait for her.
Shortly afterwards, the police called my house to tell me that my friend had died of an asthma attack. She had been found on the stairs of her house, with a terrified expression on her face. For several months after that, I was in treatment. I am now recovering, but the other day, a note appeared in my mailbox written in a little girl’s hand that read, “Your friend died because she wouldn’t play with me. I have a new doll...” I think it’s a joke, since our story has become famous in our town, but on the other hand I’m scared. I wonder, will she come for me?
Sed de Venganza
Te contaré una última historia de terror. ¿Te imaginas un fantasma vestido con kimono? Pues tal es el caso de la historia de Ishi y Kane, llamada “Vengeance”:
When the samurai warrior Kane first came to California from Tokyo, he brought his new wife, the beautiful Ishi. She was an ideal wife: gentle, attentive, and a wonderful cook. Kane was the envy of his new neighbors. But he was a proud man. When a wealthy family moved into the neighborhood, Kane cast his eye upon their lovely daughter, Aiko, and desired her. In his mind Ishi was second best.
So, Kane plotted to rid himself of his wife so he could woo and win the fair Aiko. On a stormy night on the way home from a great banquet, Kane pushed Ishi over the cliff and into the bay. No one heard her scream through the howling wind. No one suspected foul play when Kane came rushing back to the banquet hall, shouting for help because his poor wife had slipped and fallen over the cliff. Kane acted the part of the bereaved husband to perfection. He gave Ishi a splendid funeral. It wasn’t until he was alone in his house that Kane relaxed and drank to his success. Outside, the wind whipped against the house, making the walls rattle and shake. A stray breeze swept through the sleeping-room with a whisper: “Vengeance. Vengeance.” Kane sat up and blinked as a dark figure stepped into the room. Its long tangled black hair hung over the dirty, bloodstained kimono. Its face was crushed and broken, with one eyeball hanging from the socket.
The ghost of Ishi reached out a broken hand toward her husband, smiling through the shattered remains of her teeth. “Vengeance,” she whispered, “Vengeance.” Kane screamed in terror, leapt out of the window, and ran to a neighbour's house. Mistaking his fear for grief the neighbours took him in and insisted he stay with them during the first weeks of his bereavement. A month passed as Kane waited for Ishi’s ghost to reappear, but she’d vanished. Relieved, Kane decided it was safe to bring Aiko and her family to see his home. As he escorted Aiko’s parents around the garden, he felt a hand on his arm. Kane turned around and found himself facing a beautiful Ishi, who kissed him and whispered in his ear: “Vengeance.” Laughing, Ishi danced away, waving to Aiko and her parents as she passed.
Aiko glared after her in jealous rage. Fearing that Aiko might end the betrothal, Kane pressed forward with his suit, arranging for a grand engagement feast to prove his devotion. Friends, neighbours, and family came to the banquet hall to laugh and toast over food and wine. Kane was very pleased with his success. But when he looked across the hall, he saw the ghost of beautiful young Ishi walk into the room and stand demurely in the corner. He paused mid-sentence and stared in horror as she laughed and began to change. Her body twisted and broke before Kane’s eyes, her face collapsing inward and bleeding, her black hair tangling, her eyeball popping out of its socket. “Vengeance,” she whispered. “No! No!” Kane shouted. Around him, Aiko, her parents, and the guests stared. None of them could see the ghost. As Ishi drifted out of the door Kane followed, vowing she would haunt him no more.
The ghost drifted along the cliff path with Kane running after her, shouting and cursing. Suddenly the ghost stopped at the place where Kane had pushed her. She turned to face Kane and started to grow, her crushed body bloody and dirty, her eyeball swaying, her shattered teething gleaming in the moonlight. “Vengeance!”, she screamed and lunged at Kane. The samurai stepped backward, face contorting in fear. His foot slipped suddenly on the loose earth, and he plunged backward over the edge of the cliff, his body fatally smashing into the rocks far below.
That same night a terrible storm beat against Kane’s house. Lightning hit the roof and the house burned to the ground. Neighbors claimed they could hear a voice in the wind saying one word, over and over: “Vengeance.”
¿Te asustaste con alguna de estas historias? Si te gusta todo el mundo de lo sobrenatural, los fantasmas, misterios e historias de sospecha e intriga, te recomiendo que leas algunos cuentos cortos en inglés de autores como Edgar Allan Poe (estoy seguro que “The tell-tale heart” o “The fall of the house of Usher” te encantaran), H.P. Lovecraft con todo el universo de los Mitos de Cthulu, o bien, explora algunas otras historias en español escritas por Horacio Quiroga.
Además, existen muchas más historias perfectas para Halloween que puedes leer en los libros de R. L. Stine, o algunas novelas clásicas de la literatura gótica como Frankenstein de Mary Shelley o las de Oscar Wilde, tales como el Fantasma de Canterville, o quizá, si te gustan las historias de vampiros, disfrutarías leyendo Dracula de Bram Stoker o Carmilla de Sheridan Le Fanu. Si te gusta más el folclor, te recomiendo que leas sobre las leyendas de diferentes países, encontrarás leyendas sobre fantasmas, duendes, o criaturas sobrenaturales que te encantarán.
