A towering, thin creature stalks the countryside of the Llanos region in South America carrying
the bones of his victims in a sack —whistling all the way.
Vengeful and full of murderous intent, if you hear his whistle it’s probably already
too late.
This “Terror of the Plain,” is El Silbón, or The Whistler, and just wait until you hear
why this one-time human became the monster he is now.
[Monstrum intro.]
If you are unfortunate enough to see El Silbón, you’ll be looking at an emaciated figure
more than three meters tall, with elongated limbs and with an old sack slung over his
back.
Also known as El Sin Fin, The Endless, he’s a malevolent ghost with a very real physical
presence—the result of being cursed by his grandfather for killing his own father.
He roams the plains of the Los Llanos region, a large area of tropical grasslands bordered
by the Andes in the north and west, and the Amazon rainforest in the south.
Knowing that El Silbón is so connected to that landscape, I wanted to learn more about
this South American boogeyman from someone who had actually been to the land he haunts.
So I contacted Argentinian film director (and monster enthusiast) Juan Fernández Gebauer,
who worked on Fantasmagorias, a beautifully, and eerily, illustrated HBO series about the
myths and legends of Latin America.
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me Juan!
[Juan: “Hello Doc, it’s a pleasure to
be on your show, I really like the concept.”]
Thank you!
So what have you heard about the monster?
I know you spent some time in Columbia.
El Silbón is a specter from the Los Llanos area. He is the soul in pain of a young man who murdered his father.
Cursed by such action, he wanders the plains carrying his father's bones in a sack,
throwing gloomy whistles into the air, which is where his name comes from.
There’s a phrase I really like: Each era vomits the monsters it needs.
Since that first time, I have heard the legend of the whistler many times more.
Each narrator adapts it a little to their needs.
There are those who say that it was a rude and spoiled boy who killed and butchered his
own father, because the man did not manage to hunt a deer that the boy wanted to eat.
The version I was told says that the father
had discovered the boy with a woman he didn't like.
A prostitute.
Angry, the man murdered the woman.
The son, who was madly in love, killed his father in revenge.
So the reasons why El Silbón is reported to have killed his father vary—to benefit
the period and the storyteller.
I’ve also read versions where El Silbón’s father seduced or assaulted his daughter-in-law,
triggering his son’s homicidal rage.
And in other stories, the young man’s father murdered his wife not because she was a prostitute,
but because she was rumored to be promiscuous.
Regardless of why the young man killed his father, all of the stories end one way.
[Juan: Everyone agrees that after seeing the killing, the boy's grandfather cursed him,
tortured him with a whip and washed his wounds with Aguardiente and then released him to
some hungry and rabid dogs.
And since then the Whistler has been roaming
the roads, carrying his father's remains in a sack and murdering drunks, partiers, womanizers.
And whistling his melody.]
El Silbón doesn’t just wander around aimlessly—he hunts for womanizers and cheaters.
Perhaps because of the role his murderous father and the woman he loved played in his
fate.
And he also looks for drunks—which might be because of the alcohol his grandfather
drenched his wounds with before his death.
But no one is safe—the occasional innocent victim may fall into his path.
You won't always hear the rattling of his victims’ bones from his sack as he approaches—but
you’ll always hear the rise and fall of his haunting whistle.
In this Venezuelan story, we learn just how cruel El Silbón can be.
One night a rancher was hosting a party.
A man planned on going, but his friends warned him it was dangerous to walk through the plains
alone on a dark night like this one.
But the man insisted he could protect himself and set off for the celebration on his horse.
The horse ran fast, but upon crossing a stream it stopped abruptly.
The man heard a whistled scale in the distance as he tried to calm his horse...the whistling
was getting closer.
The horse spooked and threw the man off.
Suddenly the whistling faded as if the whistler were going away.
But when the man turned, he saw a figure with painfully thin, elongated limbs so tall he
could not see its face.
The figure hit the man with a stick, and even with his machete, the man could not reach
the creature to defend himself.
The monster beat the man to the ground and walked away laughing.
The man managed to find his horse and endured a painful ride to the party.
Those celebrating asked what had happened and when he told them—they all crossed themselves.
The owner of the ranch told him he had come upon El Silbón.
And he was a lucky one—most of El Silbón’s victims do not survive.
El Silbón clearly likes to toy with his prey.
There’s that unusual, and creepy, characteristic of his whistle: when you hear it close by,
that’s a sign you are actually safe; the further away the whistle sounds, the closer
to you El Silbón really is.
He is particularly violent with drunks—sucking out the alcohol from a hole in their stomachs—before
removing their bones from the same opening he drank from.
And taking the bones is the worst part: without them his victims cannot rest peacefully in
death, as they have become part of El Silbón’s doomed existence.
If you hear El Silbón outside your door at night and fail to do anything to drive him
away, or if you don’t stop to listen to his whistling
—a member of your household will die.
A surefire way to drive away his lost soul is
with a dog—since he hates the animals that tore him apart.
This is such a unique, and eerie monster.
What possibly could have inspired it?
[Juan: From what I was able to find out from locals, the legend of El Silbón is based
on a person named Joaquín Flores, who probably committed a crime similar to this one around
1850 , and as in other times events of this nature were rare, the men from the plains
took moral advantage of the murder and echoed the story so that similar events would not
be repeated.]
Originally, the land of the Llanos was populated by nomadic indigenous groups like the Guahibo.
By the 19th century when tales of El Silbón took root, many of the land’s occupants
were cattle ranchers.
Livestock was introduced to the Llanos region by the Spanish colonizers in 1548, and the
cattle population rose to an estimated 4.5 million by the beginning of the 19th Century.
This likely explains El Silbón’s distinctive hat; the style commonly worn by ranchers of
the region.
As the cattle population boomed, tensions rose against the Spanish occupiers in the
Llanos region and surrounding areas.
The Llaneros, a name that appears during this century to refer to all people who worked
the ranches, joined the revolutionary forces
of Simón Bolívar in 1818.
As skilled horsemen and fighters, they helped deal the crucial blow to the Spanish crown
in the battle of Boyacá.
Following the deaths in the Venezuelan War of Independence and the continued wartime
devastation to crops and livestock, by 1823 only 256,000 cattle remained.
So, monumental changes occurred when the Spanish introduced cattle to the Llanos and when the
ranchers of those cattle contributed to the independence of the area from Spanish rule.
The impact of these events is reflected in the appearance of the region’s most famous
monster, El Silbón.
And the legend and impact continues.
Since 1974, an annual Venezuelan music [Festival Internacional de Música Llanera "El Silbón"]
festival celebrates El Silbon and “Llanero folklore.”
He has a statue in a Venezuelan theme park,
his own horror movies, and was even
referenced in a 2003 speech by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
El Silbón has left his impact on popular culture, but that doesn’t mean this monster
has lost his influence in the Llanos.
[Juan: Even the young people who sometimes laugh incredulously and make jokes about his
appearances, when asked seriously if they fear him, say that yes, it is feasible to
hear his piercing whistle late at night in the streets adjacent to the center of town.
I believe that telling the legends and traditions
of a culture helps to preserve an identity.
Understanding what scares us, helps us to understand what is hidden, what is in the
shadows.]
Today the myth of El Silbón is an active part of the folklore of the Llanos, continuing
a tradition hundreds of years old.