127 | Kidnapped by a Cryptid? El Pombero - Black Cat Report | UFOs, Cryptids, True Crime & Paranormal

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
He's one of the most notorious entities on the planet, a
creature that has somehow managed to be known and strongly
believed in by millions of people, but is rarely discussed
or heard about in the English speaking world.
This week we're digging into El Pombero.

(00:27):
I didn't see you there. It all started early this
morning. From hunting ghosts to Bigfoot
UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I. Always wanted to see AUFO.
Oh I was I was researching for your entertainment.
That's Bigfoot's cat. He basically wrote the book on
Monarch We. Aren't really comedians.
What if Buddha did cocaine? The Addams family on meth.
This is the Black Cat report. See you on the other side.

(00:53):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 127 of the Black Cat
Report. My name is Gil, and joining me
here today, fresh from his graduation ceremony from the
Doctor John Brinkley Academy of Agricultural Science and
Alternative Fertility is Doctor Joey Lee.

(01:18):
Congratulations. Sir, I mean doctor, Sir,
congratulations. Yeah, I actually had to go to
Pavia, Italy, to get my degree. Luckily, Benito Mussolini is not
alive, so he cannot revoke my degree.
And I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
It's been a, it's been a hard couple months.
I do feel. I do feel, yeah.

(01:41):
Yeah. I do feel like I should be able
to tell you that to find anything just go to Web MD.
That's the end all be all of Doctor Nick.
That's. True.
Well, we're all really excited for your career buddy, and I
just wanted to let you know thatwe're all pulling out for you.
Now, before we attempt to bring Al Pombero to light, we have a

(02:04):
little bit of housekeeping. First, thank you to everyone who
tuned into Beer, Booze and Boogeyman, the live Paranormal
Collins Show that Joey and I do with their friends on the 1st
Saturday of every month. Specifically, we want to give
special thanks to the anonymous individual who shared their
Horror Story about a Ouija board.

(02:25):
We sincerely hope that the advice we gave helps.
Also, a big thanks to the Black Cat Report patrons who called in
live during the middle of their trip to Canada.
Jayden Ian Ave. Y'all are the freaking best.
As for the next Beer, Booze and Boogeyman, the topic will be

(02:45):
deathbed confessions, those deep, dark truths someone shares
just moments before they pass on.
Have you heard any? If so, give us a call.
Share them. Fuck, they're dead.
Doesn't even matter. And you can submit all this
anonymously, so you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, you can do it. It's going to be it's, it's
easy, literally. It's so easy.

(03:08):
All you got to do is go to GHOSTdot BEER.
That's Ghost dot Beer. Or just click the link in the
Beer, booze Boogeyman section ofthe show's description.
Super easy. Go in there, share it all.
Tell us everything. It can all be anonymous.

(03:30):
Lie to us. We love lies now.
We we actually do. Low key.
Now, As for this episode's sources, it's complicated.
Looking up information about El Pombero is easy, but finding
sources that agree with each other or better yet, fit with

(03:52):
the descriptions given by directwitnesses, well, as it turns
out, is damn near impossible. Even among the main sources
everyone seems to reference, most boil down to just a few
accurate sentences at best when they are held up and compared to
witness statements. As a result, in order to deliver

(04:13):
the most accurate information aspossible, I ended up printing 68
pages of articles, so I'm not going to read them off, but you
can find the links to everythingreferenced in this episode,
slash everything I've found and more in a Google spreadsheet
I'll share publicly. For anyone else going down this

(04:36):
rabbit hole. The link will be found in this
episode Show notes, probably labeled Google Spreadsheet.
Gil kill the whole tree to do. This You know what's bad?
When Trump says he's cutting down too many, like that's what
happened. It got pretty insane.
It was one of the the lesser, the lesser covered executive
orders that he did. Yeah, if you go on Facebook and

(05:00):
you check La Pombero's Facebook relationship status, it will say
it's complicated. El Pombero, thank you.
Is it showing on your screen? It's showing El Pombero.
Yeah, this is a fascinating entity.
I went way too far down a philosophical rabbit hole with
this topic, you know? Now, with housekeeping out of
the way, let's dive in. Living deep in the heart of

(05:26):
Central South America, El Pombero is an ever present
danger who's been feared, honored and even cherished by
the region's original inhabitants, the Gwarani, for
hundreds, if not thousands of years.
It's territory spans out from Paraguay and weaves through the

(05:48):
dense jungles and mountains intothe neighboring lands of Brazil,
Argentina and Bolivia. He's known for kidnapping people
of all ages, often killing them,though of the few who've been
taken and survived, most report they experience similar
horrifying effects to their connections to reality during

(06:12):
the entire ordeal. All the rest are left with their
memories wiped completely blank when they've been found.
For those who do retain their memory, it's not uncommon for
them to say that they were able to see people searching for
them, but were invisible and unable to speak.

(06:36):
He's also loyal to families, a rapist and protector of small
children, and has the ability toparalyze or impregnate people
with a single touch. He loves liquor and tobacco,
which are the vices some people use as a way for gaining his
favor or loyalty, while others who make the mistake of

(07:00):
encountering El Bumbaro and not sharing one of these with them
quickly face his wrath. His akas go on forever,
partially because of how ingrained he is in the Guanine
culture, but also because sayinghis name at night is known to

(07:23):
summon him, and as a result he gets a lot of nicknames, most
common of which are Kari Pari, which means Lord of the night in
Guarani, or Senor de la Noche, which means the man of the
night. In Spanish, he's also called
Huarehe Hare, master of the sun Pomberito, Little Pombero

(07:52):
parage, which means hairy feet, Cho pombe, which means Don
Pombero. And basically the list just
keeps going on and on and on, partially because every single
small community in this area hasgiven him kind of their own

(08:13):
nickname. They're all afraid to speak of
him for, you know, 12 hours of a24 hour cycle.
They're all afraid to say it. So every small village and
region and area has kind of started to refer to them in one
way or another, which makes it very hard to research.

(08:33):
Now, I'm not going to attempt togo through all these fucking
nicknames and nobody wants to hear that list.
I didn't even want to find out that there was a list.
And actually there isn't a list.I should probably make one.
Point is, I'm just going to stick with the Guare.
Any people most often call them El Pombero, which it's
technically night time right nowso I shouldn't be saying it is,

(08:55):
but. Yeah, you're gonna say it many
times. We've done much worse on this
show. Yes.
Well, real quick though, at the pains of researching this, I
have to share this. If somebody else is researching
at Pombero, you need to know nowthat if you're looking him up,
without fail you will see his name translated to the Fireman

(09:22):
and the Firefighter, which in Spanish is El Bombero with AB at
the beginning. That makes sense.
This is entirely A mistranslation and sent me down
a wild goose chase. But I did get a very nice
calendar ordered thanks to Google image searches.

(09:42):
But that's totally, totally a different story.
South American firefighters, I do believe that I I was
Googling. Who knew that was a that was a
genre, yeah. It's it's a genre.
Yeah. I, I was Googling him and one of
the things that nicknames that came up actually was AUS
nickname is from Florida. It was a southern deadbeat dad

(10:02):
Bombera. So it was just, you know, meth
head basically. Specifically not You're
specifically not supposed to make fun of him at night.
Joey and good luck. I am.
I am, but I will not say that anymore so as to not confuse
people when they Google. There's a couple of no Nos
buddy. You.
You crossed 1. You crossed one.

(10:24):
No, I shouldn't. No more.
No more careful. Careful.
Well with that all said, El Pombero falls in the category of
being unduende, which translatedas a ghost.
All of the Spanish speaking world knows this right?
So duendes are they're ghosts ormore specifically goblins.

(10:48):
This category duende is used as basically as a catch all term
right for a wide range of different types of small goblin
like beings. But with that said, sure, all of
my digging and dear Lord my hands are tired when it comes to

(11:08):
El Pombero. It's honestly unclear if El
Pombero is just a single entity like say, the Loch Ness Monster,
a specific type of entity like the Squonk, or his own special
subclass of entities like Demons.

(11:33):
No fucking clue, no, no concreteeverything, every goddamn thing
available now then now the goddamn thing.
Well, even these sources that refer to him as like him as a
specific, like it is just that one entity.
They then go on to talk about creating more of them, which

(11:57):
makes no fucking sense. Yeah, like cloning himself,
cloning themselves, you know, cloning or just like that they.
Keep in mind. He's a rapist, yeah, and
impregnating, impregnating people with a touch.
Yeah, specifically, and I didn'tinclude this, if he impregnates

(12:20):
a woman, they come out looking like, you know, they're, they're
half El Pombero, which we'll kind of get to, yeah, we'll kind
of get to here in a moment. But they come out, they come
out, you know, half L pom barrel.
And if the child gets introducedto the, the, the woman's

(12:43):
partner, the actual like say herhusband or something, he becomes
a pom barrel and the baby is technically a pom burrito, a
little pombero. So there's that whole mythology
that's a whole rabbit hole. And that's this, this is all
from the same sources. And I'm not shitting you from
1956 and 1976, some of the earliest anthropological

(13:05):
anthropological writings around beliefs.
It just goes out there. But regardless of how many there
are, to the Guarin, El Pombero is a daily reality, not a
superstition or a boogeyman. But as real as God is to

(13:27):
Christians, and frankly seen more often, and in much the same
way as God in His word is debated, so too are the motives,
meaning, and even the physical appearance of El Pombero.
He's depicted as a tiny little wild looking the humanoid about

(13:50):
two feet tall, who is completelynude with jet black skin that's
covered in notoriously thick hair.
He has a large head and a torso and it shaped like 2 half
inflated basketballs shoved intoa small pillowcase.
I think that's the best way I could describe it.
That's a good description. He's always shown hunched

(14:12):
forward with the crouched back, which by the way is what Pombero
means is crouched. And I I believe after thinking
about this too much, that this posture is most likely due to
his notoriously huge constantly getting mused Hawk well below

(14:37):
all that and left it. No, no, no, his his penis.
His penis. Oh, OK.
Oh, yeah, I was confused there for a second.
Joey, I'm screen sharing. I need to get your reaction.
Hold on. I don't want to see this, but
OK, I guess. Oh, no, you're you're gonna see
a Pumbaro cock. I've got 1 here for.
I guess I did so much work on goat balls and balls in general

(14:58):
that now I have to see a Pumbaro, yes?
Joey, you and anybody tuning in live that doesn't have the the
fancy overlays, y'all are in fora treat.
Yeah. So this is one of the depictions
I want you to. I would like you to notice his
third leg right there. No wonder they're instantly

(15:20):
impregnated. I mean like.
Ron Jeremy, he's got a cigar too.
Yeah, I know that's he's got a cigar too.
Oh, yeah. Or he's got another penis coming
out of his mouth. Yeah, Yeah, there's another
penis coming out of his mouth. He's got a cigar, buddy.
Yeah, that's a tree trunk. That's a tree trunk down there,

(15:41):
literally. Because the photo we just showed
was made of wood. But below all of that, and
there's a lot. Barely touching the ground,
it's. Honestly, if he fell forward,
would he notice blow all that and left to fend for itself, who
hold up that very demanding frame are two skinny legs which

(16:05):
lead down to his backwards facing feet, A feature that for
anyone familiar with the jinn ofIslam, just cause bells to go
off. That's weird.
Well, he's also reported as tall, with pale skin and long
blonde hair hanging down from a large sombrero he usually

(16:27):
sports. He's slim, fit, and wears pants.
So what the hell is he? That's been a quest I've been on
for two weeks and I'm going to tell you in order to answer that
I dug up anything I could find that quoted the individuals and

(16:47):
communities describing their first hand encounters or the
cultural memory and that led to the most ridiculous sources
becoming the most credible tabloids.
More popularly referred to todayas click bait articles known for

(17:13):
their insane headlines and wild stories with big assumptions.
The one thing they do very well is directly quote the witnesses,
neighbors that are involved in whatever the case happens to be.
And if you keep scrolling down, you'll usually find they are

(17:38):
filled with comments by nosy community members.
The best kind. That's how we get in the
information we get, you know? It took a while.
I mean to be very, very honest about this.
The official sources around the OR what is supposed to be the

(18:01):
official sources around the stuff disagreed so much.
And I got so annoyed trying to find a well formed summary
around El Bombero that I was like fuck it.
I'm I'm just going to look for witnesses.
I'm going to look for people that are close to the the
Gwarney like the culture and to see what the fuck they have to
say. And that's when I realized

(18:23):
almost none of these sources were written by Gwarney people.
It was mostly Jesuits that came in and violently tried to, you
know, colonize the region and I'm like, I can't trust them for
shit. And around the time that there
was kind of some transitions andstuff that were happening in the

(18:44):
area. It there's like 5 pages of the
script I threw out because I realized I'm like, this has
nothing to directly do with El Pombero.
But I would like to .1 thing outbefore we get into the main body
of the story. When I speak of the Guani
people, they are not some tribe living deep within the

(19:06):
rainforest. There's not just twenty of them.
Let me break it down for you. Here in Paraguay, 89% of the
population speak Spanish, 90% speak Gawarini.
There are more Gawarini speakersin that entire country than

(19:27):
there are Spanish speakers. So 8 to 9% of the yeah, the
speak Spanish, 90% speak Gwarney, right, 'cause you said
80 to 90. 89% speak Spanish, 90%also speak Gwarney too.
There's no well that means 1% more speak.

(19:52):
Just Gwarney. Oh OK, so they also, that's what
I was trying to get at. They also speak Spanish.
However the numbers work out, yeah.
But the point is, is that there's 1% more in total.
Guarne is the second official, or you can't even say it's the
second official. It would be the first official
language of Paraguay. Spanish is the 2nd.

(20:13):
And there have been so many folks that have been, you know,
leaving Paraguay and like movingto Spain.
For, you know, a better life, dreams, opportunities, all that
jazz that Spanish universities and public schools in all
throughout Spain are now teaching Guarini officially as

(20:33):
classes to people like. So yeah, it's like I, I learned
a lot. They're fucking fascinating, but
just culturally really fucking cool.
But, but all that said, so when we're speaking about El Pombero
and coming from the Guarini people, this isn't a tribe of 10

(20:54):
folks. Please understand this isn't a
tribe of 10 folks. This is a.
Sizable portion of the population, maybe not always
direct heritage wise, but in terms of cultural influence,
major that is. That is fucking huge, right?
It's, it's not like a, a lost tolike add to it.

(21:16):
It's like not like a lost Amazontribe where they haven't talked
to humans or anything like that.They're just the same, you know,
it's the same as everybody in Paraguay, so.
Yeah, and, well, they're the majority, but one of the one of
the most fascinating things I think that that I learned during
all this, their written languagewasn't standardized until 1950.

(21:38):
So think about a population so massive and like with such such
a huge influence culturally. And less than 100 years ago,
they finally were like, OK, commas go there.
Like, you know, even the Super, super racist Jesuit missionaries
reading through kind of some of their accounts were utterly

(22:00):
fascinated. The Guarini language, they even
at the time, while they were going in and beheading people
and slavery and all sorts of horrible shit, they were writing
in their own personal journals. This is a more advanced language
than Spanish. Yeah.
They were like, this is incredible.

(22:22):
As they were like lining them upto hang them.
They're just like, man, you knowwhat?
Tell them what you say about this about them.
But I love their language, you know?
Every time I see your head up there on that, on that Pike, I'm
going to remember how you taughtme to use vowels.
It's really fucked up, but it isvery, very intense, very fucked
up history of colonization. But their, their language is

(22:45):
fucking cool. Well, in the end, all of the
articles I read through one case, which was widely covered
across multiple sources, and I was able to verify with the
institutions that they cited, right, Because we're trying to

(23:05):
get to the truth here. One of them honestly summed up
El Pombero the best, both, both culturally in terms of how
people relate to him, but also paranormally, if we want to give
it that. And I want to emphasize here,

(23:28):
nobody in the Gwarney referred to El Pombero as a Cryptid.
That is my own theory. I'm pushing as a generalization
because who the fuck in the English speaking world looks up
goblins? Culturally it's not a thing for
us, right? At least I I don't know anybody
and I know quite a few folks that would be into them.

(23:49):
One case which was widely covered and easy to back up and
reference and validate, sums up El Pom Barrel the best, and that
is going to be the body of today's episode.
The real short and fat body of the episode.
Like 2 partially inflated basketball shoved that's.

(24:13):
A very good description. I can see that in my it took me.
Days to figure out how to explain that Well, shortly after
eating lunch on June 30th, 2016,Gilberto de Silva settled his
two year old son Octavio into a tent for a midday nap before

(24:35):
leaving him in the care of his brother-in-law and making his
way back to work. His wife, Octavio's mother
Viviana had already left the makeshift laborers camp little
while earlier it was harvest season in colonial Milagros,

(24:57):
Paraguay, and the young family had travelled with around 30 of
their close friends and relatives to the area to work as
harvesters on the Yerba Mazi plantation.
Soon after beginning work, de Silva's brother-in-law came to
tell him that Octavio had woken up and wouldn't stop crying.
But as he was unable to stop in the middle of what he was doing,

(25:20):
Silva instead sent his 12 year old nephew to go check up on
little Octavio. A few minutes later, his nephew
returned with bad news. Octavio was missing.
Of course Silva did what Alana dads would do.
He panicked with a stern expression and with a mix of

(25:44):
being slightly annoyed but motivated by concern, he grabbed
Viviana and ran back to the campwhere they started what became a
multi day search for Octavio. Once they got back to the camp,
their fears accelerated as they move from quiet searching to

(26:08):
yelling to frantically opening each tent and asking everyone
nearby if they had seen their little Octavio.
And while no one had, one by one, each person they asked
dropped everything and within anhour there was a full-fledged
search party spreading out from the camp and combing through the

(26:31):
Yerba maze plantation and rough terrain of the bordering forest.
By nightfall, nearby neighbors of the plantation and the
regional police had also joined in, and within 24 hours their
numbers spelled to include over 100 officers on the ground and

(26:52):
helicopter support horses and drones.
Then there was no paperwork or bureaucracy.
No one at all was wasting any time throwing themselves and any
resources they had into looking for Octavio use.
It spread so fast that even the minister of government was in a

(27:17):
helicopter flying above the areatrying to look for him.
That's a lot. We're talking about mythological
or hypothetical or, you know, whatever type of being depending
on where you're at in the world.Obviously this is building up to
a mystery or some kind of intense question.

(27:40):
I can't stress enough here how quick the entire region reacted
and how thoroughly, like just how thorough they responded.
Everybody there are there's Twitter posts of the fucking
minister of government being like just got out of the

(28:01):
helicopter like everybody was. This wasn't kind of like he was
missing for four days. How did he get over here?
And it's like, well, he was missing for four days.
What the fuck dude? You know?
Like it's like we talked about in that the National Forest
episode 1 of the National parks episode with the, I think it was
the Martin case. His last name was Martin.

(28:21):
Where they didn't, they found like a shoe, but it was like
maybe a day later or something like that.
And it took them so long to get besides like the main host of
the the parents and kids. They like took them the forest
Ranger so long to get there, like a day or two to get there
and start looking. And so like, yeah, this is like
immediately gone, you know, justcrazy.

(28:46):
Yeah, well within the same span of time the police had also
arrested two men from the Harvesters camp.
But the Silva was more annoyed by this news than reassured,
stating to local reporters at the time quote.
They have nothing to do with it.1 is my brother-in-law and the

(29:10):
other a friend and they are not about to do anything to my kid.
I suspect El Pombero because he left no trace.
He then went on to say that by nightfall on the day Octavio
disappeared, quote, I bought liquor and tobacco and left it

(29:32):
in the woods for him. Now I hope that he releases my
kid. Like a freaking like he's giving
him something. What is it called?
Like a like a ransom. Like he's giving him a ransom to
give back the to get back his kid to like tobacco and and
liquor. It's more like an apology.

(29:54):
Well. I'm sorry that you stole my kid.
OK. Yeah.
So he said this within the 24 hours span of this much
attention. Again, like everybody is there.
This is blowing up in the news, right?

(30:15):
And like some of these news articles and like sources were
from countries that border parapet like this was spreading
out across South America in terms of like how significant
this is. Like, everybody was boom, like
on the ship. Yeah, naturally.
The reactions by reporters and police when De Silva made that

(30:38):
statement that his son was takenby El Pombero, they were mixed.
That all said, many understood this as a very valid theory,
while the others scoffed and dismissed it as backward
superstition. But no matter what criticism
people gave him, De Silva and Viviana insisted El Pombero was

(31:06):
behind this, and they knew why. For decades, De Silva's father
had made nightly offerings to ElPombero in exchange for the
beings friendship and protectionof his family.
But De Silva strayed from this tradition, breaking the cycle of
gifts, loyalty and favors that they had cultivated with El

(31:31):
Pombero. It was after seeing the signs of
the trickster's handiwork, and by that I mean the complete lack
of signs. And by that I mean a child
disappearing into thin air and then further learning about the
family agreement that De Silva had abandoned, that local

(31:54):
healers had advised him to stop ignoring El Pombero if he ever
wanted to see his son again. It's a pretty strong statement
to make it somebody at that time.
Especially like, yeah, your kid just disappeared.
But you know, you know, he left that out there and then like he

(32:16):
walked out there just to see if it was gone.
And he saw all the like the police officers and cops just
being like, what? Drinking the drinking the
liquor, smoking the cigarettes. And he's like, what?
Oh, no, did you see him? Do you see El Palm Baro?
He ran away and he's like, dude,this is an offer to him, not
you, you know? I want to point out here it's
not without precedent. This specific area has long been

(32:41):
notorious for children disappearing without a trace.
July of 2000, a 2 year old mysteriously went missing from
inside the house while his mother was home.
That's crazy. And this was realized by the
father when he came home from work that evening.
A massive search soon began and just like with Octavio and

(33:05):
within 27 hours of that child's disappearance, he was discovered
sitting alone and a force clearing, cold and frightened
but physically unharmed. Weird.
Did that? Did did it say if that person
dropped something for them, likegave them a no?

(33:26):
No, it didn't. It wouldn't be from everything I
read from again like tabloids and through comments and through
trying to dig through stuff. It wouldn't be surprising if
they did and it wouldn't be surprising if they didn't like
it. It just.
Either way, you know. Kind of like going up to a

(33:46):
random neighbor and being like, do you believe in Christ?
Some folks are going to be fervently like, yes, 100% this
is a Christian household and thought it on and go to.
And other folks are going to be like, yeah, kind of a little
bit. And you know, if I get desperate
enough, I do. And other folks are going to be
like, get the fuck out of my face, you know, and like, or
they're going to be like, no, wedon't believe that.

(34:07):
But the point is like it wouldn't be shocking in this day
and age if if somebody was just like yes or no.
So it's kind of hard to tell. But if it's a yes, it's a real
belief. If it's a no, it's probably a
pretty strict no, you know? Yeah.
It's, it's kind of that. That makes.
Sense what's going on here? Yeah.

(34:27):
Yeah, and and that's a lot. And and 1st off, when you said
when the dad was going to that he was just like he did what any
parent would do. I thought he just was going to
like shrug and be like, yeah, I was going to make another one.
But. You know, that look that like
Dan's get when they're slightly concerned, but they have to
maintain this expression of I'm going to act like I'm just

(34:48):
annoyed because I don't actuallywant to think about if this is
really happening. And when it's proved that I'm
actually just annoyed, I'm goingto be like, how dare you, You
know, like that kind of like that's the best way I could
explain it. And I literally did read
articles about where people wereaccusing him during, during the
time span of his son missing, ofhim being involved in his son's

(35:09):
disappearance specifically because of his facial
expression. So like, I'm not exaggerating
this at all. It was, that was a whole thing
over the time span of his son's just because there was just
articles coming out everywhere at the time and people commented
a lot about it and he had to respond to those comments and it

(35:29):
got pretty fucking ridiculous. He's like, I always had faith
and it was just this whole. I love I just imagined him
sitting there like on the articles that are out just
actually typing and responding person by person to just like
it's like. I would be looking for my son
right now if. You if you stopped commenting on

(35:52):
this, I would literally have found my little Octavia.
I would have found them. You know it.
It got out of hand. In the December of 1996, Romina
Viarte was only three years old,vanished from her family's rule

(36:14):
home and was missing for six days before being discovered 2
miles away, only slightly dehydrated and bruised.
As for Octavio's story, by the second day for more than 200

(36:35):
police and regional law enforcement officers there on
the ground completely covering the area and his case had now
reached a point where, after covering every accessible piece
of land multiple times, they were now forced to split up into

(36:58):
small teams and start cutting through the thick jungle with
machetes. It's.
Awful. This is a 2 almost 3 year old
boy who like literally can barely walk.
Yeah, you wouldn't see. You'd have to cut down.
This is absurd jungle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You'd have to cut down most of the jungle, Sissy.

(37:21):
No, So like, how the fuck is he getting in there?
Yeah, true. Yeah, you need teams of people
just to go like a yard into this.
Sorry, 15 cheeseburgers into this yes, like this little
fucking kid. How they this is getting

(37:45):
ridiculous. Right.
Yeah, yeah, that's honestly, it's like, what?
What can you do? Like it's either it's either
there was somebody who stole thebaby, you know, there was
somebody that just came in there, stole the kid or saw him
out there playing like, cool, I'm taking this kid or Palm
Barrow just took him and it, youknow, it's like there's kind of

(38:06):
two options. I mean, he couldn't even get
eaten by an animal truthfully, because two years old still.
Tender, but like there was a whole section I didn't even
include. They brought in fucking forensic
teams on the first night. Damn that's quick.
Perfect though. Like dude, they, they're like, I

(38:28):
can't express like they took this so God damn seriously.
This is 2016. Drones were not readily
available in 2016. This is like these are major
resources they're throwing. They had infrared up on the
first fucking night looking for this kid that's.
Huge. Yeah, that's.

(38:49):
Wild forensic teams are on this scene like everything was into
this anyway money there was no fucking around.
They were like fuck paper like we need to find this little kid.
Now I I really admire how how well this like community came

(39:10):
together, you know, because these are, these folks are the
equivalent regionally at the time of, you know, seasonal
migrant workers. And this is how the community's
responding. Yeah.
I have so much respect for that.Like I have, it's so much
respect for that. It's.
Interesting to see too because this is a yerba matte

(39:32):
plantation. So yerba matte the company
correct? Or is yerba matte the.
The drink Yerba matte is a specific leaf from a tree I.
I don't know. I've never drink it, so I don't
understand. But I imagine that the company
that owned it might. I, I, I kind of see it both
ways. I can see that the company's

(39:54):
like, shit, we're a private plantation owner.
OK, Well, the person who owned it probably like, shit, we don't
want somebody to think that, youknow, we're stealing kids or
something like that. But I can see it the other way
where they're just like, eh, they're just hired help,
whatever. But I imagine because it was the
kid, they were just like, we need to find this person, so.
I think it was genuinely becausethey cared from top down.

(40:16):
Was Karen top down? Was Karen, you know?
I read through a lot of articles.
Yeah, I read through a lot of articles from like months later
or years later with follow-ups and stuff like that.
Like people, they they legitimately cared.
Yeah, like 100%. And I also think, and this is

(40:37):
fucked up, they've gotten good at this because of how many kids
go missing in this area. Now see, that's a whole nother
detail too. That's like, OK, 'cause if
there's a lot of kids that go missing, you're just.
Like. Maybe a more serious problem,
but you know it is what it is. Among those teams was a member

(41:02):
of the region's special operations group.
Jorge Marcelo Vieira, a local, was raised with the same beliefs
as De Silva. After hearing El Pombero might
be responsible for taking Octavio, Jorge decided he was

(41:23):
going to follow local beliefs about what El Pombero does after
stealing someone. But this wasn't just blind
superstition, it was personal. For decades now, ever since he
was a small child and had multiple uncles mysteriously
disappear in this area, he had wished that the people looking

(41:46):
for them would have seen the signs and followed their
beliefs. This is so.
It's perfectly. Yeah, it's getting deeper.
Yeah, when the day started, Jorge spoke to his team.
Quote, if Da Silva said it was El Bombero, then according to

(42:09):
beliefs he'll take the boy towards the east, adding later
thanks to our ancestors, we holdthe belief that this creature
leads people to where the sun is.
We follow that route and the coordinates they gave us showed
the correct direction to that place.

(42:32):
According again, it was very dense forest up to our waists.
When we saw Octavio, we were overjoyed.
The boy was sleeping in perfect condition and not hypothermic.
That's why legend has it that ElPombero has him all night.

(42:54):
The sunrise is what protects himfrom hypothermia.
He had no cuts, he had nothing. He was in perfect condition.
When reporters asked Jorge laterif a barefoot person could get
hurt, he replied yes, that's obvious.

(43:15):
A child of that age with that build can't walk more than 100
meters on those paths. Quoting further, I do believe
because I was born in the province and our parents and
grandparents told us about him and described him in the same
way. My uncles went through the same

(43:37):
thing and weren't lucky enough to have been searched for
according to the beliefs. Going further, when they found
Octavio, he was completely naked, slightly dehydrated but
unharmed. A barefoot 2 year old who can

(43:58):
barely walk sleeping in the middle of a God damn jungle in
an area with no access points inor out.
I think it's very clear that Elpam Barrow knows how to take
kids but not take care of them. Yeah, well, to be fair, it just
sounds like most adults wild nights out, you know, they wake

(44:21):
up in the forest half half nude,a little bit dehydrated.
But this is a 2 year old. So to say that it is been right.
Let me get the time timeline right.
How long after was it? Was the baby found like a week,
two days OK? Look how fucking tiny this kid

(44:43):
is, dude. So small.
Look at the size of the water bottle next to that child.
Yeah. Like.
That's a tiny kid. He couldn't have made it in the
jungle. Like, not at all.
Dude, the the water bottle, do you say that it's about half the
height, a little over half, 2 fifths 3/5 the size of that kid?

(45:07):
Yeah, Yeah. I don't.
I don't know how to reach it. Little over half the height as
you could just say it's like, yeah, it's a little over half
the height of that kid. And to say they went and
survived in the jungle for two days is doesn't seem very
feasible, especially with animals.
Just just, no, that's like all there is to that.

(45:29):
And they, they obviously took him to the hospital fucking
immediately. Yeah, and ran all the tests and
got him checked up and he was inrecovery.
There was no more or less. He was fine.
Yeah, no long term problems. He didn't like, he didn't even
have like any cuts or bruises orscrapes on his bare ass feet in

(45:52):
the middle of the jungle in the middle of the fucking South
America. Then that makes it sound like it
was the kid was carried. You know, was was carried there
precisely. But with that said, you know,
they did a lot of testing for some things that might not be
obviously visible. You know, there was no sort of

(46:18):
intrusive assaults or anything like that made on, on this very
small child's body. And again, it it begs a lot of
questions because people, desperately hundreds at this
point, hundreds of people desperately trying to get
through this area, needed to spend forever with fucking

(46:42):
machetes and teams of people taking turns just to get there.
And then when they got there, there was no way out besides
their machete paths. So like, if it was a human being
doing this, how the fuck did they get in there?
She dropped the child off. There would probably be obvious
signs of footsteps, something like that of brush movement too

(47:07):
of to get to that area. Like a trail of some sort that
they could have probably found, especially if it was police.
They would have been like, there's a trail footsteps, you
know, or Leafs. Movement at this point, yeah.
And I guarantee you by this point, with this much attention
on it, the police investigated the scene where they found the
child, you know? Yeah, that's fucking insane.

(47:33):
It's it's absolutely fucking even.
It's just this is nuts. But if you see photos of this
terrain, we're talking about like central Paraguay, bro.
No, like, we, you and I, we livein Appalachia and that shit's
intense hiking. This, this shit about this
terrain makes going to the mailbox look like climbing Mount

(47:55):
Everest. Like, it's not a fucking joke.
It's like not a joke. We're talking like a mile and a
half like into it and some random fucking clearing, which
is a notorious place that Elpenbarrel likes to hang out is
clearings in the middle of the jungle.
Like also the fact there were zero trails going in or out on

(48:18):
this whole thing more or less from what I could find about Up
and Barrel. There's some legends that say he
does things to kids but I'm gonna be honest I found nothing
at all that would even come close to like a quote from what
I would consider a legitimate source.
Even you know, 1958 old book that I illegally downloaded from

(48:43):
a cultural website. Y'all should lock down your code
better even that when I went through and I like got it
translated and there is no references of accounts of
anything like that. I I think that that's a mix up
with another God who does like to lust after children and then

(49:05):
give them to a different God whois the greatest name I've ever
heard called an ow ow because it's the sound that they make.
Carol it's a OAO. It's literally ow ow.
Like it's literally. So he takes children, takes them
into a specific area, pulls out their eyes, has his way with
them, and then gives them to hisbrother, who eats them.

(49:30):
And I think that people are mixing, I think that non Kuwara
name, but like, people are mixing up El Pombero with that
bullshit. But he don't fuck around with
any of that bullshit. He generally takes kids.
Yeah. He doesn't try to do anything
bad to him. I think he's like a little, you
know, like I don't. He's like the, he's like the,

(49:50):
the, the third brother that they're just like, they look at
him and just like he's got something.
He's like the third brother madebetween first cousins.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what's crazy is is those
two gods you were just talking about, at least they like, they
waste not, you know, like the eyeballs are getting eaten, you

(50:12):
know, So it's like they're they're definitely not wasting
any of the kid. We, I think there's four or five
evil sons or evil children of the Gwarini like gods, and
that's their title is like the evil kids, that's they're just

(50:34):
all evil. Yeah, you can.
Just call most. Kids there we should do we
should do we should do an episode on them.
Not because I've done all the research I'll I'll dig just as
hard, but because like it actually is like a really like
holy shit. I'm like just cool concepts,
cool ideas and stuff. Well, when it comes to El
Pombero, there's countless stories like Octavios, children

(51:02):
who just up and vanish and then are found completely naked,
alive, slightly dehydrated but with hardly a scratch on them.
They get taken to a hospital andthere's no signs of sexual
assault or anything nefarious. You might assume from how they

(51:25):
were found completely naked in alittle nowhere.
Well, As for the places that they're found, it's not uncommon
for the children to be located. I forgot to delete a line from
my script. As for where they disappear from

(51:49):
and where they're discovered, that gets even stranger stories
around Elpenbarrel. It's not uncommon for a child
who can barely walk to go missing for only an hour or two,
but somehow they end up miles away in a location that requires

(52:09):
crossing mountains, fences, rivers, and dense jungle.
These places would be hard to reach even for a full grown
adult with a straight half. It would be a struggle to get to
these spots right? Which is why I'm going to

(52:31):
propose a second Cryptid, Speed babies.
They're a new generation of human which are able to wrap
them across the jungle. And thanks to RFK getting
fluoride out of our drinking water, we're going to tap into
our original towers. We can.
I was going to call them race babies, but when I read that out
loud, that's not as good. I should say that.

(52:53):
Yeah, race babies. Maybe like Flash?
Babies, it sounds bad, race babies sounds bad.
But if you stop and think you'relike, it's not actually saying
anything. I just want to say race babies.
Fuck is a race baby? They're the fastest of our kind
making Take it, take everything out.

(53:14):
Yeah, exactly. Race babies, God, race babies.
It sounds so bad, but it's so weird.
Yeah, You're not declaring anything.
It's just fine. Now I wanna see all.
Right. So we'll go babies running

(53:35):
there, the politically correct version of this totally
hypothetical situation. Speed babies.
Speed babies who are on methamphetamine and have never
touched fluoride. But you do have to be be very
careful because they they, they were Nazis.
Because no, that was the race babies.

(53:55):
Yeah, yeah, the race babies, Mangala, he definitely worked on
them and they gave got methamphetamine.
The speed babies are the babies of the race babies.
It's babies having babies. There's a whole problem.
In the 90s, it's like they were like 15 year olds have babies.
That's not when my great. Oh shit, actually, yeah, that
was my great. They were about a year old.
That's not what literally my parents did when their parents

(54:18):
were in the first generation to not have kids at 15 and 16 years
old. And then everybody freaked out
the 90s, but that's a whole theyget into culture too much.
Now, I mentioned Octavio's father messing up when he broke
with tradition, right? And I forgot to mark that.

(54:39):
Now I mentioned Octavio's fathermessing up when he broke with
tradition. And part of the reason I picked
Octavio's story is because it's honestly, it's so well
highlights one of the few beliefs surrounding El Pompero
that everyone agrees on. You can summon and form a pact

(55:04):
with El Pompero by leaving offerings for him in the crook
of a tree near the edge of the forest.
Or honestly, after reading everybody's little spot, they
like to do it any small, slightly hidden spot that random
people won't see. The whole point is that it's

(55:25):
namely just between you and El Pompero, other folks.
It's not prohibited that other folks know where you're doing
it, but you kind of spots that aren't generally seen right.
Secret meetings, yeah. Yeah, like some people like
leave it out on a table where the only they sit in the middle
of the night to smoke a cigarette.

(55:45):
Like shit like that. Like it's, it's very personal.
I didn't. I didn't know you could summon
Pombero, but that's cool. You 100% can summon Pombero, and
one of the reasons, the first reason which we'll approach here
and is more closely related to De Silva and Octavio's
disappearance, is he would summon him because he wants

(56:08):
something. Specifically, when you do this,
you need to leave him. Tobacco, liquor, and honey,
those are his three favorite things.
And I'm not shooting you when I say he's almost always depicted

(56:29):
with at least two of those threethings.
Almost always he has a cigar in his mouth and he has like a
bottle of liquor in his hand. Loves the shit.
I don't understand that at all, but I could go for a cigarette
right now. It might have been too easy if
he liked beer to just call him Palm Bureau all the time.
So honestly, it is just too easyif he liked beer.

(56:52):
So he's just like I cannot take the.
The nickname would have stuck. I'm not going to shit you,
that's probably the name for himin like 6 villages and it
probably caused me to go down the rabbit hole trying to be
like who the fuck is this Bureauguy that sounds just like him.
Is there a difference? It's just the uncle of the of
the guy of Octavia. Just kidding.

(57:12):
Like, yeah, he likes beer. It's like elbowing.
He's like, yeah, yeah. They start passing down.
Yeah, they're beer. He loves beer.
And that's why the baby was taken, because the uncle was
being an asshole. It's also why they arrested him.
So they're just like, I feel badfor the two folks that got

(57:33):
arrested because to follow. Up with that, obviously they
weren't involved if they straight up fucking.
They got arrested and then the child wasn't found until like 24
hours later. Y'all saw that kid?
It was way the fuck too small tobe in the jungle.
Yeah, I'm 6 foot tall and I'm too small to be in the jungle

(57:56):
alone. Can you imagine there?
Were nothing. That the kid was found too, to
be like after they were arrested, you know, to just be
like, I I've been saying it likewe didn't take this kid, you
know, like obviously, but. Yeah, so specifically, you need

(58:17):
to leave him tobacco, liquor andhoney.
Now here's where there's a catch.
I told you up top, there's always a catch.
If you want him to do a favor for you or fulfill a specific
requirement or request, you haveto leave offerings for him every

(58:40):
night in the same spot for 30 days, each time saying out loud
what your request is. But if you mess this up, he'll
mess you up. It's usually at first it's done
by small things to you right? So it's just, it's just like

(59:04):
minor annoyances like unlocking and opening up your livestock
gates, breaking random things, pretty annoying rocks non-stop
at the roof of your house. That would drive me crazy.
Imitating the voices of people you know.

(59:25):
He's got a whole cook. More annoying.
Filled with little weird acts ofmischief.
Like, could you imagine if you heard your, I don't know, your
brother's voice coming from yourbathroom right now?
Yeah, and you got it to when to go look at Nobody's there.
I'd walk out of the house. It's like, yeah.
And then you have it like it just, like, just it just fucking

(59:46):
mischief. Like really mischief for an
entity like this, Right? Yeah.
Fact is, these are all meant to be harmless reminders that,
frankly, you haven't been paid. He's like, come on, pay your
toll. You're El Pompeo protection
racket now. At this point, if you don't

(01:00:11):
listen to these warnings, thingswill very quickly escalate.
Kidnappings, beatings, murder. He'll target you, your spouse,
your kids. He's completely fucking
indiscriminate. A little one man mobster who'll
make sure they never find the fucking body.

(01:00:32):
Like that's basically what he flips to real.
Fast. Hey, you get over here.
We're going to go out there. Well, just as he took a 2 year
old into an area that took days to fucking reach and like like
that he's like, I'll never find you.
Give me my fucking honey hard liquor.

(01:00:52):
You know, like you're the one that.
Started this bitch like he so started this.
Yeah, he's like, I'm going to finish it.
It's so petty. It's like the little pettiness.
He's a sensitive little. He's a sensitive little guy.
Got Napoleon syndrome too probably.
Now with that said, a lot of people don't have specific

(01:01:13):
requests for him but still want to be within his good graces for
sure. And I don't really blame them
because he just targets random mother fuckers and we'll just
fuck with them. So it's like you kind of if
you're living in the area, you should kind of just be like,
buddy, hi, hi, we're neighbors. You know?
Well, to do that, if you want todo this at home, it's the exact

(01:01:38):
same process as before, but morelenient because it's not a
business arrangement. Basically, you're not asking for
a specific favor. You're just trying to make
contact. You're trying to become friends.
So he's he's more chill, right? Yeah.
So instead of say, having to give him all three things,

(01:01:59):
smokes, spirits and sweets for 30 days, you can pretty much
just pick one of them or honestly anything you think that
he would enjoy, which he's a huge fan of small fruits.
You can leave that in whatever your secret offering spot is.
As a benefit of doing this, he'll take care of you, look

(01:02:23):
after your property, protect members of your close family,
and he'll even start leaving little gifts for you in the same
place you left stuff for him. It's kind of one of the signs
that the relationship exists nowis like, you put honeycomb in
this little spot underneath a jar underneath an old log in the

(01:02:45):
woods when nothing could fuckingget to.
It's impossible for anything to get there.
Even the ants can't get to it inthe middle of the rainforest.
And you go back the next day andthere's, like, a guava in it,
and you're just like, fucking shit.
Like, this is a closed container.
I haven't said, you know, like, they don't even have guavas at

(01:03:05):
our local market right now. Yeah, like it's some crazy shit,
right? Yeah.
And it's like there's some really cool stories, stories
around. They're not long enough to give,
you know, segments of the episode too, because it's just
like ending there was this, you know, it's like it was one
sentence. But there, there's some really
cool stories around, shit like that from the folks in in this

(01:03:27):
area. And fuck, I question my reality.
I'm not gonna get into knocking theirs, but it's kind of a cool
thing. And that's, that's kind of what
gets set up right. OK, kind of cool.
Is that when you pass on, he'll stay loyal to your family, often

(01:03:49):
attaching himself to just one specific child.
So you make this pact with El Pombero who can fuck your shit
up. Don't get, don't get it twisted.
Fuck your shit up. And he's going to be like locked
in, loyal to your family 100% you know what I'm saying?

(01:04:09):
I'm always a fan of getting demons on my side.
Boom, he's locked in. But there's a catch.
He's kind of sensitive and gets incredibly aggressive.
God if he feels neglected or ignored.
So once the friendship is established, you need to make

(01:04:32):
sure there's an offering made every single night in the same
spot for the rest of your life. No, No thank you.
No, thank you. I have articles I'll be posting
in the final cut of this episodeof literally People where it's

(01:04:53):
like, this man's been giving El Pumbaro cigarettes for decades
and he's like, I don't regret a day of it.
You don't like it's like there'sso many well after you die.
Thing is, the child that he attaches to needs to make
offerings when you pass on or he'll take it personally.

(01:05:18):
What a bitch. Things will escalate, as was the
case with De Silva's father, who, depending on the article
you go to, doesn't say and actually speaks against giving
offerings to El Pombero. But on the articles where

(01:05:38):
they're direct quotes, he 100% gave offerings to El Pomero when
his son went missing. Again, we're going off of
sensational tabloids. I I really tried to just go off
of the quotes of people. God, I like this guy at the
beginning, you know, I thought he was just like a little tricks
to him, like do crazy little things, but man, I hate him now.

(01:06:01):
I'm like he's that like terribleroommate, that fucking Pombear.
It's like that terrible roommateyou had that just moved in, you
know, doesn't really pay rent and just like takes and takes.
And when you come home with likesome pizza, you know, you, you
really come home with this pizzaand they look at you when you
walk in, they're just sitting onthe Yep, sitting on there

(01:06:22):
smoking a cigarette. Yep, sitting on there smoking a
cigarette, looks at you and be like, did you bring me any?
And he's like. No.
This is my pizza. Like no, this is my I hate.
I don't like this. This is the I just.
Want to zoom in here? Oh wait, that's too close.
Wait, that's that. Was very too close.
That's too close, just leave it there is fine.

(01:06:43):
Here we go. They didn't make it hairy or
make the feet backwards, which is the feet they kind of fucked.
Up on it now, looks like the legs are almost backwards.
It's so weird looking but I hate.
That's the other depiction of him, the completely opposite of.
That's like a goblin. A little goblin.
Little mischievous little goblinmore.

(01:07:06):
Like that? I hate this thing.
Sorry. I know this is like drawing up.
I hate this thing. It's just so annoying.
Especially like. Oh.
You didn't give me any food justlike your dad did.
It's like, shut up. Go get your own dad.
But how can I put this? So living on the edge of the

(01:07:28):
rainforest is not easy for sure.Go figure.
And this is seen as a way for protection.
There's a, there's a lot of stories there, very fucking
brief, but it's folks who talkedabout some impending tragedy or

(01:07:48):
some sort of freak accident where it's like they're working
in the fields and a 400 year oldtree just decides to die at that
fucking moment and snap and fallexactly where they would have
been standing. Like shit like that.
And they heard the whistles of El Pombero, which is something
that brings him very close to another character that we

(01:08:11):
covered. El Sibone is Sibone whistles.
Yeah. So El Pombero, I can't quote how
many times I've read that he cantransform into a log, transform
into a rock sitting next to it, like he could just fucking
anything he wants. He can transform into right?
Which explains why it's impossible to describe his

(01:08:34):
physical appearance right. But it's also an anomaly because
so many people recognize him when they see him at the same
time. And again, I'm trying to go into
the the cultural context of likepeople believe he's real.
So I'm trying to put my brain inthat area.
I'm not trying to knock anything.
I'm just trying to be like, OK, well, how would I rationalize it

(01:08:55):
'cause I assume they're as rational as I am.
But so you could transform pretty much into anything.
And one of the favorite things that he loves to do is he has a
very specific kind of whistle. It's like a very high pitched,
very eerie and very hard to place chicken chirp, like a
little baby chicken chirping. But it's very strange and it's

(01:09:17):
very off, and when you hear it you have no fucking clue where
the hell it's coming from. It's just, it's like
ventriloquism. Ventriloquism, you know.
Exactly. No, no, no.
Ventriloquism is something that people that was another one of
his many nicknames. It was like he's the
ventriloquist of the jungle. He can make anything close sound
far. Anything far sound close da da

(01:09:38):
da da da. Like he just can make anything
come from anywhere. He can make the sounds with his
mouth of people clapping, which was a very weird description I
never thought of. Never thought I would read that.
You know what I'm like, It said of humans clapping, of a Viper

(01:10:00):
hissing of a of a sick human being, which I think was
multiple layers of mistranslation.
It probably meant distressed. Yeah.
It's the only thing I could think of that would be close.
Who the fuck knows. Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much anything. But specifically, he loves to

(01:10:21):
make the sound of birds at night.
And one of the warning signs that he's in the area is every
fucking animal shuts the fuck up.
Quiet, eerie silence. And for the rainforest?
It should never be quiet. That would be horrifying.

(01:10:41):
Like every. I've never been.
I've always wanted to go. I hope I can make it before it
disappears. But everything that I've ever
seen about somebody that goes there says like the one thing
nobody ever tells you about is that at night, it's so fucking
loud. So like all of those, but

(01:11:02):
everything you've ever seen on the Discovery Channel is
screaming his ass off. And then in the middle of
fucking and eating at the same time, it's killing fucking,
eating at the same to everything.
And it's so loud. And a lot of folks, for the
first few nights that they get there, can't sleep because it's
so God damn loud to imagine thatgoing silent.

(01:11:26):
That's creepier, yeah. That's and then to have one
source of sound coming around you that's just being
manipulated is like, so throw yourself in it.
That's some trippy shit to thinkabout.
Something. That's a rock concert, goes
quiet. And then you just hear, hey,
Joey, what are you doing? It's me, your mom, just like

(01:11:46):
kind of bouncing around in the middle of like a fuck it.
It's like. And I understand the like the,
the cultural significance of it,you know, of, of Pombero with
people living on the edge of the, the woods, you know, and I
understand the physical significance of it too.
And I'm describing it as if El Pombero was coming over to my

(01:12:12):
house and just sitting there andthen he was like one of your
roommates. And God, that would make a
terrible show. It's like, what is it?
What's that show? The 2 1/2 men, like 2 1/2 men in
one Pumbero and you know, it's just kind of sitting there just
like. 2 1/2 Pumbero, Yeah. 2 1/2pumberos and you're just like,

(01:12:33):
what the hell is going on here? Why?
Why is the house not comes home?Why is the house not clean?
He's like, he didn't leave me any liquor, you know?
And he's like, well, yeah, it's not how we do things here, you
know? Check again.
Where'd my house go? Where'd my liquor go?
Yeah. Bring the liquor.
The worst, The worst. Kind of drunk the one with

(01:12:53):
power. Yeah, oh God, yeah 'cause then
it can. Just do whatever.
Yeah, don't want that. Right, it's the person who owns
the. House El Pompeo is is is
absolutely. He's fascinating though, because
again, so we, we, we're distance, I'm, I'm going to
assume most folks hearing this are very distant from, from ever

(01:13:17):
knowing about him A and from anyof the culture and shit around
him B. So you probably just barely
heard of him if you're finding this and don't know shit about
him. If that's you when you meet the
criteria of most of the English speaking world, then whatever
language is I'm forgetting, there's only two.
There's English and and Spanish.But if you somehow find yourself

(01:13:39):
in a third, the character's fascinating because there is so
much similarity in in his stories and his behavior and his
powers and his potential and everything about him.
So much similarity to to other cryptids, spirits and legends,

(01:14:00):
right? So his behavior is incredibly
close to fairies who traditionally stole kids.
And we're also about this size as of a barrel, right?
They weren't that little Tinkerbell fucking size.
Things that were that were bigger in the northeastern

(01:14:21):
United States, specifically in the Bridgewater Triangle, like
the New England area, you have the pug wedgies, right?
Which like he walks from Star Wars or you know, and inflate a
Bigfoot, like one that's not fully inflated.
Those are the Pugwedgies. One of the most famous cases,
one of the most famous stories about the Pugwedgie, which if

(01:14:44):
you look up anything about him is probably gonna be the first
thing that comes up or them is that they're these little tribes
of creatures generally describedas Harry.
Again, picture tiny Bigfoots andthey have a hypnotic power where
they're just like come into the woods with us.

(01:15:06):
I'm into the woods with and they're able to kind of like
fucking control you. Very famous case of this guy
who's just like walking his dog.He's like going into the woods
with you. What are you, little man?
And he's just like come into thewoods.
He's like, I'm scared and the dog's like and he's like, I
agree with you, Roscoe. And they like run off and then
that's just repeated in every documentary ever made about

(01:15:28):
them. But the.
Clear hero, Yeah. Yeah, the dog was the El
Gombear. But yeah, so they kind of the
the way that they're so hairy, the size, everything about them
does remind me so much of pug watches where I'm like, oh, this
is this is really close. If if in El Pombero's legend, it

(01:15:50):
was more clear, which is way toomuch to ask, I realize that now.
But if it was more clear that there were multiple, then I'm
like pugwudgies. These are South American
pugwudgies, like 100%. You know, like the the fit is so
close, but then you also have elves and you have leprechauns,

(01:16:12):
then you have goblins. It meets across the board of so
many things. Now past all of that, so many of
these cases are nearly identicalto so many National Park missing
person cases documented by DavidPalatus.

(01:16:37):
Everything, literally everything.
The the impossible distance travelled over difficult terrain
in unreasonably short spans of time, finding the person or the
person's remains in a spot that has already been heavily
searched. Memory loss, the complete, you

(01:16:58):
know, disappearance of the victim at the moment they're
taken where it's like they're walking 15 feet from here to
there and it's like, where the fuck did they go?
And then everybody starts to panic and shit like that, like
that kind of shit. To take it even further, Jacques
Valet in Passport to Magonia. He exhaustively documents the

(01:17:24):
very long near the universal history of trickster like
entities appearing in almost every culture on the planet.
They all have striking similarities between each other,
right? And this is these are at times
when they are separated by continents, cultures and
centuries. Everybody has this role in

(01:17:48):
literature. The trickster role is literally
a theme. Like this is a thing that's
thematic. Yeah.
Yeah. It it's one of the most base
level concepts of our imagination of like utilities,
right? That's that's the very atheist
perspective of it and which is totally fine and it's very
useful, but it is interesting that just everybody has it,

(01:18:11):
regardless of how advanced, quote UN quote they are in any
specific direction, right? Whether it's art, whether it's
warfare, whether it's agricultural development, what
have you. Doesn't matter.
Where the fuck they're they all this was like one of the
earliest seeds. And while their literal
appearance changes, their behavior, personality, and the

(01:18:33):
side effects of a human encountering one of these
trickster like entities seems tobe timeless memory loss or foggy
memory, shape shifting or screenmemories.
When part of or all of your memory is replaced by something

(01:18:55):
else. Often with alien abductions.
It's a vivid memory of an owl. Intense whistling sounds.
Sounds a lot like UFOs whirring.It does the.

(01:19:15):
Rape, reoccurring sexual scenes and experiences, kidnapping.
Said another way, abduction. The ability to get into and to
leave from any house. Invisibility, the ability to

(01:19:36):
paralyze someone with just a touch.
Many, and I mean many abductees report aliens essentially taking
their index finger and tapping them on the head, leaving the
abductee either knocked out Coltor left in a daze.

(01:19:57):
Experiences and encounters passed down through the family.
Yeah, Yep. Yeah, usually starting in the
early to mid teens, the range ofcompletely good and completely

(01:20:19):
terrifying encounters. Yeah, so before we.
Extremely great, you know, and then.
Quasi versus the red eyes in theDesert of Mojave incident.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Brooklyn Bridge incident,
UFO incident, Yeah. Yeah.

(01:20:41):
So if there's any I, I realized looking into, and this is what's
so fascinating about sociology or anthropology as a whole is
looking at it very objective words like everything coming
into me is completely new. I was like, wow, this is that,
this is that, this is that. And and I had to step back and
put myself into a mirror and be like, same shit.

(01:21:03):
I believe 100% if there's anything that I would be like
slightly suspicious of, maybe a little bit, you know,
superstitious of same shit. Yeah.
They, they are. They are.
And this is not any kind of grand revelation, but I do feel
like it's important to remember as we look here and be like, oh,
it's one of these, you know, tricks to gods.

(01:21:24):
They're a dime a dozen. They got there.
And she's like, OK, but stop andlook at yourself, you know?
What are the parallels between? Maybe that's just a big deal for
me. Maybe other folks are like, I
was already enlightened and fuckyou, you know, whatever, that's
cool, Congrats. But for me, it really forced me

(01:21:45):
to like kind of like step back and look at everything that like
I'm really into, I'm really interested and I'm fascinated
by, I'm willing to dabble with believing.
And frankly, I had to shut the fuck up and sit down.
And I think that's a good way toapproach this.
And it's just kind of be like, hey, maybe there is something I

(01:22:05):
don't know what the fuck it is. I don't know if all the powers
are exaggerated. I don't know, you know, like
let's knock it down to a reasonable level and see where
we can find a find an agreement.But maybe there is some shit in
the rainforest where it does target small kids.
Could be. And it's crazy as fuck there,
there was a long standing beliefin this area that there were

(01:22:29):
small tribes, or specifically one small tribe of incredibly
hairy humans who in every other way look normal, but they're
fucking like completely covered in hair.
And that they came out of certain confined spaces here,
caves and you know, shit like that.

(01:22:50):
And they were cannibals and theywould steal kids and they would
fuck around with things. And they would, sometimes some
of them would be curious of the other people in the area and
they would go explore shit at night and then they would
disappear. Yeah.
And that might exist. That that might pop up in the
news tomorrow. The new tribe of all hairy

(01:23:10):
people. You know, like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
I wouldn't be shocked. Very short.
Yeah, very short. All.
All I know about this is that you made me like this thing at
the beginning and then you made me hate him at the end.
This is Romero for is anime number one for me now.
I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say enemy number one,

(01:23:33):
that's giving him too much power.
It's giving palm Berry too much power.
Maybe 10. The enemies of the post office
is number 1. So I would say that's the the
biggest thing. But truthfully, looking into it,
you could compare a lot of it like you're saying to UFOs and
abductions and, and similar styles of things.

(01:23:54):
And the, the weird thing to me is that it's passed down to it's
not, it's not weird. It's just like an interesting
thing to me is that it gets passed down to family.
Yeah, hereditary through family.And that if which also pisses me
off too about that because it's like, why do I have to pay for
your sins, dad? Why do I have to pay for you
trying to protect everything? But I mean, I guess in, in the

(01:24:16):
idea of it, it's like, no, this is what our family believes.
This is what we do. We, we protect our family around
here by offering up what's a little liquor, you know, what's
a little liquor? What's a little cigarette, you
know? I just.
Remembering your culture, you'reremembering your culture.
I also want to say though, what would really suck is if the
first day, you know, on the first gift that you give

(01:24:37):
somebody like your significant other or something like that,
you don't want to like give themthis grandiose, like beautiful
gift because then you got to start living.
You got to, you got to keep going up.
So imagine that the person on their first day like gives them
like 30 bottles of liquor and like whole packs of tobacco and
stuff like that. And then it's like, all right,

(01:24:57):
you got to keep, you got to keep1 and up and that.
And they're just like, I can't like, I don't know if money to
keep this relationship going, Sorry.
Palm Barrow like. There is literally.
It's funny you say that. This is going to I don't know
what I'm going to do with all the screenshotted and downloaded
PDFs of translated articles I'd made or God or whatever.

(01:25:19):
There's one specific one. It's like Da da Da Da Man has
been doing, you know, giving gifts to Bombero for decades.
He spends his Christmas bonus every year when buying 400
cartoons of cigarettes and he does this gladly.

(01:25:40):
He broke down his whole process and this is like a recent, this
is from like 20. I can't stress enough how much
like the, the belief and the thereality for the folks that that
are there like this is not a, this is not old.
You know, one of the cases that I almost covered, it ended in
January of 2025, like a few months ago.

(01:26:04):
This is very current, but no people do it.
You know, people 100% the same way that they do.
You know, I don't know, fucking communion and shit, right?
You know, they, they go, they goto church on Sundays or a tithe.
Yeah. It's a tithe.
You know, yeah. And it's reading into it and I'm
just like, can't knock it Now. I'm just kind of this, this is

(01:26:27):
wild. And some of these cases are
nuts. Granted, El Pombero has been
blamed for everything from molestation, car accidents to,
you know, the batteries missing from a remote, like everything
on both ends of the spectrum. Because he he's kind of, he's
fit that role of just like, instead of saying God damn it,

(01:26:49):
you know, you blame him. And it's everything and nothing
that's a role. You know, you know, Palm Barrow
is sitting up there like listening to all these
accusations is like, whoa, whoa,whoa.
I did not take the batteries outof your remote control
molestation. I did.
I did. But I did that.

(01:27:10):
Terrifying. He mistook his partner for El
Pom Baro and killed him. This is dark humor.
If you're not, if you don't carefor dark humor, please leave
now. Like, seriously, You're just
going to be like, this sucks andI hate you and that wasn't funny

(01:27:31):
and da, da, da, da. That's OK.
I get it. We're not all in agreement.
Yeah, Joe. I'm excited for this.
Game I really I really 100% should not be laughing at this,
but when I came across this article Joey look, I was already
going to hell. I'm ready I'm already going to

(01:27:52):
hell like OK, it's a little bit warmer You know what great.
I don't like the cold anyways showing up.
There we go. All right, I'm ready to read
this to you and then I'm going to show you the image from the
top of the article. It's getting warm in here.

(01:28:18):
Terrifying. He mistook his partner for El
Pompero and killed him on September 28th, 2024 when Pablo
Long name I can't pronounce. A security guard working at a
mechanic shop. He was high as hell on a
cocktail on all sorts of different drugs and he saw

(01:28:41):
Gaston Alimerano, his Co worker,walk in without hesitation.
Pablo panicked and began stabbing Gaston repeatedly, 20
times in total. Thanks to Pablo's impaired motor

(01:29:03):
functions behind the wheel, Gaston was able to manage it
away from the assault long enough to call 911 and report
everything that happened before mortally succumbing to his
injuries. Yes, the victim dies and I'm
laughing about it. Just hold on.
It gets worse. Pablo fled and 10 days later was

(01:29:26):
captured by the police charged with the murder of Gaston.
And when police notified Pablo why he'd been arrested, he said,
well, I was high and mistook himfor home barrel.
Oh my God. But it was me.

(01:29:47):
It's so much. Damn.
It's a striking resemblance. I had to read through like 30 of

(01:30:10):
these articles and it's the sameside by side they use for
everyone. That's awesome.
That's so fucking they let him off right, right, They let him
off right, and they're just like, no, definitely.
Oh, now his ass is locked up. He's probably on death for some
shit. Oh yeah, he's probably on death.
Probably killed Marty. Folks not watching this.

(01:30:33):
He really fucking shit. But Gaston was a little person.
Pablo freaked out and stabbed a little person thinking they
were. Well, even with the hat, it kind
of makes him look like he has that style of hair.
Not because of the hat, just theway that.

(01:30:53):
Arguably the same expression, the same expression, different
noses and eyes, but same different.
Just why did they do this to him?
They knew what they all knew what they were doing.
This is. Bro.
And even the picture behind it is like ghosted in.

(01:31:13):
This is the offensive humor portion of the show.
This is fucked up. I know this is fucked up.
I've had two weeks to not laugh at this but like.
But you laughed every single day.
It's fine. I mean, it's great.
This is. This is fucked up.
This is very but you should not laugh at a victim around shit.
But like, I'm giving credit. Look, I'm saying this on air

(01:31:37):
now. It's recorded forever.
If I die, even violently, horribly, if it's like, Oh my
God, how could that happen to anybody?
And it's under such comedic circumstances.
Please laugh at my death. If you don't.
You never loved me. Yeah, yeah, I will sing it now.
Fucking. You better laugh.

(01:31:59):
Look, I I don't want, but I can't dish.
And that's something I want. If I died, it's like you
wouldn't believe it. Somebody named Gil with 2L's
stabbed him to death. That's fucking hilarious.
You should laugh. Yeah, he was wearing.
Oh my God, he was real. He.
Was real. I thought he was fake, me and
Kate. I thought that was him playing

(01:32:20):
the same role the whole time. Yeah, now I realize Gil was just
smoking a cigarette during thosebrains.
Yeah, Gil was just like, hey, I got to go outside, you fools.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. Thank you.
So fucked up. But again, characters like this
play a role in every society. It's some fascinating shit.

(01:32:42):
It's fucking funny. All that said, Joey, I have a
little list here of my favorite,my favorite black cat heads, if
you will. Yeah, and they include Jaden,
Jackie Ave. Lucas, Bobby D Thomas, Little
Mystery Yellow Bear Tim Ian Rochelle Dwayne AKA Snatch Twat

(01:33:06):
Marissa, Max Morgan Dragon Ball from the Star Blood Chronicles
podcast, Miller's Monsters, who's one of the only English
speaking people on the entire Internet.
Would any sort of accurate breakdown of El Pumbaro Extra
special shout out to you motherfucker.

(01:33:28):
Multiple years ago you gave a brief little TikTok just a few
seconds long and the only shit you covered turned out to be the
accurate shit. Shout outs to you, bud.
Hell yeah. Alyssa Bree Gavin, infamous
leader of the chicken cult. James Michael extreme Christian

(01:33:48):
from the Paranorm Girl podcast and most fashionable, the
fashionablest of our sexiest producer tier fashion able.
Yeah. Thank you all.

(01:34:10):
For listening. Thank you all so much for
listening. But now I would like to know
there. There's so much more this is
this is trying to break down andquickly explain an entire
culture's intricate beliefs in like an hour and a half.
At the end of the day, it's a lot.
But this is incredibly well known across, like, the Spanish

(01:34:35):
speaking world, and it's just spread.
If you go and type in pombrero on TikTok, oh, my God, there are
so many results. Like, they are just like,
everywhere. 99% get mistranslated into the
firefighter. But yeah, and there's like only

(01:34:59):
a handful that are actually in English.
Like, there's seriously only like two or three.
I was like, I was this what? Yeah.
This is how did I not know? You know, Yeah.
It's a truth. Hell yeah.
Thank you all so much for listening.
And next week we don't get some good.

(01:35:20):
Stuff. We love you all.
Bye. Bye.
It's talking to people in the chat.
A lot of people are entranced bythis story, wanting to know,

(01:35:40):
like, thoughts on his origin, Like, was he, you know, start
like this? Could interpretive dance, Yeah,
start like this Or did it like, you're on mute?
Did it start like this or did itlike turn into this, you know?
Yeah, OK, so that's another rabbit hole.

(01:36:02):
Everything about El Pombero is a100% complete contradiction.
I, I, I cannot emphasize that enough.
That's why this episode is, is being put out so fucking late.
I'm, I'm obsessed with being like, I don't want to regret
these facts that I'm saying here, you know, a year from now

(01:36:23):
when you know whatever I I want to deliver honest to God, like
truth, even if it drives me insane.
And part of that is the, the epistemology.
Part of that is the the whole fucking just the labels, the
names that are applied to him get kind of insane.
So it's complicated to put it very simply.

(01:36:52):
And to this day, God damn it, there's anthropological
arguments that are made that he's only like 250 years old.
OK. There's cultural arguments that
say he's thousands of years old.Well, I guess it just depends.

(01:37:15):
On who's studying him, you know,like he's the the study.
Exactly who's studying? Who's studying them?
And then you kind of get into this confusion of like, well, if
a lot of people knew how to speak Spanish, how many of those
folks knew how to write Spanish and could document shit for
themselves? Yeah.
And that becomes the whole, thatbecomes a whole, you know,

(01:37:38):
rabbit hole and stuff there. But there's a very unique in the
Gorani there. There's a very unique, I guess
you could just say creation myththe same way that, you know,
Christians have like their creation myth.
There's a very, yeah, a very unique creation myth behind

(01:37:59):
that. And there's some deviations of
how El Pombero Haman to be. He was either the the son of two
gods that fucked basically. There was the original God and

(01:38:20):
there was another one that was made later. 2 original gods, one
was made later, the third one was made later, one of the
originals fuck the other one album Barrow popped out and then
there's there's like 60 but whenyou look into the authors.
Creationists. Creation ideas.

(01:38:42):
Yeah, like the origin stories, right.
But when you look into the authors and I imagine folks that
are from there, they they might be completely offended by this
and that. Forgive me for my ignorance, but
I was left precarious by any cultural bias that those authors

(01:39:05):
might have had, at least the ones that I found.
Because I was like, bro, you're a fucking missionary who's
coming in and like, part of the raping and pillaging and
murdering and enslaving group ofpeople.
Why the fuck should I trust yourinterpretation of their culture?

(01:39:27):
Like, I have a really hard time with that, you know?
Yeah. So kind of makes me think it's
complicated. Yeah, It makes me think of the
idea that a lot of the, the, what would I say, a lot of the
ideals in like the descriptors that they use for El Palmbero
can also be added to the colonizing people and the

(01:39:50):
Jesuits. And the people went down there
like the same things that El Palmbero was doing, that the
Jesuits were doing, you know, so.
Yeah, it. And I'm glad that you brought
that up. So Pombero.
One of the theories that I heardabout why Pombero was recent was
because I believe it was the Portuguese, which would make

(01:40:13):
sense because they, you know, neighbor up to Brazil.
The Portuguese used to hire indigenous folks, native folks
to in a solitary way basically be like human scarecrows, more
or less. They would go out in the fields
and they would have these gourdsattached to sticks that were

(01:40:36):
filled with rice and they were in charge of running up and
scaring away like birds and stuff from the cornfields.
So that was one theory. And and they were called like,
I, I forget the word. The word was very close to
pombero. It was like Pombero Ton or
something like that was like very, very, very phonetically

(01:40:58):
close. It was like fire firemen, you
know. Yeah, yeah.
Is today with like Google Translate.
So there was that origin and they were like, and that's why
it's only a couple, 100 years old.
Another one was that when warring was happening around
that time, because colonists or colonists did a good job of
causing infighting in order to just kind of weaken everybody

(01:41:21):
and take over, that there were spies that were set up.
And those spas were constantly like, it was a whole positioning
thing. They were crouched over.
They would like watch from the shadows move through the nights
and that you would have to leavelike treats and food out for
them to bribe them. And like all this, all this shit

(01:41:44):
that kind of fits into porn barrel.
And then that's how we started. But then you have native folks
who are actually there, you know, actually involved actually
saying that, actually saying like they are looking dead in
the camera saying El Pombero took my fucking son.

(01:42:06):
They are saying this dead eyed within 24 hours of their own
child going. They believe this, you know,
then you have them and it's not some random new shit that's
based in European mixture group.So it's.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
I have no fucking clue. It's it's very everything with

(01:42:31):
El Pombaro thoroughly defines his status as a trickster, even
even if he's 100% fake. And there's nothing that could
be like, oh, that's what El Pombaro was 200 years from now
or something. Even if that's true, the idea

(01:42:53):
still plays the perfect role of a trickster, where it's just
like, yeah, but I influence society and progress.
It's just everything about it isin a literary sense.
It fits the fucking mold so goddamn well.
So goddamn well. It's just the Loki.
Looking. Fascinating.
Paraguay, the Loki. You know the trickster God
basically getting bribed but doing whatever if it.

(01:43:16):
If it wasn't for Marvel or whatever franchise does does
Loki now, there would be more people that know about like El
Pombero than Loki because like that's how big of a reach, which
is fascinating because we are asEnglish speakers in in in North
America. Like we are so close to the

(01:43:36):
Spanish speaking world. There's not shit in in our
language about him, but he's like everywhere.
Go to TikTok, 10s of thousands of videos like literally and
there's like 3 that are in English.
One of them by the way is Miller's Monsters who did a ran

(01:43:57):
a video like years ago and I commented on it.
I was like holy shit I didn't expect to see you here.
And he's like, oh, I'm glad I could help.
Just imagine if El Pombero was in Marvel.
You know, Captain America's like, no, we no, that's not OK.
You shouldn't be drinking. It's funny you mentioned Captain
America, Joey, but we'll get to that a little bit later.

(01:44:20):
Love it. All right, I hope that confused
some of your thoughts. What a pair of force.
I hope that confused some of your thoughts.
To be the cat around everything,buddy.
I read every goddamn thing I could find and translate and
your answer's as good as mine. There are no concrete answers.

(01:44:44):
It's like it's somebody perception of what it is.
Somebody needs to stop me from investigating tricksters in the
future 'cause I'll go insane. I I like spreadsheets.
I need shit to be orderly to thescript.

All Episodes

127 | Kidnapped by a Cryptid? El Pombero

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

The Breakfast Club

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}127 | Kidnapped by a Cryptid? El Pombero