Piuchén

The Piuchén (also Piguchén or Pihuichén) is a vampiric shape-shifter of Mapuche and Chilote folklore, known across much of Chile and in southern Argentina. The name comes from Mapudungun and is glossed as “to dry people”. It is usually described as a flying serpent or a lizard with bat wings that can also take the form of a bird, frog or a human, and whose whistling or hissing is said to stun its prey.

Folk accounts say it lives in forests near lakes, drains blood from sheep and goats (rarely people), and leaves red droppings on trees. In Chiloé it is said to haunt Lake Huillinco, raise waves that sink boats and fell large trees. Protective measures include waving a white flag, keeping white goats, blowing an ox horn, or getting the help of a machi (Mapuche healer). Burning the tree in which it hides is the traditional way to kill it.

Two early written accounts exist. The English naval officer Richard Longeville Vowell, in Chile in the 1820s, recorded locals’ claims that it sucked blood from a distance and thought it was a bat. The Jesuit naturalist Juan Ignacio Molina described the Piguchén as a winged quadruped. The common vampire bat is also called piuchén in Spanish, and poet Floridor Pérez has compared the creature to the chupacabra.

As a Mapuche forest spirit its tradition belongs to living Indigenous culture.

A winged serpent or lizard, sometimes covered in grass and horn-like protrusions; in old age a bird or frog-like creature with small wings.

Forests near lakes and rivers in central and southern Chile and Chiloé; it hides in trees by night and hot days.

The Piuchén is part of Mapuche and Chilote mythology and is discussed in Chilean folklore books and as a forerunner of the chupacabra.