Patasola: Hideous One-Legged Female Vampire Who Kills Driven By Hatred In Colombian Folklore

A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com - In Colombian folklore, the Patasola (‘La Patasola’) is a female monster living on the summits of the plain. She has only one leg but can move with astonishing speed.

People claim to have seen her jumping on one leg through saws, ravines, and roads, screaming mournfully. It is the soul in pain of the unfaithful woman who roams mountains, valleys, and plains, who dishonored her children and failed to respect her husband.

She is a dangerous, vicious vampire and an enemy of men who only hates and spreads terror. This female vampire is feared by settlers, hunters, miners, farmers, walkers, and loggers. Among them, she torments and lures unfaithful husbands. She has supernatural powers and can change her appearance to an animal, like a cow or a large black dog) by crying for help.

Disguised as a beautiful and seductive young woman, the Patasola attracts an unsuspecting man or a walker and lures him away from his companions to the deepest places of the jungle. She reveals her authentic, hideous appearance and vicious vampire-like lust for human flesh and blood.

The Patasola is not only harassed by old guilt and possessed by hatred, but she also has an ugly appearance. She has wild and fuzzy eyes, a disproportionate mouth showing feline teeth, and hair disheveled and entangled like the jungle lianas that fall on her face to hide her ugliness.

Horrible woman who likes to suck blood. Image credit: Rafael Yockteng - Public Domain

In other descriptions, she possesses bulging eyes, catlike fangs, one breast, a hooked nose like Baba Yaga in Slavic mythology, and big lips.

But her most distinguishing feature is her one leg.

Roaming the forests and wild, uninhabited, and uncultivated areas, she looks for her next victim to attack and devour the flesh or suck his blood.

She hates the blue skies, water, and sunrise as a vampire. Her kingdom belongs to the twilights and the nights. Sometimes, Patasola forgets her bad feelings and begins to sing or waits for the moon’s appearance in the sky.

Tradition has it that the Patasola, or ‘one foot’, was once a beautiful married woman with children. Her husband, however, had some serious reasons to be jealous, so he decided to find out whether his wife was disloyal to him. He, unfortunately, discovered that she indeed disrespected their wedding vows. He was so furious and jealous that he struck her lover with an axe and unintentionally mutilated her by chopping off one of her legs as if it were a tree branch.

Then, he took their three children, set the house on fire, and fled the town. The Patasola’s ghostly apparition was claimed to be seen in the woods; she was jumping on her one leg, groaning and moaning. Wandering through lonely farms, forests, and jungles since that terrible night, the Patasola has only one goal: revenge.

Another version of the story says that the Patasola was a mother who killed her son. For this crime, she was banished to the woods as punishment.

Others described her as a sexually alluring woman who repeatedly seduced or manipulated others; besides, she was also cruel to both men and women, so they mutilated her with an axe. She died of her injuries and became an evil ghost haunting the forests and mountain ranges.

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

Updated on Nov 21, 2023

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