Peuchen

Also Known As: also Piuchén, Pihuichén, Pihuychén, Piguchén, Piwüchen; from Mapudungun *piwicheñ*, glossed “to dry people”
Region/Culture: South America
Mythos: Mapuche Mythology, Chilote Mythology, Chilean Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It drains blood from livestock and occasionally from people, paralysing its victims with its stare and announcing itself with a shrill whistle.
Role in Mythos: It is the standard explanation in rural Chile for animals that waste away without visible injury, and in Mapuche cosmology it belongs to the class of harmful spirits known as wekufe.
Relation to Humans: People rarely see it and almost never survive a close encounter with it, so its presence is read from evidence rather than sighting: red stains on a tree trunk, thinning flocks, a whistle in the dark. Where it settles, the remedy is either to leave, to put running water between the household and the creature, or to call a machi who knows the ceremony for driving it off.

Something has been at the trunk of the old tree again. A red streak has dried on the bark, sticky where the sun has not reached it, and in the paddock below the sheep are lighter than they were a week ago, standing in the wet grass with the dull patience of animals losing something they cannot name. No wound shows on them. No dog has been through the fence. In the Aconcagua valley, in Ñuble, in the forests south of the Biobío and out across the water in Chiloé, people have known for centuries what that means, and they say the name quietly.

The Peuchen is Chile’s own blood-drinker, and it has never held still long enough for anyone to agree on its shape. In the Mapuche telling it is a flying snake, a culebra that hunts the forest on wings it does not grow until it reaches maturity. It lives an extraordinarily long time, and in extreme old age it changes again, shrinking into a bird about the size of a rooster or a young turkey, no less hungry for the change. Along the way it has been described as a fish, a frog, a quadruped, a bat, and something disturbingly close to a person. Its body is said to be shaggy with grass and scrub and twisted hooked growths, as though the forest had begun to grow over it while it slept.

Then there is the version that reads like a field note. In 1782 the Jesuit abbé Juan Ignacio Molina, writing his compendium of Chilean natural and civil history, set the piguchén down among the animals rather than the marvels: a winged quadruped, a kind of great bat, the size and figure of a domestic rabbit, covered in fine cinnamon-coloured fur. He gave it a sharpened snout, large round shining eyes, ears almost invisible, membranous wings, short legs like a lizard’s, and a tail round at the base and then broad like a fish’s. It hisses like a snake and flies like a partridge. It lives in the hollows of trees and comes out only at night. And, Molina insisted, it harms nobody. It eats insects.

Nobody else was willing to let it off so lightly. Forty years later the English sailor Richard Longeville Vowell rode through the Aconcagua valley near Quillota and collected the huasos’ account, later put into Spanish by José Toribio Medina. Their Pehuechén matched Molina’s animal almost point for point, the same rabbit’s body, the same chestnut fur, the same lizard feet and scaly fish tail, except that its wings were leather like a common bat’s but much thicker, its eyes were frightful, and it came out of the ravines at night to destroy flocks by drinking them dry. Vowell noticed something that any folklorist would recognise. Every man there could imitate the creature’s whistle, that peculiar funereal shriek, and describe its slow heavy flight. Not one of them claimed to have seen it up close. But it was hard to find anyone whose father or brother or at least whose compadre had not killed one, always in the very act of taking a lamb.

Rodolfo Lenz, compiling his etymological dictionary of Chilean words drawn from indigenous languages in the first decade of the twentieth century, recorded the working belief in two lines from Los Ángeles: the piuchén lives in the trees, draws other animals to it from a distance, and sucks their blood. From Ñuble he noted a variant, peuchén, a hairy mythical bird. Both entries carry the same quiet assumption, that this is not a story about a monster but a description of a local hazard.

What it does is consistent even where its body is not. It fastens to a trunk through the heat of the day and hunts at night. Anyone unlucky enough to look at it may be fixed in place by its stare while it feeds, and the encounter is usually fatal. It gives off a substance so irritating that carried on the air or in water it raises a rash on the skin like mange. Its strength is out of all proportion to its size: it is credited with bringing down full-grown trees, and in Chiloé with lifting waves large enough to wreck the boats that come too near. When a household grows thin for no reason, and the Colo Colo and the Basilisco Chilote have been ruled out, the Peuchen is what is left.

It does have limits, and they are practical ones. It prefers sheep and goats to people, and attacks on humans are treated as exceptional rather than routine. It will not touch white animals. A river or an estuary between a family and the creature is enough to stop it, which is why the standard advice is simply to move. If moving is impossible, the household calls a machi who knows the ceremony to drive it out of the district. And if the tree it sleeps in can be found, the creature can be killed outright: wrap the trunk in stout cloth so it cannot escape, then set the tree alight.

The same word does duty for the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, which lives in Chile and does exactly what the Peuchen is accused of, on a smaller scale and without the whistling. That is not an explanation so much as a starting point. Something real was landing on the livestock. The rest of it, the wings that arrive with age, the paralysing eye, the waves off Chiloé, is what happens when a small nocturnal thief is asked to account for everything that goes wrong in the dark.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Peuchen?

The Peuchen is a blood-drinking creature from Mapuche and Chilote folklore, known across much of Chile and into southern Argentina. It is most often described as a winged serpent that lives in the forests, though accounts also give it the form of a large bat, a bird, a fish, a frog or a quadruped. Its name comes from the Mapudungun *piwicheñ*, usually glossed as “to dry people.”

What does the Peuchen do to its victims?

It drinks their blood. The Peuchen is blamed for livestock that waste away without any visible wound, particularly sheep and goats, and it is said to paralyse a victim with its stare before feeding. It leaves red traces on the tree it hides in, and its presence is announced by a shrill whistle.

How do you get rid of a Peuchen?

The most common remedies are to move away from the area or to put a river or estuary between the household and the creature, since it cannot cross running water. Where leaving is not possible, a machi is called to perform the ceremony that drives it from the district. It can also be killed by wrapping the tree it sleeps in with strong cloth so it cannot escape, then burning the tree.

Is the Peuchen based on a real animal?

The same Mapudungun word is used for the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, which lives in Chile and feeds on the blood of livestock, so the legend is widely thought to have grown out of encounters with it. The eighteenth-century writer Juan Ignacio Molina described the piguchén as a real animal the size of a rabbit with membranous wings and cinnamon fur, and said it harmed nothing but insects. Later accounts made it far more dangerous.

Is the Peuchen the same as the Chupacabra?

They are not the same creature, but they are frequently compared, and some writers have suggested a connection. Both are blamed for draining the blood of livestock, though the Peuchen is documented in Chile from the 1700s while the Chupacabra emerged in Puerto Rico in the 1990s.