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Ciudad Perdida

added29 August 20261972

A Tairona city in the Colombian Sierra Nevada, founded around 800 AD — six and a half centuries before Machu Picchu. Abandoned during the Spanish conquest and found again only in 1972, by grave robbers who came upon twelve hundred steps climbing through the jungle. The Kogi peoples living nearby consider themselves its keepers and say they never lost it.

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11.03800, -73.92519

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DebunkedWhite

De Loys's Ape

In 1920 the Swiss geologist François de Loys, prospecting for oil on the Venezuela–Colombia border, shot what he described as a large tailless ape that came at his party by the Tarra river. The single photograph — the animal propped on a crate with a stick — was published in 1929 by George Montandon as Ameranthropoides loysi, the missing link of American man; Montandon used it in a racist theory of the separate origin of races. The picture shows an ordinary white-fronted spider monkey, common in those forests: the crate gives a true height of about a metre, and the tail is hidden behind the body. De Loys's companion later said the whole thing had been a joke at Montandon's expense.

240 km away

Ghost sightingGreen

El Silbón, the Whistler

The Llanos (Los Llanos) is a vast expanse of tropical grassland plains and savanna situated within the Orinoco River basin across western Venezuela and eastern Colombia, specifically centered on the municipality of Guanarito in the state of Portuguesa, alongside Barinas and Cojedes. "El Silbón" (The Whistler) is a premier figure of northern South American folklore. Depicted as a roaming spectral patricide bearing a sack of human bones across his shoulder while emitting a chilling tonal whistle, the entity represents a foundational cultural archetype of regional Llanero cattle-ranching lore.

726 km away

CryptidYellow

Moca, Where the Chupacabra Began

In March 1995 farmers in this Puerto Rican town began finding sheep and goats dead, drained of blood, with two neat punctures in the neck. Within months the count ran into hundreds across the island. Witnesses described a creature the height of a man, moving in bounds, with spines along its back and huge black eyes. A Puerto Rican journalist coined the name — goat-sucker — and in thirty years the chupacabra has spread from Mexico to Chile.

1098 km away

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