From folklore to cinema.

Floating balls of light or will-o'-the-wisp as they are more generally known, is something that has always been talked about, in Latin America they are related to treasures buried during the Revolution and the Civil War in the 19th century where these lights can be seen in the Here in Venezuela, places where gold or money was buried are called “burials”, especially in towns where there were no banks and people feared looting by armed groups.

In South America a distinction is made if the lights are white, they indicate a buried treasure, but if they are red, they are a trap of Satan himself and you have to get away, knife in hand, biting the sheath and praying.

This American tradition seems to come directly from Spain where the myth is basically the same with a few variations, for example, in South America the lights are most likely to be seen on August 24, Saint Bartholomew's Day, and in Venezuela they are seen both on Holy Thursday and Sunday. Good Friday or May 3, day of the Holy Cross, this depending on the population, this last date seems to come directly from Europe since it is the one that is handled in Spain and other places.

An example of this is in the movie Dracula horror novel written in 1897 by Abraham Stoker Irish, but non-Catholic recounts as Jonathan Harker - Keanu Reeves one of the characters being taken overnight in a carriage to the Count's castle, the The driver who was actually Dracula transfigured makes stops in places where the lights of the will-o'-the-wisp can be seen to collect the hidden treasures. He doesn't specifically mention the date, but the chapters are written as letters and this is a letter written by him to his fiancée Winona which is dated May 5th and tells of how he talked to the Count about the events that happened the night before when he arrived at the castle. which could have been two days before, that is, May 3, the day of the Holy Cross. In all these places, the fictional Transylvania of an Irish writer, Spain, and countries with Hispanic influences such as Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, these dates supposedly facilitate the appearance of the lights because they are the days when the Angels do not watch over Lucifer. and this and other evil entities can do their thing, something like the night of the purge but on the spiritual plane.

But if this folklore is too common in Spanish-speaking countries in other European countries, especially Germany, England and, as a consequence, the United States in America, it was so common that it passed to the level of everyday life, known in Germanic countries as Irrlicht or misleading light. , the Austrian romantic composer Franz Schubert dedicated a song to him from his work "Winter Journey" called precisely Irrlicht (Wisp-the-wisp).

In both German and English literature, especially in poetry, will-o'-the-wisps are used as metaphors for things that are attractive from a distance but that ultimately cause misadventures in Tolkien's universe, which is a soup of European folklore and mythologies, Gollum warns hobbits Sam and Frodo do not follow the lights of the bog of the dead during their trip to Mordor, since doing so would end up becoming one of those lights.

This folklore of the fatuous games is so common that even without having heard of them you already knew them, if you saw Brave the Disney movie in the Harry Potter books where it is called hinkypunk and a Pokémon called gastly are basically will-o'-the-wisps.

In fact, the most recognizable icon of Halloween, the pumpkin is a European representation of a tricky spirit that lures the unwary with its light into its traps; myth, fiction, reality, you have the last word… The END…

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