Chonchon

What it is

The chonchon is a being from Mapuche religion, carried also into Chilean folk story and the tales of southern Argentina. It appears as a human head, feathered and furnished with talons, whose ears have grown so large that they serve as wings. After dark, and above all on nights with no moon, the head leaves the sleeping body it belongs to and goes flying. Two kinds of story explain how. A woman may bind herself to a sorcerer, a brujo, and her head then takes wing on its own; or a kalku, a Mapuche wizard, changes into the shape on purpose. People without sorcerer's sight cannot see the creature, though all can hear its cry, tue tue tue.

Where it comes from

The name is Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, which Spanish borrows as chonchón. In Chile the creature carries a second name, Tue-Tué, shaped like the sound of its call. Its first home is Mapuche religion, the belief of the Mapuche people, and the stories travelled from there into folk narrative across Chile and down into the south of Argentina. Written study of the tale exists as well: a Spanish-language academic article published in 2000 by Constantino Contreras, looking at thematic unity and textual variety in a social topic across three oral tales, is cited among the works on the creature.

How it is done

The tales give two routes to flight. In the first, a woman strikes a bargain with a brujo; after that, once darkness comes, her head lifts away from her body and grows wings, and she flies off making sounds like a bird. Anecdotes tell of husbands who wake to find their wives' heads gone. The flying head is said to make for the reni, a hidden spot beneath the ground, where she joins her coven to work witchcraft or to share its pleasures. In the second route a kalku changes shape by choice, and only the strongest among them are credited with the knowledge; a cream rubbed on the throat makes the head come free.

Tools and materials

Two things carry the story along. One is the cream: a magical ointment for the throat, treated in the tales as what allows a kalku's head to leave its body. The other is the creature's own outfit: feathers, talons and ears swollen to wing size, built for flying on moonless nights. Its cry, tue tue tue, works as the one signal open to everyone, since ears and feathers belong to a body only sorcerers can see.

What it is for

Within the belief, the shape serves harmful work. A kalku who becomes a chonchon is said to keep every power he held as a sorcerer and to gain more besides, among them the ability to feed on the blood of people who are ill or asleep. The night flights therefore read as raids by a wizard on his victims. The cry belongs to everyone else: hearing tue tue tue overhead is held to foretell that someone dear to the listener will soon die, which makes the creature at once a sorcerer's instrument and a warning sounded over a household.

Who does it

The sorcerer at the centre of the belief is the kalku, also written calcu, a name the tales treat as the same figure as an evil machi, or witch. A kalku is said to hold a pact with a wekufe, an evil spirit, and to keep servants who carry out his orders; the chonchon is counted among these, whether as a bird of harmful kind or as the wizard's own manipulated head. Not every sorcerer may take the flying shape: the stories grant it only to the strongest. Beside the kalku stand the women whose heads fly by agreement with a brujo.

Peoples and places

The fullest telling belongs to the Mapuche, whose religion supplies the cast: the kalku, the wekufe spirit, the reni meeting place and the pact with a brujo. From that source the creature moved into wider folk narrative, and it stands as a known figure of Chilean story as well as of the tales of the far south of Argentina. Chilean usage adds a second name, Tue-Tué. Mapuche and Chilean accounts describe one and the same visitor, so the two strands of tradition tell a single story rather than rival ones.

What people believe

The stories run on a Mapuche map of power. Behind the flying head stands the wekufe, an evil spirit with which a kalku contracts; through that pact the wizard commands servants, the chonchon among them. Sight is gated by initiation: in the air the creature can be seen only by other sorcerers and by people looking for such power themselves. Everyone else receives sound, the tue tue tue that carries a warning of death. Under the ground lies the reni, a hidden place where heads and their owners meet as a coven, for witchcraft or for the pleasures of the night.

Compare and confuse

Stories of a head that travels unaccompanied gather far beyond the southern cone. Alongside the chonchon, the same family of beings includes the Flying Head of Haudenosaunee and Wyandot legend, the Krasue of Southeast Asia, the Manananggal of the Philippines, the Penanggalan of Malay myth, the Soucouyant of the Caribbean and the Tlahuelpuchi of Mexico, several of them described as vampiric. Japan contributes the rokurokubi, a yōkai whose neck stretches rather than parts from the body.

Questions people ask about Chonchon

Good reading and sources

• Chonchon on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data