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Haunted places in Argentina
What are the most haunted places in Argentina? The best-known are Recoleta Cemetery and Will-o’-the-Wisp.
Argentina’s most famous ghost story is set among the marble tombs of Buenos Aires’s Recoleta Cemetery, the resting place of Eva Perón: the tale of Rufina Cambacérès, a 19-year-old said to have been buried alive in 1902. Like many such legends, its most dramatic details appear only in later retellings – but her extraordinary tomb, with its statue at the door, has made her one of the best-known figures of the city.
- 2 hauntings
- 4 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Argentina
Recoleta Cemetery
Buenos Aires’s city of marble tombs, resting place of Evita – and of Rufina Cambacérès, the 19-year-old said to have been buried alive in 1902. Regional legend
Will-o’-the-Wisp
Pale flickering lights over marshes and bogs that lure travellers off the path – folklore’s ghost lights, and a puzzle chemists are still trying to solve. FolkloreThe ghost lore of Argentina
Beyond the capital, Argentine folklore is rooted in the countryside: the luz mala, an evil light seen over the countryside at night and said to be a soul in torment or to mark buried treasure or unburied remains; the lobizón, a seventh son who turns into a beast; and many local spirits from the Andean north to Patagonia. Indigenous peoples such as the Mapuche, the Guaraní and the Andean communities of the north-west keep their own living traditions about the dead and the land.
Buenos Aires itself, with its old quarter of San Telmo and its great cemeteries, has a lively tradition of ghost and legend tours.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Recoleta, Buenos Aires
The cemetery’s 4,700 vaults hold Rufina Cambacérès, Evita and the city’s oldest legends, and draw visitors from around the world.
- San Telmo, Buenos Aires
The city’s oldest neighbourhood, with colonial-era houses and tunnels, is the setting of many of its ghost stories.
- Chacarita Cemetery, Buenos Aires
The vast municipal cemetery, born of the yellow fever epidemic of 1871 and opened on its present site in 1886, holds tango legends such as Carlos Gardel.
- The pampas
The grasslands of the interior are where gauchos told of the luz mala, the ghostly light that rises over the plains at night.
Timeline
- November 1822The first public cemetery Recoleta Cemetery
The former convent garden of the Recollect friars opened as the Cementerio del Norte, laid out by Próspero Catelin.
- 31 May 1902Rufina Cambacérès dies at 19 Recoleta Cemetery
The young heiress collapsed on her birthday and was buried the next day. Rumours that she had been buried alive followed soon after.
- 1952 / 1976Eva Perón’s long journey to Recoleta Recoleta Cemetery
Evita died in 1952; after decades in which her embalmed body was hidden abroad and moved repeatedly, she was laid in the Duarte family vault at Recoleta in 1976.
- 17 October 2007The legend examined Recoleta Cemetery
The specialist blog AfterLife reviewed Rufina’s story against the 1902 record, noting that the truth can no longer be known and suggesting grave robbery as one explanation.
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