Country file · Central America & the Caribbean
Haunted places in Costa Rica
What are the most haunted places in Costa Rica? The best-known are Sanatorio Durán and La Llorona.
Costa Rica’s most famous haunted place is the Sanatorio Durán, the tuberculosis sanatorium built from 1915 high on the slopes of Irazú volcano and abandoned in the 1970s. Its ruined pavilions, wrapped in mountain cloud, are said to be walked by a nun who once nursed the sick; today the site is national heritage, open to visitors by day.
- 2 hauntings
- 5 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Costa Rica
Sanatorio Durán
A tuberculosis sanatorium on the slopes of Irazú volcano, abandoned in the 1970s, where visitors look for the ghost of a nun who nursed the sick. Regional legend
La Llorona
The weeping woman who searches rivers and canals at night for the children she lost – the best-known ghost legend of Mexico and the Hispanic world. FolkloreThe ghost lore of Costa Rica
The country’s wider ghost lore is a rich body of rural legends, many of them told across Central America: La Llorona, who in one Costa Rican version is the daughter of a Huetar chief whose child was thrown from a waterfall; La Segua, a beautiful woman who becomes a horse-headed horror before men who misbehave; the Cadejos, a spectral dog of the night roads; and a headless priest of colonial legend. These stories are part of Costa Rica’s folk heritage, retold in schools, books and television.
The old colonial capital, Cartago, ruined by earthquakes, and the volcanic highlands around it are the heart of this lore.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Cartago
The former colonial capital, repeatedly shaken by earthquakes, keeps the roofless ruins of the Iglesia de Santiago Apóstol, a setting for local legends.
- Irazú volcano highlands
The misty road up the volcano passes the Sanatorio Durán, Costa Rica’s best-known ghost site.
- Rural Central Valley
The coffee country around San José and Heredia is where legends of La Segua and the Cadejos were traditionally told.
Timeline
- 1918The sanatorium opens Sanatorio Durán
Led by Dr Carlos Durán, Costa Rican doctors opened the sanatorium to treat tuberculosis patients in the mountain air of Irazú.
- 1925The nuns arrive Sanatorio Durán
The Sisters of Charity of Saint Anne began nursing patients, establishing the presence that inspires the sanatorium’s best-known ghost.
- Early 1970sClosure Sanatorio Durán
With tuberculosis now treatable by drugs, the sanatorium closed after more than half a century; the buildings fell into ruin.
- 2010El Sanatorio on film Sanatorio Durán
Miguel Gómez’s mockumentary horror film, based on the legend of the ghostly nun, was released.
- 2014Declared national heritage Sanatorio Durán
President Luis Guillermo Solís declared the complex part of the country’s historic and architectural heritage.
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