SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 115
heard about it. I was drinking beer with a friend, who happened to be hitting on an ex-park
ranger who loved the place as one loves one’s own blood. Of course, first the ghost stories
came up, those about all the people drowned at the pond and waterfall in front of the cave.
“You see a child and his mother at the top of the walkway at sunset, perhaps, standing
quietly hand in hand, staring at you from the other side of the river. And then you realize,
by when the last visitor has left, that you haven’t seen them go with the rest. You check every
path, but they’re just not there. That has happened to me more than once; it’s the place’s
“Amazed Ones” as we call them here,” he said, finishing his sandwich.
I’ve always loved the name given to ghosts in Misiones. It suggests they are surprised at
being dead.
Then he’d gone on with a technical explanation of how there is a whirlwind in the water
caused by a submerged cavity on the opposite side of the cave, and how swimmers were pulled
into it by the current and couldn’t come out.
The phantasmagoric call of an urutaú bird, at that time of night, made me shudder and
chuckle at the same time. I was also trying to hook up with my friend, but I’d lost the battle
that night.
“But the best story in this place is that of Professor Rizzo and her box of snails,” he
asserted. I braced myself for another truculent story.
“In 1965, Antonia Rizzo led the first archaeological expedition into the Indian Grotto.
Locals had been taking pottery pieces and arrowheads for years already. Everyone thought
there’d be nothing left, especially because a logging company who’d owned the place had
ordered a man to live with his family for a month inside the cavern and to just empty its
contents into the river, which he did. Just imagine!
“Then in comes Rizzo’s expedition and the rumours about her box soon start spreading.
You know, she found the remains of three people in the cave, two men and one woman. They
ended up in La Plata Museum, but were never part of any display. That was cool enough in
itself. But the rumours started saying that after Rizzo left, and even while she was here, she
carried around a cardboard box full of native snails, those white large ones, those with a pink
rim on their mouths, you’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
I had. Megalobulimus santipauli, the “white snail” for everyone. No amount of
convincing would ever make me be able to stare at them considering their large shiny mass
of a slug body carrying a white protuberance on top, elegant in comparison. These snails are
part of everyone’s lives in Misiones, and at some point if you live here, you’ve had either a
dreamcatcher or a wind chime made of the hollowed ghostly shells, turning and turning in
the wind, hypnotically.
“Well, rumour says she kept it with her at all times, never letting the box be away from
her sight. Manuel, the guy at the restaurant? He says he saw it with her when she returned
in 2004, after the Carbon data thing. That was only a year ago! So… the story goes that the
box contains white snail shells, but not of the kind found in Misiones. It holds (some say
three, some say five) shells only found in the province of Córdoba, so distant from here that
it’s mind blowing to think exchanges between native peoples go so far back in time. That’s
the reason she keeps the box with her: it’s such a valuable rarity, she didn’t want to hand it
to the La Plata Museum, where, as we all know, none of her findings were ever displayed to
the public.”
My friend argued the story was ridiculous.
“But why keep it with her all the time? Even when she went to the toilet?” she doubted,
perhaps imagining one of the small lavatories in bus stations, and a cardboard box balancing
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