Los Pelacaras, The Face Peelers

Good evening. I am the leader of my community, the Ikitu people, and I am calling because we need help. My wife made me tea before I called, she always does that when I am stressed. We need the world to know what is happening to us. My village is called San Antonio, in the Alto Nanay district. To get here from Iquitos City takes ten hours by boat up the river. We are surrounded by jungle. We have lived here for generations, and we know these forests. We know the animals, the sounds at night, the spirits our grandparents spoke of. But what has been attacking us since July 11th of this year, I have never seen anything like it. Nobody has. The old ones in our village, they call these things Los Pelacaras. The Face Peelers. It is a legend we grew up with, stories to scare children. Creatures that come in the night and take your face, your fat, your organs. I always thought it was just stories. You understand what I'm saying? Just old stories to keep children from wandering into the jungle after dark. But now I have seen them with my own eyes, and I am telling you, these things are real.

It started on July 11th. That first night, people heard strange sounds coming from the trees at the edge of the village. A humming, like nothing we had heard before. Not an animal. Not the wind. Some of the men went to look, and they came running back saying they saw lights moving through the canopy. Red lights, floating. We thought maybe it was poachers, or illegal miners. We have problems with them here, the gold in the riverbeds attracts criminals. But then people started seeing the figures. read about illegal mining cartels operating in that region, maybe connected - Brett' They were tall. Very tall. Over two meters, some of them. They wore dark hoods, black armor covering their entire bodies. And they floated. I am not making this up. They floated about one meter off the ground. Their shoes were round, like platforms, and they had a red light on their heels. Their heads were long, elongated, and they wore masks that covered their faces completely. But you could see their eyes through the masks. Yellowish. Glowing, almost. The young people in the village said they looked like the Green Goblin from Spider-Man. The armored one. I do not know about Spider-Man, but I know what I saw.

After a few nights of sightings, I decided I would go see for myself. I am the leader, you understand. I cannot ask my people to face something I will not face myself. So I took my shotgun, the one I use for hunting, and I went out near where people had been seeing these things. It was maybe eleven o'clock at night. Dark. The jungle is very dark here, no light pollution for hundreds of kilometers. I had been waiting maybe an hour when I heard that humming sound everyone had described. Low, mechanical. Not natural. And then I saw it. Coming through the trees. Silver colored, floating. I could not make out the face clearly because of the mask, just the shape of the head, very long, and those eyes. We met almost face to face. Maybe ten meters between us. My hands were shaking, but I raised my shotgun and I fired.[ Direct hit, center of the chest. Nothing happened. It did not fall. It did not even flinch. I shot again.[ Same thing. The thing just rose up higher into the air and disappeared into the darkness above the canopy. You understand what I'm saying? I shot it twice with a hunting shotgun and it just floated away. That is when I knew we were dealing with something beyond my understanding.