The father without head, also known as either the priest or the friar without head, is a character belonging to a colonial legend of Latin-American folklore, who is described as the ghost of a priest without his head.

The legend tells that the ghost of a catholic priest (or even a friar or a monk) appears out of nothing; he wears the usual clothes of his order, but the particularity is that he does not have the head. For this reason, he causes terror and panic among people. Some versions of the legend of the father without head agree that the character was a catholic priest whose behavior was not the proper one for a person with his investiture, or even that he was a priest who was decapitated unjustly by his enemies. Thereafter his ghost appears and walks at night, either through the streets or in hermitages, churches and other religious buildings, looking desolately his head and frightening the sinners or as a mute witness claiming to justice for his death. One also tells that in some instances he appears inside of religious buildings where he celebrates Mass, or even inside of some other buildings when people tell a priest died in strange circumstances. Eventually, another characteristic of this ghost is to appear in places where treasures are kept guarded jealously by ghosts until someone comes who is brave enough to claim to them.

The legend of the father without head is common in many Latin-American countries and there are different versions in Mexico, Centro America, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. Its origin dates back to the times of colonial evangelization when the Church was the punishment executor. As revenge to this oppression, the popular belief goes on at the priest, who is punished forever for some awful sin.

Legends about ghosts without head who walk at night can be found in all cultures. The legend of the Abbey of Saint Dionysus is told in France; he is a saint of the Catholic Church who was martyred approximately in the 240 A.D. together with Saint Eleuterus and Saint Rusticus, because they preached the Gospel in the Gallic Empire. Saint Dionysus was decapitated on the Montmartre hill (whose name would come from Mons-Martyrum, Mount of the Martyrdom some etymologists, while others assert that it comes from Mons-Martis, Mount of Mars, because there was a temple dedicated to the Roman god of war). The legend tells that, once his head had fallen to the ground, his decapitated body stood up, picked up the head and started walk for a league, until stopping where presently there is the basilica where he finally died.

Montmartre Church in Paris

Prague, in the Czech Republic, is famous for its stories of ghosts. There is one of them about various ghosts without head who appear at night at the Charles Bridge. They are the ghosts of ten knights who were executed in the Middle Age, whose heads were spit on pikes and placed on the bridge. Another legend from Prague is that about a templar monk without head, who was decapitated for having fallen in love with a noblewoman and now appear on Friday at midnight in Liliová Street, riding a white horse and taking his cut head under his arm. Another decapitated ghost of a burgomaster taking his head appears in Martinská Street, in the Old Town, to frighten those who are irresponsible in their work. Meanwhile, a monk without head comes from the garden of the Strahov Monastery taking in the hands

his own head; he was condemned to this torment as he refused to assist a dying man due to his addiction to playing cards.

A ghost talking without head is the leading figure in the mystery of one of the most ancient temples in Madrid (built between the XII and XIII century): the church of Saint Ginés of Arlés. In 1353, some thieves robbed the church and cut the head to an elderly person who was there. Some weeks later, a ghost without head appeared at the door of the temple. This was the soul of the murdered man who returned on the earth to reveal the names of those who murdered him.

An English legend well known to people is that about the decapitated ghost of Anne Boleyn, who goes through the corridors of the London Tower. Sightings of knights without head begun to be frequent after the arrive of Europeans to America; legends about these ghosts are told in very different places, like New York, Texas, Louisiana, Mexico, Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, even coming to be popularized by literature, like the shot story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by the US writer Washington Irving, written in 1820.

In Latin America, the origins of the legend of the father without head seem to be related with the executions of catholic missionaries when the Christianity begun to spread in America, where these priests were seen as a menace, particularly by the landowners and chieftains of that time who wanted to maintain their power or for not being in communion with their feeling of their own Catholic Church; this led to the execution of these priests, often against the people’s will, in the frame of the Spanish Inquisition. This was the case, for instance, of the murder of Friar Antonio de Valdivieso, Dominican priest and defender of the natives’ rights during the Spanish colonization of America, who was stabbed to death in León, Nicaragua, in 1549

In this instance, the legend would rise as a veiled form to remember the priest among the common people. His ghost would stand up in the dark claiming for a justice he did not receive yet. Perhaps, the everlasting presence of the terrifying image of the father without head is the far testimony of aborigines and the remote echo of those voices, expressing the terror experienced with the death of one of their first defenders, considered with no doubt the head of a completely dismembered people. It seems that the aboriginal community, which remained so long headless, disjointed, confused and hopeless, looked terrified at the remembrance of a real guide in all his dimension, creating the myth of the father without head starting from the analogy based on their own vision of reality. The image of the tormented soul of the priest – who gave his life for his followers – illustrates the tragedy of a people loosing a leader who is eventually like a body deprived of his head. In other words, a people with no leader is like a headless body which walks without a definite target along the way of life.