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Corpo-seco

Also called: Corpo Seco, Dry Body
Folklore and mythUndeadA curse

The Corpo-seco, or 'dry body', is a Brazilian revenant defined by rejection. Refused by heaven, hell and the soil, the desiccated corpse of a great sinner cannot remain buried and roams after dark. The legend works as moral instruction, above all about the treatment of parents. It is Brazil's best-known native walking corpse.12

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Origin
Brazilian
Brazil
What causes it
A curse
The dead man's sin was so great that neither God nor the devil will take the soul, and the earth itself throws the body out.
How you become one
Someone who committed an unforgivable sin, in most tellings mistreating his own parents.
field notes

What the sources say

1

Looks like a dried-out corpse, nothing but skin and bone12

2

Reported from Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and the north-east12

3

Told as a warning against abusing parents and disrespecting priests12

4

A version from Cambira in Paraná, dating from the 1950s, makes him a man who broke a vow to Our Lady of Aparecida12

5

There he flags down lorry drivers for a lift and vanishes at the site of his fatal accident12

Sources

  1. Lenda do Corpo-seco - Toda Matéria
  2. Revenant - Wikipedia

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

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