The Abchanchu is often described in English-language books and websites as a Bolivian vampire that disguises itself as a helpless old traveler and drains the blood of anyone kind enough to help. That description is a simplified version of the Anchanchu, one of the most feared beings in the beliefs of the Aymara people of the Bolivian altiplano. Anthropologists working in Aymara communities describe a figure that is more complicated than a vampire: a shape-shifting owner of caves, gold and the underground world, blamed for madness, wasting illness and sudden death.[1][2]
| Other names | Anchanchu (the usual Aymara and Bolivian Spanish form); also spelled anchancho. “Abchanchu” appears mainly in English vampire encyclopedias |
|---|---|
| Type | Malevolent spirit of Aymara tradition, often labeled a vampire in English sources |
| Region | The Andean altiplano (high plateau) of Bolivia, with related beliefs in southern Peru |
| Said to live in | Caves, rock crevices, ravines, riverbeds and abandoned houses |
| Most dangerous season | August |
| Status | A living belief in some Aymara communities, not a reported animal |
Abchanchu or Anchanchu?
In Bolivian Spanish and in ethnographic writing the name is almost always anchanchu or anchancho.[1][3][4] The spelling “abchanchu” is found mainly in English-language reference books on vampires, such as Jonathan Maberry’s Vampire Universe (2006) and Theresa Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, which describe it as a shapeshifter that preys on travelers who stop to help it.[5][6] The form most likely began as a misreading or misprint of “anchanchu” and spread as books copied one another. This entry uses “Abchanchu” in the title because that is how most English readers will search for it, but everything below draws on the Aymara tradition of the Anchanchu.
The Anchanchu in Aymara belief
The fullest account in English-accessible scholarship comes from Spanish anthropologist Gerardo Fernández Juárez, who has spent decades studying ritual and healing among the Aymara of the altiplano. He describes the anchanchu as one of the especially harmful beings of the plateau, most active in August and able to take many forms. Its victims are often driven mad.[1][2]
Descriptions collected in the region include:[2][7]
- Its disguises. An old, helpless traveler, sometimes hunchbacked or pot-bellied; a wealthy Aymara woman with gold teeth; a seductive foreign woman; or a monstrous animal or half-human creature. The variety matters, because the danger lies in not knowing which stranger it might be.
- Its home. The loneliest places on the altiplano: caves and crevices, ravines, riverbeds, underground spaces and uninhabited houses.[4] It is said to roam mountain paths and the edges of pastures at night, leaving whirlwinds in its wake.
- What it does. It approaches people walking alone. Victims are said to sicken, waste away or lose their minds, and English-language sources describe it drinking blood from the lips or the heart.[5][6][7]
- Protection. People traveling alone pray or talk aloud to themselves, and some put a small stone under the tongue.[7]
- Treatment. A victim needs a ritual specialist (a yatiri), who prepares a ch’iyara misa, or “black table,” an offering made to satisfy the anchanchu and release the sufferer.[7]
Gold, mines and the Ekeko
In Aymara thought the anchanchu belongs to the world “below and inside,” the underground realm that also holds the mineral wealth of the Andes. Fernández Juárez describes it as the owner of oro vivo, “living gold,” and his work pairs it with the Iqiqu, or Ekeko, the cheerful little god of abundance celebrated at the Alasitas festival in La Paz.[1][3] In some tellings the two are half-brothers: the Ekeko brings prosperity, while the anchanchu guards hidden wealth and punishes those who come too close to it.[7]
This link to the underground also connects the anchanchu to Andean mining. Spanish missionaries tended to identify such beings with the Christian devil, and the anchanchu is often compared to the Tío, the horned owner of the mines honored by Bolivian miners.[7]
How the legend became a “vampire”
When the Anchanchu entered English-language vampire encyclopedias, most of this context was dropped. What remained was the most familiar-sounding detail, a harmless-looking old traveler who kills the people who help him, along with the label “vampire.” Popular websites then added features no ethnographic source mentions, such as red eyes, fangs and pale skin. The result reads like a European vampire relocated to the Andes.
That does not make the English tradition worthless. It shows how a living local belief can be turned into a “monster entry” as it moves between languages and books. For the original belief, the Aymara sources and the anthropologists who work with those communities are the place to look.
Why August?
The Anchanchu’s link to August is no accident. Across the Andes, August is when the earth is believed to be “open” and hungry. It is the end of the dry, cold season, just before planting, and the month when families make offerings to the Pachamama (Mother Earth) and to the mountain spirits. The same openness that makes the earth receptive to offerings is thought to let harmful beings out. Fernández Juárez groups the anchanchu with other “August terrors,” the dangers that become active when the boundary between the human world and the world below is thin.[1][2]
One of those dangers is the kharisiri, the subject of his 2006 article. The kharisiri is a human outsider, often imagined as a priest, a stranger or a well-off townsman, who puts travelers to sleep and secretly removes their body fat, leaving them to waste away. It is the altiplano version of the Peruvian pishtaco. The anchanchu and the kharisiri are different beings: one is a spirit of the underground, the other a human predator. But they share a season, a preference for lone travelers, and a symptom: unexplained wasting. That overlap is probably part of why English-language writers, reading secondhand summaries, ended up describing the Anchanchu as a blood-drinking vampire.[1]
Protection and ritual in practice
What stands out in the ethnographic accounts is how practical the responses are. People avoid walking alone at night in August, especially past caves, ravines or abandoned houses. Those who have to travel talk or pray aloud, and some keep a pebble under the tongue. When someone falls ill in a way that matches an anchanchu attack (sudden fright, loss of appetite, confusion, or wasting), the family calls a yatiri, who diagnoses the cause by reading coca leaves and then prepares the offering. The “black table” given to the anchanchu is the reverse of the “sweet” or “white” tables offered to the Pachamama and other benevolent beings. It is meant to pay off a dangerous creditor rather than honor a protector.[1][7]
Ways the belief has been explained
Anthropologists generally treat the anchanchu as part of a working system of belief rather than as a creature to be proven or disproven. Some interpretations that have been suggested:
- A way of naming illness. Like many folk illnesses, attacks by the anchanchu offer an explanation for sudden madness, wasting or death, together with a ritual way to respond.
- A warning about isolation. The altiplano is high, cold and sparsely populated, and nights on its paths are genuinely dangerous. A being that targets people walking alone reinforces caution.
- Anxiety about wealth and outsiders. Several of the anchanchu’s disguises, including the woman with gold teeth and the foreign woman, are figures of wealth or strangeness, and its association with gold ties it to the risks and temptations of mining.
- Layers of history. Pre-Hispanic beliefs about the powers of the underground were reshaped by Christian ideas of the devil during the colonial period, which helps explain why the anchanchu can look like both a mountain spirit and a demon.[8]
For a comparison with another shape-shifting predator from a very different tradition, see the Aswang of the Philippines.
References
- Gerardo Fernández Juárez, “Kharisiris de agosto en el altiplano aymara de Bolivia,” Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena 38, no. 1 (2006): 51–62. PDF via Redalyc.
- Gerardo Fernández Juárez, “Terrores de agosto: la fascinación del Anchanchu en el Altiplano aymara de Bolivia,” in G. Fernández Juárez and J. M. Pedrosa (eds.), Antropologías del miedo (Calumbur, 2008), 119–144.
- Gerardo Fernández Juárez, “Iqiqu y anchanchu: enanos, demonios y metales en el altiplano aymara,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 84, no. 1 (1998): 147–166.
- “Glosario,” Revista Ciencia y Cultura (Universidad Católica Boliviana), no. 15–16 (August 2005), s.v. “anchanchu.” PDF.
- Jonathan Maberry, Vampire Universe: The Dark World of Supernatural Beings That Haunt Us, Hunt Us and Hunger for Us (Citadel Press, 2006), 2.
- Theresa Bane, Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology (McFarland, 2020), s.v. “Abchanchu.”
- “Anchanchu,” Wikipedia, which summarizes Fernández Juárez (2008) and Bolivian press accounts, including Urgente.bo (31 October 2024) and Muy Waso (6 October 2022).
- Dimitri Karadimas, “Insects and demons: The origins of a diabolical figure in the Bolivian Andes,” CISAP (University of Cagliari), 2019. Article page.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from ethnographic and reference sources. An earlier version described the Abchanchu with blood-red eyes, fangs and a pale complexion, and spoke of survivors’ accounts. None of these details appears in the sources and they have been removed. The illustration above is an artistic impression.