El Coyotepe Fortress: the prison of the torture cells and what happened to the guide

On top of a hill facing Masaya, in Nicaragua, stands the El Coyotepe Fortress: a fort that saw a battle in 1912 and later became a prison for political prisoners, with cells for physical and psychological torture. It's one of my first published investigations, from 2019, and one of the strongest I've lived through.

Note: the video is in Spanish. This page is the full story in English.

From fort to prison

The fortress sits on Coyotepe hill, a few kilometers from Masaya, overlooking the city and the lagoons. In October 1912 it was the site of the Battle of Coyotepe Hill, in which U.S. Marines took the hill from the forces of General Benjamín Zeledón.

Over the years it became a prison for political prisoners. Today it can be toured with guides, and what you find below, in the dungeons, are dark, damp cells with no light.

What people tell

According to local accounts, in the days of Somoza's National Guard prisoners were tortured physically and psychologically:

• There was a psychological torture cell: several people were locked in a completely isolated, pitch-dark space, where all they could hear were the screams of the other prisoners.
• In the physical torture cell, a few steps away, you can still see stains on the wall that, they say, are blood from that time. I saw them with my own eyes and they're on camera.
• There's the story of a prisoner whose tongue was ripped out, who spat blood in his torturers' faces, and who was then supposedly thrown from a helicopter into one of the active volcanoes in the area.

And the paranormal legends: a woman in white, moans like people being tortured, shadows, voices, and the claim that the only original iron gate still standing sounds by itself, as if someone were opening and closing it. People also say others went in to perform rituals and play with Ouija boards.

The investigation

Before starting, a clarification I always make: that night the night watchman was upstairs with another person, so the voices you hear in the background of the video are human. I analyzed them all before publishing.

I investigated with a homemade electromagnetic field meter, and I was accompanied by one of the site's caretakers, who acted as a guide.

In the physical torture cell, next to the stains, the meter started reacting right when I began trying to communicate, and then the reading faded until it disappeared.

The psychological torture cell

The guide kept saying he felt someone touching him and throwing small stones at him. To be able to measure that, I gave the meter to him. In the psychological torture cell he went to the back, and I asked that, if something was there, it touch the device in his hand.

It happened when I turned off the light: the meter reached the blue light, the strongest. To rule things out, I turned the light on and asked for it to happen again. And again it reached blue.

In that same cell, twice, about 20 to 25 minutes apart, a sound like breath, like breathing, was recorded. I don't consider it ours: by its frequency it's different from the sound the guide made breathing through his nose, and it seems more embedded in the audio than recorded in the room.

What happened to the guide

At one point, in the dark, I noticed the guide starting to move while he was standing still. I asked if he was okay and he didn't answer. I turned on the light: he looked absent, lost in thought, and took a while to reply. Later, just as he said he felt something touch his head, the camera had a flicker, a glitch in the image. I don't give that much weight, but in an investigation you can't rule anything out.

The most disturbing part came later. The air turned very cold and the guide changed completely, even his gaze: he had a lost look, as if he weren't himself. It wasn't something energetic: it was a flesh-and-blood person transforming in front of me.

I don't know what happened to him. He may have lost consciousness, he may have some condition I don't know about, or it may have been acted; I tried to rule that out by listening to what he said to the other guide. But something made me think it was real: when I finished recording, he ran out of the place, and when I followed him I saw him climbing the spiral staircase almost on his knees, terrified.

What I take with me

El Coyotepe was one of the best places I've ever investigated: a lot of history, a lot of suffering, and, with no electricity and far from the city, almost no electromagnetic contamination, which is ideal for a serious investigation. I take with me a meter that hit the maximum twice when I asked, a breathing sound I couldn't explain, and what happened to the guide, which I still can't define today.

The video (in Spanish)

If you visit

El Coyotepe Fortress is on the outskirts of Masaya and can be toured with guides. It's a place of great pain: be respectful.

🔦 Did you see the flashlight on the home page? One of the hidden recordings is from this night: look for the word "Possession".