Folklore / history Ypacaraí, Central Department, Paraguay (lead); São Sepé, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; Três Lagoas, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil
Luisón and Lobisomem: Three Latin American Werewolf Stories That Resurfaced in 2016
A Paraguayan werewolf film, a 2009 Brazilian attack report that drew a Japanese TV crew, and a 1990s town scare Fantástico revisited, all in 2016.
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Three werewolf stories from Paraguay and Brazil came back into the news in 2016. One is a film. One is a 2009 attack report. One is a 1990s town scare that a television special revived for Halloween. Each deserves to be separated from the others, because the evidence differs sharply.
A film for a Paraguayan lake town: El Luisón de Tacuaral
The Luisón is the Paraguayan werewolf. In October 2015, Asunción's Diario Hoy reported the first trailer for El Luison de Tacuaral, a horror film then still shooting, "based on the story of the same name" by Gabriel Santos Rodríguez Ovelar. The filmmakers called it a tribute to the town of Ypacaraí. The cast included Miguel Ángel Romero, known as the clown "Paletita," and Jessica Servín.
A blog repost of a report from the outlet EPA the same month quotes director Jorge Pettengil: the project started "as a short," then grew, and was shot entirely in Ypacaraí with support from local government and a cooperative. The blog says the film recreates "the popular myth of the Luisón of Ypakarai," and Pettengil cites the Paraguayan TV series Sombras en la Noche as an influence.
By September 2016, a Diario El País item, excerpted on the Moopio aggregator, announced the finished "mediometraje" (a medium-length film) for a free screening at 7 p.m. at the Centro de Eventos de Ypacaraí, beside the old railway station. We found only that excerpt. The film is fiction, and no source claims a real Luisón sighting.
São Sepé, Brazil: a 2009 report, a 2016 TV inquiry
O Sepeense reported on May 27, 2016 that a Japanese television team was researching the "werewolf of São Sepé" for a series on odd events in Brazil. The case dates to mid-2009, the paper says, when a young woman from the Lili neighborhood filed a police report of an attack by "a creature like a big dog" that "stood on its hind legs and walked like a man." A medical examination, it adds, documented scratches on her face and arms, and police began investigating whether a man in a costume could have been frightening residents at night.
That is a verified injury report and an open question about who or what caused it. The paper gives no outcome of the police inquiry. The 2016 development is only the television interest: the crew contacted local journalists, and the Zero Hora columnist Nílson Souza, who published a text on the case the same day, was asked for details by a colleague.
Três Lagoas, Brazil: a Halloween rerun
On October 31, 2016, Globo's G1 posted "Dia das Bruxas do Fantástico," a list of ten mysterious stories from its Sunday program. Among them: the program traveled to Três Lagoas, in Mato Grosso do Sul, "to investigate a strange animal" that residents said "looked a bit like a pig, a bear and also a man."
The special describes the creature as "lobisomem" in its heading and gives no date for the original report. Portuguese Wikipedia places the scare in 1990 to 1993 and says specialists called it mass hysteria, but we could not confirm that against a primary source, so we do not rely on it. The Halloween special is a rebroadcast: the 2016 event is the retelling, not a new sighting.
What separates the three
El Luisón de Tacuaral is fiction about a local legend. São Sepé is a police-reported attack from 2009, with scratches, that was suspected to be a costumed prank, and its 2016 news is a foreign TV request. Três Lagoas is a past scare retold on television. Only one of these has any physical evidence, and it is an injury, not a creature.
Bottom line
Per local and national Brazilian press, two older "lobisomem" stories were revisited in 2016, one by a Japanese TV crew and one by Globo's Fantástico. In Paraguay, a locally made horror film took the Luisón legend to a screening in Ypacaraí. Of the three, only the São Sepé case involves a police report, and the cause of the scratches was not established in the sources we found.
Attribution / source table
- Claim: Luisón film: first trailer; based on Rodríguez Ovelar's story; cast; tribute to Ypacaraí
Attribution: Diario Hoy, Oct 5, 2015
Link: Diario Hoy - Claim: Director Pettengil: began as a short, local support, 'popular myth of the Luisón of Ypakarai,' Sombras en la Noche
Attribution: Blog repost (Oct 11, 2015) of an EPA report
Link: Paraguay: un milagro americano - Claim: Free screening 7 p.m., Centro de Eventos de Ypacaraí; 'mediometraje' (excerpt only)
Attribution: Diario El País, September 2016, via Moopio aggregator (page undated)
Link: Moopio - Claim: São Sepé: 2009 case, police report, scratches, costume inquiry; Japanese TV 2016; Zero Hora column
Attribution: Jornal O Sepeense, May 27, 2016
Link: O Sepeense - Claim: Três Lagoas: Fantástico Halloween special entry
Attribution: G1 / Globo, Oct 31, 2016
Link: G1
Legal / disclaimer footer
Entertainment and cryptid-news commentary only. Nothing here confirms a werewolf or any other creature. Claims belong to the sources named, and fiction is identified as fiction.
Map: Monstrum Athenaeum; public-domain Natural Earth boundaries. Approximate town-centre markers only.
