THE LEGEND OF THE DRY BODY

According to this legend the "Dry Body" would have been in life a man who fought a lot and beat his own mother. Due to the incredible evil inside him, as soon as he died, he became an evil creature that is usually camouflaged in the trunks of the trees, just waiting for some spoiled child to pass by. They say that despite his badness, the Dry Body, which is also known as Unhudo, would have regretted that he mistreated his mother and for that reason he punishes all children who show stubbornness or who respond to their mothers. Perhaps it was from this that the popular saying goes: "Whoever knocks his mother is left with a dry hand." 

There is also another theory about the origin of the Dry Body that says he would have been a very selfish, mean-spirited man who had grown a huge variety of fruits and grains on his farm. But after a dry season in which several people were starving, it is said that the farmer refused to share his stocks that he had stored in a huge quantity with others. The people got revolted and in the middle of the fight the farmer ended up dying of a heart attack. But after his death he would not have rested, his anger only increased and eventually turned into a cruel and vindictive creature. Legend has it that the creature that once was a farmer stands in the woods waiting for anyone who crosses his path and never lets other people approach fruit trees, which he thinks are always from his old orchard. 

The legend of the Dry Body is spread all over Brazil, especially in the states of Amapá, Paraná, Amazonas and Minas Gerais. There are also some Portuguese-speaking countries that also worship this legend.

In the interior of São Paulo the legend has gained a certain "vampire" touch. They say that the corpse is camouflaged in the woods preying upon unsuspecting people, when the unfortunate one passes by his side the entity sucks all their blood making them a Dry Body as well. But if no one goes near the entity for a long time it dies of hunger and looks like a dry tree. For this reason there are many dead trees with human aspects. 

In Ituiutaba, Minas Gerais, there is yet another variation of the legend. People say that the body of a woman who had been buried in the municipal cemetery did not remain in the bottom of the grave for more than a few hours. According to them, the earth expelled the body. It was as if the earth repelled the woman's body. The firefighters would have been called and in the absence of an explanation (and a solution) they would have taken the woman's body to a cave that sits in a mountain range south of the county and would have left her there for her eternal rest. But according to the locals who dare to walk the dirt road that is in the edge of the mountain, it is said that you can hear the cries and shouts of a woman coming from inside the cave. The saw where the cave is located is known as "Serra do Corpo-Seco".

 (Serra do Corpo Seco Ituiutaba)