El Silbón

El Silbón, the Whistler, is a tall apparition of the plains of Venezuela and Colombia, known by the shrill whistle it gives as it walks the savanna at night.

Ana Cecilia Valdez, writing on the peasant culture of Barinas in Venezuela's Boletín Antropológico in 1992, described the Silbón as a ghost twice a man's height in a broad hat. It always travels on foot across the savanna, giving high, piercing whistles that make the hair stand on end, and it steps into the path of those it meets.

Wikipedia places the legend in the llanero folklore of Venezuela, shared with the border regions of Colombia, and says it emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. It says the story serves to warn people morally and to keep order in the countryside.

In Colombia the tale appears in Los cuentos de Pascual, a collection of myths and legends of the piedemonte llanero hosted by the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. The storyteller Pascual ends with advice: if you hear whistling in the middle of the night, do not answer, because it will come straight to you. He says there is one defence only, which is to keep your mouth firmly shut.