There was a lady called Maricota de Todos os Santos, very slanderous, she lived in the window of her house watching the lives of others. She even had calluses on her elbows from leaning out the window, watching who went and who came.

 

On a Good Friday, Dona Maricota watched a  procession  and was surprised not to know what it was about.

 

So he decided to look out the window to see who was participating in that procession.

 

As they got closer, she saw that they wore clothes that covered their entire bodies, that they all came with candles in their hands and that the first in line was holding a huge black cross.

 

In addition to the strange costumes, she heard a slow sound of bass drum, very funereal, a rattle, groans, piercing screams and the chants:

 

“Pray again, pray again, pray one more prayer; Pray again, pray again for the souls of those 

who died without confession. Pray again, pray again, pray novena and trezena;

Pray again, pray again for the souls of those that died without serving time”.

 

A little startled by the strangeness of the procession, she continued watching from the window, until one of the participants left where he was and walked towards her with a lit candle. He held out the candle to Dona Maricota and said: “Woman, keep your tongue, the night belongs to the dead. Save this candle for me, I'll come back for it later."

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When the procession returned, the participant asked for the candle back and said to Dona Maricota: “Tonight is for the dead. Tomorrow we will be together in another place”.

 

Upon entering her room, instead of the candle she had kept, there was a piece of a bone, from a dead man's leg! Dona Maricota got the biggest fright, felt sick and, even though she was helped by the priest and a doctor, she died soon after.