The Vallecas Poltergeist (Expediente Vallecas)

Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro was 17. She died at Hospital Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, in 1991. Most sources give the date as 14 July. Others say August.

Her family traced it back to a Ouija board. Estefanía had used one at school with classmates while the teacher was out of the room. The teacher came back and lifted the board, and the glass broke. In the family's story, dark smoke came out and entered her nose. Seizures, hallucinations and violence followed, then a coma and her death.

In the family flat at Calle Luis Marín 8, in Puente de Vallecas, the strange events began. They heard Estefanía's voice calling to them from rooms. A dark silhouette moved down the corridor. Doors opened and closed on their own. Appliances switched on with no remote and no timer.

Glass broke for no reason. A crucifix was torn from the wall, three claw-like scratches beside it. The children felt their wrists struck as they slept. The bathroom went suddenly cold.

The early hours of 27 November 1992. The family called the 091 emergency line. A National Police patrol answered. Then Chief Inspector José Pedro Negri arrived, the supervisor on shift.

The officers set down what they saw. A perfectly closed cabinet door opened suddenly. A loud noise came from the terrace. A thick brown stain appeared on a small doily, and Negri identified it as drool. The crucifix was found damaged. The officers looked for draughts and other rational causes. They found none. The home, the report said, was in "a state of mystery and strangeness". The family said the activity went on. On 1 November 1993, a photograph of Estefanía began to burn by itself. No trace of an accelerant was found.

The report records what officers observed. It does not confirm a ghost. The case was later filed away for "lack of coherence". On TVE's Código Uno, on 4 October 1993, Negri said he had inspected the cabinet and seen nothing strange. There could be "20,000 explanations", he said. He called himself a sceptic.

In 2018 her brothers spoke to El Mundo. "It was an epileptic fit," Ricardo said. "We didn't see my sister levitate." He said he had thrown a stone onto the terrace from the next balcony, at his mother's request, to impress the police. Photo albums inside the cabinet often fell against its door and pushed it open.

The stain was probably food from the youngest sibling. Maxi said a parapsychologist told them what to say on television. Medical readings point to temporal lobe epilepsy, and their mother had absence epilepsy. Marianela still describes seeing her sister levitate.

Journalist Manuel Carballal examined psychological reports in Causa de denuncia: Poltergeist. David Cuevas wrote "Desmontando a Verónica" for El Mundo. In 2017, Paco Plaza turned it, loosely, into the film Verónica, which won the Goya for Best Sound. In 2025, the HBO Max series Expediente Vallecas included testimony that some phenomena were pranks and harassment by neighbours. Still, the Vallecas poltergeist keeps its place in Spanish memory, a family's grief written into a police file.