"Give Me Back My Guts!" by Richard and Judy Dockrey Young

Give Me Back My Guts!

By Richard and Judy Dockrey Young

From Spooky Campfire Stories (2000)

Edited by Amy Kelley

Tagline: Spooky outdoor tales for all ages.

A swindled widow wants to get revenge on the man who left her with nothing.  When he dies she joins the women paid to mourn him and sneaks into his vault.  She uses a knife to open him up and cut out his guts. The widow brings his guts home and begins to cooks them up into a stew called menudo. 

As she is cooking she hears the cows on the ranch calling out “Ah-oooo-ah.”  The atmosphere darkens and a storms rolls in.  Typical scary story noises are heard like the fence gate opening and a knocking at the door.  She suspects the noises are more than just the storm and the cattle now sound like they are saying asadura, which is the Spanish word for guts.  Then a voice outside says, “Give me back my asadura!”

Favorite Line

“The old woman had an awful idea.  Poor people often ate a stew called menudo, made from the cheapest meat in the open-air market—cow intestines.”

When a story begins this way it can only spiral downward!

The Spoiler Bits

In order to give a full analysis I will have to spoil the ending.  I'm not going to tell the entire story so you will still be able to read the story for the full picture. Highlight the section below to read the spoiler:

This is a classic story of something being stolen from the dead and the ghost returns to get it back.  Being told as a child’s story around a campfire, this tale doesn’t get too yucky but we already know this ghost is getting his entrails back so they can be buried with the rest of his body.  When the widow puts the kettle of guts outside, he takes them back and the haunting abruptly stops.

Or, if this is being told around a campfire, someone now jumps up behind the group and shouts, “Give me back my guts!” Then someone like me jumps and drops hot marshmallow on her leg.

Official GOMS Classification

Level One Unexplained Voice. 

Could be a haunting.  Probably is. But there is some doubt from the widow that she is not sure what she is hearing.  Of course, if I cut out a man’s innards and tried to cook them up for dinner I would be sure his ghost would want to haunt me too. Yes, that voice demanding guts is real and certainly meant for me.

Scared Beyond the Book? Yes

I will never steal a dead person's guts and cook them up for dinner so I never expect to find myself in this position.  But don't we all think that now and then that we hear things and we aren't sure if that noise belongs.  Maybe it's more than a noise. It may be connected to something that wants to harm us.

After Thoughts

I wanted to know why the band Menudo called themselves by this name.  I will update this post when I know.  My husband says menudo is a hangover cure.  Maybe that has something to do with the meaning.  I wasn’t into the band Menudo as a kid and if I’d learned then that they are named after a cow tripe soup I may have spent less time looking them over in Tiger Beat trying to decide if they were cute.