The Vallecas Case: the police file of Luis Marín Street

What happened

The Vallecas case is the paranormal event with the most institutional documentation in Spain. It is the only National Police file where a chief inspector and several officers testified and drafted an official report describing phenomena of physical alteration, movement of objects, and invisible assaults with no apparent physical cause in a family home.

The protagonists and the location

The setting of the events was apartment 3B at number 8 Luis Marín Street, in the neighborhood of Vallecas, Madrid. The main protagonist was Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro, an eighteen-year-old young woman who passed away in August 1991. The direct witnesses of the subsequent activity were her parents, Máximo Gutiérrez and Concepción Lázaro, along with her younger siblings.

The events

In the spring of 1990, Estefanía conducted a Ouija board session at her high school to contact a friend's deceased boyfriend. A teacher interrupted the session and broke the board. The classmates present stated that a dark smoke came out of the broken glass and entered Estefanía's nose.

From that day on, Estefanía's health deteriorated drastically. She began to suffer violent seizures, muscle rigidity, and visions of dark, hooded figures calling her by name. She was admitted to various hospitals in Madrid, but doctors found no physical or psychiatric anomaly to explain her condition. On August 14, 1991, Estefanía was admitted to the Gregorio Marañón hospital in a coma and passed away that same night from sudden asphyxiation.

Following her death, violent activity took over the family home. The children's toys would turn on by themselves, glasses broke without human intervention, and closet doors opened and closed violently. One night, a photograph of Estefanía hanging in the living room began to burn spontaneously inside the frame; the fire consumed only the young woman's face, leaving the glass and surrounding wood intact.

The investigation

On the night of November 27, 1992, faced with the increasing violence of the attacks, the family fled the home and called the police from a nearby bar. Chief Inspector of the National Police, José Negri, arrived at the scene along with five heavily equipped officers.

The official police report drafted by Negri details that, upon entering the home, the officers witnessed the door of a built-in closet swing open suddenly and violently before them, brushing past their faces. Seconds later, they heard a loud bang on the empty outdoor terrace. Upon inspecting one of the rooms, they observed a wooden crucifix torn from the wall and claw marks in the plaster where it had hung. Inspector Negri defined the situation in the official report as a "phenomenon of mystery and rarity."

The legacy

The official autopsy determined that Estefanía's death was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest of unknown origin. The Vallecas case marked a milestone by taking infestation phenomena out of the purely spiritual realm and introducing them into the State's judicial records. It directly inspired the horror film *Verónica* (2017), directed by Paco Plaza, and remains the benchmark case for Spanish parapsychology.