Pishtaco Knife
The knife of the Pishtaco is the blade of the fat-stealer of the Andes, a figure who is said to creep upon sleeping travelers or the unwary on lonely roads and cut the fat from their bodies to sell it in secret, for candles, soap or, in the modern telling, to be shipped abroad for machines. The weapon is rarely seen; it is more feared than described, and a whistle or a shadow at the roadside is enough to raise the terror of the nakaq, as the same figure is called in Quechua. The belief is rooted in the real dread of the stranger and of the outsider, and historians note that it attached itself