By Tim Binnall
In a strange story out of Argentina, an infamous goblin has been blamed for the brief disappearance of a toddler who nearly drowned during the mysterious misadventure. According to a local media report, the curious case unfolded on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Berón de Astrada when a three-year-old boy named Sebastian wandered away from home. "He was dressed in his Captain America cape," his mother Mariela Escalante recalled "and told me he was going to go look for the comic book character." Thinking that the youngster was simply going to play in their neighborhood, she grew concerned when, shortly after leaving the residence, the tot was nowhere to be found.
A frantic search soon commenced and, after several hours of looking for Sebastian, his relieved mother received word that the boy had been found under rather strange circumstances. It turned out that the toddler had manage to travel around two miles from his home and somehow wound up in a lagoon. The youngster's story may have had a tragic ending were it not for his faithful dog Morocho, who had been by his side during the entire trip. A woman walking near the lagoon heard the animal making a ruckus and, upon investigating the noise, saw the canine desperately trying to pull the boy from the water by his Captain America cape.
Stunned by the worrisome scene, the witness quickly stepped in to save Sebastian from drowning and alerted the authorities to the situation. While Morocho is understandably being hailed as a hero for preventing the boy from drowning, the youngster's mother as well as many other residents in the town believe that something sinister had led to the boy winding up in the perilous predicament. Noting that her son is unfamiliar with the area and walked nearly two miles, "crossed seven wire fences and two mountains" to get to the lagoon, she declared that "we are sure" that he had been taken to the location by a notorious entity known in local folklore as the pombero.
"We found zigzag tracks in the mountain and this is not natural," she explained, asserting that "this is not the first time that a boy has been lost and found far away in that area." Another media outlet which covered the peculiar event described the pombero as "an anthropomorphic goblin" that resembles a short, ugly man that wears a straw hat and possesses an array of magical powers including the ability to render itself invisible and imitate the sound of birds as well as other animals. While it seems that Sebastian did not specifically say that he had been lured away by the pombero, his mother is certain that this is the case and has enlisted a priest to "give him a new baptismal blessing" following the suspected near-death encounter with the creature.