The residents of Masaya in southern Nicaragua donned their most terrifying disguises on Friday night to celebrate the carnival of "Los Agüizotes", held every year since the mid-twentieth century to commemorate San Jeronimo, the city's patron saint.
The festival of myths and legends gathers most of the characters from Nicaragua's most popular ancestral tales of terror on the last Friday of October at midnight.
The participants of the festival grimace and scream to scare the hundreds of national and foreign onlookers who accompany the pilgrimage.
The word Agüizote comes from the Nahuatl language where Agüi stands for water and zote means fright, therefore, agüizotes means fright near water.
The celebration of "Los Agüizotes" has been part of the patron saint's festivities in Masaya since 1976.
