Selección Terror: Ralph Barby

About this issue

This 1984 Spanish pulp horror tale "Escogidas para el Ceremonial" (Chosen for the Ceremony) by Ralph Barby follows three teenage girls—Folie, Justine, and Perle—in Paris. After attending a magician's show at a dilapidated theater, Justine is called on stage by the hypnotist Tnan, who publicly reveals deeply personal traumas from her mind: her mother's death in a car accident and her father's suicide in the Seine. Though Justine loses conscious memory of the event, she becomes mysteriously compelled that night to leave her aunt and uncle's house at 11:30 PM. Walking through dangerous nighttime Paris, she is pursued and attacked by a gang of young criminals intent on rape. As they overpower her against a doorway, a curved saber suddenly cuts through the air, wounding her attackers and saving her from assault. The narrative emphasizes urban danger, psychological manipulation through hypnosis, and supernatural intervention.