Today!

[Affinity]

[Gonzo]

"Journey to Ixtlan", page 152 and following, commentary about Genaro capturing his ally. Within the commentary he states phantoms can be identified because they offer you food...too much to quote. If interested, download the complete set of books from scribd.com and search for "phantoms".

[Gonzo]

Well, I was being lazy. Here is the excerpt.

I thought that my home must be towards the east, so I began to walk in that direction. It was still early. The encounter with the ally had not taken too long. Very soon I found a trail and then I saw a bunch of men and women coming towards me. They were Indians. I thought they were Mazatec Indians. They surrounded me and asked me where I was going.

"I'm going home to Ixtlan," I said to them.
"Are you lost?" someone asked.
"I am," I said.
"Why?"
"Because Ixtlan is not that way. Ixtlan is in the opposite direction. We ourselves are going there," someone else said."Join us!" they all said. "We have food!""

Don Genaro stopped talking and looked at me as if he were waiting for me to ask a question.
"Well, what happened?" I asked. "Did you join them?"

"No, I didn't," he said. "Because they were not real. I knew it right away, the minute they
came to me. There was something in their voices, in their friendliness that gave them away,
especially when they asked me to join them. So I ran away. They called me and begged me to
come back. Their pleas became haunting, but I kept on running away from them."

"Who were they?" I asked.

"People," don Genaro replied cuttingly. "Except that they were not real."

"They were like apparitions," don Juan explained. "Like phantoms."

"After walking for a while," don Genaro went on, "I became more confident. I knew that
Ixtlan was in the direction I was going. And then I saw two men coming down the trail towards
me. They also seemed to be Mazatec Indians. They had a donkey loaded with firewood. They
went by me and mumbled, "Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon!" I said and kept on walking. They did not pay any attention to me and went
their way. I slowed down my gait and casually turned around to look at them. They were walking
away unconcerned with me. They seemed to be real. I ran after them and yelled, "Wait, wait!"
"They held their donkey and stood on either side of the animal, as if they were protecting the
load.

"I am lost in these mountains," I said to them. "Which way is Ixtlan?"

They pointed in the direction they were going.

"You're very far," one of them said. "It is on the other side of those mountains. It'll take you
four or five days to get there." Then they turned around and kept on walking. I felt that those were real Indians and I begged them to let me join them. "We walked together for a while and then one of them got his bundle of food and offered me some. I froze on the spot. There was something terribly strange in the way he offered me his food. My body felt frightened, so I jumped back and began to run away. They both said that I would die in the mountains if I did not go with them and tried to coax me to join them. Their pleas were also very haunting, but I ran away from them with all my might. "I kept on walking. I knew then that I was on the right way to Ixtlan and that those phantoms were trying to lure me out of my way. "I encountered eight of them; they must have known that my determination was unshakable. They stood by the road and looked at me with pleading eyes. Most of them did not say a word; the women among them, however, were more daring and pleaded with me. Some of them even displayed food and other goods that they were supposed to be selling, like innocent merchants by the side of the road. I did not stop nor did I look at them.