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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

The Burning of Zozobra!

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the months leading up to Labor Day, a dedicated team of craftspeople and volunteers gather in the Santa Fe Plaza Mall to build…a puppet. Not just an ordinary puppet, but a gigantic, 50-foot tall marionette with moving arms, eyes, and legs. It looks kind of like a big, somewhat-scary, somewhat-cuddly ghost. This ghost will get stuffed with shredded paper, and then around 50,000 people get together to…well, set him on fire. This…is the Burning of Zozobra. This episode was brought to you in partnership with Visit Santa Fe. Learn more about the Burning of Zozobra and start planning your trip now - the event takes place every year the Friday before Labor Day: https://burnzozobra.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0

In the months leading up to Labor Day, people are hard at work at the Santa Fe Plaza Mall.

0:07.1

Inside of this strip mall, the people of Santa Fe, New Mexico are building a gigantic, 50-foot-tall marionette out of wood and chicken wire.

0:18.7

And now, it's stuffing time.

0:22.1

Hundreds of people show up ready to stuff a gigantic puppet full of shredded paper.

0:28.7

We invite the community to have a pizza party to come and stuff in.

0:33.4

And I will tell you, it was kind of funny this year because we were going to open the doors at 9 o'clock.

0:38.7

And when we did, there was a line in it all the way you could even imagine it.

0:42.9

And his 50-foot body was stuffed.

0:47.8

Every chicken wire hole was stuffed by 1 p.m.

0:52.5

This is not your standard puppet.

0:56.5

This puppet's name is Zezobra.

1:00.4

Technically, Zazobra is a ghost.

1:03.9

This tall, thin ghost, wearing a robe,

1:08.5

which makes it look like he is floating just above the ground.

1:12.5

He has big green eyes, big flappy ears, and long dangling limbs.

1:18.8

So his arms move, his mouth moves, his head goes back sides to side, his eyes move.

1:24.7

And so it's really a lot of specialty work, shaping the face, shaping a nose or eyebrows or, you know, the ears,

1:32.1

or making the monster as beautiful as we possibly can.

1:37.4

So what are the people of Santa Fe, New Mexico?

1:41.5

Planning on doing, exactly, with this giant, horrifying, beautiful monster.

1:49.4

Well, they're going to light him on fire.

1:52.7

We'll have people come up to us and say, you can't burn that one. It's too beautiful. That one's too

...

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