The Thirteen Souls That Refuse to Leave São Paulo’s Skyline

Posted by Juniper Ravenwood | December 3, 2025

🔥 A Normal Friday Morning That Became Hell on Earth
February 1, 1974 started like any other workday in downtown São Paulo. By 8:45 a.m., an overloaded air-conditioner on the 12th floor sparked, and within minutes the entire Joelma Building became a vertical inferno. No sprinklers. No fire stops. Toxic smoke and 900 °C heat turned escape routes into death traps.

🚪 The Elevator That Became a Tomb
The image that still haunts Brazil: firefighters prying open a stalled elevator car to discover thirteen bodies melted and fused together—limbs intertwined, faces indistinguishable. They were buried side-by-side in São Pedro Cemetery and baptised in legend as “As Treze Almas.”

🕯️ A Plot Cursed Long Before the Skyscraper
The land itself seems to demand thirteens. In the 1500s, thirteen Jesuits reportedly angered indigenous tribes. In the 1860s, a professor murdered his family of twelve in a well on the property; the firefighter who retrieved the bodies died the next day—making thirteen again. Then came 1974.

🎥 What Security Guards Hear After Midnight
In the rebuilt tower (now Edifício Praça da Bandeira), elevators still open on empty floors. Guards report burning-plastic smells, sudden 20-degree temperature plunges, and overlapping screams in Portuguese: “Socorro!” “Mãe!” “Deixa-nos sair!” Security footage has captured shadowy clusters that dissolve into static.

🕯️ Are They Trapped… or Trying to Warn Us?
Some mediums claim the Thirteen aren’t angry—they’re waiting. Waiting for acknowledgment, for proper rites, for someone to finally say their names aloud and break the cycle.

Next time you’re in a high-rise and the elevator dings on a floor you didn’t press… maybe listen a little closer.

Stay strange,
Juniper Ravenwood
Producer, The Shadow Frequency Podcast
shadowfrequencypodcast.com