The short film is set to a haunting original score with no dialogue, and is broken up into three split screens telling all the stories simultaneously.
"It's a non-linear story with no beginning and no end, that I presented at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was working on masters degree in fine arts," said Valladares.
Although Valladares currently lives in Jersey City, she lived in Union City since the age of 10 and remembers hearing bizarre tales.
For instance, she has heard of cases of local people being hypnotized by con artists, then robbed, leaving no clues for police to follow up on.
Valladares also remembers a murder/suicide that occurred in her neighborhood when she was growing up, leaving many unanswered questions.
She explores several of these incidents in her short film.
Hypnotic spells
Valladares created the artistic video piece utilizing three of the stories that she knew about while growing up in Union City. The stories themselves are disturbing tales of murder/suicide, attempted kidnapping, and forcible hypnosis.
"They are three different stories; one was based on a personal experience, but for the third, about forced hypnosis, I interviewed three victims," Valladares said. "One of the women was a customer at my parents' grocery store. They were three women who didn't know each other, all from Union City."
The women's stories were almost identical. Although they could not remember everything that happened, they are able to remember the events that led up to their supposedly being hypnotized by con artists.
The scam usually involves two people; one who approaches the victim on the street. How the hypnosis done is unclear, and Valladares' piece presents a hypothetical method.
"They talk to the victim as if they have known each other for a long time [earning their trust], and the victims end up giving them jewelry, money, and even inviting them to their house," said Valladares.
Some stories tell of how victims walk into banks with these people and withdraw money for them, and a second person is involved, in charge of holding.
Another similarity that links the women's stories is the escape method of the con artists.
"These people escape by making up a story about the other person being sick, and ask the victim to go to the pharmacy or call an ambulance," said Valladares.
The victims continue to walk in a trance, while the two people escape, and when they finally realize they've been robbed, there is no physical evidence to show police.
"It's hard to report it because a lot of details are missing," said Valladares.
This same story has occurred in other locations of the country, and according to one of Valladares' professors, these people are even referred to as "pigeon shooters" in the Southern states.
Unexplainable
The second story was something that had happened to Valladares during the summer of 2003. It also coincides with the recent discovery of the human trafficking of young Honduran women in two Union City bars, which were shut down a few months back.
"I has been approached by this one lady who looked lost, and she was speaking in Spanish," said Valladares. "Then another woman approached me saying, 'Hermanita (sister), could you help her get to this place? It will only take you a second.' "
Suspicious of the behavior of these two women who had started to get too close to her, Valladares excused herself and left. She said that moments later, a car with New York license plates sped off with the women in the back.
"I am very curious about these weird situations, so I wanted to investigate," said Valladares.
What she discovered was that she might have been approached a group of people who abduct young girls from their homes and take them as sex slaves to other parts of the country or to other countries.
"I heard about cases like this even before that," said Valladares. "My father once worked with this woman from Venezuela who came here as a sex slave until she befriended someone who helped her escape."
The third story playing along in the piece was a murder/suicide of a neighbor that occurred back in 1997. It was never clear about what exactly happened.
"I never forgot about it. It was just very disturbing," said Valladares. "This family kept quiet and to themselves, and then we had heard that the husband had stabbed and killed his wife in the apartment and then hung himself."
The neighbors knew very little about the couple and their two kids. The day of the murder, the couple was found by their 14-year-old son.
The re-enactment Valladares pieced together was also hypothetical about what might have happened that day. "These are stories that I though about for a long time, so I decided to put them together in this trio," said Valladares, who took her inspirations from foreign horror films such as Goddard's films.
The piece was filmed and finished last spring, and Valladares had received a lot of support from the Union City community as she went around shooting on Bergenline Avenue and in apartment buildings. Some businesses allowed her to run cables and work materials through the stores.
"I love Union City; the people have been very supportive the whole way through," said Valladares.
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