The ‘susto’(scare) illness, present across Latin America with local cultural characteristics, has been traditionally analyzed under the framework of the so-called ‘culture-bound syndromes’ and has been overlooked from the perspective of altered states of consciousness (ASC). This perspective opens the door to its consideration within Amerindian shamanic-like episodes that were conceptualized as demonic possession in the colonial period. This article presents a comparative analysis of colonial documents and contemporary ethnographies of the Andean region.