[6] Allegedly ordinary people who board it fall into a kind of stupor, preventing them from divulging any secrets about the ship (lore of Puerto Varas).
Other informants add that the crew's deformity of one leg bent backward forces them to hop around to maneuver, and, as aforementioned, are purposely kept as forgetful idiots in order to protect the ship's secrets.
[18] In contrast, others describe the crew as specially dressed and well-presented ("walking elegantly in long leather boots"[26]), except when one greets them with a handshake, their hands will feel very cold.
[22][27][21][17] In one version (lore of Valdivia), it is more particularly a submarine steamship, and the potential recruits are taken to a treasured city at the bottom of the sea, but sworn to secrecy on pain of death.
[24] In a different telling, when the crew of the ghost ship are on their shore leave, they impose themselves on friends or on someone who has committed some petty crime and force them to entertain the sailors at the host's expense.
[e][17] One collected tale claims a slender chalupa type boat commanded by a certain young man from Chonchi [es] never returned, but the father rather than to mourn only smiled knowingly, indicating he was sure the son was safely aboard the Caleuche.
The man thereafter grew increasingly rich, and people heard the sound of chains being lowered at the house over several nights; it was the Caleuche furtively unloading its cargo of merchandise to benefit this merchant.
The commentary makes connection to the aforementioned popular belief that a man suddenly getting rich will be suspected of carrying on secret commerce with the ghost ship.
[35] A legend tells that a man named Pancho Calhuante in the village of Matao took a sea lion [es] (lobo) cub from its mother and slaughtered it to extract oil.
It was witnessed by the various crew members on a Chilean navy boat, as attested by Agustín Prat, 2nd in command of the naval escampavía [es] Huemul who wrote an account of it in a letter that he saw "two large, white lights (each about the size of a lantern).. hovering no more than one metre above surface, with no vessel in sight".
[46] It has also been argued that it was based on real events, such as the Dutch ship Kalache (also given as El Calanche), led by Vincent van Eucht, which disappeared in the southern seas in the early 1600s.
The Caleuche is a living vessel which travels the world, carrying a crew of monster hunters in The Luke Coles Book Series by Josh Walker.
The Caleuche is a ghost pirate ship that sails around the globe, captained by the Sirena Chilota mermaid from the original legends in The Vampire Blade Book Series by M.C.
In film and television, Raúl Ruiz's Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) and Litoral (2008) and Jorge Olguín's Caleuche: The Call of the Sea (2012) are all loosely inspired by the legend.