Literature produced by those who managed the freak shows she appeared in described her as belonging to a Native American tribe called "Root Diggers" whose members were similar to apes and lived in caves.

In another version, which is based on the words of indigenous villagers in Ocoroni, Mexico, Pastrana was a local girl whom they referred to as "wolf woman."

[4][5] According to Ireneo Paz, Francisco Sepúlveda, a customs official in Mazatlán, purchased Pastrana and brought her to the United States.

During her life, Pastrana's management arranged to have her examined by doctors and scientists, using their evaluations in advertisements to attract a larger audience.

[13] Samuel Kneeland, Jr., a comparative anatomist of the Boston Society of Natural History, declared that she was human and of Indian descent.

[14] Charles Darwin discussed her case after her death, describing her as follows: "Julia Pastrana, a Spanish dancer, was a remarkably fine woman, but she had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead; she was photographed, and her stuffed skin was exhibited as a show; but what concerns us is, that she had in both the upper and lower jaw an irregular double set of teeth, one row being placed within the other, of which Dr. Purland took a cast.

[11] Lent later found another woman with similar features, married her and changed her name from Marie Bartel to Zenora Pastrana, becoming wealthy from her exhibition.

[2] Hundreds of people attended her Catholic funeral, and her remains were buried in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace.

[20] Filmmaker Eva Aridjis filmed the burial for her feature documentary "Chuy, The Wolf Man", a portrait of a modern-day Mexican family with congenital hypertrichosis.

A musical Pastrana by Australian writers Allan McFadden and Peter Northwood was performed by Melbourne's Church Theatre in 1989.

On 14 October 2013 the in-development movie "Velvet" was announced, based on the life and experiences of Julia Pastrana, and from an original screenplay by Celso García and Francisco Payó González.