La Llorona. Is she more than just a story?

As it is Halloween I well share a story of La Llorona ...Spanish for "the weeping woman," and is a popular legend in Spanish-speaking cultures with many many versions.

Here in New Mexico I was taught she was the wife of a wealthy businessman... her husband and their children were returning home during a storm... Crossing the Rio Grange the ferry tipped the unfortunate family in the turbulent waters where they drowned....

It was said she spent her life walking the banks of the River lamp in hand looking for the bodies of her lost children... it it also said that long after she died her lamp could still be seen along with the sounds of her weeping...

this story also includes a warning to children... not to follow the lights as she will lead you to the river where she will drown you, make you a replacement for her own lost children....

Now that is my local version... what surprised me is I began my travels across the world... there I found more stories of La Llorona they have her up in Colorado down in Old Mexico, I've heard stories in California down to South America I was even told one version in Spain....

In almost every case she is claimed to be a local ghost with the stories changed to fit the region and people... Still I find it intriguing La Llorona and her story has spread wold wide and people who do not believe in ghosts do believe in La Llorona!
Odd how this one story went global long before the Internet was born...

Wikipedia
GHOSTLY LEGENDS & MYSTERIES this second one is a cool site with three pages of stories...

reply to post by DaddyBare

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Many nights I walk the acequia here in Corrales and hear her cries and catch fleeting glimpses of her lantern.

But I'm not going down to the river at night. There is some bad mojo down there.


Thanks for the story and the painting DB

Well you don't have to go to the river to find ghosts... I remember hearing about A lady with a spear sticking out of her head witnessed scrambling out of a manhole on a Corrales street on a dark night. Numerous people in the neighborhood have had equivalent occurrences with a very similar phantom. No matter what people exclaim, it certainly is a menacing ghost that should be steered clear of.

yup Corrales is just one of those mystical places where weird things just gravitate towards

reply to post by DaddyBare

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Ah yes, manys the nite I had to go in the back with the barmaid because she was freaked out in the old Territorial House, now known as the Rancho de Corrales.

www.legendsofamerica.com...

Just to show how enduring La Llorona is an wide spread here's a vid out of Calif

YouTube Link

here's another version of the story
Titled the scarest woman in Spanish lore

YouTube Link

[edit on 31-10-2009 by DaddyBare]

Now, you guys are scaring me with your ghost stories! But that's ok, it's Halloween!

My recollections of the La Llorona story come from my Mexican friends as a child and as an adult. At slumber parties, my friend would scare us with her version of La Llorona, the ghost of a woman who had drowned her two children in a river and wandered this earth weeping and crying out for them. She herself was witness to La Llorona's haunts, when she visited her grandfather's ranch in Mexico. She knew she had heard La Llorona. I now chalk it up to coyotes, but others don't.

I heard her version from other Mexicans, both children and adults, with all being firm believers. To me, the story could have an original source, something to do with a watery death and the ghost of a woman seen afterward. IOW, a typical haunting.

However, it seems that parents use La Llorona as parents use the boogeyman, to elicit compliance with rules or warnings of danger. Be careful, do what I tell you to do, or La Llorona will get you!!

I loved that Got Milk commercial!



[edit on 31-10-2009 by desert]

reply to post by desert

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You know we joke about La Llorona but people do tend to laugh off our fears... there have been very frightening accounts of attacks not at rivers edge but right in peoples homes



While I've never seen her myself I am a believer... enough not to go taking foolish chances

Wow! Fascinating! Interesting how there are different versions, but I guess things get added or taken away by being passed down so many times.

I've heard of this story also. In the version I read a Mexican Indian woman fell in love with a high blooded Spaniard. He allowed her to believe their common law marriage was the real thing. They had children; then his family found a high blooded bride for him. For the goodbye meal, she fed him his children. After he unwittingly ate them , she told him what he ate.For this crime she was hung. As punishment in the after life she was forced to walk the earth looking for her children until judgement day. The morals of the story do not kill your children secondly do fall in love with a man above your station.

In some of the stories she is a demon on the side of good.In some of these stories, Larona scares the devil out of drunk gringos stupid enough to follow her curvacious form to a river. She also terrifies naive teenage girls who sneak out at night. Sometimes the stories involve her trying to steal children she mistakes for her own. The Lorona myth has some elements in common with Medea and Lilith



[edit on 2-11-2009 by eradown]

With so many variations I wonder if La Llorona or some version has slipped out of the Spanish culture into other segments... anyone else hear of some thing similar where you live? you know same kind of story different names