Los Angeles,
California, the heart of several of America's most chilling legends and ghost
stories. Among the most popular, the Latin folk lore of "La Llorona",
literally translated in English as "The Weeping Woman". Legend has it
she was once a beautiful woman named Maria who was quite fond of her own beauty
and believed that as a result she could have any man she chose. Maria found a
handsome "Ranchero" (or Rancher) named Marcos whom she married
(though the names differ depending on culture groups). Their two children, she
later blamed unfairly for her husband’s infidelity.
Some say it was in a
fit of rage and despair that she drowned her babies in a nearby river, while
others say she was not sane and did so only to spite Marcos. Though she took
her own life in immediate regret, it was too late. Maria was not allowed in at the
gates of heaven when she could not say where her lost children were. And so she
was cursed to walk the earth in a state of limbo until she could find their
souls.
For hundreds of years,
numerous variations of her sad tale have been told, but her famous cry of
"mis hijos" (translated; my children) gave her the frightening
Spanish nickname of La Llorona. Although several Los Angelinos claim to have
witnessed her haunting Echo Park Lake as far back as the 1960's, the sightings
stretch far and wide across the states and beyond.
It has retained an air
of mystery to the legends origin, as she has been known to linger around any
body of water she can find.
Perhaps she cannot
remember where she performed the murders, or her children passed on peacefully
without their mother as punishment for her wretched deeds. If you grew up in
LA, you were very likely told this story by one of your older relatives as a
warning to stay inside at night, unless you wanted La Llorona to find you and
take you by mistake for one of her own.
One witness, told me
about a well-remembered story of his father, Francisco Segura, and the
terrifying run in he experienced with her ghost in Michoacan Mexico near La
Angostura in the 1930's. Being told that that La Llorona would always come out
at 11pm, Segura and some friends attempted to prove their bravery by
finding her only to be chased away by the "floating woman screaming and
crying, for her kids, with fire in her mouth".
This added detail was
not unheard of in Mexico, as another known traveler of the 1930s had once said
he too had seen a woman of similar description while in the woods. Asking if
she was alright, he and his horse were scared half to death when she turned around,
revealing her identity and breathing out fire.
As legend grows and
curious minds search deeper for a meaning, people very commonly reference back
to the Aztecs in Tenochtitlan, saying that La Llorona was based off a story of
their goddess who wanted to warn her children of wars and destruction to
come.
For the skeptics, the
story is just that. Simply a result of years and years of Hispanic culture,
weaving together a tapestry of their own imagination, creating a way to make
life a little more interesting as we all do once in a while.
But the sightings of
the wailing phantom grow every year, as do those brave souls willing to face
the terrors of the night waters, and see if La Llorona can make them scream.
by Angelina Paige
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