La Llorona The Crying Woman

The timeless legend of La Llorona (the Crying Woman or the Weeping Woman), originated in South America and traveled to the American southwest via Mexico. La Llorona is always said to be tall and thin, with long dark hair and a flowing white gown. There are numerous stories of La Llorona, the ghost of a weeping woman who searches each night for her children, usually near a river. According to some of these stories, she drowned her children after her lover told her he did not want a family, then became horrified over what she had done and killed herself and now eternally sobs as she searches for them along creeks and rivers. La Llorona is also a prominent figure in Taos and Taos Pueblo, Guadalupta, and Colfax, a ghost town near Cimarron, New Mexico. In fact, the California Milk Advisory Board sometimes runs a “got milk?”ad that features La Llorona.


The most famous version is probably the Mexican one: Long ago, a beautiful Indian princess, Doña Luisa de Loveros, fell in love with a handsome Mexican nobleman named Don Nuno de Montesclaros. The princess loved the nobleman deeply and had two children by him, but Montesclaros refused to marry her and married another woman, Doña Luisa went mad with rage and stabbed her two children. Authorities found her wandering the street, sobbing, her clothes covered in blood. They charged her with infanticide and sent her to the gallows. She then dies and becomes a spirit. Ever since, it is said, the ghost of La Llorona walks the country at night in her bloody dress, crying out for her murdered children. If she finds any child, she’s likely to carry it away with her to the nether regions, where her own spirit dwells.Sometimes she is said to be hitchhiking along a road, and after an unsuspecting driver picks up the weeping woman, she suddenly disappears from the car.

In Santa Fe, the skeletally thin wailing woman has been repeatedly sighted in and around the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) building. The five-story structure, near a tributary of the Rio Grande, is built over an old Spanish graveyard. The two bottom floors are underground, deep in the graveyard. Employees report hearing sobbing echoes through the corridors and sometimes feel unseen hands push them on the stairs. Many locals refuse to go anywhere near the building.

The finer details vary, but while the Weeping Woman is most often thought of as a tragic figure, she is also portrayed by parents of disobedient children who will come for them if they don’t behave. Some believe that those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend. She is said to cry "Ay, mis hijos!" which translates to "Oh, my children!"

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Haunted Places: “Ghostly Locales from Around The World” compiled and edited by Jeff Belanger;
The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena by Patricia D. Netzley;
The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Demons, Spirits and Ghouls by Alex Irvine;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona

Pic Source:
The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Demons, Spirits and Ghouls by Alex Irvine page 11