La Llorona
Mexico, Southwest U.S.
"The weeping woman" ranges so far and wide in her nocturnal (and diurnal) prowlings that she merits special mention as a unique spectre. The tale is told of an Aztec princess who loved a Spanish conquistador. She bore him two children on the promise that he would marry her. The lustful, social-climbing grandee had higher ambitions, however: he married a different woman of higher station. Like Medea, the princess went mad and killed her children. Colonial authorities, the story continues, seized her and had her put to death, by some accounts for murder, by others for sorcery. Her fate is to walk the earth seeking her children.
Those who claim to have seen her and lived to tell about it report a creature of many faces. A common form that she takes is of a beautiful woman in black, sweating with sexual attraction -- what Spanish speakers call muy hembra. She often has no mouth. Or she has the face of a bat or a horse. Some descriptions of her resemble a vampire with long claws.
Most who see La Llorna either die within a year or have a run of extremely bad luck. Young men have the most to fear of her for they are her special prey. She may pass in silence, it is said, or ask after her lost children. Nowhere is there written that there is an effective exorcism or ward against her: the doom she brings, by day or by night, is unavoidable.
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