La Llorona, the weeping woman, is an urban legend that is well known throughout Mexico and other Latin American countries. As the story goes, a young woman, intent on keeping the man she loves but who does not want to bear the responsibility of being a father, decides to take her two children to a nearby river and drowning them. She approaches said man to bring him he news of how he no longer has to worry of the burden that were her children. The man rejects the woman, sending her to a state of depression and eventually killing herself as she cannot live with the regret of killing her children. Thereafter, she is said to have been doomed to haunt the land in search of her dead children, never to be re-united with them. She is often heard weeping which is where her name derives from. Other variations say that the man is actually the father of the children and leaves the woman for a rich woman. She is said to kidnap wandering or misbehaved children.
There is a slight variation of the Legend of La Llorona that stems from the country of Honduras. Here, it is said that the woman’s children drowned of their own accord while the woman tended to washing their clothes in the river. Because she was not paying attention to the kids, they drowned and, as she should, blames no one but herself.
One man tells of seen a La Llorona:
I was about 10 years-old when I was playing hide-and-seek with some friends and my little sister. I thought it was a good idea to hide in the woods by the Rio Choluteca (the Choluteca River) as the sun, being the fall, was setting and they wouldn’t think, or dare, to look for me there. It wasn’t quite dark yet so I was able to make my way with ease near the river. I stayed in the woods and took cover behind a Tamarindo Tree. As I was taking cover, I started to hear what sounded like a woman crying. I looked towards the river and saw her there. She had her back to me, concealing her face with her long, dark, wet hair, but I could see that she was using the river to wash what looked like child’s clothing. Although I could not see her face, I could hear her calling my name and I slowly approached her without fully understanding why I was doing so. Closer and closer I got, the sound of her weeping growing louder. Then, for reasons I can’t explain, I snapped out of it and realized, to some extent, what was happening. I remember being told to never turn my back to her or she will be able to take my soul when least expected and the only way to escape from her is to walk backwards away from her. And so I did. I walked and I walked, then I blacked out. The only thing I can remember after that was being home with no recollection of how I got there. (His Sister continues the story) Me and a couple of friends finally found him. But when we did so, he did not look like himself. He looked as if frozen, or paralyzed with fear. We tried to snap him out of it, but he would not respond. We started to get scared and decided it would be best if we all carried him out of there as it was almost dark and we didn’t want to get lost in the woods. It wasn’t until we got home when he snapped out of it with no recollection of what happened. The last thing he could remember was the woman by the river.