Tag Archives: ghost

La Llorona

Text:

“Lla Lorona is a weeping ghost who can be found next to bodies of water, like lakes or rivers. She’s constantly crying because she can’t find her children who drowned years ago. If a child walks by the body of water she’s in, she’ll mistake them for her dead children and drag them into the body of water with her.”

Context:

The informant heard this story from their parents, as well as family members from Mexico, when they were a young child.

Analysis:

At its core, La Llorona seems to serves as both a moral warning and a cultural reflection: it reinforces traditional roles by portraying the ultimate punishment for failing in one’s duties as a mother, which is a theme that is shared between many cultures. However, this legend also symbolizes deeper historical and emotional wounds. One possible interpretation is that she represents the collective trauma of colonization—her cries echoing the pain of indigenous peoples who lost their families, land, and identity, serving as a metaphor for cultural loss. She is implied to be a woman of Latin heritage in a time of colonialism, where white men held all the power, and her tragic fate is directly tied to the racist system she existed in. Therefore, she represents the “bane” of an elite, white male demographic in a society where their power and influence finds its foundations in the oppression of those deemed “other”.

The Legend of La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 24
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

Legend:

“The most popular legend in Mexico is “The Legend of La Llorona.” That of a lower class woman who fell in love with a wealthy man, who was already married. This woman had two children with him, and hoping he would leave his wife, she lost control one day. Filled with despair, she decided to drown her children in a river, and, since then, her soul wanders in sorrow through the streets every dawn, mourning the murder of her children. La Llorona walks each night with disturbing cries of regret, saying “Ay mis hijos!” which means “Oh, my children!” Dressed in a white gown that covers her entire body, down to her bare feet. There are those who say they have seen her: according to them, the ghost also has long hair, and her face resembles a skull. Many have also claimed that this woman also attacks midwives, doctors, and nurses who help pregnant women end the lives of their unborn babies.”

Context:

My informant told me that many Mexican legends are passed down from generation to generation, taught in class, or even shared from neighbor to neighbor on the street. She had heard this legend on the playground when she was 6-7 years old. She said that children would share this legend with each other as a way to frighten other children.

Analysis:

In class, we read an article and talked about the legend of La Llorona. In the article “The Politics of Taking: La Llorona in the Cultural Mainstream,” Domino Renee Perez writes that La Llorona “wails at night as she wanders dark roads searching for her children or any other potential victims” (154). We had talked about La Llorona mainly targeting children, so this variation of the legend is interesting because it instead is about the spirit of La Llorona going after people who terminate their pregnancies/their unborn children. One can argue, that instead of La Llorona attacking children, she is going after people who are making the same choice she did to end (by ending their unborn babies’ lives) that doomed her to haunt the streets. This view/belief depends on one’s own view of terminating a pregnancy, but it is interesting to think about the different interpretations of the La Llorona legend. I find this variation between different versions of the legend of La Llorona fascinating.

The Red Balloon Ghost Story

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

My informant told me a story about her deceased Nana sending her red balloons for her birthday. Her Nana, whom she was very close to, passed away ten days after her 12th birthday. The next year, when her 13th birthday was approaching, she, my informant, felt a lot of grief, because the approach of her birthday meant that the anniversary of her Nana’s death was approaching as well. She prayed to God and her Nana to feel some comfort from her grief. The next day, when she came home from school, there were a bunch of red balloons in the tree in front of her house. My informant told me, “Red was my favorite color, and they were birthday balloons; one or two said “Happy Birthday.” She only took one of the plain red balloons: “because I did not want to be greedy.” That night, she prayed that the balloon would float for seven or ten days (she could not remember the exact amount of time) and the balloon stayed afloat for the amount of time she had prayed for.

Context:

My informant shared with me that she grew up with strong Christian roots. She was Catholic and attended the Catholic Church for several years when she was young before her family switched to a Protestant Church. She told me that she had developed the habit of praying to God to give her a sign as proof of His existence or to help her make big decisions when she was going through rough times. The balloons appeared when she prayed to her deceased grandmother My informant has shared this story with her mother and her mother shared other memorates with her about supernatural events regarding her Nana.

Analysis:

My informant presented this story to me as a ghost story, however, I would argue that there are sign superstition elements to it: praying to her grandmother and then finding the red balloons in front of her house. There is a supernatural element to her story, though, too: the balloons being her favorite color and the one balloon lasting the length of time she wanted it too. One can argue that the spirit of her Nana brought her these balloons for her birthday, therefore making it somewhat of a ghost story. In class, we talked about ghosts/spirits are mostly vengeful and to haunt the living, but I wonder if it is a possibility that there are some spirits that present themselves, specifically to their loved ones, to bring support and to show the living that they are not alone (in a positive way).

The Legend of Hooper’s Hollow

Nationality: American
Age: 57
Occupation: Dance Studio Owner
Residence: Downers Grove, IL
Language: English

Legend:

“There’s a beautiful park in between where my neighborhood was and the school that I went to, so, a lot of kids would like to cut through the park. Well, in 1979, there was a boy coming home from hanging out with friends one night, and he was a nice kid, 15 years old, a happy kid, and nobody to this day knows what happened, but he was murdered by being hung from that bridge over the creek [in the park]. So, he wasn’t found for almost a day, and when he was found, he had a huge, angry look on his face, but obviously, he was dead. So, the legend goes that this boy was so happy [in general] and so upset about being murdered that his spirit stayed in the area and haunted any kids that tried to play in that creek or go over that bridge. So, once in awhile we would go there at night to see if we could feel his spirit or see his ghost; we never did, but we wouldn’t actually go over the bridge because we were too frightened.

Just adding on, I did have friends that used to claim that they would hear his voice or see, like, a hologram of him from time to time, especially at night. But, I’m sure they were making it up. ‘Cause anytime we went–which I only went a couple times [because] I was too scared–I never saw any kind of ghost, or spirit, or hologram of his presence. But people used to claim that they would see him or hear his voice yelling or crying from the bridge.”

Context:

My informant told me that the boy was murdered when she was around 12 years old and it had been an anomaly in her town; children being murdered was not common. She told me that that’s the reason why this legend is so popular; the parents only talked about the boy’s murder, but the children talked about his spirit haunting the creek. Many of the children believed it and steered clear of the bridge. When asked if any adults knew about the legend, my informant said that the only reason her mother found out about the legend was through her and her younger brother.

Analysis:

What I find so interesting about ghost stories/legends is what the circumstances are that causes the ghost/spirit to haunt the specific location it is haunting. In the article we read in class about Estonian legends of ghosts, it was believed that ghosts/spirits haunted ancestral homes as a way of keeping the property in the family while the Soviet Union was trying to force Communism onto Estonians. In this legend, it is believed the boy’s spirit/ghost haunts the bridge and the creek where he was murdered as a way to keep children away from the area. It seems that his ghost is keeping the children of the town away from the creek and bridge as a way of preventing another child from meeting his same fate of being murdered. There is also the element that only children/younger people know and share this legend and not the adults. This acts as a way of frightening other children.

Burning House

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Full-Time College Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Language: English

I met with PM to discuss his ghost story.

Everyone thought my house that I lived in from ages 7-13 was haunted. Everyone in my family had their own encounter with the ghost. You know when it feels like someone is watching you? We all got that feeling something when no one was around, especially at night. My mom has a story where she was sleeping and woke up unexpected and felt like a presence standing over her. Super creepy stuff. I had my own encounters where I felt a presence watching or hovering over me when I was sleeping. My sister had it the worst though. From what I remember the ghost encounters were worse on the third floor where her room was. Things would break unexpectedly, she felt like someone was watching her a lot of the time, windows would open on their own, and the floorboards would creak up there when no one was there. Fast forward to my house burning down out of nowhere. Coincidentally, the fire started on the third floor and no one really knows how. They thought it could have been an electrically fire but who’s to say the ghost wasn’t involved. Later on, when we were looking at the pictures of our destroyed house my grandma actually thought she saw it or something eerie in one of the photos.

This is a first-person account of P’s house burning down. It’s almost as if the farther you went into the house, the more haunted it became. This is definitely a ghost story or legend, where shared experiences and personal encounters are physical manifestations of the ghost. Not only that, but the fact that the fire originated in the most “active” area of the house—and that, in a photo of the remains, Pearson’s grandma claimed to see something eerie—aligns closely with common folklore motifs. These elements are frequently seen in other ghost stories and legends.