“In the city of Cuyotenaga, Suchitepequeza Guatemala, it is a very religious and spiritual place, so there are a lot of witches. So you have to be careful when you go out late out at night because that is when the witches practice their magic. So my mom experienced a lot of these events. And one specific my Uncle Carlos when was young, around 20 years old, he was going to pick up my mother from school because she was about 16 at this time. And he’s heading there and its late at night, like 11:30pm. Now my uncle is very free willing guy a very, he didn’t believe in magic but believed in God. This night changes everything.

“So he’s walking down the road there are no cars because it is a very poor city. He’s walking down the road and he starts to hear a beautiful singing voice, a woman’s voice. And he, in the distance, he sees a woman in a white dress. He starts walking towards this woman and its starts to get colder and she isn’t facing him. She’s facing a light pole but he can still hear the singing. He gets about 20 feet away from her and the singing stops and she starts to cry.

“So he yells out to her ‘Are you ok and what is the matter, why have you stopped singing?’ And he could see that she grabs the pole and starts to scream. Now he’s scared and he feels like something is wrong. He starts to walk closer to her cautiously and his head starts to hurt. But for some reason he feels like he is being pulled towards this woman but he wants to run. But he can’t run. Her screams are melodic and so he’s hearing a combination of singing and screaming now. And she starts to glow. And he gets closer and closer to her and his hand starts reaching out to her. And for a second he sees the most beautiful woman in the world and is completely captivated by her.

“And so she isn’t crying any more. And she turns around and she looks at him and the lights starts to flicker. One minute she’s a beautiful woman the next minute she has the face of a horse. And then the screaming starts again but so immense that he can’t bear it any more. And then all of the sudden the woman is gone but screaming continues. And everything starts to get blacker and darker but the light is still gone. He feels like he is dying. He starts to pray. He holds the lamp, he praying to the Hail Mary, ‘Save me save me … return me my heart!’ And right before he passes out he hears a voice that overpowers the screaming in the head: ‘I have saved you today’ and with that he passes out.

“The next day my other uncle, (I have four uncles and five aunts) Uncle George, he finds my uncle on the ground next to the light post and this two handprints on his chest, his shirt is gone. When my Uncle Carlos comes to, halfway through the day, he has been out for like 16 hours, he starts to scream. And my Uncle George starts to freak out. Uncle George says: ‘Tell me why you are here.’ My uncle Carlos stops: ‘I don’t know what happened.’ He didn’t realize he was screaming, he just remembered the night. He thought that the last thing he could remember was touching the woman’s shoulder. Now this is the scary part. He still hears, he’s dead now, he died young when he was 28 and he would tell us jokingly.

“We all thought he was drunk that night playing a joke. He would tell us that he would hear screaming when he would go to bed some nights, but he would pray to ward off the sprit. But he said he felt that the evil sprit still had a grasp on his soul. The day he died he fell 12 feet from a tree onto his chest, punctured his lungs and damaged his heart. And that is how he died. This is all a true story and this is very important to me. There is no conclusion to the story, we don’t know if that is actually what happened. In the end that is what some of us believe that the spirit took his heart.

When was the first time you heard this story?

“My mom told me it when I was really young, I was there when my Uncle Carlos, he was my role model growing up, he would tell the story when we were all around, it was all a joke until he died.”

What does the story mean to you?

“Definitely eye opening, maybe we don’t know what’s out there, maybe there are bad demons out there. I believe in God so there is evil. In some places you don’t want to mess with the wrong people. Most of my aunts and my mother completely after that happened they completely believe in it.

Do you believe in this story?

“I don’t know, sometimes. I believe there are bad people that can do bad things but I feel that it is something you have to choose to believe in. maybe you can get away from it.”

Analysis:

I think this story represents the numerous Guatemalan stories that refer to a ghostly woman. The informant specified that most of these haunting stories take place at night, during the witching hour. It is interesting that the informant mixed the usage of witches and ghosts in this story, but ultimately concluded that this lady represented a demon like presence in his family’s history.

While components of the La Llorana story are different from this one, I think there are many notable similarities. Here is a link to a story about the Guatemalan ghost lady, La Llorana, that exemplifies these similarities:

http://childreninternational.blogspot.com/2007/10/guatemalan-ghost-story.html

“Children International.” : A Guatemalan Ghost Story. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.