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According to Mexican legend, one that goes back as far as the 1500s, a mournful and eerie cry sounds through the air at midnight every night. "My children, oh, my poor, poor children," La Llorona, or "Weeping Woman", sobs. She wears a bloodstained dress as the shares her grief.
The voice supposedly belongs to the ghost of a beautiful woman of mixed descent, a Spanish Indian who had a nobleman as a lover. She was truly in love and bore him two children; he was just passing time and did not return her feelings. She waited happily for the day they would be married; he tired of her and began to ignore and neglect her. Such is the way tragedies begin.
She decided one night that she could not bear to be without him and went to his home to plead with him to return to her arms. Imagine her dismay when she found him in the middle of a gala celebrating his marriage. She rushed in weeping, but he dragged her outside and told her he could never have married her. Her Indian blood made her an undesirable, and his new bride was Spanish nobility like him. He shoved her away coldly.
She ran back to her home hysterical and desperate. Seizing a small dagger that had been a token of affection from her unfaithful lover, she murdered her children as they lay sleeping. She ran screaming through the streets, covered in her children's blood. She was arrested and sent to prison, where she was convicted.
Her sentence was to be executed by hanging. Her body was left to swing in public mockery before it was cut down. Every night since her execution, she has been crying out her guilt and grief, and perhaps will for all eternity.
