La Llorona : The Weeping Woman Ghost

Photo utilized under CC| Creator: vinka_portafolio

The Legend of the Llorona is not just one legend, and one story, there are many different versions of this popular and spooky Latin ghost.
La Llorona is the weeping woman, who ensures that children are not out beyond bedtime, she is a child's worst nightmare (and parent's best friend).
As a child I remember we used to play outside in the front yard in Juarez Mexico, and once the sun began to set, all the kids would scurry home as fast as they could. No one was willing to risk seeing the Weeping Woman. She was always looking for children to steal, in order to justify her guilty conscious. Always looking for some gullible kid, to take with her, and make her feel better for that horrible thing she did that one fateful night.
She never has her fill, she can never kidnap enough children, and as long as there are children misbehaving, or not wanting to go to bed, the legend of La Llorna will live on.

I've known a lot of people who have claimed to have had encounters with the Llorona, and when I was a child, adults would always tell me their rendition of the story when they wanted me to go to sleep, here is one of them:::

I used to tag along with my older sister everywhere. Her husband's family all lived in Juarez, Mexico. I would always tag along with her because I always had so much fun.

I remember one night, I heard my sister's mother in law, very seriously; telling my sister that she had seen the ghost of a woman. The woman was standing in the corner across the street. It was very late at night (more like morning) and there was water coming in from the roof. She got up to put something to catch the water, and looked out the window to see how hard the rain was falling.

She look out her window, noticed a favorite toy of her youngest son was getting all muddy, then peered across the street.There, she saw a woman standing on the concrete corner across, the woman wasn't doing anything, she wasn't going to cross the street, she wasn't even getting out of the rain, nothing. She just stood there, my sister's mother in law said she could not help but be curious, so she continued to stare at her behind the mini blinds.

All of a sudden as though the woman knew she was peeking, she directed her gaze RIGHT to my sister's mother in law. In what seemed like an eternity, the woman, very eerily began to charge towards the window, her face distorted and terrifying. My sister's mother in law got away from the window in terror. Expecting a bang.. or a thump, fearing that the woman was angry enough to strike the window.

She waited and waited, and nothing. So she hastily looked out the window again, the woman was no longer there, but she says remembers the toy was right under the window. It wasn't there anymore. The Llorona took the toy. She now knew that there was a child in the house. What if she returns? - that was her encounter with the ghostly woman La Llorona

Like I had previously stated, La Llorona, or the weeping woman is a folklore legend of Latin America, and while extremely notorious amongst these cultures, the story is always told differently.

Photo utilized under CC| Creator: Rareworlds

The general story is about a woman who murder's her two children, out of guilt she kills herself, (or out of rage her husband kills her), and now she haunts the streets in search of a child who can replace her murdered children. You can hear her weeping, moaning and howling in the night. She will stop at nothing to replace her children.
Why did she murder her children?
When did this happen?
All these questions can be answered in one of these fantastic sources!