#30 of 31 Days of Halloween: La Llorona

La Llorona is not a story I grew up with, but one I learned as an adult. She's a creature of Latin American folklore, a ghost or demon who preys on children who wander too far from home or on cheating men, depending on who is telling the story. She's a character in the traditional of The Woman in White, who is also a vengeful ghost seeking retribution for her wrongs or forgiveness for the wrongs she has done.

She's been gaining in popularity here in the United States, making an appearance on an excellent episode of the popular television series Supernatural. 

I love how these stories pull from many of my favorite ghost story elements. How ghosts can be remnants of powerful emotions, like vengeance, or how wandering as a ghost can be a punishment for wrongs, like filicide. Sometimes there's a phantom hitchhiker vibe to the stories, when the woman in white wanders the road, and might wreak horrible revenge on the man who picks her up.

There's a lot of meat to those stories and I end up being sympathetic both to the "monster" and to its victims, which is a place I like a horror story to take me.