Urban Legends and Other Stories

La Llorana

La Llorana was the prettiest girl in a small town somewhere in Texas in the early 1500's. Every man in the town wanted to marry her but there was only one lucky man she hoped to marry. This man befriended the family and courted her for a few years before they married. Within 3 years of marriage, they had 2 sons.

One day before the eldest son's birthday, her husband went out to "buy a present". He said goodbye to his sons and his wife and left for town. He was never seen again. There were rumors in town saying that he left her for a young mistress, others say that he was murdered, but nobody ever knew the real reason why he had left his family.

She had gotten over the abandonment and had set her heart on a rich farmer. They had fallen in love. She had told her lover that she wanted to get married but he had said that they couldn't. She was in shock, but when she asked him why, he would not answer her. Later, he confessed that he could not marry her because of her sons.

She was so angry, she ran all the way home. She told her sons that they were going to go take a bath down at the river. They had slowly entered the shallow end of the water, but she had other plans. She told them that they were old enough to go into the deep end, so they did. As she pretended to wash their hair, she pressed on their heads and pushed them down under the water and didn't let go until they were dead.

After watching her sons' lifeless bodies float down the river, she ran to her lover's house and explained what she did. He couldn't believe it and was disgusted by her actions. Je said that he couldn't love a murderer and told her to never come to his house again.

Suddenly, she realized what she had just done to her family. She ran back to the river and cried at the bank. She stayed there and wept. She did not eat, drink or sleep until she died. Her soul now walks the river edge weeping and looking for her sons.

VERSION 2

During the 1600's a beautiful woman of Columbian culture named Maria lived in the town now known as Baker county, Florida.She lived in a farm house with her two children and her husband. Her husband was never home because he was always working the fields. One day when her husband didn't return from the fields she thought the worst and in her grief, she believed that she and her children must be with him forever. That night, she drowned her children in the bathing tub and then he hung herself in front of the mantle of her once happy but lonely home.

Now they say if you drive down 229 South, where her farm house was off of Ernie Bryant Road, you can see her and her children wandering aimlessly in the fields in late August calling for her husband and their father, If someone who is in love dares look her in they eye they will die instantly of a heart attack.