La Llorona

I have lived in New Mexico my entire lifetime, and never moved. As result of living in the center of the southwest, I have heard the story of 'La Llorona' multiple times, and in many different versions. I live very close to about two rivers, and when I was little, I heard a version of the story where she drowned her children in the river that I could easily walk to. I never thought that I would pay it much attention, never the less see her, hear her, and slightly see, but recently, all that changed.

I have three friends that are brother and sister to each other. It was summer of 2008, and we were having a sleepover. We had been planning this for about a month, and earlier in the day, we had bought all the food and other snacks we could imagine. We had planned to fire up the grill at make s'mores at about 8:00 and just sit outside and have a good time. At every sleepover we have, it seems that the Halloween decorations seem to get taken out of the closet a lot. This time, I randomly grabbed a plastic skull I carried with me at every one.

8:00 came around, and we made s'mores in the front yard. It was fun, seeing as I was the first, second, third and last to set mine on fire. We walked around barefoot on the driveway for a bit. I set the skull on the wall of our patio. After a bit, we sat in front of the door, talking silently. During a small moment of silence and nothing to say, we heard a moan come from up the hill. It sounded outside and very close but still far away. We ran inside, and in the haste, I nearly got shut out. We were all accounted for, and we ran into my room. When we heard it, it seemed like it was coming our way fast. We all believed it was La Llorona, but we shook it off as one of my neighbors trying to scare us. The two streets we lived on had ex- criminals and people with mental disorders everywhere.

I eventually noticed that I didn't have the plastic skull with me. About two or so hours later I walked through the dark hallway, switching on as many lights as possible right when I was in my entryway, I looked out the narrow window next to the front door. I saw what looked like a misty shape of a person hovering there. It looked kind of like a woman, but I couldn't tell very easily, it was all very light. I didn't stay to find out; I turned tail and ran back to my room. Right before I got to running half of the two feet into the hallway, I looked down a bit, and saw my plastic skull right next to the door.

I still am not sure if that really was La Llorona, but one of the friends at the sleepover, the older sister, had heard her once before, and the moaning sounded just the same.

The other sister with us was hearing bells for the rest of the night.