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The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.
Real Ghost Stories
Chapter 11
La Llorona
The weeping woman, a tall thin woman in a long white dress, haunts the Southwest and goes wherever the Hispanic people go. She is a well-known legend, perhaps the original Woman in White.
The legend says she was once a beautiful but selfish woman who neglected her children to spend her nights dancing and flirting with her admirers. Her little boys disappeared; some said of neglect, some said she murdered them by drowning the little ones in a river. That was hundreds of years ago but she is still seen sometimes but more commonly heard. She cries and wails and walks the river banks hunting for her lost children and grieving their fate.
She walks all the rivers of the Southwest but with the spread of the Hispanic people further north she has traveled with them and now has been seen as far north as Billings, Montana, walking among the cottonwoods along the banks of the Yellowstone River.
Her message is family and the importance of family. That family comes first always. Her grief for her children destroys any peace that death may have offered and left her with only with sorrow.
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"Santa Fe, New Mexico," Sam said solemnly. "That's where we want to go."
Dean glanced over at his brother, riding in the passenger side of the Impala, window rolled down, the wind whipping his overly long hair around. "And what's in Santa Fe that we want to see, Sam?"
"Dad called them Women in White. Remember Jericho? The Hispanic community calls her La Llorona, the weeping woman. She's been seen all over the country but there seems to be a specific one haunting a building in Santa Fe, New Mexico." Sam explained.
"Whoa, run that by me again? There's more than one of them? I thought we got rid of the one in Jericho." Dean seemed confused.
"We may have gotten rid of Constance Welsh but the weeping woman legend is much more wide spread than that," Sam went on. "The legend may even be much older than even the Spanish one. She could be an entity related to the Gaelic banshee legends. There was also an Aztec goddess, Cihuacoatl, who appeared before Cortes landed who was seen to weep for her lost children and is believed to have foretold the fall of the Aztec Empire. "
And Sam went on, "She even could be based in the Greek legend of the demon demi-goddess, Lamia who was Zeus' mistress. Hera found out and forced Lamia to eat her own children."
"Well, she sounds like quite the charmer. What are we doing in Santa Fe then if she seems to be a universal mystic character? Our record with the old gods is not all that good." Dean objected.
"I know," Sam responded. "The one in Santa Fe though just might be a mixture of the La Llorona spirit and the ghost of an actual woman, I think. She haunts a particular building, the PERA Building, near the Santa Fe River and there might be a possibility of removing that particular manifestation of La Llorona."
"Why do we care?"
"One of the more unpleasant possibilities of a La Llorona appearance is that she entices and drowns other people's young children out of jealousy." Sam explained. "We should go clean this one out of Santa Fe before someone's toddler shows up floating down the river."
"OK," Dean looked grim. "That's a damn good reason to gank her ass."
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The Winchesters arrived in Santa Fe twenty hours later just at sunset and immediately broke into the Public Employees Retirement Building. The PERA building was an odd structure to beginning with. Due to a city wide restriction that no building is Santa Fe is allowed to exceed the height of the Cathedral; three floors of the PERA building are underground.
The building restriction only added to the particular dark and hidden feeling of the hallways and passages. The Woman in White had been glimpsed many times by many people; slipping around corners and gliding down darken hallways. The Winchesters stood in the shadows and waited for the appearance of their particular prey.
It was dawn before Sam caught a peek of a tall, skeletal woman in a white dress darkened to grey by wear and age. She drifted down a buried corridor, heading east. He went after her loaded with salt and binding rituals but came to a dead end and an empty hallway.
Returning to Dean, who had no luck at all during the long night, the brothers decided to spend the next night on the other side of that wall, outside in the building's landscaped garden. Sam had a thought and they scouted the surrounding landscape and found that the women had been walking on a path that, if extended lead straight to the banks of the Santa Fe River.
It was Sam's turn to look grim and he discussed a plan with Dean. "I want to cordon off the River to prevent her from reaching the water. I am going to leave only one 'magical' gate for her to enter"
"What will that do for us, Sam?" Dean questioned. "You know, little brother, how much of the stuff that you have been doing lately is safe? Aren't you getting into this magic stuff a little too much?"
"You never asked that question of Bobby, when he was alive, Dean." Sam appeared to be upset. "Bobby was just about as close to a modern wizard as it was possible to get and you never suspected him of evil."
"That's not really fair, Sam." Dean responded. "I just want to make sure that you're going to be safe. Bobby had forty years on you. Who knows what kinds of problems he faced and defeated before we were even born."
Sam settled. "You mean to say it's going to take forty years of magic before you trust me to stay out of trouble? I thought you weren't planning on living that long."
"Very funny. Ha, ha. Now, what are we doing?" Dean got serious.
"We are going to build a magic fence and herd her into the water. Once she's in the water I'll take over to get her gone." Sam chewed on his lower lip. "We're going to have to do this between sunset and dawn and it's going to be a lot of work. That's the only problem I can see, we might run out of time."
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Eddy Marcus and his newest girlfriend, Angie, were going to spend a moonlit night beside the river, necking and groping. At least that was Eddie's plan. If Angie was going to go along with it was yet to be seen.
Eddie was a good lookin high school jock with a reputation for being romantic. It really appealed to the girls and Eddie was going to pull out all the stops out for Angie. Angie was the top of the heap, a real good looker with pretty high standards. Eddie had picked a bright full moon night to take Angie to his favorite spot by the river and he had real high hopes.
They arrived and under the trees Eddie had already laid out a blanket and a basket full of beer and snacks. Angie settle down nicely and Eddie was putting it on with a trowel, pointing out the moonlight reflected in the river's waters and the soft rustling of a cool breeze through the trees. He was maneuvering his fifteen year old target for the night into lying down when a man rushed past between them and the river, heading down the river bank.
Angie squealed and sat up. "Who was that?" she whispered.
Another man rushed past, heading upstream and at Angie's little squeak he stopped dead in his tracks.
"Who's there," the man barked, and then approached. The closer the guy got the bigger he seemed. "Hey, Dean!" He yelled. "We have an audience."
The first guy came back and looked at the teenagers. "What are you doing here?" he asked then ran his hand over his face. "God, that was a stupid question."
Eddie saw that this guy wasn't as big as the first one to find them but he was big enough to intimidate a couple of horny teenagers.
Eddie started babbling, "Look, we're not doing anything and we don't want to bother you guys. You look really busy. We'll just pack up and…"
"Shut up kid," the really big guy said. He turned to his partner. "This could work to our advantage, Dean. Hold on a minute."
"I don't know, Sam. They're just kids. What can they do for us?" Dean said.
Eddie continued to pick up their stuff and pushed Angie behind him. He thought could feel that she was shaking. Later he found out she was laughing.
"No, no, you guys just go on doing whatever you're doing and we'll get out of your way. Our car is just over …"
"I said, shut up, kid." Sam said. He turned back to his partner. "You know we are cutting it real close to get this all done by sunrise. We could use this pair."
Sam turned back to the kids and eyed Angie. "How old are you?" he asked.
Angie, with a boldness that Eddie didn't expect, spoke up. "I'm fifteen years old and I'm warning you. My Dad sent me to martial arts training and I can hurt you."
The 'Dean' guy started laughing. "You better watch out Sammy, she'll kick you in the knee cap. You'll be crippled for life."
"Shut up, jerk. She can stand at the gate. She's young enough." Sam eyeballed Eddie. "He looks fit , he can help light the bowls and put down salt lines."
Eddie decided to at least be as bold as his girlfriend. "Look, you guys, I don't know what you're up to but you don't want to add kidnapping charges on top of whatever you're doing here."
The big guy smiled at Eddie and it completely changed his whole personality. He looked kind and somehow younger. "What's your name? I'm Sam and this is my brother Dean. We're hunting a ghost."
Angie started to laugh. "Really? You're nuts but I'm Angie and God's gift to women here is Eddie. Can we help hunt your ghost? It's got to be more fun than fighting off Mr. Hands all night."
Dean looked at Eddie and there was pity in his eyes. "Man, you better hang with us. You don't even know what kind of trouble you are walking into with this one. Hunting ghosts will be safer for you."
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San stationed Angie at his "magic gate", and explained. "You're bait. You'll know when you see a woman in a long white dress that it's time to get out of the way. Head up stream to that little footbridge as soon as you see her and you know she sees you. I'll be on the bridge, waiting for you."
Angie compressed her lips in a firm line. "OK, how long do you think I'll have to wait?"
"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I really don't expect her until sunrise in about five hours."
"Well, then, get me something to sit on and maybe a beer and chips from Eddie's cooler. I'm good."
Angie looked around her. "If you can't find anything else I could sit on that tree limb."
"I'll find you something and a blanket too." Sam replied. "I have to say, you are handling this better than your boyfriend."
Angie glanced at Eddie who was getting trained in the finer points of laying salt lines by Dean. "What can I say, he's a dick head and would you believe he's the pick of the litter at my school? A girl's got to be tough to get what she wants."
"Good for you," Sam said. "You'll go far, even if you have to drag him around behind you."
Angie looked up at Sam and fluttered her eyelashes. "What about you, you got a girl?"
"Whoa," Sam raised his hands and backed off. "I am currently off the market and, to tell the truth, you scare me. You should go after Dean. He has no sense of self preservation."
Angie stared over at Dean. "I'll keep that in mind. Maybe after we get your ghost we can all go out to breakfast? Sort of payment for services rendered?"
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False dawn was breaking and Angie heard Sam call out, "Light the bowls." Eddie and Dean had spent the night cupping shallow bowls into the soil at intervals both North and South. They had then gone back and tied the bowls together with a steady stream of salt. Sam had called it "building a fence" and Angie had no idea what Sam was mixing in each of the bowls but he called them his "fence posts" and whatever he was doing seemed to make him happy.
Angie's job was to sit in this beach chair and watch for a woman in a long white dress. She thought she had the easiest job of all and her entertainment during the long night was three pretty nice looking male bodies parading up and down in front of her. She had decided that if she couldn't have Sam she'd take Dean and if all else failed there was always Eddie.
At Sam's shouted order Eddie went north and Dean went south and she could see little blue flickering lights start up in a line down both ways on the riverbank. Looking off into the darkness she caught sight of a lash of something light colored coming at her. It looked like it was the right size for a tall woman and Angie stood up so the woman could also see Angie.
The figure came at her faster and Angie took off, running up the bank towards Sam standing on the bridge. She could hear them all cheering her on. "Go Angie, Come on Angie, Hurry up Angie."
She didn't dare look behind her. She knew that they were trying to get the ghost into the water for some reason and that it would be very, very bad if the ghost caught her. Well, she hadn't gotten an "A" in P.E. for nothing. She turned on more speed and hit the bridge and got behind Sam.
Looking back she could see the woman standing in the river water and it appeared that Dean was "closing the gate". Eddie stood beside Dean with a lit bowl in his hands and Dean was pouring salt on the ground. Sam was chanting in a language Angie didn't recognize and the ghost woman was screaming the world apart. The wailing and crying set Angie's teeth on edge and she covered her ears with her hands.
As she watched the woman first sunk under the water then leaped out again with a scream that shook the trees. Her mouth was a pitch black oval and her eyes echoed her mouth. Sam continued to chant and then he threw something into the water. It glittered and hissed when it hit the surface and streamers moved toward the ghost. When the first of it touched the ghost she screamed even louder, something Angie could not believe was possible. Then she wailed and cried and sunk back under the water and there was peace in the night.
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Full daylight and the ghost hunting crew was at Lucille's Diner stuffing their faces with Belgian waffles and coffee. Dean had done everything with the whipped cream short of asking for the can and shooting it straight into his mouth.
"Is he always like this?" Angie asked Sam.
Sam looked up from his plate and glanced at his brother. Dean looked perfectly normal to him. "Always like what?' he asked.
Angie shook her head and decided that maybe Eddie wasn't that bad of a choice. At least he was young enough to break of bad habits. Angie tucked into her own food.
"So, is this what you guys do?" Eddie wanted to know. "You go around killing ghosts?"
"And other things," Dean muttered with a full mouth.
"Let it be," Sam advised. "You don't want to know. Let this be your ghost story for the rest of your life; just this." Sam put his fork down and looked carefully at the amateurs. "I'll leave you with a number to call if you run into anything strange and you can call for help. But take my advice and just let it be. Both of you; make it just a story you tell your friends, nothing more."
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Notes and References:
Ghosts of the Old West by Earl Murray, 1988
Wikipedia "La Llorona
Website: Legends of America . com "Ghostly Legends & Mysteries"
A new reference that has been coming up in searches is the Pilot episode of "Supernatural" which used the legend of La Llorona as a basis for their "Woman in White" story. The writers did a very good job and have enhanced the La Llorona story.