November 12, 2024 • 46 mins
Get your copy of Ghostly Ghastly Tales here! And follow Anastasia Garcia on Instagram @anastasiawrites to keep your eye out for upcoming projects.
On today's episode Abby sits down with Anastasia to discuss the mythology behind La Llorona, La Lechuza and her new book of short horror stories.
Sources
- Janvier, Thomas A. “Legend of La Llorona.” In Legends of the City of Mexico, 134–138. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1910
- Library of Congress article by folklorist Stephen Winick: La Llorona: An Introduction to the Weeping Woman
- Espooky Tales article on The Owl Witch
- Texas Standard article by Sarah Asch & Raul Alonzo La Lechuza legend serves as both a cautionary tale and a story of revenge
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I am Abbey Branker and I am sobeyond thrilled to be sitting
here with a very longtimeinternet friend, anastasia
Garcia, and this is the firsttime that we are actually
face-to-face with each otherafter so long, and we're so
thrilled to finally becollaborating on a project
(00:40):
project.
But Anastasia is here to talkabout the folklore of La Llorona
and how she translated thatmythology and many other very,
very interesting mythologiesinto her new book Ghostly
Ghastly Tales.
Welcome, we're so happy to haveyou here, hi so great to see
you, abby.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
We've been internet friends from afar for so long.
I love anything and everythingthat Abby does and I'm just here
to support her, so I'm so gladto be in the room finally
talking about a shared project.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yay, yes, okay.
So, before anything else, tellus a little bit about Ghostly
Ghastly Tales.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, so this is my very first book.
I've written horror in the pastshort stories and longer form
fiction and this is my firstpublished book.
It is a collection of shorthorror stories for young readers
.
This is ages 8 through 12.
It's based on folklore fromaround the world, and one of
those short stories is inspiredby La Llorona, which is what I
(01:34):
think we're going to be chattingthrough today.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, yay, and can I ask you a little bit about your
process as one horror writer toanother?
Like how did you tackle theresearch of the mythology that
kind of inspired the stories andcombining that with, like your
modern twist on these tales?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
yeah, so I did quite a lot of researching, um,
original like kind of uh,secondary sources, so folks who
had collected folklore andwritten them down so that I
could kind of read them throughthe ages.
Truthfully, a lot of the horrorshort stories that we liked when
we were little like ScaryStories to Tell in the Dark
Short and Shivery all of thosestories had footnotes in the
back of their books.
So I started there with likethe original kind of books that
(02:14):
they referenced to inspire thosestories that I read as a kid.
And I just collected abookshelf worth of folklore
books, started reading andwriting and as I found a story
that scared me to this day, Iwas like this is a story that
has something in it that pullsthrough the generations that's
still scary to this day.
Those are the ones I kind ofbookmarked and wrote down and
(02:34):
thought about.
And then I took some of thoseand just like kind of elaborated
them for what I think kids aremore scared of today, what
scares me today.
So taking those as kind of thefoundational nuggets and then
building stories on top of that.
So that's how I started.
So it was a lot of research andfinding those scary things that
still persist to this day.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Wow, that's amazing.
Okay, and this is going to belike a really obnoxious question
, but do you have like afavorite story, like when people
buy the book, which I'm surethey will all go by after
listening to this, like whereshould they go first?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I think so.
One of my favorites isSomething's Wrong With Mother.
That one, to me, is one of thescariest.
It's based on this like100-year-old Victorian short
story that actually inspired theother mother from Coraline,
which I'm sure fans on thispodcast understand, and so I
loved.
The concept that somethingthat's very familiar to you kind
(03:25):
of takes a sinister turn isvery scary.
So in this story something'swrong with mother.
A girl misbehaves and hermother leaves for a business
trip and returns slightlydifferent, and I'll leave it at
that.
But to me that's like thescariest thing.
The scariest thing is somethingthat seems familiar is actually
dangerous and terrifying.
So love that one.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Even just you saying that sort of like gave me chills
.
It's such a like someone youshould know and be able to like
love and trust, but you knowthat something's wrong about it
is such a gripping horror story.
Yeah, okay, so we do.
When we have guests on thispodcast, we have some cringy
icebreakers that we askeverybody, so forgive us in
advance, but the first thing Ialways ask people is what are
(04:08):
your favorite horror films, justso the audience can get a sense
of kind of the lens that youlook at horror through.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, fantastic question, always great.
So for me, my favorite scarymovie is the Thing from 1982.
Obviously, as horror fans outthere know, it's the practical
effects of this movie that wereoutstanding and to this day are
very terrifying to me, like theidea of spider legs coming out
of a little head that runsaround the, the, the mutating
gross like feel body horror ofthis mutating kind of alien
(04:38):
effect.
As everyone knows, the thingset in Antarctica at a little
art expedition and the isolationhorror is terrifying about this
too, the idea that you can'trun out and just like run away.
The characters in this movieare all scientists, so they do
what you want them to do theytest blood, they try to kill it
with fire, they isolate peoplethat are acting strange, they
(04:59):
tie people to couches that arebeing violent and belligerent,
like they do everything you want, but they're still like, still
mounting.
Chaos ensues by the end andthen it still ends on an
ambiguous ending.
You don't know, did theyvanquish the alien?
Are they safe?
You know, is that person whoyou think they are Like?
I love that element.
So to me it was a very simpleconcept, perfectly executed in
(05:22):
true horror fashion.
And then I'll give you a numbertwo, which to me is like kind
of a personal aside, was kind ofleads to the book, which is
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I actually like the remakebecause I thought they did such
a fantastic job like amping upthe gore.
But being from Texas, the TexasChainsaw Massacre was one of
the first movies I saw thatreally felt real, like I'd seen
(05:43):
this gas station.
I know these people.
I've been like the landscape tolook real.
The driving down these longcountry roads felt very real.
So for me this is the firsttime like wait a minute, this
isn't just scary stuff I can seein a movie that's set somewhere
mysterious and fictional.
This can be in my backyard andthat was scary yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I've actually never thought about the people
who grew up in Texas watchingthe Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
like how that would influence orimpact your feeling about that
movie of like, because Iunderstand that I grew up in
this in New England, essentially, but a place in New England
where there's a lot of, like,very dark history and I'm
(06:22):
actually researching a big topicthat will come out right before
this episode that is like takeslike all of the history takes
place like in my backyard when Igrew up, and so it's this weird
feeling, but I I can totallyrelate to that and I never
thought about the impact of thatwith that movie.
That's such a good point.
Yes, so true, love it.
Oh, wow, okay, so that thoseare pretty hardcore horror films
(06:42):
.
I love that.
That's.
That's great.
And then my favorite questionhave you ever had a paranormal
or unexplained experience of anykind?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yes, so I have two.
I think that I can.
I'll just do really quickly.
One is so in an old family homethat I lived in when I was a
baby so not me personally, butlike my family and the lore kind
of carried through like mywhole life.
We lived in this very tinylittle house in the middle of
country Texas.
It had been there for quite along time and they've kind of
(07:10):
rebuilt it and made it nice, butthere were.
Every person in my family has astory about this house and some
terrifying element of it.
One of them the most common isthat everyone would hear cowboy
boots on the hardwood floor.
So there's a very distinctsound of heavy boots walking
through the house and everyoneheard it and to the point where
(07:31):
they think it was real, like, oh, somebody's coming in the door,
somebody's wearing boots andthey're walking in the door Like
everybody would react to it sonaturally and then realize
there's no one in the house.
So the persistence of thisthrough time was very key.
And then also people heard itwhere they were like oh, I'm
staying over the night and I wassleeping on the couch, heard
someone walk behind me withtheir boots on, woke up and was
(07:51):
like, started talking to it andthere was no one there.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So just oh, that's so scary.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Terrifying, like the idea that there was someone here
.
And, truthfully, when they wereclearing out the brush around
this house, they found an oldtombstone like an old grave and
they were like, oh well, here itis.
So you clean it up, you tidy itup and you just say sorry for
intruding ghost, you just stillmake it your home.
And then so many other thingsdishes, rattling doorknobs
(08:15):
rattling.
People would see it, the doorwould shake in its frame and it
was never malevolent, but it wasdefinitely making itself known.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, so family home.
No wonder you grew up to be ahorror writer, right?
Yeah, no wonder.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So everyone had stories in that house for sure.
And then the one that inspiredme to actually write a story in
this book is there's a story inthis book called Drums of War,
which is where a girl visits aghostly battle site and
experiences kind of like a timeslip where she kind of maybe
falls back in time.
And so that was actuallyinspired by a real experience I
had visiting a battle site inTexas.
(08:52):
So Texas is well known forMexican-American War, the Texas
Revolution, a lot of battles,civil War.
There's a lot of battles thatwere taking place in the area of
Texas, and so we went on fieldtrips all the time to the near
the battlefield near you.
And so one time I was visitingwith a cousin of mine and we
strayed from the group.
Everyone was loading up ontobuses.
(09:12):
We strayed from the group andwe're kind of wandering around
this playground area and for amoment all the sound slipped out
and everything went way downand it was like you couldn't
hear the kids anymore, youcouldn't hear the wind in the
trees.
It went super quiet and theboth of us looked at each other
in that moment like something iswrong and we can all feel it.
We looked around us and therewere birds.
(09:32):
Black birds filled, uh, thetrees around this battle site,
but there was no sound, nocalling, no bird feathers, no
rustling, and we were likesomething is going on.
So the two of us looked at eachother and, very slowly, you
could hear the sound offootsteps in the grass,
footsteps, footsteps, footsteps,more and more and more, and it
(09:54):
sounded like we were surroundedby people walking in the grass.
We couldn't see anybody, so weboth got scared, jetted back to
the bus, pretended we didn'thear anything.
Nothing happened.
Everything was fine, but tothis day, terrifying to me.
I don't know what it was, um,but the that.
That moment will always stickwith me what a story, oh my gosh
.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, that's like so vivid and it's so interesting
because I've actually my mom hada somewhat similar experience
at this New England like ghosttown called Dudley Town that
like her and her father and herbrother went to, and there was
weird things that happened.
Had somewhat similar experienceat this new england like ghost
town called dudley town thatlike her and her father and her
brother went to, and there wasweird things that happened.
But one of the things is mygrandfather was a forest ranger
and so they were in the middleof the woods and suddenly, like
(10:35):
it was silent, like there wasbirds, like, but there was
nothing.
And and he like wasparticularly suited to to be
aware of that, because that washis like whole job.
But the added elements of thenhearing like the footsteps or
the approaching entity orwhatever it was, seems so
intense to me.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
That's wow, okay, that's very intriguing and and
to us it may, because we werelike all spent all day talking
about it, but the idea of therebeing like multiple, like lots,
of people in the forest, likecoming out of the woods.
Have you seen?
Uh, lovely, dark and deep.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The movie no, I haven't oh it's.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It's a uh very, it just came out last year, I think
.
Uh, she's a forest ranger.
She lives out in the middle ofnowhere and there's some cosmic
horror entity.
Should definitely check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm just giving myself a note right now because
I will.
That sounds very cool, okay.
One more question when you weregrowing up, were you afraid,
like how kind of aware that?
Like okay, maybe there's thingsthat exist that I'm not sure
what they are.
Did that scare you as a kid?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yes, but there was a thrill to it, a fear of like if
something.
I think there was always a linefor me like if something
happens and this ghost gets me,I will be the first recorded
case of a ghost murdering achild gets me, I will be the
first recorded case of a ghostmurdering a child, that's
hilarious.
So I was like, okay, if theydon't murder me, I can
experience it and I can writethis down.
(11:52):
So it was definitely scary butthrilling.
I think I was a little tinyparanormal investigator where I
was like I must take all theevidence and jot it down and
keep it for life.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yes, yes, I love that evidence and jot it down and
keep it for life.
Yes, yes, I love that.
Okay, so we are really excitedbecause we have come together
today to talk about the legendof La Llorona, which is a vast
and sprawling legend that variesdepending on region, and we're
going to talk about all of thatand some other folklore that's
(12:24):
kind of adjacent to that.
And you know, something that Aland I have talked about a lot
is making space on this show forlegends and folklore from other
cultures, and so we're verygrateful for you to come on and
kind of share some of yourexperiences with us on this and
and hopefully it's somethingthat you'll see a bit more next
year from Lunatics Radio Hour aswell.
But before we jump in, we havesome sources to cite.
(12:47):
So the first is actually asource that you used a lot in
the researching of your book,because you talk about this
legend in your book a bit InLegends of the City of Mexico.
The chapter is called Legend ofLa Llorona by Thomas A Hanover
and it's pages 134 to 138, sodefinitely check that out.
There's also a Library ofCongress article by folklorist
(13:08):
Stephen Winnick called LaLlorona An Introduction to the
Weeping Woman and a Spooky Talesarticle on the Owl Witch, and a
Texas Standard article by SarahAshe and Raul Alonso called La
Llorona.
Legend Serves as Both aCautionaryary tale and a story
of revenge, and I'll link all ofthese sources as well in the
description so that you guys cancheck them out yourselves.
So La Llorona, or the cryingwoman, the whaler, is an entity
(13:33):
from Mexican folklore.
The story of the weeping womancan vary depending on region.
So, for instance, one versionof the legend goes that she
killed her children by drowningthem, and she did this because
she discovered that her husbandwas cheating on her, and so she
is believed to be most activenear bodies of water, and I
think that's something that kindof penetrates through most of
(13:54):
the different variations.
Even the sound of her wailingis incredibly powerful, and so
some believe that anyone who canhear it expect terrible fortune
and even death as a result ofher curse.
I'm going to quote from theLibrary of Congress article on
kind of the variations of thefolklore Quote sometimes La
Llorona sees you from afar andpursues you, terrifying you as
(14:18):
you flee towards your home.
Sometimes she appears riding ahorse.
Sometimes she appears in yourhorse-drawn wagon or in your car
, warning you against badbehavior before disappearing,
just like that other famousspirit, the vanishing hitchhiker
.
In some stories, an encounterwith her is fatal.
La Llorona is often closelyassociated with children.
(14:39):
In some stories, she is said towail for her own lost or dead
children.
In many of these stories, shekilled her own children when she
was alive and is doomed for heractions to be a wandering ghost
.
In other stories, she appearsmainly to women who have
children, while in still othersshe kidnaps children who are
never seen again.
(15:00):
End quote.
Regional variations exist acrossMexico, the United States,
guatemala and Venezuela.
In Guatemala, the legend goesthat a married woman becomes
pregnant from an affair and shegave birth to the child, who is
named Juan de la Cruz.
She then drowned the child tohide its existence from her
husband and as punishment she isforced to live on after death
(15:22):
and search every body of waterfor the son that she killed.
In Venezuela, the legend is abit more vague, but it's always
centered around a woman whomourns the loss of her children.
In some cases this is from herown doing, and other versions of
the story again claim that herchildren were killed by someone
else.
And in the United States.
The story is often used as acautionary tale to keep children
(15:45):
away from water and to helpenforce water safety, which is
never a bad thing.
But can you tell us a bit aboutyour experiences with this
legend, growing up in Texas?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yes, so I was recently on the Susto podcast
where we were talking about LaLlorona and she's kind of the
rock star of Mexican, of likethe folklore from when we were
kids kids, because she is likethe prevailing one, the one that
is very visual, iconic.
We see her in a lot of legendsand stories and everybody knows
about her, but she was alwaysused to warn us against water.
That was always the key.
The most common version that Iheard when I was a kid was that
(16:16):
la llorona was a beautiful womanpursued by a man, but she had
two children from a previousmarriage and this man didn't
want to marry her because shehad two kids, so she decided to
kill them, she drowned them in acreek and then she returns to
the man saying, you know, hopingthat they can be together, but
of course he was horrified bywhat she'd done and cast her
aside.
(16:36):
She then realizes, like thefull horror of what she's done,
and is cursed to wander thewaterways of Texas for eternity
looking for her dead children.
But also any children will do so.
That's why it was you know,stay away from the water La
Llorona is going to get you.
That was the the.
The fear was like you know theydescribe what she looks like
long, dark hair, wearing white.
(16:58):
She's wandering along thecreeks and if she finds you,
she'll grab you and take youwith her, because she's looking
for any kid and that really didhelp.
In Texas there are a lot oflittle creeks and waterways that
you can kind of slip into, soit makes total sense just to
like put that in the heads ofkids to keep them away.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Is that something that your parents actually would
tell you?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, so it was a parent's family, like raised by
a village generally.
So you're at gatherings with alot of like uncles, aunts,
grandparents and everybody justsays that just in general.
Like plants the seed, so kidskind of keep each other in check
and don't wander too far.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
And do you remember actually like living in fear of
her.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah.
So generally it was like whenyou're you can, the feeling you
get as a kid of like wanderingtoo far, where you're like, wait
, I'm a little too far away, I'mon my own that kind of like
feeling of like this is a littlebit of danger.
I think it's a very primalinstinct that is kind of natural
, like as a child you were alittle bit helpless.
The instinct is I should be,I'm safer with everyone else.
(17:59):
So I think that feeling justlike heightens.
Like if you've already had thatstory in your head and you have
a visual of what you should beafraid of, that you kind of
equate the two things.
You think, oh no, she'ssomebody's watching me, there's
somebody there.
So I remember that being scary.
So you kind of put that in yourhead.
But also if you've been outsidein the middle of nowhere Texas I
mean middle of nowhere really,but in middle of nowhere Texas
(18:22):
sound is weird.
It's pitch black.
So you can hear things and somethings sound human.
There are screeches or screamsor wails or cries, even like a
coyote crying in the distance.
If you don't quite pick outthat it's a coyote pack pack, it
does just sound like a whalefrom a distance and it carries
through the trees and stuff.
(18:42):
So if you have that in yourhead, that there's like a
screeching, wailing person outthere, you can already say, okay
, I heard, I heard her, I'veseen her, I've heard her.
Um, so, yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I love that.
That's so.
I love it.
It's so cool and haunting andit makes total sense.
So we wanted to try to like diga little bit deeper to
understand some of the roots ofthis legend, which I think is
going to be one of those thingsthat's impossible to pin down.
But one real lead here islooking back at ancient Aztec
mythology.
(19:12):
So there's some speculationthat this folklore started with
what's known as the hungry womanmythology from the Aztec people
.
And there's some speculationthat this folklore started with
what's known as the hungry womanmythology from the Aztec people
.
And there's some similaritiesbetween La Llorona and Siwa
Kodal, or also known as KeylastLee.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So Siwa Kodal was an Aztec fertility goddess, one of
many, yeah and I mean this isvery interesting to me because
La Llorona was always just kindof like folklore that they told
to us and I just thought kind ofsprung up amongst you know just
stories of people.
I thought it was a very modernstory.
So the idea that when I wasresearching things in the
legends of the city of Mexico,they have footnotes in there
(19:47):
that reference the story andthey were saying that yes,
there's this Aztec goddess thatpotentially could have been the
original inspiration for some ofthis and it just carried as
people from the area regionmoved into other parts of North
America, south America, theykind of took that story and
changed it with them.
But in that story theymentioned that the Aztec goddess
Iwakodl was said to be dressedin white, bearing on her
(20:09):
shoulder a little cradle, asthough she were carrying a child
, and she could be heard sobbingand shrieking and that sound
was considered a bad omen.
So if you were out too late oryou were out in the area and you
heard that's that wailing womanor you saw her, even it was
considered bad you would die.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It would bring with it bad, bad, bad omens which is
so interesting because there'sso many similar through lines
there.
Right, there's obviously thesound and the shrieking being
the bad omen and the associationwith the cry.
It's just being dressed inwhite, right, so it's.
It's fascinating to kind oflike make the leap, and of
course it is making somewhat ofa leap Right.
It's so impossible to actuallytrace these things back, but I
(20:49):
would say it's a pretty strongcase Right that there's yeah,
there's like scenes there.
Yeah Seats, yeah, exactly, yeah,seats, yeah, exactly, okay.
So I first became aware of ofthis legend with a very
controversial film, I would say,called the Curse of La Llorona,
which is part of the Conjuringuniverse.
It came out in 2019 and it wasproduced by James Wan, alan and
(21:09):
I watched it.
Actually, if anyone listeningis a Patreon, there's an old
Patreon horror movie club whichis a Patreon exclusive podcast
that we do every month where wewatch this film and we talked
about it.
I think we actually, to betotally candid, like ripped it
apart.
We thought it was not a greatfilm.
It totally like is a film aboutwhite people, like it just was
(21:31):
like such a missed opportunity,we think and I'll let you talk a
little bit about that as wellbut I was grateful that the film
introduced us to this, becausethis was the first time I really
became aware of this legend.
But beyond that, I thought itwas kind of a failure of an
execution.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So true, I mean, I distinctly remember when this
movie came out how excited mycommunity back home was for this
.
Like for the first time we'reseeing you know, everybody's
seeing ghosts and spirits andAnnabelle and talking doll and
all kinds of like the exorcist.
You've seen a lot of like these, these iconic horror movies on
camera, but for the first timeyou were getting a very uh,
(22:07):
south Texas, uh, mexicanAmerican folklore story of La
Llorona, the key, the rock star,the one we all know, um, so we
were so excited Like everyonewas lining up to go.
I got my tickets.
Have you seen it?
Oh, my goodness, this is goingto be great and truthfully, they
even.
I don't know if you remembersome early trailers, but some of
the early trailers even showlike it's really just showing
the kids interacting with thespirit and you know there's
(22:28):
going to be jump scares.
You know it's going to be alittle B-horror movie, but it
was like for the first time wewere seeing in person.
What they don't show is that thesinner is an entire story on a
white character.
Essentially it's a white woman,she's married to a Hispanic man
and essentially, like in thevery first five seconds, they're
like oh, he's dead and it's mystory.
(22:48):
You're like, wait what?
And then her two children.
And you're like, ok, I guessMaybe we're going into, but
because it centers the storythere, it means that you're
approaching all of the legendsas an outside observer.
You're like what is la llorona?
Please tell me more.
What is mexican folklore?
So there was so much of justlike, kind of like there was
(23:09):
definitely like a glass wallbetween you and the stories and
the other people who wereexperiencing things.
Um, plus, you had, uh, patriciavelasquez, who's's a Venezuelan
actress who plays Anaxuna Moonin the Mummy, which everybody
knows.
But she is a fantastic actressand they have her in there as
like a total side character.
And I was like you're tellingme this whole movie could have
been centered over.
You know, it could have hadgreat characters and they just
(23:31):
kind of didn't center it.
One of the things that it alsodoes in the movie is it others,
the practice of curanderismo,which is, uh, you know,
curanderos, curanderas, whichare like kind of like mexican
folk, natural healers.
Um, there's a whole practice ofthis that exists in the
community.
People have done this forgenerations and centuries and it
makes it such an other thinglike oh, light some sage and
(23:52):
bring it around your house andit'll help cure the spirits.
It really takes kind of.
It puts all of this greatfolklore and mysticism and
mythology in the back seat tolike a very probably what you
guys ripped apart was a veryfamiliar kind of jump scare,
yeah, uh like, like, likeformulaic scary movie.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
so I wished, I wished it did more um, but it was a
great start to what could be abig universe yes, yes, exactly,
and I also just think that wholeuniverse, like the Conjuring
universe in general, like jumpedthe shark long before this film
joined its, yeah, yeah, it'sright.
So I I hope that there's.
There's some other films we'regoing to talk through, but I
also hope that there's maybeanother big blockbuster version
(24:33):
of this on the horizon, becauseI I think that, where everyone
is owed, that, yes, so the firsttime that the Weeping Woman
appeared on film that I couldfind was a 1933 Mexican film
called La Llorona and it wasdirected by Ramon Pion, and this
was actually the first Mexicanhorror film with sound, which I
(24:54):
think is really cool.
That's amazing.
Yeah, also David Lynch's film,very famous film Mahal and Drive
from 2001,.
Explores this legend which Itotally forgot about and didn't
kind of clock until I wasresearching this.
So Rebecca Del Rio plays therole of La Llorona de Los
Angeles and she's a singer andshe performs a Spanish version
(25:15):
of Crying by Roy Orbison, andshe's a singer and she performs
a Spanish version of Crying byRoy Orbison, and you can see
kind of through the lines rightthat her performance here causes
anyone who hears you know herto suffer the consequences, and
so, even though maybe it's alittle bit of a subtle reference
, obviously he's pulling on thislegend quite directly.
There's also a Mexican horrorfilm from 2008 called Kilometer
(25:36):
31, which was heavily influencedby this mythology and the film
was the highest performing inthe Mexican box office the
weekend that it was released,which I just think is say people
are hungry for this kind of astory.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I think, I think people people really crave this,
they want it and I think oncewe get more diversity all
through the layers of filmproduction is when you'll start
to see more stories centered onthe legend and the people and
the people who brought thelegend through the generations.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So there's actually six otherlow-budget films, I think,
mostly from the early 2000s, tomention the River, the Legend of
La Llorona the Whaler, a filmjust called La Llorona, the
Curse of La Llorona and theRevenge of La Llorona.
So lots to explore if anyonewants to kind of dive deeply and
see the different iterations ofthis mythology and film, film
(26:28):
Coco from 2017, which includes asong called La Llorona, which
was actually first popularizedin the 1940s by Andres
Henestrosa.
Yes, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I'm so glad you shouted out Coco.
It's my favorite Pixar movie.
It's beautiful, it's amazing.
I watch it every Dia de losMuertos season and it makes me
cry every time because it's likeso many of the characters, even
the way they're drawn andportrayed, look like my family
members and I just love it.
And then the story ofremembrance, the story of
sharing stories, like all ofthose things are just things I
(27:05):
carry with me on a regular basis, so I cry every time.
So I had no idea.
There was a song in therecalled La Llorona, which now I
have to go back and find andthink about and hear and listen,
listen to the words of, becauseit has such fantastic songs and
music throughout.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, it's just such a beautiful film and, yeah, I
was very excited to see that.
I also did not pick up on thatwhen I watched it the first time
, of course, so I'm excited towatch it again.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It inspired my.
I built an ofrenda this year,so now I have an official altar
with all the pictures and thecolors and all the things.
Yeah, there is a.
Also, for those of you whodon't know, there's a special
like pet day of the dead.
So October 27th is the year isthe day that they say our pets
come back to us in dreams.
So anyone out there who wantsto celebrate you are more than
welcome to build your own littleofrenda to your past family and
(27:52):
do a little research on Dia delos Muertos and learn and see
how you can apply it to you thisholiday season.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And do a little research on Dia de los Muertos
and learn and see how you canapply it to you this holiday
season.
I love that so much.
I did not know that.
So October 27th, that's goingto be a very special day, I
think, for a lot of people.
I love that, in addition to theConjuring Universe film from
2019, there's another filmcalled, again just La Llorona.
This was a Guatemalan filmwhich screened at the Toronto
International Film Festival thatyear, which I think is really
(28:18):
cool, and I'm really interestedto watch that film Because
Toronto is, for anyone whodoesn't know, like one of the
top five film festivals in theworld, so it really typically
centers a lot on, likenon-American films.
So I'm very, very curious towatch that and I bet it's
fantastic.
And finally, in 2022, a filmcalled the Legend of La Llorona
(28:40):
starring Danny Trejo, wasreleased, and the Legend also
appears in many novels and otherforms of art and, of course,
it's penetrated across all thedifferent types of media, but
notably it's referenced in NancyFarmer's 2002 novel, the House
of the Scorpion, and in RodolfoAnaya's novel Bless Me, ultima.
So those are some books tocheck out if anyone is more in
(29:01):
the mood to read versus watchfilms.
And then, finally, it's alsobeen used in the television
series Grimm Riverdale andSupernatural.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I did not know that.
I want to go check.
I want to go check out justthose episodes, the Monster of
the Week episodes.
I hope she's in there.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, I think that those are like good series
because they're almost likeanthology series in a way.
So if you're looking for acertain thing, you can just
watch that one series and youdon't need to worry about the
ongoing drama of the maincharacters.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I don't need to know Riverdale drama from like no,
never.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Anastasia also suggested this legend and kind
of some of our pre-conversations, and I was so intrigued that I
wanted to fit it in as well,because I had never heard of
this and it was really, reallycool.
So we're going to talk a littlebit about the history of La
Lechuza, or the Owl Witch.
La Lechuza is similar in thatit's folklore from a similar
region as La Llorona, mexico andthe United States and Texas,
(29:55):
and it's also similar because itcenters around revenge and
children.
The legend tends to take theform of a story about a man
walking alone at night whoencounters glowing eyes and the
rustling of wings from a nearbytree.
So I'm going to quote from theTexas Standard article.
Quote there are many versions ofLa La Chuza, but in all of them
(30:15):
she begins as a woman who hasbeen wronged.
According to RachelGonzalez-Martin, a professor of
Mexican-American studies at UTAustin who specializes in
folklore, la La Chuza lived onthe far end of a small town,
which people normally classifyas somewhere in the desert area
in northern Mexico.
She lived alone and that madetownspeople suspicious of her.
(30:37):
She said One season, a smallchild, a little boy, goes
missing from the town and no oneis able to find him.
End quote.
In this version of the story,the woman is accused of being a
witch responsible for the boy'sdisappearance.
For revenge, she makes a dealwith the devil to come back as a
shape-shifting owl woman.
End quote, which is also justvery badass and cool.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, this to me is super interesting to hear
because I've only actually everheard I've never heard this
version before like I've neverheard her backstory.
But it's very in line with alot of these familiar fears that
appear in folklore, likemissing children, danger beyond
the edge of town, and then, ofcourse, familiar stereotypes of
women who live alone are somehowlike evil in some way and then
(31:21):
being accused of witchcraft,like if a woman just wants to
hang out on her own and practiceand make some potions or, you
know, have a great garden, she'dbe considered a witch in some
way.
So this story very much playson a lot of those familiar
themes that I see throughfolklore.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, yeah absolutely .
And it's so interesting thatall of those themes seem to
penetrate like folklore in everydifferent region of the globe.
Like in every region of theglobe, women with gardens are
witches, like it really doesn'tmatter.
And people will go to them forhealing properties and then also
, like, condemn them.
You know, it's just, it's auniversal truth.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Universal man.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So Lollachuza became a cautionary tale meant to scare
children into beingwell-behaved and home on time,
otherwise Lollachuza would findthem, I guess, kind of similar
to how La Llorona operates aswell, right?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Some of the more haunting reports that I've read
about Lollachuza encountersinclude people who claim to have
heard what sounded like aperson imitating an owl or a
bird, and that, to me, is socreepy Like the idea of, like
you and your brain, it soundslike an owl, but you and your
brain are like wait, thatsounded like a human, making it
sound like an owl, like all ofthose things just sound
(32:31):
terrifying to me.
I mentioned it earlier that whenyou're like kind of out and
alone in the woods, your earswill play tricks on you and they
convince yourself that you'veheard all kinds of things, that
that, that, that owl might havebeen a woman or that person
might have been an owl.
And then there are so manysounds If you're not familiar
those of us who live in citiesor don't spend time alone in the
woods for hours at a time thereare so many animals out there
(32:52):
that sound human, like screeches, mountain lions, even just like
general, like birds, can make,can imitate sounds that sound
very familiar to us.
So there are just so manythings that we don't know and
the woods is full of it.
That's what makes it scary.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
One of my favorite childhoodstories is there was a night me
and my sister camped in ourbackyard, just we were like in a
tent and we were little, andthey had released fisher cats
into my home state to likecontrol the deer population for
some reason, I think, becauselike deer ticks, it was some,
something was happening.
But fisher cats sound likewomen, screaming like a bloody
(33:28):
murder.
And there was in the middle ofthe night like one on either
side of the tent and my parentswere like how do we get our
daughters out of this tent alive?
But I remember growing up theseblood-curdling screams that
just sound like a woman is beingkilled in the worst way and
it's fisher cats just outsideyour house.
And it's wild.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Terrifying, terrifying, yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So La La Chuza is specifically known for targeting
men, especially men who arealone, walking at night and
usually drunk, which issomething that came up in almost
all of the examples that Ifound online.
According to Gonzalez-Martin,who we quoted earlier, the
legend has evolved a bit from astory about someone different
and othered to a revenge storyfor women who have been wronged,
(34:11):
which I think is reallyinteresting, and I totally can
see that kind of naturalevolution.
And, either way, the legendgives power to women and power
to people who have been otheredin general, which I think is an
incredibly powerful mechanic.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think folklore steps in to kind of solve and
provide language for, andstories for, morals and things
we need to learn and teach eachother.
I think they've passed throughthe generations in that way.
We kind of form them to what weneed to know or what we need to
teach someone, and I could seehow that definitely changed and
moved around In my childhood.
La La Chusa was always a witch,always a woman with the power
(34:46):
to transform into an owl, whichis always just cool Like the
idea that a woman just has thiscool power like where do you get
it?
I would like one.
And she was always.
And the owl was a scary,powerful creature that could
swoop down and snatch you up inher talons, so she would grab
you on the shoulders and liftyou up and take you with her.
Truthfully, for us it was usedsimilar to La Llorona, warning
(35:06):
you away from creeks and riversand waterways.
La Luchisa was used to warn usaway from barns, abandoned
houses in the woods, all byherself.
So it was like she had.
She lived in these spaces.
Anytime you're driving past oneor anytime you were near one,
it was like ooh, a lot of theshoes is in there, don't walk in
there, don't go in there, she'sgoing to get you, and then
they'd grab you on the shoulderslike she'd be taking you away.
(35:28):
So it was truly fun, but madesense to me that that's the way
that culture, my culture, mycommunity used it to kind of
like warn us away from thosespaces.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Are there other things like this that you were
told growing up, and are do theymostly center women?
I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
No, we heard El Kukui .
El Kukui was essentially theboogeyman.
El Kukui was a I guess would bejust an entity that warned us
away from the dark.
So if you were trying to getoutside at night or you were
trying to do something thatyou're going away over there
where there's no lights and theycan't see you, it just warned
you away from the dark.
Not all women, but there isprobably.
The ones that stuck with mepersonally, as a woman, were the
(36:07):
ones about women and thestories about powerful women, or
powerful women beings, even ifthey were in the negative you
know, she's going to get you,she's going to eat you, she's
going to eat you, she's going tokill you, like.
That was interesting to mebecause it was the idea of
giving these entities power inthat way.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that.
So we are all very blessedbecause we are about to hear a
little excerpt from one ofAnastasia's amazing, haunting,
incredible stories.
So, again, this is a story fromGhostly, ghastly Tales.
It's called Don't Cry, andmaybe you'll tell us a little
bit about it before we get intoit.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, so this is one of the stories in the collection
.
Two brothers are abandoned onthe side of the road and they're
lured to the water's edge by acrying woman.
I'll help set the scene andI'll read kind of a short
snippet from us of the coolestpart.
So in this story Mateo andArturo are traveling down the
long back roads of Texas withtheir uncle Manny.
They wake up to find theiruncle is missing from the car
and they are parked on the sideof an abandoned road near a
(37:04):
creek.
This is a very familiarlocation for me, being being
from Texas, and so I love theidea that this is where they
kind of sit.
And it's a little scary becauseevery little kid sitting in the
backseat of a car can see thisin Texas.
The eldest brother, Arturo,gets out to look for his uncle,
but he never returns, and nowMateo is forced to investigate
himself.
So this is where we are.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Amazing, amazing.
Okay, take it away.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Mateo is a little afraid to get out of the car,
but he's also afraid to be aloneany longer.
Just as he unbuckles hisseatbelt he sees something, or
maybe someone, through the tallbrush and the crooked trees.
It looks like someone in allwhite walking along the creek.
He blinks and the figure isgone.
Maybe it was never there.
As soon as he's out of the carhe breathes in deep the smell of
cool, sweet air.
It smells like it does justbefore a rainstorm.
With a car behind him, mateochecks for his brother, arturo.
(37:54):
He climbs over the barbed wirefence and hops down into a bed
of knee-high grass.
He shuffles through noisily todeter any snakes hiding in the
brush.
He's not as brave as his olderbrother, but he is more careful.
Mateo approaches the creek'sedge Down the embankment.
A creek is swollen, withrainwater lazily coursing
through the soft-flowing current.
There's nothing in eitherdirection.
(38:15):
Then he hears the sound thatArthurow went to investigate.
It sounds like a woman crying.
Her whimpers turn to low moansand then sniffles.
The sound raises goosebumps onhis skin.
It's not right, it's out ofplace.
Suddenly, an unwelcome thoughtrushes in.
Mateo remembers a story hiscousin told him when they stood
around a bonfire in the backyard, the one about the wailing
(38:38):
woman, the one who cries, wholives near water.
It's why no one is supposed toplay by water alone.
She's down there, she cries forher missing children.
She's doomed to float along thecreeks, the rivers, the lakes
looking for her children.
And when she finds you, mateoshudders and tries to shake the
thought from his mind.
But the sound of the wailinggrows.
(39:00):
And then a figure in the water.
Mateo chills as if a bucket ofice water rushes down his back.
It's a woman with long, darkhair hair wearing a white dress.
She's hunched over something.
Her shoulders shake from hercrying, her sobbing, her
mournful moans help us.
She whispers, tears streamingdown her face.
She glides through the watertowards mateo, her long fingers
(39:22):
with blacking fingertipsreaching please got you.
She hisses, her clawed nailsbearing deep into his forearm
what a treat.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's so good, it's so creepy.
I really, really hope thateverybody checked out this book
and I should also just say, ontop of the content being 10 out
of 10, the design of the book isso beautiful.
It glows in the dark, it's sofun and beautiful and I would
say I don't know if you wouldagree, maybe I'm a bad influence
I would say it's great for kidsespecially kids of a certain
(39:52):
age because it's beautiful, it'sfun and it gives you like a
scary meter, which I find to bevery helpful, so you you kind of
know before you get into it,like which stories might be more
or less palatable for kidsdepending on their age.
But I love it, it's sobeautiful and heavy and
hardcover and I really, reallyhope that everyone checks it out
(40:12):
.
Thank you for sharing that.
That was so great yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So the book itself.
We to me, all the books forkids used to be designed in like
that goose, bumpy, likenewspaper-y feel where it was
kind of.
You know you scrunch it up inyour backpack and you lose it.
But this book, they spent a lotof time making it like
hardcover, a little bit morepremium, a little bit more
giftable, so you could give itto your friend, you could share
it, you could gift it and, yes,it's glow in the dark hardcover.
(40:35):
All designed by this fantasticartist, teo Scaffa, and he also
did 22 full color illustrationsinside the book with, like, some
little call outs and snippets.
They did a great job designingit to look neat, like you want
to keep it and go through it.
And, yes, the fright meters.
I, I rated each story one tothree.
So kids, maybe kids who arereally into scary stuff, go
straight for the threes.
Maybe kids who are just dippinga toe into scary things will
(40:57):
start with the ones and grow.
Um, I'll say that my rating isapparently super controversial
because some kids are like theones were terrifying and the
threes were not scary at all.
So, um, but it was truly, trulya fun, fun activity to find.
And then the book also has.
For each story there's a smallfootnote like a narrator kind of
giving you a little bit of thathorror history which I think
(41:20):
your fans will enjoy.
And then in the back there'salso I dove a little bit into
like the folklore and kind of,where I found stories and I
included a little bibliography.
So hopefully little academic,creepy kids will want to go
through and read some of theseoriginal folktales.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I think so, and I've actually gifted a few to like
spooky kids in my life andthey've been, they've gone over
so well and we so Alan and Iactually have kind of a
tradition of exchanging gifts onHalloween, as opposed to.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
We do.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
That's adorable but I've kind of been thinking of
like, okay, what kids in my lifecan I also give this to, kind
of like as a Halloween gift?
And it's it's just a beautifullike coffee table book too.
In addition to kind of being afun interactive gift for kids,
it's just beautiful to have out.
Yeah, it's, it's that's reallycool to see kind of how it came
to life visually for you.
(42:09):
And I just have to say, ofcourse, like our podcast is all
about the history of horror andI appreciate so much that those
footnotes where it kind of callsout the legends and I've been
learning so much stuff I want togo research and look into, and
so I think that's a really coolelement of it that you very,
very rarely see in likeanthology horror books.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I was speaking fully to those little kids like
me.
I was speaking fully to myselfas a kid who used to sit at the
library and read every book onthe occult and the supernatural
and the mysteries of theunexplained, and I hope that
there are kids out there stillto this day who do the same, who
like a library research scenein a movie and or book, and
hopefully this will be a part ofthat.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, I know there are.
I know that there are.
Thank you so much for coming onand talking to us about La
Llorona, and this is exactlywhat we do, right, we trace
modern horror back to its roots,and so it feels so fitting to
have you on, finally, and totalk about your collection of
short stories and then kind oftaking one of those and tracing
it back to your roots, right,and it feels very perfectly what
(43:10):
this podcast is about.
So I'm very grateful that youjoined us today and I just want
to kind of close out with alittle bit on the folklore here.
So there are many similarities,obviously, between the legend of
La Llorona and La Luchusa.
Both involve a woman, wrongedusually, and revenge.
It's so interesting to me totrace these stories back to
(43:33):
their roots, kind of as far aswe can and generally
directionally right there'sobviously people out there far,
far better suited for thisresearch than I am that are
doing that too but to try tokind of understand the mythology
that has evolved over the yearsand perhaps in this case even
from ancient Aztec belief tomodern day urban legend.
So we're just so thrilled thatyou came on to kind of talk
(43:53):
about this and to teach ussomething new, to bring us into
kind of your culture a littlebit, and we hope that there'll
be more collaborations for us inthe future.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yes, well, thank you so much I mean shout out to
Lunatics Radio at our podcastfor being what I consider fully
academic in your approach tohorror history and researching
and sharing all of these spookytales that we all love so much.
You treat each of our scarystories and like these things
that are silly but fun butserious but engaging, with such
respect and dedication to theart and the form.
(44:24):
So I mean thank you for keepingall of these stories alive for
the next generation, for us topass on as we continue.
So thank you for all the workthat you all do to keep this
going.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Thank you, thank you.
That's very kind of you.
Thank you so much, and I hopethat you really do consider
getting yourself a copy ofGhostly Ghastly Tales.
I'm going to link everythingthat you need to do that in the
description of this podcast andon social media, but please
follow Anastasia on Instagram atAnastasia Writes.
We'll leave that below and youcan check out the book's website
(44:56):
, ghostlygastlytalescom, topurchase the book and kind of to
learn more about it.
So we'll make it very, veryeasy for you.
But I could not recommend yourwork more, and we didn't even
say that your work has also beenfeatured on this podcast before
.
So you've been part of thelunatics community for a very
long time and it's long overduethat we sat down and had a chat.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yes, well thank you so much for having me on.
Yes, I hope to continue to beone of your fans from afar, just
wishing you and the podcast somuch luck and all the fans out
there Stay tuned to hear morefrom this wonderful group of
people and all the things thatthey're doing to research and
share stories with our community.
So, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Amazing.
Thank you.
Talk to you soon you.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I am Abbey Branker and I am sobeyond thrilled to be sitting
here with a very longtimeinternet friend, anastasia
Garcia, and this is the firsttime that we are actually
face-to-face with each otherafter so long, and we're so
thrilled to finally becollaborating on a project
(00:40):
project.
But Anastasia is here to talkabout the folklore of La Llorona
and how she translated thatmythology and many other very,
very interesting mythologiesinto her new book Ghostly
Ghastly Tales.
Welcome, we're so happy to haveyou here, hi so great to see
you, abby.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
We've been internet friends from afar for so long.
I love anything and everythingthat Abby does and I'm just here
to support her, so I'm so gladto be in the room finally
talking about a shared project.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yay, yes, okay.
So, before anything else, tellus a little bit about Ghostly
Ghastly Tales.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, so this is my very first book.
I've written horror in the pastshort stories and longer form
fiction and this is my firstpublished book.
It is a collection of shorthorror stories for young readers
.
This is ages 8 through 12.
It's based on folklore fromaround the world, and one of
those short stories is inspiredby La Llorona, which is what I
(01:34):
think we're going to be chattingthrough today.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, yay, and can I ask you a little bit about your
process as one horror writer toanother?
Like how did you tackle theresearch of the mythology that
kind of inspired the stories andcombining that with, like your
modern twist on these tales?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
yeah, so I did quite a lot of researching, um,
original like kind of uh,secondary sources, so folks who
had collected folklore andwritten them down so that I
could kind of read them throughthe ages.
Truthfully, a lot of the horrorshort stories that we liked when
we were little like ScaryStories to Tell in the Dark
Short and Shivery all of thosestories had footnotes in the
back of their books.
So I started there with likethe original kind of books that
(02:14):
they referenced to inspire thosestories that I read as a kid.
And I just collected abookshelf worth of folklore
books, started reading andwriting and as I found a story
that scared me to this day, Iwas like this is a story that
has something in it that pullsthrough the generations that's
still scary to this day.
Those are the ones I kind ofbookmarked and wrote down and
(02:34):
thought about.
And then I took some of thoseand just like kind of elaborated
them for what I think kids aremore scared of today, what
scares me today.
So taking those as kind of thefoundational nuggets and then
building stories on top of that.
So that's how I started.
So it was a lot of research andfinding those scary things that
still persist to this day.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Wow, that's amazing.
Okay, and this is going to belike a really obnoxious question
, but do you have like afavorite story, like when people
buy the book, which I'm surethey will all go by after
listening to this, like whereshould they go first?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I think so.
One of my favorites isSomething's Wrong With Mother.
That one, to me, is one of thescariest.
It's based on this like100-year-old Victorian short
story that actually inspired theother mother from Coraline,
which I'm sure fans on thispodcast understand, and so I
loved.
The concept that somethingthat's very familiar to you kind
(03:25):
of takes a sinister turn isvery scary.
So in this story something'swrong with mother.
A girl misbehaves and hermother leaves for a business
trip and returns slightlydifferent, and I'll leave it at
that.
But to me that's like thescariest thing.
The scariest thing is somethingthat seems familiar is actually
dangerous and terrifying.
So love that one.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Even just you saying that sort of like gave me chills
.
It's such a like someone youshould know and be able to like
love and trust, but you knowthat something's wrong about it
is such a gripping horror story.
Yeah, okay, so we do.
When we have guests on thispodcast, we have some cringy
icebreakers that we askeverybody, so forgive us in
advance, but the first thing Ialways ask people is what are
(04:08):
your favorite horror films, justso the audience can get a sense
of kind of the lens that youlook at horror through.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, fantastic question, always great.
So for me, my favorite scarymovie is the Thing from 1982.
Obviously, as horror fans outthere know, it's the practical
effects of this movie that wereoutstanding and to this day are
very terrifying to me, like theidea of spider legs coming out
of a little head that runsaround the, the, the mutating
gross like feel body horror ofthis mutating kind of alien
(04:38):
effect.
As everyone knows, the thingset in Antarctica at a little
art expedition and the isolationhorror is terrifying about this
too, the idea that you can'trun out and just like run away.
The characters in this movieare all scientists, so they do
what you want them to do theytest blood, they try to kill it
with fire, they isolate peoplethat are acting strange, they
(04:59):
tie people to couches that arebeing violent and belligerent,
like they do everything you want, but they're still like, still
mounting.
Chaos ensues by the end andthen it still ends on an
ambiguous ending.
You don't know, did theyvanquish the alien?
Are they safe?
You know, is that person whoyou think they are Like?
I love that element.
So to me it was a very simpleconcept, perfectly executed in
(05:22):
true horror fashion.
And then I'll give you a numbertwo, which to me is like kind
of a personal aside, was kind ofleads to the book, which is
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
I actually like the remakebecause I thought they did such
a fantastic job like amping upthe gore.
But being from Texas, the TexasChainsaw Massacre was one of
the first movies I saw thatreally felt real, like I'd seen
(05:43):
this gas station.
I know these people.
I've been like the landscape tolook real.
The driving down these longcountry roads felt very real.
So for me this is the firsttime like wait a minute, this
isn't just scary stuff I can seein a movie that's set somewhere
mysterious and fictional.
This can be in my backyard andthat was scary yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, I've actually never thought about the people
who grew up in Texas watchingthe Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
like how that would influence orimpact your feeling about that
movie of like, because Iunderstand that I grew up in
this in New England, essentially, but a place in New England
where there's a lot of, like,very dark history and I'm
(06:22):
actually researching a big topicthat will come out right before
this episode that is like takeslike all of the history takes
place like in my backyard when Igrew up, and so it's this weird
feeling, but I I can totallyrelate to that and I never
thought about the impact of thatwith that movie.
That's such a good point.
Yes, so true, love it.
Oh, wow, okay, so that thoseare pretty hardcore horror films
(06:42):
.
I love that.
That's.
That's great.
And then my favorite questionhave you ever had a paranormal
or unexplained experience of anykind?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yes, so I have two.
I think that I can.
I'll just do really quickly.
One is so in an old family homethat I lived in when I was a
baby so not me personally, butlike my family and the lore kind
of carried through like mywhole life.
We lived in this very tinylittle house in the middle of
country Texas.
It had been there for quite along time and they've kind of
(07:10):
rebuilt it and made it nice, butthere were.
Every person in my family has astory about this house and some
terrifying element of it.
One of them the most common isthat everyone would hear cowboy
boots on the hardwood floor.
So there's a very distinctsound of heavy boots walking
through the house and everyoneheard it and to the point where
(07:31):
they think it was real, like, oh, somebody's coming in the door,
somebody's wearing boots andthey're walking in the door Like
everybody would react to it sonaturally and then realize
there's no one in the house.
So the persistence of thisthrough time was very key.
And then also people heard itwhere they were like oh, I'm
staying over the night and I wassleeping on the couch, heard
someone walk behind me withtheir boots on, woke up and was
(07:51):
like, started talking to it andthere was no one there.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So just oh, that's so scary.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Terrifying, like the idea that there was someone here
.
And, truthfully, when they wereclearing out the brush around
this house, they found an oldtombstone like an old grave and
they were like, oh well, here itis.
So you clean it up, you tidy itup and you just say sorry for
intruding ghost, you just stillmake it your home.
And then so many other thingsdishes, rattling doorknobs
(08:15):
rattling.
People would see it, the doorwould shake in its frame and it
was never malevolent, but it wasdefinitely making itself known.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, so family home.
No wonder you grew up to be ahorror writer, right?
Yeah, no wonder.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So everyone had stories in that house for sure.
And then the one that inspiredme to actually write a story in
this book is there's a story inthis book called Drums of War,
which is where a girl visits aghostly battle site and
experiences kind of like a timeslip where she kind of maybe
falls back in time.
And so that was actuallyinspired by a real experience I
had visiting a battle site inTexas.
(08:52):
So Texas is well known forMexican-American War, the Texas
Revolution, a lot of battles,civil War.
There's a lot of battles thatwere taking place in the area of
Texas, and so we went on fieldtrips all the time to the near
the battlefield near you.
And so one time I was visitingwith a cousin of mine and we
strayed from the group.
Everyone was loading up ontobuses.
(09:12):
We strayed from the group andwe're kind of wandering around
this playground area and for amoment all the sound slipped out
and everything went way downand it was like you couldn't
hear the kids anymore, youcouldn't hear the wind in the
trees.
It went super quiet and theboth of us looked at each other
in that moment like something iswrong and we can all feel it.
We looked around us and therewere birds.
(09:32):
Black birds filled, uh, thetrees around this battle site,
but there was no sound, nocalling, no bird feathers, no
rustling, and we were likesomething is going on.
So the two of us looked at eachother and, very slowly, you
could hear the sound offootsteps in the grass,
footsteps, footsteps, footsteps,more and more and more, and it
(09:54):
sounded like we were surroundedby people walking in the grass.
We couldn't see anybody, so weboth got scared, jetted back to
the bus, pretended we didn'thear anything.
Nothing happened.
Everything was fine, but tothis day, terrifying to me.
I don't know what it was, um,but the that.
That moment will always stickwith me what a story, oh my gosh
.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, that's like so vivid and it's so interesting
because I've actually my mom hada somewhat similar experience
at this New England like ghosttown called Dudley Town that
like her and her father and herbrother went to, and there was
weird things that happened.
Had somewhat similar experienceat this new england like ghost
town called dudley town thatlike her and her father and her
brother went to, and there wasweird things that happened.
But one of the things is mygrandfather was a forest ranger
and so they were in the middleof the woods and suddenly, like
(10:35):
it was silent, like there wasbirds, like, but there was
nothing.
And and he like wasparticularly suited to to be
aware of that, because that washis like whole job.
But the added elements of thenhearing like the footsteps or
the approaching entity orwhatever it was, seems so
intense to me.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
That's wow, okay, that's very intriguing and and
to us it may, because we werelike all spent all day talking
about it, but the idea of therebeing like multiple, like lots,
of people in the forest, likecoming out of the woods.
Have you seen?
Uh, lovely, dark and deep.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The movie no, I haven't oh it's.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It's a uh very, it just came out last year, I think
.
Uh, she's a forest ranger.
She lives out in the middle ofnowhere and there's some cosmic
horror entity.
Should definitely check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
I'm just giving myself a note right now because
I will.
That sounds very cool, okay.
One more question when you weregrowing up, were you afraid,
like how kind of aware that?
Like okay, maybe there's thingsthat exist that I'm not sure
what they are.
Did that scare you as a kid?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yes, but there was a thrill to it, a fear of like if
something.
I think there was always a linefor me like if something
happens and this ghost gets me,I will be the first recorded
case of a ghost murdering achild gets me, I will be the
first recorded case of a ghostmurdering a child, that's
hilarious.
So I was like, okay, if theydon't murder me, I can
experience it and I can writethis down.
(11:52):
So it was definitely scary butthrilling.
I think I was a little tinyparanormal investigator where I
was like I must take all theevidence and jot it down and
keep it for life.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yes, yes, I love that evidence and jot it down and
keep it for life.
Yes, yes, I love that.
Okay, so we are really excitedbecause we have come together
today to talk about the legendof La Llorona, which is a vast
and sprawling legend that variesdepending on region, and we're
going to talk about all of thatand some other folklore that's
(12:24):
kind of adjacent to that.
And you know, something that Aland I have talked about a lot
is making space on this show forlegends and folklore from other
cultures, and so we're verygrateful for you to come on and
kind of share some of yourexperiences with us on this and
and hopefully it's somethingthat you'll see a bit more next
year from Lunatics Radio Hour aswell.
But before we jump in, we havesome sources to cite.
(12:47):
So the first is actually asource that you used a lot in
the researching of your book,because you talk about this
legend in your book a bit InLegends of the City of Mexico.
The chapter is called Legend ofLa Llorona by Thomas A Hanover
and it's pages 134 to 138, sodefinitely check that out.
There's also a Library ofCongress article by folklorist
(13:08):
Stephen Winnick called LaLlorona An Introduction to the
Weeping Woman and a Spooky Talesarticle on the Owl Witch, and a
Texas Standard article by SarahAshe and Raul Alonso called La
Llorona.
Legend Serves as Both aCautionaryary tale and a story
of revenge, and I'll link all ofthese sources as well in the
description so that you guys cancheck them out yourselves.
So La Llorona, or the cryingwoman, the whaler, is an entity
(13:33):
from Mexican folklore.
The story of the weeping womancan vary depending on region.
So, for instance, one versionof the legend goes that she
killed her children by drowningthem, and she did this because
she discovered that her husbandwas cheating on her, and so she
is believed to be most activenear bodies of water, and I
think that's something that kindof penetrates through most of
(13:54):
the different variations.
Even the sound of her wailingis incredibly powerful, and so
some believe that anyone who canhear it expect terrible fortune
and even death as a result ofher curse.
I'm going to quote from theLibrary of Congress article on
kind of the variations of thefolklore Quote sometimes La
Llorona sees you from afar andpursues you, terrifying you as
(14:18):
you flee towards your home.
Sometimes she appears riding ahorse.
Sometimes she appears in yourhorse-drawn wagon or in your car
, warning you against badbehavior before disappearing,
just like that other famousspirit, the vanishing hitchhiker
.
In some stories, an encounterwith her is fatal.
La Llorona is often closelyassociated with children.
(14:39):
In some stories, she is said towail for her own lost or dead
children.
In many of these stories, shekilled her own children when she
was alive and is doomed for heractions to be a wandering ghost
.
In other stories, she appearsmainly to women who have
children, while in still othersshe kidnaps children who are
never seen again.
(15:00):
End quote.
Regional variations exist acrossMexico, the United States,
guatemala and Venezuela.
In Guatemala, the legend goesthat a married woman becomes
pregnant from an affair and shegave birth to the child, who is
named Juan de la Cruz.
She then drowned the child tohide its existence from her
husband and as punishment she isforced to live on after death
(15:22):
and search every body of waterfor the son that she killed.
In Venezuela, the legend is abit more vague, but it's always
centered around a woman whomourns the loss of her children.
In some cases this is from herown doing, and other versions of
the story again claim that herchildren were killed by someone
else.
And in the United States.
The story is often used as acautionary tale to keep children
(15:45):
away from water and to helpenforce water safety, which is
never a bad thing.
But can you tell us a bit aboutyour experiences with this
legend, growing up in Texas?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yes, so I was recently on the Susto podcast
where we were talking about LaLlorona and she's kind of the
rock star of Mexican, of likethe folklore from when we were
kids kids, because she is likethe prevailing one, the one that
is very visual, iconic.
We see her in a lot of legendsand stories and everybody knows
about her, but she was alwaysused to warn us against water.
That was always the key.
The most common version that Iheard when I was a kid was that
(16:16):
la llorona was a beautiful womanpursued by a man, but she had
two children from a previousmarriage and this man didn't
want to marry her because shehad two kids, so she decided to
kill them, she drowned them in acreek and then she returns to
the man saying, you know, hopingthat they can be together, but
of course he was horrified bywhat she'd done and cast her
aside.
(16:36):
She then realizes, like thefull horror of what she's done,
and is cursed to wander thewaterways of Texas for eternity
looking for her dead children.
But also any children will do so.
That's why it was you know,stay away from the water La
Llorona is going to get you.
That was the the.
The fear was like you know theydescribe what she looks like
long, dark hair, wearing white.
(16:58):
She's wandering along thecreeks and if she finds you,
she'll grab you and take youwith her, because she's looking
for any kid and that really didhelp.
In Texas there are a lot oflittle creeks and waterways that
you can kind of slip into, soit makes total sense just to
like put that in the heads ofkids to keep them away.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Is that something that your parents actually would
tell you?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, so it was a parent's family, like raised by
a village generally.
So you're at gatherings with alot of like uncles, aunts,
grandparents and everybody justsays that just in general.
Like plants the seed, so kidskind of keep each other in check
and don't wander too far.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
And do you remember actually like living in fear of
her.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah.
So generally it was like whenyou're you can, the feeling you
get as a kid of like wanderingtoo far, where you're like, wait
, I'm a little too far away, I'mon my own that kind of like
feeling of like this is a littlebit of danger.
I think it's a very primalinstinct that is kind of natural
, like as a child you were alittle bit helpless.
The instinct is I should be,I'm safer with everyone else.
(17:59):
So I think that feeling justlike heightens.
Like if you've already had thatstory in your head and you have
a visual of what you should beafraid of, that you kind of
equate the two things.
You think, oh no, she'ssomebody's watching me, there's
somebody there.
So I remember that being scary.
So you kind of put that in yourhead.
But also if you've been outsidein the middle of nowhere Texas I
mean middle of nowhere really,but in middle of nowhere Texas
(18:22):
sound is weird.
It's pitch black.
So you can hear things and somethings sound human.
There are screeches or screamsor wails or cries, even like a
coyote crying in the distance.
If you don't quite pick outthat it's a coyote pack pack, it
does just sound like a whalefrom a distance and it carries
through the trees and stuff.
(18:42):
So if you have that in yourhead, that there's like a
screeching, wailing person outthere, you can already say, okay
, I heard, I heard her, I'veseen her, I've heard her.
Um, so, yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I love that.
That's so.
I love it.
It's so cool and haunting andit makes total sense.
So we wanted to try to like diga little bit deeper to
understand some of the roots ofthis legend, which I think is
going to be one of those thingsthat's impossible to pin down.
But one real lead here islooking back at ancient Aztec
mythology.
(19:12):
So there's some speculationthat this folklore started with
what's known as the hungry womanmythology from the Aztec people
.
And there's some speculationthat this folklore started with
what's known as the hungry womanmythology from the Aztec people
.
And there's some similaritiesbetween La Llorona and Siwa
Kodal, or also known as KeylastLee.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So Siwa Kodal was an Aztec fertility goddess, one of
many, yeah and I mean this isvery interesting to me because
La Llorona was always just kindof like folklore that they told
to us and I just thought kind ofsprung up amongst you know just
stories of people.
I thought it was a very modernstory.
So the idea that when I wasresearching things in the
legends of the city of Mexico,they have footnotes in there
(19:47):
that reference the story andthey were saying that yes,
there's this Aztec goddess thatpotentially could have been the
original inspiration for some ofthis and it just carried as
people from the area regionmoved into other parts of North
America, south America, theykind of took that story and
changed it with them.
But in that story theymentioned that the Aztec goddess
Iwakodl was said to be dressedin white, bearing on her
(20:09):
shoulder a little cradle, asthough she were carrying a child
, and she could be heard sobbingand shrieking and that sound
was considered a bad omen.
So if you were out too late oryou were out in the area and you
heard that's that wailing womanor you saw her, even it was
considered bad you would die.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It would bring with it bad, bad, bad omens which is
so interesting because there'sso many similar through lines
there.
Right, there's obviously thesound and the shrieking being
the bad omen and the associationwith the cry.
It's just being dressed inwhite, right, so it's.
It's fascinating to kind oflike make the leap, and of
course it is making somewhat ofa leap Right.
It's so impossible to actuallytrace these things back, but I
(20:49):
would say it's a pretty strongcase Right that there's yeah,
there's like scenes there.
Yeah Seats, yeah, exactly, yeah,seats, yeah, exactly, okay.
So I first became aware of ofthis legend with a very
controversial film, I would say,called the Curse of La Llorona,
which is part of the Conjuringuniverse.
It came out in 2019 and it wasproduced by James Wan, alan and
(21:09):
I watched it.
Actually, if anyone listeningis a Patreon, there's an old
Patreon horror movie club whichis a Patreon exclusive podcast
that we do every month where wewatch this film and we talked
about it.
I think we actually, to betotally candid, like ripped it
apart.
We thought it was not a greatfilm.
It totally like is a film aboutwhite people, like it just was
(21:31):
like such a missed opportunity,we think and I'll let you talk a
little bit about that as wellbut I was grateful that the film
introduced us to this, becausethis was the first time I really
became aware of this legend.
But beyond that, I thought itwas kind of a failure of an
execution.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So true, I mean, I distinctly remember when this
movie came out how excited mycommunity back home was for this
.
Like for the first time we'reseeing you know, everybody's
seeing ghosts and spirits andAnnabelle and talking doll and
all kinds of like the exorcist.
You've seen a lot of like these, these iconic horror movies on
camera, but for the first timeyou were getting a very uh,
(22:07):
south Texas, uh, mexicanAmerican folklore story of La
Llorona, the key, the rock star,the one we all know, um, so we
were so excited Like everyonewas lining up to go.
I got my tickets.
Have you seen it?
Oh, my goodness, this is goingto be great and truthfully, they
even.
I don't know if you remembersome early trailers, but some of
the early trailers even showlike it's really just showing
the kids interacting with thespirit and you know there's
(22:28):
going to be jump scares.
You know it's going to be alittle B-horror movie, but it
was like for the first time wewere seeing in person.
What they don't show is that thesinner is an entire story on a
white character.
Essentially it's a white woman,she's married to a Hispanic man
and essentially, like in thevery first five seconds, they're
like oh, he's dead and it's mystory.
(22:48):
You're like, wait what?
And then her two children.
And you're like, ok, I guessMaybe we're going into, but
because it centers the storythere, it means that you're
approaching all of the legendsas an outside observer.
You're like what is la llorona?
Please tell me more.
What is mexican folklore?
So there was so much of justlike, kind of like there was
(23:09):
definitely like a glass wallbetween you and the stories and
the other people who wereexperiencing things.
Um, plus, you had, uh, patriciavelasquez, who's's a Venezuelan
actress who plays Anaxuna Moonin the Mummy, which everybody
knows.
But she is a fantastic actressand they have her in there as
like a total side character.
And I was like you're tellingme this whole movie could have
been centered over.
You know, it could have hadgreat characters and they just
(23:31):
kind of didn't center it.
One of the things that it alsodoes in the movie is it others,
the practice of curanderismo,which is, uh, you know,
curanderos, curanderas, whichare like kind of like mexican
folk, natural healers.
Um, there's a whole practice ofthis that exists in the
community.
People have done this forgenerations and centuries and it
makes it such an other thinglike oh, light some sage and
(23:52):
bring it around your house andit'll help cure the spirits.
It really takes kind of.
It puts all of this greatfolklore and mysticism and
mythology in the back seat tolike a very probably what you
guys ripped apart was a veryfamiliar kind of jump scare,
yeah, uh like, like, likeformulaic scary movie.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
so I wished, I wished it did more um, but it was a
great start to what could be abig universe yes, yes, exactly,
and I also just think that wholeuniverse, like the Conjuring
universe in general, like jumpedthe shark long before this film
joined its, yeah, yeah, it'sright.
So I I hope that there's.
There's some other films we'regoing to talk through, but I
also hope that there's maybeanother big blockbuster version
(24:33):
of this on the horizon, becauseI I think that, where everyone
is owed, that, yes, so the firsttime that the Weeping Woman
appeared on film that I couldfind was a 1933 Mexican film
called La Llorona and it wasdirected by Ramon Pion, and this
was actually the first Mexicanhorror film with sound, which I
(24:54):
think is really cool.
That's amazing.
Yeah, also David Lynch's film,very famous film Mahal and Drive
from 2001,.
Explores this legend which Itotally forgot about and didn't
kind of clock until I wasresearching this.
So Rebecca Del Rio plays therole of La Llorona de Los
Angeles and she's a singer andshe performs a Spanish version
(25:15):
of Crying by Roy Orbison, andshe's a singer and she performs
a Spanish version of Crying byRoy Orbison, and you can see
kind of through the lines rightthat her performance here causes
anyone who hears you know herto suffer the consequences, and
so, even though maybe it's alittle bit of a subtle reference
, obviously he's pulling on thislegend quite directly.
There's also a Mexican horrorfilm from 2008 called Kilometer
(25:36):
31, which was heavily influencedby this mythology and the film
was the highest performing inthe Mexican box office the
weekend that it was released,which I just think is say people
are hungry for this kind of astory.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I think, I think people people really crave this,
they want it and I think oncewe get more diversity all
through the layers of filmproduction is when you'll start
to see more stories centered onthe legend and the people and
the people who brought thelegend through the generations.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So there's actually six otherlow-budget films, I think,
mostly from the early 2000s, tomention the River, the Legend of
La Llorona the Whaler, a filmjust called La Llorona, the
Curse of La Llorona and theRevenge of La Llorona.
So lots to explore if anyonewants to kind of dive deeply and
see the different iterations ofthis mythology and film, film
(26:28):
Coco from 2017, which includes asong called La Llorona, which
was actually first popularizedin the 1940s by Andres
Henestrosa.
Yes, oh my God.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I'm so glad you shouted out Coco.
It's my favorite Pixar movie.
It's beautiful, it's amazing.
I watch it every Dia de losMuertos season and it makes me
cry every time because it's likeso many of the characters, even
the way they're drawn andportrayed, look like my family
members and I just love it.
And then the story ofremembrance, the story of
sharing stories, like all ofthose things are just things I
(27:05):
carry with me on a regular basis, so I cry every time.
So I had no idea.
There was a song in therecalled La Llorona, which now I
have to go back and find andthink about and hear and listen,
listen to the words of, becauseit has such fantastic songs and
music throughout.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, it's just such a beautiful film and, yeah, I
was very excited to see that.
I also did not pick up on thatwhen I watched it the first time
, of course, so I'm excited towatch it again.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It inspired my.
I built an ofrenda this year,so now I have an official altar
with all the pictures and thecolors and all the things.
Yeah, there is a.
Also, for those of you whodon't know, there's a special
like pet day of the dead.
So October 27th is the year isthe day that they say our pets
come back to us in dreams.
So anyone out there who wantsto celebrate you are more than
welcome to build your own littleofrenda to your past family and
(27:52):
do a little research on Dia delos Muertos and learn and see
how you can apply it to you thisholiday season.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
And do a little research on Dia de los Muertos
and learn and see how you canapply it to you this holiday
season.
I love that so much.
I did not know that.
So October 27th, that's goingto be a very special day, I
think, for a lot of people.
I love that, in addition to theConjuring Universe film from
2019, there's another filmcalled, again just La Llorona.
This was a Guatemalan filmwhich screened at the Toronto
International Film Festival thatyear, which I think is really
(28:18):
cool, and I'm really interestedto watch that film Because
Toronto is, for anyone whodoesn't know, like one of the
top five film festivals in theworld, so it really typically
centers a lot on, likenon-American films.
So I'm very, very curious towatch that and I bet it's
fantastic.
And finally, in 2022, a filmcalled the Legend of La Llorona
(28:40):
starring Danny Trejo, wasreleased, and the Legend also
appears in many novels and otherforms of art and, of course,
it's penetrated across all thedifferent types of media, but
notably it's referenced in NancyFarmer's 2002 novel, the House
of the Scorpion, and in RodolfoAnaya's novel Bless Me, ultima.
So those are some books tocheck out if anyone is more in
(29:01):
the mood to read versus watchfilms.
And then, finally, it's alsobeen used in the television
series Grimm Riverdale andSupernatural.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I did not know that.
I want to go check.
I want to go check out justthose episodes, the Monster of
the Week episodes.
I hope she's in there.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, I think that those are like good series
because they're almost likeanthology series in a way.
So if you're looking for acertain thing, you can just
watch that one series and youdon't need to worry about the
ongoing drama of the maincharacters.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I don't need to know Riverdale drama from like no,
never.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Anastasia also suggested this legend and kind
of some of our pre-conversations, and I was so intrigued that I
wanted to fit it in as well,because I had never heard of
this and it was really, reallycool.
So we're going to talk a littlebit about the history of La
Lechuza, or the Owl Witch.
La Lechuza is similar in thatit's folklore from a similar
region as La Llorona, mexico andthe United States and Texas,
(29:55):
and it's also similar because itcenters around revenge and
children.
The legend tends to take theform of a story about a man
walking alone at night whoencounters glowing eyes and the
rustling of wings from a nearbytree.
So I'm going to quote from theTexas Standard article.
Quote there are many versions ofLa La Chuza, but in all of them
(30:15):
she begins as a woman who hasbeen wronged.
According to RachelGonzalez-Martin, a professor of
Mexican-American studies at UTAustin who specializes in
folklore, la La Chuza lived onthe far end of a small town,
which people normally classifyas somewhere in the desert area
in northern Mexico.
She lived alone and that madetownspeople suspicious of her.
(30:37):
She said One season, a smallchild, a little boy, goes
missing from the town and no oneis able to find him.
End quote.
In this version of the story,the woman is accused of being a
witch responsible for the boy'sdisappearance.
For revenge, she makes a dealwith the devil to come back as a
shape-shifting owl woman.
End quote, which is also justvery badass and cool.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Yeah, this to me is super interesting to hear
because I've only actually everheard I've never heard this
version before like I've neverheard her backstory.
But it's very in line with alot of these familiar fears that
appear in folklore, likemissing children, danger beyond
the edge of town, and then, ofcourse, familiar stereotypes of
women who live alone are somehowlike evil in some way and then
(31:21):
being accused of witchcraft,like if a woman just wants to
hang out on her own and practiceand make some potions or, you
know, have a great garden, she'dbe considered a witch in some
way.
So this story very much playson a lot of those familiar
themes that I see throughfolklore.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, yeah absolutely .
And it's so interesting thatall of those themes seem to
penetrate like folklore in everydifferent region of the globe.
Like in every region of theglobe, women with gardens are
witches, like it really doesn'tmatter.
And people will go to them forhealing properties and then also
, like, condemn them.
You know, it's just, it's auniversal truth.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Universal man.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So Lollachuza became a cautionary tale meant to scare
children into beingwell-behaved and home on time,
otherwise Lollachuza would findthem, I guess, kind of similar
to how La Llorona operates aswell, right?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Some of the more haunting reports that I've read
about Lollachuza encountersinclude people who claim to have
heard what sounded like aperson imitating an owl or a
bird, and that, to me, is socreepy Like the idea of, like
you and your brain, it soundslike an owl, but you and your
brain are like wait, thatsounded like a human, making it
sound like an owl, like all ofthose things just sound
(32:31):
terrifying to me.
I mentioned it earlier that whenyou're like kind of out and
alone in the woods, your earswill play tricks on you and they
convince yourself that you'veheard all kinds of things, that
that, that, that owl might havebeen a woman or that person
might have been an owl.
And then there are so manysounds If you're not familiar
those of us who live in citiesor don't spend time alone in the
woods for hours at a time thereare so many animals out there
(32:52):
that sound human, like screeches, mountain lions, even just like
general, like birds, can make,can imitate sounds that sound
very familiar to us.
So there are just so manythings that we don't know and
the woods is full of it.
That's what makes it scary.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
One of my favorite childhoodstories is there was a night me
and my sister camped in ourbackyard, just we were like in a
tent and we were little, andthey had released fisher cats
into my home state to likecontrol the deer population for
some reason, I think, becauselike deer ticks, it was some,
something was happening.
But fisher cats sound likewomen, screaming like a bloody
(33:28):
murder.
And there was in the middle ofthe night like one on either
side of the tent and my parentswere like how do we get our
daughters out of this tent alive?
But I remember growing up theseblood-curdling screams that
just sound like a woman is beingkilled in the worst way and
it's fisher cats just outsideyour house.
And it's wild.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Terrifying, terrifying, yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So La La Chuza is specifically known for targeting
men, especially men who arealone, walking at night and
usually drunk, which issomething that came up in almost
all of the examples that Ifound online.
According to Gonzalez-Martin,who we quoted earlier, the
legend has evolved a bit from astory about someone different
and othered to a revenge storyfor women who have been wronged,
(34:11):
which I think is reallyinteresting, and I totally can
see that kind of naturalevolution.
And, either way, the legendgives power to women and power
to people who have been otheredin general, which I think is an
incredibly powerful mechanic.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think folklore steps in to kind of solve and
provide language for, andstories for, morals and things
we need to learn and teach eachother.
I think they've passed throughthe generations in that way.
We kind of form them to what weneed to know or what we need to
teach someone, and I could seehow that definitely changed and
moved around In my childhood.
La La Chusa was always a witch,always a woman with the power
(34:46):
to transform into an owl, whichis always just cool Like the
idea that a woman just has thiscool power like where do you get
it?
I would like one.
And she was always.
And the owl was a scary,powerful creature that could
swoop down and snatch you up inher talons, so she would grab
you on the shoulders and liftyou up and take you with her.
Truthfully, for us it was usedsimilar to La Llorona, warning
(35:06):
you away from creeks and riversand waterways.
La Luchisa was used to warn usaway from barns, abandoned
houses in the woods, all byherself.
So it was like she had.
She lived in these spaces.
Anytime you're driving past oneor anytime you were near one,
it was like ooh, a lot of theshoes is in there, don't walk in
there, don't go in there, she'sgoing to get you, and then
they'd grab you on the shoulderslike she'd be taking you away.
(35:28):
So it was truly fun, but madesense to me that that's the way
that culture, my culture, mycommunity used it to kind of
like warn us away from thosespaces.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Are there other things like this that you were
told growing up, and are do theymostly center women?
I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
No, we heard El Kukui .
El Kukui was essentially theboogeyman.
El Kukui was a I guess would bejust an entity that warned us
away from the dark.
So if you were trying to getoutside at night or you were
trying to do something thatyou're going away over there
where there's no lights and theycan't see you, it just warned
you away from the dark.
Not all women, but there isprobably.
The ones that stuck with mepersonally, as a woman, were the
(36:07):
ones about women and thestories about powerful women, or
powerful women beings, even ifthey were in the negative you
know, she's going to get you,she's going to eat you, she's
going to eat you, she's going tokill you, like.
That was interesting to mebecause it was the idea of
giving these entities power inthat way.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that.
So we are all very blessedbecause we are about to hear a
little excerpt from one ofAnastasia's amazing, haunting,
incredible stories.
So, again, this is a story fromGhostly, ghastly Tales.
It's called Don't Cry, andmaybe you'll tell us a little
bit about it before we get intoit.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, so this is one of the stories in the collection
.
Two brothers are abandoned onthe side of the road and they're
lured to the water's edge by acrying woman.
I'll help set the scene andI'll read kind of a short
snippet from us of the coolestpart.
So in this story Mateo andArturo are traveling down the
long back roads of Texas withtheir uncle Manny.
They wake up to find theiruncle is missing from the car
and they are parked on the sideof an abandoned road near a
(37:04):
creek.
This is a very familiarlocation for me, being being
from Texas, and so I love theidea that this is where they
kind of sit.
And it's a little scary becauseevery little kid sitting in the
backseat of a car can see thisin Texas.
The eldest brother, Arturo,gets out to look for his uncle,
but he never returns, and nowMateo is forced to investigate
himself.
So this is where we are.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Amazing, amazing.
Okay, take it away.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Mateo is a little afraid to get out of the car,
but he's also afraid to be aloneany longer.
Just as he unbuckles hisseatbelt he sees something, or
maybe someone, through the tallbrush and the crooked trees.
It looks like someone in allwhite walking along the creek.
He blinks and the figure isgone.
Maybe it was never there.
As soon as he's out of the carhe breathes in deep the smell of
cool, sweet air.
It smells like it does justbefore a rainstorm.
With a car behind him, mateochecks for his brother, arturo.
(37:54):
He climbs over the barbed wirefence and hops down into a bed
of knee-high grass.
He shuffles through noisily todeter any snakes hiding in the
brush.
He's not as brave as his olderbrother, but he is more careful.
Mateo approaches the creek'sedge Down the embankment.
A creek is swollen, withrainwater lazily coursing
through the soft-flowing current.
There's nothing in eitherdirection.
(38:15):
Then he hears the sound thatArthurow went to investigate.
It sounds like a woman crying.
Her whimpers turn to low moansand then sniffles.
The sound raises goosebumps onhis skin.
It's not right, it's out ofplace.
Suddenly, an unwelcome thoughtrushes in.
Mateo remembers a story hiscousin told him when they stood
around a bonfire in the backyard, the one about the wailing
(38:38):
woman, the one who cries, wholives near water.
It's why no one is supposed toplay by water alone.
She's down there, she cries forher missing children.
She's doomed to float along thecreeks, the rivers, the lakes
looking for her children.
And when she finds you, mateoshudders and tries to shake the
thought from his mind.
But the sound of the wailinggrows.
(39:00):
And then a figure in the water.
Mateo chills as if a bucket ofice water rushes down his back.
It's a woman with long, darkhair hair wearing a white dress.
She's hunched over something.
Her shoulders shake from hercrying, her sobbing, her
mournful moans help us.
She whispers, tears streamingdown her face.
She glides through the watertowards mateo, her long fingers
(39:22):
with blacking fingertipsreaching please got you.
She hisses, her clawed nailsbearing deep into his forearm
what a treat.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's so good, it's so creepy.
I really, really hope thateverybody checked out this book
and I should also just say, ontop of the content being 10 out
of 10, the design of the book isso beautiful.
It glows in the dark, it's sofun and beautiful and I would
say I don't know if you wouldagree, maybe I'm a bad influence
I would say it's great for kidsespecially kids of a certain
(39:52):
age because it's beautiful, it'sfun and it gives you like a
scary meter, which I find to bevery helpful, so you you kind of
know before you get into it,like which stories might be more
or less palatable for kidsdepending on their age.
But I love it, it's sobeautiful and heavy and
hardcover and I really, reallyhope that everyone checks it out
(40:12):
.
Thank you for sharing that.
That was so great yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
So the book itself.
We to me, all the books forkids used to be designed in like
that goose, bumpy, likenewspaper-y feel where it was
kind of.
You know you scrunch it up inyour backpack and you lose it.
But this book, they spent a lotof time making it like
hardcover, a little bit morepremium, a little bit more
giftable, so you could give itto your friend, you could share
it, you could gift it and, yes,it's glow in the dark hardcover.
(40:35):
All designed by this fantasticartist, teo Scaffa, and he also
did 22 full color illustrationsinside the book with, like, some
little call outs and snippets.
They did a great job designingit to look neat, like you want
to keep it and go through it.
And, yes, the fright meters.
I, I rated each story one tothree.
So kids, maybe kids who arereally into scary stuff, go
straight for the threes.
Maybe kids who are just dippinga toe into scary things will
(40:57):
start with the ones and grow.
Um, I'll say that my rating isapparently super controversial
because some kids are like theones were terrifying and the
threes were not scary at all.
So, um, but it was truly, trulya fun, fun activity to find.
And then the book also has.
For each story there's a smallfootnote like a narrator kind of
giving you a little bit of thathorror history which I think
(41:20):
your fans will enjoy.
And then in the back there'salso I dove a little bit into
like the folklore and kind of,where I found stories and I
included a little bibliography.
So hopefully little academic,creepy kids will want to go
through and read some of theseoriginal folktales.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I think so, and I've actually gifted a few to like
spooky kids in my life andthey've been, they've gone over
so well and we so Alan and Iactually have kind of a
tradition of exchanging gifts onHalloween, as opposed to.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
We do.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
That's adorable but I've kind of been thinking of
like, okay, what kids in my lifecan I also give this to, kind
of like as a Halloween gift?
And it's it's just a beautifullike coffee table book too.
In addition to kind of being afun interactive gift for kids,
it's just beautiful to have out.
Yeah, it's, it's that's reallycool to see kind of how it came
to life visually for you.
(42:09):
And I just have to say, ofcourse, like our podcast is all
about the history of horror andI appreciate so much that those
footnotes where it kind of callsout the legends and I've been
learning so much stuff I want togo research and look into, and
so I think that's a really coolelement of it that you very,
very rarely see in likeanthology horror books.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I was speaking fully to those little kids like
me.
I was speaking fully to myselfas a kid who used to sit at the
library and read every book onthe occult and the supernatural
and the mysteries of theunexplained, and I hope that
there are kids out there stillto this day who do the same, who
like a library research scenein a movie and or book, and
hopefully this will be a part ofthat.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yeah, I know there are.
I know that there are.
Thank you so much for coming onand talking to us about La
Llorona, and this is exactlywhat we do, right, we trace
modern horror back to its roots,and so it feels so fitting to
have you on, finally, and totalk about your collection of
short stories and then kind oftaking one of those and tracing
it back to your roots, right,and it feels very perfectly what
(43:10):
this podcast is about.
So I'm very grateful that youjoined us today and I just want
to kind of close out with alittle bit on the folklore here.
So there are many similarities,obviously, between the legend of
La Llorona and La Luchusa.
Both involve a woman, wrongedusually, and revenge.
It's so interesting to me totrace these stories back to
(43:33):
their roots, kind of as far aswe can and generally
directionally right there'sobviously people out there far,
far better suited for thisresearch than I am that are
doing that too but to try tokind of understand the mythology
that has evolved over the yearsand perhaps in this case even
from ancient Aztec belief tomodern day urban legend.
So we're just so thrilled thatyou came on to kind of talk
(43:53):
about this and to teach ussomething new, to bring us into
kind of your culture a littlebit, and we hope that there'll
be more collaborations for us inthe future.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yes, well, thank you so much I mean shout out to
Lunatics Radio at our podcastfor being what I consider fully
academic in your approach tohorror history and researching
and sharing all of these spookytales that we all love so much.
You treat each of our scarystories and like these things
that are silly but fun butserious but engaging, with such
respect and dedication to theart and the form.
(44:24):
So I mean thank you for keepingall of these stories alive for
the next generation, for us topass on as we continue.
So thank you for all the workthat you all do to keep this
going.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Thank you, thank you.
That's very kind of you.
Thank you so much, and I hopethat you really do consider
getting yourself a copy ofGhostly Ghastly Tales.
I'm going to link everythingthat you need to do that in the
description of this podcast andon social media, but please
follow Anastasia on Instagram atAnastasia Writes.
We'll leave that below and youcan check out the book's website
(44:56):
, ghostlygastlytalescom, topurchase the book and kind of to
learn more about it.
So we'll make it very, veryeasy for you.
But I could not recommend yourwork more, and we didn't even
say that your work has also beenfeatured on this podcast before
.
So you've been part of thelunatics community for a very
long time and it's long overduethat we sat down and had a chat.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yes, well thank you so much for having me on.
Yes, I hope to continue to beone of your fans from afar, just
wishing you and the podcast somuch luck and all the fans out
there Stay tuned to hear morefrom this wonderful group of
people and all the things thatthey're doing to research and
share stories with our community.
So, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
Amazing.
Thank you.
Talk to you soon you.
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