OUT OF STATE | La Llorona: The Weeping Woman of Mexican Folklore

A river at night.
A woman’s cry that chills the blood.
La Llorona — the Weeping Woman — is Mexico’s most famous ghost.

For centuries, she has haunted riversides and canals, searching for the children she drowned and lost. Some call her a grieving mother. Others, a curse born from betrayal. But all agree: her cry is an omen. If you hear it, death may follow.

In this episode of Out of State, we travel beyond American folklore into the haunted history of Mexico. From Aztec goddesses to colonial sightings in Mexico City, to modern encounters along the Rio Grande, La Llorona endures as one of the most terrifying paranormal stories in the world.

Join us as we uncover why her legend refuses to rest… and why her voice still drifts across the water.

Chapters

• 0:00 Warning and Introduction
• 1:38 Origins of La Llorona
• 4:04 The Haunting Cry
• 6:43 Sightings Across Regions
• 10:10 Modern Cultural Impact
• 13:17 The Enduring Legacy of Grief

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

This episode includes references to child death and grief. Listener discretion is advised. The river is quiet, only the sound of water moving over stone, and then a cry, high, piercing a woman's voice, splitting the dark. High piercing a woman's voice, splitting the dark. Her figure drifts along the bank, white dress trailing in the mud, hair, black tangled, hiding her face. Her arms reach for something that isn't there and her cry shatters the stillness. I'm Isihios, my children, but if you hear her voice, she isn't mourning you, she's already hunting.

Speaker 1: 0:54

This is La Llorona, the weeping woman of Mexico, a ghost whose cry is the sound of death itself. I'm Robert Barber, and this is Out of State. A companion series to State of the Unknown. Short journeys into legends beyond America's borders is out of state. A companion series to State of the Unknown. Short journeys into legends beyond America's borders, stories of folklore, hauntings and shadows from the other side of the map. Let's step into the dark.

Speaker 1: 1:44

La Llorona is called Mexico's most famous ghost, but her cries were heard long before she was given that name. In the mid-1500s, spanish friars in Mexico City wrote of hearing a woman weeping in the night. Her voice echoed through the streets, piercing, unrelenting, always crying for her children, and many swore her lament came before disaster, before plague, before war. But even then the Spaniards realized this was not a new ghost. It was older, much older. In Aztec traditions there was Siwa Coatl. Her name means snake woman a goddess of motherhood and childbirth, said to appear at night wandering roads weeping for her lost children. Her cries were omens foretelling catastrophe. Chroniclers wrote that she was heard before to the Spanish. Others point to Chalchi Utlikwe, the goddess of rivers and lakes. She was a protector of waters, but she was also feared for floods and sacrifice. When the Spanish came, these indigenous figures collided with Catholic warnings about sin, betrayal and damnation. The result was no longer a goddess, no longer a saint. It became something else, a ghost, no longer a saint. It became something else a ghost.

Speaker 1: 3:27

The woman in white who weeps by the water, the mother who will never rest. The story changes its clothes, but never its bones. A beautiful woman, a faithless lover, a betrayal that curdles into something worse. In rage or in a moment beyond reason, she leads her children to the river and pushes them under. The current closes. The night says nothing, and when her mind clears it's too late. She follows them into the dark, but death refuses her. So La Llorona is sent back to the banks, condemned to walk the edges of water and search forever.

Speaker 1: 4:22

White dress, dripping hair like a curtain face you're not meant to see. Her voice is the trap, the riddle If it sounds close, she's far. If it sounds far, she's already within arm's reach. People say she chooses the places where the shore crumbles, the soft banks children like to play on by day, by night. She waits where the reeds thicken. And to play on by day, by night. She waits where the reeds thicken and the mud takes her weight. She calls not with words but with absence, drawing you toward the one sound in a sleeping town. They say she takes the living for two reasons to replace what she lost or to make the world feel what she feels. And when the water calms, there's no sign she was ever there. Only the mark of feet along the bank, only a name. No one speaks aloud.

Speaker 1: 5:24

The cry of La Llorona is what makes her feared. It's not just weeping, it's sound twisted until it doesn't belong in a human throat. Children are told the cry can follow them home, that once you hear it you'll never forget it. The danger is in its trick. A cry that sounds faint may be close. A cry that sounds faint may be close. A cry that sounds near may be far. It's never what it seems. Those who hear it describe a hollow echo, as if it comes from the ground, the water, the walls, a sound you feel in your chest before your ears catch it. Some say if her cries heard outside your house, someone inside will die within days. Others claim that those who follow her weeping to the river sometimes never return at all.

Speaker 1: 6:23

The first written accounts come from colonial Mexico City. Soldiers reported hearing a woman's wails drifting through the empty streets at night. Always before catastrophe, her cries became an omen of plague or war or conquest. One tale describes a patrol who swore they saw her at the aqueducts, a pale figure bent over the water. They approached, but before they could speak she vanished and that week sickness swept through the city. In Oaxaca, families warned children not to play near the Rio Atoyac after dark, not only because of drowning but because La Llorona might mistake them for her own.

Speaker 1: 7:13

In Xochimilco, the famous floating gardens, boatmen still whisper of her. On foggy nights they claim to hear a woman calling from the reeds, sometimes close, sometimes impossibly far. In Puebla, there are stories of families waking to her cries just outside their windows. On three nights in a row she was heard. On the fourth, someone in the household was gone. Travelers on lonely highways tell of a woman in white flagging them down, but when they stop the road is empty. In border towns along the Rio Grande, migrants whisper that she follows those who cross the river, a woman's cry rising above the current. One man swore he saw her standing in the water, but when he called out, the figure dissolved into spray. And in more than one village children have vanished by rivers. At night. The only trace a small handprint in the mud at the bank.

Speaker 1: 8:21

La Llorona is not bound to one place. She has crossed rivers, borders, even oceans. In Guatemala, travelers whisper of her beneath bridges. Horses refuse to cross when her cry drifts through the arches. One story tells of a merchant who ignored the sound and by morning his cart was found overturned, the animals missing, his body nowhere in sight. In Venezuela, farmers claim livestock die after hearing her voice. Carry across the valleys, the herds panic, the air stills and by dawn the fields are empty, but for hoofprints leading nowhere. Empty, but for hoofprints leading nowhere. In Chile, mothers warn children during storms that La Llorona moves in floods stealing souls as easily as the waters sweep away homes. One tale says her veil was seen drifting in the current after an entire family was lost to the river. The details shift, the names change, but the image never fades. No-transcript.

Speaker 1: 9:41

La Llorona is not only a warning. She is not just a tale to keep children away from rivers. She is a way to explain sudden tragedy drownings, disappearances, death without reason. She embodies betrayal and grief, but twisted into something more, because she does not only suffer, she makes others suffer with her. Her loss became hunger, her mourning became predation. That is why her legend endures, because she is not tragedy alone. She is tragedy turned outward, she has tragedy turned outward. La Llorona has not faded into the past. She is still alive in Mexico's imagination and beyond.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Her story is told during Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Her voice is sung in the haunting folk ballad simply called La Llorona, a song recorded by icons like Chevella Vargas and Leela Downs. Its mournful melody is sung in plazas a love song on the surface, but always carrying the echo of a woman who lost everything. She appears in theater puppet shows, even children's rhymes that are anything but comforting, and she's become part of cinema, from Mexican horror classics to Hollywood's the Curse of La Llorona in 2019. She slips into TV as well, appearing in series like Supernatural and Grimm and in films that borrow her shape like Mama. Her face is painted in murals, her name whispered in podcasts like this one and retold online On forums and message boards.

Speaker 1: 11:33

People still share stories of hearing her cry near rivers, swearing. The legend is not only old, it is happening still. But in Mexico she is never just a character, she is a presence. In Xochimilco, boatmen tell tourists of hearing her cry over the canals. In Puebla, families still swear. She passes by before death visits the household, and in rural towns, people still leave offerings, candles, flowers, toys, all so her search may turn away. Water is her prison, her stage, her weapon. Rivers and canals are thresholds, the place between life and death, safety and danger. La Llorona lingers there because grief itself is a threshold, never resolved, never released. Her cry is both mourning and hunting. It is sorrow given fangs. It spreads fear because it spreads grief, and perhaps that is why she endures while other ghosts fade into stories. No one tells, because loss does not end, it only changes shape, and La Llorona is that shape. La Llorona is not only rage, not only vengeance. She is grief that became hunger, loss that became endless. Her cry is not mourning, it is hunting, and in her voice is the promise that grief spreads. It does not stay still, it seeks, and once it finds you, it will not let go.

Speaker 1: 13:29

This has been Out of State. A companion series from State of the Unknown. Short journeys into legends beyond America's borders. If you've been enjoying the show, follow, rate and share it with someone who can't resist a story that lingers. And until next time, remember not every cry in the night belongs to the living.