Any one got a good "La Yarona" story?

Question

La Yarona (Spanish for weeping woman) is one of the oldest of the stories I know. and one told to children for generations...Over the years I've traveled all across the country Plus south and central America... it always amazes me how many different La Yarona stories and versions there are...
so whats your version?

Answer 1

The correct Spanish spelling is "la llorona". Venezuelan kids of every generation have heard this tale over and over again as a national folkloric tale. I had no knowledge that other Latinamerican countries claimed "la llorona" as theirs but she's been around for quite some time.
To summarize, it is about a woman who killed her child and ever since, even after her death, she cries and whines thru streets and fields at night. According to Venezuelan folklore she will take anyone who sees her face with her. Something similar to the "banshee" in Ireland, except ours is of human origin. La llorona has come to symbolize death's personification.
I don't have any personal or third person stories to add but I can say that the first time (at age 13) I'd ever heard a cat cry in my backyard I got scared stiff thinking it was la llorona. From that experience I have formulated my own hypothesis: Before electricity reached the country and small towns of Venezuela, just like people saw ghosts they speculated on this horrible whining sound saying it was a woman's cry and built a whole story around it. If you have heard a cat cry (it can chill your blood), you might agree with me.

Answer 2

You probably mean "La Llorona." I remember I had a hard time just pronouncing it as a kid :)

My grandmother told me that La Lorona killed her children because she was a crazy woman and one day, for unknown reasons, beat her children against a wall until they died. My grandfather I recall told me Llorona has long nails, like 2 feet long, growing from her hands, and long white hair.

In a book my mother has, called "The Wedeping Woman: Encounter with La Llorona" there are a ton of stories from the Santa Fe area, mostly. Flipping to a random page recounts a story of how some lady called the police because she could hear La Lorona outside of her house! The police went and checked, and they could hear crying coming from different directions, but they never could find who was making the noise.

There's also a strange family story about my great-grandfather almost running down La Llorona in his car one night.

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UPDATE: I was reading through the book in more detail, and noticed a habit in certain local stories where, occasionlly, La Lorona takes the form of a crying baby laying in the road. When a person goes to pick up the baby and get it to safety, they see the baby has sharp, jagged teeth in its mouth, and sometimes it will begin to talk in demonic nonsense.
This sounds like some other ghost completely, but it is attributed to being La Llorona.

Answer 3

http://www.lallorona.com/La_index.html

This is a great web site that has for archtypical versions of the story, one each for la llorona as a witch, as siren, as a harlot and as a virgin.

Of course, the version I like best is "Medea"