I think what the women saw floating above the creek is what is called "balled lightening". Also, the wind does strange things around water and the vegetation around it. There are gases that escape such areas, such as methane. We named our place up here in the Northwest "Lira del Bosque" (my Spanish friend translated "Forest Lyre" for me). We often hear what sounds like soft music in the tall evergreens, but when the wind is blowing as hard as it was today when I went out to get the mail it sounded like freight trains or the roar of semis passing by; it was frightening, and I could hardly wait to get back in the house. The sound was like thundering growls from a monster, very hard to describe. Although our place is surrounded by water (you can't walk too far from the house without falling into a pond, lake or creek) we have never seen the "balled lightening" or methane flames.

In Santa Cruz, CA my Spanish friend had the balled lightening phenomenon in her house. Once a ball of lightening came in and settled itself in a cast iron frying pan. Fearing it would cause a fire, her son picked up the pan to extinguish the flame in the sink, and the flame jumped out of the frying pan onto the floor and disappeared into a crack in the tile floor! They were also frequently awakened by strange sounds in that house, too. I once slept in that house in their guest room, and all I heard was the sound of my hostess coughing all night, and the sound of her purring cat who had climbed in bed with me and settled herself in my long hair. Anyway, I hope those were the sounds I heard. Oooooh!

Emilie in Port Orchard, WA ---
----- Original Message -----
From: La Plus Belle
To: general@nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Story of La Llorona/I think I saw her

I remember when I was 6 or 7 and my family and I lived in Zacatecas for a year so that we kids could get the "cultural experience." We had traveled to the nearby rancho of Los Ramos (See map I uploaded to the maps sections titled, "Los Sedanos.") to visit family friends (which I recently found out throught Family Search are distant relatives, also!) who killed a pig for us to make "tripas," "moronga," and, or course, TAMALES! Anywho, I remember I had fallen asleep on a woman's lap in the room adjoining the kitchen that had no door that faced a creek right across and a few feet down. I remember waking up to the most forlorn crying I had ever heard...It sounded like a sad wail and it was coming from the creek. I remember hearing the women that were making tamales in the kitchen crying out in shock. I either saw or heard the women saying they saw a ball of fire floating above the creek. What's certain is that I heard that sad, sad crying. It was the most distressed and
distressing cry...Now, you might say I dreamt all of this or it was my childish imagination, but how could a roomful of adult women have experienced the same things?...Strange, strange...Maybe the story of "La Llorona" is just so embedded in our folkore that it's always on our minds when in Mexico...Who knows, but it was so strange...

http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html (This is the version I had heard.)

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

Leticia Leon > wrote:
Did I see La Llorona or an angel? when I was about five years old I got lost from my ranch house in Ahualulco De Mercado, Jalisco. I went down a path to the river, merely a stream from the biger one, with my family unaware. My mother noticed my absence and all they went yelling looking for me. They found me crying in the shore, about 200 metros from the house. What I remember is I was determined to get into the water but a lady dressed in a white and long dress stop me, she told me not to do it. she was standing sort of floating above a bank in the middle of the stream and his arms were up open like she wanted to embrace me. I cried because at that moment I thougt she was La Llorona as I did remember my mother used to tell her story, lhat lady I saw had a long black hair, that was a the feature of her apearence I remember the most vividly.

The story of a woman who kills her children for the love of a man seems to originate with Greek mythology, something the Colonial Spaniards, priests and soldiers and the educated class would have been familiar with, and perhaps told or read such stories to the indigenous people. In the "Odyssey", Medea kills the children she had with Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts) because he was leaving for his homeland in the ship the "Argo", going back to his wife. My husband tells me that his grandfather, who was born in Mexico in 1853 still had a copy of the tales of "1001 Arabian Nights" in Spanish, and that one of the stories he used to read to his grandchildren was "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves". He also would tell stories of the Llorona, and of the specter of the creature with the horse's head. I bet kids had lots of nightmares then. I knew nothing of these stories until I started school.

Emilie in Port Orchard, WA ---
----- Original Message -----
From: victorianonavarro
To: general@lists.nuestrosranchos.org
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 8:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Nuestros Ranchos] Story of La Llorona

I've read that La Llorona would roam downtown Mexico City at night, during the Mexican Colonial era. However i think the legend is pre-Hispanic. According to tradition, there were several omens in México-Tenochtitlan regarding the coming of the Spaniards. One of them was the ghost of an Aztec goddess crying for her children, and where could she hide them (how could she protect the Aztecs from the Spaniards?).
Right now they are showing in Mexico a horror movie kind of based in La Llorona. The film is "Km 31" or "Kilómetro 31".