Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest

by Alfred Ávila

  Here in the middle of the river she found a simple Indian, too humble to comprehend his foolish fate. The woodcutter looked up at the huge ghost. She was towering high above his head like a monster ready to devour its prey. But what fascinated the Indian was the beauty of her face.

  “Perhaps she is an ancient Indian princess looking for the portal to the next world. That’s why she cries so mournfully.”

  He stared at the woman towering way above him. She was no longer crying or screaming. Instead, she reached down and grabbed him violently. He felt the pain of her talons sinking deep into his flesh. She lifted him high with a powerful jerk, making his bundle of wood scatter all over the river to be swept away by the current.

  The Indian screamed in pain, feeling La Llorona’s sharp talons bite into his flesh as she lifted him into the air. He could feel the wetness of his blood oozing from his wounds. Her staring eyes were malevolent. A slight tremble shook his body, and he asked her fearfully in a slow drawl, “Why are you so cruel to me? Why are you hurting me? I have done nothing to you.”

  His words had barely cleared his throat when suddenly she plunged his body into the swirling waters. He struggled to free himself and to break loose from her hold, but her grip was too tight and her talons only sank deeper into his flesh. She lifted him up again. She was like a hungry cat toying with a mouse, making its victim suffer and cry before killing it.

  Poor dumb woodcutter! He looked again at the ghostly woman’s face. An evil smile was on her lips. His innermost brain screamed at him that his life was at stake. Yet the simple woodcutter could only look into the phantom’s eyes deeper and deeper, trying to understand the brutal treatment he was enduring. All this time blood and water dripped from him down into the river, and he was beginning to feel weak.

  The Indian screamed out at the ghost, “Why? Why?” as he stared into the dark, dark pupils of his tormentor. “Why? Why? Who are you? Where are you from?” his mind echoed. He could not look away. Some unknown force kept him staring into her eyes.

  La Llorona felt a piercing sympathy for this simple Indian. Was he not one of her own kind? An Indian suffering from centuries of abuse first by the hated Spaniards and then at the hands of the mestizos? A primordial feeling stirred in her breast, a bond with this Indian she was tormenting. His cries of pain and his anguished moans washed through her soul.

  She had killed many of her own kind before, but this time she knew that she could not do it. She shuddered violently as if something inside was ripping her apart. She dropped the woodcutter into the water as her hands rose and gestured toward the heavens. A long painful and mournful scream came out of her twisted lips. In horrible agony, she lunged upward into the air and swiftly disappeared down the river, still screaming miserable screams mixed with hatred and sorrow.

  The Indian fell all the way to the bottom of the river. He quickly fought the current and managed to get on his feet and breathe. He stood there for awhile dripping wet, gasping for air, trying to make sense of what had occurred. As he slowly moved in the direction of the riverbank, he could feel the pain from his wounds.

  He would never understand what had happened. He would only remember a moment of terror now etched in his simple mind. He had escaped with his life, the only person who had ever escaped from the death grip of La Llorona. She had taken pity on this poor creature.

  The woodcutter still chops his firewood in the forest. He burns copal—an incense—to the ancient Indian gods of his fathers and prays that he never meets the goddess of the rivers again.

  If nightfall finds him on the other side of the river, he sleeps in the forest, waiting until daybreak to cross it. When he tells people to stay away from the river after dark, they only laugh at him and say, “Poor dumb woodcutter. He’s crazy.” Still at night you can hear the cries and screams of La Llorona along the river. Stay away, for you will not escape as the Indian did.

  THE WHIRLWIND

  THE WHIRLWIND

  The boy sat with his dog Mangas outside the small adobe structure that they called home. They sat there in the shade; the boy scratching the dog’s head. Mangas had received this name because he was black with white front legs and black paws; it looked like the dog was wearing white sleeves or mangas.

  The morning was hot and dry, and the boy, whose name was Chicho, didn’t want to move around in the heat. He just sat there staring at the distant mountains beyond the fields of corn and past the sandy landscape with its cacti and desert bushes.

  “It must be cool on those mountains,” he mumbled. He was awakened from his daydreaming by his mother who called to him to come into the house and eat his pozole, a soup that deliciously blends hominy and pork.

  He yelled back to his mother, “I’m not hungry!”

  The heat was very uncomfortable. Chicho didn’t feel like moving, but Mangas stood up hungrily wanting to go inside and not miss out on a meal. As the dog started to walk to the house, Chicho grabbed him and pushed him down in the dust. Mangas growled in disappointment and lay there in a bad mood.

  Chicho continued his daydreaming. “I wonder what it would be like to fly? To fly like a bird and be free and never have to worry about the heat, just fly to the nearest river and be cool!”

  He was surprised when a breeze started blowing, kicking up dust as it drifted by. The cool air hit him ever so lightly in the face, enough to make him feel good. His thoughts were interrupted again by his mother’s voice calling out to him.

  “Chicho! Go out to the cornfields. Pick some corn for the evening meal. And pick some jalapeño peppers for your father’s chili!”

  He hated to hear his mother’s voice, always wanting something. He did not like to work or to do his chores around the house. He would mutter and walk away angry at having to do what he was told. His muttering on some occasions got him a twisting pinch on the arm or a quick swat on his behind.

  His mother would scold him, “Naughty boy, someday you are going to cry for me. I will not be with you all your life!” She would then start to weep and sob, covering her face with her apron.

  He would feel ashamed of himself, but his attitude didn’t change. At other times he was told, “Don’t complain or the demons of the desert will carry you away! Bad boys who don’t behave know this!”

  Chicho never did anything voluntarily. He always had to be told and reminded to do his chores. He was truly a bad and disobedient boy. He didn’t like chopping wood or pumping water for cooking the meals. He really detested any kind of work.

  This hot sunny day, while sitting in the shade of his house, he spotted a whirlwind in the distance. It picked up dust and swirled around and around way up into the sky. It fascinated him. He watched it kick up loose dirt and dry plants, flinging them high into the air.

  His mother had warned him not to go near those whirlwinds. They were the handiwork of the demons and devils in the desert. This was their evil dance. Swirling and spinning, they would work themselves up into a sinful passion. Then the whirlwind would dissipate, and the goblins it held would leave to go do their evil deeds in the world.

  But knowing Chicho, he would never listen to his elders, much less to his mother. Woe to you young ones who heed not the wisdom of your elders! Woe to you who have no respect for your parents, for they have acquired their wisdom in the pain and suffering of their long years.

  Chicho didn’t care. He was a young lazy rascal, very unhappy with his life. He wanted to play, eat, sleep, and not worry about the responsibilities of his never-ending chores. He wanted to be like a raven and fly in the sky all day long with no worries in his daily life.

  The whirlwind moved in closer and closer, making a soft whistling sound. “What if? …” Chicho thought to himself as he got up and started out in the direction of the whirlwind. Mangas bit the boy’s trousers and attempted to hold him back, but Chicho was determined to go. He hit Mangas on the jaw, and Mangas let go. Chicho ran toward the whirlwind.

  Mangas sensed that his young master was in the process of
committing a very foolish act. The dog leaped forward and ran fiercely toward Chicho and the whirlwind. Chicho was by then almost upon the whirlwind.

  Suddenly, the wind grabbed Chicho into its swirling mass, while Mangas hearing the boy’s screams, jumped in after him, barking and growling, trying to free both himself and Chicho free by biting and scratching at the arms of the demons who were holding them. Boy and dog were fighting for their lives, knowing that unless they got away they would probably end up in some horrible place, probably Hell itself.

  The terror that Chicho and Mangas felt made their strength surge so that they fought harder to escape. Soon howls of pain and frustration came from the spinning wind, from the demons who were struggling to keep the two of them. The evil spirits were losing their battle. They were hurting from Mangas’ vicious bites.

  Finally and unexpectedly, Chicho and Mangas were sent swirling out of the whirlwind. As they skidded to a tumbling stop in the sand, the whirlwind continued speeding onward into the distance, the moans, groans, and screams of the demons who had lost their prey still could be heard.

  Chicho patted his dog’s head and said, “We’re lucky to get away. Who knows what evil was in store for us if the demons had kept us in the whirlwind?”

  As he shook the dust from his clothes and began to catch his breath, he suddenly noticed that his hands were dry and crinkled like an old man’s. Veins protruded visibly on his hands and his nails were dull. His body was longer and thinner. He was surprised as he looked at himself and saw the body of an old man.

  Chicho looked over at Mangas. He was horrified. Beneath the dust, his dog’s hair had turned gray and his whiskers white. As Chicho watched his old dog hobble over to him, tears welled in his eyes and ran down his dusty face.

  “What happened?” he asked Mangas. But Mangas only looked at him with the eyes of an older dog who couldn’t understand itself what had taken place. His master looked so old!

  Chicho sat there crying and sobbing. “The whirlwind! The whirlwind! It stole our youth!”

  He sat on the ground. Mangas hobbled over and licked his face. Chicho covered his face with his hands and cried in sorrow. The demons of the whirlwind had stolen their youth, Chicho realized. He sobbed and sobbed, and the dog let out a long mournful howl. It was a sad day for both of them.

  They finally got up and found the road that would lead back to their home. Chicho didn’t understand how they ended up so far from home in the short time that they were in the whirlwind. They walked all day, and at night they slept close together to keep warm in the cold desert. In the early dawn they continued their trip home again.

  Chicho cried much of the time, and hunger plagued them both. Some relief came from eating the seedy prickly pear from the numerous cacti in that region. They drank the meaty juice from the succulent fruit.

  Finally, they arrived at the area where Chicho remembered his adobe house had once stood. There was only rubble. Broken adobe bricks lay scattered around what remained of the walls of the house. Desert shrubs grew all over. The desert was slowly reclaiming the land. The cornfields were long gone. Everything had been abandoned many years ago.

  He stood there in the quiet ruins and called out, “Mamá! Mamá!” But only the echoes from the distant hills answered him.

  Mangas looked at him with sad eyes. Their home was gone! Gone forever into the quicksand of time. Only a carcass of their former lives remained. The years had passed so swiftly during their time in the whirlwind. Gone was their youth, too. The demons of the whirlwind had lost their prey, but they had exacted their revenge.

  Chicho walked over to the edge of a crumbled adobe wall and sat down gently. His old limbs caused him pain when he moved. Mangas slowly came over and lay down beside him. Chicho had tears running down his cheeks. He was an old man with an old dog.

  He lived for many more years. Even in his old age, he and his dog Mangas would attempt to chase down a whirlwind whenever one came by. Chicho would hobble after it with his dog at his side to jump into the whirlwind, but they were too slow. Only the demons knew why Chicho and Mangas were chasing whirlwinds. They were trying to enter one to recapture their youth. The swirling demons of the whirlwind would only tease them and laugh at them as the wind swiftly moved away.

  The local people called Chicho and Mangas “the crazy old man and his old dog.” He was the village idiot who chased whirlwinds. He probably went insane as a punishment for the evil of his youth, people would say. But nobody would ever find out the truth—only Chicho and Mangas knew the story, and even now they can’t tell you. They passed on to their fathers and are buried together at the local cemetery.

  THE CHINESE WOMAN OF THE SEA

  THE CHINESE WOMAN OF THE SEA

  On the Pacific side of Baja, California, there is a beach surrounded by rocks. There are many clusters of rocks off the beach in deeper water. Pounding waves hit the rocks and explode into flying foam and water. On the far left side of the beach is a cluster of rocks known to the local people as Seal Rocks. The rocks are used as resting places by seals, sea gulls, and other sea fowl.

  Many years ago a coffin washed up on the rocks. The waves kept battering it until it broke into pieces, revealing the body of a young Chinese woman with her baby tied up against her breast with strands of old rope. The waves washed the corpses into a deep crevice in the rocks. The rocky crevice protected the bodies from the violent crashing waves coming in from the sea.

  The woman was from a nearby Chinese hamlet. Chinese fishermen and their families had arrived years earlier from upper California in their fishing boats. The coastal current had carried them down, and they had landed in a small cove where they built their houses. With such abundant marine life in the area, they had decided to stay. They made their daily living fishing and diving for the abalone which were plentiful in the cove.

  The young woman had drowned only a couple of kilometers away from Seal Rocks Beach. After she drowned, it had taken five days of hard work to recover her body from the deep because of the rough seas. Meanwhile, her baby had refused to eat or drink, and it soon died crying for his mother.

  To retrieve her body, the Chinese fishermen had brought a big rock from the beach and tied a rope to a diver. The diver held the rock in his arms and jumped into the sea. Down, down he went into the deep blue water. When he reached the bottom, he could feel tremendous pressure against his small body. He swam over to the corpse, managed to grab her arm, and jerked his line to let the people above know to pull him in. Swiftly and steadily, he was pulled up until he broke the surface of the water gasping for air.

  The fishermen had built a coffin, and they tied the woman’s baby to her body with old pieces of rope. The mother and child would be together in death as they were in life. They placed the coffin on the fantail of the boat. On their way back to the hamlet, a huge wave arose from the sea and smashed into the boat and washed the coffin into the sea. A riptide carried it away beyond the reach of the small fishing boat. The Chinese fishermen could only wail and cry over their loss. It was hard for them to lose the bodies after the struggle and sacrifice to retrieve the woman’s corpse. They could only cry in their misery as the coffin swirled and tossed in the turbulent sea then disappeared from their sight in the ocean waves.

  Sometime later, a woman’s mournful sobbing and a baby’s gentle crying could be heard at Seal Rocks intermingled with the sound of the waves that crashed against the rocks and onto the beach. Only the bravest would venture past the beach at night. Unfortunately, the footpath by the beach was the only way to go to the neighboring villages.

  One dark night, an old man—known to people in the villages as Tigre Acero or Steel Tiger—was walking along the beach path. He was feeling a little tipsy. He had shared a little pulque with his friends at the next village.

  “What a beautiful night!” he said to himself.

  Just then, he heard a baby crying softly from the distant rocks by the beach. In his drunken mind he thought he was hearing voices. The cryi
ng drifted closer and closer. Suddenly, the crying stopped. Everything went quiet, even the crickets were silent. An eerie calm settled over the area. Only the slow steady beat of the old man’s sandals on the pathway could be heard. He was aware that something was wrong, but he kept on walking.

  He was not scared. He had walked this footpath many times in the past. He was Tigre Acero, the Steel Tiger, the meanest man in the village. But he was much older now. Age had mellowed his temper, yet he still boasted of his fighting youth. The local villagers didn’t call him Tiger anymore, only “Old Man Acero.”

  He continued walking until a soft voice called to him. “Sir! Sir! Help me, please.” He was startled by the voice and turned in the direction of the sound. He calmed down quickly. It was a young lady in the shadow of an old tree with low hanging branches. He could see she was holding a bundle in her arms.

  “Help me, please!” she said again.

  He asked her, “What are you doing here so late at night?”

  She replied, “I fell asleep with my baby. We have been walking all day, so I took a nap and just woke up.”

  He looked at her with curiosity. What was a Chinese woman doing out here by the beach and so late at night? As he mulled over the question, he was interrupted by her. She sadly revealed that she had no place to go.

  Acero, being kindhearted in his old age, said to her, “You and your baby can stay with me as long as you wish. I’m a lonely old man, and I need companionship and someone to cook and care for my house. If you agree to these terms, you can stay.” Then they continued on their way.