Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest
Read Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest Online
Authors: Alfred Ávila
STORIES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ALFRED AVILA
COMPILED BY KAT AVILA
This book is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Arte Público Press
University of Houston
452 Cullen Performance Hall
Houston, Texas 77204-2004
Cover design by Daniel Lechón
Avila, Alfred
Mexican ghost tales of the Southwest / by Alfred Avila : compiled by Kat Avila.
p.   cm.
ISBN 978-1-55885-107-8
1. Mexican AmericansâFolklore. 2. TalesâSouthwest, new. 3. Ghost storiesâSouthwest, New. I. Avila, Kat.
II. Title.
GR111.M49A95 1994
398.25'0976âdc20
94-6919
CIPÂ Â
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
Copyright © 1994 by Alfred Avila
Printed in the United States of America
8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 11 12 10 9 8 7 6
To my parents, José and Guadalupe Avila,
and to Rev. John V. Coffield.
In blessed memory of Rabbi Robert J. Bergman
.
âAlfred Avila
The Funeral and the Goat Devil
MEXICAN GHOST TALES
OF THE SOUTHWEST
LA LLORONA
A
long time ago, in the old days, there lived a woman in Mexico. Life was hard for her because her husband had died and she was left with three small children. In time, the children became a burden for the woman. She longed for the gaiety and the dancing at the fiestas as an escape from her daily responsibilities. For this reason, the woman would go out and leave the children to fend for themselves, and because they were hungry and hurt from the beatings they received at her hands, the children cried often.
One day, tired of hearing her children's endless weeping and pleading for food, the woman forced them into a sack and dragged them to a nearby river swollen from the rains in the mountains. Although the children cried out to their mother, begging her to release them, they did not suspect the grim fate she had in store for them.
As the woman dragged the sack slowly to the water's edge, she could hear her children cry out, “Please, mother! Please!” Still, she was determined to cast off the yoke that hung around her neck because her heart was hard and cruel.
Oh, to be rid of these troublesome children! she
thought.
Finally, the mother pushed the sack off the bank into the river with one quick move. She could hear her children's terrified screaming as they tumbled into the swift, swirling waters that swallowed them into eternity. Afterwards, the woman walked away happy. At last she was free!
The woman continued her loose wicked life until she finally died. Her soul was then taken before God for judgment. Trembling and sorrowful, she stood before the Almighty.
“You!” God said to her, “are to be pitied. Not only have you sinned greatly during your time on earth, but you committed the greatest sin of all, you killed your own children. Therefore, you are condemned to roam the rivers of the world until you find their bones. You will find no rest until then, and you will wander about crying until the end of the world.”
If some night when there is no moon, you happen to hear a long, mournful, howling cry by the river, beware! It may be La Llorona, the Wailing Woman, looking for her children. Stay away from the river, because you don't want her to find you in the dark.
THE DEVIL DOG
THE DEVIL DOGM
any years ago in the quiet sleepy village of La Colonia, on the outskirts of Zacatecas, there lived a hard-drinking man who did not care for his own people. He spent the nights drinking tequila and
pulque
and quarreling at the local cantina, and the days sleeping in the dusty, windy streets.
Sometimes he made it back to his adobe house. It sat about a mile from the village, in a clump of mesquite trees amidst large cactus plants that grew here and there from the arid ground. The house was just a short distance from the railroad tracks. On rare occasions, a train would pass by headed north. It would carry federal troops sent to suppress the unrest stirred up by the famous Pancho Villa and the revolution that was blazing in the northern lands.
One night, after drinking heavily, the man said goodbye to his friends in the cantina and staggered out reeking of tequila and lime. Stumbling in the dark, he finally found his way to the railroad tracks.
“At last!” he said to himself in a drunken stupor. “I will follow the tracks home.”
As he wove his way home stumbling on the railroad ties, he suddenly tripped over the rail, hitting the ties hard when he landed on the gravel.
“Oh, what a miserable life!” he cursed out loud in the dark.
As he slowly picked himself up, he looked back and saw two small red glowing lights way off in the distance. The drunkard staggered onward humming to himself, and every once in awhile he would glance backward. Each time he could see the red lights gaining on him.
The man kept walking on and thinking, “What can those lights be? Maybe they're only a pair of fireflies.”
He was beginning to sober up and was perspiring. He looked back again, straining his eyes in the dark. Nearer and nearer the lights came.
He started to run, trembling from fear and gasping for breath. When he looked behind him, now mortally afraid, he saw a coal-black dog moving towards him in a fast, loping motion, a huge dog with bright glowing red eyes that gleamed in the moonless night!
The drunkard screamed and screamed, his shrieks echoing into the darkness.
Days passed, and the man was never seen again. Around the village water fountain there was gossip that he was carried off by witches, or that he got tired of the town and hopped on a train headed north to join the revolution.
“Who knows?” the villagers used to say.
What no one ever guessed was that the drunkard had been carried into Hell in the tightly clenched jaws of the Devil himself, screaming in fear for his eternal soul.
THE BAD BOY
THE BAD BOYM
any years ago somewhere in the lowlands of the Sierra Madre Mountains, there was a remote village. Life was hard for the villagers, who lived on the edge of starvation. Many managed to barely survive by selling the firewood they gathered in the surrounding hills to the people of a nearby town. With this, they earned a few coins they used to buy maize for their tortillas and a handful of beans.