Halloween Countdown: October 16 – you better be good and you better pray

La Llorona is a Mexican weeping ghost, similar to the Irish banshee. There are many variations to the legend, involving a woman who drowns her children after being spurned by her lover, and is therefore doomed to walk the earth as a wailing, restless spirit (like a supernatural Susan Smith, minus the race-baiting). Wikipedia has a good rundown of the various tales and aspects of La Llorona. Especially interesting is how the nature of the spirit, tragic harbinger or malevolent entity, changes based on the social class of those telling the story.

Last winter, I was driving late at night to pick up my wife at Davis Square station, and while I was making my way down South Border Road, a parkway cutting through the Middlesex Fells reservation, I saw a woman in white swaying along the shoulder where the asphalt met the edge of the forest. It was probably some drunk teenager stumbling out of an arboreal beer bash, but it still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for a few minutes. I suppose I could have pulled over and found out for certain, but ever since that time Resurrection Mary stiffed me on gas money, I’ve been hesitant to stop for roadside manifestations from beyond.

Manic Hispanic is an ongoing side project featuring the members of various SoCal punk acts performing Chicano-themed reworkings of various punk classics. It’s a clever gimmick executed masterfully, to where I’ve come to prefer the revised versions of certain songs over the originals. Here’s their “She Turned Into Llorona”, playing off the Misfits’ “I Turned Into a Martian”, from their 2003 album, Mijo Goes To Jr. College. (Descendents fans will get the joke.)